Birds Doing Ornithology: The Role of Beauty in Model Building

"Philosophy of Science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." - Richard Feynman For obvious reasons this provocative quote is not very popular among philosophers of science, but Feynman certainly didn't mean it in bad taste. The fact of the matter is that most science can be done with little to no …

The Frustrating Success of Our Best Theory of Physics

If you were to ask most physicists about the success of the standard model of particle physics, you would get a very strange answer: that it is frustratingly successful. Odd indeed, that's like calling a painting frustratingly beautiful. Further prodding would reveal that in fact most physicists not only find the model frustrating, but also …

Can we tell if we’re simulated, and why does it matter?

See part 1 here. So maybe we're living in a simulation, maybe we're not. Why does any of this matter? If we can't actually tell any way, we are just arguing over the likelihood one way or the other and why should any of us care? It doesn't change the taste of coffee; it doesn't …