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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’

#551

Post by Mauneam »

unethical_ban wrote: post #531
Mauneam wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite rich, coming from somebody who took a hard line stance, used an abrupt term, put very little effort in and shut down the discussion by calling me a "troll." That said, intelligent design is shutting down curiosity. It's not an explanation for anything, it's not a falsifiable theory, and posits a supreme being that we can't possibly have any hope of ever understanding, as it is incalculably more intellige…

You're arguing that it's impossible to consider the concept of a higher power without disregarding science. You're wrong. Period. Alternatively you're arguing that examples of specific faiths you provide are equivalent to the broader concept of accepting the chance of a higher power. Which is also wrong.

[flagged]

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

#552

Post by silent_cal »

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…

Checkmate, atheists

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

#554

Post by l33tman »

dcow wrote: post #526
l33tman wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QFT is the most well-tested physics theory mankind has developed and certainly is not a "haze" as the pop-sci articles write. What they mean by the "haze of probabilities" is that you need to iterate over all possible configurations of the gluons and quarks in the proton to produce experimental predictions. It is for sure computationally ludicrous, but conceptually it's really not better or worse than to say that par…

QFT is not complete. It’s one lens through which we model our observations of micro systems. Being well tested just means it’s precise, not accurate.

That does not follow. What inaccuracies are you thinking about?

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

#555

Post by jononomo »

knightoffaith wrote: post #505
jononomo wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a lot of things don't square well with evolutionary biology, which is why the field is in crisis.

I know evolutionary psychology has been getting a lot of heat, but is evolutionary biology in general in crisis? As far as I know people like Gould weren't rejecting evolution wholesale so much as they were rejecting adaptationism.

Yes. There was a conference on this in 2016: https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-seek-to-update-evo...

You can also read my other comment on this topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37014923

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

#556

Post by andrewflnr »

snowwrestler wrote: post #547
philipswood wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but string theory is still in the "it's so pretty and elegant is must be true kind of territory". Not only do they have no proof, most of the potential experimental confirmations are at energies so high they're effectively out of reach for the foreseeable near future.

You're not wrong, but what you're not appreciating is that the criteria for "pretty and elegant" are the same for string theory, the standard model, general relativity, and any other physical theory: a relatively simple and internally consistent mathematical framework that, when carried through in calculations, produces predictions that match a wide variety of observations, and is not contradicted by any known observ…

> If the critics of string theory could prove it was wrong, they would have, but they haven't yet. That makes it provisionally correct.

No, absolutely not. This is the kind of argument an amateur apologist would make for the existence of God. You need to think about what "unfalsifiable" means and why it's a pejorative term in science.

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

#557

Post by philipswood »

snowwrestler wrote: post #547
philipswood wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but string theory is still in the "it's so pretty and elegant is must be true kind of territory". Not only do they have no proof, most of the potential experimental confirmations are at energies so high they're effectively out of reach for the foreseeable near future.

You're not wrong, but what you're not appreciating is that the criteria for "pretty and elegant" are the same for string theory, the standard model, general relativity, and any other physical theory: a relatively simple and internally consistent mathematical framework that, when carried through in calculations, produces predictions that match a wide variety of observations, and is not contradicted by any known observ…

Pauli's insult comes to mind: "Not even wrong..."

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

#558

Post by geye1234 »

notahacker wrote: post #491
geye1234 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nope, the "god of the gaps" critique has nothing to do scientific discovery being a route to omniscience, something only some religious figures have ever claimed to have even the possibility of access to. It's the set of things religions claim the only explanation/evidence for repeatedly shrinking, as we found [scientific] explanations... The 'god of the gaps' argument, which is pushed very hard by the new atheists…

The idea that if something wasn't explicable in terms of contemporary science it must be evidence of a role for divine fiat was around (and lambasted even by fellow theists) decades before the New Atheists turned up. It's also implicit in the argument I'm replying to. The fact that other arguments exist for religious belief systems (though attempting to deduce the necessity of an unchanging omni-being from the observ…

"If something isn't explicable in terms of current science, it means God must be doing it" is undoubtedly a ridiculous argument. We agree there. But the assumption behind this argument is "God is a hypothesis on a par with weather patterns or germs". The new atheists share the assumption, but from it draw the conclusion "if something isn't explicable in terms of current science, it is nonetheless explicable in principle in scientific terms". Examples of this are trivial to find in their works, including the two titles I mention above. But as I explained, this assumes what it's trying to prove: that rational explanation and scientific hypothesis are one and the same. So both the religious and atheist versions of the 'god of the gaps' argument share the same assumption.

