Quantum Field Theory: The Woo Stops Here

The Greater Fool said:
Assuming true, then "tightly constrained" information is passing to those additional dimensions. It is this "tightly constrained" gap that is large enough for woosters to make claims. After all, how much interaction is required by a soul? a life force? a god?
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*Jams crowbar in harder...* That... Woo... has to fit... in there... somehow.
 
steenkh said:
There are people who think that it is very profound to have a single god ruling the laws of physics at His pleasure, but who can easily see the absurdity if this god is substituted with magical imps.
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Yeah I know. I've seen it a thousand times. Seeing it again with a sly winking "But I'm not being serious" addendum isn't exactly a paradigm shift.
 
PixyMisa said:
It's not so much that they interact, it's that they're part of all interactions.
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Exactly. I tried to make this point previously, but apparently failed:
The Greater Fool said:
*IF* there are 6+ additional dimensions, they have attributes we can't fathom, let alone measure. One particle that exists in our 4 dimesions can have attributes in each, true? Why couldn't or wouldn't they have simultaneous attributes in some/all of the 6+? With interactions in those dimensions we neither comprehend nor measure?
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String theory, for example, says stuff is made strings, what we see is a point (or points) of the string, but other parts remain invisible to us. It seems that if I act on a point of the string, other parts of the string (again, that we can't see) are affected. Why does this postulated unseen effect in unseen dimensions have to have additional effect on our dimension?

PixyMisa said:
No. Once again, the extra dimensions explain the laws of physics. They don't change them. They add precisely zero room for extra woo.
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No. Once again, the laws of physics address the aspects we see, and their are, often conflicting theories about what we cannot see, and how it may or may not affect what we do see.

By way of example (again), gravity (though any force may apply). We know to an amazing degere it's effects in our four dimensions. We have yet to see it itself, only it's effects. How can it be claimed that a mechanism we have never seen that causes gravity doesn't also cause OTHER simultaneous effects (even extremely small effects) that we can't see, in dimensions we can't see, in ways we can't imagine? The laws and theories of QFT rather require such effects, and it's why they're trying to figure it all out.

Every particle, every force could (and likely do) have attributes and effects in both our familiar four dimensions, and the others we can't see.
 
The Greater Fool said:
Exactly. I tried to make this point previously, but apparently failed:


String theory, for example, says stuff is made strings, what we see is a point (or points) of the string, but other parts remain invisible to us. It seems that if I act on a point of the string, other parts of the string (again, that we can't see) are affected. Why does this postulated unseen effect in unseen dimensions have to have additional effect on our dimension?


No. Once again, the laws of physics address the aspects we see, and their are, often conflicting theories about what we cannot see, and how it may or may not affect what we do see.

By way of example (again), gravity (though any force may apply). We know to an amazing degere it's effects in our four dimensions. We have yet to see it itself, only it's effects. How can it be claimed that a mechanism we have never seen that causes gravity doesn't also cause OTHER simultaneous effects (even extremely small effects) that we can't see, in dimensions we can't see, in ways we can't imagine? The laws and theories of QFT rather require such effects, and it's why they're trying to figure it all out.

Every particle, every force could (and likely do) have attributes and effects in both our familiar four dimensions, and the others we can't see.
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Or it could be demons.
 
The Greater Fool said:
Or, it could be Whos.

While I don't believe QFT completely rules out some woo, doesn't mean I believe any woo is real. I don't.
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It rules out any woo that has any detectable effect on the universe and that's means it's non existent as far as we are concerned.
 
tsig said:
It rules out any woo that has any detectable effect on the universe and that's means it's non existent as far as we are concerned.
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Yes, that keeps getting repeated. As often as it's repeated, I'm not convinced it's true. Maybe when someone comes up with a graviton, or a grand unified theory, I'll buy in to the completeness. Until then, stuff is missing. We have no idea what (or we wouldn't be missing it).

I appreciate the effort put forth thus far. I know y'all are getting frustrated at repeating the same thing. Thanks for the time.
 
The Greater Fool said:
Yes, that keeps getting repeated. As often as it's repeated, I'm not convinced it's true. Maybe when someone comes up with a graviton, or a grand unified theory, I'll buy in to the completeness. Until then, stuff is missing. We have no idea what (or we wouldn't be missing it).
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Wrong. That's exactly what the video explains we do know.
 
