What I meant was that if you think of a field excitation propagation "between interactions", they can be identified with particles. And you are right, I was neglecting those pesky massless virtual photons in the IR limit. As for the SE with a potential, this is clearly a semi-classical setup, there are no external classical potentials, they all come as some mean-field pictures of a reasonably stable many-particle interaction (a contradiction in terms though it might be). I think I pointed that out earlier in some thread.
The more I learn about the whole thing, the more I realize that all of Quantum Physics is basically a collection of miraculously working hacks, like narrow trails in a forest full of unknown deadly wildlife. This is markedly different from the classical physics, including relativity, where most of the territory is mapped, but there are still occasional dangers, most of which are clearly marked with orange cones.
The more I learn about the whole thing, the more I realize that all of Quantum Physics is basically a collection of miraculously working hacks, like narrow trails in a forest full of unknown deadly wildlife. This is markedly different from the classical physics, including relativity, where most of the territory is mapped, but there are still occasional dangers, most of which are clearly marked with orange cones.
Yes. While I'm not terribly up-to-date with the ‘state-of-the-art’ in theoretical physics, I feel like the situation today with renormalization ...
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A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
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Note from orthonormal: MBlume and other contributors wrote the original version of this welcome post, and I've edited it a fair bit. If there's anything I should add or update on this post (especially broken links), please send me a private message—I may not notice a comment on the post. Finally, once this gets past 500 comments, anyone is welcome to copy and edit this intro to start the next welcome thread.