Great Explanations

That is pretty awesome, but I also don't think it's necessary to think about light speed to solve that problem. Anyone who spends a lot of time debugging networking problems knows that 1ms is unreasonably fast for any communication with a machine more than a couple router hops away, even if it's physically nearby.

I see that this is getting upvoted, but your example sounds like someone who realizes that a device doesn't work because it's not plugged in, and then makes a self-satisfied comment that his knowledge of electromagnetic theory usefully controlled his anticipations in this situation.

In other words, it's about simple conventional nuts-and-bolts technical knowledge, not an improvement on such knowledge brought by more advanced understanding of anything. There's no way someone who works in network administration wouldn't know that a "<1ms" ping coming from around the world is anomalous.

This great story is related.

However, I don't think any such simple insights will move you any close to understanding either QM or relativity

Then, like Luke, I must observe that your definition of 'understanding' is completely incompatible with mine. Actually, no. I think we've moved beyond that now. You are just wrong.

Look at the first example for a start. That claim is based on understanding of (part of) relativity. But that example was only included coincidentally. May I remind you that the examples you demanded were for physics in general (and, for that matter, that the demand was in response to professed understanding of evolution.)? Space considerations stopped me before I also threw in predictions about "two really good clocks, one of which you fly around really fast!", the fellow who gets into a rocket and outlives his great grandchildren and what happens when you shoot not very many very small things through very small slits.

As for your assertion about the implications of QM on the questions of personal identity, this looks even more as a belief that you've taken on faith, backed by sheer rationalizations. (Again, regardless of its actual merits when the real arguments are considered -- I'm not saying that it's incorrect, merely that you don't have any good reason to believe either way if your grasp of the issue is entirely non-mathematical.)

Leaving aside for now the question of understanding of Copenhagen validity but as for the specific claim about knowing enough contemporary physics to understand the implications to personal identity your rejection is just nonsense. You most certainly can gain enough knowledge to make conclusions about personal identity without knowing math.

Ask an impressive physicist:

"Dude are, like, atoms and combinations thereof in any way uniquely identified?"

He says "nah".

You say "kk"

From there you have some utterly trivial philosophizing to do to reject ideas of "same atoms for personal identity". This is a trivial question and basically relies on not being philosophically incompetent while also checking with a physicist just in case some relevant, surprising and bizarre phenomenon has appeared recently at incomprehensibly high levels of physics.

if you have no independent knowledge of these areas as a solid foundation for your opinions about them, it is reasonable to conclude that you have let your enthusiasm for the underlying philosophy of these sequences lead you to an illusory "understanding" that is in reality sheer rationalization.

I haven't read the quantum physics sequence on Less Wrong. I got my physics from lots of other sources.

if you really believe you understand them in some "non-mathematical" way, you are fooling yourself... it seems inconceivable that someone could gain such understanding in a "non-mathematical" way

Are we just disagreeing about the meaning of "understand" or something? Are you using the word "understanding" in an unusual way, such that there is no such thing as non-mathematical understanding?

Also, at one point you seem to say that I can't have evidence about whether Copenhagen is correct or incorrect without understanding all the equations involved? That seems too obviously false; I assume I'm misunderstanding you?

(They may well be wrong, to be sure, but I don't think you have any real evidence either way.)

Sociological data about trends in opinions, the opinions of newly tenured people, about the opinions of people in the newest branches of the field, etc. don't count as evidence?

I agree that some of Vladimir's comments can apply to both meanings of "explanation," I was just trying to avoid conflating the two. I also think that most readers of pop-sci books generally wouldn't be able to tell if something's wrong, because most readers don't check multiple sources and use Google Scholar to find the papers being cited.

What I'm disagreeing with is Vladimir's original claim that "it's impossible to gain any real understanding of physics from such materials."

Almost all of the Sequences consist mostly of helpful explanations of concepts without going into full mathematical detail. I gave additional examples of non-mathematical explanations that improved my understanding in ways that informed my actions here, and wedrifid gave his own examples here. I gave one more here.

Because these all seem to be instances of improving someone's understanding of some idea in a useful way without them acquiring full mathematical understanding of that idea, I wondered if perhaps Vladimir was using an unusual definition of "understanding" such that for him "understanding" or "real understanding" only referred to detailed mathematical understanding. But in that case his original claim that "it's impossible to gain any real understanding of physics from [materials that don't impart a detailed mathematical understanding]" is basically tautological, and doesn't undermine the rationale for the original post ('Great Explanations').

Vladimir also seemed to claim that I can't have evidence about whether Copenhagen is correct or incorrect without understanding all the equations involved. But that seems obviously false, so I asked if I had misunderstood him.

My best guess: the comment seemed generally rude and "talking-down".

While I can see the motivation for typing "E-X-P-L-A-N-A-T-I-O-N", it seems to me like it would seem to people as somehow mocking, especially on a cursory read.

I didn't downvote that comment, but might have, if I followed the conversation live. My thinking when I read it was: "He can't possibly really think that it is a homonym! So, for the sake of the argument he arrogantly (because that all caps spelling does show off some arrogancy) distorts reality and expects us to accept it?!"

But, now I see that this is too much of a correspondence bias. You probably just wanted to show that "explanation" has two different meanings, but in the head of the discussion just found a very bad example for your argument. Because "explanation" does have two slightly different meanings and this is relevant here. But let's be clear, these two meanings are close and in no way homonyms (as opposed to what you stated and what you clearly tried to present with the "fluke" example).

So, I think this comment of yours is bad and the downvotings were valid.

Edit: I didn't read the wikipedia article you linked when I wrote the above. I only ever heard/saw "homonym" being used in the sense of "two identically spelled and pronounced words with different meanings and of unrelated origin"; what Wikipedia calls "true homonym". In the more general sense the two "explanations" might qualify as homonyms (I am definitely not a linguist). But, your "fluke" example strongly indicated the more narrow (and, I think, more common) meaning. So, my reasons still stand.