4 ms·

One of the problems with your argument is, as usual in these kinds of discussions, enthymematic: much lies in your particular notions of "explanation" and "unde

by gone35 12y ago

One of the problems with your argument is, as usual in these kinds of discussions, enthymematic: much lies in your particular notions of "explanation" and "understanding", which to you seem to self-evidently involve far from than their usual lexical sense --eg to many, Feynman's explanation of magnetism, with its remarkable succinctness, granularity and predictive power, is quite sound and satisfying! So I would suggest you to begin by explicitly defining [1] what your particular notion of "understanding" is, so that you can then clarify what exactly is it that you find unsatisfying about modern physical law. [1] http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/e05.htm http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/e05.htm

bane 12y ago
Okay, yeah sure. Good point. If you want to get down into those kinds of philosophical details, I'm not sure I'm prepared to do that. Right now, I'm kind of like the Supreme Court on pornography, I recognize understanding when I see it. I think Feynman handles the question incorrectly. The question is about his understanding of magnetism, but he places the burden on the receiver of the explanation. If they don't understand the explanation then it doesn't matter. I do get his point in this and I'm not entirely saying it's wrong. But I think also that it's a deflection. Lets assume a "presently omniscient" listener asking the question, somebody who may not have the knowledge before it is presented to them, but will understand the explanation perfectly as it's provided. Suppose a Feynman or some other physicist has such a listener and they go on a deep dive into all the myriad and intricate details, the sum of all human knowledge on the matter -- this kind of listener would be able to follow along entirely with every last detail. This listener would still not have an answer to the question "how do magnets work?" Because science doesn't actually know the answer to this. We have excellent descriptions of what magnets do, and what produces magnetism. We can predict to some nth decimal point of precision the outcome of just about any given experiment such that we don't really bother much with experimental physics about most of the day-to-day magnetism. But why do those things produce magnetism at all? The answers to this is basically "it just does". And that's as good as all our knowledge is. That's all we've arrived at. For all we know, every time an electron starts circling something, invisible universe fairies produce "magnetism" magic that does what we observe. We don't know why magnetism does what it does, only that it does it. But imagine if we actually understood it, at a fundamental level, if we "groked" magnetism and were the masters of it... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8148377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8148377

by gone35 12y ago

bane 12y ago

Okay, yeah sure. Good point. If you want to get down into those kinds of philosophical details, I'm not sure I'm prepared to do that. Right now, I'm kind of like the Supreme Court on pornography, I recognize understanding when I see it. I think Feynman handles the question incorrectly. The question is about his understanding of magnetism, but he places the burden on the receiver of the explanation. If they don't understand the explanation then it doesn't matter. I do get his point in this and I'm not entirely saying it's wrong. But I think also that it's a deflection. Lets assume a "presently omniscient" listener asking the question, somebody who may not have the knowledge before it is presented to them, but will understand the explanation perfectly as it's provided. Suppose a Feynman or some other physicist has such a listener and they go on a deep dive into all the myriad and intricate details, the sum of all human knowledge on the matter -- this kind of listener would be able to follow along entirely with every last detail. This listener would still not have an answer to the question "how do magnets work?" Because science doesn't actually know the answer to this. We have excellent descriptions of what magnets do, and what produces magnetism. We can predict to some nth decimal point of precision the outcome of just about any given experiment such that we don't really bother much with experimental physics about most of the day-to-day magnetism. But why do those things produce magnetism at all? The answers to this is basically "it just does". And that's as good as all our knowledge is. That's all we've arrived at. For all we know, every time an electron starts circling something, invisible universe fairies produce "magnetism" magic that does what we observe. We don't know why magnetism does what it does, only that it does it. But imagine if we actually understood it, at a fundamental level, if we "groked" magnetism and were the masters of it... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8148377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8148377