Sorry for taking so long to write a response. I had to think a bit about this.
So, I don’t think it feels very satisfying to the average physicist to just say “well, atoms sometimes just spontaneously emit photons”. It’s a model that correlates well with our measurements, but there’s no proof that it is true.
In some sense, the purpose of science is to make sense of the world, and it surely isn’t the most satisfying thing to be left without an ulterior explanation. That is why I think it is important to repeatedly ask why, until one finds the primordial source of causality.
Oh, absolutely! There are lots of physicists working right now to figure out the ins and outs of advanced quantum mechanics. There’s been a century long fight between the ones who think our current rules must be incomplete and the ones who don’t care why the rules are what they are so long as they work. There’s a surprising amount of dogma here too, with schools of thought being supported by proponents instead of science. I think that’s changing now, but I feel like that’s partly why physics hasn’t really expanded quantim physics at all.
So perhaps we will find a solid causal link between everything. Perhaps we’ll nail down entropy as a real property instead of just a statistical observation. Maybe we’ll truly understand the origins of not just this part of the universe, but the wider multiverses through time, space, and fields.
But maybe we’ll find that causality isn’t so solid, with time-like paths everywhere, and determinism only at medium scales. Perhaps the nature of existence is beyond gleaming for those held within.
Right now, we have no idea one way or the other. I definitely agree with continuing to ask why, but even the existence of the answers is up for debate, let alone the nature of those answers. I’m especially cautious of putting convenient explanations in the place of those unkowns.
So maybe saying so authoritatively that some causes don’t exists was an error on my part. Sorry about that. It would be more accurate to say that some causes might not exist, especially in some models, and that we can’t tell the difference yet.
Sorry for taking so long to write a response. I had to think a bit about this.
So, I don’t think it feels very satisfying to the average physicist to just say “well, atoms sometimes just spontaneously emit photons”. It’s a model that correlates well with our measurements, but there’s no proof that it is true.
In some sense, the purpose of science is to make sense of the world, and it surely isn’t the most satisfying thing to be left without an ulterior explanation. That is why I think it is important to repeatedly ask why, until one finds the primordial source of causality.
Oh, absolutely! There are lots of physicists working right now to figure out the ins and outs of advanced quantum mechanics. There’s been a century long fight between the ones who think our current rules must be incomplete and the ones who don’t care why the rules are what they are so long as they work. There’s a surprising amount of dogma here too, with schools of thought being supported by proponents instead of science. I think that’s changing now, but I feel like that’s partly why physics hasn’t really expanded quantim physics at all.
So perhaps we will find a solid causal link between everything. Perhaps we’ll nail down entropy as a real property instead of just a statistical observation. Maybe we’ll truly understand the origins of not just this part of the universe, but the wider multiverses through time, space, and fields.
But maybe we’ll find that causality isn’t so solid, with time-like paths everywhere, and determinism only at medium scales. Perhaps the nature of existence is beyond gleaming for those held within.
Right now, we have no idea one way or the other. I definitely agree with continuing to ask why, but even the existence of the answers is up for debate, let alone the nature of those answers. I’m especially cautious of putting convenient explanations in the place of those unkowns.
So maybe saying so authoritatively that some causes don’t exists was an error on my part. Sorry about that. It would be more accurate to say that some causes might not exist, especially in some models, and that we can’t tell the difference yet.