Is fundamental physics dead for the coming generations? (Including my own)

[bsfeechannel]

I'll be happy as a clam with moderate wages, while my superiors make millions.

Right. You help company A make money. Then you go to company B and tell them that if they hire your services, they'll make as much as company A. They'll hire you instantly. There will be no shortage of opportunities for those who help others make money.

[tggzzz]

[Newton] didn't just come up with equations. He adapted his understanding of the physical world based on his calculations and observations. Most people can't do that.

It's the exact same thing with respect to programming languages. Developers who are used to one language, one framework, one environment, see all problems and their solutions in terms of that environment: in terms of their own experience.

It's particularly funny when such people start critiqueing other programming languages for not supporting the one approach they are used to.

Or insisting on coercing the tool they know into into doing something badly when other tools would make it easy. The using a hammer to insert screws syndrome.

The most amusing I saw was one soft realtime C process on one machine requesting a result from another soft realtime C process from another machine. The obvious way would be to open a comms channel over TCP/IP. Our hero added a row to a database table, had the other process poll the database and insert the result in the database, and the original process polled the database for the result. WTF territory!

Between college and high school I thought for sure I was going to become a miner.

Some really, really smart people do manual labor, and do science or research as a hobby.  It's not a bad option at all: that way you don't get mentally stressed at work, or bring work home with you, or have to do the academic competition thing; and anyone who has ever worked out regularly knows manual labor can be quite fulfilling in its own way.

Dead-end jobs only exist if you value career or money over fulfillment and happiness in life.

Very true.

My favourite (probably apocryphal) anecdote of a maths graduate who got himself a job assembling vacuum cleaners. After a while the company realised was capable of far more, and repeatedly tried to get him into "better" jobs. He refused, saying "I deliberately chose a job I could learn in 30 minutes and do without thinking. While I am working I am also doing what I really enjoy: playing chess".

For me money is a "hygiene factor".

[palpurul]

So, here is the thing:

I am currently in High School majoring in Math and Physics - I'm in Denmark, so it works a bit different than most of you probably are used to. My complete class is majoring in Physics and Math as well, so the interest in these subjects are understandable pretty high - outside of school as well. 

Unfortunately I'm the only one who "dreams" about becoming an engineer, and the majority of people want to study something fancy like Quantum mechanics, string theory or whatever is all the rage right now.

That's actually a good thing. The principles of basic physics is crucially important to understand how something works or how something is built. Because there very few people like you, you are unique. That a good thing.

The problem with this is the fact that most people are no longer interested in fundamental physics like Newtonian Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, Oscillation and Waves, etc.
Instead of actually learning these rather fundamental subjects, they jump right onto YouTube and watch some "educational video" of some hot-shot scientist about stuff like String Theory, Quantum Mechanics and so on.

Then in the next physics class here in High School, honors program or whatever, about some fundamental subject they think they know and understand it, because they "understood" the advanced subject, so they start talking pure bullshit about the topic at hand! (Excuse my language, it annoys me as hell) They literally comment on every thing the teacher says or does, and there comments are far, far to often completely incorrect - which is insanely annoying. 
 

Annoying right? When I was studiying electrical engineering there were a lot of these people. They usually have crap grades. Most of them "understand" and some of them claims to "intuitively understand" modern physics, yet they fail to understand very basic concept like impedance and this about electrical engineering.  I remember LIGO first detected gravitional waves and there was this person who won't stop talking nonsense about gravitional waves ( I don't claim to know about gravitional waves, but it was kind of obvious that he didn't have a clue because he said something about how advanced satellites are used to detect gravitional waves), we were taking a course about communication systems with this guy, and our professor was reviewing fourier series, basic mathmatical concept explaining how every periodical signals can be expressed as sums of different sinewaves. This guy was asking a lot of questions about it and complaining how complicated this concept is. From the questions he asked it was obvious that he was clueless. I think our professor realized the guys "understanding" of gravitional waves and asked him "you understand how gravitional waves work and not this?... what a bummer.

