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I see your goal. But I question how you're going about it. First, I'm all for convincing people that the wave function is something real. If you believe that s
by btilly 2y ago
I see your goal. But I question how you're going about it.
First, I'm all for convincing people that the wave function is something real. If you believe that strongly enough, then you're pushed towards accepting the Everett Interpretation. Which makes far more sense to me than any other interpretation of QM.
But I would suggest that you get them there by the shortest reasoning that you can. With minimal detours. The more material you have, the more likely that someone with different preconceptions will find something to disagree about. Worse yet, people will lose track and abandon it.
I would also suggest that you simplify your writing. According to https://readabilityformulas.com/readability-scoring-system.php https://readabilityformulas.com/readability-scoring-system.p... your writing is college entry level. Readability is weird, we don't notice that it matters until we find ourselves unable to understand text. And then it is a wall. Meaningless phrasing choices can improve readability and broaden your audience.
Now for a more substantive criticism. But one of choice of topic, where you likely reasonably disagree with me. You are writing about the scientific method. But the style of your writing undermines the essential spirit behind the scientific method. What do I mean by that essential spirit? I mean the thing that Feynman was trying to explain in http://www.feynman.com/science/what-is-science/ http://www.feynman.com/science/what-is-science/. It is the attitude that leads to statements like, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Now you're telling them what to believe. You aren't telling them how they could think of it. You aren't encouraging them to disagree with you and question you. You're telling them what is true. I think that conveying the skeptical attitude is more important than convincing them of any particular fact.
Moving on, I see you've added a number of things to your article. They are significant improvements. But I would suggest an improvement to one in particular. Your arithmetic example.
Counting to negative numbers for debt makes sense. But you don't show how you get something that unexpectedly is useful. So I would make the chain that you lead people down to be counting, to positive integer arithmetic, to negative numbers for debt, to fractions, to the idea that we can put this on a line, to the question of whether we have everything on that line, to the reals. Just outline it. And then point out how we started with counting, and wound up most of the way to geometry...doesn't look like counting any more!
Finally, I think that high school students are capable of more philosophy than you do. In particular there are lots of youtube videos and articles that try to explain why uncountable means more. If they can see those explanations, why can't they encounter the idea that all such claims require additional assumptions? Thinking about how to connect reasoning and computation is something of interest. And leads to topics that are fundamental in such places as logic and CS.
Anyways, this is wrong and I don't know if you read it. But if you do, hopefully you found at least one thing that's worth thinking about.
- lisper 2y agoThanks for the feedback. > But I would suggest that you get them there by the shortest reasoning that you can. With minimal detours. Yeah, well, that's the challenge, isn't it. The target audience is so far away from QM that it's hard to fathom. These are people who believe (or at least seriously consider the possibility) that Jesus rose from the dead, the earth is 6000 years old, demons are literally real... > Now you're telling them what to believe. Am I? That is actually something I was trying very hard to avoid. Can you point out where I'm doing that?
- btilly 2y agoThe fact that the audience is so far is part of why I think that the attitudes of skepticism are more important than any particular set of facts. But it is also important that you make it easy to follow your explanation without having to challenge emotionally held beliefs. For example, consider those religious beliefs. A big part of why we hold them is that trying to give up those beliefs involves accepting a lot of pain. Both from external causes, like the condemnation of your religious community, and internal ones, like the gut level belief that even thinking about rejecting Jesus puts you at risk of going to Hell. It is very hard to engage in quiet contemplation while feeling that you're risking eternal damnation. As for where you tell people what to believe: And indeed it is a counter-example to the idea that mathematical truths are grounded in actual objective reality, but that is not news -- we already established that with the example of negative numbers and imaginary numbers. You claim to have shown that the ideas were not grounded in actual objective reality. But that isn't true. You only showed that they aren't grounded in the first way that you tried to ground it. Both of those examples are things that can easily be grounded in objective reality in other ways. But the Banach-Tarski construction is different. It depends on the axiom of choice. Which in turn is a statement about a process that cannot be actually done in objective reality. And without being able to do that process, we're unable to do Banach-Tarski in objective reality. I think that's an important difference. And it is one that is missed when you tell them that this is like that other thing which you just saw.
- lisper 2y agoThanks for the feedback. FWIW, I am very cognizant of the emotional toll of giving up religious beliefs, which is the main reason I've not been tackling those head-on.