41–50 of 118 posts
That means, through the wonders of experimental physics, sometime in the next 10, 20, 50 years we will find out if the idea sinks or swims.
I wish the idea the best of luck, as we do need to figure out this issue once and for all.
The edge of human understanding of the universe is a vague and scary place. When we dug deep below the atom level everything we took for granted fell apart. We had to invent an entirely new model of physics to make sense of our observations, which is complex and counter-intuitive (quantum mechanics) Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the…
Perhaps we don't have the capacity to understand how the universe works? I can't remember where I read it but someone made the point that no matter how hard you try you can never teach a mouse to understand French.
humans couldn't so far teach mouse a human language. That doesn't mean that mouse doesn't have something like several thousands or tens of thousands of basic sounds and combinations of them into meaningful (for mouse) sequences. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/catch-the...
After all as a mouse says to another mouse - "no matter how hard you try you can never teach a human to understand mouse language".
The same is through the history of physics/mathematics. It takes a change in fundamental point of view. The notion of derivative took decades of work to develop by geniuses of that time. Imagine how physics/mathematics looked without it.
When i look at strings theory of today i see epicycles, a very intricate and complex system of epicycles in 11 dimensions :) We need a genius like Newton or Einstein to again see and tell us what is behind that apparent complexity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps we don't have the capacity to understand how the universe works? I can't remember where I read it but someone made the point that no matter how hard you try you can never teach a mouse to understand French.
>no matter how hard you try you can never teach a mouse to understand French. humans couldn't so far teach mouse a human language. That doesn't mean that mouse doesn't have something like several thousands or tens of thousands of basic sounds and combinations of them into meaningful (for mouse) sequences. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/catch-the... After all as a mouse says to another mouse - "no…
Maybe humans do not have the capacity to understand the complete workings of physics.
The edge of human understanding of the universe is a vague and scary place. When we dug deep below the atom level everything we took for granted fell apart. We had to invent an entirely new model of physics to make sense of our observations, which is complex and counter-intuitive (quantum mechanics) Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the…
The point I always make when this comes up is: epicycles, negative-mass phlogiston, æther and all the rest were good physics at the time. People who used them made more accurate predictions than any alternatives. So yes, dark matter and dark energy are probably not the full story. But they are the best model we currently have, and it's very easy to criticize and much harder to offer a positive counterproposal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>no matter how hard you try you can never teach a mouse to understand French. humans couldn't so far teach mouse a human language. That doesn't mean that mouse doesn't have something like several thousands or tens of thousands of basic sounds and combinations of them into meaningful (for mouse) sequences. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/catch-the... After all as a mouse says to another mouse - "no…
No but the point is a mouse simply does not have the capacity to understand French. Maybe humans do not have the capacity to understand the complete workings of physics.
we don't really know what capacity is required to do it. 1PFlops? 1P neuron synapse transfers/minute? What capacity and in what units mouse brain is?
Our human brain evolution has abused low efficiency size increase approach. As result we're using only like 10% of capacity of our brain.
This dog knows 1000 words in human language. That's more than i know in Chinese, and the task of learning a 1000 Chinese hieroglyphs scares the hell out of me:
https://www.thedodo.com/worlds-smartest-dog-chaser-752002926...
>Maybe humans do not have the capacity to understand the complete workings of physics.
why would it be so? So far the physics has been pretty simple (any abnormal complexity has been usually an indication of our lack of understanding and has been successfully cleared with time) , and even several orders of magnitude complexity increase will fit into our brain.
Edit: to the comment below on 10% - there is a difference between 10% capacity and 10% neurons. The fact that most of our brain is physiologically participating while producing that little capacity most of the time in most of the people is exactly the low efficiency i was talking about.
The edge of human understanding of the universe is a vague and scary place. When we dug deep below the atom level everything we took for granted fell apart. We had to invent an entirely new model of physics to make sense of our observations, which is complex and counter-intuitive (quantum mechanics) Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the…
Perhaps we don't have the capacity to understand how the universe works? I can't remember where I read it but someone made the point that no matter how hard you try you can never teach a mouse to understand French.
We don't understand QM but we can still use the equations to make predictions..
You're suggesting that we can't create better equations which explain more the universe? That's quite a bit early to say that.. I'm more worried about our possibility of creating experiments which can be used then to select which equation is the right one.
The edge of human understanding of the universe is a vague and scary place. When we dug deep below the atom level everything we took for granted fell apart. We had to invent an entirely new model of physics to make sense of our observations, which is complex and counter-intuitive (quantum mechanics) Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the…
The point I always make when this comes up is: epicycles, negative-mass phlogiston, æther and all the rest were good physics at the time. People who used them made more accurate predictions than any alternatives. So yes, dark matter and dark energy are probably not the full story. But they are the best model we currently have, and it's very easy to criticize and much harder to offer a positive counterproposal.
Vortex theory was very cool, but not how the world worked.
The edge of human understanding of the universe is a vague and scary place. When we dug deep below the atom level everything we took for granted fell apart. We had to invent an entirely new model of physics to make sense of our observations, which is complex and counter-intuitive (quantum mechanics) Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the…
I suspect that its what we don't understand about quantum mechanics what finally will explain the macro observations that we don't understand.
After all, macro observations have to derive from the fundamentals and it seems that the fundamentals are in the quantum realm.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No but the point is a mouse simply does not have the capacity to understand French. Maybe humans do not have the capacity to understand the complete workings of physics.
>a mouse simply does not have the capacity to understand French. we don't really know what capacity is required to do it. 1PFlops? 1P neuron synapse transfers/minute? What capacity and in what units mouse brain is? Our human brain evolution has abused low efficiency size increase approach. As result we're using only like 10% of capacity of our brain. This dog knows 1000 words in human language. That's more than i kno…
This myth needs to die in a fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_the_brain_myth