That's not very convincing. What have physicists achieved in the last 50 years other than creating new problems? I mean honestly, so we proved black holes exist and there was probably a big bang. Other than that we haven't proven shit.
Really? Just off the top of my head, which makes hollow drummy sounds when you whap it with a stick, we have seen major advances in condensed matter theory - essential for improving ordinary lasers and semiconductors, as well as quantum computing (all of which you can thank physics for, by the way, with advanced 'theoretical' - i.e. wanky - physics of the last fifty years essential for the recent advances in semiconductors and with the idea of a quantum computer being younger still)... quantum cryptography... we've advanced our understanding of atoms, to say nothing of figuring out the bits and pieces that make the things that make atoms... QED happened and gained traction, taking a list of useful, shiny things that I couldn't begin to prepare and making previous catastrophes pretty coherent... recent developments have improved even our understanding of pretty child-friendly things like stars... we pulled together a huge chunk of the early universe's story via cosmic background radiation theory... MEMS have been taking off (and could only have been done with the rules they 'just made up', as you incorrectly state)... far more plausible electron and confocal light microscopes... unified a few fundamental interactions... and, just to really push the wrong buttons, the theory of mirror symmetry which started as guesswork with 'made-up rules' and is still pushing a lot of mathematical research and bringing a ton of new results there (again, this is in a field where we don't get away with 'making things up' in the way that seems to bother you).
EDIT: First correction... *nothing is ever set in stone*. You don't seem to believe this, but you also criticize physics for supposedly setting things in stone and also for supposedly having nothing set in stone. Every discovery has to bring more questions, including the second-guessing you accuse of being impolite enough to not exist, but even though we think we know less than ever before we have so many shiny things to account for it (like the ones you're staring at right now, unless you've plugged the Internet into some guy who translates packets into sentences and post by yelling back at him) and there is simply no way you can say that 'we haven't proven shit'.
Look at this:
You see a spiral galaxy because you buy into all this wooden science we've had the past 50 years. Through my marble eyes I see a straight line. Oh, and you can quote me on that.
Okay... I don't see where the hell you're going with this. Come again? 'Wooden science'? It doesn't seem like you know the first damned thing about what's solid and what's not... you're also pushing this bizarre caricature of rigidity into places where it simply doesn't fit, and when little kids spend so much effort putting rigid things into places where they don't fit we take away their scissors and make them wear helmets and pads.
Call me an armchair scientist. I'm not claiming to know what the fuck is going on. But that's a step ahead of the science community who is making up the rules as they go along, a la fundamentalist Christians. Just look at the fucking picture and think about how distorted our observations probably are. It's not a spiral.
First off, they're not 'making up the rules as they go along' - they try to formulate a collection of *approximations to rules* that fit observation, *and then they try to break them*. It's not like they just sit around tossing nonsense around to rile you up - they know perfectly goddamn well what they're doing, and if they can't break a theory *it must be pretty badass*.
Second, on a more personal note, precisely what the hell has been going on with so many people comparing things they don't like to fundamentalist Christians? This wanky meta-hipster bullshit needs to die, no matter where it has come from.
"Scientists are fundamentalists!"
"Evolutionists worship Darwin!"
"Fundamentalist Christians want to bomb cheese!"
Moving along, it doesn't seem that you have the faintest idea of how the scientific process works if you think that's close at all to reality. Take the very examples you've dragged out, for example... or take SUSY, which is getting pushed into smaller and smaller corners - despite being a beautiful, cool theory that makes a lot of sense of the universe, it doesn't fit! What kind of nerve do you have to have to look at all of the things getting tossed into oncoming traffic and conclude that there's this kind of rigidity? Hawking got some smack talked back to him, and when he turned out to be wrong he accepted it... Feynman's path integral formulation still isn't on the most solid theoretical ground, so even though it's experimentally obscenely accurate we're still trying to put all of the pieces together... and we know that we have no idea what the hell to do about gravity. (I personally have more than half a mind to call it experimental error. If it's going to be such a little bitch, I'm just going to keep the bottom of my shoes somewhat sticky and wait for it to shut off.)