Now I have no idea which religious thinkers are pushing this absurdity, at least not today. I'm not really interested, because I know that the failure of a weak argument for a particular claim does not undermine that claim. But I do know that the new atheists bang this drum repeatedly, loudly and excitedly. It's a big part of their argument, and is very often repeated online.

Have I fairly stated their argument? Am I fair to say that the argument is circular?

> though attempting to deduce the necessity of an unchanging omni-being from the observation "there is change" sounds like it'd be a stretch that makes Anselm's Ontological Argument seem respectable

What research have you done on this? What is your understanding of the argument, and where are its weaknesses?

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

#559

Post by knightoffaith »

jodrellblank wrote: post #550
knightoffaith wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is a sense in which it is a good answer to "Why are my parents white?" if the question means "Why did I just so happen to be born to white parents as opposed to non-white parents?" and not "What scientifically caused my parents to be white?". The question about constants is more like the former than the latter since it's a question not about what scientifically caused the constants to be a certain way (we…

> " The answer that I'm arranging the events intentionally explains why an otherwise low-probability event is occurring " Okay, I'll grant you that if someone only believes in a God creating conditions for life then the Anthropic principle sort of suggests a non-God possibility, along the lines that Evolution with natural selection presented a way for increasing complexity and intelligence to arise from random mutati…

Indeed, it doesn't seem to me that we have a good reason to believe that universal constants could have been otherwise, or even if they could have been otherwise, that the probability that they lie in the Goldilocks range is low, so I don't really buy the fine-tuning argument. Nonetheless, I think we should give credit where credit is due - it's still an explanation.

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

#560

Post by knightoffaith »

Mauneam wrote: post #549
knightoffaith wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Goddidit" is supposed to, I take it, refer to saying something like: "We don't know how to explain this. Thus, God did it." The fine-tuning argument isn't the same. The fine-tuning argument says, "We know that the universal constants, had they been slightly different, would not have allowed for a universe in which life was possible. The probability that these constants are what they are by random chance is very low-…

It does not explain why the low-probability event of these constants being what they are occurred. It does not explain anything. All it does is move the goalpost for explaining beyond unreachable and trap the inquisitive mind in a box. As to the predictive power, the multiverse theory does have it. The fact that we can't experimentally confirm it today doesn't mean that it's not falsifiable. I agree, however, that th…

>It does not explain why the low-probability event of these constants being what they are occurred. It does not explain anything.

Maybe you could explain (no pun intended) why it's not an explanation? Go back to the card example I used earlier - would you agree that me intentionally arranging the events is an explanation? What exactly is it that makes this an explanation, but not an intelligence behind universal constants (I won't use the word God so as to not offend you---again, the idea that there is an intelligence behind universal constants doesn't commit us to any particular faith, doesn't commit us to the idea that the intelligence must be the ultimate cause or omnipotent or omniscient or anything like that)?

>All it does is move the goalpost for explaining beyond unreachable and trap the inquisitive mind in a box.

What box-trapping are you referring to here? If by moving the goalpost, you mean that it doesn't explain anything about why the intelligence is what it is or how it behaves---yes, indeed, it doesn't, and we're still open to asking these questions. Again, we're not committing to any particular faith here, you could even use this argument to provide credence for the simulation hypothesis (something you're probably fine with since it's not a strictly theistic idea), since we're not saying anything particular about what this intelligence is like or how it came to be. In the context of the argument, we say "God" to just mean "intelligence behind the universe".

>As to the predictive power, the multiverse theory does have it. The fact that we can't experimentally confirm it today doesn't mean that it's not falsifiable.

Oh, interesting, what are you referring to here? What could empirically falsify the multiverse theory?

>Again, just like with intelligent design, there is not a single physicist who was an atheist first, and then learned about fine tuning and became a believer. Every single proponent of fine tuning was a person of faith first (predominantly Christian but some other faiths too) before they became a physicist. Can you name a single counter example? (that might make me reconsider)

I don't see why the behavior of people who accept or reject the argument is relevant. We don't reject intelligent design because it's pushed by Christians; we reject it because it appears to be inferior in terms of explanatory power and utility for scientists. (Of course, intelligent design is still an explanation; another key point here is that there's a difference between a false or bad explanation and a not-even-explanation---off the top of my head, I can't even think of what a not-even-explanation that purports to be an explanation looks like.)

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