you missed the part where the meta physicians claim what they aren’t doing is metaphysics but science and logic, or something… and their inability to admit or understand that any logic of science is a metaphysical system…
history of philosophy is often a lot of finger pointing and posturing about ‘my philosophy isn’t metaphysics! it’s common sense!’
personally I’m more interested in the implications of idealism as a system in practice, but i’m a filthy pragmatist interested in the real world as it is, not as it ought to be.
You missed the part where metaphysicians claim that what they are doing isn’t metaphysics at all, but science and logic, or something along those lines.
No, I didn’t. I agree with that. I have literally written an entire book criticizing how people conflate the mathematical models of modern physics with philosophical interpretations of those models, and then pretend their metaphysics is not philosophy but something “proved by the empirical evidence.”
The book was motivated precisely by the question I raised in my previous comment: does the common man’s position really have to be abandoned?
Philosophers, including physicists who write philosophy, very commonly point to modern physics as establishing the need to abandon certain common worldviews and adopt a new metaphysics. But they often present this not as metaphysics, but as something directly established by empirical reality, such that questioning it is treated as equivalent to denying science.
One example is the dominant interpretation of special relativity, which claims that space and time are ontologically relative. We can experimentally verify that clocks drift from one another exactly as the mathematics predicts, such as when two airplanes fly in opposite directions and meet again. The conclusion is then presented as empirically proven: space and time themselves must be relative.
But John Bell pointed out in “How to Teach Special Relativity” that the same mathematics can be given a different philosophical interpretation while preserving the same empirical predictions.
You can instead assume that spacetime is absolute, while objects in motion undergo physical effects that cause moving clocks to slow and rulers in the direction of motion to contract. The measurements of rods and clocks would then be emergent properties produced by absolute space and time plus these physical effects. The mathematics remains the same, but its ontological interpretation changes.
If physicists object that such an absolute rest frame could never be experimentally identified, that does not prove it does not exist. It means only that its existence is empirically undetermined. At that point, the usual response is Occam’s razor: if we cannot directly detect such a frame, we should eliminate it from our ontology.
My point is not that this is wrong. It may be a perfectly reasonable philosophical choice. My point is that Occam’s razor is a philosophical argument.
You have not empirically proven that space and time are relative. You have shown that relativity follows from the mathematics given a particular interpretation of what the mathematics represents. Choosing that interpretation over another requires an additional philosophical argument. If there were motivation to make an argument in response (which is a whole other topic, but I argue one can mount a strong counterargument), then it would lead to a philosophical debate, and that debate could not be settled empirically.
This is the broader point I am making: the same mathematics can be compatible with multiple ontological interpretations. Empirical evidence can constrain those interpretations, but it does not necessarily determine them uniquely.
So, if you are an extremely conservative skeptic who refuses to abandon the common man’s worldview unless doing so is strictly necessary, you can always ask whether the new worldview actually follows necessarily from the mathematics and empirical evidence.
Often, it doesn’t. The physical evidence motivates the metaphysical debate, but it does not wholly determine its outcome.
The book was motivated precisely by the question I raised in my previous comment: does the common man’s position really have to be abandoned?
no, i don’t think that the “common man’s position has to be abandoned”. In fact, i think that people should be allowed to believe that the earth is flat. For 99% of people, that is what they can observe in their daily lives, and it’s the simplest model that “gets the job done” (i.e. navigates the person through their daily lifes). You only need to know that the earth is a globe if you’re doing international trade, geopolitics, or spaceflight. For every other application, it does not matter.
If physicists object that such an absolute rest frame could never be experimentally identified, that does not prove it does not exist. It means only that its existence is empirically undetermined.
You are right here.
At that point, the usual response is Occam’s razor: if we cannot directly detect such a frame, we should eliminate it from our ontology. … My point is not that this is wrong. It may be a perfectly reasonable philosophical choice. My point is that Occam’s razor is a philosophical argument.
The thing is that Occam’s razor is not just a philosophical argument. It comes from practical thinking.
The thing is, our brains are a computer too. So they need software, programming. Now, if you want to write software, you have to keep to some meaningful physical constraints, such as: Be simple, don’t waste computing resources, be energy-efficient, make the code run fast. These circumstances urge you to use the simplest possible model (of how the physical world works) that works for your practical applications.
So, occam’s razor really comes from the urge to optimize the software that runs in our brains for simplicity and speed. It does not come for no reason. And that is why indeed, yes, occam’s razor follows from being pragmatic.