The Greater Fool said:
Yes, that keeps getting repeated. As often as it's repeated, I'm not convinced it's true.
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That's the great thing about reality instead of Woo. It doesn't give a toss if you're convinced or not.

Maybe when someone comes up with a graviton, or a grand unified theory, I'll buy in to the completeness. Until then, stuff is missing. We have no idea what (or we wouldn't be missing it).
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Woo of the Gaps in a nutshell.
 
The Greater Fool said:
Yes, that keeps getting repeated. As often as it's repeated, I'm not convinced it's true.
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As PixyMisa says, the video explains why we know that. It does not matter how many extra dimensions, or fancy new fields there might be: in the energy and size range that is important to us, we know that QFT explains all.
 
Thanks for repeating it all again, and again, and again.

Yes, I know it's woo of the gaps, I said as much. Oddly, this keeps getting thrown at me at the same time I'm told no such gaps exist. Pick one.

Yes, I know it doesn't matter if I don't agree. Nor does it matter that you do.

Yes, reality is reality, regardless what I (or you) believe.

A video says we know it all. It must be completely true and all there is. [Insert argument via youtube meme].

Yes, we know it all... What is dark matter? How does gravity work?

Again, thanks for the time. Really.
 
There's a difference between not knowing something and being able to plug any random made up B.S. into it and declaring yourself the winner.

Yes they are still gaps in our knowledge. That doesn't anything you want can go in them.
 
JoeBentley said:
There's a difference between not knowing something and being able to plug any random made up B.S. into it and declaring yourself the winner.

Yes they are still gaps in our knowledge. That doesn't anything you want can go in them.
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Thank you for your support.

It's a cool rule that one can't throw any 'ol BS into the gaps. I agree completely. Anything thrown into whatever gap there is, no matter how sound or silly, is unsupportable BS. [ETA: Throwing in 'we know it all' in the gaps, equally so] Sadly, woosters don't agree with this cool rule. All they need, all they've ever needed, is a gap in knowledge.

All I've said is there are gaps, thus much woo cannot be ruled out using QFT. Depending on how the woo is said to work, QFT could rule it out. Cleverly, much of woo stays away from specifics. Such woo can be dismissed because of lack of evidence.
 
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The Greater Fool said:
Thanks for repeating it all again, and again, and again.
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You are welcome. We can take a round again any time :)

Yes, I know it's woo of the gaps, I said as much. Oddly, this keeps getting thrown at me at the same time I'm told no such gaps exist. Pick one.
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The crux of the OP is that there are no gaps left in our everyday life.
As you know I argued that there was a tiny gap of undetectable woo, which hardly any woos believe in anyway, and I took a lot of flak for it. So for all kinds of woo that can be detected by definition, it is not even controversial here that there are no gaps left.

If you disagree, you will have to either find the flaw in Carroll's reasoning, or state that you do not think that QFT is an adequate model of reality, despite its ability to successfully predict the Higg's particle.
 
steenkh said:
You are welcome. We can take a round again any time :)


The crux of the OP is that there are no gaps left in our everyday life.
As you know I argued that there was a tiny gap of undetectable woo, which hardly any woos believe in anyway, and I took a lot of flak for it. So for all kinds of woo that can be detected by definition, it is not even controversial here that there are no gaps left.

If you disagree, you will have to either find the flaw in Carroll's reasoning, or state that you do not think that QFT is an adequate model of reality, despite its ability to successfully predict the Higg's particle.
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The flaw is that we, in fact, don't know everything, a few important items I've listed.

For (depending on who you talk to) 6,000+ years, the sun has risen every morning*. After observing this for a time, the ancients got pretty good at predicting the precise time, in spite of the fact that how they believed the mechanics worked were completely wrong. Similar can be stated about the movement / phases of the moon, planets, stars.

QFT attempts to explain patterns we see. As we delve deeper, we see new patterns. QFT makes amazingly accurate predictions about particles and energies. When it comes to energies, we see the effects and can predict them extremely well. We have yet to see the mechanisms.

Again, gravity as an example: We can't interfere with gravity, no matter how hard we try. Gravitons make the math work, but they are a construct, a placeholder. (Some) string theory purports to explain gravity through the action of strings, said actions being in dimensions we don't see. This makes false the assertion that what happens in those dimensions is not felt at our scale. This is a gap into which people attempt to shove their woo, even the woo that we know how this gap works.

* aside from the belief that god stopped it a time or two.
 
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