Yes there are know-it-all posers like this.

And yes I know, "I am just in High School, so I can't really judge whether or not they talk bullshit". Well that is partly true, when it comes to "fancy" science topics like string theory I can't, but when it comes to basic fundamental mechanics I defenietly can at least at High School level, as I spend my time studying physics as well, but fundamental stuff, such as Newtonian mechanics and electricity, instead of whatever is all the rage right now, so I actually know what is thought in school and understand it - which for me is a pleasure.

This post has been pretty angry, and partly aggressive, but I would like to get your opinion on this problem, as it currently expands far beyond my High School class, and I encounter it everywhere outside of High School in places like honorary science programs and so on.

Many young people engaged in science nowadays no longer take the time to understand the fundamental aspects of physics, but jump right into the "fancy" stuff, believing that they therefore understand anything else. This leads to them talking pure bullshit when it comes to fundamental elements of physics believing that they completely understand it. This drives me, and many others, crazy because they have the feeling that they need to comment on anything the teacher or someone else says, and their comments are simply wrong!

So, I'd like to hear from you what you think about this, does this behavior drive you crazy as well? Do you find it annoying? Or do you don't find it necessary to focus on the fundamentals of physics? 

Any thoughts are appreciatet!

Leo

(I'm terribly sorry for any offensive or angry parts in this post, as I was pretty steamed while writing this - guess why? Secondly, it may be a bit confusing, so feel free to ask for clarification about what I wrote)

Keep it up 

[coppercone2]

uhh did you do basic research on gravity waves and satellites?
https://www.dw.com/en/ligo-vs-lisa-the-race-for-gravitational-waves/a-39717919

[palpurul]

uhh did you do basic research on gravity waves and satellites?
https://www.dw.com/en/ligo-vs-lisa-the-race-for-gravitational-waves/a-39717919

He was talking about LIGO.

[coppercone2]

its related

[rstofer]

A EE degree has similar attrition rates to a special forces program for some reason.

Just a wild guess:  math
I think that is going to be the case for any STEM degree.

I'm seeing part of the problem (again) in my grandson's ME program.  You need to take the math classes before you get to the class where the skill is required.  This makes sense, you shouldn't be learning calculus while you take physics.  The problem is that while you are taking the math there is no context to explain why you would use some particular technique.

What I do like about his Calc II course is that nearly all the problems are 'word problems'.  The very first thing it teaches is the need to draw a picture.  Engineers can't even talk without drawing a sketch.

[ferdieCX]

I learned at the technical High School basic electronics, that included how to solve AC circuits in steady sinusoidal state using complex numbers.
When I reached the college level and learned Calculus, the applications of it where obvious to me. 

[bsfeechannel]

This is the "standing on the shoulder of giants," problem. It is a real problem. I think 99% of college graduates do not understand basic newtonian physics, calculus, and integrals. And I think most human beings actually can't, despite learning equations and passing tests and getting degrees.

People tend to think that classical physics is a piece of cake. It is not.

There may be little research in classical physics nowadays, however its applications are far from being thoroughly explored. Here is a big picture of where the various domains of physics make sense.


Source: Wikipedia

[CatalinaWOW]

To expand on what bsfeechannel is saying, some of the most exciting stuff that has been accomplished in the last couple of decades has its basis in purely classical physics.  The MEMS IMUs that are causing a revolution in navigation and enabling quadcopter flight stabilization and the like are applications of ideas familiar to physicists of the early 19th century.  But with lots of detail and refinement.  Same thing with the infrared imagers that are becoming quite affordable.  No fancy quantum physics, just a simple bolometer and temperature coefficient of resistance.  19th century concepts refined greatly.  There are many other examples.

There is much yet to learn about the world and how to manipulate it.  Those who think they understand everything are clearly not paying attention.  Follow your interests and remain curious about everything. 

[Rick Law]

To the OP in particular, and to all...

