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Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

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Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newton mechanics was wrong: because it didn’t account for the relativistic terms, all the equations are off by some amount. It turns out that we can ignore the error in practical contexts, but that’s still being “wrong”. Another example: the math of a geocentric solar system is often precise enough for practical purposes and so, when it’s simpler, it can be useful to use it instead of Newtonian or relativistic models…

I would say Newtonian mechanics is a good approximation (as it is accurate in its domain, plus easier to conceptialize and compute with than either QM or GR). Approximations aren't "wrong", they are just simplifications of something less wrong, usually in certain corner cases. Sometimes approximations are derived from the broader theory, and sometimes the broader theory comes later. (And of course, sometimes old theo…

> Approximations aren't "wrong", they are just simplifications of something less wrong, usually in certain corner cases.

I think it’s true that wrongness is relative to the use-case. But, on the other hand, before things like the Ultraviolet Catastrophe and the Michelson-Morley experiment, a lot of physicists thought they had the big picture of the universe basically right and just had to fill in the details. The revolution of GR and QM was barely even suspected and this should give us pause when it comes to our confidence in the modern picture of the universe. Relativity and QM will always be useful as models of the spheres they model, but the worldview we’ve built on top of them could change drastically overnight (in historical terms).

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#112
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But modern thinkers cannot be so readily absolved No, but they can go on a 40 year goose chase trying to reconcile the many different string theories that don't have any physical evidence to substantiate. QFT is one of the most successful theories we've created, but GR is still our best theory regarding gravity. There's still no evidence for the graviton. We probably need something else besides QFT to describe the n…

> QFT is one of the most successful theories we've created, but GR is still our best theory regarding gravity. There's still no evidence for the graviton. We probably need something else besides QFT to describe the nature of reality The evidence for QFT is orders of magnitude stronger than the evidence for GR, and the two are incompatible. The empirical evidence is simply the fact that gravity exists; if there's no g…

> then what?

Then it us a "simulation". "Pixels" of reality rendering.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#113
post #112
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> QFT is one of the most successful theories we've created, but GR is still our best theory regarding gravity. There's still no evidence for the graviton. We probably need something else besides QFT to describe the nature of reality The evidence for QFT is orders of magnitude stronger than the evidence for GR, and the two are incompatible. The empirical evidence is simply the fact that gravity exists; if there's no g…

> then what? Then it us a "simulation". "Pixels" of reality rendering.

And? That doesn't explain anything. What rules is the "simulation" following? If it's not following any, how come reality behaves so consistently in most respects?

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#115
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By my reading, a lot of it just boils down to the "all models are wrong, but some are useful" aphorism, but denigrating models' usefulness in a philosophical context, calling the implications of relativity and whatnot "a waste of time". I think this is overly reductive. Indeed, many consequences that follow from the nonexistence or impossibility of a certain thing, event, or effect are brittle to the physical model b…

I would characterize it more as "All models are wrong, some are useful, but it is never useful to use a model in a domain it is known to be wrong in". We are extremely confident in the wrongness of relativity and QM in this matter, so using them in that particular way for philosophy is really a waste of time. One could sensibly write philosophy of the form " If string theory is true, then..." or " If Loop Quantum Gra…

Yeah, this is the fundamental tension in modern physics: are best theories are not consistent with each other (so we know they’re wrong or partial) and every experiment we do to test them confirms them to within measurement error.

It’s exactly the sort of situation that precedes a paradigm shift and it’s very hard to predict exactly what will trigger one.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#116
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified? What is the nature of consciousness? What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing. Why any of this exists at all? What is the purpose of this existence? Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical. … science is not a bo…

Those are all very good questions, and I can't do them justice in an HN comment. But here's a first cut: > How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified? Read David Deutsch "The Fabric of Reality" chapter 7. > What is the nature of consciousness? Read Daniel Dennett, "Consciousness Explained". > What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing. Read Richard Daw…

Daniel Dennett is a philosopher.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#117
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.

If scientists had the slightest bit of societal power, our response to climate change wouldn't be this shameful, and climate activists wouldn't be so successfully marked for the daily sessions of "5 minutes of hate". What did gain societal power is capitalism is brute-forcing its way into everything via "tech" that then pats the people in gold-plated cages, who allow their genius to be used for that on the back, whil…

> If scientists had the slightest bit of societal power, our response to climate change wouldn't be this shameful

Why? Scientists are still human beings, they have partake in torture and genocide in the past. "I aim at the stars.. but sometimes I hit London" etc.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#118
post #5

Perhaps it went over my head but in summary he wanted the scientific process of discovery in physics research to stop because his philosophy couldn't keep up?

Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.

No, they don't. Well, not the ones I read. Philosophers have been cheerleading science since Kant.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#119
post #16

I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. They're both incredibly correct with their predictions but they don't go together, so they can't both be right and in the end they both have to be wrong somehow. Two of the places where they are both clearly somehow wrong are gravity (completely missing from QM, incomp…

> I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. Please don't use the word "wrong". Alchemy is wrong. Astrology is wrong. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics get many things right but are probably "incomplete" in the same way Newtonian mechanics wasn't wrong, only incomplete.

Newton was wrong if his project was about uncovering the deep workings of nature. His assumptions were wrong and don’t work. They will never work. They are not “incomplete”.

They are practical though. In that sense astrology can be said to be practical too.. hides.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#120
“Our entire belief in objects,” [Bergson] wrote in Creative Evolution (1907), “indeed rests upon the idea that time does not bite into them."

The only "objects" I know of that time does not "bite into" are mathematical abstractions such as integers, or God existing outside of time. No physical entity (Einstein was concerned, after all, with physics) escapes being embedded in time. Can love transcend time? Only to the degree it, like mathematics, transcends physics.

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