Thoughts on past Coast to Coast AM shows

Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of old Coast to Coast AM radio broadcasts. Here are a few things that bugged me:

On Coast to Coast, host George Noory was interviewing a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who had discovered the equations for the strong and weak nuclear forces. This physicist made the statement that the more physicists learn about nature, the more abstract it is becoming. Nature is at heart an abstraction, he said.

But is nature becoming more and more an abstraction because that’s the way it really is? Or is it becoming more of an abstraction because physicists are descending ever deeper into relying on mathematics? Physicists these days accept nothing unless there are pages and pages of equations to support anything. They come up with their new theories by extending existing equations, or developing new ones. They look to their equations to point the way to new insights. They refuse to think except in mathematical terms. One wonders if they are even capable of thinking in conceptual, non-mathematical ways. Mathematics, especially the complex kind physicists deal with, are extremely abstract. So is it any wonder that our Nobel Prize-winning physicist says that they’re discovering nature is an abstraction? But is it really? Do the equations of physicists bear any resemblance whatsoever to reality?

On another broadcast, Michio Kaku said, in regards to black holes, “that's what the math seems to indicate.” Like I'm supposed to believe that, “Well, if that's what the math seems to indicate, then it must be so.” Who cares what the math seems to indicate? The math seems to indicate that if I take five apples away from three, I'll be left with -2 apples. So I don't have two apples. As if negative apples are something I can actually possess. Why give such authority to math, when we're dealing with speculative theories?

Mr. Kaku also said that the simplest explanation for the Schrodinger's Cat paradox was the many worlds hypothesis.

...what?

How is that the simplest explanation? Let's see...Billions of parallel universes created every second, or that our quantum mechanical theory is wrong. Hmmm. Oh, obviously the many worlds theory is the simplest explanation. Sure. I think the reason scientists are so unwilling to think quantum mechanics is wrong is this: just before he said this, Kaku also said that quantum mechanics makes possible transistors, laser beams, etc. But quantum mechanics does NOT MAKE THESE THINGS POSSBILE!!!! As if, had we not had a theory of quantum mechanics, then these things wouldn't work. Quantum mechanics is an explanation for observed phenomena. It does not make those phenomena possible. We could have these technologies without understanding the why of the processes behind them. The very fact that we DO have these technologies DESPITE our flawed theory of quantum mechanics proves this.