I had similar confusion at one point in my life.  I now think it is easier to understand the distinction not as fundamental vs fancy, but as a scale of "how close is it to reality that we can experience (feel, see, hear...) directly".  Whether it is fundamental or not is a different question.  Your chosen field determines if that is fundamental or not.

Quantum mechanics, string theory, electromagnetism, classical mechanics etc, etc... they are all equally real and equally unreal.  Their importance is to the extend your field demands it, and their "fundamental-ness" is to the extend that your field requires it.  Quantum mechanics is not in our everyday reality and it is not fundamental for physician to understand, but it is fundamental to most physicist and some computer engineers.   Engineers of Quantum Computing will see quantum mechanics as dearly fundamental.  Quantum mechanics is also seen as a way to secure data communication - the whole new field of Quantum-secured data transmission.

Back to reality we can experience (I call that "experiencible directly" for the purpose of discussion)

It is easy to see Newtonian mechanics at work.  Every time a coffee cup slips out of your hands, you see gravity at work, you see how energy is converted.  So Newtonian mechanics is high on the "directly experienciable reality" scale.  It is a lot harder to experience quantum effects directly, so it is very low on the "directly experienciable reality" scale. 

The less directly experienciable, the more we rely on mathematics to understand what is under the hood.  Both Newtonian physics and Quantum physics are quantified and described by mathematics.  Newton invented calculus so as to describe Newtonian mechanics mathematically.  That mathematics allowed us to do predictions.

Calculus was/is by no mean easy to understand, but with Newtonian physics, you can relate it to everyday experience.  So "everyday" it is that we have common sense guiding us - you let go and the cup drops, very common sense, right?  But untrained human beings can never reach into their common sense to figure out quantum mechanics.  With good training, a physicist can have a sense of how the answer is going to look.  That sense is something I call physics-sense, not common sense.

When you entirely leave the realms of direct-experienciability, you are in the world of mathematics.

1+1=2, you can experience that.  You can grab an egg, grab another one, here you have two.  You can visualize that and experience that.  You are in both worlds.

y=1/x, you are beginning to leave the world of direct-experienciability.  How many times do we see infinity in real life?  We do have common sense about "very large" but not about "infinity".

y=(pi*c*i)/sine(x), now you are gone from reality - square root of negative one?  Definitely no daily experience (common sense) can guide you with that.  But you will see the "imaginary number" sqrt(-1) notated as "i" all over the place in electronics or physics.

Quantum mechanics, string theory, black holes, they are all fundamental to some fields.  They are also very low on the "directly experiencibility" scale so more math than reality you can feel.  They are not so much fancy, but they offer the appearance of knowledge giving the ones who know some level of smugness.  Shall we say, these topics are high on the smug-appeal index.

Those are my views and my way of thinking about them.  I hope helps in drawing light to the distinction.

[coppercone2]

I don't think its smug I think its just the idea that we might be wasting our time on this basic calculatable easy to comprehend shit rather then getting teleporters, shrink rays, worm holes to other universes, etc. When you think of mechanical engineering, is it easy, without really studying the shit out of it, to imagine something 'amazing' like teleportation or faster then light travel?

 Alot of people just think 'yea some brackets gonna get thinner and the gear system is gonna wear less, eventually' when they think about 'fundamental' design studies like mechanics. Once you are well acquainted with any field it becomes pretty obvious that corporate influences and groupthink basically prevent some kind of kinda cool maybe useful sub field from being studied. On the contrary, it might be a waste of time to do so at this time as a civilization for our own sake, since other things related to earthly problems are more important at this time. It is non the less apparent and you can find tons of 'abandoned' research directions that might prove very interesting from a intellectual standpoint. On the other hand, sometimes, if you have some balls, it might turn out someone made a mistake and you are the right person to handle some job (expect hell though).

Like, maybe some really cool jaw dropping steampunk stuff can be made, but in the next 100 years trying to figure out other stuff is more useful.

