Cyan comments on Hypotheses For Dualism - Less Wrong

1 Post author: byrnema 09 January 2010 08:05AM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 10 January 2010 07:43:32AM *  1 point [-]

If someone pushes down in the middle of a sheet of rubber, it isn't mysterious to me why the rubber sheet gets distorted in other places.

Objecting to "non-physical" explanations means objecting to explanations that we don't understand. And yet huge swaths of science are things that we don't understand. Here's an example to distinguish between understanding and mere curve-fitting:

  1. Thermodynamics: You say that heat is actually the kinetic energy of moving particles. Heat is communicated by particles bouncing off other particles and imparting momentum to them. Now you understand heat! You can use this understanding to construct equations that will let you predict how heat flows.

  2. Gravity: You observe a lot of objects rising and falling. You observe the orbits of planets. You take all this data, and find some equations that fit it. You can now predict the influence of gravity. But you don't understand gravity.

Comment author: Cyan 11 January 2010 04:52:34PM *  0 points [-]

I don't think curve-fitting is quite the right idea in reference to general relativity -- the equivalence principle is parameter-free. But the principle does take the fact that masses attract as given, and the rubber sheet analogy doesn't help explain why it should be so. In the end, I think you're right (to the degree that you concur with byrnema's excellent comment).