The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal • Hacker News Board

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#181

Post by pdonis » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #127

pdonis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument you are making assumes two things that strike me as highly implausible: (1) That enough people would use their new free time to innovate instead of just watching TV or playing World of Warcraft or something like that. (2) That enough people would still choose to do the unpleasant but necessary tasks that provide the resources needed for everyone to eat, have housing, etc. Not to mention all the other stu…

Right now a fairly tight circle of people decide for others how to spend vast amounts of time. It's not even very efficient as many jobs carry bullshit hours requirements. So after increasing free time by a large amount, a very small number of people start choosing different areas to innovate in, it still ends up as a large growth area for innovation, or social interaction, or whatever humans value individually inste…

I don't dispute that our current system is inefficient. But the proposed change under discussion (universal basic income) does not just mean "increasing free time by a large amount" while keeping everything else the same. It means increasing free time by a large amount while removing the need for anyone to do productive work. It's the latter that I see as problematic, not the former.

What would a world where we did the former but not the latter look like? It would be something like everyone having to be, at least in some measure, an entrepreneur--everyone would be their own small business, having to figure out what product or service to sell to others in order to make a living, and having to decide for themselves what use of their time would best serve that goal. That might well, in the long run (i.e., after all the upheaval caused by people who were used to having someone else define their business objectives, now having to do it themselves, has died down), be a big improvement over what we have now. But the key incentive of having to make a living is still there.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#182

Post by pdonis » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

EForEndeavour wrote: post #159

pdonis wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was wrong in the sense that epicycles are an entirely imaginary math artefact, and reality works on different principles. How do you distinguish "an entirely imaginary math artifact" from the "principles" that "reality works on"? (Hint: planetary orbits are not ellipses once you take GR effects into account.)

The same way we distinguish the shadows cast in Plato's cave from the objects occluding the light. The more situations in which a theory or model makes accurate predictions, the more correct it is. Epicycles are much, much more wrong than mathematically perfect elliptical orbits.

> Epicycles are much, much more wrong than mathematically perfect elliptical orbits.

Not if you define "wrong" as "inaccurate predictions". You can approximate ellipses with circles and epicycles to any desired degree of accuracy by putting in more epicycles. So you can match the predictions of ellipses to any desired accuracy with epicycles.

Also, as I noted, the actual orbits of the planets are not perfect ellipses once GR effects are taken into account. Have you proven mathematically that it is impossible to construct an epicycle model that makes more accurate predictions than perfect ellipses, based on the actual data (which confirms the GR predictions to within current observational accuracy)?

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#183

Post by EGreg » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #180

starbeast wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you find it implausible given that there are plenty of people who already do both those things while having enough money not to.

How many is "plenty"? What percentage of people who have enough money not to do those things actually do them? My sense is that that percentage is pretty low. Yes, there are people like pg or sama who continue to work and add value even though they don't have to, and I think that's an admirable thing to do. But I think there are many more people who, once they have enough wealth to not have to work, stop working for…

How many people contribute to open source, wikipedia and debate stuff online?

A lot of it produces ZERO economic returns. But the fallacy is that we need top-down institutions to move things forward. I would argue that we are better off abolishing intellectual property laws as well and allowing everyone to contribute to open source drugs the way they do in other sciences.

Watch these two videos:

Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us

Clay Shirky: Institutions vs Collaboration

We need more collaboration and less capitalistic competition.

I know firsthand the righteous indignation that anarcho capitalist libertarians have at “violence” being used to redistribute wealth.

But these same libertarians ignore all the coersion used on the other side. They seem to want people to be FORCED to work out of fear of losing food and housing. Some freedom for the masses - the freedom to work or starve.

And of course Property is a coercive institution just like government. It has to be enforced. So Disneyworld charges visitors entry fees and vendors rent and pays people to dress up like Mickeys and it’s top down and Libertarians are ok with that. Next door is a city that’s run democratically and what if they want to charge taxes and redistribute basic income, how is that any worse than Mickeys?

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#184

Post by poelzi » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/24/7426

It is proven that physicists are in fact, the most ignorant folks of all scientists. Real, proper physical models are always interdisciplinary, unified theories. The most ignored category of all.

I can assure everybody, that the model that might get accepted in 100 years is already here. As I'm personally using one of those fringe models, I can assure you that using this in public will get you mostly negative points online and quite interesting conversations offline. Nice side-note: You will be able to filter out non scientific thinkers quite easily and I can assure you, there are lots of them in the "scene". Interestingly chemists are much more open to different models, in fact, most of them know that our models are rough approximations at best.

It is funny when you think in models that explain everything, but are quite far from the standard perspective. It becomes hard to explain effects because the details obviously start to diverge the closer you look. On the other hand, I think every adolescent is capable of thinking the model I'm using. (PS: I'm not the origin of the model I'm using, I seriously would have never been able to come up with such a minimal, absolute logical and elegant solution)

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#185

Post by poelzi » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #51

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> What irritated me about it was the assumption that, if most of your predictions are correct, your model is almost entirely correct, and just needs to be tweaked a bit. Haha, no. We wish. Epicycles worked very well and were highly accurate, because, as Fourier analysis later showed, any smooth curve can be approximated to arbitrary accuracy with a sufficient number of epicycles. However, they fell out of favour wit…

> the frame of reference is wrong According to General Relativity, there's no such thing as a "wrong" frame.

Sorry, but I have to correct you there. There is a infinite number of Relativistic Models possible. In the one that is currently used, you are indeed right.

