Because the sophons have been sabotaging our experimental results
Came here looking for this comment
But perhaps it is actually because we are located in the Slow Zone.
Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
81–90 of 326 posts
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quantum mechanics is an example. We know how to use QM. It is an amazing theory. But physicists aren't probing QM anymore. Well most aren't. It does such a good job spitting out answers, we don't ask why. There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it. They say don't look at the man behind the curtain. QM is equations that gives good answers but we don't really know why. Something Deeply Hi…
>> But physicists aren't probing QM anymore Physicists are probing the heck out of every theory. However, QM has proven to be _extremely_ reliable, even some 'Gedankenexperimente' by Einstein trying to make it look wrong turned out to be true ('geisterhafte Spukwirkung'). >> There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it. I don't think so. I mean just look at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)…
By probing, I mean looking beyond predictions, the underlying nature of it. The equations of QM give us great results but it is very much an oracle type situation. We ask a question and we get a good answer. But why? Theoretical physicists are told not to look behind the equations and figure more out. Why is it this way?
Let me be frank I am getting way outside my true understanding and parotting what I have read. But if QM the way it is because it fits the many worlds theory? Are we missing another piece to explain it? If you take the simplest version of QM that can solve the problems, you are stuck with many worlds.
These are important areas that colliders aren't going to answer but physicists push new physicists to avoid.
There are other theories but require dressing up the base QM math to eliminate many worlds.
Very few are doing work in this area
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ea…
>"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."
Sounds a lot like overfitting.
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#84I don’t get it. What does she want people to do?
If we've completely chewed over the particle physics data we can currently produce so thoroughly it probably makes sense to stop employing so many theoretical physicists and instead shift resources into areas that are making progress whether that's pure math or biology or what-have-you.
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#85I have become a bit more pessimistic about it the state of discovery. Things have slowed despite the current generation having abundant access to overwhelming compute power and the internet, things that did not exist even 30 years ago. There has never been a better time to collaborate or prove out theoretical models, yet there has been a decrease in needle moving discoveries.
Maybe the internet is an impediment to doing science. It certainly seems to shorten people's attention spans.
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#86I strongly disagree that the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years.
We have been looking really hard for answers to persistent questions. While we have not found affirmative answers, physicists have systematically ruled out option after option after option. We have not yet discovered a unified-theory-of-everything, but we know a whole lot more about what that theory is not.
Furthermore, the past 40 years have seen the emergence of precision cosmology (and the dark-matter/energy paradigm that it entails), the observation and confirmation of neutrino oscillation, the detection of gravitational waves (and the nuclear physics revolution that has begun with GW170817), SN1987A, and so much more.
The coming decades are poised to learn so much more, a lot of it from the stars. GAIA, LISA, updated terrestrial GW detectors, LSST/Rubin, TMT, SKA, and more are all poised to tell us much more about things we don't understand. Particle physics will move forward too, though it is uncertain how quickly. The right breakthrough in wakefield accelerators, though, could be transformative.
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 11
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#87Short version, without the anger and bitterness:
Theoretical physicists' way of working is to put forward baseless mathematical models and build $40bn machines to prove them wrong. They should instead work on theoretical inconsistencies that have been known for a while.
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#88What 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…
Another relevant segment of the Philosophy of science article is the realism/anti-realism dichotomy.
I find it an interesting line of reasoning that the current lack of progress is due to the default naturalistic approach whose sole purpose is finding "truth" vs. a more pragmatic, non-realist approach that would have a much more concrete purpose (e.g. solving particular problems). Truth for the sake of it with no practical experiments seems to have been a dead end.
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#89"...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.
I find it hard to put together her criticism of "chasing mathematical elegance, instead of trying to explain observations" with her criticism of the large and expensive colliders. The way I see it, the whole reason why the expensive experiments are needed is that the current theories do explain all the 'local' and (comparatively) low energy observations that we can do here on earth in ordinary conditions; we know that there are discrepancies between our theories and large scale / high power processes that we can observe in astrophysics, but if we actually want to probe and explore these discrepancies between theory and observations, then we need to make some discrepanct events to look at.... which we can't do without the very expensive experiments that she shuns; e.g. the Higgs boson is not going to show up on a low-power particle accelerator, no matter how smart physics you do.
Re: Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In this case, though, the idea that we need to resolve inconsistencies is the correct diagnosis and shines a light on the incredible failure of the prevailing institutions.
Take for example the idea that a photon is both a particle and a wave. This dogma has been force fed to students for decades without the glaring inconsistency being resolved, or even pointed to as a thing that needs resolving — something is either a particle or it’s a wave; if we observe properties of both, then we need a physical explanation for how one becomes the other. Something can’t be two distinct things. Logically, all I’m pointing out is that “A is A”.
Yet my perspective that there is an unsolved inconsistency here is considered heretical. “Shut up and calculate” is the reigning dogma.