Psychology
fromPsychology Today
6 days agoPeople Don't Just Update Beliefs, They Test Them
Understanding psychological change requires recognizing the role of control and mastery in actively pursuing change despite familiar limitations.
In the practice of psychiatry, we like to think we have better radar than most doctors for identifying incoherent thinking in our fellow humans. Incoherence is one of the crucial signs for potential disasters in the central nervous system-delirium, psychosis, mania, intoxication, stroke, encephalitis. And yet, now in the waning years of my career, I confess that I've practiced this skill of identifying incoherent thinking with only the vaguest definition of coherence, and no measure.
In the weeks leading up to September 1891, mathematician Georg Cantor prepared an ambush. For years he had sparred - philosophically, mathematically and emotionally - with his formidable rival Leopold Kronecker, one of Germany's most influential mathematicians. Kronecker thought that mathematics should deal only with whole numbers and proofs built from them and therefore rejected Cantor's study of infinity. "God made the integers," Kronecker once said. "All else is the work of man."
Recent integrative approaches suggest that physics cannot be adequately characterized by magnitude-based distinctions alone, such as those implied by Big-P, little-p, and mini-p physics. While these categories capture differences in scope and historical impact, they fail to address the heterogeneity of physical activity itself. To remedy this, I propose the Five Fs of physics: force, friction, flux, formulation, and foundational structure.
A drawn circle is at least something physical. You can see it, touch it, erase it. The skeptic can still say, "Circles are grounded in physical reality. Justice is different; it's just an idea in your head." So let's talk about the number two. Point to it. Not two apples, not two fingers, not a numeral on a page-that's just a symbol.
Analogue quantum simulations are a useful tool for investigating these systems, particularly in regimes in which the applicability of numerical techniques is limited. For different simulator platforms, figures of merit include the electron bandwidth and interaction strength, temperature and the number of simulated lattice sites. Their use is further underscored by the ability to realize distinct lattice geometries, on-site degrees of freedom and by the physical observables that are accessible to experimental measurement.