Ancestors

Written by Konrad Hinsen on 2025-01-19 at 16:44

Finally managed to read the latestt chapter by @yoginho et al. on a train ride:

https://spore.social/@yoginho/113691384640018139

Like the chapters before it: recommended to everyone interested in how science actually works (meaning: how science works when it works). Looking forward to what's coming.

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Written by Konrad Hinsen on 2025-01-19 at 16:48

@yoginho It's fun to do some brainstorming around the terms that occur all over again in this text.

Example: why would any organism consider it relevant to construct supposedly fundamental theories about all of the universe? The answer is probably "social status".

Another one: the "limited beings" make me wonder what unlimited beings would do instead. But the only known unlimited being on this planet, Elon Musk, probably doesn't read my toots, so I will never know.

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Written by Boud on 2025-01-19 at 19:49

@khinsen

The main reason why #cosmologists consider it relevant to construct models about the whole #Universe with as few parameters as possible to match the observations is curiosity. Several cosmologists have become astro institute directors or got Nobel prizes in the past few decades, but this is social status as a side effect, not a motivation.

If someone did an anonymous survey of cosmologists, I would be surprised if any of us said that we were motivated by social status.

@yoginho

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Written by Konrad Hinsen on 2025-01-20 at 06:56

@boud I have never heard any human ever state in public "I do this or that to gain social status."

The idea behind relevance realization is that relevance is ultimately shaped by evolutionary pressure. Curiosity fits well into that picture: a better grasp of the world is favorable to survival. But why direct that curiosity at topics such as fundamental particles, which are very unlikely to have any impact on survival, even at the species level?

@yoginho

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Written by Konrad Hinsen on 2025-01-20 at 07:00

@boud BTW, for me that's a very old question. When I did my PhD, in a theoretical physics department dominated by particle physics and solid state physics, I noticed both the snobbish attitude of the particle physicists ("your matter stuff is a mere application of our fundamental theories") and the defensive attitude of the solid matter people ("but our work matters in real life"). Purity against "dirty" economics. Thus my interpretation: purity -> virtue signalling -> social status.

@yoginho

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Written by Yogi Jaeger on 2025-01-20 at 08:55

@khinsen @boud

It's funny that I didn't even think of theoretical physics when you mentioned "system of the world." For me, these theories are just models, like any other, just slightly more generalizable than most. It'd be great indeed, if more theoretical physicists would realize that, and also that other kinds of models are much more directly relevant these days.

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Written by Konrad Hinsen on 2025-01-20 at 10:17

@yoginho There are physicists who share that view, of course, but there is also the widely held belief that there is a single fundamental law of which everything else is "just" a combination of approximations and applications.

I first me this belief when studying quantum mechanics. Most courses and textbooks claim at some point that classical mechanics is just a limiting case of quantum mechanics, offering few arguments and lots of hand-waving.

@boud

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Written by Konrad Hinsen on 2025-01-20 at 10:21

@yoginho What's completely missing from the expositions of this belief is relevance. It hardly matters if classical mechanics is or is not a limiting case of quantum mechanics, unless you are pursuing purity.

Same for mathematics BTW: for 99.9% of mathematics, it doesn't matter if you take ZFC as its foundation or something else. Fortunately!

@boud

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Written by Boud on 2025-01-20 at 15:56

@khinsen @yoginho There's a lot hidden in the word "just". #DownwardCausation [1] is real but constrained by the fundamental laws.

I agree with Jim Peebles' overview of physicists'/cosmologists' philosophical view of fundamental science [2]. This makes no claims for/against "relevance" for survival, though GR for GPSes is a standard example (survival for drivers or drone targets depends on GPSes succeeding or failing).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downward_causation

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.16506 #ArXiv_2401_16506

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Written by Konrad Hinsen on 2025-01-21 at 18:35

@boud Ouch, 60 pages. That's probably more than I could possibly believe ;-) But it looks interesting enough to be worth a careful read, thanks for the pointer!

@yoginho

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Toot

Written by Boud on 2025-01-21 at 18:55

@khinsen

I see that v2 is quite a bit longer than v1. And I see me in the acknowledgments of v2 ;).

@yoginho

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