How did Einstein Think? • Hacker News Board

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#41

Post by jonsen » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 12:37 AM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #37

granfalloon wrote: post #36

"The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought." This is interesting to me. When I'm working on something difficult I often find my thought process to be very "verbal." Kind of like an internal monologue, talking myself through the problem. It's fascinating to think that my mental experience might be so profoundly different from someone else's.

> talking myself through the problem Also interesting is that there must be at least two people to have a conversation. Who's talking and who's listening when talking to yourself? Wouldn't the person listening already know what the person talking is going to say before they say it? Then why have the conversation? If he was imagining particle physics as little billiard balls I'm not sure vocalizing the problem mentall…

Try playing both sides of say a game of chess. I bet if you do it seriously you can't predict the outcome.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#42

Post by fargolime » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 12:37 AM UTC

Chinjut wrote: post #40

fargolime wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, yours is probably different from physicists' mental experiences, not software developers'. One thing I've learned from discussions about physics is that the thought processes that are common to software development are largely foreign in the realm of physics. Take for example Einstein's Relativity of Simultaneity thought experiment. [1] This is akin to discussion about a bug among software developers. Like devel…

Physicists reject that thought experiments have value? I'd say the context in which I most frequently hear the phrase "thought experiment" (or "Gedankenexperiment") is physics! Indeed, that is historically where the term originated. (And we must also consider examples like the very one of Einstein's you pointed out). I also don't see any reason why thought experiments and mathematical arguments should be thought of a…

The way I see it, you hear about thought experiments in physics because of Einstein. Because of him they can't avoid giving them some credence. But the odds of a new thought experiment purporting to show a bug in general consensus physics being given consideration today is nil, and I'm talking about before the text is read. Using thought experiments to discuss current physics is fine as a starting point only. For new physics they are junk that immediately labels one as a crackpot.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#43

Post by jasonkostempski » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 12:37 AM UTC

darkmighty wrote: post #32

joshmarlow wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, whether right or wrong in this case, I think you're on to something. As a culture, we do like to focus on singletons - we like the idea of lone geniuses toiling away and changing the world and skip over the amount of team-work/collaboration that goes into real advances. So I wonder: is this specific to our culture or is a multi-cultural thing? If it is multi-cultural, then an explanation might be that hyper…

Well there's a very obvious reason for that: we want to learn from the best. Why would you pick someone which is only good, or anything else but the best, most creative, most inspiring? Surely having an ensemble of good performers is nice, but the 'genius' by consensus is who anyone would wish to learn foremost. I do have a specific opinion on what it means to learn form someone. People often overreach and obsess wit…

"...learning from Einstein is as simple as reading what he wrote and the way he described his theories."

"If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicist about the methods they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle: don't listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds."

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#44

Post by stolio » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 12:49 AM UTC

ibebrett wrote: post #30

danieldyer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Emmy Noether: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether "In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importanc…

She was brilliant, but lets not go overboard. She's not even the biggest name in the fields of math she contributed to.

I don't know what she did for math but Noether's Theorem in physics, that symmetries in nature are connected to conservation laws, is impressive.

No idea how far up the totem pole that puts her.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#45

Post by benihana » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 12:55 AM UTC

mafribe wrote: post #26

titzer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Von Neumann, Grace Hopper, Turing. Bernoulli, Euler, Riemann.

Exactly what has G. Hopper done that warrants her inclusion in this list?

She's not Einstein, and she's not well known outside of computer scientis. Seems to line up perfectly with ok_craig's comment.

Of course she was brilliant, and influential, but putting her in the same list as Newton or Einstein feels like intellectual hipsterdom.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#46

Post by kaybe » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 12:56 AM UTC

fargolime wrote: post #42

Chinjut wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physicists reject that thought experiments have value? I'd say the context in which I most frequently hear the phrase "thought experiment" (or "Gedankenexperiment") is physics! Indeed, that is historically where the term originated. (And we must also consider examples like the very one of Einstein's you pointed out). I also don't see any reason why thought experiments and mathematical arguments should be thought of a…

The way I see it, you hear about thought experiments in physics because of Einstein. Because of him they can't avoid giving them some credence. But the odds of a new thought experiment purporting to show a bug in general consensus physics being given consideration today is nil, and I'm talking about before the text is read. Using thought experiments to discuss current physics is fine as a starting point only. For new…

Until the time of ~Einstein thought experiments were feasible enough because only the intuitive-upon-closer-inspection parts of physics were discovered.

