[prng2021]

We're not asking questions about human constructs like what is moral or what is the ideal form of government. We're trying to understand what the most fundamental building block of reality is, which is something objective. Something independent of whether of not people ever existed.

So no, countless people around the world aren't wasting their lives researching particles when the answer is simply, it's whatever we say it is.

[woopsn]

What can we see? Vapor trails, patterns burned into a plate, etc. The evidence of some "thing" slowing down, perhaps, but really the environment that slowed it down necessarily changing irreversibly. Irreversible effects cannot be arbitrarily small (apparently). We never see a particle, only effects such as these -- if we did see anything else, well, we couldn't possibly remember. Particles are an attempt to explain/theorize evidence that is fundamentally observational.

[kayo_20211030]

Did you take the time to read the original piece? Even the smart people can't agree.

What gives you the faith that a "particle" is not a human construct? What on earth does "fundamental" even mean except being the bottom turtle we can see on the particular mountain of turtles at which we're looking.

"Countless"(?) people around the world are not researching particles. They're doing particle physics as they understand "particles". That's how it should be and particles are whatever they say they are. In that field, no measure means no reality. *Unless*, of course, you have faith in some platonic reality.

Positive materialists will disagree.

[prng2021]

When you say particles are whatever we say they are, I assume you believe particles are subjective. I'm saying particles are objective, like a "wavelength" as opposed to subjective, like "morals".

If you are saying even objective things are whatever we say they are, then this is a useless discussion. Obviously every word is defined with other words and all words are human creations. So yea in that sense, literally everything we know of is whatever we say it is. That's a pointless statement to make in response to this article or really ever.

[kayo_20211030]

I was saying that I don't know what a particle is, and neither does anyone else, but subjective isn't quite the correct word.

What I am sayings is that there are many useful interpretations of what a particle "is" that allows science to progress. The theoreticians and the experimentalists use, sometimes even form, those interpretations to help them along in their work. I'm saying that they yet remain interpretations, even analogies; and it really doesn't matter whether those folks believe in an objective reality or not, good work still gets done. Maybe it's subjective in that sense, but a particle is whatever they say it is; and nothing more can be said with certainty unless you dive into philosophy.

You can measure a perturbation in a field, or a track in a bubble chamber, and call it a particle. Then you can work backwards to an "objective" representation, and a particle still becomes whatever you say it is. It's still scientific, consistent, mathematically rigorous, and in line with theory and observation, but it remains a human construct. You can't escape that. Ultimately, one is free to believe that there is some fundamental thing; and, maybe there is and maybe there isn't.

> literally everything we know of is whatever we say it is

Of course "literally everything we know of is whatever we say it is". That, precisely, is my point. It most certainly does not mean that we can just state anything as true unless it is sensible, consistent, observable and verifiable; and expect not to be challenged.

[prng2021]

Is the first law of thermodynamics whatever we say it is? If that's how you want to phrase it, then again, this is a useless discussion. All you're really saying is that the literal English words and sentences we use to define something are human constructs. That's so obviously true.

[khazhoux]

I'll go even further and point out that in 2003, it was proven that particles are not, in fact, the friends we made along the way.

[kayo_20211030]

Do expand. What happened in 2023?

[sfink]

Yeah, I don't get that, because it seems to me that the friends you make along the way are mathematically indistinguishable from particles being real and having properties. It's a distinction without a difference.

Or at least, I'm interpreting "the friends you make along the way" as the sum total of the effects of a particle on the surrounding world. Saying "the particle doesn't exist, but it has effects X, Y, and Z" is the same as "the particle exists and has effects X, Y, and Z". If a distinction is not observable, then it's meaningless to quibble over whether it's "real" or not.

(Which all just proves that my interpretation isn't the one you were using....)