For 99% of people, that is what they can observe in their daily lives, and it’s the simplest model that “gets the job done”
Well, for me, 99% is not good enough. I want 100% compatibility, not just with what I observe in my day-to-day life, but with all empirical evidence ever gathered and recorded by humanity.
The thing is that Occam’s razor is not just a philosophical argument. It comes from practical thinking. The thing is, our brains are a computer too. So they need software…
You’re explaining the process you believe leads to people employing Occam’s razor. That doesn’t justify the usage of the razor. This is basically an is/ought thing. You describing an “is” (the process that causes it) doesn’t get you to an “ought” (that the razor should be logically employed in all cases).
Also, as I said, one can mount a strong argument against Occam’s razor in this case.
Particularly, special relativity without assuming an absolute rest frame is not logically compatible with non-local effects, yet quantum mechanics is non-local. The physicists Frauchiger and Renner directly proved in a paper published in Nature Communications that this leads to a time-paradox without specifying an absolute time-ordering of events.
Well, they argued there are two other ways to avoid the time-paradox as well. One is to just claim quantum mechanics is wrong, which I don’t think it’s wrong. The other is to posit that there is a multiverse, because maybe two observers describe the same system in contradictory and logically incompatible ways because they are actually describing two different branches of the multiverse.
However, Jeffrey Bub in his paper “Two Dogmas’ Redux” shows mathematically that this doesn’t work, because the paradox can be proved to be completely confined to a single branch of the wavefunction, so it cannot be resolved by considering higher branches. While Frauchiger and Renner posit that the multiverse may solve the problem in their paper (and indeed say this in many interviews), Bub proved they are wrong, and it is still inconsistent.
The only logically consistent conclusion, then, is that there is an absolute time-ordering.
When I said I could mount a strong argument against it, my point was not merely that I’d throw out Occam’s razor in this case. If I offer no meaningful alternative, then it doesn’t really strengthen my case that one can mount a reasonable defense.
But my point is stronger than that. I am pitting two different assumptions against one another: (1) Occam’s razor, and (2) the view that your worldview should be logically consistent. I am pointing out that applying #1 in this case violates #2, and that I believe #2 is more important here.
Can I prove it’s more important? No, but I think I could convince a lot of people who were willing to listen.
Yeah, i know that the current physical worldview is not actually exactly correct. It’s an approximation that is somewhat close to what we can practically observe today, namely close enough that no practical deviation has been found for all experiments performed. That does not mean that it actually describes the world correctly.
I believe that every physical model is wrong, in the sense that it deviates from how-the-world-actually-behaves by some non-zero amount. Yet that amount is small enough to be declared “insignificant” by world-leading scientists. And i’m too tired to argue about that.
Anyways, another interesting concept of physics that i believe is wrong is the commonly-held assumption that energy is always conserved. In fact, some 20th-century authors have already written about the fact that this is not the case in cosmological contexts, for example this paper (full text available as PDF for free download). I recommend checking it out, it’s rather short (4 pages) and well-written.
Yet we have that model in our world that “energy is conserved”, that’s what’s being taught at every engineering school, because for every practical context (i.e. everything outside of cosmological timescales which involve billions of years), conservation of energy is a good enough approximation that does not show any differences to what can be measured in human-made experiments.
So, every physical model is an approximation, even the very central ones, such as the conservation of energy.
What I am disagreeing with is that the “physical worldview” even comes entirely from the empirical evidence to begin with. The empirical evidence gives you a body of mathematics, but you have to apply another layer of philosophical interpretation on top of the mathematics to get to a “physical worldview.”
I thus am arguing that the same body of mathematics, and thus empirical evidence, without any modification at all, is compatible with multiple “physical worldviews,” i.e. different “ways of thinking about it,” and I am arguing that my way of thinking about SR is actually more logically consistent than the standard way.
Energy being conserved is not just practically wrong but empirically wrong, as you said yourself, on large scales you can observe it being wrong and energy conservation failing. I am explicitly talking about different ways of viewing the same body of mathematics where there is no empirical method to distinguish between the two interpretations.
A simple example is fields. Most physicists believe the mathematics of fields, involving the assignment of a set of numbers to every point in space, corresponds to an ontological field, whereby they imagine an invisible object piloting particles around. They always speak of the fields as objects in the world that “cause” things to do something.
But we could equally argue that the mathematics of fields is just a way of describing the dispositions of particles. That is to say, the particles just move on their own. There is no invisible entity piloting them around, but this is not to deny the mathematics of fields, but rather, to interpret the mathematics of fields as a way of describing the dispositions of particles.
