4 ms·

Aside from the absurd title SciAm republished it under, the article originally appeared here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.16131 https://www.natu

Aside from the absurd title SciAm republished it under, the article originally appeared here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.16131 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.16131 Whether it is actually much use in understanding black holes is a matter of opinion.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Got it. Nice. So you are talking about taking this concept of 'analogies' to the extreme of an actual physical 'analogy' that can be studied. Here acoustics, to mimic the event horizon (i'm simplifying). This is pretty extreme case. I was just saying generally, that metaphors and analogies can help explain concepts. This is finding actual real correspondence between different 'model's. Were you saying earlier that there was a way to model this correspondence between models generally, for other cases? Maybe there is a category theory or something, to relate different models, so they can be analogies of each other, but both real so can have experiments?
- mannykannot 2y ago
  I'm not thinking of anything as formal as that, more in terms of trying to get a handle on the difference between the words in ordinary language. Metaphors, analogies and models often help us understand things, but they can mislead unless they are, to a reasonable degree, models of the thing we we are trying to understand. The physicist Matt Strassler calls the latter 'phibs', and has written a recently-published book motivated by one in particular, an attempt to explain the relevance of the Higgs field. https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/04/16/why-the-higgs-field-is-nothing-like-molasses-soup-or-a-crowd/ https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/04/16/why-the-higgs-field...
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    Yes, this is good article showing the downsides of analogies. Thank You. Interesting that while critiquing the common analogy, it did suggest another one. I wonder if the problem isn't analogies, it is just finding 'good ones'. "As an analogue, consider air pressure (which is itself an example of an ordinary field.) Air is a substance; it is made of molecules, and has density and weight. But air’s pressure is not a thing; it is a property of air, , and is not itself a substance. Pressure has no density or weight, and is not made from anything. It just tells you what the molecules of air are doing. The Higgs field is much more like air pressure than it is like air itself. It simply is not a substance, despite what the phib suggests."

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Got it. Nice. So you are talking about taking this concept of 'analogies' to the extreme of an actual physical 'analogy' that can be studied. Here acoustics, to mimic the event horizon (i'm simplifying). This is pretty extreme case. I was just saying generally, that metaphors and analogies can help explain concepts. This is finding actual real correspondence between different 'model's. Were you saying earlier that there was a way to model this correspondence between models generally, for other cases? Maybe there is a category theory or something, to relate different models, so they can be analogies of each other, but both real so can have experiments?

mannykannot 2y ago
I'm not thinking of anything as formal as that, more in terms of trying to get a handle on the difference between the words in ordinary language. Metaphors, analogies and models often help us understand things, but they can mislead unless they are, to a reasonable degree, models of the thing we we are trying to understand. The physicist Matt Strassler calls the latter 'phibs', and has written a recently-published book motivated by one in particular, an attempt to explain the relevance of the Higgs field. https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/04/16/why-the-higgs-field-is-nothing-like-molasses-soup-or-a-crowd/ https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/04/16/why-the-higgs-field...
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  Yes, this is good article showing the downsides of analogies. Thank You. Interesting that while critiquing the common analogy, it did suggest another one. I wonder if the problem isn't analogies, it is just finding 'good ones'. "As an analogue, consider air pressure (which is itself an example of an ordinary field.) Air is a substance; it is made of molecules, and has density and weight. But air’s pressure is not a thing; it is a property of air, , and is not itself a substance. Pressure has no density or weight, and is not made from anything. It just tells you what the molecules of air are doing. The Higgs field is much more like air pressure than it is like air itself. It simply is not a substance, despite what the phib suggests."