CharlesR comments on Great Explanations - Less Wrong

23 Post author: lukeprog 31 October 2011 11:58PM

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Comment author: lukeprog 01 November 2011 09:05:57AM *  2 points [-]

if you have no independent knowledge of these areas as a solid foundation for your opinions about them, it is reasonable to conclude that you have let your enthusiasm for the underlying philosophy of these sequences lead you to an illusory "understanding" that is in reality sheer rationalization.

I haven't read the quantum physics sequence on Less Wrong. I got my physics from lots of other sources.

if you really believe you understand them in some "non-mathematical" way, you are fooling yourself... it seems inconceivable that someone could gain such understanding in a "non-mathematical" way

Are we just disagreeing about the meaning of "understand" or something? Are you using the word "understanding" in an unusual way, such that there is no such thing as non-mathematical understanding?

Also, at one point you seem to say that I can't have evidence about whether Copenhagen is correct or incorrect without understanding all the equations involved? That seems too obviously false; I assume I'm misunderstanding you?

Comment author: CharlesR 02 November 2011 04:27:48PM 3 points [-]

Luke, do you agree there is no such thing as a non-mathy understanding of graph theory?

I think Vladimir is saying physics is like that. Because when you take away the math, you are no longer able to explain what is really going on.

Can such an explanation really be called "great"?

Comment author: wedrifid 02 November 2011 05:28:37PM 1 point [-]

I think Vladimir is saying physics is like that. Because when you take away the math, you are no longer able to explain what is really going on.

Is that the right link? Because the that post, "Guessing the Teacher's Password", gives a purely verbal description of a object getting heated up and turned around. Explicit mathematics doesn't come into it either on the part of the successful student or the reader of the document. Basically it provides yet another example which reduces Vladimir's claims to absurdity.

Comment author: CharlesR 02 November 2011 10:17:36PM 4 points [-]

When I was young, I read popular physics books such as Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. I knew that light was waves, sound was waves, matter was waves. I took pride in my scientific literacy, when I was nine years old.

When I was older, and I began to read the Feynman Lectures on Physics, I ran across a gem called "the wave equation". I could follow the equation's derivation, but, looking back, I couldn't see its truth at a glance. So I thought about the wave equation for three days, on and off, until I saw that it was embarrassingly obvious. And when I finally understood, I realized that the whole time I had accepted the honest assurance of physicists that light was waves, sound was waves, matter was waves, I had not had the vaguest idea of what the word "wave" meant to a physicist.

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