Which is more likely: you haven't kept up to date on physics news, or the people who spend their lives doing physics don't know what they're doing? Be skeptical. But fix that by reading more. If someone is skeptical, but the answers exist and they stay skeptical, that's just willful ignorance.

every generation of experts claimed to have all of the answers

No they haven't. And no one is claiming that now.

This isn't skepticism. This is "I don't understand, I don't want to understand, but I want to feel smart so I'm going to say they're not smart".

[+] hector@lemmy.today -20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

On the contrary, the universe, the state of matter, the mechanisms of astro physics, are the subjects most deserving of being skeptical of experts claiming to know things they have no way of knowing. Now you may be referring to some humble scientists, but the "exerts" absolutely do claim to know everything.

[–] Man_kind@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You dont have a good understanding of what science is. No scientist claims to know what charge is, what causes it, nor what dark matter is or dark energy.

Scientists say what they can say with reasonable certainty. If they state something, you can research why they state it, and find sound reasoning and experiment that supports it.

If you dont, you can disprove it, and then now you're a scientist.

Just because you dont know a thing, doesn't mean others cant know.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I'd also like to interject that physics deals with models of how the world works, i.e. physicists make predictions about what would happen in specific scenarios. That has nothing to do with knowing what goes on underneath, because we can't know that.

Consider quantum physics. It might be that the universe is indeed a wave and that's just how things are. But it could also be possible that we're living our entire lives in a simulation, whoever hosts the simulation is having a tea party and giggling at us silly being on how we're confused by our observations. You can't really tell these two apart, experimentally, since they would have the same outcome. So physics can't really tell about what things are, just how they behave in certain situations. That's why i think of physics as models, not theory (because "theory" carries a starker claim to absolute truth to me).

[–] Man_kind@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Why does "theory" carry starker claim absolute truth to you?

Theory, theoretical, these are not claims to absolute truth. Rules maybe, but then id say you're more correct that they'd be rules of a model.

Relativity is a theory. Its in the name. You might not like it, but it is definitely a theory, and referred to as such by all of science. Maybe you call it model of special relativity, but you'd be the exception. However it would not be incorrect to refer to it as a model, either.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 minutes ago

Why does “theory” carry starker claim absolute truth to you?

I think the word "theory" derives from the words "theo" (meaning god) and "ergy" (meaning work). So it's "god's work" literally translated.

What is meant by that is that people recognize the truth, such as truths about how the world works. The truth is called "god", or rather, "god" in the christian context is understood to be the set of all truths. So mathematical insights and physics rules are a subset of god, because they represent truths of some sort. And applying these truths in practice, i.e. building machinery according to them is the work that people put into it. So people work according to "god", i.e. according to rules. Like when you build a car, you have to know about thermodynamics. The knowledge makes you do the work. So it's insight->work, or in latin/greek: "theo-ergy" or "theory" for short.

You have to remember that all these words were invented in the 1800 so it's not unreasonable to claim that there's a heavily christian background in them since that's how people thought at the time.

[–] Marthirial@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Come on Hector, just go back explaining everything with baby Jesus back in your room and stop making an ass of yourself in public.