Giant_Joe:I've read and I own A Brief History of Time and I've read a lot of The Road to Reality: A complete guide to the laws of the universe. Now I can't say that I understand all the math and physics, but I think I know enough to trust those guys and say that they are not the "Paul Krugman" equivalent in their fields.
Yup. Plus, there's very open debate in their fields, and they tend to either admit when they're wrong, or allow competing theorie to develop in parallel and even inform each other's development until one is demonstrably false. For example, the new collider they just cobbled together should be able to get to some seriously high energy levels, at which point it's possible some of the more out there theories will be able to make testable predictions. As has been said, that's the hold up and the advancement: engineering. Science has been progressing as much as it can, engineering is just reaching the point where we can build the facilities to test the theories. So it's an interesting dynamic by which improvements in engineering make people think technology and thus 'science' are always advancing when really it's just refinements of existing capabilities, meanwhile the limit of engineering capabilites have been limiting the possibilities for testing the truly advanced theories out there right now, and thus holding up any practical applications they may imply.
And as has also been said briefly, there's a parallel example of a 'science' having massive political implications and it is starting to look just as messed up as economics, namely climate science. And it's a perfect example of what happens when you try to politically appoint an authority of sorts to preside over what is and isn't acceptable in such a field. Being the only field of science I know of where it's been necessary to file freedom of information requests to get access to some of the evidence, paid for by tax dollars no less, I'm still surprised people aren't at least more skeptical of the 'scientists' involved, if not the theory of global warming itself. But when there's a large political vested interest in the results, that's what you'd expect. No one honestly gives a damn in any practical way about the details of what the four forces do at higher energy levels. They could play poker for all we know or care. When engineering gets to the point where relativistic speeds are possible, then maybe we'll care en masse. Not before. And only if it's possible, and we're still around.
Solid_Choke: abskebabs: I think it was Gauss that once said that if the implications of mathematics and the natural sciences were at all political we would still be debating if 2+2=4. It's strange, I think a kind of market competition survives in the natural sciences, because even those who for example may decry general relativity would still want to apply it for navigational and GPS purposes. Please find me this quote. I would really appreciate it.
abskebabs: I think it was Gauss that once said that if the implications of mathematics and the natural sciences were at all political we would still be debating if 2+2=4. It's strange, I think a kind of market competition survives in the natural sciences, because even those who for example may decry general relativity would still want to apply it for navigational and GPS purposes.
I think it was Gauss that once said that if the implications of mathematics and the natural sciences were at all political we would still be debating if 2+2=4. It's strange, I think a kind of market competition survives in the natural sciences, because even those who for example may decry general relativity would still want to apply it for navigational and GPS purposes.
Please find me this quote. I would really appreciate it.
I've not been able to find it either, though I remember it as something guido hulsmann mentioned in one of his lectures at Mises U, possibly the first one.
Bogart: Has the existence of the Weak Nuclear Force come back into vogue? When I graduated college, quite some time ago, the scientists were arguing that it is a product of the Strong Nuclear Force and the Electrical Forces.
Has the existence of the Weak Nuclear Force come back into vogue? When I graduated college, quite some time ago, the scientists were arguing that it is a product of the Strong Nuclear Force and the Electrical Forces.
I believe they have been the electrical and weak force have been shown to be unified as the electroweak interaction for higher energies. This is what Abdus Salam, Sheldon Glasnow and Steven Weinberg were awarded the Nobel prize in Physics for in 1979
John Ess: This guy has been claiming just what you described. His videos are interesting and he has a website with some interesting snippets from his book where he explains things in more detail. He's actually pretty inflammatory about these topics. Similar to how economists here react to Krugman and the like. He even has a healthy skepticism of mathematics like we do as well (though I think his goes beyond ours). His personal economic views is that humans will become extinct very soon -- which is a bit head scratching, though. http://www.youtube.com/user/bgaede his website http://www.youstupidrelativist.com/WGDE.html
This guy has been claiming just what you described. His videos are interesting and he has a website with some interesting snippets from his book where he explains things in more detail. He's actually pretty inflammatory about these topics. Similar to how economists here react to Krugman and the like. He even has a healthy skepticism of mathematics like we do as well (though I think his goes beyond ours). His personal economic views is that humans will become extinct very soon -- which is a bit head scratching, though.
http://www.youtube.com/user/bgaede
his website
http://www.youstupidrelativist.com/WGDE.html
I had a look at the first video and found it pretty painful to watch, definitely seems like a textbook crank. He is actually totally on the money about the way that the concepts of dots, lines etc lack proper definition, but this is really because they are basic concepts we can't even excape our reasoning of space with. Also, just because a dot is used to specifiy a location, does not mean as he says that mathematicians are implying that a dot is a location. I think he is a little over optimistic expecting perfect definitions, since most mathematicians are not predominantly interested in foundations as much as what follows from them.
Geometry and vector calculus are initially built up within a Euclidean framework using exactly the theoretical objects he criticises, yet it is only once the relations and structure of metrics is made clear that we can begin to abstract conditions away from them that we don't "observe" or more accurately cannot imagine. I think Paul Lorenzen and the Erlangen school which Hans Hoppe has cited in his work, made a decent stab at attempting to show how mathematics formulates from a priori principles.
He makes a flimsy alternative citing, that the main characteristic of the dot is shape, yet this is as arbitrary as labelling the cause of an action an instinct, it's a dead end. The notions are necessarily tautological, and mathematics is full of tendencies towards ideals, infinites and infinitesimals. A "dot" could be said to have the shape of a circle, yet we would need to rely on lines and dots to properly express the geometry of a circle, and so we get an infinite regress ad nauseum. Indeed the shape of a dot is arbitrary it is simply the ideal of an object whose dimensions are so small we can ignore its macroscopic characteristics, in physics when we are interested in further including physical properties we call these particles.
Very interesting. Thx for posting. I like how this guy starts out with the basics.
Lee Smolin wrote an interesting book that touches on this topic. I believe it was called The Trouble With Physics...
Magnus: John Ess: This guy has been claiming just what you described. His videos are interesting and he has a website with some interesting snippets from his book where he explains things in more detail. He's actually pretty inflammatory about these topics. Similar to how economists here react to Krugman and the like. He even has a healthy skepticism of mathematics like we do as well (though I think his goes beyond ours). His personal economic views is that humans will become extinct very soon -- which is a bit head scratching, though. http://www.youtube.com/user/bgaede his website http://www.youstupidrelativist.com/WGDE.html Very interesting. Thx for posting. I like how this guy starts out with the basics.
That is pure crankism right there.
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