But now I understand why Einstein wrote in his last book, after much thinking, that this perspective is wrong. He called it "unthinkable" for a good reason. The model I'm using also has relativity, but with an absolute frame. It also behaves differently in extreme situations like the surface of super massive black holes and and near field of a proton. In fact, I have much more relativity but not everywhere and it's paradox free :)

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#186

Post by pdonis » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #183

pdonis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many is "plenty"? What percentage of people who have enough money not to do those things actually do them? My sense is that that percentage is pretty low. Yes, there are people like pg or sama who continue to work and add value even though they don't have to, and I think that's an admirable thing to do. But I think there are many more people who, once they have enough wealth to not have to work, stop working for…

How many people contribute to open source, wikipedia and debate stuff online? A lot of it produces ZERO economic returns. But the fallacy is that we need top-down institutions to move things forward. I would argue that we are better off abolishing intellectual property laws as well and allowing everyone to contribute to open source drugs the way they do in other sciences. Watch these two videos: Drive: the surprising…

> A lot of it produces ZERO economic returns.

Exactly.

> the fallacy is that we need top-down institutions to move things forward

That might well be true. And it has nothing whatever to do with what I said. In fact, abolishing top-down institutions would, if anything, make it more difficult to have a scheme like universal basic income (the topic we're discussing here) at all.

> of course Property is a coercive institution just like government. It has to be enforced

Is the only thing preventing you from appropriating your neighbors' property the fear of enforcement?

Property rights are agreements. If it is a net gain for all parties to follow an agreement, they will follow it, even in the absence of coercive enforcement.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#187

Post by perl4ever » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #161

perl4ever wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible though, that Copenhagen is wrong in a similar manner to epicycles that give the correct numerical answer? That's the impression I get as a non-physicist, that yes it's kind of an aesthetic preference, but on the other hand aesthetics are important and sometimes are pivotal in finding new insights. Ugly may not be completely objective, but it isn't completely arbitrary either.

I should correct an important misconception. Epicycles do not produce correct predictions. Epicycles can produce correct point location of planets, but do not produce correct phase. Galileo observed heliocentrism-compatible phase of Venus with his telescope. That was the crucial experiment, not the simplicity.

I don't think it's important to my point. The point remains that multiple theories can be equivalent in some restricted sense, yet the more aesthetic one might have greater potential.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#188

Post by dv_dt » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #181

dv_dt wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now a fairly tight circle of people decide for others how to spend vast amounts of time. It's not even very efficient as many jobs carry bullshit hours requirements. So after increasing free time by a large amount, a very small number of people start choosing different areas to innovate in, it still ends up as a large growth area for innovation, or social interaction, or whatever humans value individually inste…

I don't dispute that our current system is inefficient. But the proposed change under discussion (universal basic income) does not just mean "increasing free time by a large amount" while keeping everything else the same. It means increasing free time by a large amount while removing the need for anyone to do productive work . It's the latter that I see as problematic, not the former. What would a world where we did…

I think you may be under appreciating the "basic" part of universal basic income, as well as the human drive to do better than their own baselines.

The "basic" part means that the level of income is generally set at an austere level. Think of living in the minimal existence of a monk. Some people would do fine with that, and would choose it, but the vast majority of people I believe would elect to work for more.

Humans over their history have always reached for more, including the most extremely wealthy, who basically have a capitalism granted equivalent of UBI, but significant numbers still choose to work.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#189

Post by DoctorOetker » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #63

letitgo12345 wrote: post #12

Well considering that we know everything pretty much about most of everyday physics and new physics requires energies that are almost unreachable and billions of dollars in experimental investment and/or years and decades to collect sufficient data, it's not a surprise at all that foundations of physics progress has slowed. I don't think the physics community is to blame here. Just the nature of reality

Well considering that we know everything pretty much about most of everyday physics [...] That's true and also not true. Yes, we have a working theory that explains essentially everything with unprecedented accuracy as long as you don't wander too far outside of everyday length and energy scales. But on the other hand we still do not really understand basic quantum mechanics almost a century after its discovery or at…

I'm really interested in noted inconsitencies in physics since historically major progress was achieved by refusal of some to ignore an inconsistency, because that is often the last thing people talk about (as opposed to open questions). I know a couple that occupy my mind, but I am always looking for more such inconsistencies. It's in such a state of mind that I would like to know which problem you refer to in your last sentence, and not in the state of mind of bashing the perceived outsider.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#190

Post by pdonis » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #188

pdonis wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't dispute that our current system is inefficient. But the proposed change under discussion (universal basic income) does not just mean "increasing free time by a large amount" while keeping everything else the same. It means increasing free time by a large amount while removing the need for anyone to do productive work . It's the latter that I see as problematic, not the former. What would a world where we did…

I think you may be under appreciating the "basic" part of universal basic income, as well as the human drive to do better than their own baselines. The "basic" part means that the level of income is generally set at an austere level. Think of living in the minimal existence of a monk. Some people would do fine with that, and would choose it, but the vast majority of people I believe would elect to work for more. Huma…

> The "basic" part means that the level of income is generally set at an austere level.

And all history shows that that level increases over time to a point where "minimal existence" is enough luxury to be unsustainable. This is by no means the first time that the option of the state doling out basic necessities to everybody has been considered. The Romans had their bread and circuses. Today it would be food stamps and cable TV and Facebook and Twitter. Same difference.