This is an extract from the OPIP book. Previously, A(lice) and B(obby) discussed the importance of unlearning to make progress, simplicity and unification in physics, the role of assumptions and refutations, the challenge to identify the right problems, and that the new solutions we need will probably be very surprising.
A: We established that the new solutions will be surprising. Does that mean they will go against what we know from history?
B: Yes and no. On the one hand, they will be radically different, but in terms of how they come about, there will likely be many parallels.
A: What are those parallels?
B: To illustrate those, let’s pick an example from physics, making clear how our understanding in a particular area has evolved. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it simple and easy to digest.
A: Okay, let’s see.
A: Alright, I’ve plowed through it. What are the learnings?
B: The first thing that struck me is how obvious solutions look in hindsight.
A: I was already aware of that.
B: Me too, but it’s worth dwelling on it. I always kind of knew it, but when I wrote down the early—now entirely obsolete—conceptions of how things work, I realized that those are actually the much more intuitive, “natural” and “logical” explanations. Add the social pressure to believe in these early ideas, and it’s clear I wouldn’t have stood a chance of discovering the solutions we now consider correct.
A: I agree that you wouldn’t have come up with those smart concepts.
B: And unlike your statement, my thought leads to something important: respect. Consider the Ptolemaic Geocentric System as an example. Ptolemy combined various bold concepts into a single, consistent theory. It had mathematical beauty and could predict celestial events with unprecedented precision, all during a time that was, mildly put, not conducive to scientific thought. Considering all this, it’s difficult not to be in utter awe of his achievements. This sharply contrasts with the common misconception that ancient people were not intelligent, believing things like Earth being the universe’s center.
A: What’s the takeaway from this?
B: More respect for previous achievements automatically casts a different light on the current situation. It acknowledges how easy it is to be wrong. If you think we’re just smarter today, you don’t approach the subject with the level of humility that is required to make progress. You might not recognize your blind spots and take for granted things that should be questioned.
A: Okay.
B: Related to this, it’s important to emphasize that the current moment always feels like the most enlightened possible. Once we get new insights, we’re quick to forget how it was possible to see it in the wrong way. It is often reported by physicists that after identifying the solution, they couldn’t even reconstruct where the confusion lay before. Isn’t that fascinating? Our brains are so quick to adapt, making it appear as if it never was any other way. With this in mind, you inevitably view the current state of knowledge differently, and with a bit more healthy skepticism.
A: Your points are somewhat valid, but they’re based solely on one example from physics. This could be an exceptional case.
B: You’re right, so let me corroborate my case by…
A: Oh, no, hold on…
B: Exactly, you see it coming. Let me corroborate my case by stating yet another example from a different area in physics. But relax, this time it will be shorter.
A: Pfft.
A: Alright, now what can we learn from this one?
B: The first takeaway is that you’re not alone. You expressed skepticism when I only showed you one example, so I had to show you a second one. Other people work the same, psychologically. The last chart illustrates how one experiment, no matter how compelling, won’t convince the majority. Young’s double slit experiment couldn’t change views, only the second piece of evidence by Fresnel set the course for accepting the wave theory of light. Similarly, Einstein’s photoelectric effect wasn’t sufficient to convince scientists of the particle nature of light; Compton had to corroborate it from a different angle.
A: Okay, but I was aware of that. Convincing everyone always takes time.
B: You may have known this on a superficial, rational level, but did you understand it deeply? If you think it’s possible that tomorrow, someone will announce the new big idea and will receive immediate recognition for it, then you may not have fully internalized it on an emotional level. While the discoveries and evidence are mostly logical and clear-cut, gaining acceptance in the scientific community—let alone society overall—resembles more a thick soup.
A: Okay. Other learnings?
B: Looking at the charts, does it strike you how easy it is to understand it all? This represents the pinnacle of human knowledge, the intellectual output of the over 100 billion people who ever lived on Earth.[1] I would have expected it to be a bit more difficult to grasp.
A: Well, that’s just because you massively simplified it.
B: Yes and no. The charts do simplify some things. They omit countless contributors, many minor discoveries leading to major ones, and the intricate relationships between these discoveries. They also don’t show the experimental challenges, the complex mathematics involved, the journey to these discoveries, as well as the setbacks. But the final outcomes, those are in the charts. They are not dumbed down versions so that the common (wo)man can get a simplified, but essentially distorted and inaccurate, idea of what is going on. No, the key insights are what it says on the charts. That’s it.
A: Hm, is that really true…
B: Let me try to prove it with a Gedankenexperiment (thought experiment). You travel back in time and show people these charts. Assuming they believe you, would you agree that progress would have been much, much faster?
A: Probably yes.