Also, Jbroll, I know you are very intelligent, and I'm not questioning that. Just trying to prod smart guys like you to think a little outside the box.
Also, comparing me to an armchair quarterback is humorous, and worth some merit. But who can blame me if the coach is keeping Joe Montana on the bench so he can play Tim Tebow?
First off, I'm not very smart. But I work hard, a hell of a lot harder than the bazillions of people who think that it's their place to bash string theory (or whatever the hell else kind of bashing is going to be the next stupid fad), and I - as well as anyone else with even the slightest bit of serious interest in physics - think so far outside the goddamn box that there aren't even words for some of the generalized cubical complexes in which you won't find me. What you're doing is a combination of preaching to the choir and missing very basic details in what seems to be their entirety - it's not like Montana versus Tebow, it's like you see Brendan Fraser in a Tebow jersey in the crowd of a rugby match and wonder why Phil Jackson isn't making him put on his ice skates. This is not wrong... it's not even wrong... hell, it's not even not even wrong.
Einstein wanted to prove the universe has simple laws that are set in stone (ie "marble") but quantum physics and other branches had laws that were less simple, yet work very well in the real world, (ie "wood").
I can't explain the rest of the quote yet without getting eggs and tomatoes thrown at my face. I actually need to do a little research instead of this armchair science before I go there. But I'm sure I'm right. All the breadcrumbs are there.
There is some serious danger to taking a casual perusal of an over- and mispublicized physicist whose big idea was nearly a century ago and turning that into a motivation to criticize things that you're clearly not as well-read-upon as you think. This is further more dangerous when you're missing the part of history where Einstein was actually the kind of guy who made the kind of mistake you're criticizing... rejecting quantum theory until his death in 1955! Further, you don't really see the half of what laws seem simple and stoney without doing a little bit of elbow grease, which can be assumed not to be the case when you say things like
But if you look at this whole thing through the eyes of a child, you'll see the answer. It's crystal clear. I just don't have the math to prove it.
and expect to stay in the long bus. Physics is hard because we *can't* just see things through the eyes of a child! (I don't know about you, but I had a few problems with tensor analysis until well into my teenage years.) Apart from being willing to throw everything out and 'think different' - which, *again*, everyone already does - that's just a massive load of wank.
Then, the very next sentence, you solidify yourself with a much-higher-than-desired (i.e. somewhere over 100)
crackpot index with
I've been thinking about this whole thing basically daily for the past 10 or so years and now it's all coming to fruition.
even though you admit to having more than a few missing pieces. If you want to see far, stand on the shoulders of giants... right now it seems more like you just have your head up Einstein's ass and you're blaming 21st century physics for the smell.
I'm sure if I talked to a brilliant 16 year old, he or she would be able to put it together and solve the whole damned thing.
It's going to take a hell of a lot more than that.
Finally...
Neither do I, but I'm going to be pretty blunt when it seems appropriate, and right now is one of those times. The parts of your argument that aren't just... wrong!... are telling physicists something they already know far better than you seem to credit. Putting aside the implicit disrespect of trying to talk down to one of the most difficult and technical fields humanity has ever studied, and the further insult of putting up and criticizing straw men in their place and saying that they should be doing things in exactly the way they are *as if somehow the scientific community actually contained this cadre of fundamentalist cheese-bombing physics Nazis who made everything up as they went along*, it's also a bit of an overstep to suggest that you not only have part of the answer but also got there without understanding the basics and made your conclusions without the math and the other hard work (which is, among other no-nos, *precisely* what you accuse physicists of doing to criticize them!), so you may have a bit of rethinking to do if you really don't think you mean no disrespect.
The 4 billion year posts after that are simply not worth any consideration. Unusual as it has been in many cases, I'm just with Mutant on that one. Just... no more.
Jef
) : we don't even know our own origins neither how did man built the pyramids or Machu picchu. Hell we can't even do it ourselves...
