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

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

#41

Post by bowsamic »

PeterStuer wrote: post #38
bowsamic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's not an excuse but Sabine definitely "starts it". Just look at her wording in the blog post? She is always combative at the outset. She does not seem to have the kind of people skills required to harshly (and you can't deny it's harsh) and publicly criticise an entire field without upsetting everyone in that field. It takes skill to do that in a good way. Unfortunately for her, the only people who are real…

I have no horse in this race, but ... 1) 'undiplomatic' and 'truth' aren't mutually exclusive. While science is highly social in it's game, it is not in its object. Otherwise the discipline is scientism, not science. 2) even if I knew nothing about the intricacies of counting angles on the head of a pin, I can still have an opinion on its usefulness, lack of verifiability or predictive power. In a software analogy: A…

1) If you aren't diplomatic while telling people their work is stupid and pointless then no one will listen to you. If no one will listen to you you may as well not talk.

2) No, you can't, or at least, your uninformed "opinion" is worthless. To clarify, Sabine's is not worthless, since she is actually a theoretical particle physicist. A lay person's opinion on the matter is worth nothing.

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

#42

Post by iopq »

bowsamic wrote: post #41
PeterStuer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no horse in this race, but ... 1) 'undiplomatic' and 'truth' aren't mutually exclusive. While science is highly social in it's game, it is not in its object. Otherwise the discipline is scientism, not science. 2) even if I knew nothing about the intricacies of counting angles on the head of a pin, I can still have an opinion on its usefulness, lack of verifiability or predictive power. In a software analogy: A…

1) If you aren't diplomatic while telling people their work is stupid and pointless then no one will listen to you. If no one will listen to you you may as well not talk. 2) No, you can't, or at least, your uninformed "opinion" is worthless. To clarify, Sabine's is not worthless, since she is actually a theoretical particle physicist. A lay person's opinion on the matter is worth nothing.

A lay person like a politician can complain they get no return on their investment, for example

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

#43

Post by kgwgk »

cma wrote: post #30
frozenport wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It didn’t came out of the LHC project. (The LHC project was approved in 1994. There had been a decade of planning but that had nothing to do with the creation of the web.)

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

#44

Post by lewispollard »

bowsamic wrote: post #33
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 know it's not an excuse but Sabine definitely "starts it". Just look at her wording in the blog post? She is always combative at the outset. She does not seem to have the kind of people skills required to harshly (and you can't deny it's harsh) and publicly criticise an entire field without upsetting everyone in that field. It takes skill to do that in a good way. Unfortunately for her, the only people who are real…

Well, I agree, unfortunately. Sabine is smart and knowledgeable, but when people try to engage with her in ways that push the boundaries of her knowledge, and especially when that may be some uncomfortable "unknown" position that we have no certainty on, Sabine will usually (in my observations) double down on her position and refuse to even entertain an outside idea, often in a derisive and short way that cuts off any form of dialogue about the issue.

I don't have examples to hand as it's early and I can't be bothered, those are merely my observations based on a handful of interactions I've seen with her on twitter and adjacent spaces (such as podcasts), and should be taken as such.

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

#45

Post by bowsamic »

iopq wrote: post #42
bowsamic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) If you aren't diplomatic while telling people their work is stupid and pointless then no one will listen to you. If no one will listen to you you may as well not talk. 2) No, you can't, or at least, your uninformed "opinion" is worthless. To clarify, Sabine's is not worthless, since she is actually a theoretical particle physicist. A lay person's opinion on the matter is worth nothing.

A lay person like a politician can complain they get no return on their investment, for example

Thankfully politicians don't think of science in terms of "return on investment"

Obviously it must be justified as scientifically important, but they do not expect "something back". Government agencies generally take a more blurry and general approach to R&D, since you cannot predict what comes out of a given experiment. No one predicted an absolute revolution in squeezed light from gravitational wave detection for example. Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer will probably both get funded even though the science case is very minimal and they will cost many billions

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

#46

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

warpech wrote: post #24
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.

Moderators and community standards.

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

#47

Post by vishnugupta »

bowsamic wrote: post #41
PeterStuer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no horse in this race, but ... 1) 'undiplomatic' and 'truth' aren't mutually exclusive. While science is highly social in it's game, it is not in its object. Otherwise the discipline is scientism, not science. 2) even if I knew nothing about the intricacies of counting angles on the head of a pin, I can still have an opinion on its usefulness, lack of verifiability or predictive power. In a software analogy: A…

1) If you aren't diplomatic while telling people their work is stupid and pointless then no one will listen to you. If no one will listen to you you may as well not talk. 2) No, you can't, or at least, your uninformed "opinion" is worthless. To clarify, Sabine's is not worthless, since she is actually a theoretical particle physicist. A lay person's opinion on the matter is worth nothing.

Well said.

As objective as science is it is humans who are doing science, who have emotions, vested interests and so on. So if someone criticises a whole body of people then be prepared -- best case they are completely ignored, worst case they are retaliated. No surprises there.

About opinion; yes sure we all can have it. But please when you offer it then be nice, be open to feedback, be curious. Don't go out all guns blazing.

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

#49

Post by gilgoomesh »

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.

Hacker News’ preference for the page title conflicts here with the fact that this is a personal blog and implies knowledge of the author.

You either know who Sabine Hossenfelder is (theoretical physicist and educator) or you don’t.

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

#50

Post by DocTomoe »

defrost wrote: post #16
frozenport wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And for "all" that we can throw at this kind of program it should be pointed out that perhaps nothing of interest might happen until it scales to energy levels of several of our suns with observations over a scale a little longer than human evolution .. still barely a scratch on the breadth and depth of the universe.

That's the crux with all kinds of fundamental research, isn't it? Everyone considers it a basically useless wild goose change until sometimes, something comes along that completely restructures our understanding of the universe.

I wonder if people made the same argument against funding of research in nuclear fission...

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