There is fear of a 'dead field'. Some people might say EE is still in its golden age but fields like mechanical engineering or especially thermodynamics are past their golden age of easy/radical discovery. Useful to know, but who the hell thinks they are gonna get a noble prize studying thermodynamics? Think of it like bit coin. Some stuff is just mined out (or at least people think it is and there is groupthink and corporate pressures to fund other areas).

There is also a lack of trust and transparency, so its very easy for someone to not want to study an older field because they think they won't have jobs because 'everyone figured everything out' and it feels much safer to study something super complicated thats being worked on constantly. Look how many EE's are in software. From a higher level standpoint it could explain why kids want to study the whizzbang stuff.

[Rick Law]

I don't think its smug I think its just the idea that we might be wasting our time on this basic calculatable easy to comprehend shit rather then getting teleporters, shrink rays, worm holes to other universes, etc.

There is fear of a 'dead field'. Some people might say EE is still in its golden age but fields like mechanical engineering or especially thermodynamics are past their golden age of easy/radical discovery. Useful to know, but who the hell thinks they are gonna get a noble prize studying thermodynamics? Think of it like bit coin. Some stuff is just mined out (or at least people think it is and there is groupthink and corporate pressures to fund other areas).

EE is certainly in its golden age from a scientific development stand point.  As to job market, it has all the appearance of dead in some developed economies.  They are moving off shore to some place cheaper.  So it is unclear to me if scientific development of the field and job market for the field are related when you put geography into play.

For those spending their time thinking about teleportation (and the likes), they will probably be researchers and academics.  In the world of research and academics, a nobel price is gold.    Smugness is certainly dependent on the individual, but getting a nobel price certainly has some smug-appeal to it.

[coppercone2]

Yea but I think they weigh the noble prize in its contribution to humanity, i.e. it does something useful

[KL27x]

[Newton] didn't just come up with equations. He adapted his understanding of the physical world based on his calculations and observations. Most people can't do that.

It's the exact same thing with respect to programming languages. Developers who are used to one language, one framework, one environment, see all problems and their solutions in terms of that environment: in terms of their own experience.

It's particularly funny when such people start critiqueing other programming languages for not supporting the one approach they are used to.

There is major difference, though. Programming languages are an entirely artifical construct. In the beginning, they must follow somewhat the structure of the cpu, which itself is made with many compromises and arbitrary decisions. And tbe higher the level of the language, the more arbitrary decisions are baked in. A programmer really doesnt need to understand a CPU or assembly programming. It will help in niche circumstances, only. It would be an interesting world where humans actually take newtonian physics for granted, because everyone actually "gets it."

There is nothing arbitrary about physics. Understanding newtonian physics and thermodynamics has broad ranging benefits to logical thinking and design and engineering and problem solving. I wouod wager the majority of physics majors in the US do not understand physics.

Newton discovered and proved this stuff long time ago. Perhaps he imagined that one day every man, woman, and child would be able to see the world they way he did. In such a way that is, as far we we know, empirically correct everywhere in the universe. That day is far, far away. He shared this knowledge. But studying does not equal understanding.

Here's a personal anecdote: I was part of a debate where a member posted a link to a post in a "physics forum." In this (dead)"physics forum," 3 people answered a very simple leading question. They all incorrectly assumed the question was correct to begin with. They the answered it with some obscure phenomenon that wasn't even applicable. There is no place for a physics forum in todays world because most of the people that actually understand it are doing something more important. This forum was just a place for educators to hang out and display their degrees.

[Nominal Animal]

Programming languages are an entirely artifical construct. In the beginning, they must follow somewhat the structure of the cpu, which itself is made with many compromises and arbitrary decisions.

That is completely incorrect. See e.g. programming language theory, lambda calculus, or Lisp, Haskell, Forth, or PostScript programming languages. There are no such universal ties at all.

Of course, many programming languages have some ties to the hardware they are run on, but there is nothing universal about those; they vary a lot.  You could say the concept of stack is the closest thing (as most programming languages and hardware architectures rely on such an abstract data type), except that there exists both hardware and programming languages that do not have any stack (or comparable structures) at all. (Shaders are probably the most common ones.)

