To everyone saying “Feynman did explain it” you’re missing the point - his answer is that there isn’t really an answer to why magnets attract; he never says in that interview that there is, other than that is how the universe works.
He can explain the precise way in which they attract each other, can explain what properties of materials give rise to magnetism, and so on, but this is all ultimately a description. The only way science can answer a “why” question is with a description of general behaviour that encompasses what is asked about, so: why do magnets attract, because of spins and magnetic fields and so on. But why do spins and magnetic fields cause the attraction? There is no known general behaviour that encompasses that behaviour, and if there were, it would be subject to the same questioning. Ultimately, all “why” questions reach an end.
I think they actually don’t reach an end. The only thing possibly ending is the scope and tolerances of our measurements and descriptions.
This means, first of all, that there will always be a practical end to good answers to “why” questions.
But if you think that there is truly no end, it also means that the workings of the universe are infinite in a very strange sense: if there’s an infinite succession of explanation, what does that mean? An explanation is a description of something that implies the characteristics of what you’re explaining, right? And it can’t just describe all the details of the thing being explained, it must be simpler on some level.
I don’t really see how you get this infinite succession of simplifications. Maybe it makes sense if the universe is infinitely complex, so that for example, the behaviour of atoms is explained by the behaviour of protons, neutrons and electrons, which are explained by quarks and still smaller sub-electron particles, and this sequence of subdivision goes ever smaller. I don’t see any good reason to believe that though.
“The map is not the terrain” - Alfred Korzybski
This is what I mean, I believe our limitations, biologically, chemically, or otherwise, are not sufficient to express reality as is to the full extent of the definition- in fact I think that all observation is negation or division, meaning, it is polar, our language is Hegelian in nature, by positing things against one another as a means to progress in understanding, it fundamentally defines by dividing or subtracting, because how could you posit two opposing things without excluding all other things that they do not represent?
Classical philosophy of science- we can say what is not a lot easier than we can say what is, and thereby narrow down the scope of what [likely] is. But due to the very nature of nature, we can never be certain, because we function under imperative of space-time, and time progresses forward, into a deep unknown, nobody knows the future, right? It is my contention that even fundamental laws of nature deteriorate, evolve, mutate, or change over time. At the end of the Universe, at the point of total entropy, not even laws of nature would exist. How could they? What would it mean for them to exist? What would the word “exist” even mean?
I am saying that a map can never 1:1 perfectly capture the nature of reality. So, every time we ask “why”, we take one step closer to approximating truth, and we can get infinitely close to it, but we can never reach or attain it, due to the limitations of how our own minds work.
It is my contention that even fundamental laws of nature deteriorate, evolve, mutate, or change over time. At the end of the Universe, at the point of total entropy, not even laws of nature would exist. How could they? What would it mean for them to exist? What would the word “exist” even mean?
Why do you think the laws of nature - what we know of them - change? We don’t have any reason to believe it. The “point of total entropy” sounds like the heat death of the universe, which certainly we do and can discuss and make predictions about.
I am saying that a map can never 1:1 perfectly capture the nature of reality. So, every time we ask “why”, we take one step closer to approximating truth, and we can get infinitely close to it, but we can never reach or attain it, due to the limitations of how our own minds work.
This is somewhat different to what I’m talking about.
So he answered ‘how do they work’. No one was asking why.
The interviewer in the referenced clip did actually press Feynman to explain the “why”, which led Feynman into an explanation about how “why” is impossible to completely answer, which is what OP is talking about.
ICP runs deep.
Ultimately, all “why” questions reach an and.
I see you have not recently interacted with a toddler in the “why” phase.
Are you able to answer all their why questions satisfactorily? No? Then that’s where they reach an end…
The secret to this, which works on all children, mine included, is to turn it and ask them what they think. Leads to more fun answers as well. Not right, but fun.
Taking it all the way back to OP’s meme. Love it.
Never discourage that phase, imagine if our population never grew out of questioning the world. Just don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know, maybe you will figure out why and can teach me someday.”
I work with kids, including a bright little boy who told me that “Why?” is his favorite question. I explicitly tell him that I hope he never stops asking it. His questions challenge the depths of my knowledge and compel me to look up questions I never thought of before. I love it.
I call him my “little scientist.” He’s only 4 and he teaches my coworkers new things all the time. I feel so lucky to get to work with a little knowledge-sponge that’s as curious as I am!
I read somewhere that a good response is: why do you think?
“Hmm, I’m not sure honey - why do you think metal stick to magnets? Maybe there are some books at the library we can read to find out more…”
But once again, those will explain how, not why.
I generally say things like “it’s complicated, but let’s see if we can find out.”. Unfortunately when my daughter said “Why are your parents divorced,” I had to leave it at “It’s complicated.” Basically, magnets.
“Sweetie, there’s just no easy way to say it: your MeeMaw is an unrepentant cock goblin. Wait, I guess that was pretty easy, actually! Sleep well, pumpkin!”
