We Are Made of Waves

https://nautil.us/we-are-made-of-waves-640732/

by dnetesn • 2 years ago

92 71 2 years ago

illuminant2• 2 years ago

We are made of potential, potential acts and distributes as waves (when not acting like and distributing as a state particulate.) Something tells me we already know this and are continually amazed by new narratives re-explaining these counter intuitive topics.

This announcement is like saying "buildings (large architectural structures) are actually moments of force, the cement or stone or wood or steel only exists to keep everything from collapsing in on itself.

pixl97• 2 years ago

Buildings are fundamental components of the universe?

x86x87• 2 years ago

i believe the intent is to highlight the banality of the claim through an analogy.

breezeTrowel• 2 years ago

Yes. That's why fundamental particles are called the "building blocks of the universe". It's buildings all the way down!

azulster• 2 years ago

if your frame of reference is centered on teh building then it could be claimed that the entire universe fundamentally depends on the exact properties of that building on some level

mensetmanusman3• 2 years ago

“Real estate baby!”

szvsw2• 2 years ago

buildings are actually moments of force, the cement or stone or wood or steel only exists to keep everything from collapsing in on itself.

This is actually kind of a beautiful sentence, especially the first half. I’m sharing it with some of my colleagues who research computational structural design/architecture/analysis as well as historical structural/civil engineering. I think some of them might agree with it, in a weird way. I will also be trying to get the main structures prof to squeeze this line in as a debate opener to one of his lectures for a class that is mixed between architecture and engineering students. FWIW the textbook used for that class is called “form and forces” so you can see how a sentence like that would fit well into the dialogue.

illuminant2• 2 years ago

I've been self studying architectural engineering. I hope to some day build my own home. It may well be a tribute to brutalism, we'll see.

This observation is genuine enough, the moment of force is kind of like the quantum super-amplitude of forces, playing out very slowly on the classical scale. The experienced architect (or engineer) can "see" how a structure may future collapse by the intuition of reading moments of force and how they influence forms.

layer83• 2 years ago

What the heck is potential?

I mean, I’m roughly familiar with the physical notion, but it doesn’t seem very suitable as an ontological bedrock.

hprotagonist2• 2 years ago

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Iluvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.

i’ve always been struck by the aptness of that framing of the state of things.

HocusLocus• 2 years ago

We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmony which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly; we have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and, as it were, tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.

~Francis Bacon, "New Atlantis" AD 1626

hprotagonist2• 2 years ago

and some years later: https://dood.al/pinktrombone/

koolala2• 2 years ago

im vibin atleast 70%, heart beat does whatever it wants

ysofunny• 2 years ago

the tricky thing is distinguishing that which is being moved by the wave from the wave itself

if the wave is the energy moving, the energy is being moved by the wave, but then what's the wave? clearly not energy

if the wave is moving the energy around, the channel (or medium) is the wave!

neom• 2 years ago

I always thought about it more like water waves, where the wave is both the medium and the channel? I guess I've been thinking about it wrong!

moffkalast• 2 years ago

Believe it or not, also a wave.

layer83• 2 years ago

Everything is necessarily (?) just stuff changing in relation to other stuff. The wave is the change.

IshKebab• 2 years ago

The wave is a change in whatever the wave type is (air, pressure, EM field strength, water height, etc.). I think your comment is a bit confused tbh.

I did a PhD on waves... and tbh I didn't really understand them until then.

canjobear• 2 years ago

Check out Sean Carroll's recent books if you want an introduction to these ideas that conveys the actual mathematical content and not just a word jumble.

TexanFeller• 2 years ago

Sean Carroll's content really hits the spot. Technical and mathematical enough to avoid metaphors that don't hold up to careful thought, but straightforward enough to be enjoyable even after work when my brain is fried. He's incredibly prolific too, hours of content per week that's accessible to people like me go up on his Mindscape podcast and Youtube posted lectures.

bee_rider• 2 years ago

Waves are just a description of the behavior that’s been observed, right? It is a mathematical model.

Physicists cleverly foist the question of what is and why on philosophers (who are happy to ponder endlessly), it turns out “can we model how it works” is much more profitable to follow.

Koshkin• 2 years ago

Any physical theory is "just a description of the behavior that’s been observed, right? It is a mathematical model."

(Saying that 'cat' is just a word describing what's been observed completely misses the point of what science actually is. Philosophy of thought and science has gone much farther than that.)

Aloisius2• 2 years ago

It does seem that many physicists confuse mathematical models with reality or at least do so when communicating to laymen.

At the very least, it sells more books.

whatshisface• 2 years ago

In the sense that,

- You don't know your partner, you know what you remember of what you've understood from what you've seen them say and do.

- You don't know the text, you know what was printed.

- You don't know which grains of rice you will scoop out from a bag.

"Reality" as held above theories (models) and the evidence for and against them is an unreachable standard of truth.

samatman2• 2 years ago

Physicists are not in the book-selling business to at least three significant figures.

criddell3• 2 years ago

Some, like Max Tegmark in his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, suggest that mathematics may be all there is.

mistermann9• 2 years ago

Physicists, like all humans, often confuse their theories and models of reality for reality itself.

