On Einstein and Voodoo

Once again I'm at the stage of a research project where I have to buckle down and calculate. Many of you might have this idea that theoretical physicists love to pin their pen to the paper and run symbolic marathons endlessly. Well I'm not the one. I actually dislike doing calculations (o.k. I'm telling a half-truth). Months of visualization exercises, which leave me either giddy or experiencing motion illusions, have come to a disappointing end. That stage of trying to imagine the physics and get a grip on that speckle of 'reality' is where I find joy in my work. But this time there was a glitch in my process.

So I've made friends with a few cognitive psychologists at Stanford. They do research on trying to understand, among many other things, how we got to be so smart; how is it that humans can create ideas like differential topology and superstring theory? When I first heard that people were actually doing research on 'abstract domains' concerned with the type of thinking that I do, I got a bit weary. But as time went by (and after debating with my cogsci pals for a while) I finally swallowed the fact that I have an organ called the Brain.

One day while going for my ritual run at the top of Potrero hill, to relax my brain from a dreary calculation marathon, an Einstein quote crossed my mind: "The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it's comprehensible." Just think about that- I think it’s profound.

That quote triggered the stunningly bizarre realization that my Brain and all the damn Neurons and such are firing away to create the very physics and math that I suppose is so fundamental. If indeed we can come up with physical law and mathematics which make predictions about our universe during an epoch billions of years before humans existed, then whatever underlies the functioning of our Brains to generate such ‘incomprehensible’ tasks has (based on logical grounds) to be more fundamental than the theories that we create.

This realization depressed me. I felt for a while that I was in the wrong field. I bet that if Einstein was still with us, based on his quote, he would have gone into Cognitive Psychology or Voodoo.

Comments

[Paul Valletta]

When you stand upon a mountain and survey the spectacular panoramic event before you eye's, you store the information of experience as memory. Retrieving the memory, you can not recall the total event 100%, a fraction of the event is lost to the spacetime, it is lost to the Present-time which keeps the experience of reality in check.

Was it not Einstein who realized that every time you stand infront of a mirror, what reaches your eye's is not the whole picture?

[Anwar]

Your comments about calculations have helped me a bit. Thanks. I'm interested in theoretical physics and,though I like doing mathematics, I don't like it in the same way that I like physics. I was a bit concerned.

[Danel]

So you are saying you want to do what's the most fundamental of all? And it depresses you that cogpsy seems to be more fundamental then physics?
If I understood that right, I don't agree that something is more fundamental than the other. I think that everything relative. Like Einstein said. What seems to be fundamental to one person may be nothing but a derivative to another. The truth is, there's no truth, really, and at the same time everything is the truth.
Don't be depressed. Just do what you love doing.

[Niku]

Hello
Same here as Paul.I dont like calculations and equation manipulation and frequently make mistakes . Also I dont like too much abstraction (unless I am told at every point how it makes things better! ).

BTW,since I am writing for the first time,I should say thanks to Stephon and all other involved in Quantum Diaries.
Bye

[Paul Valletta]

Just a point to clear confusion, the poster refering to "not liking maths" is actually Anwar?

The deviding line for threads actually has the posters name in the section of where the next poster writes!

As you can see I am the "panoramic viewer" poster :)

[Paul Valletta]

The really interesting things written by Stephon can reveal some abstract notions.

For instance 'Ritual' "hill-run" is something inherent of experience throughout history at every social level. The process of physical change via exhuastion (exercise?) is somthing our ancestors know a lot about, Men and Mountains have a partnership "duality" , Moses for instance and not a specific one. When we evolved through time, the location tunes the experience, Ancestors first thought was created at a Mountain Top, more likely 'tuned' by Cosmic Rays and High-Altitude sickness. The contributed to thoughts, look throught historical and religious writings, the Mountain-top is very special. Personal accounts of the effects of Cosmic Rays by one who in order to 'survive', has to cross a formidable boundary, the Mountain being that.

So did Stephon's thinking get influenced by the "quote" in his head, or by the physical interaction of his environment, high-altitude sickness for instance?..very interesting indeed.

[Niku]

Hello
Its Anwar really,I agree .(I had noticed before that poster's name is after the post ,and felt the format was a bit odd but...) .