Why does gravity cause two things to attract? Why does the strong nuclear force hold protons together? Why is the speed of light 3 x 10^8 m/s and not half that, or 1000x as fast?
It’s often possible to figure out how certain initial values of the universe cause it to behave in certain ways. But, as for why those initial values are the ones that they are, that’s like asking about angels dancing on the head of a pin.
What if instead of Richard Feynman it was Richard Fremen.
What if instead of Richard Freman it was the Freeman of Arrakis.
I never really thought about it, but isn’t the question actually “why do opposite charges attract?” Doesn’t it come down to stability? The universe likes equilibrium and combining opposite charges is an attempt to equalize.
To clarify: Feynman could explain it, but can’t dumb it down enough for us mortals.
I want Feynman for president.
I don’t care how, or why, or that he’s no longer here. Anything is better than this bozo.
Ai president
Magnetism is complex and difficult to reduce down succinctly, but the real issue is that at the very base level, “why does magnetism exist” is no more explainable than “why do particles have spin?”
They didn’t know it, but ICP were asking an epistemological question.
I looked for a non-yt source, but the best explainer for how magnetism in everyday objects is built up from quantum mechanics that I could find easily was this by minute physics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hFAOXdXZ5TM
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I think it’s more fundamental than that. He could talk about relativity and electrostatics and particle spin, but at some level the electromagnetic force is called a “fundamental force” because it’s one of the postulates we just kinda accept about the universe, and any explanation he could give would depend on that assumption.
Fair point
Feynman actually did try to explain it, and could do the math and other work to show why magnets attract one another. Having watched the Todd in the Shadows video about Miracles, I kind of find the question wholesome - he’s not asking out of willful ignorance, but rather that it’s something he knows is beyond his grasp but amazes him (and wants to share that joy in the world with his kids and family).
Trump is just willfully ignorant and small-minded.
Feynman actually did try to explain
Not in that particular interview which was very annoying. Feynman knew magnetism better than most people on the planet and instead of explaining it, he went off on the reporter for a badly phrased question.
He could have explained that magnetism and the electric field are the exact same thing seen from different reference frames. Instead he spent 5 minutes on why the reporter’s question was stupid.
Nice try sewer clown
I’m sorry, what?
ICP is an ode to ignorance, fuck anyone trying to rehab that shit.
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissedThose are not lyrics promoting wonder to children. They’re anti-intellectualism.
It’s a lot harder to make that argument in the context of the rest of the lyrics
Music is a lot like love, it’s all a feeling And it fills the room, from the floor to the ceiling I see miracles all around me Stop and look around, it’s all astounding Water, fire, air and dirt Fucking magnets, how do they work? And I don’t talk to a scientist Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed Solar eclipse, and vicious weather Fifteen thousand Juggalos together And I love my mom for giving me this Time on this planet, taking nothing for granted
It’s not anti-science, it’s frustration at the world for being the complicated, messy place it is, and a longing to go back to the simple innocence of childhood where even basic physical processes are magical. It’s not a rant that nobody should do science, it’s his own disillusionment, and a plea for people to allow a little bit more wonder into their world.
It’s a powerful lyric because even in a song about how magical the world is, it still slips in and ruins it, the pebble in your shoe that doesn’t allow you to ever truly experience that pure feeling again, always gnawing at you in the background no matter what you do.
Can’t dress up the scientists lying lyric in a way that isn’t blatantly anti science, but the rest tracks.
I think anti-intellectualism is the Revenge of the Idiots, they too want to be able to claim things about the world, it’s just that they can’t, because they don’t know science, and science is hard, but they still want to have opinions, so all they do is just make up their minds that the Earth is flat, and fuck you science, I can believe what I want kind of deal.
It’s like someone sitting in their house saying, “modern art is shit, I can do better”, and proceed to take a shit on the floor just to prove a point to themselves, that they will not be “held back by the man”.
It’s one dumb fucking lyric, but I forgive them, because apparently Juggalos are a cool bunch and are nice to each other, and that’s the only thing that matters to me, song be damned.
I think “frustration at the world for being the complicatedd, messy place it is, and a longing to go back to the simple innocence of childhood where even basic physical processes are magical” is exactly the sentiment that leads many people to become anti-science. They turn their frustration at the people who want to grasp the complicated rules of the world and make appropriate changes according to them. They just want things to stay the same childhood magic.
To drop my reply from a similar post:
To be fair: "A magnet works because negatively charged electrons repel each other. "
"Why do negatively charged electrons repel each other? "
“… Well … Ok, so hear me out. You’re going to need to understand quantum mechanics and then the fermion principal. Then you’ll know that the electrons aren’t allowed to occupy the same space, and the easiest way to avoid being in the same space is to not touch each other. The electrons know they aren’t allowed to touch because they’ve studied fermions.”
To be fair: "A magnet works because negatively charged electrons repel each other. "
This is the Coloumbic (electrostatic) force, which is related to magnetism but this explanation would be insufficient to explain magnetism.
