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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

#81

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

fjfaase wrote: post #78
bjornsing wrote: post #9

I 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 h…

I understand that her critizism goes beyond the models that are usefull, but address the problem that there is a whole industry (wasting money and human resources) of inventing and promoting models that do not solve any urgent 'gap' and/or are not even practically testable.

It's like the entire discipline is getting paid to keep adding epicycles.

So - yes - that's a problem.

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

#83

Post by jmeister »

quantum_mcts wrote: post #48

Quoted post unavailable.

She did publish her criticisms:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys4079

https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1574341154757279746

There is not much market or political pressure for self-correction in academia, it's all reliant on noble behavior of the leaders of the field.

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

#84

Post by defrost »

DocTomoe wrote: post #50
defrost wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

USofA nuclear physcists certainly made such an argument against pursuing the development of nuclear fission weapons, they said such things were beyond the reach of US industry in argument against the intial pleas to do so from the UK MAUD committee and a following letter from Albert Einstein.

They were eventualy persuaded by an Autralian nuclear scientist acting on behalf of the Commonwealth MAUD scientists.

The issue with the endless(?) chase after ever more exotic particles is that every iteration levels up by some magnitude of effort, where nuclear fission weapons were once ( just out of | just within ) reach and subject to furious debate is more the case that ever fresh exotic particles expontentially escalate beyond actual resources.

Once we ring the circumference of the planet and use all the PetaWatts we can currently generate .. what next?

It'll take a while to level up to smashing suns together .. with no guarentee the rabbit hole is halfway plumbed.

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

#85

Post by tayo42 »

ogogmad wrote: post #68
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…

> She also explains the ideas behind her views (which comes down to "particle physics are no longer useful") This comment is in bad faith. She says the problem is lack of progress since the 1970s. She claims that either: The theories produced since then have been falsified, OR that they have been made unfalsifiable (and she names SUSY as an example of the latter). She says that she's a particle physicist hoping for t…

Was the Higgs boson discovery not progress in particle physics? Wasn't that only like 10 years ago?

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

#87

Post by ogogmad »

tayo42 wrote: post #85
ogogmad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She also explains the ideas behind her views (which comes down to "particle physics are no longer useful") This comment is in bad faith. She says the problem is lack of progress since the 1970s. She claims that either: The theories produced since then have been falsified, OR that they have been made unfalsifiable (and she names SUSY as an example of the latter). She says that she's a particle physicist hoping for t…

Was the Higgs boson discovery not progress in particle physics? Wasn't that only like 10 years ago?

Theoretical particle physics. This is yet another comment in bad faith, because you haven't read the article.

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

#88

Post by Tade0 »

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 have a hypothesis: the original, 140-character limit was only useful for hurling insults and hot takes.

Fast forward to today and we have a whole culture built around it, even though the limit is long gone.

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

#89

Post by tayo42 »

ogogmad wrote: post #87
tayo42 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the Higgs boson discovery not progress in particle physics? Wasn't that only like 10 years ago?

Theoretical particle physics. This is yet another comment in bad faith, because you haven't read the article.

Lol what bad faith? How? I read the article and the guardian article yesterday... All I did was ask a clarifying question. The world isn't out to get you

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

#90

Post by arethuza »

dncornholio wrote: post #74
cma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would be very interested in hearing where you got this information from.

That comment isn't completely wrong - the Web was invented at CERN:

https://home.cern/science/computing/where-web-was-born

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