Category: Epistemology and Method

If you can’t make a mental model of a phenomenon to describe mathematically (an adversarial competition between reality, model, and description),then you are by definition using analogies without limits. Feynman, Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Epicurus, Democritus used mental models. If I can explain quantum woo woo with three variations on one mental model, then we have to ask, why everyone tries to use woo woo math.There is nothing woo woo about the subatomic world unless you start with woo woo concepts to describe it. Mathiness w/o mental model = sophistry. So for example, the three popular fringe theorists (Weinstein, Wolfram, Lisi) all are adding value. Lisi’s insight hints at a primitive geometry that can ‘leave those holes’, Wolfram is trying to discover that geometry, and Weinstein is pointing out that the hole is geometric. Wolfram is the only one in physics and math that has at least somewhat learned the limits of math (top-down) vs computation and simulation (bottom-up). My only question is why he chose one-dimensional vectors rather than continuing his work on n-dimensional emergence. I would have thought he’d have gone from his work ten years ago to leave behind mathy points,but he moved to vectors, and not to volumes. It’s possible (maybe probable) that he will discover a geometric model,because from what I’ve seen he’s at least emerging triangles (correct).