The exact same "artificial construct" argument applies to mathematics. Look at metamathematics to understand why. Everything we can conceive, is "an entirely artificial construct". Every single thing, even mathematics, include underlying assumptions or axioms that are not obvious, but must be accepted as Given Truth for the thing to have any meaning, applicability, or utility.  Everything a human being is able to "know", is filtered through their experiences and limited understanding.

There is nothing arbitrary about physics.

Of course there is!

One of my favourite examples is basic optics.  You can think of light rays (simplified models of photons, that exclude absorption and emission events; as if we used perfect mirrors or lenses) as vectors from a light source to a surface (or vice versa), that reflect (with original and reflected rays being on the same plane with the reflecting surface normal, and those rays having the same angle to the surface normal) and refract (as defined by Snell's law) at surfaces between isotropic materials.  Or you can think of light rays as a geometric object that minimizes the time of flight between any two points in space, as described by Fermat's principle.  The two approaches are mathematically equivalent, in that the former can be derived from the latter, so both equally describe physical reality.  The first is easy to apply using basic vector calculus, the latter is related to calculus of variations, an equally powerful but very different mathematical tool.

It is the underlying mathematical model that is not arbitrary. The way we humans interpret that model, allows us to see different facets of the behaviour of the model. We are not intelligent enough to see all those facets at the same time, simultaneously.

Because programming languages are created by humans, their construction "encodes" one or more of such facets.  Researchers can use tools like programming language theory or lambda calculus to analyse and compare programming languages, and try and reveal those facets.  Most programming languages have retained their viewpoint during their evolution, but some, like PHP in particular, have either added or switched their viewpoint. (Adding object-oriented features is the most common one.)  One of the reasons PHP is so reviled, is that humans are not good at changing their viewpoint, so code that is written in a mismash, is perceived as "messy", "unclean", and "difficult to understand".

Note: The core of my argument is that there exist more than one viewpoint to the same "fact" or phenomena. Viewpoint is a human tool to abstract and limit the "fact", so that our limited perception and rational logic abilities can utilize it.  When anything is codified by a human, that viewpoint is embedded in the definition. My claim is that the ability to switch viewpoints, especially the viewpoint to the same "fact" or phenomena, enhances the usefulness and possibilities for application. Thus, limiting oneself to a subset of viewpoints limits one in both understanding, and the ability to utilize the "facts" and phenomena.

Understanding newtonian physics and thermodynamics has broad ranging benefits to logical thinking and design and engineering and problem solving.

I believe that is the effect of having learned a completely new set of viewpoints, not because of the particular set of axioms, laws, and phenomena involved.

Perhaps he imagined that one day every man, woman, and child would be able to see the world they way he did.

Do you see what you did there? 

One could say they can, if they want to, but that is probably not true.  I believe there is a large fraction of people who are unable to change their viewpoint on anything: they are essentially "stuck" in the viewpoint they get when they first learn a thing.  I don't think it is related to intelligence per se, but to some fundamental difference in how people learn and integrate things into their understanding; closely related to rote learning.

[KL27x]

Programming languages are an entirely artifical construct. In the beginning, they must follow somewhat the structure of the cpu, which itself is made with many compromises and arbitrary decisions.
That is completely incorrect. See e.g. programming language theory, lambda calculus, or Lisp, Haskell, Forth, or PostScript programming languages. There are no such universal ties at all.

When I say, "in the beginning" I mean the level of the language. At the core, in assembly, before any subroutines were written and dispersed throughout the programming world, the language must have exactly followed what the CPU was built to do. And as you go beyond that, there is not necessarily any correlation, anymore.

One of my favourite examples is basic optics.  You can think of light rays (simplified models of photons, that exclude absorption and emission events; as if we used perfect mirrors or lenses) as vectors from a light source to a surface (or vice versa), that reflect (with original and reflected rays being on the same plane with the reflecting surface normal, and those rays having the same angle to the surface normal) and refract (as defined by Snell's law) at surfaces between isotropic materials.  Or you can think of light rays as a geometric object that minimizes the time of flight between any two points in space, as described by Fermat's principle.  The two approaches are mathematically equivalent, in that the former can be derived from the latter, so both equally describe physical reality.  The first is easy to apply using basic vector calculus, the latter is related to calculus of variations, an equally powerful but very different mathematical tool.

