Quick additional notes on the physics rant
Mar. 9th, 2021 08:27 pmTwo more examples (or more like one-and-a-half examples, as they're nearly the same) to illustrate what I was talking about in the physics rant:
1. The fact that lots of physicists apparently still think of particles rather than fields as fundamental. Like, I mean, what? How is that supposed to work ontologically, formally? It doesn't make any damn sense. Obviously fields are fundamental.
2. The fact that hardly anyone ever gives a coherent explanation of what is meant by "virtual particles" and whether or not they really exist. If you actually understand what's going on, this shouldn't be hard!
For instance, here's a pretty good explanation by one Matt Strassler. Although, note, he issues two important corrections in the comments:
But you put all that together and you have a pretty good explanation of virtual particles. And all it requires is being clear on your ontology! This is the sort of thing I mean when I say that when physicists say they have a model, they don't actually have a model properly speaking.
-Harry
1. The fact that lots of physicists apparently still think of particles rather than fields as fundamental. Like, I mean, what? How is that supposed to work ontologically, formally? It doesn't make any damn sense. Obviously fields are fundamental.
2. The fact that hardly anyone ever gives a coherent explanation of what is meant by "virtual particles" and whether or not they really exist. If you actually understand what's going on, this shouldn't be hard!
For instance, here's a pretty good explanation by one Matt Strassler. Although, note, he issues two important corrections in the comments:
- Here he points out that "real particles" are actually just an approximation;
- Here he points out that it's really the sum of virtual particles that really exists as patterns in fields, individual virtual particles are just our way of decomposing that sum and don't actually exist per se
But you put all that together and you have a pretty good explanation of virtual particles. And all it requires is being clear on your ontology! This is the sort of thing I mean when I say that when physicists say they have a model, they don't actually have a model properly speaking.
-Harry
