Things to Reject in 21st Century Physics
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From: Tom Roberts on 4 Jul 2010 12:02 The major thing to reject in physics, in this or any other century, is Oldershaw's attempt to dictate to nature how to operate. Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: > (1) Acausality - everything in nature obeys causality, except bad > mathematical physics. What God whispered in your ear and told you this? This depends on what one means by "causality". Philosophers have been trying to define it for centuries, and have failed. Modern mathematical physics has a quite different meaning of causality, which is obeyed by all modern theories of fundamental physics -- it is quite different from what you mean by the word, so don't get confused by PUNs. This is related to some of your other demands. For instance, the decay of subatomic particles sure appears to be non-deterministic and acausal. > (2) Reversibility - an unacceptable Platonic over-idealization. What God whispered in your ear and told you this? I know of no exactly reversible systems, but there are LOTS of situations in which reversibility is a useful and extremely accurate approximation. And some of our current best theories are time-reversible (but we know they are at best approximations to some as-yet-unknown better theory). > (3) Strict reductionism - nature is multi-scaled and fundamentality > occurs throughout the hierarchy, which has no upper or lower bounds. What God whispered in your ear and told you this? Today I know of no upper or lower bounds in length scales -- experimentally we have probed only as small as ~10^-18 meters, and below that scale is terra incognita. At scales above that of the solar system, either GR breaks down or our knowledge of types of matter and energy break down. But "don't know" means DON'T KNOW. And we DON'T KNOW if there are limits to nature's length scales. > (4) Absolute scale - within any given cosmological Scale there is > quasi-"absolute" scale, but the entire cosmological hierarchy of > Scales only has relative scale. What God whispered in your ear and told you this? Structures in the world we inhabit come at all scales we have observed, from femtometers to gigaparsecs. The observable features at different scales are DIFFERENT, so there is an "absoluteness" to it (e.g. we have seen no atomic nuclei at the scale of parsecs; we have seen no stars at the scale of millimeters or parsecs, etc.). > (5) Non-deterministic modeling - real physical systems are fully > deterministic; it is our obsession with our mundane observational > limitations that confuses the issue, as well as the false assumption > that predictability limits mean indeterminism. What God whispered in your ear and told you this? Indeed, the behavior of sub-atomic systems STRONGLY implies non-determinism. Certainly our current best theories of particle physics are non-deterministic (in some senses, not in all senses). The fact that Bell's inequalities are violated in certain physical systems is STRONGLY indicative that no fully deterministic theory applies (it would be rigorously so, except for the fact that there might be something going on that we know nothing about). To claim that human social systems are "deterministic" is OUTRAGEOUSLY naive. > A manifesto for the 21st century. It would be MUCH better to do science, than waste time on such a silly "manifesto". I repeat: the REAL thing to reject is Oldershaw's approach of trying to dictate to nature how to operate the world. Some God whispering in his ear is not science. Remember that science is a process to model the world, systematically refining and improving the model via experiments. In particular, it is NOT an attempt to describe "how the world works" or "what the world is". Oldershaw clearly does not understand this; if he did, he would see how silly his ultimatums actually are. And how misplaced. Tom Roberts
From: Hayek on 4 Jul 2010 12:37 Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: > (5) Non-deterministic modeling - real physical systems are fully > deterministic; it is our obsession with our mundane observational > limitations that confuses the issue, as well as the false assumption > that predictability limits mean indeterminism. Suppose we have an object traveling at an infinite speed. Where would its position be ? It would be impossible to calculate it, we would be certain that it passes, but we would be unable to give it a determined position. Indeterminism is not hard at all. Uwe Hayek. -- We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion : the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history. -- Ayn Rand I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. -- Thomas Jefferson. Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill.
From: Sam Wormley on 4 Jul 2010 13:54 On 7/4/10 11:37 AM, Hayek wrote: > Suppose we have an object traveling at an infinite speed. Suppose you consider things that can happen in the universe.
From: Hayek on 4 Jul 2010 14:34 Sam Wormley wrote: > On 7/4/10 11:37 AM, Hayek wrote: >> Suppose we have an object traveling at an infinite speed. > > Suppose you consider things that can happen in the universe. You seem to know what happens at uncertainty ! Share ! Uwe Hayek. -- We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion : the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history. -- Ayn Rand I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. -- Thomas Jefferson. Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill.
From: eric gisse on 4 Jul 2010 15:12
Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: [snip blather] > > (5) Non-deterministic modeling - real physical systems are fully > deterministic A Nobel prize awaits you if you can demonstrate this. [snip blather] |