…Kidding!

cheers,

-cvj

Thanks for the engaging debate. We may have different views about wether objective truth exists or can be found or whatever. I don’t have anything to change in my position in light of your comments, so I’ll leave it. I can certainly understand the other side of that debate. I also agree that “truth” was not Cole’s main point. (Although anyone who puts “blue” in quotes shouldn’t be surprised if readers infer a position on “truth.”)

I do find it frustrating when people use references to quantum mechanics and relativity to support positions that are not specific to those theories, like this whole point-of-view thing. It seems designed to give the position the credibility of science while placing it out of reach, and therefore beyond the criticism, of the lay reader. Would the meter stick argument have been any less accurate? How about binocular vision, that’s a point-of-view thing? These spurious quantum/relativity references are commonly given and it drives me nuts. However, I should probably talk to a therapist about that rather than posting blog comments. (Well, maybe in addition to posting blog comments. I don’t want everyone to think they can have a quantum/relativity/philosophy free-for-all without me taking a few shots.)

Cheers,
Gavin

By the way, with regards your parenthetical remark in your penultimate paragraph above, I will say only two words: “quantum” and “gravity”, and then ask you to consider them next to each other in the light of the paragraph of yours that I blockquoted in my comment #26.

Cheers,

-cvj

Do we agree that this is a general lesson of science and is in no way specific to relativity and quantum mechanics?

Gavin

So we are all in agreement that point of view is very, very, mega-super-important

That’s all she’s saying, imho. Good, we agree. We’re done.

Cheers,

-cvj

P.S. Then you muddle it all by the paragraphs after, offering things like “closer to the objective truth”, and “objective truth is attainable, at least asymptotically”….. as evidence of objectivity and arguments against her central points. Nope, they don’t work. First, the above quoted things are analogous to the often used “pretty unique”. Something is either unique, or it is not. Something is either objective, or it is not. Second, all we have to do is agree on the blockquoted comment above, and then you agree with KC that this is part of science…and an important lesson to extrapolate to other areas. I don’t think she was making any deeper a point than that (but she can set us straight if she wishes to)…..You seem to be arguing now for the sake of it at a level of detail that was not meant. Which is ok of course…. but…..

I’m not arguing that point of view doesn’t exist. I’m arguing that this is not the lesson of relativity and quantum mechanics. She could have said

The lesson of the meter stick is that “truth” emerges only when “point of view” is inserted squarely into the equation.

After all, a meter stick only measures distance relative to the end of the stick. There is no “absolute position;” it is all relative. So her claim doesn’t really have anything to do with relativity or quantum mechanics, it is part of the whole measurement story back to ancient times. So I totally agree with you. This is “not rocket science.” It is not modern physics at all. Since it is so easy to understand, why are we getting modern physics involved?

So we are all in agreement that point of view is very, very, mega-super-important and must be taken into account when doing measurements. The question is where do we go from there. Is the meter stick useful because it allows us to make this profound observation about the point-of-veiw dependent nature of position? Do we conclude that “truth” is unattainable, that “objective reality” is just a construct of our point of view?

That’s not how I use my meter stick. I use it to find the length of things in a way that is objective. Some people think I’m tall, other people think I’m short, but they all agree that I am 1.86 meters from head to foot. That is the point-of-view independent truth about my height, thanks to the meter stick.

Of course high velocity observers have a different view of my height, which is why relativity introduces the notion of invariant distance, which everyone can agree on. Quantum mechanics introduces new challenges, but the wave function interpretation resolves them. This back and forth from confusion to resolution to confusion again is how science moves ahead. The amazing thing about science isn’t that it keeps dishing up confusion (any half-baked religion can do that), it is that science keeps dishing up resolutions. Planets don’t go in circles, but they do obey Newton’s law of gravitation. Time between events is measured differently by different observers, but invariant separation same for everybody. Electrons are not fully described as either waves or particles, but they are described by wave functions.

You know a lot of physics, Clifford, so you can point out why every resolution I gave in the last paragraph has fallen to a new confusion (as you did earlier by changing the subject from quantum mechanics, which does not require an energy scale, to quantum field theory, which does). But my point is that each iteration is bringing us closer to the objective truth. Most people would not view my claim to being 1.85 meters tall to be point-of-view dependent, but I don’t have a lot of friends who travel at near light speed. My invariant height is more objective because even high speed friends could agree. If we figure out the beta-function for my height, then we could correct for everyone’s choice of renormalization scale, etc.

The lesson of science is not that the objective truth is unattainable, it is that the objective truth is attainable, at least asymptotically. If science was just point-of-view dependent mush then we wouldn’t need all of this training to do it.

Gavin

-cvj

Well said, Quibbler. I think this is maybe what I wanted to say in a roundabout way. The manner in which science is taught and conveyed by the media often does not allow much room for creative possibilities. It’s like whenever some new research comes out about how many spiders we eat while we sleep or about how Cheerios decreases heart disease risk or something, it’s like it’s some deep truth come revealed, until some research comes out later debunking it, of course. Like that whole thing with eggs and cholesterol. You’re right, media definitely has a big role in disseminating false conceptions of objectivity in both science and journalism.

Relativity and quantum mechanics don’t just point out the problem, they fix the problem by giving us a new description (”truth”) that is independent of the point of view. The lesson of relativity is that space-time is a manifold with Lorentzian metric governed by Einstein’s equation. The lesson of quantum mechanics is that the state of a system is a Hilbert-space vector which evolves according to Schrodinger’s equation.

I don’t understand: Down to what distance scale does this “truth” hold? So you need to insert a statement about when energy scale you’re working up to…. sounds like a “point of view” to me.

When I write Einstein’s equation and Schrodinger’s equation I don’t insert “point of view” into the equation. These equations contain only terms like curvature and the stress-energy-momentum tensor that are independent of the point of view.

What?! I don’t understand this. Writing an equation does not finish the job of doing physics. What happens when I make a measurement? Don’t I then need to specify a frame? Isn’t that a “point of view”?

Seems to me that this is not very hard to understand at all. It’s pretty easy in fact. “Not rocket science”, as they say.

…But then I don’t go in for all the fancy philosophy, so maybe I’m missing something “deep”.

-cvj