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Comment by amasad | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood how some physicists disregard philosophy and do it with a straight face. How else are supposed to understand and make meaning of their findings?

Take scientific realism for example. Roughly, whether our theories have a 1-1 mapping to reality. Are the entities described by, say physics, really exist? Say an electron? Or is it just a concept or a tool we use to understand the world?

A common objection to scientific realism is Pessimistic Meta Induction. Roughly, we've been always wrong about physics and physical entities, even when we made progress, therefore we're likely wrong now (maybe less wrong but still wrong).

I personally find Structural Realism to be a compelling argument -- it's sort of a "third way". Roughly, look, we've been wrong and theories change and evolve but the basic structure of our theories remains intact. Therefore the structure must map on to reality. Full discussion here https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/

That's merely one example of meta questions about physics that physics itself cannot fully answer and only philosophy can help us understand. I think part of the reason we don't have consesus on the interpretation of quantum mechanics is because of this dismissal of philosophy by physicists.

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> Roughly, we've been always wrong about physics and physical entities, even when we made progress, therefore we're likely wrong now (maybe less wrong but still wrong).

This is an extremely good point and one that people very often overlook.

It applies to all sorts of different areas of life.

For example in health/safety, we have always believed many things to be safe (or at least not deadly) and found out later that they were not safe or caused more harm than anyone thought (radiation, smoking, asbestos and more). So there are likely many deadly things today that we don't take seriously and in 300 years our children will gasp when they look back.

In programming, when you are fixing "buffer overflow number 15,452" you have to understand if this bug was going to be the last one it wouldn't be number 15,452. So just like the 14,451 that came before it, there will be more to come. So you should stop for a moment to think at a higher level or consider taking steps to completely eliminate the problem at its source instead of focusing on that specific instance because otherwise that number is not going to stop growing.

In general it's very good to be able to recognise the patterns that have been consistent over a long time and appreciate that the present time is probably not that different from what came before it. Time is going to pass, your present is going to be simply added to the next person's past, and it's unlikely to magically be void of those patterns that have been persistent for thousands of years.

> This is an extremely good point and one that people very often overlook.

A good point to clarify to people who think science is like religion, that it states assertions about the world and those assertions are somehow binding to reality. But that's a complete misunderstanding of what science is.

The ultimate result of all of science is a bunch of heavily abstracted "we've observed that if you do this this, then that happens" statements. Newton's mechanics are a bunch of observations generalized into clean mathematical form, that turned out to be useful at predicting results of further observations. Not all observations fit it, so we added a bit more of maths and came up with Relativity. Etc. There's nothing more to that, and physics isn't first "wrong" and then "right"; it's always striving towards more accurate, more predictive models.

> "we've observed that if you do this this, then that happens" statements

The whole endeavor of making science "map to reality" seems wholly misguided to me. Really, it's a set of predictions and outcomes. That's why the phrase "nature of reality" when applied to science irks me. Science isn't searching for the "nature of reality" and it couldn't find it even if it were. Science is about predicting the future ever more accurately.

> For example in health/safety, we have always believed many things to be safe...

Please, do not mix science and pseudo-scientific journalism.

Fat or sugar? Pseudo-scientific journalism will only accept a "yes" or a "no" for an answer. Science is instead made of "yes", "no", and "we don't know yet".

Let me don my physicist hat here for a moment.

I couldn't care any less what philosophy has to say about the phenomena I studied when I was in academia. Except insofar as there is overlap with the observations (empirical) and elucidation of the models (rational/mathematical), what concerns philosophy is completely separate from what concerns physics.

I suppose if I am forced to make some statement assuming there is a definitive, important relationship between philosophy and physics, I'd say this: physicists implicitly assume a sort of rational empiricism. We can't prove (philosophically speaking) that our approach maps to some "True Reality" but that isn't the goal. Effectively we've asserted (implicitly) there is a "1-1 mapping to reality (whatever that is)". Philosophy has no response to that that isn't also an assertion. And that's why philosophy simply isn't relevant to physics.

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

Feynman nailed it imo.

Even if I conceded that philosophy of science is not useful for scientist (I doubt that's the case) my comment was mainly concerned about the layman's understand of the world.

While "Shutup and calculate" is useful for invention and technology it's detrimental to our understanding of the world which, arguably, is why science was so useful to start with.

For an interesting discussion on the power of explanations check out David Duetsch's work in the book the Beginning of Infinity. He claims that explanations are fundamental to progress.

Other than book deals, tv spots and entertainment, what have all of the many Interpretations of QM gotten us? By contrast what has shut up and calculate gotten us? All modern electronics for a start...

Good thing Einstein didn't just shut up and calculate.

