Comment by fargolime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fargolime | Hacker News Reader

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Yep, yours is probably different from physicists' mental experiences, not software developers'. One thing I've learned from discussions about physics is that the thought processes that are common to software development are largely foreign in the realm of physics.

Take for example Einstein's Relativity of Simultaneity thought experiment. [1] This is akin to discussion about a bug among software developers. Like developers can agree that a bug exists after discussion alone, a software developer could read the thought experiment and conclude there's a bug in physics (i.e. the general consensus at the time). But physicists don't seem to work that way. In discussions with many super smart physics-minded people, I've found that most reject that thought experiment, nay any thought experiment, as having value. Only a mathematically-based argument suffices for them. Imagine showing software bugs only mathematically!

[1] In Einstein's words: http://www.bartleby.com/173/9.html

Physicists reject that thought experiments have value? I'd say the context in which I most frequently hear the phrase "thought experiment" (or "Gedankenexperiment") is physics! Indeed, that is historically where the term originated. (And we must also consider examples like the very one of Einstein's you pointed out).

I also don't see any reason why thought experiments and mathematical arguments should be thought of as exclusive... I would think an important part of a thought experiment is often its mathematical analysis.

The way I see it, you hear about thought experiments in physics because of Einstein. Because of him they can't avoid giving them some credence. But the odds of a new thought experiment purporting to show a bug in general consensus physics being given consideration today is nil, and I'm talking about before the text is read. Using thought experiments to discuss current physics is fine as a starting point only. For new physics they are junk that immediately labels one as a crackpot.

Until the time of ~Einstein thought experiments were feasible enough because only the intuitive-upon-closer-inspection parts of physics were discovered.

The big problem is that the finer points of the new physics are just straight-forward unintuitive. To understand even quantum physics (which is very basic) on an intuitive level is sufficiently impossible and has baffled the community for some time (see also the resolution[1]). It is however quite possible to develop a good intuition for the maths describing it.

Sadly, the history of thought experiments and these discussions still linger in the vocabulary used to describe the phenomena. Many words are common words that inspire some people to invent their 'intuitive' own version of the theory, based on what the words mean in every-day discourse[2].

[1] http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/l...

[2]http://www.energyhealing-quantumhealing.com/ for a particularly amusing example

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