The crisis in physics is not only about physics

Post by Others » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:39 AM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #118

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't yet understand the "underlying mechanics of thought" though.

It depends on what you mean. We understand that it is a mechanical, computational process. As opposed to, say, the reigning theory of mind in philosophical circles which is dualist. (Spiritualism in academia in the 21st century... sigh.) We have not yet mapped out the wiring diagrams of our brains which result in the human experience of consciousness. But that's a technological limitation in brain scanning and simula…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 5:21 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #13

knzhou wrote: post #8

As usual with Sabine, this article blatantly misrepresents how science is done and how actual scientists think, and serves mainly to portray herself as the only person in the field capable of rational thought. People in the comments here are picking up on this when it takes an unfair swipe at medicine, but it really applies to the whole article. I am not going to bother doing a line-by-line rebuttal, because I've alr…

> As usual with Sabine, this article blatantly misrepresents how science is done and how actual scientists think No offence but she is a trained physicist so she too is an 'actual scientist' by the very definition of the term. And she's completely right about the neglect of economic reasoning. The arguments against blowing 40 billion bucks on an accelerator that will likely not surface anything new is valid. Physicis…

Post by naasking » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:09 AM UTC

roca wrote: post #96

jean23 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite example is number theory, which was either hailed or ridiculed for millennia as being pure mathematics that can and will never be applied to real life problems. Today number theory is the basis for several important fields of application, including computation theory, modern cryptography, and numerical calculation.

Yes, but the question is, did developing number theory hundreds of years in advance of its applications accelerate the development of, say, cryptography? Or would cryptographers have just worked out the number theory when they needed it? If it did accelerate the development of cryptography, how much acceleration did we get for that investment? Also in modern times, especially, there is a big problem of discoverabilit…

Post by otabdeveloper4 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:03 AM UTC

dannykwells wrote: post #2

This was great until the bit about medicine. Medicine has made huge, tremendous progress in the past 30 years. And there are still many serendipitous discoveries happening that lead to new drugs. I mean jesus for the first time ever, a company is going to put up a drug for approval to treat alzheimers. Let's not lump medicine in with physics, please. Medicine has always been skeptical of theories without data and, wh…

Post by Xcelerate » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:56 AM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #109

mellosouls wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aka "Consciousness Explained Away" Consciousness is still an extant and very unexplained phenomenon.

That's a bit like saying phlogiston is an unexplained part of physical theory. Once you understand the underlying mechanics of thought, it stops being mysterious and really stops being a problem at all.