Science thread

[rotting bones]

There's a new interpretation of the double slit experiment that tries to reframe the wave pattern as caused by dark photons: https://youtu.be/DpMcC-E5l5c

If light somehow turns out to have parity with darkness, would that lend credence to some of Goethe's criticisms of the Newtonian theory of light? Not that Goethe's alternative made any sense IIRC.

[rotting bones]

Automated experimentation is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-025-01463-z

[Ares Land]

If light somehow turns out to have parity with darkness, would that lend credence to some of Goethe's criticisms of the Newtonian theory of light? Not that Goethe's alternative made any sense IIRC.

I suspect Goethe's objections were religious and spiritual in nature, so not really?

[rotting bones]

I suspect Goethe's objections were religious and spiritual in nature, so not really?

Goethe was not a religious fanatic by any means. My impression is that he was a slightly pretentious rich kid who wanted to be thought of as an urbane intellectual and artist. He had different ideas than Newton about how to perform experiments and do science generally, but he was considered to be a Renaissance Man in his time. IIRC he did advance biology in his study of plant morphology. His physics mainly has applications in the visual arts and the study of optical illusions. If you go to a science museum, you might see an exhibit about colored shadows. That's Goethe's discovery in "physics". That is, unless you anachronistically transpose his conclusions to this new context. Such a transposition makes more sense than you might think. The conclusion that scientists drew from the victory of Newton over Goethe is that Goethe's metaphysics of balanced light and darkness is nonsensical. But if this experiment is right, that conclusion might have been overly hasty.

On the one hand, I suspect people stoked Goethe's vanity because he was wealthy and respected. I have my doubts about the lasting value of his works. On the other hand, Goethe symbolized "the other Germany" for entire generations. The Germany that could potentially have turned away from the mad pursuit of military glory, finding refuge in art, learning and a cosmopolitan dream of building a better future. That last part is explicitly glorified in Faust II.

Note that how "scientific" Newton was is a pretty controversial subject by itself. Newton was an alchemist and a religious prophet. His theory of gravitation was considered to have been an occult force at the time because its mechanism is a spooky action at a distance. The acceptance of gravitation changed how the material world was understood in the philosophy of science. Eventually, Einstein managed to reduce gravitation to the immediately mechanical brand of materialism by conceptualizing spacetime as a rubber sheet. By then, quantum physics presented an even bigger challenge. Cockshott supports the de Broglie-Bohm theory to be a principled mechanical materialist.

[xxx]

I suspect Goethe's objections were religious and spiritual in nature, so not really?

religions are always about slits...

[rotting bones]

It's possible that very much unlike Newton, Goethe was actually an atheist. IIRC he spent years carrying Spinoza's Ethics in his pocket at a time when Spinoza was widely reviled for being an atheist, a Jew, an excommunicated Jew, or any combination of the above.

That book promotes holism of a kind that conflicts with the analytical procedure that later proved useful in modern science. It's possible this was at the root of Goethe's feud with Newtonian science. I don't know if I'd consider a principled Spinozist objection either religious or spiritual though. Philosophical, yes, but everyone already agrees Goethe had a philosophical disagreement with Newtonianism.

All this is speculation. I don't really know. Goethe might just have been attracted by Spinoza's lyrical analysis of theological topics from a cosmopolitan standpoint. I like Spinoza's Ethics too, and I also agree with Goethe that Kant was a gasbag.

[Travis B.]

On the other hand, Goethe symbolized "the other Germany" for entire generations. The Germany that could potentially have turned away from the mad pursuit of military glory, finding refuge in art, learning and a cosmopolitan dream of building a better future. That last part is explicitly glorified in Faust II.

I myself have observed that Goethe is the go-to person to symbolize a positive Germany, of what could have been and of what Germany has attempted to reclaim in the wake of Nazism.

[zompist]

Cockshott supports the de Broglie-Bohm theory to be a principled mechanical materialist.

You mean, he supports an untested theory based on philosophical prejudices?

Any time you hear about "interpretations" of quantum mechanics, you should secure your wallet. No interpretation is better than any other, none are testable, and all have strange things to swallow. Physicists shrug and stick with what the theory actually does.

Most of the problems come from reifying the Schrödinger equation. It's not a physical thing and nonsense mulitiplies if you treat it as one.

A rundown of the strange things:

The Copenhagen interpretation: the "collapse of the wavefunction" and endless noodling over the concept of "measurement."
Feynman's view: everything is particles, but to calculate where you might measure them, you use a probability function that acts like a wave. No need for a collapse of anything, but you have to accept that the universe doesn't let you predict things, only predict probabilities.
Many worlds: nothing collapses because an entire new universe appears. About the extreme case of entia getting multiplicanda.
Pilot wave theory (Bohm): in addition to Schrödinger's there yet another, also unobserved wave.
Dark photon theory: I don't know the details except it posits an entirely new undetectable class of "dark photons".
Hidden variables: there is some unseen deterministic mechanism "below" QM. This one is actually experimentally disconfirmed.

I like Feynman's idea the best, as it really makes no assumptions or added entities. People who don't like it generally have a non-scientific attachment to determinism.

[Raphael]

A rundown of the strange things:

The Copenhagen interpretation: the "collapse of the wavefunction" and endless noodling over the concept of "measurement."
Feynman's view: everything is particles, but to calculate where you might measure them, you use a probability function that acts like a wave. No need for a collapse of anything, but you have to accept that the universe doesn't let you predict things, only predict probabilities.
[...]

I like Feynman's idea the best, as it really makes no assumptions or added entities. People who don't like it generally have a non-scientific attachment to determinism.

Hm, judging from your description, I could imagine that people might oppose Feynman's idea because they have a non-scientific attachment to non-determinism, too.

