The truths of General Relativity cannot be conveyed in conventional language. But does one have to study the underlying mathematics before evaluating its claims?
Yes. Of course you do.
You can approximately capture the truth General Relativity in the statement, “gravity bends space.”
The delusion that such statements “approximately capture the truth” of things like GR is pervasive, but no less a delusion for it.
This approximation of the truth is useful because it allows you to understand certain consequences of that truth, such as gravitational lensing. Hence, even someone untrained in physics can be convinced of General Relativity …
Once again, this is delusion. Eliezer wrote an entire sequence about this.
Basically your entire set of claims and comments is mostly “mysterious answers to mysterious questions”.
The delusion that such statements “approximately capture the truth” of things like GR is pervasive, but no less a delusion for it.
Not sure whether we disagree here, my guess is I am slightly unsure what you intend to say. I do think there are statements like “time will pass more slowly relative to a stationary observer if you move close to the speed of light” that are highly specific predictions that can be verified (given sufficient investments in experiments) without deeply understanding the theory of relativity. Such a statement does definitely capture some aspect of the truth of general relativity.
If some process (like a physicist or a research lab) repeatedly generates highly surprising predictions like this that turn out to come true, someone might be said to meaningfully be “convinced of the veracity of general relativity” without a concrete understanding of the underlying theory.
> The truths of General Relativity cannot be conveyed in conventional language. But does one have to study the underlying mathematics before evaluating its claims?
Yes. Of course you do.
I was surprised to hear this from you. In other threads you have seemed rather quick to dismiss mystical claims without trying to master the underlying “language”.
Yes. Of course you do.
The delusion that such statements “approximately capture the truth” of things like GR is pervasive, but no less a delusion for it.
Once again, this is delusion. Eliezer wrote an entire sequence about this.
Basically your entire set of claims and comments is mostly “mysterious answers to mysterious questions”.
Not sure whether we disagree here, my guess is I am slightly unsure what you intend to say. I do think there are statements like “time will pass more slowly relative to a stationary observer if you move close to the speed of light” that are highly specific predictions that can be verified (given sufficient investments in experiments) without deeply understanding the theory of relativity. Such a statement does definitely capture some aspect of the truth of general relativity.
If some process (like a physicist or a research lab) repeatedly generates highly surprising predictions like this that turn out to come true, someone might be said to meaningfully be “convinced of the veracity of general relativity” without a concrete understanding of the underlying theory.
I was surprised to hear this from you. In other threads you have seemed rather quick to dismiss mystical claims without trying to master the underlying “language”.
https://xkcd.com/808/
(Also, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZawRiFR8ytvpqfBPX/the-hard-work-of-translation-buddhism#DM8CCgSb3KvyjknqH )