Introduction: Non-physicist with speculative questions

[Mickey 6]

How did you find PF?

Via Claude

Hi everyone,


I'm a lawyer from southern Indiana with no formal physics background, but I've been fascinated by fundamental physics questions for years. I've recently been exploring some ideas about scale, recursion, and the relationship between quantum mechanics and general relativity, and I've reached the point where I need feedback from people who actually know what they're talking about.


I'm here because I've developed a speculative framework that I'm probably either (a) reinventing badly, or (b) misunderstanding in fundamental ways. Rather than keep refining it in isolation, I want to find out what I'm missing from the literature and if and where my thinking breaks down.

What I'm NOT:

• A physicist claiming to have "the answer"
• Someone looking for validation rather than criticism
• Unwilling to be told I'm wrong

What I AM:

• Genuinely curious about whether there's anything interesting in the ideas I've been exploring
• Eager to learn what actual experts think
• Ready to read papers/books people suggest
• Prepared to hear "you're just describing [existing framework X]"

I've found LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity) incredibly helpful for articulating and refining ideas, but I've also learned that AI assistance can make bad ideas sound sophisticated without actually making them correct. So I'm here for the reality check.

I'll be posting a framework in the Beyond the Standard Models section soon, but wanted to introduce myself first. Looking forward to learning from this community, even if (especially if) the learning involves understanding why my ideas don't work.


Thanks for having me here.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Welcome! Be sure to read our guidelines on speculation. We're quite strict as we're an academic community.

Thread 'Physics Forums Global Guidelines'

Sep 2, 2003

Welcome to Physics Forums!

In an effort to maintain the integrity of this site and to provide a comfortable environment for people to communicate, we ask that you please follow these Guidelines when posting on this site. These guidelines are global and apply to every area of this site. Mentors may choose to enact specific guidelines for individual forums, which are to be taken as an extension to the global guidelines when posting and visiting that specific forum. These specific guidelines are usually sticky topics placed at the top of the specific forum.

Application and...

• Greg Bernhardt
• Replies: 2
• Forum: Feedback and Announcements

• 

 

[PeroK]

I'll be posting a framework in the Beyond the Standard Models section soon, but wanted to introduce myself first. Looking forward to learning from this community, even if (especially if) the learning involves understanding why my ideas don't work.

First, if you post your personal theory, then the thread will be deleted, as per the forum rules.

Second, we get several people like you on here every week.

Third, physics in this day and age isn't going to progress by lay people dreaming up ideas. That's not the way it works at all. That's just a dead end.

To do anything meaningful in any science these days, you are going to have to put in the years of study. How could it be otherwise?

 

[berkeman]

Welcome to PF, @Mickey 6 -- You should have a look at this PF Insights article that applies to your situation:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/wont-look-new-theory/

 

[sbrothy]

This is just the first paper on arXiv in experiments (High Energy Physics - Experiment):

Dihadron Transverse-Spin Asymmetries in Muon-Deuteron Deep-Inelastic Scattering.

Note especially the number of authors! The complexity of a "simple" experiment have become so broad, and the knowledge so specialized, that the days when a lone genius overturned physics are pretty much over.