Says you, by claiming credit for philosophy in his work. Ironically if Einstein had taken a non-philosophical view of QM maybe his genius could have been applied to its advancement rather than disproven railings against it on philosophical grounds.

Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect helped inspire the QM revolution. But I had Relativity in mind, the thing he's most well known for. As for his later life, he was searching for the TOE, which is an ongoing thing. Problem is that harmonizing gravity with QM has proved very difficult.

As for debating QM, it's quite possible that will eventually lead to a new understanding. That's why shut and calculate is insufficient to advance the field. You need the theoretical side spinning out ideas for the shut and calculate types to carry out experiments and plug the data into equations. Some of these ideas range into the metaphysical side of things until they can be empirically tested.

I assume you're talking about "God does not play dice". Einstein's famous quote may yet be proven correct. Everettian theory (many-worlds interpretation), Bohmian Mechanics, and Exotic Probability theory are all deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. My money is on Exotic Probability theory winning out, with a lower level physical theory (perhaps causal networks?), providing the exotic probabilities.

Einstein was fully capable of discovering exotic probability theory, having contributed greatly to the development of bosonic statistics. Unfortunately, he did not, and we've been floundering about with string theory and the like ever since his famous quote.

Add in a Feynman quote:

"In fact it is necessary for the very existence that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions, like those of our philosopher."

Back when I was in college, I saw on reddit this quote and a wonderful response to it, which I'll try to recount it fully.

There is a species of birds in Europe that time their eggs' hatchings to a particular point in spring, which coincides with the hatching time of a particular type of greenworm that the birds and their young eat. Because of global warming, the timing of these birds' egg hatching has not lined up as well with the greenworms, and their population as a consequence is in decline. If the birds examined their own methods of timing the egg laying and hatching, they could realign it with the greenworms, thus allowing them to improve the survival rates of their young. Thus, orthinology can be useful to birds, and as per Feynman's argument by analogy, philosophy can be useful to scientists. :)

Philosophy of Science concerns itself with the process of doing scientific work, how to do it well, what determines scientific and unscientific work, what kinds of traits make a given scientific theory better than another. At a time where scientific fields are becoming more concerned with reproducibility, papers are published just to inflate citation numbers, junk journals abound, pressure exists to simply publish quantity... Does it not seem like examining the method and process of scientific work is becoming more necessary?

Ooh. My curiosity is piqued. What bird is this? If like to read up a bit more.

I found the comment!

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/esfrv/im_an_ornitholo...

The comment wasn't exactly as I remembered it, but it says more or less the same thing.

That ornithology is not useful to birds says more about the birds than about ornithology.

Indeed. Is anthropology useful to humans? I hope we'd all agree that it is, and would be even/especially if conducted by aliens (assuming they shared their findings, which would be a massive violation of the Prime Directive).

But that doesn't stop physicists from opining away as to the nature of reality that's being mapped. It's it from bit, math all the way down, consciousness collapsing the wave-function or a multiplicity of branching universes, the universe is a hologram, the universe is a computer computing itself, and so on.

My question is what's the purpose of physics outside of aiding technology if not an attempt at explaining reality, or at least our observation of whatever reality is?

My question is what's the purpose of physics outside of aiding technology if not an attempt at explaining reality, or at least our observation of whatever reality is?

It's "explaining reality". The assumption is that we do so by observing, and the explanation is by models (usually mathematical). That's the extent of any relationship to philosophy. Questions regarding whether "observed 'reality'" is really real reality or the like simply aren't pertinent.

I think that people outside the field have the wrong understanding of what physicists do. I think you make a good point about models and assertions. However, I would like to add an important point: we are data driven. Hard evidence is the most important part of validating and guiding our models. In my anecdotal experience, most of us get frustrated with superfluous time consuming discussions. Often these frustrations are a result of the non-scientifically trained trying to project what they perceive to be a scientific discussion.

Source: I’m a theoretical physicist by profession. I work in the field of condensed matter physics, specialising in geometry optimisation & DFT.

>It's it from bit, math all the way down, consciousness collapsing the wave-function or a multiplicity of branching universes, the universe is a hologram, the universe is a computer computing itself, and so on.

The problem is, all of these statements are completely unjustified, beyond being fun to talk about. They might not even be philosophy, on the grounds that philosophers do actually still expect statements to be supported.

The purpose is coming up with models that predict observations. Whether what we observe has anything to do with "reality" or whether we're just brains in vats doesn't make much of a difference.

I suspect that some scientists disregard philosophy as a separate primary academic activity. What they are doing has philosophical underpinnings; the have gone with particular underpinnings that work and don't wish to be wasting time re-examining them all the time and re-evaluating them against various other hoky possibilities.

Science does have its answers about, say, what it means to know something about the world. Those answers work for science and scientists; scientists don't feel the need to idly debate about what it means to know something.

