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Comment by webwielder2 | Hacker News Reader

Are there really electrons? Or does observable phenomena simply fit with the theory of electrons?

If you can explain the difference, maybe you can help me make sense of postmodern philosophy.

It's the usual map / territory or model / reality difference. If you've ever heard or said the Box-ism "All models are wrong, but some are useful" you've been introduced.

Some practice with it may even be a good intro to some veins of actual postmodernism (as opposed to piñata postmodernism which is mostly stuffed with straw by people who like hitting it).

I think GP's qiestion dates back to earlier than postmodern philosophy.

Is Platonic realism valid? I need to know before I plug in this toaster.

A bit like for Marxism, so many schools tried to claim that name, with a messy history, it's hard to even know what you mean by that :

https://samzdat.com/2018/01/26/platonism-without-plato/

This has nothing to do with postmodern philosophy. There is a difference between the reality, and a human's conceptualization of that reality. In fact, we can abstract further and say that there is a difference between X and the concept of X. Now, the GP comment is saying that the model of X (which is how a human being conceptualizes X) is different than X. So, when you look at nature as it is, there are no electrons. There are just things that humans happen to model as electrons. We could also happen to model them as something else perhaps inconceivable to us at the moment. But the reality of what-we-call-electron is independent from the concept of electron. This insight is as old as Plato and Kant.

Fascinating, you went from saying this has nothing to do with postmodern philosophy to describing constructive postmodern philosophy.

I love it!

I don’t think there’s anything postmodern about it…

How is this philosophy? Any information based system will have information about a real thing it has observed.

Constructive postmodernism would propose a competing constructive model. At the very least doubt should have justification, otherwise it's naive agnosticism.

That is true for all physics. We can only claim to build approximate models that have degrees of freedom that only make sense within the context of that model. In a sense, every object that you attach to a physical explanation has an inductive bias because of the mechanisms that you use to interpret the observations surrounding that object..

> the concept of electron.

but this claims that the concept-of-electron as a discrete entity which the what-we-call-electron only approximates at best.

But because concept-of-electron is unscientific (aka, it is not produced from a falsifiable hypothesis), you can claim anything from it, including that it exists and supercedes the what-we-call-electron.

aka, it's akin to claiming god.

I can't help but point out the humor of one being hundreds of years old while the other thousands.

(But yeah, Mediterranean/Europe wasn't at its best in-between...)

Also, postmodern science concepts of relativity and various quantum weirdness not having had an impact on postmodern philosophy (with the incompleteness theorem straddling both) is quite a bold claim.

> Are there really electrons? Or does observable phenomena simply fit with the theory of electrons?

Practically speaking, what is the difference?

There isn't a difference, but you could say the same about this one electron idea.

The reality of electron (presumably) is static but our model of electron can change given new data, new information. The reality of our solar system is the same but the way Newton modeled it in his head is different than the way Einstein modeled it in his head (which is ever so slightly different than how a contemporary physicist would model it in their head at the moment).

Electron is something humans created to describe reality in a way that's comprehensible to us and at the same time we can observe via experiments that it is an accurate descriptions in a way that we can measure. Asking whether electrons are something else that conceptualization doesn't make much sense.

Well, it does makes sense, and there has been research and experiments to see if it is something else (and, compared to early descriptions of an electron, it has been shown to be something else: QM, further subatomic particles and all that).

You can argue that this is because we measured better, but even for some of the things we can't measure, we still opt for specific explanations of how they "really are" over others, even if they describe the same phenomena and have the same measurement accuracy.

If anything what you say is just a particular philosophy of looking into what those models mean, not some definitive truth.

I think it does, they could turn out to be like phlogiston or the luminiferous ether.

If there's a gap between theory and reality, then there's a more accurate theory. If you know this more accurate theory, you're going to have specific arguments for it.

I think it's too easy to get sidetracked with the science aspect and not pay enough attention to the language/philosophy aspect.

I have 2 olives in my martini glass right now. I can see, feel, smell, and even hear them if I throw them. So we say they are "real" and it makes perfect sense for 99.9999% of our lives. But "real" has a very specific meaning that we never think about.

Then consider subatomic particles. You can't feel or see them. But the theories that describe their behavior have gone undefeated for decades. But we'll never be able to see one, so does it exist?

2 more examples: does something exist after it passes the event horizon of a black hole?you can see it, frozen and red shifted. But you can't be guaranteed that if you crossed over that you could touch it. You might get spaghettified and die but there's no way to report this experience to anyone before the event horizon. there's effectively two separate realities.

Next, consider 2 identical marbles mixed up in a box. If you measure both of them before and after shaking, you could still tell them apart because at the macro level, nothing is perfectly identical. One marble will have more protons or defects or higher temperature, etc.

But now try that with 2 atoms or molecules in a box. If you shake it, and discard any measurements on the box like vibration, you absolutely can not tell them apart. They could have disappeared and regenerated for all we know.

My point is that "real" isn't the only concept that leans heavily on language. But also the concept of "same" and for the black hole, even seeing it isn't enough to establish proof that what you're seeing is real. Even though it's the gold standard we constantly rely on. (Not to mention that the very perception of "sight" itself is just subatomic particles hitting a detector! Which is then carried by an EM field to the brain. But I'll stop there).

If theory bounding the observer's sense-making apparatus does not refute the electron, then make of it what you will.

Ok Hegel

I propose a new flat electron theory. They do in fact orbit the nuclei in a simple orbit. It's just that Maxwell's equations don't apply at those length scales. Electron tunneling is a conspiracy designed to hide the truth.

This is of course a sarcastic aside, but I have to admit even toying with the idea of throwing out observations you don't like feels really good. I see why for some unbinding their beliefs from the constraints of reality is so appealing.

I don't think you understood the question. It was about the status of theories, not the status of reality.

It was about the status of theories, not the status of reality.

What is the difference?

“In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice...”

Theories are attempted descriptions of reality for various purposes (usually prediction.) Don't confuse the map for the territory. Theories, like maps, are created by humans, reality, like territory, is apparently not.

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