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>The world exists in infinite resolution, and that’s what we’re built for. The truth is made of details, and they go all the way down. Any ideas about it just r

>The world exists in infinite resolution, and that’s what we’re built for. The truth is made of details, and they go all the way down. Any ideas about it just rest on the top. This isn't known. The greatest depth of resolution we know about is the elementary particles. Quarks, Leptons and Bosons. The smallest meaningful length is the 1.6×10^−35 and it's known as the planck length. We don't know what's smaller than that length. This length places a hard limit on our very notion of abstraction. You think your memories and imagination are ethereal abstractions that have no meaningful size or resolution? False. Your memory and even thought takes up physical space in your head and whatever that physical space is it can be no smaller than the planck length. This limit puts a full stop on even the most ethereal abstraction you can think of. Everything and I mean everything... even that feeling you get when you remember the sound or smell from some place in your childhood, that feeling itself takes up physical space and has a limited resolution. I get what he's talking about and I know I'm being pedantic. But the fact that he just stated something that's axiomatically wrong shows that his ideas here are not likely to be fully correct and he's not thinking deep enough. Our existence is owed to the macro viewpoint. I am not simply a collection of atoms and particles. The arrangement of those particles is what makes me human. The macro view with less details is what gives me, and you meaning. From a quantitative perspective this viewpoint is measurable as entropy. The truth is often hidden by the details it is not hidden in the details.

cwillu 3y ago
“If you could look even closer (and you can with a microscope) the detail would continue to unfold essentially forever, or at least until you reach the molecular scale”
- corethree 3y ago
  This is also wrong. We have ways to deduce resolution smaller than the molecular scale.
  - shmeeed 3y ago
    Your Planck-length-attention to detail seems to have failed to parse the "at least" part of the sentence, which by formal logic makes it correct again, doesn't it? By the way you're saying yourself that this scale has to be deduced and isn't observable anymore. I suppose it could be argued that the essay is rather about what we as human individuals could observe by more or less direct means, and about what normal people could comprehend if they wanted to. It's not a stretch to say that musings about the quantum realm are beyond the scope of most. You're not wrong, of course the author could have chosen to extend his argument deeper into the fine structure of matter itself. But he didn't, and I think he gets the point across just as well, so the discussion seems a bit silly.
    - corethree 3y ago
      The author didn't need to extend his argument that far. That wasn't my point. What he did is make some statements that are factually wrong. Reality as we know it does not have infinite resolution. This is categorically false. It points to the fact about how his arguments aren't fundamentally true. His point is flawed because at the low level it's false. In my argument I took it further. I made the counter point. You probably didn't read far enough. If you did you would agree with my counter point. At a high level, both of our overall points have truth. But this guy is talking about his point as if it's the one fundamental truth, and he even uses the term infinite resolution which again is false.
raincole 3y ago
If you were so "pedantic", you would have known Planck length isn't "the resolution of physical universe". At the risk of ad hominem, it sounds like you're just very eager to show off the fact (or misconception) you know about this term.
- corethree 3y ago
  The Planck length is the smallest meaningful length, as far as we know. There's no risk here... your statement is a deliberate personal attack, there's no other way to put it. It's like stabbing someone, but stating that you're doing so at the risk of looking like your committing murder.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > The Planck length is the smallest meaningful length, as far as we know. No, this is not correct. The smallest meaningful length we actually know about based on experimental data is about twenty orders of magnitude larger than the Planck length, i.e., about the size of an atomic nucleus. As I pointed out in response to your first post, your statement about the Planck length is a plausible speculation in quantum gravity, not a known fact.
    - corethree 3y ago
      How was this experimental data obtained?
      - pdonis 3y ago
        Particle physics experiments over decades. One of the primary goals of such experiments has been to probe smaller and smaller distance scales.
- vehemenz 3y ago
  The author said "meaningful" resolution. If you're so eager to correct others' pedantry, you might be more charitable before offering such a hasty rebuttal.
BlueTemplar 3y ago
Yeah, especially since elementary particles don't have detail almost by definition. And it's a missed opportunity for the article to also point out that there might be a temptation of trying to go way too deep than it's worthwhile for that specific situation - meanwhile if the levels of detail were literally infinite, you wouldn't try. But I guess it would muddle the message ?
pdonis 3y ago
> The smallest meaningful length is the 1.6×10^−35 and it's known as the planck length. This is not a known fact. It's a plausible speculation in quantum gravity, but we are not going to be able to test it any time soon. I agree that we don't know that "infinite resolution" is correct; but we also don't know that it's wrong.

cwillu 3y ago

“If you could look even closer (and you can with a microscope) the detail would continue to unfold essentially forever, or at least until you reach the molecular scale”

corethree 3y ago
This is also wrong. We have ways to deduce resolution smaller than the molecular scale.
- shmeeed 3y ago
  Your Planck-length-attention to detail seems to have failed to parse the "at least" part of the sentence, which by formal logic makes it correct again, doesn't it? By the way you're saying yourself that this scale has to be deduced and isn't observable anymore. I suppose it could be argued that the essay is rather about what we as human individuals could observe by more or less direct means, and about what normal people could comprehend if they wanted to. It's not a stretch to say that musings about the quantum realm are beyond the scope of most. You're not wrong, of course the author could have chosen to extend his argument deeper into the fine structure of matter itself. But he didn't, and I think he gets the point across just as well, so the discussion seems a bit silly.
  - corethree 3y ago
    The author didn't need to extend his argument that far. That wasn't my point. What he did is make some statements that are factually wrong. Reality as we know it does not have infinite resolution. This is categorically false. It points to the fact about how his arguments aren't fundamentally true. His point is flawed because at the low level it's false. In my argument I took it further. I made the counter point. You probably didn't read far enough. If you did you would agree with my counter point. At a high level, both of our overall points have truth. But this guy is talking about his point as if it's the one fundamental truth, and he even uses the term infinite resolution which again is false.

raincole 3y ago

If you were so "pedantic", you would have known Planck length isn't "the resolution of physical universe". At the risk of ad hominem, it sounds like you're just very eager to show off the fact (or misconception) you know about this term.

corethree 3y ago
The Planck length is the smallest meaningful length, as far as we know. There's no risk here... your statement is a deliberate personal attack, there's no other way to put it. It's like stabbing someone, but stating that you're doing so at the risk of looking like your committing murder.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > The Planck length is the smallest meaningful length, as far as we know. No, this is not correct. The smallest meaningful length we actually know about based on experimental data is about twenty orders of magnitude larger than the Planck length, i.e., about the size of an atomic nucleus. As I pointed out in response to your first post, your statement about the Planck length is a plausible speculation in quantum gravity, not a known fact.
  - corethree 3y ago
    How was this experimental data obtained?
    - pdonis 3y ago
      Particle physics experiments over decades. One of the primary goals of such experiments has been to probe smaller and smaller distance scales.
vehemenz 3y ago
The author said "meaningful" resolution. If you're so eager to correct others' pedantry, you might be more charitable before offering such a hasty rebuttal.

BlueTemplar 3y ago

Yeah, especially since elementary particles don't have detail almost by definition. And it's a missed opportunity for the article to also point out that there might be a temptation of trying to go way too deep than it's worthwhile for that specific situation - meanwhile if the levels of detail were literally infinite, you wouldn't try. But I guess it would muddle the message ?

pdonis 3y ago

> The smallest meaningful length is the 1.6×10^−35 and it's known as the planck length. This is not a known fact. It's a plausible speculation in quantum gravity, but we are not going to be able to test it any time soon. I agree that we don't know that "infinite resolution" is correct; but we also don't know that it's wrong.