Thanks for the correction - updated the article. I don't know why B-52 has stuck in my mind. I tend to try to write from memory without using the big G - it has its upsides, but also its downsides :-)
Read Joel's piece right before yours. As usual, both were spot on.
I've been amazed by the complete lack of science surrounding Wuhan virus, but "science" has been one of the primary tools of hucksters science, well since science.
When scientific method was first introduced all civilization was naturally ignorant of it and could be fooled by those who actually understood it. The enlightenment(s) gradually popularized science and the masses took advantage of its use making great strides in all fields of endeavor. For the last few decades much of, if not most of the world's educational institutions have been failing to teach science, and instead they've been successfully proselytizing. They convinced a significant portion that science and fact are subjective.
I don't really know what's going on in certain fields with the emphasis on a "consensus" that involves muzzling those who dissent. I do aver that if credentialed scientists don't want to be questioned by curious and critical laypeople, they really should stick to quantum physics. When you start talking about atom-field interactions, I can't say, "Well, actually, that's not in line with my experience of atom-field interactions." Not even if I casually pull out my phone and do a quick web search of the topic so I can see if it's just one of those jargon-y terms scientists give to an ordinary phenomenon in an effort to evade the See Through Their Crap-o-meter.
I don't mean to bash science; like any modern human I have worshiped at its altar, but if I'm reading correctly, Ibn al-Haytham would have said there is no altar and our scientific understanding is built by destroying the golden calf that says otherwise. And the fact that the people building the Golden Calf also use the term "sex assigned at birth" and call disavowing one's actual biology "gender-affirming care" doesn't make them very difficult to challenge. Like I said, next time, they should concentrate on lying to us about something that can't be determined with the naked eye (or loins).
This difficulty of understanding quantum mechanics is why I became so fascinated by it. It's not all that mathematically difficult when applied to simple systems (things like the simplified atom-field model I referred to). But actually *understanding* what's going on is not easy at all. Being able to work through the math is not at all the same thing as "understanding" - a fact I often emphasized (to little avail) to my students.
The principal difficulty with QM is not mathematical, it's more to do with the fact that there are no 'pictures' from our everyday experience that really work. So we have all this math, but nothing to hang it on.
The classic example is something called "the two-slit experiment". It's very simple to visualize - you fire a single 'photon' through two slits - like two vertical slits in a metal screen, for example. We look at what happens to the light afterwards. You can see the photons arrive individually at a second screen (with no slits) after the first with the slits - one by one - but they build up a pattern that is associated with waves (and it gets *much* weirder than this).
So are photons waves or particles? Or are they particles guided by some 'wavey' thing? Yes, to all of those questions - it all depends on what you choose to measure. There's no way to develop a fully-consistent picture if you think in terms of waves and particles. The math is easy (something that a good final year high school student could cope with).
Feynman, a colossus of physics and QM in particular, described this experiment as containing all the mysteries of QM. He couldn't explain it properly. No one has been able to. Just being able to write down and solve the math is NOT the same thing as "explanation".
What is, perhaps, even stranger with QM is that there are several "interpretations" of the math which ALL work, and yet are fundamentally different ways of looking at what's "really" going on. In most of my work, and mostly for convenience, I used a form of what is called the Copenhagen interpretation - but I also occasionally used the "Many Worlds Interpretation" because it was an easier conceptual framework for that specific problem (for me). But there are other interpretations which represent very different views on what is "happening". All of these different interpretations result in the same answer - they predict the results of experiments, but they all have a different conception of 'reality'.
As you might imagine, there are lots of arguments about the 'correct' way to view QM. The problem is that it can be *proven* that these interpretations lead to the same experimental predictions - and we're stuck with a bit of a mess when it comes to describing 'reality'.
There are many who argue that the math doesn't represent 'reality' in any meaningful way - it's just a convenient tool that allows us to go from preparation to measurement and get the right answers. This might be correct, but I feel it's somewhat defeatist - is there really no way to get a better handle on 'reality'? It feels like a crank the handle approach - just do the math and don't worry about what it means (often called the "shut up and calculate" approach - something that Feynman is also supposed to have said, but actually didn't).
So the world of QM is, for me, endlessly fascinating - and it's only by *argument*, and sometimes very heated argument, do we make any progress at all in sorting this stuff out.
The gender ideology stuff seems a bit like this too. Is it a man or a woman? Or a bit of both? Unfortunately with the gender ideology stuff we have an assumed picture of 'reality' - but there's no math there at all. At least in QM everybody gets the same answer (if they implement their chosen interpretation correctly).
The atomic bombs were dropped by B-29 bombers, not B-52s. Just wanted to point out that small error.
