One aspect of these essays that now bothers me is my use of the phrase "the standard model." I use it to mean the prevalent theory in whatever field I'm discussing, but the standard model is the accepted term for the family of fundamental particles as we understand them in particle physics. I shouldn't be using that phrase generically.
Thank-you for food for thought! Taking on physics as a hobby interest is quite a challenge. Especially when someone doesn't have a qualified teacher to guide you! I like the articles---especially this last one, although I still will have to read them more closely 555 times to grasp exactly what they're saying, and where you are vs. where the AI is speaking. I'm not saying a physics-challenged person like me can't grasps the ideas and formulate logical questions or conclusions, but here's what I've learned about AI so far just from my initial experience using it. You've heard about GI=GO (garbage in=garbage out), and now we have a case of ICI=ICO, or ice-cream in=ice-cream out. (You mention, paraphrasing) that AI agrees with you on some ideas and "corrects" you on others.)
What I see is that AI not only has built-in bias, it has built-in expectation of answers to questions. It's maximus prime directive is to provide an answer even if that answer is unclear, dubious, built on existing hypotheses and possible answers. etc. rather than state (like most medical doctors, college professors, psychiatrists, pastors, priests and parents are loath to do, "I don't know.")
How did I come to that conclusion? I applied for a job. Yep, an AI company wants to hire political/policy analysts to assist, in collaboration with other analysts, to create answers to political science and policy questions for AI . This tells me that AI 1, can be wrong. 2. possesses built-in biases. 3. cannot be used to predict in any meaningful way way except statistically (which, as we know is based on probability otherwise known as a "complicated Ouija Board.") 4. is NOT the god-machine. 5. can only recite in many different ways, only what is recorded as known, NOT what is actually known, and 6. what is known and what is opinion and what is hopium depends on the zeitgeist of ages we never experienced.
Yes, you can ask AI a range of questions about anything, such as "are the ruins that have been found REALLY the city of Troy, or another city that Homer fictionalized?", but choosing what is "True" and what is speculation is still up to the human being. For example, here is what AI has to say about Homer & Iliad and Odyessy.:
The Authorship Debate
The Traditional View: Ancient Greeks believed Homer was a single, blind historical poet from Ionia who composed both masterworks.
Modern Scholarship: Many experts suggest the poems were built over generations by oral bards. They may represent the work of two different authors or a collective tradition rather than a single writer.
The Homeric Question: Scholars continue to debate whether a single person named Homer existed or if the name represents a legendary figure attached to a larger cultural tradition.
Substitute the name Shakespeare for Homer, and you see where I'm going with this. Yes, physics, as a discipline, knows a lot of stuff, but, for instance, using toy models, like 'war--gaming,' only works until it doesn't. Trying to discern the answers to "if" questions, such as, "what happens IF Trump keels over dead before we leave Iran?" if iffy. The theoretical is either substantiated (meaning using the weakest legal standard of "more likely than not") or it isn't. The is a difference between theory and practice, the Ideal and the Pragmatic. Physics has the same conundrum when it comes to the Wave-Particle Duality issue.
"At the atomic and subatomic scale, this clear separation breaks down. Quantum objects like light (photons) and matter (electrons) exhibit wave-particle duality—they travel and spread out like waves, but are detected as localized single points (particles) when measured."
Social science has the same issues. If there is no clear, direct cause and effect relationship that can be substantiated with reliable, replicable empirical evidence, social scientists' default explanation is 'intervening variables' that boil down to "all we're doing is guessing," (for example, why twins either live similar lives or different lives --- I term that the bullshitters admission.) When I asked AI: is socialism the answer to the affordability problem? I got bulleted talking-points for the socialist and "critic" sides. Not free market or capitalist sides. The implication is clear; educational vocabulary not so much. Someone made the word choice.
Back to physics. To say a wave has properties that changes into particle behavior when observed or measured ---is just as ridiculous. How do you know how it behaved before you saw it unless you have a camera that can record it behaving before you saw it, and yet it's so small you can't see it or measure in the first place. so how did you know where to put the camera or the scale? Then there's the question of WHY does it change when observed or measured. I want explanations ---not hypothetical, not mathematical, not fairy dust magical, but empirical evidence.