Whether or not the entity in a theory really exists or is just a theoretical construct is something that can be probed. The "atom" of ancient Greece was just a theoretical construct based on the hand-waving hypothesis that division of matter into finer and finer pieces surely must bottom out when we reach some pieces which are indivisible. It's not the same thing as a modern atom.

A theoretical construct becomes real when several layers of lower level constructs are empirically validated. I.e. since we can predict and observe the effects of sub-sub-atomic particles, doubting that an atom or molecule is a real entity is just short of lunacy.

> physics itself cannot fully answer and only philosophy can help us understand

Philosophy can't make us understand anything. Philosophy just wants to entice you into endless debating whereby what you understand is a growing body of philosophical hypotheses.

> Science does have its answers about, say, what it means to know something about the world.

Those answers are probably different for every scientist you talk to. Or at least there are several major camps, which is where philosophy would be useful. Often their ideas are close enough it can be glossed over, but when they aren't it results in endless arguing because they aren't willing to admit they subscribe to different philosophies.

I do agree, however, that we should avoid philosophy as much as possible. But that means at least stating what you take for granted and what you think science is.

Except that physicists do debate what measurement means, evidence is etc.

I studied science before philosophy and the cartoon-view of philosophy, even as it applied to science, that I was given in the sciences was 50-100 years out of date, backasswards and upside-down, and extremely brief to boot. Scientists for the most part don't understand philosophy of science, they are mostly confused about what makes science, science - and they have scant knowledge about the history of their own science, much less science in general.

Historically, philosophy was the pile of compost from which every science has grown. And many transplants of useful ideas since.

Sturgeon's law applies to both science and philosophy; both see the other's faults but not their own. Both are useful.

> How else are supposed to understand and make meaning of their findings?

What does it mean to understand? Ultimately, to have a model that lets you predict further behaviour of / interaction with some phenomenon. That's what physics gives you. Do the models map 1:1 to some "True Reality"? Who cares? That's not even a meaningful question. We have no other way of understanding "True Reality", but through models that give verifiable predictions.

It's because scientific materialism can be used like a religion. It is arguably the most powerful religion in history.

Sciencism, yes. (And Sciencism is very popular amongst scientists.) Science, no - it is a destructive method (destructive of hypotheses or false belief) not knowledge.

What's the difference scientific materialism and empiricism?

Well, an obvious example is the NDE phenomena, majority of the time accompanied by an OBE ~ person's heart stops, they have an OBE NDE, and directly experience themselves explicitly outside of their lifeless body.

This is an experience that many people have had, and yet, because of its nature, it cannot be tested with the same tools used in the physical sciences.

And yet, because it cannot be poked, prodded or easily tested as with matter and physics, the reductionist materialists claim it cannot exist, denying the experiences of thousands of people, most arrogantly at that.

And yet, many NDE experiencers have produced veridical proof that they were indeed consciousness, detached from their body.

> reductionist materialists claim it cannot exist

They don't claim the person did not have a subjective experience. They simply claim that the subjective experience was not accompanied by someone's consciousness actually viewing the physical room at a vantage point that is outside of their physical body.

In other words, the brain is incredibly powerful, and can produce overwhelmingly vivid internal experiences -- an NDE could easily be an intensified internal experience. There are so many examples of how the brain does this in less mundane situations than biological death, it would be unreasonable to rule that out as a very strong possibility.

You might ask why are NDEs so similar? The same reason that alien abduction stories are so similar. The particular details are have over time become embedded in the social subconscious, and thus are strongly suggestive to the individual experience and also to the retelling of it. Whenever we tell a story, we bend details a bit towards common templates or archetypical elements. Even more so if the experience itself was vague and hard to remember or express.

And of course, it's very possible a decent percentage of people are unwittingly fabricating the NDE. We aren't the most reliable recorders of our own experiences.

> NDE experiencers have produced veridical proof that they were indeed consciousness, detached from their body

This is an incredible claim. What hard evidence is there to support it?

The day that philosophy makes an experimentally-testable prediction about a property of nature is the day that a lot of physicists will pay attention.

I don't disregard it, but philosophy is strictly irrelevant to science. Science is not about describing "reality": it's about guessing measurements' outcome. Whether an electron "exists", is a (fully respectable) philosophic question. Whether we can foresee the full state a CPU will be in every other nanosecond, that's a scientific question.

> I've never understood how some physicists disregard philosophy and do it with a straight face.

A full list of advancements in physics made thanks to advancements in philosophy during the 20th century: Ø.

> How else are supposed to understand and make meaning of their findings?

You don't. Your everyday intuitions no longer apply to phenomena on scales often well described by physics. Shut up and calculate.

> Take scientific realism for example. Roughly, whether our theories have a 1-1 mapping to reality.

