The crisis in physics is not only about physics • Hacker News Board

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#31

Post by kian » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

pxhb wrote: post #21

Barrin92 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As usual with Sabine, this article blatantly misrepresents how science is done and how actual scientists think No offence but she is a trained physicist so she too is an 'actual scientist' by the very definition of the term. And she's completely right about the neglect of economic reasoning. The arguments against blowing 40 billion bucks on an accelerator that will likely not surface anything new is valid. Physicis…

> Almost any material hard metrics you look at like life expectancy, economic growth or whatever you could consider a sign of technological advancement, even tens of billions in investment seem to produce only marginal improvements. We are not living in the golden age of science. As a knit pick, these metrics are all derivatives of science output, and not science itself. For example, detecting gravity waves does move…

Fantastic mondegreen ("knit pick", like picking at stitching with knitting needles, as opposed to "nit pick", which is picking off lice eggs to prevent future annoyance)

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#32

Post by aplanas » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

pxhb wrote: post #21

Barrin92 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As usual with Sabine, this article blatantly misrepresents how science is done and how actual scientists think No offence but she is a trained physicist so she too is an 'actual scientist' by the very definition of the term. And she's completely right about the neglect of economic reasoning. The arguments against blowing 40 billion bucks on an accelerator that will likely not surface anything new is valid. Physicis…

> Almost any material hard metrics you look at like life expectancy, economic growth or whatever you could consider a sign of technological advancement, even tens of billions in investment seem to produce only marginal improvements. We are not living in the golden age of science. As a knit pick, these metrics are all derivatives of science output, and not science itself. For example, detecting gravity waves does move…

> For example, detecting gravity waves does move the needle on any of these metrics

It will surely do. Those achievements are not possible without staggering advances in technology that can be later applied in different fields.

The same technology that we first developed for those expensive colliders is now used in MRI and others diagnosis tools that we have for granted today.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#33

Post by stan_rogers » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

pxhb wrote: post #21

Barrin92 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As usual with Sabine, this article blatantly misrepresents how science is done and how actual scientists think No offence but she is a trained physicist so she too is an 'actual scientist' by the very definition of the term. And she's completely right about the neglect of economic reasoning. The arguments against blowing 40 billion bucks on an accelerator that will likely not surface anything new is valid. Physicis…

> Almost any material hard metrics you look at like life expectancy, economic growth or whatever you could consider a sign of technological advancement, even tens of billions in investment seem to produce only marginal improvements. We are not living in the golden age of science. As a knit pick, these metrics are all derivatives of science output, and not science itself. For example, detecting gravity waves does move…

Speaking of nitpicking, it's nitpicking - literally speaking, removing the eggs of the lice you've probably already removed from someone's hair. It's a fussy activity (of necessity), takes forever, and would probably seem quite an annoying thing to someone (likely a child) who thinks you've already solved their pressing problem and should maybe leave them alone now.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#34

Post by empath75 » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

Will_Parker wrote: post #26

Robotbeat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dark matter, dark energy, quantum gravity.

Consciousness :trollface:

I actually do think that to some extent, studying physics is studying the mind — specifically studying exactly how ‘reality’ differs from our intuition about it. A new discovery in physics is often also a discovery about psychology — for example — relativity exposed our intuition about time and space as incorrect.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#35

Post by pdonis » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #8

As usual with Sabine, this article blatantly misrepresents how science is done and how actual scientists think, and serves mainly to portray herself as the only person in the field capable of rational thought. People in the comments here are picking up on this when it takes an unfair swipe at medicine, but it really applies to the whole article. I am not going to bother doing a line-by-line rebuttal, because I've alr…

> this article blatantly misrepresents how science is done and how actual scientists think

Her factual statements, that every high-energy physics experiment since the 1970s has only confirmed an existing theory (the Standard Model) and that every prediction made by physicists about possible extensions to that existing theory has turned out to be wrong, are correct.

