Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Quote of the Week: Doobie Physics

Chris Taylor: Here's the problem -- although your theory no doubt sounds quite wonderful to you in words when you spark up a doob and run it through your mind, if you actually had bothered to get enough of an education to translate it into actual math that could be used to make predictions about the physical world which could be experimentally verified you would quickly find that it doesn't.
-S.O.G. on the arguments for or against time travel causality



[The idea for this feature was blatantly stolen from Maurice's Blog]

2 comments:

Maurice Mitchell said...

I have to admit I had to put this in context before I could even begin to understand it. After that...LOL
Interesting sidenote on a This American Life article about a guy who set out to disprove Einstein's theory and the debacle that followed.
I heard any criticism of Einstein succinctly explained: If Einstein had been wrong we wouldn't have the Atomic bomb. 'Nuff said.

Nigel G Mitchell said...

I agree, that is a little out of context. But I thought the contempt conveyed in the text was universal. And the "doob" line cracked me up.

But the guy is wrong - Einstein didn't have the mathematical acumen to work out his theories. He was terrible at math. He always came up with his theories, then worked with another scientist who was better at math to help him work out the proofs.