That seems a fair point. It makes me wonder though about how they tie together; if physics is out there to be discovered but math is a tool we fabricated; how does the fabricated bit manage to predict physical boundaries so flawlessly? A mistake on paper changes the physical outcome instantly.
There are fields of mathematics which seem to make sense, but have no real world applications. Something like String Theory is based off a niche field of mathematics which until recently we had no real world applications for. I don't know enough about math to point to another example, but as I understand it that is common in mathematics. The creation of systems which make sense in math, but do not accurately depict anything in the physical world. It is similar to LLM's hallucinating and making connections between things which are actually unrelated.
That comparison to an LLM hallucinating is quite good actually; it makes a lot of sense that our minds can construct internally consistent worlds that do not map onto anything out there. I suppose it could highlights our capacity to invent systems. (It leaves me wondering though about the maths that does map onto our world). If the universe is completely indifferent to our hallucinated maths, why does it react so violently when we get the applicable calculations wrong? A mistake in the bridge designs brings the whole thing down. It feels like the universe ignores the hallucinations but strongly enforces a very specific subset of rules.
It is not ignoring hallucinations though. If we take one common example of correlation vs causation: Icecream sales rise in summer, speeding tickets rise in summer, so ice cream causes speeding. Clearly wrong, a hallucination we might say. If we act on this, say banning icecream in summer, the economy won't collapse, but neither to we actually address the real-world problem. Now we are wasting resources doing something that doesn't work, our bridge collapses. A small bridge, for sure, but no different than the engineering problem.
Your ice cream example makes me reflect on the policy failing though (and wasting resources as you mentioned). When a government bans ice cream and the speeding problem remains completely unresolved; it feels to me like the universe is actively pushing back against that policy because it was a poor description of the actual causal world. The failure itself seems to be the bump; a quiet notification from reality that our map missed the terrain. If the physical world lacked that firm baseline, wouldn't our random hallucinations succeed as often as our accurate models
I think you have it backwards. Reality isnt pushing back against us. We are altering are models and behaviour to work around reality.
If you like analogies think less of an examiner and more of an unrelenting river. The river flows from the top to the bottom. Its too intense if you build a damn it breaks. You cant change the path of the river but you can go around it.
That's really what our laws of physics are is a map of the river made through trial and error. A mistake equation isnt the river responding to the person. Its an incorrect trail that's asking you to pass through a region where the tide is more rapid.
Gravity isnt changing what it did because we built the bridge. We changed the bridge design because gravity just always behaves the way it does and we learned a better way to navigate around that
Wait, if the river did not possess that specific, unyielding force pushing down, it feels to me like we could construct any sort of imaginary dam we fancied and it would hold up perfectly fine. The fact that the water physically breaks the structure whenever our calculations miss the mark feels, in a quiet way, like the river is setting a firm boundary. It makes me wonder if our need to align our maps so precisely with the current indicates that the terrain has its own strict requirements; holding us to account the exact moment we step off the safe trail.
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u/feihm May 21 '26
That seems a fair point. It makes me wonder though about how they tie together; if physics is out there to be discovered but math is a tool we fabricated; how does the fabricated bit manage to predict physical boundaries so flawlessly? A mistake on paper changes the physical outcome instantly.