I was wandering why people think they are smart these days including me. We are internet age (almost for 20 years?), we can access a lot of information so easily but that makes us smart or good decision maker? I was not sure. The reason why I was thinking has been, after big earthquake and Fukushima accident in Japan, it seemed to me people make sometime irrational decisions. So, I was wandering what went wrong? based on what, we are making decisions? I am a scientist so I thought back what we do to make decisions in scientific context. Then, I wrote that down in Japanese. I don’t know how much I could write in English but I am trying to do that here.
This is my understanding, so I don’t want to argue it with you. If you want to know more about these things, please look for textbooks. Anyways, let me do it. We have several stages of understanding in physics, or haven’t we?
- Conjecture : Proposition to solve a problem to explain physical phenomena we are facing. Usually ideas, thoughts, directions, and advises. At this stage, this proposition is not unproven. I can come up with Taniyama-Shimura conjecture as conjecture to prove Fermat’s last theorem has been proofed by Andrew Wiles.
- Hypothesis : Proposed explanation on the physical phenomena based on observations. Hypothesis should be stronger than conjecture.
- Thesis : Based on observations physical phenomena and testings hypothesis, the thesis would be proposed as a statement we could use a presumption of argument. Scientific papers and doctoral thesis we write might be here.
- Theory : An explanation of physical phenomena thoroughly tested, and most scientists agree on it. By using theory, we could make models. These models should explain physical phenomena. If theory is right, these models could also predict the result. For example, based on Einstein’s theory, scientists had predicted gravitational wave. They have succeeded to observe it.
- Physical law : Scientifically generalized law of physical phenomena. By using physical law, we could predict the future incident on where the law is applicable. Newton’s laws are thoroughly tested and generalized so we could predict the movement of planet as long as on where the law of universal gravitation dominates.
So I am basically doing 1-3 during research. Some scientist also do 3-5, such as LIGO (detecting gravitational wave predicted by Einstein’s theory). Maybe R&D in company normally is working on 4-5 to make products.
Now, I started to understand. We usually make conjectures (I meant we come up with thoughts or ideas about news on TV or so) but we are not doing tests on the ideas or thoughts, even we don’t hypothesize. If we could have hypothesis, we could or might be able to perform the tests and know them better. Is there any problem here? No, as long as they are not crucial to our life. What is wrong with it? Nothing, as long as the problems are not serious.
Sometimes, however, it could be serious. We don’t usually do hypothesizing and testing because it take efforts and time, because we need to work hard to figure things out. Biggest problem here is that we profoundly make false assumptions, however, we feel as if we are doing O.K. Even though we haven’t done anything these hypothesizing and testing. We don’t investigate the quality of decision we make once the problem has pasted. That was weirdness I was feeling. We behave like we made a right decision because the problem has passed away.
I was good at math in school but was not the best. Why is that? Because, I had mistakenly believed I could have solved the problems so I didn’t solved them when I thought I could solve them. But I should have fill out paper until the teachers were convinced.
We can’t solve every questions and problems in our life, we have to use time wisely and efficiently, for which is important to ourselves. Otherwise, we don’t have much time by the time we die. Don’t tweet or post ideas on twitter or Facebook, just start solving it!!