Yes, you make a point. Either way to look at it is fine. I'm saying that most people can't look at it in either of these ways. Many people can't see the logical connections that are present in basic physics. They have no ability to apply it. I have been witness to many physics debates where people whip out their degrees, but they misapply the physics from the word go. They sadly try to spread fancy terminology as if were peanut butter, into the huge logical holes they cannot see, in a pathetic attempt to corroborate what they intuitively but incorrectly feel is correct. If they understood physics, they would intuitively know what is correct. It's a chicken and an egg problem. Most people can't use physics.

The exact same "artificial construct" argument applies to mathematics.

I completely disagree with this part. There is no comparing math/physics to programming. If we meet intelligent aliens, they will have math, that will overlap ours. Maybe more or less complete in certain areas. They will have an understanding of physics that overlaps ours. Maybe more or less complete in some areas, but the parts that overlap with either be identical; or one of us will be right and the other will be wrong, and it will be demonstrable. (Perhaps one will be less comprehensive. In the way that Newtonian physics is 99.9999999999% correct when it comes to mass and speed of objects on earth, but it doesn't account for relativity... perhaps there are more layers of complex math needed to accurately represent physics at the extremes of the universe).  And as you have said, they may prefer an approach or viewpoint that is different than our own, but if you understand it, you realize it is the same thing. That is of no major consequence. At the core, newtonian physics is cause and effect. It accurately describes the effects of objects at various distances/pressures/temperatures on each other through the universal forces.. But there is no way they will have C or java. If they have computers, their chosen CPU architecture and higher level programming languages could be vastly different. Our programming languages are completely a human construct, the same way that language is. Romanians speak a different language from Chinese. Even if we went back in time to the 1950s and replayed history, the languages we use today would be different in some ways. There are somewhat arbitrary decisions made along the way. Expecting the same result is like thinking that two different english speaking countries completely isolated from each other would come up with the exact same qwerty keyboard, independently.

C isn't empirical. It is tailored specifically to the human mind. And not a "universal human mind." It was made to some extent by a very small committee of humans and tailored to their own preferences and presuppositions. It is full of human artifacts and judgment calls that could have gone one way or the other, based on compromises between different advantages and disadvantages that were perceived at the time. It is a handful of nerds deciding where to put the Q, making that decision, and moving forward.

In programming, it is a practical necessity to stand on the shoulder of giants (so to speak. It's not actual information that is hidden in there, so much as arbitrary crap. It is no use to worry about why they Q or Y are on the keyboard, and similarly it is not super necessary to learn assembly programming to be proficient at a higher language.) In physics, it is entirely practical and useful to learn and understand newtonian physics if you want to work in nuclear physics.  In programming, burnout is a major problem. I think it's because programmers work in an artificial construct. It has no empirical connection to the real world. It is a challenge to do efficient coding, but in the end it's just gaming a game with arbitrary human-set rules.

Understanding newtonian physics and thermodynamics has broad ranging benefits to logical thinking and design and engineering and problem solving.

I believe that is the effect of having learned a completely new set of viewpoints, not because of the particular set of axioms, laws, and phenomena involved.

This is exactly my point. I'm not talking about memorizing equations. I'm suggesting actual knowledge and understanding of the gross relationships and interactions. The formulae are not important. You can look those up if and when necessary. But you won't know if and when to use them if you don't understand physics.

Perhaps he imagined that one day every man, woman, and child would be able to see the world they way he did.

Do you see what you did there? 

Yes. I am suggesting that Newton could view things correctly. It doesn't matter how you get there, as long as it's correct. When it comes to physics, you can't fudge things to fit your own point of view.

Metamathematics? Unprovable != arbitrary.