Comment by mcmoor
2 years ago
It's interesting that semiconductor engineers have to directly wrestle with the magic that's quantum tunneling. This theory is really not just a theory.
2 years ago
It's interesting that semiconductor engineers have to directly wrestle with the magic that's quantum tunneling. This theory is really not just a theory.
In some devices it's something they have to fight against. In others, like SSDs, it's the feature that makes them work! It's not just a theory and it's not just another flaw that we've got to work around, we've taken it from a theory and turned it into useful technology.
You mean it's not just a hypothesis.
I would really, really expect users of this site to know the difference.
Users of this site who pay attention to how science is actually practiced, and not the oversimplified cartoon version they teach us in school, know that the boundary between a "theory" and a "hypothesis" is rather blurry. For instance, have you ever noticed how it's called "string theory" despite having no real evidence for it? Have you ever heard anyone, let alone a real scientist, complain about this nomenclature?
Early theories and fleshed-out hypotheses overlap a lot. There's no sharp transition from one to the other.
String theory is supported by a ton of evidence in that it can produce many predictions and hypotheses that match observed data. That’s why it’s called a “theory” and why people continue to study it.
What’s missing is a test that would produce evidence that would allow us to distinguish between string theory and competing theories. But that’s not nearly the same thing as saying it has “no real evidence.”
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I think it's important to draw a distinction between the formal and natural sciences. HN is overrepresented by folks with backgrounds in mathematics and computer science where using "theory" is correct, e.g., set theory.
Bret Weinstein explained the distinction between a hypothesis and theory a few weeks ago on YOUR WELCOME.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac4MnNrs6g4
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What if they don't? Will they cease to be users of this site? What if they speak a lot more languages than you, just not perfectly? Does it even matter what you would expect?
The (scientific) theory is really not just a (colloquial) theory
The other famous example is PET scanners, which actually use a form of antimatter: positrons (the antimatter counterpart of electrons).
You don't even need that. The prediction he's referring to as most accurate is the magnetic moment of the electron, which is used in plain old MRIs. If we didn't have the quantum mechanical correction, all of our MRI images would be distorted. Only by a few pixels, but it'd be noticeable!
We used fire in our daily lives even before organic chemistry existed.