Miguel comments on Why I'm Blooking - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 September 2007 05:49PM

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Comment author: Miguel 16 September 2007 10:47:48AM 0 points [-]

Well, I'm an admirer of Eliezer's works, and I can safely say that some of his blog posts have changed my whole way of thinking.

To offer just a small example, I used to think that I _understood_ gravity. I _knew_ that gravity was the curvature of space-time. But now I know I don't *really* understand it - I can't do the math. Saying curvature of space time conveys the same information to me as "beyond man's knowledge": it doesn't allow me to make any predictions; it doesn't change my anticipations at all.

So, how can I claim to understand gravity? I shouldn't even be allowed to talk about curvature of space time until I know it at the technical level (at least so I can understand the math and do some calculations). And so I've bought two textbooks: one for general relativity and one for quantum physics (another branch of physics exhaustively explored in math-free popsci books).

This is just one small example. Many of his other posts have been real eye-openers.

Keep up the good work!