I see you still haven’t read the article you’re commenting on.
That’s enough for me.
I’ve not been commenting on any particular article.
If you’re referring to the Scientific American article you mentioned, it’s behind a paywall.
Regardless, if you had a point to make about that article, I imagine you would have made it. As it is, you’ve been rather vague on just what it is you’re citing that for.
I just skimmed a lot of posts- I saw a lot of good points. I just want to add this, I just hope I’m not repeating others:
Mostly, I think this kind of thinking is actually a good thing. Everyone (well, most everyone) has these feelings from time to time. Don’t you remember your freshman year in college?
We are new to a field or a thought or a concept. We are struck by many new ideas and we have to make sense of them. So we do our best. Some of this thinking happens as we try to do that. We start thinking that we have new insights into things (well, they are new to us, at least). How can we know that we are probing the same blind alleys that many have before. So others set you straight (hopefully gently). This all can be a good thing, part of embracing scientific culture and thought. As long as people can allow ourselves to be talked down from the treetops, they should be allowed to climb a little.
The problems arise when we get stubborn or fall in with evil or misguided companions (I’m looking at you, conspiracy theorists, YEC’s, and climate deniers). This often happens when the facts disagree with our preferences, prejudices, privileges or experiences*. Then this becomes a real problem when it impacts policy.
*Disagreement with our day-to-day experience (plus much mathness) is why quantum and relativity seem to bear the brunt of this phenomenon. Fortunately, the societal implications for laypersons rejecting or failing to completely understand quantum and relativity are small.
Uh, this reminds me of a Sponge Bob moment when Patrick makes the comment that the cozy wood fire they made should not be there. Only for the fire they started did go “poof” when everybody remembered that they were underwater. 
Thing is that I do not expect your cell phone, your computer, or your network that uses quantum physics to stop working when you learn about how they do use Quantum Mechanics.
More on the link.
By the same reasoning, how can a vector field be real? How can an inverse-square force be real? They’re just mathematical concepts, nothing tangible.
But they describe aspects of classical mechanics, electromagnetism, etc., that are indisputably part of physics.
Just because a branch of physics uses abstract mathematical models, even highly complicated and arcane mathematical models, doesn’t make it “not physical”.
Because all the quotes in your linked page are out of context. You do know that that’s the fundamental nature of quotes pages, right? They are created by some compiler (like the venerable Bartlett or one of that ilk) going through a bunch of sources that record discussions or publications about a particular topic, and taking a few particularly pertinent or pithy phrases or sentences out of their context to group them all together as a collection of “quotations”.
The difference is QM does not behave within the constraints of spacetime which is why we now have two versions of reality viz: classical and quantum, and there is no one theoretical framework which accounts for them both. Yes, we use mathematics to model the behaviour of phenomena but the mathematics isn’t the* thing* we are describing, just a virtual reality representation of it. In other words, we essentially live in a world of ‘ideas’ and never more so than when we try to describe QM. And, in fact, since the birth of QM this perspective has become even more apparent due to the realization that reality is more than what we can describe with our five senses, something which has its origins in the physical world, and ultimately is of our own making in how we choose to model it. The point I have been attempting to make over recent posts is that it’s hopeless to try to develop a theory from what we already know in terms of physical (or classical) knowledge because it does not proceed from that direction. Rather, knowledge exists as a potential that has to be unearthed by some conscious observer, which we would nowadays consider as constructing experiments in order to see what happens. You just like to call it ‘physical’ to avoid having to admit we can’t unify it with what we already know.
This is a silly argument since most physicists freely admit nobody understands QM in the way classical physics is understood and whatever quote I presented would probably be met with derision by you because it does not suit your argument. Why are there so many interpretations of QM if there existed a physical paradigm with which to explain it?
Who said anything about QM not being at the foundation of physics? Not me.
Doesn’t mean we really understand it or can unify it with classical ideas about reality. You seemed to have missed the point.
“**Classical physics **(the physics existing before quantum mechanics) derives from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid only at large (macroscopic) scales. Quantum mechanics differs from classical physics in that: energy, momentum and other quantities are often restricted to discrete values (quantization), objects have characteristics of both particles and waves (i.e. wave-particle duality), and there are limits to the precision with which quantities can be known (uncertainty principle).”
In other words, there is a distinction between classical physics and QM and they are at present incompatible theories about reality. Got it?
In fact, you’re the one who’s not getting it: your own quote contradicts your claim that classical and quantum physics are “incompatible”. On the contrary, classical physics is a completely compatible approximation to quantum physics that works only at the macroscopic level.
Namely, quantum physics is what underlies the very existence of classical physics in the first place. If it weren’t for the behavior of elementary particles described by quantum physics, we wouldn’t have the observed behavior of macroscopic objects as described by classical physics. Classical physics is, essentially, just a subset of quantum physics that applies under particular constraints on the size (and speed, etc.) of the system.
