{"id":41043,"date":"2024-09-19T17:16:26","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T17:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=41043"},"modified":"2025-07-21T15:48:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T15:48:41","slug":"physics-theories-w-nick-otre-le-vant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=41043","title":{"rendered":"Physics theories w\/ Nick Otre Le Vant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"top\" \/>\n<p>Let me first say that I really liked that you personalized the book in the first pages :-). I also like the discussion format, which reminds me of Hofstadter&#8217;s books.<br><br>Chapter 1:<br>Many ideas that you discuss, which focus on fundamental physics, remind me of the themes discussed in Carlo Rovelli&#8217;s books (in particular the emergence of time). Overall, I find your suggestions interesting and thought-provoking. Still, physics is grounded in experiments, either motivated by them, or suggesting which ones to perform to tell apart two competing theories. I thus see your book as a thought experiment in physics, asking &#8220;What if&#8230;?&#8221; questions.<br><br>I&#8217;m no physicist, but my guess is that through Science, we do not unravel any of the universe mysteries, but only try to fit our observations to our ways of making sense. Even though we strive for objectivity, there is always an aspect of subjectivity involved: any theory, even counter-intuitive, must eventually make sense TO US.<br><br>Interestingly, Rovelli&#8217;s books hint at the idea that physical states are not fundamental, but rather should be relations. I&#8217;m not sure to understand what it means (it&#8217;s VERY counte-intuitive), but perhaps if relations live at the very heart of even space-time, then it helps embrace the idea that no theory can be entirely objective. This is getting away from the essence of things (Platon&#8217;s appealing but misleading concept).<br><br>Chapter 2:<br>I don&#8217;t buy into this idea of the brain creating the world. For one, this is way too anthropocentric. It may be taken in a wider sense, as done by Shroedinger when he posits that consciousness is more fundamental than matter&#8230; but then I simply don&#8217;t get it (or rather I don&#8217;t really get why we would need such a weird account, what does it give us in return?).<br><br>This is different from Rovelli&#8217;s idea that states should be replaced by relations, since the observer in such a relation does not have to be a conscious human with a brain: an example is how velocity is relative to a choice of reference frame; no need of a brain of any specific sort here&#8230;<br><br>I do agree that the fact that mathematics are so apt at describing the world is because it&#8217;s a (formidable) tool built by us for us (and our brains). But I don&#8217;t take this to be any proof that we create the world with our brains. Rather, I&#8217;d say maths allow us to make very complex reasonings about the world, but these may always be broken down into smaller, intellegible bits for us to process one at a time (for those patient-enough to check theorems, proofs and the like). And a reason why mathematics may seem so efficient at describing the world is perhaps because we only kept what worked (survivor bias). Note that it is not always that efficient: for instance, there is no closed-form equation for such a simple thing as the perimeter of an ellipse.<br><br>What is the essence of the objective world you might ask? I am not sure this question makes sense; and at the very least I don&#8217;t think it matters&#8230; For we are inherently limited to the world we can apprehend with our brain. However, this &#8220;world-apprehended-by-us&#8221; meta-relation DOES matter, and will likely keep us busy for a little while ;-).<br><br>I thus do not side with your concept of brain(s) creating the world, nor do I side with the idea of humans getting closer and closer to an objective world (what Koenderink calls a &#8220;God&#8217;s Eye view&#8221;). However, I do think that different individuals\/species interact with different aspects of the world, and the closer we are to other individuals, the more inter-subjective our experiences can be (and that&#8217;s what we humans are tempted to call &#8220;objectivity&#8221;, because we typically lack modesty).<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me first say that I really liked that you personalized the book in the first pages :-). I also like the discussion format, which reminds me of Hofstadter&#8217;s books. Chapter 1:Many ideas that you discuss, which focus on fundamental physics, remind me of the themes discussed in Carlo Rovelli&#8217;s books (in particular the emergence &#8230; <a title=\"Physics theories w\/ Nick Otre Le Vant\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=41043\" aria-label=\"Read more about Physics theories w\/ Nick Otre Le Vant\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discuss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41043"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41045,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41043\/revisions\/41045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}