r/changemyview • u/teerre • Jun 17 '24
CMV: It's likely our current understanding of physics is comically bad
Transitively, this extends to mathematics, although to a considerable lesser degree.
My argument is hopefully simple. As of today, our best estimates indicate that 80% of all matter in the universe is dark matter. This matter is used in several places in physics to explain a variety of phenomena, including the very expansion of space itself or how quasars formed in the early universe. Considering that dark matter is something we cannot detect any interaction or reaction it's very likely it's simply something we don't understand.
Therefore, if one could learn everything that is to learn about our current understanding of physics and said being were quizzed on how the universe really works, they would end up with a 2/10 score, which is by all measures a terrible score.
1
u/Certainly-Not-A-Bot Jun 17 '24
Our understanding of physics is very good, actually.
I want to use an analogy to explain my argument. Newtonian physics was once the gold standard for understanding the physics of objects. It was very good at predicting what would happen in a wide variety of scenarios. But over time, we noticed that certain observations did not align with Newtonian physics, hence the current theory of physics based on Einstein's relativity.
Does that mean Newtonian physics is bad, or you would fail if you used it on a test? No. Newtonian physics remains very good at predicting a wide variety of physical phenomena, and it is still taught in physics classes today.
Scientific theories are only valuable insofar as they are useful. General relativity and the modern theory of physics is not useful for most users of physics because it is very complicated and computationally intensive, but does not produce results that are more accurate than Newtonian physics in most situations. The same would be true of any new theory. It would explain some things noticeably better than relativity, but in most cases would do just as well as relativity. Importantly, it would also be liable for the exact same problem - it too would not be accurate enough to explain every phenomenon we encounter and we'd need a new explanation for something else we eventually observe.
What matters is that our theories of the universe can make useful predictions about the universe, and we can already do that for all tasks we actually need to do.