Mistaking the Map for the Territory in Physics - Dr. Jacob Barandes, Harvard, DemystifySci #344

I always get the impression that with every word Barandes says he it trying to communicate and clarify and be understood as much as possible. That's not true of everyone in the QM space where other things often take place. This makes him an exceptional science communicator and that meshed well with your approach of trying to get to the crux of things to produce another excellent conversation.

Professor Barandes is always fascinating!

"Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little." Bertrand Russell

i like this guy, he is always thourough, even if i dissagree on some minor points, Berandes is by far my favorite along side a few other favorites, for clarity and an honest account, delivered with care for the subject and for the listener.

Very enjoyable chat. Such a very nice contrast to Wolfram’s : Mathematically based idealism, arrogantly presented amid a flood of verbiage, meant to confuse and deflect contrary opinions. Vs Dr Barandes opposite view : Cautious, reality based materialism, humbly presented amid self questioning thoughts meant to advance and welcome ideas and contrary opinions. Can a case be made that these two representatives of the philosophical dichotomy of physics are generally characteristic of those who hold or have held the more idealistic vs materialistic views. I think yes….imho. Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli and Born (bullies) vs DeBroglie, Schrodinger, Bohm and Bell.(honest seekers) Seems clear in the 20th century anyway. Einstein wore both hats. Brilliantly humble. Thought: Measurement- In investigations of physical phenomena, we tend to be more attentive to the effects seen at the receiving instrument, the detectors, vs the sending devices. The pre-formulation assumptions of just what is being sent is perhaps more important than how the resulting detector-effects are interpreted. At a bar a while back, I left a physics chat for a restroom break. Arriving at the door of the bathroom, I pushed and nothing happened. I continued to push with greater, continuous effort, force, and eventually reached the right amount to easily push the door open. Did I say to myself and the bartendress, a la Planck and of all today’s quantum physicists, that energy comes in packets, that the world is particularized, that the continuum of occurrences throughout the universe is merely an allusion? No. This is a larger scale, classical metaphor of the accumulation or threshold theory (I now call mine the sh*thole theory), which clearly explains that the wave/particle “complementarity” is a false dichotomy. That Energy=Frequency, with no need for a particularizing constant. The double split experiments concentrate too much on the detector side, the bathroom door, and not enough on the emitter, the beer drinker, assumptions. Photons and electrons are sent out, and the results are both particle and wave phenomena. What are photons and electrons? Particles and waves. Amazing coincidence, or circular reasoning? So happy and surprised to hear that reality based physics is being taught or at least discussed at this self-characterized, “prestigious” college. Dr Baranes was an excellent guest, and would love to see more from him if possible. Thanks much, guys.

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The man talks SO WELL! One could just take the raw transcript of what he said, and publish it as a book, without editing!

what you have to do, is think about orthogonality, overlap and changes in direction in a vector space, that is transformaitons that include scaling or no scaling, but more importantly changes in orientation. complex numbers are valuable for that purpose, they are essentially roation matricies in hiding. the i in the schrødinger equation, and in the space of solutions is just there for the same kind of reason you "need it" in solving polynomials for general solution beyond the real solutions, its just a larger space where more solutions exists, and the i in the equation appears there to get basically a rotated space of solutions when comparing with the heat equation, the equation, simplifying the matter a bit, is basically like the heat equation, but with propagating waves instead of just composition of solutions by real sin waves in space, as with the heat equation, instead you get general solution in terms of waves that change their phase over time, but that has a constant amplitude, and there is no such thing outside having 2 dimensional functions to to speak. it works exactly the same with rotation matricies and he could have just done the same things with those, given you define the same space for the solutions to live in so to speak. its more or less just a mathematical gadget to assign more directions in components of solutions so you can have every component function have aconstant amplitude and varying direction instead of a 1 dimensional direction and a varying amplitude in space, or even in time for a varying real phase, but the things you can do are richer with complex waves than with real waves, because you can have constant magnitude at a every point, and a varying phase in time. it just is a type of solution component that has a richer space of solutions in a cleaner way. it isnt terribly significant physically, other than being time varying waves and having constant amplitude by virtue of also having a phase that is independent of the magnitude.

Love the pollster example! the measuring brings in time but the observer does too, from their object. If that, say a collective human object that constantly polls itself, and the world, then has symmetrical time there while asymmetrical time has the observer allow action position in the future event, by the observer asserting in the present (inside the human object) while proportioning logically the world as assertive, where the time breaks as measuring. It's like the human collective is a canoe that is moving down Long Lake Mandelbrot while pinging the shore with math, and physics is the shore runner, the shore itself between dimensions yet expansive/contractive. Where reality seems more like allow as main design element, assert is the minor element, then allow as observer to position in the future event from the past, where recording knowledge obviates victim space, because I can relate to Ruby not going to the back of the bus. Her brilliance still shines.

The only problem with this discussion was that it wasn't 4 hours long. I didn't want it to end.