3091: Renormalization
| Renormalization |
 Title text: Applying renormalization to bullies successfully transformed Pete & Pete's Endless Mike into Finite Mike. |
Explanation[edit]
|
This explanation is incomplete: This page was created by DIRAC'S PRE-REPENTANT BULLY. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
The term renormalization refers to a mathematical toolkit used in quantum field theory and other domains of physics. The concept is mathematically and intuitively complex, and controversial. Briefly, renormalization techniques permit the replacement of terms in equations that represent postulated initial attributes of a thing (e.g., mass and charge values of an electron) with terms that reference attributes observed experimentally. Renormalization is presumed to account for unobserved interactions among the things in the system being studied that lead to the state of the renormalized thing being different from what was initially postulated, and it can therefore be considered justified and not a fudge factor. Equations with renormalized quantities reach finite solutions that can be used to do additional work, whereas those without renormalized quantities reach non-finite (infinite) solutions that cannot.
Many common examples of calculations that require renormalization are those related to self-interactions of particles. For example an electron may interact with itself by emitting and re-absorbing a (virtual) photon. A naive calculation of the “probability” of this event produces an infinite result. Renormalization is used to extract a meaningful finite answer. We find that the true state of an electron at any given time includes a component which corresponds to this emission-and-reabsorption process. There are many interpretations of these results, but one common description is that the electron is repeatedly emitting and reabsorbing a photon, i.e. “hitting itself”.
The comic invokes the commonplace 'stop hitting yourself' trope, in which the bully (Cueball) grabs a body part of the victim and perpetrates an assault with it, while claiming that the victim is engaged in self-harm. Use of this trope references the self-interactions that renormalization is accounting for. Megan's "... Wait" represents her starting to get the idea of renormalization, inspired by Cueball's bullying of the electron, as described in the caption.
Another possible interpretation is that the earliest renormalization techniques amounted to attempts by physicists to "bully" electrons into accepting self-descriptions that gave the physicists the answers they sought.
The title text refers to the character Mike Hellstrom, nicknamed Endless Mike, from the 1989 TV sitcom The Adventures of Pete & Pete. It links back to renormalization, because renormalization lets you remove infinities to get finite solutions, so in that sense it would turn Endless Mike into Finite Mike.
Transcript[edit]
- [Cueball poking an atom. Megan looks at it with a hand on her chin]
- Cueball: Hey, electron!
- Cueball: Stop hitting yourself!
- Cueball: Stop hitting yourself!
- Megan: ...Wait.
- [Caption below the panel:]
- Renormalization actually started out as an effort to bully electrons.
Add comment 
Create topic (use sparingly) 
Refresh Discussion
It's been an hour. Does nobody know what this is about? Are we all dumb? Pgn674 (talk) 22:43, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
I'm not certain. Renormalisation is a concept from quantum field theory in which coupling constants take different values at different scales. I believe the intuition for this is that at longer scales, particles are shielded by a cloud of virtual particles which spring into 'existence' around them and take some of the apparent strength out of the interaction. The best I've got is that somehow this is like an electron hitting off of other imaginary electrons? Maybe the old, since a photon (another editor here: of course you meant to say "positron"... 162.158.74.68 - thank you, good catch 172.69.79.164) can be interpreted as an electron going backwards in time, there might only be one electron in the universe, it's just bouncing back and forth a lot? But in this case any electron interacting in any way with another electron would be 'hitting itself', so I don't see how that would be a renormalisation specific thing. 172.70.58.112 22:52, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Wait, I was dumb. Renormalisation is a self interaction, the interpretation in terms of virtual particles is irrelevant. I was over thinking it. Interacting with itself => hitting itself, simple. 172.70.58.150 22:59, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Can someone who understands renormalisation better than I add the bit about self-interaction to the explanation? I did not get that at ALL from the linked Wikipedia page (although I did get the Endless Mike reduction joke from it. 162.158.62.106 03:52, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
- I feel you. It seems like the site itself feels you, the topic is so heavy (maybe it will let me in this time). FWIW, my digging around led me here and, especially, here. 162.158.42.88 04:50, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
I'm confused about how the joke works with bullying. My best guess: he's hitting the electron whilst telling it to stop hitting itself, so the incongruity becomes cruelty. Is this a common tactic for bullies? 172.69.68.121 07:59, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
- Not sure how common, but it's a trope, pretty much a staple "jocks vs. nerd" establishing scene in any 'high school' setting in film or TV, at times.
- The idea is that the strong and imposing bully grabs the weak and meek bullied's wrist(s) (perhaps even to prevent blows, albeit mostly just annoying and ineffectual, from the victim) and then uses their superior strength to wrest the target's arms so as to strike themselves, accompanied by taunts such as "why are you hitting yourself..? You shouldn't be hitting yourself...", punctuated by the enforced 'self hits'. More towards the "play-tap" range of actual strength, either for practical reasons (they're more like "one-inch punches" than what they'd inflict, directly in a 'proper fight', and the recipient isn't going to try to help any hit from their own hand) or because its intended more as humiliation than actual intent to physically cause great pain (though lesser pain would be part of the 'game').
- It's a performative thing, probably done more to impress the bully's hanger-ons (and/or further embarass the target in front of any other onlookers, especially the girl that the bully thinks it'll impress/dissuade from associating with the target). They may even be some troll logic involved, in that they can try to claim "they never hit 'em", should authority figures get involved (even be witness to it), though with variable chances of how well that denial is accepted.
- Not that I've ever seen (or experienced or, of course, enacted) it IRL, but I'm sure I've seen the likes in many on-screen situations, at least 'of an era'. If there isn't a TVTropes page, for otz then I'd be surprised, but I'm not going down that rabbit hole just now, so here's just my own understanding. 172.69.224.200 15:51, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
From what I, who does not have a physics degree, can tell, renormalization lets you avoid certain infinite sums or products or something that come up when doing calculations with certain interactions between particles. Based on the comic, I infer that at least one situation that produces an infinite series is the interaction of an electron with itself. So renormalization lets you take the sum of all self-interactions of an electron and turn it into a constant, or discard it entirely, or something like that? Can someone smarter than me tell me if I'm getting this right? 172.71.151.56 20:33, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
- I might have a degree in physics, but our education on quantum stuff was very weak. My vague impression of renormalization was that equations explain behavior by assuming that for a given particle (like an electron) various virtual particles exist in superposition but many of their interactions cancel out. As someone above said, the particle is thus "interacting with itself" a nigh-infinite number of (theoretical) times. If this simpler conception of renormalization is what Randall is going for, I think the current explanation may be reaching for a more technical (but esoteric) form of the joke. -- Dextrous Fred (talk) 17:21, 21 May 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Add comment
