I've said it all before but here we go again
backreaction.blogspot.com
I've said it all before but here we go again
1–10 of 196 posts
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#2Wasn't high-temperature superconductivity explained more recently than 1970? Or is "particle physics" not supposed to include that? https://www.quantamagazine.org/high-temperature-superconduct...
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#3Science and everything else humans do is social and cliquey.
There's nothing that brings a group with some power over others together more than being able to agree that someone outside the group should be sidelined or punished.
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#4This is a surprisingly bad headline for an article, giving absolutely no context about what I am supposed to take an interest in as a reader.
This is about a physicist claiming she is being ostracised because she has professional views about particle physics that run counter to the accepted mainstream. She also explains the ideas behind her views (which comes down to "particle physics are no longer useful") and how she is being made the target of particle physicists rage.
Given how particle physics is an area in which expensive machinery is needed (the LHC doesn't come cheap), I wonder how much of this conflict is about the allocation of scientific funding.
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#5Science and everything else humans do is social and cliquey. There's nothing that brings a group with some power over others together more than being able to agree that someone outside the group should be sidelined or punished.
That may be too relativist. The outlines of her critiques of particle physics do not stick in the same way, I think, against astronomy and astrophysics (witness questions being answered by Webb), or against computational climate science (witness new ability to quantitatively attribute part of given storm to global warming), or against machine learning research (lots of hype but lots of value like predicting protein structure).
So saying “well everyone can poo-poo everyone else not in their field” is still true of course, but I think her specific critiques of particle physics are biting (and provoke responses) because her experience allows those critiques to be more accurate and more trenchant.
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#6I don't like article titles which provides me with no information on what I am about to get. This is no worse than clickbait.
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#7This is a surprisingly bad headline for an article, giving absolutely no context about what I am supposed to take an interest in as a reader. This is about a physicist claiming she is being ostracised because she has professional views about particle physics that run counter to the accepted mainstream. She also explains the ideas behind her views (which comes down to "particle physics are no longer useful") and how s…
I agree it’s an unhelpful headline. But it’s also one that is completely consistent with her voice in her YouTube videos on the subject, of which I may have seen too many. I think I even imagined her voice saying it as I read the headline.
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#8This is a surprisingly bad headline for an article, giving absolutely no context about what I am supposed to take an interest in as a reader. This is about a physicist claiming she is being ostracised because she has professional views about particle physics that run counter to the accepted mainstream. She also explains the ideas behind her views (which comes down to "particle physics are no longer useful") and how s…
It is entirely about the allocation.
LHC is a massive jobs program that wastes money and time, perhaps a hundred thousand experiments could fill its place. Large part of the jobs and $$$ go to someone other than a physicist.
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#9I only have a master in (engineering) physics but working with statistical modeling and AI I’ve come to appreciate the “all models are wrong but some models are useful”-mindset, and I’ve started applying that to physical “laws” as well: I no longer see them as some divine truths waiting to be discovered, but more like models of the world that will always be wrong but sometimes useful.
From that point of view what’s happening in physics today is no surprise, but it is a bit depressing: we’ve probably passed the level of complexity where models are useful and are now adding detail that make them less so. I guess you can see it as a form of overfitting, like when less scrupulous AI researchers use the test set for validation.
Re: I've said it all before but here we go again
#10To me it sounds like she is similar to a food/book/movie critic, but instead for particle physics.
Sounds like a good thing. It might shake things up and result in actual progress/change.
(not saying there is not actual progress, but think of it more like swaying some physicists to take a more adventurous road. Who knows where it will lead.)