If you think that the underlying cause for these facts is not what she says, what do you think it is?

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#36

Post by YayamiOmate » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:49 PM UTC

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #25

pxhb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost any material hard metrics you look at like life expectancy, economic growth or whatever you could consider a sign of technological advancement, even tens of billions in investment seem to produce only marginal improvements. We are not living in the golden age of science. As a knit pick, these metrics are all derivatives of science output, and not science itself. For example, detecting gravity waves does move…

I think his point is the science would be better served if it focused on solving problems for people, rather than exploring knowledge for the sake of it. But really I think that is the realm of engineering, and science is really just pursuing knowledge for the sake of it. It's impossible to know what will be useful - Richard Feynman thought it would be fun to analyze the flight characteristics of a flying plate. He l…

Reading your 1st sentence made me think "But that's engineering, it's application. Basic science is getting knowledge just for the sake of it."

And you basically followed with it. Basic science is the foundation engineering builds on. I believe 1st semiconductors were a science experiment. Em waves were. Gigantomagnetoresistance was. The internet was an academic curiosity.

It think it's important to blow some of human work on the free thinkers. It moves the popluation forward. Any other comparable scientific and engineering progress I can think was fueled by war.

Imho allocating resources only for acute goals lead to local technological optima. Seemingly puporseless research helps to break out.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#37

Post by baked_ziti » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

> They do not think about which hypotheses are promising because their education has not taught them to do so. Such self-reflection would require knowledge of the philosophy and sociology of science, and those are subjects physicists merely make dismissive jokes about.

Accusing working scientists of being insufficiently reflective on any topic, let alone themselves or the field they work in, seems without merit on its face, and frankly so bizarre as to be silly or even dim-witted. Further, the assertion that only the humanities will save science, or indeed the accusation that scientists are ignorant of the history of science, is a weighty charge that I see no reason to even consider believing.

> They believe they are too intelligent to have to think about what they are doing.

Come on.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#38

Post by adfkbuvasdas » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

kian wrote: post #31

pxhb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost any material hard metrics you look at like life expectancy, economic growth or whatever you could consider a sign of technological advancement, even tens of billions in investment seem to produce only marginal improvements. We are not living in the golden age of science. As a knit pick, these metrics are all derivatives of science output, and not science itself. For example, detecting gravity waves does move…

Fantastic mondegreen ("knit pick", like picking at stitching with knitting needles, as opposed to "nit pick", which is picking off lice eggs to prevent future annoyance)

The eye of my mind saw a pick made knitted out of wool, which was even funnier.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#39

Post by mindcrime » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

jonbronson wrote: post #30

"In the foundations of physics, we have not seen progress since the mid 1970s when the standard model of particle physics was completed." This seems to discount the explosion of work in the foundations of theoretical physics. Most notably the many variations of String Theory. Just because the work has not yet produced experiments that can validate them do not mean they are not progress. It's some of the most exciting…

Just because the work has not yet produced experiments that can validate them do not mean they are not progress.

The argument I've seen expressed about this, is that these advances should more properly be considered advances in mathematics not physics. Or to put it another way "the math works, but we have no idea if it applies to the real world or not."

It's a question for the episemologists, I suppose, whether or not we should consider an advance "real new knowledge" if there's no experimental validation.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#40

Post by ImaCake » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

yummypaint wrote: post #4

There is alot going on in physics besides things directly related to the standard model. Running out of important things to study is of no concern. As a random example check out the microscopy work by recent nobel prize winner Eric Betzig. I think people fail to appreciate the many frontiers that exist in just understanding how matter interracts with itself. The past was exciting because we got to discover new buildi…

I was briefly involved in Single Molecule Biophysics, where microscopes push the limits of what you can do with visible light in order to understand protein behaviour, where I heard the often repeated warning: "the microscope is an experiment itself". This was born out of the incredibly fancy and poorly understood microscope, which was experimental, and it was no guarantee that you were measuring the protein and not some weird light physics effect!