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Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#381

Post by tim333 »

cantrevealname wrote: post #276
tim333 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always seemed to me one of the best arguments against the simulation hypothesis.

>> all that complexity would have led to a gargantuan number of bugs and the universe would have crashed > This has always seemed to me one of the best arguments against the simulation hypothesis. Can you expand on that? Are you saying that if we were in a simulation, the observed complexity of the universe (or the complexity of particle physics) would have caused the simulation to crash? Ergo, we are not in a simula…

My thinking is more that if it was a simulation they wouldn't make it so a single proton was so complex as to be almost impossible to simulate accurately. I mean is a simulation you might expect if to look like pixels or minecraft or something close up. Or maybe simple point particles. But I don't thing the equations describing a proton are exactly soluble and also the results very complex so the best you can do is a very approximate simulation.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#382

Post by foldr »

chaxor wrote: post #366
awestroke wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still does not explain "why"

I just would like to point out that "why" is not a scientific question. Feynman mentions this quite a lot. The question "why" doesn't have answers in science. A question of "How" has a better chance of being answered in science.

I think that was a fairly idiosyncratic point of view of Feynman's. In actual scientific practice you can find hundreds of examples of published scientific papers that address 'why' questions. Here are a couple of completely random examples:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11207-009-9338-5

https://www.mdpi.com/2624-8174/4/3/63

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#383

Post by DiscourseFan »

jacquesm wrote: post #183
DiscourseFan wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting very strong "angels on a pinhead" vibes from this

With the minute difference that we do not have experimental validation for Angels dancing on a pinhead whereas there is a massive amount of experimental validation for the standard model.

So you're saying that all we need to do is experimentally validate the number of angels dancing on a pinhead?

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#384

Post by tarruda »

lisper wrote: post #378
tarruda wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that I'm not arguing against the scientific method, but I'm arguing against your claim that it alone can deliver an accurate understanding of reality outside of what we can experiment and observe. This is your parent response: " You are objectively wrong. It requires no faith. There is simply no evidence for an intelligent being at the root of creation, no data that cannot be explained with much simpler mechanis…

Those aren't predictions. Predictions are about things that are still in the future. The BB was in the past. But that is neither here nor there. "The big bang was created by God" has exactly the same epistemological status as "The big bang was created by Vishnu" or "The big bang was created by Cthulhu" or "The big bang was created by the tooth fairy". The evidence for each of those is exactly the same, i.e. there is…

I meant statement, not prediction (sorry for the using the wrong term).

> But that is neither here nor there. "The big bang was created by God" has exactly the same epistemological status as "The big bang was created by Vishnu" or "The big bang was created by Cthulhu" or "The big bang was created by the tooth fairy". The evidence for each of those is exactly the same, i.e. there is none.

Yes, all of these require faith. Same as being certain that the initial singularity came from nothing (or from "simpler mechanisms than intelligence" which don't also have a clear origin).

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#385

Post by [deleted] »

ljosifov wrote: post #370
awestroke wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still does not explain "why"

"Why" is more of a philosophy question, pre-scientific or a-scientific if you like. Science question would be "How". Maybe not this particular Q, but having in mind that on every A-answer, one can again ask Q-question "Why". That's more philosophy not so much science, imo.

[deleted]

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#386

Post by stevenhuang »

okamiueru wrote: post #379
cocoa19 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The channel is definitely not targeted for the lay person. A counter example, Derek from Veritasium, he did a phd in physics education and it shows. Some of his videos are complex in content, but dumbed down so most people can understand. I enjoy PBS space time and listening to Matt O’Dowd, but I understand at the most 20-40% of what is covered on the videos. It is frustrating because I like the topics being discusse…

I'm not convinced. When he talks about things I understand, he does so in a way that I still find frustratingly convoluted. In these cases, it's not for a lack of education. It probably just means that this style of presenting topics just isn't for me, which is completely fine. Diversity in free education is great and commendable. But I think you touch on the part that I think is the reason why. Because PBS tries to…

Yeah, your confusion there is like being confused from the use of a literary device. The intent was exactly to illustrate why the implication 'life -> multiverse' may be problematic.

It was communicated just fine, I think you should continue watching?

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#388

Post by demurgos »

desmosxxx wrote: post #341
dcow wrote: post #331

“The proton is a quantum mechanical object that exists as a haze of probabilities until an experiment forces it to take a concrete form.” I’m getting really tired of hazy probability distributions and waves that only collapse and materialize when observed. I 100% accept that QM is a useful tool to model our current understanding based on increasingly sophisticated observations, but I fundamentally don’t believe that…

IIUC, that is just a hidden variables theory. Bells theorem tells us that it would at least be non-local which is just as weird/interesting IMO.

I really enjoyed this Minute Physics and 3Blue1Brown video describing hidden variables and Bell's theorem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs

As you said, it's implies that we're not failing to measure some "hidden variable" that would explain probabilities away, but that the vary nature of these objects is probabilistic.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#389

Post by dontupvoteme »

importantstuff wrote: post #336
andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #18

I just had a really stupid thought, after finishing reading the article. So, the electron is an elementary particle, right? Compared to the proton, the electron is "simple", yes? Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person). my question is... why? why must pr…

No one who has replied to your question has got the right answer. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/21753/why-do-ele... has the right answer. There are multiple aspects to this argument, but essentially, the symmetries of your system force the charges in the Standard Model (quarks and leptons) to be the way they are due to gauge anomaly cancellation. If you believe in quark confinement, which is extremely w…

Wait, proton decay was proven?

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#390

Post by [deleted] »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #18

I just had a really stupid thought, after finishing reading the article. So, the electron is an elementary particle, right? Compared to the proton, the electron is "simple", yes? Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person). my question is... why? why must pr…

[deleted]
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