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Please forgive my response being a little meta, but it bothers me that 95% of discussions where physics "experts" are clarifying something to laymen is those ex

Please forgive my response being a little meta, but it bothers me that 95% of discussions where physics "experts" are clarifying something to laymen is those experts clarifying that some factor is actually well understood and makes complete sense and is firmly under the belt of the academic and research community if you just had the knowledge to understand why. Almost never through these same discussions is there acknowledgement or discussion of the unknowns, limitations, or unsolved problems. Judging from years of anecdotal exposure to these "clarifications for the laymen" one would assume absolutely nothing is unsolved in physics.

verisimi 3y ago
[flagged]
Filligree 3y ago
Those can both be true at the same time. Physics has unsolved problems -- that doesn't mean that the problems that come up for laymen are unsolved.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  It seems like the mismatch between technical definitions and common ones and/or the nature of mathematical models vs our first person experience of the universe is a common source of confusion. I only have an EE’s understanding of physics, so just a tiny bit of modern physics and some semiconductor stuff. But I’m glad to have had the big “it’s just a model” reveal so I can worrying too much about what physics means.
creatonez 3y ago
It's balanced out by laymen getting exposed to science media that constantly hypes up how mysterious, unknown, and downright magical everything is, rather than appreciating how rich the literature has become.
cthalupa 3y ago
I mean, this is how it is for any domain that is sufficiently deep. It's not like we don't have similar examples in computer science - when talking with laypeople, we provide generalizations and abstractions. There are still unsolved questions, like P=NP - but the layperson out there is unlikely to think that programming is "unsolved." This isn't an indictment of physics and physicists, it's just an example of how advanced domain knowledge is simplified for easier consumption of non-experts across basically every field deep enough to have these sorts of complex topics.

verisimi 3y ago

[flagged]

Filligree 3y ago

Those can both be true at the same time. Physics has unsolved problems -- that doesn't mean that the problems that come up for laymen are unsolved.

bee_rider 3y ago
It seems like the mismatch between technical definitions and common ones and/or the nature of mathematical models vs our first person experience of the universe is a common source of confusion. I only have an EE’s understanding of physics, so just a tiny bit of modern physics and some semiconductor stuff. But I’m glad to have had the big “it’s just a model” reveal so I can worrying too much about what physics means.

creatonez 3y ago

It's balanced out by laymen getting exposed to science media that constantly hypes up how mysterious, unknown, and downright magical everything is, rather than appreciating how rich the literature has become.

cthalupa 3y ago

I mean, this is how it is for any domain that is sufficiently deep. It's not like we don't have similar examples in computer science - when talking with laypeople, we provide generalizations and abstractions. There are still unsolved questions, like P=NP - but the layperson out there is unlikely to think that programming is "unsolved." This isn't an indictment of physics and physicists, it's just an example of how advanced domain knowledge is simplified for easier consumption of non-experts across basically every field deep enough to have these sorts of complex topics.