Postmodernism

Franz Von Peppercorn II wrote: »

I on the other hand think that any intelligent alien would have something like pythagoras‘ theorem in their mathematical belt.

Do you mean this to say mathematics is "true out there" independent of minds or just that aliens will probably think and use concepts of space etc like we do. The latter I can see, the former I find hard to square with things like Godel's theorem.

Perla Full Urination wrote: »

Gödel himself was a mathematical platonist, and did not see platonism as incompatible with his incompleteness theorem. He certainly did not view it as "silly."

He was originally. Not toward the end of his life and this was largely as a result of his theorem and work following from it like that of Paul Cohen's. This is directly confirmed in correspondences especially around 1952 onward.

Godel's incompleteness theorem itself makes Platonism "hard" to maintain but still somewhat feasible. It's really what followed it, namely the area known as model theory. It's stuff like this that means most mathematicians today are not Platonists.

Fourier wrote: »

Probably not in my opinion. In my opinion even scientifically there often isn't an absolute truth, though in most cases this doesn't matter or is a technicality.

Surely it can't be that the absolute truth doesn't actually exist, just that we haven't figured it out yet?

I've read your posts about quantum mechanics and it looking increasingly more likely that at it's core it is just "unknowable" (if that's a word:D) But would you not be inclined to think that maybe that QM is just not the right tool to describe whatever the absolute base reality is?

You can do a pretty good job of nailing two pieces of wood together with a heavy spanner, but a hammer does it better, a nail gun ever better again, but in a world where only spanners existed you could be forgiven for thinking that was as good as it gets.

Maybe we do need zharg, we might never get it but that doesn't mean there isn't an absolute base level of reality. I just can't wrap my head around the idea that there wouldn't actually need to be one hidden somewhere

modernism

sbsquarepants wrote: »

But would you not be inclined to think that maybe that QM is just not the right tool to describe whatever the absolute base reality is?
...
I just can't wrap my head around the idea that there wouldn't actually need to be one hidden somewhere

Good question. First let me be clear what I and the majority of physicists* think. Yes there is a base reality and QM is not the right tool to describe the base reality.

The issue then is what is the right tool. The original hope would be that it would be another mathematical theory, like we've had in the rest of physics, but that seems very unlikely today.

So let's say the basic idea is there is a base reality, but it's outside analytic/scientific understanding.

Now what do physicists actually think.

The idea with Quantum Theory is that it describes things from the point of view of an observer. You plug what they've seen previously, what object they're trying to look at now and how they're trying to look at it. It'll then tell you how that object might respond. This was recognised very early on, see this 1931 letter from Erwin Schrodinger explaining QM to Arnold Sommerfeld:

Schrodinger wrote:

Quantum Mechanics forbids statements about the what really exists, statements about the object. It deals only with the object-subject relation

Another thing you'd hope is that you could combine the different ways of looking at something to get a complete picture of what is going on. Like taking a photo of a tree from head on and above can be combined into a total 3D image of the tree.

Unfortunately you cannot. The different way of looking at something contradict each other. This is known as "Complementarity". It's a bit like taking a photo of a garden. You can choose foreground and background focus. When you choose foreground focus you see a blurry purple tree in the background. When you switch to background focus there is no tree there at all. So it's not possible to combine the photos into a single accurate picture of reality.

There's also the issue I mentioned above with the observer trying to view themselves, i.e. you can't put yourself into quantum theory. This seems to lead to paradoxes and a breakdown of the theory. This is no surprise as since QM is about a subject looking at other things, something has to be the subject doing the viewing. It can't be a subject and an object, like an eye trying to look at itself.

When QM is applied to an everyday object like a stone strictly speaking what it says is that every way of looking at the stone does make sense together, can be combined, there's no real uncertainty about what you'll see in any given way of looking at it and every observer will see the same thing. So you can just drop the whole talk about observers, looking and ways of looking. You have a clear objective picture of the stone.

The one mystery is why this is, why can't you get a clear picture of things. There's a famous diagram by probably one of the greatest physicists of the past fifty years Asher Peres:



The basic idea is that in Quantum Theory everything is a physical system, but everything is "autonomous/free". Nobody can gain a complete objective description of something or predict it perfectly.

String theory is postmodern ,in that its composed of vague theorys
that cannot be proven .
we do not have the technology to prove it exists, at all .
Since in theory it exists in many dimensions .
It says that all objects and forces, like gravity ,energy,nuclear energy
can be explained by one theory which is present in many dimensions ,
theres no proof it exists ,its pure theory.
We can show that einsteins theory of physics are correct
by observingthe movement of planets gravity and measuring the speed of light .