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Fake Physics

math.columbia.edu

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Re: Fake Physics

#51

Post by wyager »

Animats wrote: post #5

This is a frustrating era for physicists. In the mid 20th century they were like gods, giving the world the atomic bomb and the semiconductor. Today many branches of physics are stuck. The cosmologists can't find "dark matter", and aren't even sure it's necessary. The string theorists have pretty but un-testable theories. The fusion guys can't make fusion power work. Quantum mechanics and general relativity still hav…

> The multiverse approach (the universe forks at every quantum event, and all those universes continue to exist, forking further) is the default you end up at given what we know now.

No, this is absolutely wrong. There are entire families of solutions to the measurement problem and we have no firm idea which one is correct. There are even multiple mechanisms to get behavior that looks like this but is based on very different, often less weird, principles (see e.g. Einselection).

> It means most of the fundamental constants are arbitrary, for one thing.

No, this is wrong and unrelated. You're confusing two ideas. One is where the universe "forks", as you say, during eigenstate collapse, the other is that there is a space of universes with different physical constants. These are unrelated. Eigenstate collapse doesn't change physical constants.

Re: Fake Physics

#52

Post by wrsh07 »

I think this is an important data point given the powerful organizations that benefit from discrediting academics (especially in the current political climate) -- some of this is happening in climate research, and if it's also happening in physics that matters.

All of this reminds me a bit of the novel Three Body Problem where certain branches of academia (including hard sciences) are discredited as "too reactionary" or "reactionary philosophy."

The motives in some cases are clear: just as tobacco companies benefitted from the status quo, so now do oil companies.

However in physics, the motives may be more nuanced (and more of a territory capture that I don't understand).

Don't doubt for a second that legitimate climate researchers will be accused of doing fake research ... most likely within the year. I'm not sure what the physics community can do besides joining together against this and continually pushing back.

Let's stay transparent. Science is well-defined and important.

Re: Fake Physics

#53

Post by wrsh07 »

bvv wrote: post #26

As usual I think that Woit's blog post is unnecessarily polarizing. If you decide to read his post then I would recommend you also read the excellent comment by Marty Tysanner on the same page. Also, sigh. If you dig deep into the dark corners of the internets then I am sure that you can find fake anything. Focus on the beauty and the truth, people. For example: [1] LIGO continues to work beautifully, as evidenced by…

We need to make sure we're not ignoring motives we don't understand. That happened in the Republican primary, the general election, and perhaps now, too.

Don't just look away from a very real concern.

Re: Fake Physics

#54

Post by eliasbagley »

scottlocklin wrote: post #50
reikonomusha wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this assessment is magnificently incorrect. Over the past 30 years there have been very important experiments, many of which have reached the mainstream. This includes anything from the Higgs experiments to the LIGO experiments. What about things closer to the HN crowd, like communications infrastructure like the Internet? The discovery of the transistor didn't bring an iPhone overnight. Same with many other…

Higgs and LIGO are big nothingburgers compared to anything that happened in physics in any given year between 1910 and 1950 or so. Meanwhile "physicists" spend their careers doing piffle like writing programs for quantum computers that arguably will never exist in the corporeal world. Yeah, I coulda been one of those guys: I even had a pretty good idea for an imaginary QC platform and a position in a major research i…

Why is it stagnating though? Lack of talent? Lack of funding? Is it that all the lowest hanging fruit is gone and the problems are becoming intractable to solve?

Re: Fake Physics

#55

Post by wrsh07 »

tbabb wrote: post #49

Interesting; I didn't know that Nautilus was backed by a religious organization, but in retrospect I am not surprised at all. They get a lot more credit and traction here than they deserve. Nautilus is usually full of bull but pretending to be intellectual.

I like a lot of Nautilus articles, but like you didn't know who funded it. (Ie Templeton)

That's important to know as a critical thinker.

Re: Fake Physics

#56

Post by grkvlt »

bvv wrote: post #26

As usual I think that Woit's blog post is unnecessarily polarizing. If you decide to read his post then I would recommend you also read the excellent comment by Marty Tysanner on the same page. Also, sigh. If you dig deep into the dark corners of the internets then I am sure that you can find fake anything. Focus on the beauty and the truth, people. For example: [1] LIGO continues to work beautifully, as evidenced by…

> very accessible overview of particle physics in 2016

In general, Symmetry is an excellent site; they describe themselves as "An online magazine about particle physics" and are funded by the US Department of Energy, via Fermilab and SLAC. Recommend having a closer look http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/

Re: Fake Physics

#58

Post by pducks32 »

Animats wrote: post #5

This is a frustrating era for physicists. In the mid 20th century they were like gods, giving the world the atomic bomb and the semiconductor. Today many branches of physics are stuck. The cosmologists can't find "dark matter", and aren't even sure it's necessary. The string theorists have pretty but un-testable theories. The fusion guys can't make fusion power work. Quantum mechanics and general relativity still hav…

Oh jeez you have no understanding on physics in any regard.

Re: Fake Physics

#59

Post by mlechha »

Animats wrote: post #5

This is a frustrating era for physicists. In the mid 20th century they were like gods, giving the world the atomic bomb and the semiconductor. Today many branches of physics are stuck. The cosmologists can't find "dark matter", and aren't even sure it's necessary. The string theorists have pretty but un-testable theories. The fusion guys can't make fusion power work. Quantum mechanics and general relativity still hav…

It's been a great era for condensed matter physics though. And the recent revolutions in nonequilibrium thermodynamics (fluctuation theorems and generalizations of the second law) promise an exciting time ahead!

Re: Fake Physics

#60

Post by effie »

indolering wrote: post #45

I'm surprised he didn't mention pilot wave theory. Cranks love it because it doesn't violate the notion of local realism and it has infected respected popular-science publications. But any "interpretation" of quantum mechanics that leads to violations of causality should be treated as illegitimate until proven otherwise.

Also respected scientists like it because it dissolves many pseudoproblems of the orthodox quantum theory like the measurement problem and because it doesn't require rethinking basic scientific philosophy like Copenhagen did. I do not think it is perfect replacement for the orthodox quantum theory, but what do you mean 'it leads to violations of causality'?
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