Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#71

Post by SiempreViernes » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

Personally I find it amusing Hossenfelder is now invoking the need for learning philosophy of science, given how hostile she's been to it before. See for instance

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-unbearable-ligh...

that begins with: "Philosophy isn’t useful for practicing physicists. On that, I am with Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss who have expressed similar opinions."

Though to be fair, she clarifies that she wishes philosophy wasn't so useless, and that:

"Philosophers in that area are necessarily ahead of scientists. But they also never get the credit for actually answering a question, because for that they’ll first have to hand it over to scientists. Like a psychologist, thus, the philosopher of physics succeeds by eventually making themselves superfluous. It seems a thankless job. There’s a reason I preferred studying physics instead.

Many of the “bad philosophers” are those who aren’t quick enough to notice that a question they are thinking about has been taken over by scientists. That this failure to notice can evidently persist, in some cases, for decades is another institutionalized problem that originates in the lack of communication between both fields."

This is the sort of reasoning that got me reading Hossenfelder in the first place, not the conspiratorial posts she writes now... :(

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#72

Post by lostmsu » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #56

What actually is the foundation of physics? The observations or the theories? We believe, as an assumption (or nearly as a matter of orthodoxy) that there are simple universal laws that govern consistent natural phenomena. One could argue that that is the foundation of our science of physics in that if that wrong, the whole thing falls down. But that has not “progressed” and really should not change... which seems co…

The foundations of physics you are talking about sound more like foundations of scientific method, and are not specific to physics. Most people rightly call the theories and corresponding fundamental physical equations to be fundamentals of physics.

Also, you really wrote a bit too much.

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#73

Post by throw0101a » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #56

What actually is the foundation of physics? The observations or the theories? We believe, as an assumption (or nearly as a matter of orthodoxy) that there are simple universal laws that govern consistent natural phenomena. One could argue that that is the foundation of our science of physics in that if that wrong, the whole thing falls down. But that has not “progressed” and really should not change... which seems co…

> What actually is the foundation of physics?

See Naturalism:

> 1. that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers.[20][21]

> 2. that this objective reality is governed by natural laws;[20][21]

> 3. that reality can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.[20][21]

> 4. that Nature has uniformity of laws and most if not all things in nature must have at least a natural cause.[21]

> 5. that experimental procedures will be done satisfactorily without any deliberate or unintentional mistakes that will influence the results.[21]

> 6. that experimenters won't be significantly biased by their presumptions.[21]

> 7. that random sampling is representative of the entire population.[21]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)

Some other approaches:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science#Current_...

Basically you have to make some metaphysical assumptions before doing science can even get off the ground. If you believe that reality is an illusion (Buddhism? Hinduism?) then you're less likely to be interested in understanding the world's workings. If you think that things occur for capricious reasons (e.g., pagan gods being the cause of things), then there is no reason to ask "why?". If things happen not because of inherit properties but because of God's Will (Occasionalism), then who can understand the mind of God?

I've heard it argued that science mostly developed in (Western) Christendom because it brought together all of the above assumptions under its Aristotelian world view. If you look at the invention of the telescope in ~1600: it spread over the world with-in a couple of decades, but most cultures weren't really interested in it.

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#74

Post by SiempreViernes » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #65

jonbronson wrote: post #52

"...mindless production of mathematical fiction..." This derisive comment betrays the authors own hypocritical stance, claiming physicists are too close-minded, while simultaneously ridiculing the role of advanced mathematics in formulating new physics hypotheses, arbitrarily declaring them mindless fiction.

Nope. The criticism is of searching for new physics by chasing mathematical elegance, instead of trying to explain observations.

Actually, Hossenfelders great fight has been with the concept of "naturalness", a fight that has now been won by the LHC killing off all the theories based on that concept.

And it wasn't ever so simple as "chasing mathematical elegance instead of trying to explain observations", the problem has been that there was a theory that could explain almost perfectly everything within a certain region of physics, but can't easily be extended.

Thus you work on crazy schemes to extend the existing theory (all the sensible ones already having failed), or you are forced to make an entirely new framework, and that takes a lot of work before it's finished enough to even reproduce the results of the limited theory.

If you take the second route, you are very vulnerable to the "chasing mathematical elegance" slander, but it's not like the other guys are doing any better: there aren't actually any unexpected observations that need explaining within the reach of the existing theory.

