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This is exacly right, and it's a shame that article pushes the "woo, magic" perspective, instead of using the opportunity to highlight the little-known fact (am
by gohrt 12y ago
This is exacly right, and it's a shame that article pushes the "woo, magic" perspective, instead of using the opportunity to highlight the little-known fact (among the lay public and students) of theoretical phyisics:
it's a about model-building, "dimensions" aren't real except in the sense that a certain mathematical model (with N dimensions) is (a) consistent with experiment, and (b) has a lot of symmetry and simplicity relative to its explanatory/predictive power.
- Florin_Andrei 12y agoTBH, when you stumble upon a really useful parameter space, it does seem like magic. Also, these days I'm reading Max Tegmark's "Our Mathematical Universe" and, being immersed in that argumentation, the whole "real vs unreal" dichotomy seems a bit transparent. Anyway, having formerly played a bit with computational physics, I'm primarily after what's useful.
- sonoffett 12y agoGeneral semantics helped me be aware of how easy it is to confuse the map for the territory, as well as adopt models based on their usefulness. As a great philosopher once said, reality is what you can get away with.