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Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

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Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#181

Post by dwaltrip »

tshaddox wrote: post #124
SiempreViernes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard how the military makes a lot of technology that benefits society? Well, it's the same principle for esoteric experimental science: unique requirements leads to new tech being developed and then you can turn around, and if you find some use for some bit of the new tech you can tout it as a "boon to society".

> Have you heard how the military makes a lot of technology that benefits society? I’ve heard that, yes, as well as NASA inventing velcro and zippers and teflon, and all of it has a faint tinge of “not actually true at all” to it.

You don’t see how NASA has pushed technology and science forward? The inspiration it provides for people becoming engineers and scientists is alone probably worth a non-trivial fraction of the US GDP.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#182

Post by vidarh »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #162
moonchrome wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a huge stretch. CERN might be a reason we have the web that looks like it looks today, but we would have something similar with or without CERN.

We might be stuck with compuserve and AOL.

We had the internet before the web, and we had gopher. So we had an open network, the client server model and links. What the web brought was a more flexible protocol and document format. That was important, but there's no way we'd have been stuck with compuserve or AOL.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#183

Post by StanislavPetrov »

robonerd wrote: post #45
photochemsyn wrote: post #12

Well this is kind of funny and I mostly agree so TLDR: > "I’m afraid all of this sounds rather negative. Well. There’s a reason I left particle physics. Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress or for progress in any other discipline of science. The only reason we still hear so much about it is that a lot of funding goes into it and so…

> "Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress [...] But the disciplines where the foundations of physics currently make progress are cosmology and astrophysics [...]" Can anybody explain the relevance of cosmology and astrophysics to societal progress? I'm sure these are very worthwhile fields of study in other respects.. but societal pr…

>Can anybody explain the relevance of cosmology and astrophysics to societal progress?

What is "societal progress" anyway? I'd argue that society is regressing, not progressing. I'd further argue that the worth of your pursuits and endeavors have no relation to the progression or regression of society at large.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#184

Post by DangitBobby »

qsdf38100 wrote: post #111
robonerd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has a popular (and imho pretty good) youtube channel.

I liked her content at first but now I’m tired of the way she implies that "scientists" are lying to us, stealing our money, and that she is here to reveal some truths that are kept hidden from us. After watching any of her video, I don’t feel like I’ve gained any insights, except that I shouldn’t trust "science".

Can you point to any examples where she show distrust of science that was misguided? I felt her video about misleading PR for fusion was very eye opening.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#185

Post by bawolff »

johnny22 wrote: post #168
bawolff wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like everytime her name comes up, its always a bunch of comments like "i don't like her tone" or whatever, but never much in way of substantiated disagreement. I can't help but wonder if she is just speaking uncomfortable truths about things a lot of the hn audience like, where nobody can really come up with a counter per se but there is still a negative gut reaction of i-don't-like-people-challenging-my-world…

I can't say I know enough to say she's "challenging my world view" since i don't necessarily know enough about the subject to have a world view. But I still have a negative reaction to the way she (and others in other fields) does it. Because whether it's true or not, it doesn't tend to get results in changing how things are done.

> Because whether it's true or not, it doesn't tend to get results in changing how things are done.

But at the same time, several comments on this post are talking about how they think her diatribes will have an undue influence on funding decisions, so i doubt that accounts for all the negativity.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#186

Post by SiempreViernes »

vidarh wrote: post #182
davrosthedalek wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might be stuck with compuserve and AOL.

We had the internet before the web, and we had gopher. So we had an open network, the client server model and links. What the web brought was a more flexible protocol and document format. That was important, but there's no way we'd have been stuck with compuserve or AOL.

Do you remember the time when messenger services were open to third party clients? You could actually talk to all your friends using only one app!

Those days have ended.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#187

Post by gus_massa »

simulate-me wrote: post #32

I feel like this was too much a diatribe on why supersymmetry is not a good solution and didn't spend enough time on evaluating what the actual implications are of this result holding.

The problem is that (if confirmed) no one has any clue about how to fix the Standard Model to fix this. It will be a small fix, not a total rewrite like other alarmist articles claim. Anyway, no one know how exactly will be the fix.

So each one propose her/his own pet theory. Supersymmetry? A second Higgs boson? Other ...????

She doesn't like supersymmetry, and rants too much about the people that guess the fix will use supersymmetry.

(I like supersymmetry, but this is not my research area, so she knows much more about this than me about this.)

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#188

Post by paulpauper »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #75
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, she is the Trump of Science. And I do not say that be be demeaning of either. While I do not care for Trump, he knows what he is doing when it comes to showmanship, and so does she.

This comparison strikes me as much more unfavorable than you admit, because while Trump is categorically not an expert on what he purports to be (running a successful business) Sabine is clearly an expert in her field.

tbh, business success and understanding is much more subjective than physics understanding.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#189

Post by TomSwirly »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #59
robonerd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress [...] But the disciplines where the foundations of physics currently make progress are cosmology and astrophysics [...]" Can anybody explain the relevance of cosmology and astrophysics to societal progress? I'm sure these are very worthwhile fields of study in other respects.. but societal pr…

Have you heard how the military makes a lot of technology that benefits society? Well, it's the same principle for esoteric experimental science: unique requirements leads to new tech being developed and then you can turn around, and if you find some use for some bit of the new tech you can tout it as a "boon to society".

> Have you heard how the military makes a lot of technology that benefits society?

No, not since World War 2. Examples?

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#190

Post by edgyquant »

ianai wrote: post #103
tambourine_man wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, I wasn't aware. I'll check it out. I think you mean this: “Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray” https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray/dp/04... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1KFTPqc0nQ I still find the tone off putting, reminds me of the fox and the grapes fable, not sure if it's known to most cultures. Nevertheless, I'll watch the video and reexamine my opinion.

I’m just generally increasingly off put by the internets incessant “quibbling”. This seemingly endless juxtaposition of antithesis to follow any thesis. At some point that becomes just more noise, and that can be used by an agenda. I still found her point valid and interesting and not at all noise. My takeaway is more that new physics might well be out of our energetic grasps until we build some much larger accelerat…

I am as well, because the internet isn’t designed for people to reach an objective consensus about reality nor does it account for the way humans really engage one another naturally. We need a platform designed to encourage people to reach understanding but anyone, myself included, who wants to do this is looking for a profit motive when some things are more important than profit as much as I hate to say it.
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