If you want to argue that classical physics isn’t a subset of quantum physics, then you have to come up with a scientifically plausible alternative explanation for why the classical physical laws of motion are the way they are. And your explanation also has to successfully account for the observed breakdown of those laws of motion in relativistic contexts and at quantum size scales. Good luck.
What Kimstu said - the words you quoted say the opposite of your “in other words” paraphrasing. That article says that classical physics is what you see at large scales when QM is going on at the small scales under it.
I hesitate to put it in terms of a metaphor, because you seem to not get those, but here goes:
Let’s say you have a bunch of gas molecules inside a container, and we can describe their velocities, collisions with each other and the walls of the container. But with a whole bunch of molecules, that gets really difficult. But on a large scale, you can treat the gas as a continuous fluid and make your descriptions in terms of pressure and temperature. Based on your words above, you would say that the fluid theory and the molecule theory are “incompatible ideas about reality.” That’s wrong.
It is a vicious circle.
People don’t understand the scientific method or logic or reason or peer reviews, therefore they don’t believe experts and believe they can just shout louder and negate them with a wave of their hands. But when you try to explain the scientific method, they refuse because it is ‘made by experts’ who aren’t to be believed.
The phrase I hear a lot is “your so-called scientific method”, and I have been told many times I have a closed mind.
Only education will find a way out, but it too is a victim of this vicious circle. As someone said, Dunning Kruger.
Can science get things wrong? Yes. Can science get things wrong for a substantial period of time? Yes. Can science become corrupt? Yes. Are the public right to be skeptical of science and scientists? Yes.
It if funny how people espousing such skepticism only seem to suggest it when science is contradicting a non-evidence based belief system they hold. I’m sure there’s something to that but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Yep, it is **abashed **the one that does not get it. Besides what **Kimstu **said, the point I was making is that **abashed **own act of replying to this message board would be impossible if as he said we can not physically see the real results of the applications of something that is not “real”; that can not be “called physical”; or that they are “all just mathematical concepts, nothing tangible.”
“It’s physical” indeed.
Especially since they never seem to come up with any kind of coherent and consistent metric for what they consider appropriate amounts of skeptical scrutiny.
If these “skeptics” were saying something like “This is a debatable issue so I’m going to withhold judgement for the next three years and if the peer-reviewed research continues to support this hypothesis then at the end of that time I’ll provisionally accept it”, I could see the point of their skepticism.
But instead, “skepticism” seems to be used to mean “I’ll just refuse to accept any scientific conclusions I don’t want to believe, for as long as I like, and that’s a valid attitude because scientists get things wrong sometimes and they might all be mysteriously corrupted in ways I don’t understand but can nonetheless assume whenever I want to”.
Won’t you have egg on your face when it is proven that subatomic particle move because fairies are carrying them around.
It really sort of boggles the mind how you can so confidently assert things that are so utterly wrong. Besides the already noted fact that classical mechanics can be recovered as an approximation of quantum mechanics in the limit of large action (as compared to Planck’s constant), it’s also readily possible to formulate both within a unified framework—you can formulate quantum mechanics in phase space, traditionally the arena of classical mechanics; you can formulate classical mechanics in Hilbert space, which is most commonly used in quantum mechanics; or, you can formulate both within the framework of C[sup]*[/sup]-algebras. In fact, in the Koopmann-von Neumann formulation, classical objects are described by wave function.
That first actually describes my thoughts on climate change very well. At first, I was skeptical about the science. In fact, I still have the email exchange with my friends where one said “Your for Canada taking unilateral action on climate change? I thought you didn’t trust the science” and my reply was “I’ve changed my mind based on the progress that has been made.” November 29th 2008*.
Skepticism is good, but if somebody is only skeptical when it clashes with their own belief systems they should be skeptical with respect to whether they’re really skeptical or not.
I could list thousands of scientific findings, and I’d be willing to be that the only ones that people would say “I’m skeptical of that” would be things like climate change, vaccines, pharmaceuticals in general, GMOs, evolution, etc. There’s something to that. It is almost as if… nope, can’t quite put my finger on it.
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- I really need to clean out my inbox.
Kimstu, some excellent observations and comments.
Back to the OP:
You’re asking questions about why someone thinks something and why someone is resistant to something. Seems to me that the questions should be directed to the experts who are qualified to answer them, perhaps someone in the field of Cognitive science.
Of course, we can speculate, we can guess and we can offer suggestions about why people do things. But, those guesses and suggestions are not very useful unless they can also be used to explain why we, ourselves, do things. Last I checked, I’m part of “people” and I have no reason to believe that I am fundamentally different from other people. So, sometimes I ask myself why I do things. But, most of the time, I just do things. Why? I don’t really know. I’m not an expert.
Why do you want to convince someone about anything? If I felt that I had an obligation to correct people’s thinking, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else. Definitely no time to work on my own thinking.
Of course, it can be fun to engage with anonymous online posters. Strangely enough, it seems that it can be enjoyable even when it is painful. Maybe we need to ask an expert in sadomasochism…
Thank you! Happy to be here. 