The big problem is that the finer points of the new physics are just straight-forward unintuitive. To understand even quantum physics (which is very basic) on an intuitive level is sufficiently impossible and has baffled the community for some time (see also the resolution[1]). It is however quite possible to develop a good intuition for the maths describing it.

Sadly, the history of thought experiments and these discussions still linger in the vocabulary used to describe the phenomena. Many words are common words that inspire some people to invent their 'intuitive' own version of the theory, based on what the words mean in every-day discourse[2].

[1] http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/l...

[2]http://www.energyhealing-quantumhealing.com/ for a particularly amusing example

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#47

Post by fargolime » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 1:13 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #34

elberto34 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, same here. Einstein, through a combination of skill, connections and luck, rose to prominence at a pivotal time in science coinciding with the discoveries of both quantum and macro physics theory, as well as the advanced mathematics needed to describe it. No doubt Einstein was talented and a genius no doubt, but he was by far not the only one, and I'm sure he knew this. Pr ogres in physics has now become so inc…

I'm not sure I'd describe GR and the foundations of QM as 'low hanging fruit.' Einstein seems smarter because he was smarter. He didn't transform one small area of physics, he solved a lot of problems that were out at the edges and introduced new ideas that made them tractable. Of course other people helped, and some of those other people might have created GR eventually. But he was the only one to pull it all togeth…

> In physics now there are plenty of people with world-class math talent, but no one with Einstein's intuition, insight, and creativity.

I think because physics is now an industry in which deep creative insight is pretty worthless. For example, someone who could convince the gov't to award a $10 million grant to seek physical evidence of dark energy is likely going to have more success than a theorist who can show that dark energy is superfluous.

In Einstein's time physics was more like a hobby. An Einstein today, if they started as a patent clerk they'd more likely progress to IT than physics. At least in IT their creativity can be employed.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#48

Post by benihana » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 1:21 AM UTC

titzer wrote: post #10

Like many people, Einstein's life and work has been fascinating to me, but in comparison to other brilliant scientists of the twentieth century, there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. That said, I find Einstein-worship annoying. The cultural obsession with Einstein and cult of personality detracts from the reality th…

lol.

Thank you for taking the time to grace us Einstein worshiping plebs with your knowledge of the real intelligence of the twentieth century (that you seemed to have left who that is out of your post). Your unique and obviously not contrarian revisionist opinions are very interesting to me, can you please tell me more about them?

You seem to possess a certain amount of special knowledge that none of us else have - you must be really smart and interesting and unique to think that way and I would just love to hear about your thoughts on other people's groundbreaking and frankly mind-bending work. Because honestly, it's the critics who are the real geniuses in society; they have the courage and the brilliance to have the correct opinions.

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#49

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 1:25 AM UTC

granfalloon wrote: post #36

"The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought." This is interesting to me. When I'm working on something difficult I often find my thought process to be very "verbal." Kind of like an internal monologue, talking myself through the problem. It's fascinating to think that my mental experience might be so profoundly different from someone else's.

[deleted]

Re: How did Einstein Think?

#50

Post by stolio » Thu, Jan 22, 2015, 1:26 AM UTC

titzer wrote: post #10

Like many people, Einstein's life and work has been fascinating to me, but in comparison to other brilliant scientists of the twentieth century, there are at least a handful if not a dozen or couple of dozen people who were and are equally as intelligent, brilliant, and more prolific. That said, I find Einstein-worship annoying. The cultural obsession with Einstein and cult of personality detracts from the reality th…

The fact that there was a close grouping among physicists at the time works in Einstein's favor. Poincare could have easily realized E=mc^2, he was right there, but he didn't see it.

Looking at the same questions and reading same papers as his peers Einstein simply went further.