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Dr. Woit's blog is directed towards physicists, for the most part. This sort of thing is covered very early on in a graduate education in physics; it's old hat

by Elpis1 4y ago

Dr. Woit's blog is directed towards physicists, for the most part. This sort of thing is covered very early on in a graduate education in physics; it's old hat for that crew, but incomprehensible to anybody else!

puffoflogic 4y ago
In other words, it is a sequence of words entirely devoid of any meaning. If it can only possibly convey an idea to someone who already knows that idea and knows that idea is the one to be conveyed, then the words carry zero bits of information.
- Elpis1 4y ago
  Not at all. To the audience the blog is written for, the article is very sensible. When two folks who know computers quite well discuss some esoteric issue, they will use technical language and assume a certain level of competency and background knowledge; it's the same in physics.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  No. Just to elucidate the general principle a bit: sometimes a reminder or different perspective of past learning using vocabulary you already know can be valuable. Humans aren't perfect decoding and recall machines. And that's assuming the author and target audience learned the advanced vocabulary in the exact same way, which is unlikely. Sometimes you need to fill in gaps in some of your audience's knowledge, perhaps that they should have learned but didn't, maybe because they or their teacher was having a rough day in class.
ajkjk 4y ago
I'm familiar with all the physics; that's why I think Woit's stance is so disappointing! I can't stand physics' tendency to be okay with bad explanations. It's fine to not _have_ a good explanation, but that doesn't mean you have to be okay with bad ones. (also imo the problem with pretty much every treatment of Lagrangians, among other things)
kgwgk 4y ago
He is a mathematical physicist and he seems not to think much about the relationship between the mathematical models and the physical world. https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10533 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10533 It’s interesting the reply from John Baez (another mathematical physicist) to Woit’s “The state of the world is described at a fixed time by a state vector, which evolves unitarily by the Schrodinger equation. No probability here.”: “And perhaps no physics here, either, unless we say how the state of the world is described by that vector: that is, how we can use the vector to make predictions of experimental results.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

by Elpis1 4y ago

puffoflogic 4y ago

In other words, it is a sequence of words entirely devoid of any meaning. If it can only possibly convey an idea to someone who already knows that idea and knows that idea is the one to be conveyed, then the words carry zero bits of information.

Elpis1 4y ago
Not at all. To the audience the blog is written for, the article is very sensible. When two folks who know computers quite well discuss some esoteric issue, they will use technical language and assume a certain level of competency and background knowledge; it's the same in physics.
andrewflnr 4y ago
No. Just to elucidate the general principle a bit: sometimes a reminder or different perspective of past learning using vocabulary you already know can be valuable. Humans aren't perfect decoding and recall machines. And that's assuming the author and target audience learned the advanced vocabulary in the exact same way, which is unlikely. Sometimes you need to fill in gaps in some of your audience's knowledge, perhaps that they should have learned but didn't, maybe because they or their teacher was having a rough day in class.

ajkjk 4y ago

I'm familiar with all the physics; that's why I think Woit's stance is so disappointing! I can't stand physics' tendency to be okay with bad explanations. It's fine to not _have_ a good explanation, but that doesn't mean you have to be okay with bad ones. (also imo the problem with pretty much every treatment of Lagrangians, among other things)

kgwgk 4y ago

He is a mathematical physicist and he seems not to think much about the relationship between the mathematical models and the physical world. https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10533 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10533 It’s interesting the reply from John Baez (another mathematical physicist) to Woit’s “The state of the world is described at a fixed time by a state vector, which evolves unitarily by the Schrodinger equation. No probability here.”: “And perhaps no physics here, either, unless we say how the state of the world is described by that vector: that is, how we can use the vector to make predictions of experimental results.”

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]