Nick Davila’s Reviews > Inventing Reality: Physics as Language > Status Update
Nick Davila
is on page 211 of 230
"Since we never find a distribution of meter readings, but always a single reading, and since quantum mechanics seems to predict only probability distributions, human consciousness must somehow induce the probability distribution to collapse. We can agree with Wigner that there is something about human beings that leads to this collapse..."
— May 03, 2025 11:51PM
Like flag
Nick’s Previous Updates
Nick Davila
is on page 203 of 230
Last chapter and epilogue were fun and satisfactory answers to "Is physics invented or discovered?"
— May 01, 2025 07:37PM
Nick Davila
is on page 188 of 230
“Einstein said we cannot compare our theories with the real world. We can compare predictions from our theory with observations of the world, but we “cannot even imagine . . . the meaning of” comparing our theories with reality.”
— Apr 29, 2025 09:55PM
Nick Davila
is on page 181 of 230
“The minute we begin to talk about this world, it somehow becomes transformed into another world, an interpreted world, a world delimited by language—a world of trees, houses, quarks, and leptons. In order to deal with the world we have to talk about it (or measure it, or shape it—in any case we engage the world in terms of our symbols, whether we are building a pyramid or a Superconducting Super Collider).”
— Apr 20, 2025 09:57PM
Nick Davila
is on page 179 of 230
“In the final analysis, physics is only indirectly about the world of nature. Directly, it is talk about experimental arrangements and observations. What is not given to physicists by nature, but rather is invented by them, is what they say about these outcomes, the language they use to talk about nature.”
— Apr 20, 2025 09:54PM
Nick Davila
is on page 178 of 230
“For each of them an abstract language can be mapped onto features of the world in a variety of ways. But there seems to be no unique way of combining a mathematical language and a part of the world. Our words apparently do not hook onto the world in only one way. If there is no absolute relationship between physical theories and the world, how can we know how the world is “really” put together?”
— Apr 16, 2025 08:11PM
Nick Davila
is on page 166 of 230
“The history of physics is a story of the relationship between experiment and theory. Without the observations of Tycho there could have been no theory of Kepler. Without experiments of Ampere, Oersted,
and Faraday there could have been no Maxwellian electromagnetism. The relationship works both ways. Without Einstein’s general relativity there would have been no eclipse photographs in 1919 by
Eddington.”
— Apr 14, 2025 10:26PM
and Faraday there could have been no Maxwellian electromagnetism. The relationship works both ways. Without Einstein’s general relativity there would have been no eclipse photographs in 1919 by
Eddington.”
Nick Davila
is on page 165 of 230
“Many physicists believe the simplicity of nature is revealed by the fact that the world can be described by a family of quantum field theories involving local gauge symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breaking.” Oh! Of course so simple. Duh! 🤣
— Apr 14, 2025 10:16PM
Nick Davila
is starting
“Someone once likened studying the nature of matter by using a particle accelerator to studying the mechanism of a watch by smashing it against the wall and looking to see what pieces fly out.” It’s so funny and impressive that we have found out so much of the universe by just smashing things together and shooting them around
— Apr 06, 2025 10:41PM
Nick Davila
is on page 134 of 230
"In the same way that two electrons can be said to interact by exchanging photons, two nucleons can be said to interact by exchanging the new Yang
Mills gauge particles. These gauge particles can be thought of as neutralizing any arbitrary change in the convention distinguishing protons from neutrons by transforming protons into neutrons and vice versa."
Ok bro what the hell are we doing here cmon now
— Apr 02, 2025 07:30PM
Mills gauge particles. These gauge particles can be thought of as neutralizing any arbitrary change in the convention distinguishing protons from neutrons by transforming protons into neutrons and vice versa."
Ok bro what the hell are we doing here cmon now
Nick Davila
is on page 127 of 230
“When two electrons meet, one electron can emit a virtual photon, which is absorbed by the second electron. Physicists describe this process by saying that two electrons interact by exchanging a virtual photon. This represents yet another way to talk about force: A force arises when virtual gauge particles are exchanged.”
Everything is just abstractions. Physics is just a language like a programming one is.
— Mar 29, 2025 05:04PM
Everything is just abstractions. Physics is just a language like a programming one is.
Comments Showing 1-1 of 1 (1 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Nick
(new)
-
rated it 5 stars
May 03, 2025 11:51PM
"The collapse of the probability distribution occurs at the point where we feel it is no longer sensible to talk about a system in the language of quantum mechanics and we shift to the language of classical physics—when we are unwilling to continue to talk about the superposition of systems. In other words, the collapse of the probability distribution takes place in language. As far as physics is concerned, they cannot if they are classical objects like billiard balls and they can if they are subatomic “objects” like electrons. Free will and determinism are nonoverlapping domains like the classical and the quantum mechanical. The best way to become confused is to try to talk about one in the vocabulary of the other. Whenever we fail to distinguish the appropriate domain of a language, we wind up talking about things not very different from the blend of live and dead cats."
reply
|
flag