Science/physics doesn't provide a "1-1 mapping to reality", it provides predictive models which don't necessarily apply to all phenomena. Newtonian physics is still being used today in everything on the ground.

> Are the entities described by, say physics, really exist? Say an electron? Or is it just a concept or a tool that we use to understand the world?

I could (in principle) harm you with an electron beam. Does that qualify for "really exist"?

> A common objection to scientific realism is Pessimistic Meta Induction. Roughly, we've been always wrong about physics and physical entities, even when we made progress, therefore we're likely wrong now (maybe less wrong but still wrong).

See above for "scientific realism".

> I think part of the reason we don't have consesus on the interpretation of quantum mechanics is because of this dismissal of philosophy by physicists.

Nobody stops philosophers from picking up a book on quantum mechanics and writing their own interpretation. The problem is, in vast majority of cases the interpretations are either wrong or complete crap.

> A full list of advancements in physics made thanks to advancements in philosophy during the 20th century: Ø.

Einstein’s theory of relativity was inspired directly by the work for Ernst Mach and his use of thought experiments lies at least as much in the realm of philosophy as it does in physics.

As well, the physicist’s pursuit of Naturalness in scientific theories is also primarily philosophical in nature.

> The problem is, in vast majority of cases the interpretations are either wrong or complete crap.

Can you name half a dozen such interpretations that one could read? Just curious.

I can't name you concrete examples, because I've encountered this too many times. But here are general categories in which those interpretations fall:

- The physicists just can't measure precise enough, so they think in probabilities. Also known as "hidden variables". This is wrong. Bell test demonstrates the opposite.

- "Observing" a particle can change it state, therefore observer can change everything, therefore our minds are all-mighty.

- We don't understand "quantum" and we don't understand minds. A mind "can't just work on classical computation alone" and quantum computation is more powerful. Therefore minds are "quantum". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WXTX0IUaOg

> I can't name you concrete examples, because I've encountered this too many times.

It's actually kind of hard to know where you're coming from as far as critiquing the state of philosophy when you list something like #2, which is anonymous, cartoonishly stupid, and perhaps not representative of anything, alongside Roger Penrose, whose work is at least interesting.

As interesting the assumption that mind can't work on classical computation could be, it's still not grounded in anything but assumption of humans being special. It's also wrong to take two unknowns and assume they have the same explanation.

Penrose is a smart guy, but he's advocating for stuff that's not seen in experiments. Your CNS is decidedly 'classical' and is not doing quantum thingys (any more so than all things are quantum-y). The synapse, though still a bit murky and under study, is not doing quantum-only stuff.

I don't believe that our brains are quantum computers, but I don't think we know enough about how the CNS works to completely rule it out. Quantum effects have been observed in living organisms [1], so the "it's a warm soup" argument is not sufficient.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2014-01-quantum-mechanics-efficiency-p...

I've never understood how some physicists disregard philosophy and do it with a straight face. How else are supposed to understand and make meaning of their findings?

What does this even mean? Why is it the job of physicists to derive whatever you consider to be “meaning” beyond the physical implications of results? You’re free to play in the gaps left by physics all you like, but don’t drag physics into it. The nice thing about empirical results is the freedom from needing meaning or interpretation. What an attempt to impose philosophy on physics gets you is a genius like Einstein getting stuck on QM.

Philosophy is an obstacle to good physics, because it’s a subjective exercise about human expectations. Physics is about testing how nature works, even when it defies all expectations and our ability to interpret it. Philosophy was an amazing field, but over the last few centuries it’s been gutted by science, and it’s a shell now.

Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called 'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy. -Bertrand Russell

And what about all the physicists who disagree with a probabalistic theory of subatomic particle interactions? What if QM is not capable of progressing because it's not correct, only convenient? You can't ding Einstein for failing to progress QM and at the same time also reject any need to provide anything more than empirical results. That's infinitely hypocritical--but I don't really blame you since all you know is how to calculate.

This is the crux of the problem. In your eyes (and those of anyone who rejects philosophy) a scientist literally just collects data and issues a yes or no analysis of whether it fits a model. But they have no agency to progress their field beyond confirming the theories that have already been established.

What if every time we fired a single photon through a pair of slits an undetectable leprechaun appeared and deflected the photon giving rise to the beloved interference pattern we observe? You'll say that's preposterous and, since the leprechaun is undetectable, resort to Occam's Razor to explain why my theory is not to be taken seriously. But you just did philosophy.

Go read Thomas Kuhn. Science does not replace philosophy. They work together in a cyclic tension to progress our understanding of the universe we inhabit. Philosophy asks the questions that science attempts to answer. Science usually does a pretty good job but always gets stuck until someone turns around and says, "wait, we were thinking about this part wrong", and asks a new set of questions.

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