“… Well … Ok, so hear me out. You’re going to need to understand quantum mechanics and then the fermion principal. Then you’ll know that the electrons aren’t allowed to occupy the same space, and the easiest way to avoid being in the same space is to not touch each other. The electrons know they aren’t allowed to touch because they’ve studied fermions.”
This is the Pauli exclusion principle, which does act like a force, but is not the same as the electrostatic force or magnetism.
Magnetism is moving electrons repel/attract/affect each other depending on the direction they are moving.
The simplest explanation for that I know of is that force needs to exist alongside the electrostatic force for the motion of electrons to be consistent with relativistic time and space dilation effects.
And no, that’s not a simple explanation, and it requires explaining relativity, and at the end of the day the best explanation we’ve got for the electrostatic force is more or less “electrons repel each other because they do”.
All models are wrong, some models are useful. A model that is 100% correct is just reality. Science and physics boils down to observation followed by explanation which comes in the form of modeling.
New physics started when plank discovered quantization while integration raleigh-jean and weins laws for blackbody radiation. Schrodinger proposed a model among several proposed models and his fit the best.
Anyone who is surprised by science not knowing all the answers had fundamentally misunderstood science.
Finally, five fields: electromagnetic, gravity, strong, weak, and higgs. Magnetism is just an effect of leptons interacting with the electric field. That’s the model, one day when we can explain more with another model there will be more questions.
Bonus points for anyone who knows the quote “who ordered that?”
FYI; electrons are always negatively charged and protons always positively charged. So electrons, for instance, will always want to repel each other.
But your conclusion is a more direct answer to the silly conclusion I gave. Which boils down to, “we don’t really know”.
“Look man, shit just be doing what it does because it is what it is. If weren’t that way everything would be soup or darkness.”
Physics at any point when you ask “why” enough.
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch…
You must first invent the universe. - some nerd no doubt
So glad we got to see what it looks like for Carl Sagan to toke up before they CGI’d it away (believable conspiracy I just invented).
Pretty much. You get towards the bottom and on a fundamental level, there are some things that science just doesn’t know. We really don’t know how magnets work, when you get down to it.
Feynman. Invents modern plastic. Contributes to the atom bomb. Thanks Feynman
obligatory anti-feynman video by dr angela collier
Cheers
He’s easily my favorite physicist, but he was a bit of a problematic person when it comes to his treatment of women.
He was something of an idol to me for a while when I was young. “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” was one of my favorite and most often read books. But the chapter where he spoke of his experiences at bars, infamously referring to women who would accept drinks from him but not sleep with him as “bitches” always really bothered me. I remember being shocked by it and trying to rationalize it with things like “well, he came out of it realizing they weren’t and that he was in the wrong,” (yeah right, that’s a stretch) or “when his wife died so early when they were both so young it broke him, damaged him emotionally, and he lost the ability to relate to women,” (non-sequitur garbage excuse). But no, he was just deeply infected with misogyny like so many other shitty men.
It also bothered me, not as much then, but a lot more now, how involved he was in the creation of the nuclear bomb for the US and his cynicism about humanity (fully expecting we would all die in a nuclear armageddon). On the one hand, he expressed some modicum of regret, and if I remember right, spoke of feeling only sick when his coworkers were celebrating its use in “ending the war,” on the other hand, he never actually tried to understand let alone criticize US imperialism and the role he played in cementing its dominion over the world (hegemony).
Yep, I’ve got my copy of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman too, and the bar part was so gross, and the fact that people tell their story like that and don’t have the shame to either leave it out or make it sound less predatory speaks volumes about who they are.
As for his part in the Manhattan Project, it seems as if he got his karmic return in the end. I just wish he’d lived long enough to see him speak in person. He died a few months before I was born.
lol sad
From what I’ve seen Feyman was more than a little pedantic and he liked to emphasize that science doesn’t answer “why” it answers “how”. So if ICP asked that question Feyman would say “take an undergrad physics course because its not easy to explain in a soundbite”
He was fully conscious that science models behaviour but doesn’t - maybe never will - give the purpose behind it.
Magnets work by pulling all the God from our brains to create the God rays so that life can be sustained on earth.
(Feynman does not, in fact, rule)
Year 40,000 - Light some incense to beseech the magnets to attract.
That’s some wishful thinking that humans will be around then.
You missed a Warhammer 40k reference.
Gonna be honest, I don’t even know that that is beyond the name.
Confirmed magnets cause Chaos rifts to spread.
The beast of metal endures longer than the flesh of men.
Those that tend the beasts of metal must labour long to learn its ways, for a single beast must suffer the mastership of many men until ready to shed its vorpal coils.
Those that seek apprenticeship must attended closely to the runes of mobilisation, the rites of maintenance, and the words-of-power that describe the parts of a beast.
Nor must they neglect the tutelage of the Adeptus Prefects, nor the casting of the proper roboscopes.
Magnets aren’t even real. Have you ever actually SEEN one? Of course not.
Birds are magnets
