[somenameforme]

Planck's Principle: 'Science advances one funeral at a time.' [1]

In his exact words: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it... An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth."

And he said that having lived, as a outsized figure, through the late 19th to mid 20th century of physics, which was the absolute golden age for such.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle

[bluGill]

The more important lesson for those of us are are "old" is to not get stuck in things that were learned in the past when they are found false.

If you are not yet old, remember this - it is very likely you will old in a few years.

[somenameforme]

It's more nuanced because many things are never really found false, or can't realistically be falsified. Planck was implicitly referencing the whole controversy over quantum mechanics, and how exactly to interpret it. None other than Einstein refused, all the way to his death, to accept a probabilistic interpretation in spite of all evidence pointing in that direction.

He simply believed on a fundamental level that the universe must be deterministic. Many don't understand that many of his famous quotes like 'spooky action at a distance' or 'god doesn't play dice' were mocking probabilistic interpretations of quantum mechanics, like the Copenhagen Model - the one we still assume to this very day.

Of course there even remains the possibility that at some point in the future he may even be proven correct. And at this point I'm playing into the very same mindset that essentially explains where Planck's Principle comes from, but perhaps such being a part of humanity is not an entirely bad thing. It's certainly been with us even as mankind has gone through unprecedented leaps of understanding and technological advancement.

[12_throw_away]

> None other than Einstein refused, all the way to his death, to accept a probabilistic interpretation in spite of all evidence pointing in that direction. [...] Of course there even remains the possibility that at some point in the future he may even be proven correct

To the extent that decoherence is the currently favored interpretation of quantum mechanics, that's basically now. In that picture, god does not play dice with the universe, rather the observers are themselves the dice.

[peterfirefly]

We are all Wigner's friend. That rock over there, those specks of dust here, the wings of all the butterflies, the moons of Titan, and SN 1987A. Everything is just Wigner's friend.