The same goes for black holes (or the existence of humanoid-like beings on other planets in other galaxies, Sasquash, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.) No human eye has ever seen or visited a black hole. Cameras can take pictures, but they cannot experience or gather empirical evidence, and they cannot demonstrate or explain the "why." I don't reject science if it follows scientific methodology, but I do reject that the current infatuation with AI as an objective source of "factual" information. Caveat emptor.
Although how physicists answer the duality question depends somewhat on their theory of choice, now that pursuing anything other than the Copenhagen interpretation isn't career suicide, but Copenhagen will tell you it's meaningless to ask what the particle was doing before it was measured. The wave isn't real. It's a mathematical probability equation in multiple dimensions, useful in predicting (very well) where the particle will be and nothing more. That's an incomplete answer (on my part, as I assume they'd do it better) because the wave aspect is "real" Enough to cause interference patterns. The pilot wave and multi-world have other ideas. Personally, I think the most important thing to understand about the duality is that the particle is an excited point in a field. The probability wave traces where the excitement will show up next, but it's not an energy wave moving through the field... unless the pilot wave theory or multi-world is right.
"Personally, I think the most important thing to understand about the duality is that the particle is an excited point in a field." Loved that sentence. As soon as I read it, I got an image of a "wave" in the ocean that becomes "excited" when a Great White swims to the crest, pokes its head above the wave and says, "Oh, look! Catalina Island!" And we could snap a photo of that point. Lets call that a particle a sort'a wavus interuptus, that would be a business-as-usual point on land that operates as a multi-world (in this case the word multi referring only to two distinct realms of existence). I admit my own biases in that I believe there are more dimension in heaven and earth, Horatio, than we can ever discover now, given the zeitgeist in our age, and that other dimensions and thus other physics (&laws) exist. I'm sure most scientists agree, with or without humility, because it is reasonable .... airplanes do overcome gravity long enough to get to Cleveland or Tehran. :)
One aspect of these essays that now bothers me is my use of the phrase "the standard model." I use it to mean the prevalent theory in whatever field I'm discussing, but the standard model is the accepted term for the family of fundamental particles as we understand them in particle physics. I shouldn't be using that phrase generically.
More short stories and essays on prose to come! Really.
Thank-you for food for thought! Taking on physics as a hobby interest is quite a challenge. Especially when someone doesn't have a qualified teacher to guide you! I like the articles---especially this last one, although I still will have to read them more closely 555 times to grasp exactly what they're saying, and where you are vs. where the AI is speaking. I'm not saying a physics-challenged person like me can't grasps the ideas and formulate logical questions or conclusions, but here's what I've learned about AI so far just from my initial experience using it. You've heard about GI=GO (garbage in=garbage out), and now we have a case of ICI=ICO, or ice-cream in=ice-cream out. (You mention, paraphrasing) that AI agrees with you on some ideas and "corrects" you on others.)
What I see is that AI not only has built-in bias, it has built-in expectation of answers to questions. It's maximus prime directive is to provide an answer even if that answer is unclear, dubious, built on existing hypotheses and possible answers. etc. rather than state (like most medical doctors, college professors, psychiatrists, pastors, priests and parents are loath to do, "I don't know.")
How did I come to that conclusion? I applied for a job. Yep, an AI company wants to hire political/policy analysts to assist, in collaboration with other analysts, to create answers to political science and policy questions for AI . This tells me that AI 1, can be wrong. 2. possesses built-in biases. 3. cannot be used to predict in any meaningful way way except statistically (which, as we know is based on probability otherwise known as a "complicated Ouija Board.") 4. is NOT the god-machine. 5. can only recite in many different ways, only what is recorded as known, NOT what is actually known, and 6. what is known and what is opinion and what is hopium depends on the zeitgeist of ages we never experienced.
Yes, you can ask AI a range of questions about anything, such as "are the ruins that have been found REALLY the city of Troy, or another city that Homer fictionalized?", but choosing what is "True" and what is speculation is still up to the human being. For example, here is what AI has to say about Homer & Iliad and Odyessy.:
The Authorship Debate
The Traditional View: Ancient Greeks believed Homer was a single, blind historical poet from Ionia who composed both masterworks.