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#75

Post by DanielBMarkham » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #49

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #26

Good essay. Yes, the sociology and politics of the way we do science is overtaking the reproducible learning aspect. Foundations for many things, like physics, are as solid as necessary for doing a lot of work, but by the time you get to the point where you should be testing, rearranging, and ferreting out flaws in the foundations, you're so indoctrinated into a culture that you don't have the mental tools necessary…

> but by the time you get to the point where you should be testing, rearranging, and ferreting out flaws in the foundations, you're so indoctrinated into a culture that you don't have the mental tools necessary to do the required work. Don't you rather believe that a much simpler explanation is that the incentives and terms for grants are at fault?

I believe I said that. You might be confusing the reason for various sciences to get stuck with the mechanism of how they actually get stuck. The reason is that groups of people have common characteristics over time. As for the mechanism, I'm with you. Always assume the simplest explanation unless there's some evidence otherwise. Missing the "mental tools required to do the work" can be as simple as not being popular in your field of study, or a character unable to get funding or provide the oversight of funding that is necessary for your science to advance. I believe if you understand the reason, you realize that you could very well end up playing whack-a-mole simply by trying to fix the various mechanisms. That would be a tragedy.

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#76

Post by Psyladine » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #71

Personally I find it amusing Hossenfelder is now invoking the need for learning philosophy of science, given how hostile she's been to it before. See for instance http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-unbearable-ligh... that begins with: "Philosophy isn’t useful for practicing physicists. On that, I am with Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss who have expressed similar opinions." Though to be fair, she clarifi…

>Like a psychologist, thus, the philosopher of physics succeeds by eventually making themselves superfluous.

Yes, my doctor too has a thankless job of treating disease & injury in me, where once he succeeds, he has no purpose in life.

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#77

Post by jjmorrison » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #71

Personally I find it amusing Hossenfelder is now invoking the need for learning philosophy of science, given how hostile she's been to it before. See for instance http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-unbearable-ligh... that begins with: "Philosophy isn’t useful for practicing physicists. On that, I am with Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss who have expressed similar opinions." Though to be fair, she clarifi…

I thought the article was not great. But the fact that she's changed her mind on the topic makes me like her a lot more. How can we learn more if we don't change our mind?

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#78

Post by ocfnash » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

celticmusic wrote: post #32

ocfnash wrote: post #8

I dare say the author is right on many points but statements like: "But for all I can tell at this moment in history I am the only physicist who has at least come up with an idea for what to do." make it hard for me to share her point of view, especially as these ideas are not mentioned.

I'm not sure how you missed it, but she did give a recommendation. Attempt to resolve inconsistencies as a means of discovery.

I did not miss this statement; for me this does not constitute a recommendation. Indeed I think many of the researchers of whom she is critical could claim that this is what they're doing.

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#79

Post by dnautics » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #69

7532yahoogmail wrote: post #2

I've read several of Sabine's blogs over several months. I think she has very good ends in mind, has courage to push back on corporate/academic inertia ... such inertia comes with any human organization ... On the negative side she's big on complaining but small on alternatives. She's also a bit too blunt/dismissive of people -- this from a person who also dislikes corporate happy talk. As such it's not clear if she'…

I've followed it for years, but I think lately (last ~year) she's become somewhat clickbait-y in some articles. In particular the posts where she keep highlighting the misguided fools that claim gravitational waves aren't real; she wrote a forbes contribution that made a big deal the LIGO people didn't respond to questions over facebook and saw it as suspicious, and awarded points to the GW denialists as a consequenc…

I believe in gravitational waves, but specifically with LIGO I wish they did a better experiment with the multimodal observations. An easy one would be:. For an [n] month period blind all of the results, and mix them with 3X fake data. Then instruct traditional EM astronomers to search for EM phenomena corresponding to these signals. If only 25% of them correlate, we know the multimodal search is not working.

Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

#80

Post by Redoubts » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #39

ocfnash wrote: post #8

I dare say the author is right on many points but statements like: "But for all I can tell at this moment in history I am the only physicist who has at least come up with an idea for what to do." make it hard for me to share her point of view, especially as these ideas are not mentioned.

She provides one of her ideas immediately prior to that quote: ”I have said many times that looking at the history of physics teaches us that resolving inconsistencies has been a reliable path to breakthroughs, so that’s what we should focus on." And given that she has written at least one book on this general subject, I would guess that idea is elaborated in much greater detail there or on her blog. https://backreac…

"We just need to innovate"

K.