[dkersten]

> The scientific method only works because the rules of the universe happen to be simple

Are they simple though? That's not the impression I get from physicists, eg, the famous Richard Feynman quote: If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.

We haven't even managed to find a unifying theory yet, but the current contenders, like Loop Quantum Gravity are anything but simple.

[Igelau]

> The scientific method only works because the rules of the universe happen to be simple

It's simple in the sense that the universe seems to be the kind of place where inductive reasoning mostly works. For the most part we seem to be able to expect things like predictability and causality at the scale of the objects and processes in our everyday life. If it wasn't like that, things would be a lot more complicated.

[BalinKing]

As I understand it: The rules are simple, but not necessarily intuitive.

[lisper]

Exactly right. The rules of quantum mechanics are in their essence not much more complicated than high school algebra. It is the logical consequences of those rules that are hard to wrap your brain around.

[dkersten]

I have a couple of books on quantum field theory and it looks a lot harder than high school algebra.

[lisper]

Go read a book on number theory some time. It looks hard too. But it is about nothing more than the properties of the natural numbers, which any grade schooler can understand.

Likewise, QM looks hard, but at its core it is little more than linear algebra, which any high-school math student can (or at least should be able to) understand.

[dkersten]

Everything can be broken down to simple easy to understand little bits. The complexity comes from there being many, many of these little bits.

[lisper]

Yes, that is exactly my point. The core of QM consists of very few bits.

[jhayward]

I've always taken the Feynman quote to mean: just because you understand the rules doesn't mean you understand the implications, which are varied, vast, and counter-intuitive.