Comments by "" (@TheDavidlloydjones) on "Veritasium"
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Jeremy Yarbro
Jeremy,
What you say is correct, but a wee bit limited, surely? There is clearly something we don't understand here. Something we don't know.
Bel's very amazing good work shows us that we can eliminate what we call "hidden variables" as the source of what we don't know, but that gives us only the small consolation of there being one less class of things, as defined by our limited knowledge, about which we don't know what we don't know.
That still leaves some unknown territory, I think you'll agree? E.O. Wilson's good comment, in his semi-biographical "Consilience," is to the effect that we don't need bigger more expensive experiments in physics because our problems are epistemologicical. Here we have an example of that. We haven't even defined the class of things we don't know, now that we've gotten "hidden variables" out of the way.
Cheers,
-dlj.
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Chip Cooper
Chip, Yes, quite.
The point is that "hidden variables" is a phrase which implies a given way of looking at things: you have these objects, or fields, or whatever, and you plug variables into your model, and you get a result which reality confirms, thus affirming the consequent of your theory. This is not a proof, and to suppose it a proof is a fallacy, but it is a comfort.
In that sense of the phrase "hidden variables," Bell has shown to everybody's satisfaction that no, there aren't any, and no proof involving them can make sense.
Now you are talking about variables that are not known, i.e. in a sense hidden, and clearly there is something unknown going on. It's just that your unknowns are not the hidden variables of the current way of thinking.
They're like Rumsfeld's Chinese Fortune Cookie, unknown unknowns. And don't take it for granted that they're variables.
:-)
-dlj.
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Chip Cooper
"While you're funny, his correct reply to this question would be, "Not at this scale.""
Chip,
The subject of the discussion was not how to tell an enquirer the time of day*.
The subject of the discussion was whether or not there is one and only one correct way of looking at any particular situation or phenomenon.
As for stirring up trouble on the Net, I'm not sure bots, or even human intervention, are called for. Isn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics good enough for you?
Cheers,
-dlj.
* Since the asker's speed as a fraction of c is in question, I'd guess that it's location might be, too. If the asker is Alderbaranian, who are we to say it's size and mass?
-d.
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@Killua2001
That's true enough -- although it was obvious to me as a child that Africa and South America had once been connected, and my father agreed that this was his impression, too. (At one point in the 1980s a bunch of people decided I ought to go to work with J. Tuzo Wilson, and it all got as far as an interview with him. I don't know what he thought of me, but I backed away like crazy: I admire the man's work, but. But.)
The inverse square law and the fact that earthquakes are pretty continual while all the planets lining up happens very rarely if at all have both been known since the year Dot. I.e. the New Scientist guy was a fool and his editors were asleep at the switch.
But a query: what makes you think our understanding of science has "shifted dramatically" at any time in the last fifty years? Hell, since Bacon? Well, Bacon modulo Popper... No, I don't think mumbling about paradigms shifting is dramatic; it's just an example of the power of a clever buzzword.
The biological sciences have made great advances, but in a pretty straightforward way according to the DNA/molecular and the games-theoretical/information-theory programs that have been pretty clear since maybe 1930~50, don't you think?
IMHO physics has been in a black hole for about the past ten years with what seems to me like an extremely stupid walkabout into string theory. ("We've got all these infinities, so let's get rid of all the zeroes by calling them little-itsy-bitsies. An' hey, we've been studying harps and sine waves for three thousand years, so let's call them strings. Problem solved. Let's move all those grant applications out...")
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