Comment on What is a good source to read about thought experiments?
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 2 days agoRead it for real, try it out. Then you’ll know.
Comment on What is a good source to read about thought experiments?
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 2 days agoRead it for real, try it out. Then you’ll know.
SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I have, I studied these ideas at university. I’m just curious what makes these thought experiments harder than e.g. the double slit experiment, Plato’s cave analogy or Rawls’ veil of ignorance?
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 1 day ago
I have learned the stuff at university, too. But what they gave us there was good teaching, after several decades of practising their teaching.
When I read the original papers, much later, they were quite a bit harder. Especially some of the thought experiments.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Maybe not harder than those, but they are amazing, because the conclusions from them actually work.
There are thought experiments that are unsolvable paradoxes, but these are cool exactly because they are not.
So I’d say Einsteins are among the coolest.
Also double slit experiment is not so much a thought experiment as it is a phenomenon that is hard to explain.
SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The double slit experiment was first invented as a thought experiment, and later was built as an actual experiment. It’s the same with relativity, first it was thought up, now it’s experimentally verified. So the examples from relativity you bring up are also more experimental phenomena than a thought experiments at this point.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yes and no, it’s based on observed interference by Newton, Which was noted looked like how rings in water can interfere.
With relativity the difference is the huge amount of thought experiments that Einstein was able to connect to a coherent theory. That actually explains a huge part of how nature works.