Well, I’m an admirer of Eliezer’s works, and I can safely say that some of his blog posts have changed my whole way of thinking.
To offer just a small example, I used to think that I understood gravity. I knew that gravity was the curvature of space-time. But now I know I don’t really understand it—I can’t do the math. Saying curvature of space time conveys the same information to me as “beyond man’s knowledge”: it doesn’t allow me to make any predictions; it doesn’t change my anticipations at all.
So, how can I claim to understand gravity? I shouldn’t even be allowed to talk about curvature of space time until I know it at the technical level (at least so I can understand the math and do some calculations). And so I’ve bought two textbooks: one for general relativity and one for quantum physics (another branch of physics exhaustively explored in math-free popsci books).
This is just one small example. Many of his other posts have been real eye-openers.
Well, I’m an admirer of Eliezer’s works, and I can safely say that some of his blog posts have changed my whole way of thinking.
To offer just a small example, I used to think that I understood gravity. I knew that gravity was the curvature of space-time. But now I know I don’t really understand it—I can’t do the math. Saying curvature of space time conveys the same information to me as “beyond man’s knowledge”: it doesn’t allow me to make any predictions; it doesn’t change my anticipations at all.
So, how can I claim to understand gravity? I shouldn’t even be allowed to talk about curvature of space time until I know it at the technical level (at least so I can understand the math and do some calculations). And so I’ve bought two textbooks: one for general relativity and one for quantum physics (another branch of physics exhaustively explored in math-free popsci books).
This is just one small example. Many of his other posts have been real eye-openers.
Keep up the good work!