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Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

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Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#31

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

lazide wrote: post #13
farts_mckensy wrote: post #12

Theoretical physics are theoretical; that seems to be the crux of her problem. And in that light it makes sense that she's become an influencer who makes content instead of someone who devotes most of their time to advancing the science. Yes, oftentimes people will be paid to work on problems, and they'll end up in a cul-de-sac. That will be the case for the majority of the field in the case of something like quantum…

[flagged]

How is it "intentionally untestable"? I get that it is practically untestable, but as far as I know, there are people working to try to find some possible tests.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#32

Post by mhh__ »

Shawnecy wrote: post #27
farts_mckensy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could've been said of atomic theory, neutrinos, gravitational waves, the higgs boson, cmb radiation, plate tectonics, and quantum mechanics at various points in time.

Weren't those all arrived at from a series of falsifiable predictions? What does string theory even predict that can be tested?

As a non string theorist my understanding was that string theory actually makes quite a lot of empirically verifiable statements, just that those statements are only interesting at either never or extremely high energies.

I think ppl are asuming that sting theory comes from the meme about turning 1+1 = 2 into some massive integro differential equation. The world is rarely so simple.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#33

Post by farts_mckensy »

Shawnecy wrote: post #27
farts_mckensy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could've been said of atomic theory, neutrinos, gravitational waves, the higgs boson, cmb radiation, plate tectonics, and quantum mechanics at various points in time.

Weren't those all arrived at from a series of falsifiable predictions? What does string theory even predict that can be tested?

You are making it sound as though string theorists are asserting some kind of flying spaghetti monster theory. Do you think these people are not genuinely interested in advancing science? That's an ad hom fallacy. There is a difference between a hypothesis being conceptually unfalsifiable and a hypothesis that is incredibly difficult to test from a practical standpoint, or impossible with present energy constraints.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#34

Post by m101 »

I've said this before in not the same words, and I am always downvoted here on hackernews: people need to understand theory of knowledge before they understand science. Physics and physicists are the worst offenders.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#35

Post by btilly »

farts_mckensy wrote: post #23
Shawnecy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Consistently untestable and unfalsifiable claims for decades has to be seriously questioned at some point, and I think we're well beyond that point. This is especially true for string theory. I'm particularly fond of how Angela Collier laid out the timeline of string theory in her video on it[0] as well as the consequences that science communication is now facing as a result. [0] = https://www.youtube.com/wa…

The same could've been said of atomic theory, neutrinos, gravitational waves, the higgs boson, cmb radiation, plate tectonics, and quantum mechanics at various points in time.

That statement is only true for a few of the things on your list..

Yes, it took a couple of decades to test the existence of neutrinos. But, for example, general relativity was successfully tested within 5 years of being published. Gravitational waves were a prediction that took decades before we could test them, but the theory itself had lots of other verifications.

To date string theory has had many predictions that leads to failed tests. But not a single successful test in its favor.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#36

Post by lostmsu »

skhunted wrote: post #28
lamontcg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't have anything to do with her criticism of Loop Quantum Gravity, and is precisely the derailing of the topic that dang is asking you to avoid.

When people don’t have expertise in an area they are prone to making really dumb comments. She has a history of this on other topics. As such I think it’s appropriate to mention so that people can evaluate how much weight/time they want to spend on her video and views.

Do you have expertise in the area of deciding source trustworthiness or relevancy in certain fields?

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#37

Post by Koshkin »

farts_mckensy wrote: post #12

Theoretical physics are theoretical; that seems to be the crux of her problem. And in that light it makes sense that she's become an influencer who makes content instead of someone who devotes most of their time to advancing the science. Yes, oftentimes people will be paid to work on problems, and they'll end up in a cul-de-sac. That will be the case for the majority of the field in the case of something like quantum…

> enough of these people

There’s more than enough already. (And, historically, you only need less than a dozen.)

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#38

Post by ants_everywhere »

Koshkin wrote: post #37
farts_mckensy wrote: post #12

Theoretical physics are theoretical; that seems to be the crux of her problem. And in that light it makes sense that she's become an influencer who makes content instead of someone who devotes most of their time to advancing the science. Yes, oftentimes people will be paid to work on problems, and they'll end up in a cul-de-sac. That will be the case for the majority of the field in the case of something like quantum…

> enough of these people There’s more than enough already. (And, historically, you only need less than a dozen.)

> (And, historically, you only need less than a dozen.)

This seems initially like a pretty outlandish claim to me. Could you clarify what you're referring to here?

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#39

Post by btilly »

ricksunny wrote: post #11
btilly wrote: post #4

The fundamental reason for this is simple. Humans are prone to cognitive dissonance. Meaning, we do absurd things to avoid painful thoughts. And anything that questions our sense of identity, is a painful thought. So if my self-image is, "I've advanced our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality," then the idea that my contributions weren't useful becomes painful. So we avoid thinking it, challenge people…

This is beautifully articulated. And reinforces my general below-the-line (layperson) fear about the state of physics today (as reinforced ofc by the likes of Sabine Hossenfelder & Eric Weinstein).

Thank you for the compliment.

I've been working on how to formulate that idea clearly for a while. It is a problem that goes well beyond physics. For example I believe that the same cognitive error is behind the fact that experts do significantly worse than chance in actually predicting the world, and the more certain the expert sounds, the less likely they are to be right. See https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/d... for data demonstrating that fact.

Depressingly, this means that we consistently put public policy in the hands of people who are demonstrably incompetent.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#40

Post by ants_everywhere »

My understanding of the situation (which may be wrong, in which case please let me know) is that physics is stuck at a local optimum.

There are two obvious ways to get out

(1) Surprising physical observations, or

(2) Mathematical advances

Way (1) is what kicked off quantum mechanics. Way (2) is what kicked off Newtonian mechanics.

I see string theorists and loop quantum gravity people as working on (2). Their models are mathematically interesting and aren't totally understood from a mathematical perspective. But they're different enough that studying them may break the impasse.

I see (1) as largely limited by the budgets and technology needed to build things like particle accelerators and spacecraft.

For (2) you have to decide whether to only explore mathematics that defines physical reality, or whether to also allow exploration of non-physical systems. For example, you might explore a universe that is almost physical but has time machines. Restricting the search space to only physically realistic systems is a significant constraint, so there's a debate to be be had about how much weight to give it.

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