Originally posted by Shakyamunison
If you want to start a thread about it, that would be fun to debate.
video wont embed...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hnvLCkCiU8
fables... if you will
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
If you want to start a thread about it, that would be fun to debate.
video wont embed...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hnvLCkCiU8
fables... if you will
Originally posted by inimalist
no, and you probably shouldn't, I'm not a physicist, hence why I don't make absolute statements about how something, that I don't understand, works.I would certainly never tell someone to "Go read up" on it, because that would insinuate that there is very little left for me, personally, to know. It very much assumes that there is a single answer, already known and demonstrably obvious, something not true with QM, and something exceptionally untrue with many of the interpretations you have presented.
Not to me. "Go read up" is a challenge that has nothing to do with me knowing everything. You read way too much into things. Maybe it is a generational thing.
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Not to me. "Go read up" is a challenge that has nothing to do with me knowing everything. You read way too much into things. Maybe it is a generational thing.
in your generation people are happy to be spoken down to?
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
What does this have to do with Atheism? 😕
Dr Gopnik: Well, you can't do physics without mathematics really, can you?
Clive: If I recieve a failing grade, I lose my scholarship, and I feel shame. I understand the physics, I understand the dead cat.
Dr Gopnik: But.. You.. You can't really understand the physics without understanding the math. The math tells how it really works. Thats the real thing. The stories I give you in class are just... illustrative. They're like fables, say, to help give you a picture. I mean... Even I don't understand the dead cat. The math is how it really works.
....
the way you understand QM is through fables, the stories and communicative tricks physcists come up with to describe things to eachother and the layman.
Originally posted by inimalist
in your generation people are happy to be spoken down to?[b]Dr Gopnik:
Well, you can't do physics without mathematics really, can you?Clive: If I recieve a failing grade, I lose my scholarship, and I feel shame. I understand the physics, I understand the dead cat.
Dr Gopnik: But.. You.. You can't really understand the physics without understanding the math. The math tells how it really works. Thats the real thing. The stories I give you in class are just... illustrative. They're like fables, say, to help give you a picture. I mean... Even I don't understand the dead cat. The math is how it really works.
....
the way you understand QM is through fables, the stories and communicative tricks physcists come up with to describe things to eachother and the layman. [/B]
This Gopnik guy sounds like a really serious man.
Originally posted by Bardock42
inimalist, is to you then a believe in ghosts or fairies, for example, at odds with being an atheist?
... I don't think directly... hmmm, I might take most of that back.
I do think atheism is more of a consequence of other philosophical positions, but that might be totally personal. I guess I do think it is possible for someone to believe in ghosts and be an atheist...
Originally posted by King Castle
what was the point to the video!!!!!jr_shakefistalso i hate math... i learned what i needed and once i got credit i forgot it.
i think my highest was geometry or trigonometry.. i cant remember..
also unless i have a key for mathematical short hand its still just gibberish to me.
Gopnik's point is that understanding a metaphor lets you understand the metaphor, not the truth (but a good one will point you in the right direction). Believing the metaphor is the truth is bad because it leads to confusion. The uncertainty principle, for example, doesn't apply to cats at all even though Schrodinger's Cat is used to help explain it.
Terry Pratchet has a simpler way of putting it: "Its like [metaphor/simile]. Well no its nothing like that, but it's a lie you can understand."
You don't have to go into science to see this effect. Perhaps a poet writes the line "King Richard was a lion!"
If you take the metaphor as the truth you will arrive at the conclusion that King Richard was actually a large predatory cat that had gained the status of nobility.
If you understand that it is a metaphor that you get a general idea of King Richard's personality.
If you want to know what King Richard was like well enough to understand who he really was you have to go read detailed historical documents about him.
Originally posted by ShakyamunisonWell, this is correct. But I don't see the transcendence in it, we have an observation limitation that we are aware of and have worked into our theories about particle behavior.
But when we pinpoint the exact position of an electron, we can not know anything about its momentum. That would be like knowing were a car is, but not knowing if it was moving, or how it was moving. This is not because we do not have the technology to see the electron better, it is because observation of the electron changes the momentum of the electron. Observation of the partial collapses the waveform. This idea of the observer is the transcendence aspect of quantum mechanics.
Originally posted by 753
Well, this is correct. But I don't see the transcendence in it, we have an observation limitation that we are aware of and have worked into our theories about particle behavior.
I don't believe in transcendence reality. I was just having fun. However, I would not dismiss what is going on in the quantum world as a product of our inabilities.