That’s not even the brain hurty part. Imagine the double slit on a grand scale: we are measuring photons from a faraway quasar behind a galaxy, and the galaxy can gravitationally lens those photons to us by two different paths. An instant before a photon arrives on Earth, you make a decision; look at each path independently, or insert a beamsplitter and interfere the two paths together. If you do the first, you get “particle”-like behavior (two separate images of the quasar). But if you do the second, you see a “wave”-like interference pattern. But did the photon take both paths or only one? Did your decision affect the photon’s motion from millions of years ago?
This is called “Wheeler’s delayed choice” experiment, and opens up a whole Pandora’s box of extensions (quantum erasers, what happens if an alien observed the photon before you, etc).
Worrying about annuities and yields and the future value of money when you have HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS is a perfect example of why our species is so fucked.
According to the WSJ, the man on the left from the duo “Yellow” (Dieter Meier), who brought us the baritone refrain “Oooooh Yeeeaaah,” has parlayed this song via royalties and further investments as of 2017 to a net worth of $175 million.
Up to now I’ve managed to avoid joining the physics discussion because I’ve realized we don’t have a common framework to talk about it. We don’t really agree on what things exist or on what ideas to use to explain interactions between those things.
Like even something as seemingly simple as the idea of empty space is problematic because Einstein came along and said that empty space contains energy, and so is not empty. We keep talking about it as though we share the same understanding of what empty space is when we don’t. This is frustrating and hard to avoid.
As another example, we use the word particle, but particles are abstract mathematical objects. They don’t exist in the real world. They don’t occupy space, for instance. You might say that’s a pedantic objection, and we really mean “particle-like”, and it’s fine to refer to electrons and quarks as particles and these things are real and fundamental. But someone else might come along and say, no, fields are more fundamental, and particles are just resonant excitations of the field. But then yet another person might say that fields, like particles, are abstract mathematical objects that don’t exist in the real world. So round and round, which is bad enough, but a lot of the time we don’t even realize we have different points of view.
As a former philosophy of science guy who avoided phil of physics but had to read some bas von frassen and such, I’m always puzzled by many worlds people, including Sean Carroll, who I think is generally very reasonable (except exaggerating the importance of bayesianism). If there is no conceivable causal relationship with other worlds then they do not exist in the strongest sense possible of nonexistence.
There is literally no difference between zero other worlds and infinite other worlds.
Just had the most stressful 2 hours of my life. Absolute whiteout blizzard with shear ice roads. Took 2 hours to drive home when it normally takes 20 minutes. Never got above 30km/h (18 miles/h).
Some of you may be interested in Quine if you’re not already familiar with him.
From “On What There Is”
The physical conceptual scheme simplifies our account of experience because of the way myriad scattered sense events come to be associated with single so-called objects…Physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of experience, just as the introduction of irrational numbers simplifies laws of arithmetic. From the point of view of the conceptual scheme of the elementary arithmetic of rational numbers alone, the broader arithmetic of rational and irrational numbers would have the status of a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth (namely, the arithmetic of rationals) and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part. Similarly, from a phenomenalistic point of view, the conceptual scheme of physical objects in a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part.
From “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries–not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.
