5 ms·

I loved this theory when I first heard about it. It makes intuitive sense to me, even though it is hardly possible from some perspectives with what we know t

I loved this theory when I first heard about it. It makes intuitive sense to me, even though it is hardly possible from some perspectives with what we know today. The more I read the more interesting it gets.

api 2y ago
AFAIK the concept of a “particle” is kind of a construct, or at least every bit as much as a “wave.” What’s really happening down there is whatever the math says is happening and it does not have direct physical analogies to much of anything we experience microscopically on a day to day basis.
- russdill 2y ago
  It's a little more concrete for things that are not elementary particles such as neurons
- effie 2y ago
  > What’s really happening down there is whatever the math says is happening But math isn't saying what is happening in the real world. It's a model, a fake simplified world. The map is not the territory.
  - kadoban 2y ago
    We're really looking at two (or more) different maps here, not map vs territory. One of the maps is hey there's these little balls called particles, they bounce around and interact in ways X, Y, Z, etc. Another is a big page of math that involves excitations of fields that interact. The point is that _this_ one is the best we currently have, but it doesn't let you simply, intuitively and correctly talk about particles interacting (or other things we intuitively want to understand the world in terms of), because those aren't real in the model. They're just an abstraction that usually works at the scale we experience day-to-day. So yeah, the territory is the territory and neither of these are it, but even getting past that, our best map is just a bunch of math that you just have to take at face value if you want to be as correct as our maps currently allow. This is meant to address questions like "is light a particle or a wave?" The answer is: No. It's (according to our best model/map) this bunch of math that doesn't correspond to either one of those, have fun calculating.

api 2y ago

AFAIK the concept of a “particle” is kind of a construct, or at least every bit as much as a “wave.” What’s really happening down there is whatever the math says is happening and it does not have direct physical analogies to much of anything we experience microscopically on a day to day basis.

russdill 2y ago
It's a little more concrete for things that are not elementary particles such as neurons
effie 2y ago
> What’s really happening down there is whatever the math says is happening But math isn't saying what is happening in the real world. It's a model, a fake simplified world. The map is not the territory.
- kadoban 2y ago
  We're really looking at two (or more) different maps here, not map vs territory. One of the maps is hey there's these little balls called particles, they bounce around and interact in ways X, Y, Z, etc. Another is a big page of math that involves excitations of fields that interact. The point is that _this_ one is the best we currently have, but it doesn't let you simply, intuitively and correctly talk about particles interacting (or other things we intuitively want to understand the world in terms of), because those aren't real in the model. They're just an abstraction that usually works at the scale we experience day-to-day. So yeah, the territory is the territory and neither of these are it, but even getting past that, our best map is just a bunch of math that you just have to take at face value if you want to be as correct as our maps currently allow. This is meant to address questions like "is light a particle or a wave?" The answer is: No. It's (according to our best model/map) this bunch of math that doesn't correspond to either one of those, have fun calculating.