Today's post, Reductionism was originally published on 16 March 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
We build models of the universe that have many different levels of description. But so far as anyone has been able to determine, the universe itself has only the single level of fundamental physics - reality doesn't explicitly compute protons, only quarks.
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True, let's say that I'd bet my house on it not being done in my lifetime.
Yes, in the HEP context.
Not quite. You can use renormalization to help explain some of what you observe at lower energies from a HE model point of view. I am yet to see an RNG prediction of a new low-energy effect, though I suppose it might happen for one-level-up problems, but not for any kind of multi-level jumps (do you seriously think that one can potentially renormalize quarks to cognitive biases?)
You are confusing predicting with explaining.
I can't figure out what you're trying to say. Are you saying:
(1) QFT is inherently incapable of explaining the aerodynamics of rigid macroscopic bodies, ever
(2) QFT can do that in principle, but in practice we can't yet justify some of the intermediate steps
(3) QFT can do that in principle, but in practice it's pointless because the higher-level theories already tell you everything about the higher levels
(4) something else?