B: Certainly yes. True, there would still have been a lot of work to conduct the experiments, derive the mathematical foundations, and so on. But in the grand scheme of things, that would still have only been filling the blanks. It’s much easier to do that once the key insights have been achieved.
A: From that angle, yes, it’s interesting how it’s all so understandable.
B: It amazes me. I find it incomprehensible how it can all be so comprehensible. I think it’s yet another demonstration for the power of simplicity in physics.
A: What will the future boxes in the charts look like? Will they be similar to the past ones?
B: There’s no reason to believe otherwise. It’s highly unlikely that a future box will say something like “Too complex to describe here—read this 500-page book full of mathematical equations.” The essence of future insights will also be able to be captured in one or two sentences. Maybe their titles will already do that. Take “Matter is Subjective”—it’s three words only. [Here Bobby is referring to a theory he laid out earlier in the book]
A: Please, I was just starting to enjoy some of the conclusions from those historic charts. Don’t ruin it by mixing your weird theories into it.
B: Sorry. It was just an example.
A: Any other learnings?
B: Talking about simplifications, there’s another important one. With a few exceptions, I only mentioned the insights that—according to our current understanding—turned out to be the correct ones.
A: Not true. I can also see several ideas in the charts that got refuted.
B: Right, but they are relatively few compared to the multitude of ideas that could have been included. Initially, I wanted to include many more of them, and mark them in red, to make visually clear how many ideas are required to get to the few ones that work. But this wasn’t feasible, as there are just too many of them. The entire chart would have been red, a bloodbath of theories so to speak. At least I mention it now, so that it becomes clear that most didn’t make it, with only a few last men standing—until their heads get chopped off eventually as well.
A: Do you have to phrase it that martially?
B: Probably not, but I felt like it.
A: Those wrong theories, don’t they also have at least some value? The ones you showed in the charts, it looks like they can also be stepping stones to the theories that turn out to be correct.
B: You’re right. Maybe you could even postulate “Without Ptolemy, no Copernicus.” To come up with a correct theory, refuting old ones, you need the old ones in the first place. Even a wrong paradigm can be valuable, as it sharpens your mind to come up with the right, new one. The enemies need to be clear so that you can defeat them.
A: Okay, any more things to be said about the charts?
B: Also obvious, but still worth mentioning: actual progress in physics was not so much a one-way street as the chart may suggest. There was a lot of back and forth, and regressions too. For example, several earlier thinkers postulated a rotating Earth before Ptolemy. However, he dismissed it, believing it would cause many more winds (which has some logic to it). The path to truth is often quite zigzaggy.
A: How shall we think about the fact that some names (Alhazen, Newton, Foucault, Einstein) pop up several times in the charts?
B: Good question. The obvious answer that they just were great physicists seems a bit too easy. Maybe they found the right mindsets, and/or environments, to work on problems in physics. I’ll elaborate on that later.
A: Any other learnings?
B: Maybe let’s look at the timeframe of the discoveries…
A: …right, I was about to mention that. You really start at Adam and Eve.
B: And that’s exactly my point: I don’t. I’m starting in the first millennium BC, which makes it roughly 3,000 years up to now. A long time from one perspective, but almost nothing from another. This timeframe represents 1% of the time since homo sapiens first appeared 300,000 years ago, 0.0000661% compared to the 4.54 billion years the Earth is considered to be old, and 0.0000217% of the age of the universe (13.8 billion years). It’s nothing. I’m amused by the voices out there who, in light of the recent slowdown in fundamental discoveries, already proclaim “The End of Science.”
A: Maybe they aren’t really serious, and just want to get attention and sell a lot of books.
B: That’s what I suspect too. As a business person, I respect that fully. But those cannot be called serious scientific propositions. At least they will serve as good chuckle material for our ancestors, that’s also value in a sense.
A: You’re really trying to see something positive in everything.
B: It makes life easier.
A: You already talked a lot. I fear that it will never end as long as I keep asking what we can learn from the charts.
B: Alright, let me go into speed mode to cover other potential learnings. The charts also show that:
A: While all of this might be true, there must also be a limit to what we can learn from the past, right? Several insights on the chart are quite radical, hence breaking with historic thought.
B: Yes. Another lesson from history is that sometimes you cannot learn from history. You need to take it with a grain of salt and find a good balance.
A: Perhaps it’s like a generational conflict where children deliberately act in contrast to their parents. They still need to understand what their parents did to intentionally choose a different path.
B: That could be the case, yes. In any event, knowing what happened before—and especially how it happened—is the basis for future progress.
The book continues by analyzing the role of psychology in physics, exploring how to create environments that are conducive to progress, and examining the life cycle of ideas in physics. To read it, get the OPIP book.
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[1] An estimated 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth, according to the Population Reference Bureau.
