This was a great read, and it was heartening to be reminded that there are plenty of talented physicists out there who aren’t afraid to lift the rug and see what’s under there.
I noticed, as I progressed through my studies of physics, a tendency for people to go from “what if” to “it is” before finally reaching “what if” again, as their knowledge grew and developed - I think many went into it for the same reason as me, seeking explanations for reality, and there’s a tendency to mistake theory for explanation, if it’s explanation you’re looking for.
All of it, from QFT to Cartesian coordinates to mathematics itself is just a construct that we humans have come up with to create a rational framework of information that can describe reality - but as anyone who has ever written software knows, there are many ways to reach the same behaviour with different underlying code.
It’s all essentially reverse engineering from a point where you begin without even language or the concept of logic, and everything, everything that you have to work with is the stuff you’ve created, outside of the black box of the universe - but made only with the stuff of the black box.
I moved diagonally into computer science and philosophy, as I was only ending up with more questions the deeper I went into physics - and the whole information as reality concept has stuck with me, as it’s the only part of all of our frameworks which remains a consistent truth.
I think our next big breakthrough in understanding will likely come not purely from physics, but the intersection of physics and computing, as I think we will come to realise that they are essentially one and the same.
I noticed, as I progressed through my studies of physics, a tendency for people to go from “what if” to “it is” before finally reaching “what if” again, as their knowledge grew and developed - I think many went into it for the same reason as me, seeking explanations for reality, and there’s a tendency to mistake theory for explanation, if it’s explanation you’re looking for.
All of it, from QFT to Cartesian coordinates to mathematics itself is just a construct that we humans have come up with to create a rational framework of information that can describe reality - but as anyone who has ever written software knows, there are many ways to reach the same behaviour with different underlying code.
It’s all essentially reverse engineering from a point where you begin without even language or the concept of logic, and everything, everything that you have to work with is the stuff you’ve created, outside of the black box of the universe - but made only with the stuff of the black box.
I moved diagonally into computer science and philosophy, as I was only ending up with more questions the deeper I went into physics - and the whole information as reality concept has stuck with me, as it’s the only part of all of our frameworks which remains a consistent truth.
I think our next big breakthrough in understanding will likely come not purely from physics, but the intersection of physics and computing, as I think we will come to realise that they are essentially one and the same.