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> We already know that classical mechanics is non-physical. This result (and others) show that it is not even internally consistent— that is, you shouldn’t need

> We already know that classical mechanics is non-physical. This result (and others) show that it is not even internally consistent— that is, you shouldn’t need any empirical evidence to know that there’s something else going on. I don’t think this is a right approach. We already know that no theory is complete and perfect, so we can say the same thing about any theory. Even worse than that, we can make the philosophical point that any theory, being conceived within our limited brains, physically cannot be anything other than models and approximations. The logical conclusion of this argument is then that we should throw our hands in the air and stop discussing anything. It’s also wrong in this case specifically because there is absolutely no reason why this thought experiment cannot be proven or disproven within Newtonian mechanics.

Cushman 3y ago
> I don’t think this is a right approach. You’re welcome not to think so! I’m just pointing out the relevant context. This isn’t an argument in a vacuum, there’s an academic discipline that has thoroughly engaged with it. Part of that is a vast body of literature that in turns agrees and disagrees with your observations— to take a side, I’d start clicking links from “theory-ladenness”. But the dome is rather boring. P1, this math describes a deterministic system; P2, here is a non-deterministic result; QED, P1 is false. Since we know that P1 doesn’t describe the universe, it should be hard to have a strong opinion unless you’re invested in a philosophical position about pre-modern scientific practice. (I’m not invested, so I don’t have an opinion other than that it isn’t trivially refutable as stated.)
- kergonath 3y ago
  > You’re welcome not to think so! I’m just pointing out the relevant context. It isn’t, though. The argument is not “lol Newtonian physics are dumb” and you’ll see nothing of the sort in the Norton argument. The argument is instead “Newtonian physics can be non-deterministic”, which is something we can demonstrate regardless of the validity range of Newtonian physics. > This isn’t an argument in a vacuum, there’s an academic discipline that has thoroughly engaged with it. Sure. How is that linked to your point? > But the dome is rather boring. P1, this math describes a deterministic system; P2, here is a non-deterministic result; QED, P1 is false. Indeed. > Since we know that P1 doesn’t describe the universe, it should be hard to have a strong opinion unless you’re invested in a philosophical position about pre-modern scientific practice. That’s a strange position to take from a philosophical point of view. Why things are wrong matters more than whether they are because, again, everything is wrong to some extent. So, of course in some abstract epistemological sense anything that can be formulated within Newtonian mechanics is wrong. But then nothing is right, so who cares? The initial question is much more interesting from a philosophical point of view: does the old Newtonian mechanics, which is still the closest to our daily experience, contains seeds of non-determinism? But then the logic is flawed: the issue is not that Newtonian mechanics are wrong, it is that, in your formalism, P2 does not follow from P1 and is actually wrong.
  - Cushman 3y ago
    Mmm, I promise I haven’t taken any position. Is that a position? In which case, mea culpa, I really don’t care if the dome holds. Even if I cared, I wouldn’t care, because space invaders already gets us all that plus sound effects. Not for nothing, even historians and philosophers of physics broadly don’t care if the dome holds. Some do, of course, but unless you're thinking of a specific paper it’ll probably be less frustrating for everyone to leave it there— with no hard feelings!
drdeca 3y ago
> We already know that no theory is complete and perfect, so we can say the same thing about any theory. If you mean this as an appeal to Gödel’s incompleteness results, the things those show can’t happen aren’t the same kinds of things that a “fully complete theory of physics” would have to satisfy. That’s not to say that I expect that we will ever (in this world) have a complete description of the physics of this world, But I’m quite confident that Gödel’s incompleteness theorems do not pose a fundamental barrier to the laws of physics of a world being perfectly known by entities in that world.

Cushman 3y ago

> I don’t think this is a right approach. You’re welcome not to think so! I’m just pointing out the relevant context. This isn’t an argument in a vacuum, there’s an academic discipline that has thoroughly engaged with it. Part of that is a vast body of literature that in turns agrees and disagrees with your observations— to take a side, I’d start clicking links from “theory-ladenness”. But the dome is rather boring. P1, this math describes a deterministic system; P2, here is a non-deterministic result; QED, P1 is false. Since we know that P1 doesn’t describe the universe, it should be hard to have a strong opinion unless you’re invested in a philosophical position about pre-modern scientific practice. (I’m not invested, so I don’t have an opinion other than that it isn’t trivially refutable as stated.)

kergonath 3y ago
> You’re welcome not to think so! I’m just pointing out the relevant context. It isn’t, though. The argument is not “lol Newtonian physics are dumb” and you’ll see nothing of the sort in the Norton argument. The argument is instead “Newtonian physics can be non-deterministic”, which is something we can demonstrate regardless of the validity range of Newtonian physics. > This isn’t an argument in a vacuum, there’s an academic discipline that has thoroughly engaged with it. Sure. How is that linked to your point? > But the dome is rather boring. P1, this math describes a deterministic system; P2, here is a non-deterministic result; QED, P1 is false. Indeed. > Since we know that P1 doesn’t describe the universe, it should be hard to have a strong opinion unless you’re invested in a philosophical position about pre-modern scientific practice. That’s a strange position to take from a philosophical point of view. Why things are wrong matters more than whether they are because, again, everything is wrong to some extent. So, of course in some abstract epistemological sense anything that can be formulated within Newtonian mechanics is wrong. But then nothing is right, so who cares? The initial question is much more interesting from a philosophical point of view: does the old Newtonian mechanics, which is still the closest to our daily experience, contains seeds of non-determinism? But then the logic is flawed: the issue is not that Newtonian mechanics are wrong, it is that, in your formalism, P2 does not follow from P1 and is actually wrong.
- Cushman 3y ago
  Mmm, I promise I haven’t taken any position. Is that a position? In which case, mea culpa, I really don’t care if the dome holds. Even if I cared, I wouldn’t care, because space invaders already gets us all that plus sound effects. Not for nothing, even historians and philosophers of physics broadly don’t care if the dome holds. Some do, of course, but unless you're thinking of a specific paper it’ll probably be less frustrating for everyone to leave it there— with no hard feelings!

drdeca 3y ago

> We already know that no theory is complete and perfect, so we can say the same thing about any theory. If you mean this as an appeal to Gödel’s incompleteness results, the things those show can’t happen aren’t the same kinds of things that a “fully complete theory of physics” would have to satisfy. That’s not to say that I expect that we will ever (in this world) have a complete description of the physics of this world, But I’m quite confident that Gödel’s incompleteness theorems do not pose a fundamental barrier to the laws of physics of a world being perfectly known by entities in that world.