[zompist]

A rundown of the strange things:

The Copenhagen interpretation: the "collapse of the wavefunction" and endless noodling over the concept of "measurement."
Feynman's view: everything is particles, but to calculate where you might measure them, you use a probability function that acts like a wave. No need for a collapse of anything, but you have to accept that the universe doesn't let you predict things, only predict probabilities.
[...]

I like Feynman's idea the best, as it really makes no assumptions or added entities. People who don't like it generally have a non-scientific attachment to determinism.

Hm, judging from your description, I could imagine that people might oppose Feynman's idea because they have a non-scientific attachment to non-determinism, too.

I'm not following— did you mean "support" for "oppose"?

[Raphael]

A rundown of the strange things:

The Copenhagen interpretation: the "collapse of the wavefunction" and endless noodling over the concept of "measurement."
Feynman's view: everything is particles, but to calculate where you might measure them, you use a probability function that acts like a wave. No need for a collapse of anything, but you have to accept that the universe doesn't let you predict things, only predict probabilities.
[...]

I like Feynman's idea the best, as it really makes no assumptions or added entities. People who don't like it generally have a non-scientific attachment to determinism.

Hm, judging from your description, I could imagine that people might oppose Feynman's idea because they have a non-scientific attachment to non-determinism, too.

I'm not following— did you mean "support" for "oppose"?

No. I think someone who doesn't like the idea of any kind of determinism - let's say, a "the Copenhagen Interpretation proves the existence of Free Will"-type - might dislike Feynman's ideas on those grounds.

[zompist]

No. I think someone who doesn't like the idea of any kind of determinism - let's say, a "the Copenhagen Interpretation proves the existence of Free Will"-type - might dislike Feynman's ideas on those grounds.

I'm not sure they'd be understanding it. Feynman's interpretation absolutely rules out Leibnizian determinism: given the state of the universe at time t, you absolutely cannot say what happens at t+1. You can only calculate probabilities of things at that time.

Whether that's "real nondeterminism" is a matter of debate. The problem is generally nailing down what people want from either determinism or nondeterminism. If you want room for the soul to sneak in, of course Feynman doesn't oblige. But for some, randomness or unpredictability is enough.

[rotting bones]

I myself have observed that Goethe is the go-to person to symbolize a positive Germany, of what could have been and of what Germany has attempted to reclaim in the wake of Nazism.

One of the reasons the Weimar Republic had its capital in Weimar was to claim Goethe's legacy. The figure most emblematic of the Weimar Republic might have been Heinrich Heine, and modern Germany might have Habermas (who had doubts about traditional German thinking and wanted to import parts of English political thought) as its court philosopher, but Goethe always remains in the background as the closest embodiment of the old ideal.

[Raphael]

I myself have observed that Goethe is the go-to person to symbolize a positive Germany, of what could have been and of what Germany has attempted to reclaim in the wake of Nazism.

One of the reasons the Weimar Republic had its capital in Weimar

No, Berlin was the capital. Weimar was just the place where the constitution was written.

[rotting bones]

You mean, he supports an untested theory based on philosophical prejudices?

I think you will agree that it's not an untested theory. It's one of the possible interpretations of the math. Idealism should be opposed because generalization from symbols is used to perpetuate injustice, ignoring materialist power relations. These days, they are opposing vaccination by finding Satanic symbolism in chemical formulas. In medieval times, they were looking down on Jews because they worship on a Saturday.

If you want a more mainstream example, the Indian Civil Service is one of the most corrupt institutions in the world. In the qualifying exam, entrants are required to take a test on ethics, where they write long essays on the subject. This is the kind of solution you get when you replace systems analysis with values and symbols.

We want people to think, but we want them to have frameworks which take away the power of symbols. One way to do this is to think in terms of underlying mechanisms wherever possible. In my experience, people will not accept that their feelings of sinister intrusions are invalid until you show them alternative mechanistic interpretations. They will not accept that the world is inherently uncontrollable as an alternative.

Read one of Cockshott's books before you condemn him.

[Raphael]

As far as I'm concerned, "I assume this is true because it would be undesirable for the alternative to be true" is pretty much always a fallacy.

[rotting bones]

As far as I'm concerned, "I assume this is true because it would be undesirable for the alternative to be true" is pretty much always a fallacy.

If there are many possible interpretations, why would you push the less desirable ones in your discourse? If crime has both genetic and environmental components, always talking about the genetic component sounds like a red flag to me.

[Travis B.]

As far as I'm concerned, "I assume this is true because it would be undesirable for the alternative to be true" is pretty much always a fallacy.

If there are many possible interpretations, why would you push the less desirable ones in your discourse? If crime has both genetic and environmental components, always talking about the genetic component sounds like a red flag to me.

I think Raphael means that assuming hypotheses based on whether they are desirable or not rather than on whether they are true or not is fallacious. For instance, to use your example, always talking about the genetic component of crime because one is a racist who would rather crime be genetic rather than environmental due to that reinforcing one's racist beliefs indeed would be a red flag for being based on a fallacy.

[zompist]

You mean, he supports an untested theory based on philosophical prejudices?

I think you will agree that it's not an untested theory. It's one of the possible interpretations of the math.

I think you don't understand either "testing" or "interpretation".

There is no proof for pilot wave theory, no operational test which supports it over any other interpretation.

I don't say that any of the interpretations is wrong.* But they are all untested in the ways they differ from other interpreatations. The arguments in support of them are thus philosophical or subjective.

*Except hidden variable theory, but even there, there are qualifications— you can save the idea if you can swallow non-locality.

[rotting bones]

No, Berlin was the capital. Weimar was just the place where the constitution was written.

You're right. I forgot.