The mathematics of fields and the ontology of fields are not the same thing and the former doesn’t necessarily imply the latter. And so we can interpret the same body of mathematics, and thus empirical evidence, without denying the mathematics of fields at all, but only denying the ontology of fields. This would not lead to any new predictions, but it would give you a different way of “thinking about” the same body mathematics.
(I didn’t downvote you FYI. The other person did.)
you missed the part where the meta physicians claim what they aren’t doing is metaphysics but science and logic, or something… and their inability to admit or understand that any logic of science is a metaphysical system…
history of philosophy is often a lot of finger pointing and posturing about ‘my philosophy isn’t metaphysics! it’s common sense!’
personally I’m more interested in the implications of idealism as a system in practice, but i’m a filthy pragmatist interested in the real world as it is, not as it ought to be.
No, I didn’t. I agree with that. I have literally written an entire book criticizing how people conflate the mathematical models of modern physics with philosophical interpretations of those models, and then pretend their metaphysics is not philosophy but something “proved by the empirical evidence.”
The book was motivated precisely by the question I raised in my previous comment: does the common man’s position really have to be abandoned?
Philosophers, including physicists who write philosophy, very commonly point to modern physics as establishing the need to abandon certain common worldviews and adopt a new metaphysics. But they often present this not as metaphysics, but as something directly established by empirical reality, such that questioning it is treated as equivalent to denying science.
One example is the dominant interpretation of special relativity, which claims that space and time are ontologically relative. We can experimentally verify that clocks drift from one another exactly as the mathematics predicts, such as when two airplanes fly in opposite directions and meet again. The conclusion is then presented as empirically proven: space and time themselves must be relative.
But John Bell pointed out in “How to Teach Special Relativity” that the same mathematics can be given a different philosophical interpretation while preserving the same empirical predictions.
You can instead assume that spacetime is absolute, while objects in motion undergo physical effects that cause moving clocks to slow and rulers in the direction of motion to contract. The measurements of rods and clocks would then be emergent properties produced by absolute space and time plus these physical effects. The mathematics remains the same, but its ontological interpretation changes.
If physicists object that such an absolute rest frame could never be experimentally identified, that does not prove it does not exist. It means only that its existence is empirically undetermined. At that point, the usual response is Occam’s razor: if we cannot directly detect such a frame, we should eliminate it from our ontology.
My point is not that this is wrong. It may be a perfectly reasonable philosophical choice. My point is that Occam’s razor is a philosophical argument.
You have not empirically proven that space and time are relative. You have shown that relativity follows from the mathematics given a particular interpretation of what the mathematics represents. Choosing that interpretation over another requires an additional philosophical argument. If there were motivation to make an argument in response (which is a whole other topic, but I argue one can mount a strong counterargument), then it would lead to a philosophical debate, and that debate could not be settled empirically.
This is the broader point I am making: the same mathematics can be compatible with multiple ontological interpretations. Empirical evidence can constrain those interpretations, but it does not necessarily determine them uniquely.
So, if you are an extremely conservative skeptic who refuses to abandon the common man’s worldview unless doing so is strictly necessary, you can always ask whether the new worldview actually follows necessarily from the mathematics and empirical evidence.
Often, it doesn’t. The physical evidence motivates the metaphysical debate, but it does not wholly determine its outcome.
no, i don’t think that the “common man’s position has to be abandoned”. In fact, i think that people should be allowed to believe that the earth is flat. For 99% of people, that is what they can observe in their daily lives, and it’s the simplest model that “gets the job done” (i.e. navigates the person through their daily lifes). You only need to know that the earth is a globe if you’re doing international trade, geopolitics, or spaceflight. For every other application, it does not matter.
You are right here.
The thing is that Occam’s razor is not just a philosophical argument. It comes from practical thinking.
The thing is, our brains are a computer too. So they need software, programming. Now, if you want to write software, you have to keep to some meaningful physical constraints, such as: Be simple, don’t waste computing resources, be energy-efficient, make the code run fast. These circumstances urge you to use the simplest possible model (of how the physical world works) that works for your practical applications.
So, occam’s razor really comes from the urge to optimize the software that runs in our brains for simplicity and speed. It does not come for no reason. And that is why indeed, yes, occam’s razor follows from being pragmatic.
Well, for me, 99% is not good enough. I want 100% compatibility, not just with what I observe in my day-to-day life, but with all empirical evidence ever gathered and recorded by humanity.
You’re explaining the process you believe leads to people employing Occam’s razor. That doesn’t justify the usage of the razor. This is basically an is/ought thing. You describing an “is” (the process that causes it) doesn’t get you to an “ought” (that the razor should be logically employed in all cases).
