On Aug 6, 7:45*am, Pentcho Valev wrote:
On Aug 6, 2:08*pm, PD wrote:
Pentcho, if something actually happens in nature -- if it is
experimentally observed -- then it isn't a mystery. It is a fact. The
circumstance that you are surprised by the fact does not make it a
mystery. The circumstance that you cannot understand how that can be
does not make it a mystery.

Of course trapping a 80m long pole inside a 40m long barn is a fact
Clever Draper - what else could it be? But there is also a "disparity
between common experience and scientific knowledge" and this makes
such facts difficult to understand:


That is certainly true. And as Brian Greene notes, this is something
that physicists continue to struggle with -- adjusting the "common
sense" to be more in line with demonstrated fact. Nature doesn't give
a damn what makes good "common sense". It does what it does. It is the
physicist's job to figure out what nature REALLY DOES, not to figure
out what makes good, common sense, or what is easily understandable.

You take the approach, citing Orwell, that common sense should be
favored over demonstrated fact, because common sense is easier for
people to understand. That's a lovely philosophy for life but it has
nothing to do with science, which favors demonstrated fact over common
sense or understandability.

So you have a choice, Pentcho. Do you want to do science? Or do you
want to adopt a philosophy of common sense over demonstrated fact,
intuitiveness over experimental measurement?

PD