The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal • Hacker News Board

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#21

Post by walrus1066 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

tbabb wrote: post #14

While I don't like this ~guy's~ woman's disdainful, superior tone, I do think his complaint has merit. Physics is notoriously bad at having curiosity about strange, unconventional, or truly novel ideas. I just finished reading What is Real? by Adam Becker-- a history of modern physics-- and am astonished at how aggressively physicists resisted and suppressed "unconventional" interpretations of quantum mechanics (like…

'Physics is notoriously bad at having curiosity about strange, unconventional, or truly novel ideas.'

There is certainly no shortage of these!

What we are short of, are ideas that are:

- falsifiable

- testable by experiment, with current technology

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#22

Post by canhascodez » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #7

I kind of like the model of the turn of the 19th century where you had great geniuses like Tesla who would just get funding to create whatever kind of cool crap they could think of. Are there still any people like that in physics? Legendary scientists/engineers who run there own lab and just make cool stuff?

Tesla is a bad example for almost any given point, but in this case it's relevant to note that he was not a scientist, and his funding model did not work.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#23

Post by titanix2 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #9

Once upon a time, researchers were independently wealthy https://nadiaeghbal.com/independent-research

It was also a time when the whole societal landscape was different: peasants farmed because it was their way to survive and the aristocracy lived on the labor of the former without having to work. What changed now it that almost everybody need "a job" and the attention and time of a lot of smart people is distracted by that. That's also the reason why people professionalize themselves by going to the academia. In my case, I would do research and experimenting new ideas no matter what, but joining an PhD program is the way to put bread on the table.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#24

Post by a_crc » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

ackfoo wrote: post #5

We’re stuck in a paradigm that doesn’t result in any valid fundamental predictions. The idea that running the expanding universe backward makes everything denser and hotter in the past is just dumb. The universe is not like a loaf expanding from dense batter to fluffy bread. Instead, the chaotic vacuum produces, for want of a more accurate concept, particle-antiparticle pairs at random that exert a “pressure” seen as…

That's an interesting idea. Do you have any thoughts on the fact that the structure of the cosmic microwave background radiation is exactly what we would expect it to be if the universe had expanded from a tiny state to its current state?

I'm unwilling to assume it "just randomly looks like that" given that a random distribution on a universal scale seems highly unlikely to show the large scale structures notable in the CMB.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#25

Post by tbabb » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

krastanov wrote: post #18

tbabb wrote: post #14

While I don't like this ~guy's~ woman's disdainful, superior tone, I do think his complaint has merit. Physics is notoriously bad at having curiosity about strange, unconventional, or truly novel ideas. I just finished reading What is Real? by Adam Becker-- a history of modern physics-- and am astonished at how aggressively physicists resisted and suppressed "unconventional" interpretations of quantum mechanics (like…

It is "her" complaint, not "his". This is Sabine Hossenfelder, a well known theorist (mostly for her outreach/popularization work). And you are misrepresenting this"taboo" you are talking about. Thinking about what quantum mechanics "means" is how we got breakthroughs in quantum computing and theoretical computer science. Similarly, there is plenty of exciting deep theoretical work in particle physics beyond the smas…

Oops, my mistake on the gender- Sabine is not a super familiar name. (Still dislike the tone, though; don't care how famous she is).

I also think the taboo has lifted a bit, as it's now possible for mainstream physicists like David Deutsch and Sean Carroll to build their careers on quantum foundations work. But I still think the physics community has a lot of baggage from the second half of the twentieth century to let go of.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#26

Post by empath75 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

tbabb wrote: post #14

While I don't like this ~guy's~ woman's disdainful, superior tone, I do think his complaint has merit. Physics is notoriously bad at having curiosity about strange, unconventional, or truly novel ideas. I just finished reading What is Real? by Adam Becker-- a history of modern physics-- and am astonished at how aggressively physicists resisted and suppressed "unconventional" interpretations of quantum mechanics (like…

> suppressed "unconventional" interpretations of quantum mechanics (like the many worlds interpretation) in favor of the obviously-wrong Copenhagen interpretation.

They’re just interpretations and they all work equally well and produce the same predictions. It makes no sense to call any of them obviously wrong. It’s personal preference.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#27

Post by walrus1066 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

I think this is excessively harsh.

The only guarantees made about the LHC were, that it would prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs Boson.

Believe me, experimental physicists are desperate to find the slightest deviation from the standard model. I spent 2 years on one such 'stab in the dark' rare decay analysis!

The SM's predictions have been tested to a rigor unparalleled in history. It predicts stuff like mass of W & Z bosons, fine structure constant, the measurements of which exceed an accuracy of 1 part per billion in some cases.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#28

Post by nixpulvis » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

gbumakefan wrote: post #8

tylermw wrote: post #3

Love this comment left on the post by Peter Shor (of Shor's algorithm--the algorithm that kicked off the quantum computing frenzy). I assume it's him and not an imposter. "It's not just that scientists don't want to move their butts, although that's undoubtedly part of it. It's also that they can't. In today's university funding system, you need grants (well, maybe you don't truly need them once you have tenure, but…

Except you can’t just go hide in your attic. Everyone is more risk averse than ever as the cost of housing, healthcare, and education relentlessly increase faster than wages.

Reminds me a bit of the expression "desperate times call for desperate measures".

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#29

Post by canhascodez » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

ackfoo wrote: post #5

We’re stuck in a paradigm that doesn’t result in any valid fundamental predictions. The idea that running the expanding universe backward makes everything denser and hotter in the past is just dumb. The universe is not like a loaf expanding from dense batter to fluffy bread. Instead, the chaotic vacuum produces, for want of a more accurate concept, particle-antiparticle pairs at random that exert a “pressure” seen as…

> Mathematics, so useful a tool in the past, cannot describe this situation. The only way to describe this system is by using the system itself; there are no shortcuts.

> Math, philosophy, reason and order are inapplicable because they are only rules-based approximations of a chaotic state.

This is really a superlative cop-out. "My theory is so genius that math, philosophy, reason, and order are insufficient to describe it."

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#30

Post by rossdavidh » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

letitgo12345 wrote: post #12

Well considering that we know everything pretty much about most of everyday physics and new physics requires energies that are almost unreachable and billions of dollars in experimental investment and/or years and decades to collect sufficient data, it's not a surprise at all that foundations of physics progress has slowed. I don't think the physics community is to blame here. Just the nature of reality

I agree, although I think it could be argued that a logical outcome of this fact, is that most (although hopefully not all) of the physicists should go work on other things, like maybe the physics of planet formation, where we are getting new data all the time. Or maybe in areas outside of physics altogether, like the social sciences, where again we have orders of magnitude more data than we once did. If the low-hanging fruit is all gone, move on. That's hard news if you've sunk two or three decades into becoming an expert in a particular niche.