Which is more likely: you haven't kept up to date on physics news, or the people who spend their lives doing physics don't know what they're doing? Be skeptical. But fix that by reading more. If someone is skeptical, but the answers exist and they stay skeptical, that's just willful ignorance.

every generation of experts claimed to have all of the answers

No they haven't. And no one is claiming that now.

This isn't skepticism. This is "I don't understand, I don't want to understand, but I want to feel smart so I'm going to say they're not smart".

[+] hector@lemmy.today -39 points 2 months ago (2 children)

On the contrary, the universe, the state of matter, the mechanisms of astro physics, are the subjects most deserving of being skeptical of experts claiming to know things they have no way of knowing. Now you may be referring to some humble scientists, but the "exerts" absolutely do claim to know everything.

[–] Man_kind@sh.itjust.works 31 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You dont have a good understanding of what science is. No scientist claims to know what charge is, what causes it, nor what dark matter is or dark energy.

Scientists say what they can say with reasonable certainty. If they state something, you can research why they state it, and find sound reasoning and experiment that supports it.

If you dont, you can disprove it, and then now you're a scientist.

Just because you dont know a thing, doesn't mean others cant know.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'd also like to interject that physics deals with models of how the world works, i.e. physicists make predictions about what would happen in specific scenarios. That has nothing to do with knowing what goes on underneath, because we can't know that.

Consider quantum physics. It might be that the universe is indeed a wave and that's just how things are. But it could also be possible that we're living our entire lives in a simulation, whoever hosts the simulation is having a tea party and giggling at us silly being on how we're confused by our observations. You can't really tell these two apart, experimentally, since they would have the same outcome. So physics can't really tell about what things are, just how they behave in certain situations. That's why i think of physics as models, not theory (because "theory" carries a starker claim to absolute truth to me).

[–] bunchberry@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Quantum physics in no way implies everything is a wave. Physics academia is just filled with crackpot mystics who have an obsession over constantly inventing "paradigm shifts" and chasing the most bizarre interpretations of the mathematics possible and never have presented a shred of empirical evidence that their whacko crackpot claims have any basis in factual reality.

You can just split out the wavefunction into its real and imaginary parts, as two separate real-valued vectors, and convert it from Cartesian to polar form, and then it is clearly just a stochastic theory with non-classical stochastic dynamics, in fact the formula for evolving the probabilities is just the classical one + an additional non-linear term. I created a whole visualizer for this.

That is the simplified case for quantum information science / quantum computing. But you can do it in quantum physics as well, in fact doing it for particle positions is what led to Bohm developing is pilot wave theory, where the additional non-linear term is the quantum potential. We have always known that quantum mechanics is just a non-classical stochastic theory for decades, which there may or may not be an underlying deterministic reality, but there is no magic to it as if the entire world is a giant vibrating single multiverse wave. They are just particles. The only thing that is wave-like is their stochastic dynamics.

But no one will tell you that because people are obsessed with chasing the most whimsical interpretations possible and lie to people about the mathematics that it somehow inherently necessitates their quantum woo.

[–] Man_kind@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why does "theory" carry starker claim absolute truth to you?

Theory, theoretical, these are not claims to absolute truth. Rules maybe, but then id say you're more correct that they'd be rules of a model.

Relativity is a theory. Its in the name. You might not like it, but it is definitely a theory, and referred to as such by all of science. Maybe you call it model of special relativity, but you'd be the exception. However it would not be incorrect to refer to it as a model, either.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why does “theory” carry starker claim absolute truth to you?

I think the word "theory" derives from the words "theo" (meaning god) and "ergy" (meaning work). So it's "god's work" literally translated.

What is meant by that is that people recognize the truth, such as truths about how the world works. The truth is called "god", or rather, "god" in the christian context is understood to be the set of all truths. So mathematical insights and physics rules are a subset of god, because they represent truths of some sort. And applying these truths in practice, i.e. building machinery according to them is the work that people put into it. So people work according to "god", i.e. according to rules. Like when you build a car, you have to know about thermodynamics. The knowledge makes you do the work. So it's insight->work, or in latin/greek: "theo-ergy" or "theory" for short.

You have to remember that all these words were invented in the 1800 so it's not unreasonable to claim that there's a heavily christian background in them since that's how people thought at the time.

[–] Man_kind@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is the biggest load of horseshit I've ever read. You've broken down a word to its roots, and then used its etymology to create a new definition of the word, and then claim that's what the definition must be because of the etymology.

Whats the etymology of vaccine? I mean, there are so many words that have gone on to have a changed meaning from the roots of it. How a word developed and what it used to mean, does not determine the definition today.

There's nothing theocratic about the theory of relativity. If someone says "oh I have a theory as to what happened" they are more closely saying they have a hypothesis, than they are saying they have God's truth on the subject.

So, i question your authenticity in this discussion, because i find it hard to believe that you genuinely believe what you're saying to me. Im skeptical you're even a real person.

I'll just leave this here

https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/54072318

[–] Marthirial@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Come on Hector, just go back explaining everything with baby Jesus back in your room and stop making an ass of yourself in public.