Modern Scholarship: Many experts suggest the poems were built over generations by oral bards. They may represent the work of two different authors or a collective tradition rather than a single writer.
The Homeric Question: Scholars continue to debate whether a single person named Homer existed or if the name represents a legendary figure attached to a larger cultural tradition.
Substitute the name Shakespeare for Homer, and you see where I'm going with this. Yes, physics, as a discipline, knows a lot of stuff, but, for instance, using toy models, like 'war--gaming,' only works until it doesn't. Trying to discern the answers to "if" questions, such as, "what happens IF Trump keels over dead before we leave Iran?" if iffy. The theoretical is either substantiated (meaning using the weakest legal standard of "more likely than not") or it isn't. The is a difference between theory and practice, the Ideal and the Pragmatic. Physics has the same conundrum when it comes to the Wave-Particle Duality issue.
"At the atomic and subatomic scale, this clear separation breaks down. Quantum objects like light (photons) and matter (electrons) exhibit wave-particle duality—they travel and spread out like waves, but are detected as localized single points (particles) when measured."
Social science has the same issues. If there is no clear, direct cause and effect relationship that can be substantiated with reliable, replicable empirical evidence, social scientists' default explanation is 'intervening variables' that boil down to "all we're doing is guessing," (for example, why twins either live similar lives or different lives --- I term that the bullshitters admission.) When I asked AI: is socialism the answer to the affordability problem? I got bulleted talking-points for the socialist and "critic" sides. Not free market or capitalist sides. The implication is clear; educational vocabulary not so much. Someone made the word choice.
Back to physics. To say a wave has properties that changes into particle behavior when observed or measured ---is just as ridiculous. How do you know how it behaved before you saw it unless you have a camera that can record it behaving before you saw it, and yet it's so small you can't see it or measure in the first place. so how did you know where to put the camera or the scale? Then there's the question of WHY does it change when observed or measured. I want explanations ---not hypothetical, not mathematical, not fairy dust magical, but empirical evidence.
The same goes for black holes (or the existence of humanoid-like beings on other planets in other galaxies, Sasquash, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.) No human eye has ever seen or visited a black hole. Cameras can take pictures, but they cannot experience or gather empirical evidence, and they cannot demonstrate or explain the "why." I don't reject science if it follows scientific methodology, but I do reject that the current infatuation with AI as an objective source of "factual" information. Caveat emptor.
Although how physicists answer the duality question depends somewhat on their theory of choice, now that pursuing anything other than the Copenhagen interpretation isn't career suicide, but Copenhagen will tell you it's meaningless to ask what the particle was doing before it was measured. The wave isn't real. It's a mathematical probability equation in multiple dimensions, useful in predicting (very well) where the particle will be and nothing more. That's an incomplete answer (on my part, as I assume they'd do it better) because the wave aspect is "real" Enough to cause interference patterns. The pilot wave and multi-world have other ideas. Personally, I think the most important thing to understand about the duality is that the particle is an excited point in a field. The probability wave traces where the excitement will show up next, but it's not an energy wave moving through the field... unless the pilot wave theory or multi-world is right.
"Personally, I think the most important thing to understand about the duality is that the particle is an excited point in a field." Loved that sentence. As soon as I read it, I got an image of a "wave" in the ocean that becomes "excited" when a Great White swims to the crest, pokes its head above the wave and says, "Oh, look! Catalina Island!" And we could snap a photo of that point. Lets call that a particle a sort'a wavus interuptus, that would be a business-as-usual point on land that operates as a multi-world (in this case the word multi referring only to two distinct realms of existence). I admit my own biases in that I believe there are more dimension in heaven and earth, Horatio, than we can ever discover now, given the zeitgeist in our age, and that other dimensions and thus other physics (&laws) exist. I'm sure most scientists agree, with or without humility, because it is reasonable .... airplanes do overcome gravity long enough to get to Cleveland or Tehran. :)
Interesting, thank you for sharing.