Comments on: “…Things get curiouser and curiouser…” https://www.habitablezone.com/2014/09/30/things-get-curiouser-and-curiouser/ Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:05:37 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: ER https://www.habitablezone.com/2014/09/30/things-get-curiouser-and-curiouser/#comment-31930 ER Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:57:25 +0000 https://www.habitablezone.com/?p=47681#comment-31930 <em>“How do you find your way in a reality which is shifting, where the opposites are allowed to coexist? Moreover, how do you conduct experiments in it? These are the questions that must be answered when dealing with the floating world of quantum mechanics.”</em> So physics follows neither the rigid mechanical clockwork of Newton, or the relative transformations of Einstein. Instead, it seems to operate very much like psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, politics, economics.... Vague patterns are discernible, but probabilities and randomness play a huge role, indeterminacy constantly intrudes, and everywhere are contradictions and inconsistencies. Cause-and-effect is just a useful hint, not a reliable guide. In the end, we have to use our reason and experience, but we also have to rely on our intuition and our instincts because nothing is completely predictable all the time. And nothing is what it seems. We deal with the models we construct of reality, never with reality itself. We're playing a complex game, much like 3D chess, except we don't know all the rules and we can't see the entire board. It's a lot like real life. “How do you find your way in a reality which is shifting, where the opposites are allowed to coexist? Moreover, how do you conduct experiments in it? These are the questions that must be answered when dealing with the floating world of quantum mechanics.”

So physics follows neither the rigid mechanical clockwork of Newton, or the relative transformations of Einstein. Instead, it seems to operate very much like psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, politics, economics….

Vague patterns are discernible, but probabilities and randomness play a huge role, indeterminacy constantly intrudes, and everywhere are contradictions and inconsistencies. Cause-and-effect is just a useful hint, not a reliable guide. In the end, we have to use our reason and experience, but we also have to rely on our intuition and our instincts because nothing is completely predictable all the time. And nothing is what it seems. We deal with the models we construct of reality, never with reality itself. We’re playing a complex game, much like 3D chess, except we don’t know all the rules and we can’t see the entire board.

It’s a lot like real life.

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