> (Aside: of course there are bad philosophers, who do all sorts of stupid things, just as there are bad practitioners of every field. Let’s concentrate on the good ones, of whom there are plenty.)
The impression that most physicists I know is that the percentage of bad philosophers or bad philosophy papers is much high then in chemistry, physics, biology and several others.
I could not take the arguments here and convince those friends/peers otherwise.
> Philosophers are, by their nature, more interested in foundational questions where the latest wrinkle in the data is of less importance than it would be to a model-building phenomenologist.
The problem is that philosophers have so little data to work with. The problems they are pointed at often need tremendous amounts of data or very hard to collect data. Instead of making an incremental improvement on collecting that data or analyzing existing data it seems to often be the case that philosophers decided to work with guess work instead.
>The idea is apparently that developing a new technique for calculating a certain wave function is an honorable enterprise worthy of support, while trying to understand what wave functions actually are and how they capture reality is a boring waste of time.
A theoretical paper that examines the various quantum calculation techniques through the lens of information theory and attempts to make rigorous claims on which methods or fundamentally more simple(form an information theory definition) sounds like solid science and an interesting read. "trying to understand what wave functions actually are and how they capture reality" - does not sound like something I would want to fund or read.
>And part of that task is understanding the foundational aspects of our physical picture of the world, digging deeply into issues that go well beyond merely being able to calculate things.
I would want an example of an issue where calculation plays no role. Being able to communicate the ideas to fellow humans might be thought to involve not calculation, I would argue that starting with the simplest mathematical models then isomorphically(or at least minimize information lose) tweaking for human understanding would be the non-practical ideal method and use considerable calculation.
The impression that most physicists I know is that the percentage of bad philosophers or bad philosophy papers is much high then in chemistry, physics, biology and several others.
I could not take the arguments here and convince those friends/peers otherwise.
> Philosophers are, by their nature, more interested in foundational questions where the latest wrinkle in the data is of less importance than it would be to a model-building phenomenologist.
The problem is that philosophers have so little data to work with. The problems they are pointed at often need tremendous amounts of data or very hard to collect data. Instead of making an incremental improvement on collecting that data or analyzing existing data it seems to often be the case that philosophers decided to work with guess work instead.
>The idea is apparently that developing a new technique for calculating a certain wave function is an honorable enterprise worthy of support, while trying to understand what wave functions actually are and how they capture reality is a boring waste of time.
A theoretical paper that examines the various quantum calculation techniques through the lens of information theory and attempts to make rigorous claims on which methods or fundamentally more simple(form an information theory definition) sounds like solid science and an interesting read. "trying to understand what wave functions actually are and how they capture reality" - does not sound like something I would want to fund or read.
>And part of that task is understanding the foundational aspects of our physical picture of the world, digging deeply into issues that go well beyond merely being able to calculate things.
I would want an example of an issue where calculation plays no role. Being able to communicate the ideas to fellow humans might be thought to involve not calculation, I would argue that starting with the simplest mathematical models then isomorphically(or at least minimize information lose) tweaking for human understanding would be the non-practical ideal method and use considerable calculation.