Also, as I said, one can mount a strong argument against Occam’s razor in this case.
Particularly, special relativity without assuming an absolute rest frame is not logically compatible with non-local effects, yet quantum mechanics is non-local. The physicists Frauchiger and Renner directly proved in a paper published in Nature Communications that this leads to a time-paradox without specifying an absolute time-ordering of events.
Well, they argued there are two other ways to avoid the time-paradox as well. One is to just claim quantum mechanics is wrong, which I don’t think it’s wrong. The other is to posit that there is a multiverse, because maybe two observers describe the same system in contradictory and logically incompatible ways because they are actually describing two different branches of the multiverse.
However, Jeffrey Bub in his paper “Two Dogmas’ Redux” shows mathematically that this doesn’t work, because the paradox can be proved to be completely confined to a single branch of the wavefunction, so it cannot be resolved by considering higher branches. While Frauchiger and Renner posit that the multiverse may solve the problem in their paper (and indeed say this in many interviews), Bub proved they are wrong, and it is still inconsistent.
The only logically consistent conclusion, then, is that there is an absolute time-ordering.
When I said I could mount a strong argument against it, my point was not merely that I’d throw out Occam’s razor in this case. If I offer no meaningful alternative, then it doesn’t really strengthen my case that one can mount a reasonable defense.
But my point is stronger than that. I am pitting two different assumptions against one another: (1) Occam’s razor, and (2) the view that your worldview should be logically consistent. I am pointing out that applying #1 in this case violates #2, and that I believe #2 is more important here.
Can I prove it’s more important? No, but I think I could convince a lot of people who were willing to listen.
thanks for your comment. i appreciate it.
Yeah, i know that the current physical worldview is not actually exactly correct. It’s an approximation that is somewhat close to what we can practically observe today, namely close enough that no practical deviation has been found for all experiments performed. That does not mean that it actually describes the world correctly.
I believe that every physical model is wrong, in the sense that it deviates from how-the-world-actually-behaves by some non-zero amount. Yet that amount is small enough to be declared “insignificant” by world-leading scientists. And i’m too tired to argue about that.
Anyways, another interesting concept of physics that i believe is wrong is the commonly-held assumption that energy is always conserved. In fact, some 20th-century authors have already written about the fact that this is not the case in cosmological contexts, for example this paper (full text available as PDF for free download). I recommend checking it out, it’s rather short (4 pages) and well-written.
Yet we have that model in our world that “energy is conserved”, that’s what’s being taught at every engineering school, because for every practical context (i.e. everything outside of cosmological timescales which involve billions of years), conservation of energy is a good enough approximation that does not show any differences to what can be measured in human-made experiments.
So, every physical model is an approximation, even the very central ones, such as the conservation of energy.
What I am disagreeing with is that the “physical worldview” even comes entirely from the empirical evidence to begin with. The empirical evidence gives you a body of mathematics, but you have to apply another layer of philosophical interpretation on top of the mathematics to get to a “physical worldview.”
I thus am arguing that the same body of mathematics, and thus empirical evidence, without any modification at all, is compatible with multiple “physical worldviews,” i.e. different “ways of thinking about it,” and I am arguing that my way of thinking about SR is actually more logically consistent than the standard way.
Energy being conserved is not just practically wrong but empirically wrong, as you said yourself, on large scales you can observe it being wrong and energy conservation failing. I am explicitly talking about different ways of viewing the same body of mathematics where there is no empirical method to distinguish between the two interpretations.
A simple example is fields. Most physicists believe the mathematics of fields, involving the assignment of a set of numbers to every point in space, corresponds to an ontological field, whereby they imagine an invisible object piloting particles around. They always speak of the fields as objects in the world that “cause” things to do something.
But we could equally argue that the mathematics of fields is just a way of describing the dispositions of particles. That is to say, the particles just move on their own. There is no invisible entity piloting them around, but this is not to deny the mathematics of fields, but rather, to interpret the mathematics of fields as a way of describing the dispositions of particles.
The mathematics of fields and the ontology of fields are not the same thing and the former doesn’t necessarily imply the latter. And so we can interpret the same body of mathematics, and thus empirical evidence, without denying the mathematics of fields at all, but only denying the ontology of fields. This would not lead to any new predictions, but it would give you a different way of “thinking about” the same body mathematics.
(I didn’t downvote you FYI. The other person did.)
Have you taken into consideration that you are just dumb as rocks?
what do you mean like that? like a computer chip?
No, literally rocks