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Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

math.columbia.edu

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Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#11

Post by particleguy »

rrauenza wrote: post #2

I see the article mentions Sabine Hossenfelder -- I had just started watching some of her videos on YouTube. She's a wonderful presenter. She's also a talented singer and has some music videos on her channel as well.

Her post linked to in the original blog post makes a good point too: Even if your theory is consistent, it is only as valid as the assumed axioms. Consistency, of course, is necessary in any correct theory of physics, but it is not sufficient and definitely does not make the theory "inevitable". Also, if the consistent axioms are underspecified, you get ambiguous and un-falsifiable theories. Her main target has often been multiverse theories (i.e. how would you define a measure over universes/how could you verify a probability distribution over universes).

In her book "Lost in Math" a target of ire has also been supersymmetry, though she dislikes supersymmetry for another reason, namely the fact that it relies too much on justifications of "beauty" to survive all of its empirical short-comings. In her view, the fact that supersymmetry solves the hierarchy problem is more an aesthetic point (and therefore irrelevant), than a mathematical or logical necessity.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#12

Post by yters »

ithkuil wrote: post #9
yters wrote: post #6

Materialists just trying to avoid the implications of Wigner's argument.

What would the implication be? Do you assume that it's absurd to consider that a conscious being is really no different than any other memory equipped machine and thus can be in a superposition state like anything else without necessarily "feel" anything special about it?

Considering no machines are conscious, yes, it is absurd.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#13

Post by conistonwater »

djaque wrote: post #3
rrauenza wrote: post #2

I see the article mentions Sabine Hossenfelder -- I had just started watching some of her videos on YouTube. She's a wonderful presenter. She's also a talented singer and has some music videos on her channel as well.

Be careful with her videos. While she does have some good content, Sabine has an agenda to push with respect to big science and I've seen at least a few of her articles on projects I'm familiar with that are well within conspiracy theory territory. See, for example, her blog post and video on LIGO where she makes it seem like the researchers committed fraud and fabricated the whole detection of gravitational waves. M…

> her video comments are full of climate deniers

Not commenting on the rest because I don't know much about it, but saying that the quality of youtube comments under a video says something about the quality of the video is, I think, quite unreasonable.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#15

Post by AareyBaba »

djaque wrote: post #3
rrauenza wrote: post #2

I see the article mentions Sabine Hossenfelder -- I had just started watching some of her videos on YouTube. She's a wonderful presenter. She's also a talented singer and has some music videos on her channel as well.

Be careful with her videos. While she does have some good content, Sabine has an agenda to push with respect to big science and I've seen at least a few of her articles on projects I'm familiar with that are well within conspiracy theory territory. See, for example, her blog post and video on LIGO where she makes it seem like the researchers committed fraud and fabricated the whole detection of gravitational waves. M…

'she makes it seem like the researchers committed fraud and fabricated the whole detection'

She ended the video saying the opposite [0]. She said she personally does not doubt that the signals are caused by gravitational waves but points out that "in science evidence counts'. They, according to her, haven't conclusively eliminated other terrestrial sources that could cause the signals. [0] https://youtu.be/WWTvNlfkvoI?t=595

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#16

Post by QuanticSausage »

QuanticSausage wrote: post #5

Yes. edit: punctuation

By definition a physics law is inescapable. If that law can be circumvented, then there are deeper physical laws at work. Don't be conceited, nothing can be absolutely relative. If everything is relative and it's an illusion, at least the existence of illusions is objective.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#18

Post by knzhou »

djaque wrote: post #3
rrauenza wrote: post #2

I see the article mentions Sabine Hossenfelder -- I had just started watching some of her videos on YouTube. She's a wonderful presenter. She's also a talented singer and has some music videos on her channel as well.

Be careful with her videos. While she does have some good content, Sabine has an agenda to push with respect to big science and I've seen at least a few of her articles on projects I'm familiar with that are well within conspiracy theory territory. See, for example, her blog post and video on LIGO where she makes it seem like the researchers committed fraud and fabricated the whole detection of gravitational waves. M…

It's worse than that. She made a reasonable blog post highlighting somebody's doubts of the LIGO response, got a reasonable response from LIGO, and acknowledged that she was satisfied with it. That was a perfectly fine scientific dialogue.

Then months later, she made a much more conspiratorially-toned blog post raising no new issues, but which linked only to her original post as proof that "doubts have been raised", not acknowledging the LIGO response, and generally painted scientists as liars. That is just incredibly disingenuous, and I see no motivation behind it besides wanting to fire up a popular audience.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#19

Post by djaque »

AareyBaba wrote: post #15
djaque wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with her videos. While she does have some good content, Sabine has an agenda to push with respect to big science and I've seen at least a few of her articles on projects I'm familiar with that are well within conspiracy theory territory. See, for example, her blog post and video on LIGO where she makes it seem like the researchers committed fraud and fabricated the whole detection of gravitational waves. M…

'she makes it seem like the researchers committed fraud and fabricated the whole detection' She ended the video saying the opposite [0]. She said she personally does not doubt that the signals are caused by gravitational waves but points out that "in science evidence counts'. They, according to her, haven't conclusively eliminated other terrestrial sources that could cause the signals. [0] https://youtu.be/WWTvNlfkvo…

When somebody pretends to be neutral and unbiased and then goes on to give a one sided narrative containing information that they know is false and leaves out the many valid counterpoints to those claims and brands the people who would defend them as morally compromised, then it's pretty obvious what's going on.

Re: Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

#20

Post by djaque »

knzhou wrote: post #18
djaque wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with her videos. While she does have some good content, Sabine has an agenda to push with respect to big science and I've seen at least a few of her articles on projects I'm familiar with that are well within conspiracy theory territory. See, for example, her blog post and video on LIGO where she makes it seem like the researchers committed fraud and fabricated the whole detection of gravitational waves. M…

It's worse than that. She made a reasonable blog post highlighting somebody's doubts of the LIGO response, got a reasonable response from LIGO, and acknowledged that she was satisfied with it. That was a perfectly fine scientific dialogue. Then months later, she made a much more conspiratorially-toned blog post raising no new issues, but which linked only to her original post as proof that "doubts have been raised",…

Yes! To be clear it is the second blog post/video that I am criticizing.
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