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I've said it all before but here we go again

backreaction.blogspot.com

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Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#21

Post by russdill »

tsimionescu wrote: post #17
russdill wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add that many huge advances have been made by solving what could be described as psuedo problems, most notably special relativity.

That may well be the worse example you could have given, seeing as how special relativity was necessary to reconcile Maxwell's equations with Newtonian mechanics, a major inconsistency in physics. Perhaps a better example could have been GR explaining why gravitational mass and inertial mass happen to be identical (except that GR also solves other real problems - notably, how to apply special relativity in the presen…

If you read the literature of the time, the issue was considered as largely understood. I would highly recommended science and hypothesis by Poincare (1905). You'll see a lot of concepts and equations that you might have assumed came from special relativity or even general relativity.

Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#22

Post by paganel »

> There have also been several instances in the past where particle physicists called senior people at my workplace to complain about me, probably in the hope to intimidate me or to get me fired

You would think people as smart as particle physicists most probably are wouldn't go that low, but here we are.

Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#23

Post by pasquinelli »

perihelions wrote: post #11

Twitter seems so persistently corrosive and unhappiness-inducing. Why is it? The author's complaints are about other physicists' behaviors and attitudes to her writing, but it looks like much of it is specifically about Twitter interactions: about unhappy, defective people on Twitter (smart physicists, even) drawing other people into their miasma. These are people using Twitter with good intentions : smart people who…

"it" didn't find them. they joined twitter for some reasons, they stay on twitter for other reasons.

Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#24

Post by warpech »

perihelions wrote: post #11

Twitter seems so persistently corrosive and unhappiness-inducing. Why is it? The author's complaints are about other physicists' behaviors and attitudes to her writing, but it looks like much of it is specifically about Twitter interactions: about unhappy, defective people on Twitter (smart physicists, even) drawing other people into their miasma. These are people using Twitter with good intentions : smart people who…

I don't know why exactly, but Reddit seems to promote negativity much less so. It seems to me that unpleasant comments get buried by the algorithm and the people's votes.

Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#26

Post by Cthulhu_ »

paganel wrote: post #22

> There have also been several instances in the past where particle physicists called senior people at my workplace to complain about me, probably in the hope to intimidate me or to get me fired You would think people as smart as particle physicists most probably are wouldn't go that low, but here we are.

Are they smart, or do they get to boast about being smart because they work in a niche field? It doesn't excuse dickish, childish or petty behavour. Like, grow up, deal with criticism in a professional fashion, and if you feel like it was an underhanded attack, be the bigger person and all.

Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#27

Post by russdill »

vbarrielle wrote: post #15
russdill wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add that many huge advances have been made by solving what could be described as psuedo problems, most notably special relativity.

In what respect building a theory that explains an experiment that was not consistent with the then prevalent theories ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper... ) can be considered as solving a pseudo problem?

Also I'll add that there were many "outs" for those that supported aether theories such as frame dragging or simply experimental error as those themselves doing the experiments often believed and kept trying to develop more refined experiments to prove the existence of the aether even into the 20s

Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#28

Post by amatic »

shmde wrote: post #6

I don't like article titles which provides me with no information on what I am about to get. This is no worse than clickbait.

For me, the fact it comes from the backreaction blog was enough background information. She is always going on about particle physics.

Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#29

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

russdill wrote: post #12

This reads entirely as "everyone else's approach to problems have been unsuccessful, therefore they should use my approach instead, which also had been unsuccessful solving the same problems"

That's not entirely fair. I've been reading her blog for a long time.

She's basically opposed to maths in physics for the sake of beautiful maths (nature doesn't have to be beautiful in our eyes), and spending vast amounts on money on bigger particle accelerators when there is no particular theory to test.

She wants to see real progress in her field. This doesn't necessarily make her right, but she has valid viewpoints that somewhat threaten the status quo of particle physics.

Re: I've said it all before but here we go again

#30

Post by cma »

frozenport wrote: post #8
DocTomoe wrote: post #4

This 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.

The world wide web, which came out of the LHC project, alone was worth perhaps millions of experiments.
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