Thanks for the correction - updated the article. I don't know why B-52 has stuck in my mind. I tend to try to write from memory without using the big G - it has its upsides, but also its downsides :-)
Read Joel's piece right before yours. As usual, both were spot on.
I've been amazed by the complete lack of science surrounding Wuhan virus, but "science" has been one of the primary tools of hucksters science, well since science.
When scientific method was first introduced all civilization was naturally ignorant of it and could be fooled by those who actually understood it. The enlightenment(s) gradually popularized science and the masses took advantage of its use making great strides in all fields of endeavor. For the last few decades much of, if not most of the world's educational institutions have been failing to teach science, and instead they've been successfully proselytizing. They convinced a significant portion that science and fact are subjective.
I don't really know what's going on in certain fields with the emphasis on a "consensus" that involves muzzling those who dissent. I do aver that if credentialed scientists don't want to be questioned by curious and critical laypeople, they really should stick to quantum physics. When you start talking about atom-field interactions, I can't say, "Well, actually, that's not in line with my experience of atom-field interactions." Not even if I casually pull out my phone and do a quick web search of the topic so I can see if it's just one of those jargon-y terms scientists give to an ordinary phenomenon in an effort to evade the See Through Their Crap-o-meter.
I don't mean to bash science; like any modern human I have worshiped at its altar, but if I'm reading correctly, Ibn al-Haytham would have said there is no altar and our scientific understanding is built by destroying the golden calf that says otherwise. And the fact that the people building the Golden Calf also use the term "sex assigned at birth" and call disavowing one's actual biology "gender-affirming care" doesn't make them very difficult to challenge. Like I said, next time, they should concentrate on lying to us about something that can't be determined with the naked eye (or loins).
This difficulty of understanding quantum mechanics is why I became so fascinated by it. It's not all that mathematically difficult when applied to simple systems (things like the simplified atom-field model I referred to). But actually *understanding* what's going on is not easy at all. Being able to work through the math is not at all the same thing as "understanding" - a fact I often emphasized (to little avail) to my students.
The principal difficulty with QM is not mathematical, it's more to do with the fact that there are no 'pictures' from our everyday experience that really work. So we have all this math, but nothing to hang it on.
The classic example is something called "the two-slit experiment". It's very simple to visualize - you fire a single 'photon' through two slits - like two vertical slits in a metal screen, for example. We look at what happens to the light afterwards. You can see the photons arrive individually at a second screen (with no slits) after the first with the slits - one by one - but they build up a pattern that is associated with waves (and it gets *much* weirder than this).
So are photons waves or particles? Or are they particles guided by some 'wavey' thing? Yes, to all of those questions - it all depends on what you choose to measure. There's no way to develop a fully-consistent picture if you think in terms of waves and particles. The math is easy (something that a good final year high school student could cope with).
Feynman, a colossus of physics and QM in particular, described this experiment as containing all the mysteries of QM. He couldn't explain it properly. No one has been able to. Just being able to write down and solve the math is NOT the same thing as "explanation".
What is, perhaps, even stranger with QM is that there are several "interpretations" of the math which ALL work, and yet are fundamentally different ways of looking at what's "really" going on. In most of my work, and mostly for convenience, I used a form of what is called the Copenhagen interpretation - but I also occasionally used the "Many Worlds Interpretation" because it was an easier conceptual framework for that specific problem (for me). But there are other interpretations which represent very different views on what is "happening". All of these different interpretations result in the same answer - they predict the results of experiments, but they all have a different conception of 'reality'.
As you might imagine, there are lots of arguments about the 'correct' way to view QM. The problem is that it can be *proven* that these interpretations lead to the same experimental predictions - and we're stuck with a bit of a mess when it comes to describing 'reality'.
There are many who argue that the math doesn't represent 'reality' in any meaningful way - it's just a convenient tool that allows us to go from preparation to measurement and get the right answers. This might be correct, but I feel it's somewhat defeatist - is there really no way to get a better handle on 'reality'? It feels like a crank the handle approach - just do the math and don't worry about what it means (often called the "shut up and calculate" approach - something that Feynman is also supposed to have said, but actually didn't).
So the world of QM is, for me, endlessly fascinating - and it's only by *argument*, and sometimes very heated argument, do we make any progress at all in sorting this stuff out.
The gender ideology stuff seems a bit like this too. Is it a man or a woman? Or a bit of both? Unfortunately with the gender ideology stuff we have an assumed picture of 'reality' - but there's no math there at all. At least in QM everybody gets the same answer (if they implement their chosen interpretation correctly).
Surely you’re joking, Mr Rigger. (Hat tip to Mr Feynman)
:-)
I so love your style. Always entertaining but deeply insightful.
Aw thanks so much Joel - that is an honour coming from you!