Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Richard Feynman on QED, or Understanding the Un-Understandable



Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.

Richard Feynman QED Lecture 2, Reflection and Transmission : 1/7

Richard Feynman QED Lecture 3: Electron Interactions

Richard Feynman Lecture 4 Part 1/7: Problems in QED and The Standard Model of Particle Physics

3 comments:

  1. I watched up to the end of #5, where he makes the hugest logical blunder, asserting that nature works by probability & is random, because that's what his data says.

    Statistically random data can logically only mean an incomplete understanding. It can never mean 'acausal'. Actual randomness is anti-science, literally. I'm not just saying that for effect, it means 'no science can be done on this".

    He comes across as a showman pushing an agenda. A snake-oil salesman, not a scientist. If I had to choose between him and Miles Mathis as recipients for the 'Crackpot Prize'. It'd be Feynman.

    Seriously, how can anyone say it's "crackpot" to look for physical reasons for effects, in Physics...?

    Feynman makes the classic mistake of confusing the map with the territory.

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    Replies
    1. He comes across as a showman pushing an agenda. A snake-oil salesman, not a scientist.

      LOL

      Presumably you prefer to learn science from someone mumbling in a montone, without a trace of wit or theatricality.

      Physicists, it seems, mostly prefer otherwise, to judge from the sale of Feynman's Lectures in Physics, 1.5 million copies sold, tranlated into a dozen languages.

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    2. he makes the hugest logical blunder, asserting that nature works by probability & is random, because that's what his data says.

      His assertion is not a logical blunder. He asserts simply that quantum events are theoretically indeterminate.

      Quantum theory may be dead wrong. But so far, no one has been able to show how. No doubt those who share Einstein's conviction that "God does not play dice" will continue to seek hidden variables that determine what Quantum Theory says is indeterminate. But the search has gone on for about a century now, and the accumulating evidence points more and more strongly the other way.

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