BTW ,is the universe really comprehensible? We have all the oddities of Quantum Mechanics which is supposed to be not understood (as far as I understand from popular accounts). Also, what do we call understanding ? Is it deriving equations which is mathematically elegant and can predict a lot ? If yes ,then it doesn't seems an miracle to me. Afterall it could be that we are just trying to form temporarily the best model (the model which seems good to us,etc) without even touching *reality* ,whatever it may mean . Then it is nice that our models are so good ,but it is not so nice. ;-)
So, someone please explain what is meant by Einstein's quote .

[boreds]

sorry, this is a comment from an earlier thread...but I thought you might be unlikely to check back!

--------------------------------------------------

Hi Stephon,

this question about primordial fluctuations has bugged me for a long time, and cosmologists I know have never given me a completely satisfactory answer!

Basically they seem to say that as a wavenumber k
crosses the horizon, the quantum field mode associated with momentum k
"freezes in" as a classical perturbation.

But if that mode k falls back within the horizon (after inflation has stopped
and the horizon length has started increasing, say), it doesn't return to being a quantum fluctuation, right? It seems the process of this
classical "freezing in" is irreversible, something like a quantum measurement. Is that the cosmologists lore?

[m.visaya]

the mystery is, only starting... (dat-424)

[MUSTAFA KEMAL OYMAN]

Dear ALEXANDER,
I am naive untrained physicist.
you know on the addition formulea for linear velocities of Einstein: w=(u+v)/(1+uv/c2).
Do you know on The addition formulea for angular velocities?

Do you know on the addition formulea for linear accelerations?
Do you know THAT KEY WORDS: "Hertz Spaces, Relativity";"Hertz Spaces, statistic physics""Hertz Spaces,RELATIVISTIC FLUID DYNAMICS";"Hertz Spaces, AND SOMETHING"?
I am following the lost theories of Einstein on these concepts(!)
1)EINSTEN-MEHMET AKİF ERSOY LAW E= mc2 +Ia2
2)2003.7.12 - 17 European Research Conference on "What Comes beyond the Standard Model?" Portoroz, Slovenia, 12 - 17 July 2003; Euresco 03-190 THEY CALLED ME AS A PARTICIPANT BUT I CANNOT FIND MONEY TO GO.(THE ANATOLIAN, TURK VISE(SAGACIOUS) MEN,The Hodja, Nazım Hikmet, Avicenna, Epikur will come beyond the Standard Model)
2)ESF Conference: 2005/197 THEY CALLED ME AS A PARTICIPANT BUT I CANNOT FIND MONEY TO GO.
3)2005.11.19-21 GENERALIZED HERTZ SPACES FOR EARTHQUAKE PREDICTION.
IFC2005. 7th International Fracture Conference 19-21 October 2005 KOCAELI UNIVERSITY TURKEY, P.1123-1128.I COULD GO.
I ASK. NOBODY KNOWS THESE CONCEPTS. PERHAPS YOU FIND.
I THINK I WILL LOVE YOUR NAME.
HOW MANY ALEXANDER THE GREAT ARE THERE?
ALEXANDER PARIS THE GREAT LOVER (PRINCE OF TROY).
ALEXANDER MAKEDONIAN THE GREAT KILLER. HE MAKE KILL MANY BABIES AND WOMANS IN TURKEY.
HE ORDERED HIS SOLDIERS SKE YOUR HANDS AND WALK AND KILL EVERY BODY. ONE SOLDIER STOPS A LITTLE MOMENT, TO KILL A BABY. THE GREAT KILLER SEES HIM AND KILLS THE SOLDIER.

LET YOU EXCIST BY YOUR LABOUR.

MUSTAFA KEMAL OYMAN
DID YOU READ ME ON"QUANTUM DAIRIES"
http://qd.typepad.com/9/2005/02/work_wow_englis.html

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Reacties
Dear Physicist.

[m.visaya]

see the storyboarded life in a basketball game after airbrushing the players... (ANR-828)

[Vernon Nemitz]

Hello. As an amateur who has enjoyed playing with Physics concepts for a long time, I can't help but wonder why the notion of "negative mass/energy" seems to be ignored. In the vacuum, quantum fluctuations OUGHT to be able to go EITHER from Zero upward, OR from Zero downward. Net effect, ZERO average mass/energy associated with the quantum vacuum, and Zero Cosmological Constant.

Of course, now that the latest data is in, and implies that we might need a CC, after all, the preceding notion may need some tweaking. :) Perhaps the apparently unbalanced presence of REAL positive mass/energy in the Universe affects the +/- ratio of the mass/energy of the fluctuations?