And when they are called on it, they are far less likely to simply admit the mistake/shortcoming than their stellar reputation would exist.

Also, like most (but not all) humans, they tend to not enjoy criticism.

mannykannot8• 2 years ago

Mathematical models answer all sorts of 'why' questions: why is the sky blue? why do the planets move the way they do? Why does biological altruism exist in a Darwinian world?

mensetmanusman3• 2 years ago

They are answering ‘how is the sky blue’ not ‘why’ the universe has a mind (in the form of human) to experience the blueness :)

mistermann9• 2 years ago

Whether the answers are comprehensive and correct is not necessarily knowable though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency

Luckily, most people cannot care.

nitwit005• 2 years ago

Imagine I said "rain is made of matrices". There is a problem with that statement. Your rain model might function using matrices, but that's not what rain is.

abdullahkhalids• 2 years ago

First, the dominant philosophy of physics/science is that of falsification. Which roughly says that it is impossible to know the "true" laws. All of physics is just models, nothing else, and you can't do better than that.

Second, physicists also do not foist this question onto philosophers. There is plenty of work done on this by physicists.

Particularly, on the question of whether the wavefunction is simply a calculational tool or more, there are many many papers written by physicists. Two samples [1, 2].

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3233

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.1570

croes• 2 years ago

Terrence Howard enters the chat:

Told you so!

mensetmanusman3• 2 years ago

“I remember being born”

emporas• 2 years ago

Walter Russel's periodic table, is very intriguing.

Observing the fact that many elements decay to other elements, with time being the only variable changing, is a very strong indication that the classic periodic table might not show the whole picture.

I don't know in particular if matter is frozen light, but i think that matter has some properties we overlook.

calebm2• 2 years ago

I'm a wave fanatic. Shameless plug for my wave-oriented art: https://gods.art

malux85• 2 years ago

These are awesome, I love “Give and Take”,

I’m a computational chemist, you should have a look at Kohn Sham orbitals and google images “the hydrogen wave function”

I will reach out to you for a commission

calebm2• 2 years ago

Thanks. I actually have one piece which strongly reminded me of the wave orbitals: https://gods.art/math_videos/prism_eye_video_near_spoke4.htm.... Surprisingly, the orbital-like shapes were a surprise to me that came out of a wave interference experiment.

financetechbro• 2 years ago

Rad stuff!

xkcd-sucks• 2 years ago

I mean lots of the comments in this thread exemplify the need for this book assuming it is well written enough to achieve its purpose [0]

Take for example the dismissal that "waves are just a concept/model/way of describing the universe that is useful and pretty accurate for many purposes".

Yes, this is true, but the wonder is to be found in the universe, not in the model, and the model provides a path to that wonder to be found approaching true understanding. Understanding with one may practically profit, and idk motivational salience to see connections where they are present.

Like, if you stop and think about it, isn't it like totally nuts that light, "heat", "electricity", etc. just smear out into one another at the right frequency, and that you can predict it? That you can ring all the nuclei in a human's body just like ringing a bell, listen to the tone, and turn that into a like a 3d image of tumors and crap? [1] And, this beauty / intricacy / whatever collides into the need to eat and clean up poop and so forth [2] -- And we end up with microwave ovens used thrice daily until broken and trashed, and relegate the concepts themselves into "just"s, because they are ordinary.

And if this sense of holistic appreciation for the universe is more cultivated in more people we'd see more cool stuff or live in a better world or something.

[0] idk, helping the reader develop a sense of ... awe, better intuitive understanding (because people have it no matter how wrong), connection, higher order consequences, all embedded in a practical context or something.

[1] NMR/MRI more or less

[2] which are also emergent consequences of all these heady abstract concepts btw, like what is is that we need to eat, why do we need to eat to begin with, etc.

standardly• 2 years ago

not ashamed to admit I will never fully comprehend this.

m3kw92• 2 years ago

That’s good, but I still have to pay my taxes

layer83• 2 years ago

Unless they are waived. ;)

m3kw92• 2 years ago

Oh I get!

jumploops• 2 years ago

What are waves? Just loops over time :D

MrPatan• 2 years ago

Waves on what?

criddell3• 2 years ago

Probability.

largbae• 2 years ago

Is this theory going to give us a warp drive?

ngcc_hk• 2 years ago

Given we have atoms obviously we are made of waves, but the question really is are we ONLY made of waves and that is most if not only important.

———

Just like any materialist finding our mind is affected by brain area function, and claim we are just brain matter and there is no soul. May be we do not have. But a materialist approach also may not be true.

And even if true, are all fields founded. How about G or monad or … may be there is something about dark energy and dark matter we need to think of. And are all universes like us?

Even more important even if we are materialist or wave, does it matter that much. After all whilst one can say one can do all chemistry by study physics and all biology by studying chemistry, really? Reduction and mono-theme goes as far as we can and leads no where in many area of human endeavour.

Btw should I drive on the left or right? A must. Seems not as we observe both. Can you do whatever you want, also not.

Should I do x or y? How to deal with hamas, putin invasion …

That is action in context and society. But there are also action in my mind. My action is my individual choice and responsibility …

Not saying it is wrong. In fact, I think it is right. Just as said who shave the barber, does it large enough to be self referential and …

We Are Made of Waves

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