Talk:2933: Elementary Physics Paths

First comment, heh. Psychoticpotato (talk) 20:27, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

See also 1258: First. --162.158.159.7 23:21, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Let me have my first "first" moment, man. Psychoticpotato (talk) 12:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Could this be the last first? Or just the first of the last firsts. -boB (talk) 14:16, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I assume the cosmology comment from the alt text is related to the speculative nature of dark matter and dark energy, but I am too ignorant of of cosmology to know if there is something more specific being referenced.172.69.23.203 22:27, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I think its more jokinly questioning the knowlege of the cosmos, saying "space is big, so are we 100% that EVERYTHING is made of these complicated little things, or just the parts we can see?" Apollo11 (talk) 00:26, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I thought it was a reference to the incompatibility of the leading cosmological theory (Relativity) with Quantum theory. 172.68.210.117 02:49, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Am I the only one where it seems like the explanation was written by an AI? It seems like obvious things are left out, like the presence of dark matter in astronomy, or saying “quantum physics” instead of “quantum field theory”. It’s like in some areas it could be convincingly explaining without knowing, a little like chatgpt does. However, I’m thinking a lot of the explanations are like that and I’ve probably participated in it myself … 172.68.23.215 00:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The reason we're using "Quantum Theory" (at least my reason) is because thats what the comic used Apollo11 (talk) 00:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The initial explanations are indeed generated using automation, so that each day's initial visitors aren't greeted by no explanation at all; visitors with a better explanation, should feel welcome to contribute. Visitors should not be overwriting existing explanations with autogenerated content, though; that's a mistake.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 17:05, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe the point was that 'AI' was used (with or without generous human tweaking to the input to the 'algorithm' and/or post-output selectivity and editing), and this is different from the 'automation' of TheusafBOT/etc which is just a fairly limited (and entirely hand-crafted) "poll, scrape, limited-parse and post" process. As well as going the 'lazy' way of disregarding (or excessively diluting) the initial work in favour of a (mostly?) uncritical adoption of what a hallucination-vulnerable black box process spews out after being trained to just "make something that look like what a human might write" without every any hope of applying true understanding to the process. 162.158.38.191 18:56, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, it's not determined whether a physicist studies Condensed Matter or Quantum Field Theory until we open his box. Doctorhook (talk) 02:45, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

According to the Communist Russia Interpretation, the Universe studies physicists.172.71.178.172 08:22, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

you guys really need to solve your chatgpt problem --172.70.143.28 03:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Schrodinger's 'cat box thought experiment' is more complex than even Schrodinger realised, since for the duration of the experiment the cat assumes EVERY possible quantum state, including 'not actually in the box' and 'suddenly not being a cat any more'. 172.70.91.231 05:09, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

At the conclusion of this test, there will be cake.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 17:01, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Schrodinger did not argue against QM; he argued against a certain interpretation of it. Specifically, he argued that QM does not tell us how things really are; at most, it tells us what we can detect about those things. His cat in a box idea aims to make clear that we do not know what happens between observations and that using QM to describe this leads to nonsense. 172.70.46.13 06:44, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I removed the "further examples" and the mentioning of Schrödinger. Interesting for sure, but not relevant for the explanation of the comic. Schrödinger isn't even mentioned in the comic... Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:26, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Specifically, he used the cat in a box analogy to show why we can (with an ever-increasing confidence) say that the Copenhagen interpretation is baloney.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 16:59, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

It feels like Randall has gone down the same Wikipedia rabbit hole that I have (spurred on by another comic). The universe is full of extremely weird things on every level. Even the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM isn't actually one interpretation. Everyone has different ideas because it's all so weird. I remember my physics teacher telling me about the time before QM was discovered when it seemed like we had figured out most of physics and now it seems like we barely know anything. Brycemw (talk) 13:31, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It seems like there should be a third branch for chemistry, leading to biology. Just putting a bunch of atoms together gives a bunch of new, unrelated properties in the new molecules compared to their constituent atoms. When you look at organic chemistry, especially the self-perpetuating version (life), then the level of complexity is huge. {unsigned|Nutster|16:04, 17 May 2024}}

I was reading it, and as 172.68.23.215 said, it looks like Kyrodes put in multiple overriding edits which directly erased the original explaination in lieu of a ChatGPT version (analysis courtesy of gptzero). I'd personally prefer there being more human-made stuff here, and some of the writing isn't exactly coherent... But this isn't up to me to decide, eh? Eelitee (talk) 21:25, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Yesterday I was trying to read a journal article that was trying to model the way water moves through a soil column and has some of its impurities removed. They were using a system of 12 simultaneous partial differential equations, had dramatically run out of letters for naming variables, constants, and functions, and were nesting equations three deep to try to make the PDEs readable. And this was AFTER they made a large number of simplifying assumptions. To top it off, the results aren't even perfectly accurate for already highly purified water running through a column in a super controlled environment. Reality is complicated, y'all.172.68.2.100 14:56, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Should we be concerned that reality is complicated only to those with too much knowledge (like ourselves, natch) ? Reality is simple enough to the simple of mind, i.e. writers of school books, teachers relying on those, and those who believe what teachers say. Understanding of reality by the masses (99.9%, maybe more) has not improved any since the Middle Ages, it's faith and trust in the authority of the speaker. Even when "alternate," more "up to date" explanations come around, like string theory, even black holes, it tends to sound not much different from Daniken and his visitors from space, is most often presented as clickbait, etc. Yamaplos (talk) 01:06, 19 May 2024 (UTC)