{"id":10928,"date":"2013-01-04T12:14:05","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T20:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=10928"},"modified":"2015-09-28T10:15:29","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T17:15:29","slug":"the-world-of-everyday-experience-in-one-equation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/04\/the-world-of-everyday-experience-in-one-equation\/","title":{"rendered":"The World of Everyday Experience, In One Equation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Longtime readers know I feel strongly that it should be more widely appreciated that the laws underlying the physics of everyday life are completely understood<\/a>. (If you need more convincing: here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>.) For purposes of one of my talks next week in Oxford<\/a>, I thought it would be useful to actually summarize those laws on a slide. Here’s the most compact way I could think to do it, while retaining some useful information. (As Feynman has pointed out, every equation in the world can be written U<\/em>=0, for some definition of U<\/em> — but it might not be useful.) Click to embiggen.<\/p>\n

\"Everyday-Equation\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the amplitude to undergo a transition from one configuration to another in the path-integral formalism of quantum mechanics, within the framework of quantum field theory, with field content and dynamics described by general relativity (for gravity) and the Standard Model of particle physics (for everything else). The notations in red are just meant to be suggestive, don’t take them too seriously. But we see all the parts of known microscopic physics there — all the particles and forces. (We don’t understand the full theory of quantum gravity, but we understand it perfectly well at the everyday level. An ultraviolet cutoff fixes problems with renormalization.) No experiment ever done here on Earth has contradicted this model. <\/p>\n

Obviously, observations of the rest of the universe, in particular those that imply the existence of dark matter, can’t be accounted for in this model. Equally obviously, there’s plenty we don’t know about physics beyond the everyday, e.g. at the origin of the universe. Most blindingly obvious of all, the fact that we know the underlying microphysics doesn’t say anything at all about our knowledge of all the complex collective phenomena of macroscopic reality, so please don’t be the tiresome person who complains that I’m suggesting otherwise.<\/p>\n

As physics advances forward, we will add to our understanding. This simple equation, however, will continue to be accurate in the everyday realm. It’s not like the Steady State cosmology or the plum-pudding model of the atom or the Ptolemaic solar system, which were simply incorrect and have been replaced. This theory is correct in its domain of applicability. It’s one of the proudest intellectual accomplishments we human beings can boast of.<\/p>\n

Many people resist the implication that this theory is good enough to account for the physics underlying phenomena such as life, or consciousness. They could, in principle, be right, of course; but the only way that could happen is if our understanding of quantum field theory is completely wrong<\/a>. When deciding between “life and the brain are complicated and I don’t understand them yet, but if we work harder I think we can do it” and “I understand consciousness well enough to conclude that it can’t possibly be explained within known physics,” it’s an easy choice for me.<\/p>\n

Let me know if I’ve made any typos here, or have gone too far in trying to make things compact. For instance, can I get away without putting a “trace” around the gauge field kinetic term? I don’t want a notational shortcut to undermine my argument and leave the audience believing in God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Longtime readers know I feel strongly that it should be more widely appreciated that the laws underlying the physics of everyday life are completely understood. (If you need more convincing: here, here, here.) For purposes of one of my talks next week in Oxford, I thought it would be useful to actually summarize those laws […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10928"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12617,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928\/revisions\/12617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}