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Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

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Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#41

Post by btilly »

notamy wrote: post #7
nabla9 wrote: post #2

John Carlos Baez thinks Sabine has a point. https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/113285631281744111 >Despite the silly clickbait title of this video, Sabine says a lot of interesting stuff in it: her criticism of claimed deviations from Lorentz invariance in loop quantum gravity is about as good as you'll get from anyone who hasn't actually worked on loop quantum gravity. I worked on it for about 10 years, and the…

> John Carlos Baez For those like me who didn't know, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Baez > John Carlos Baez (/ˈbaɪ.ɛz/;[2] born June 12, 1961) is an American mathematical physicist and a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR)[3] in Riverside, California. He has worked on spin foams in loop quantum gravity, applications of higher categories to physics, and applied category th…

He is better known within physics as the author of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics, an archive of which is at https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/TWF.html. His more current blog is available at https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#42

Post by drdeca »

mhh__ wrote: post #32
Shawnecy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve heard that it also predicts at very low precision, some values that are practically measurable, and, unsurprisingly for how little precision these predictions have, these predictions are correct (I.e. the experimental results are within the predicted range).

(Or, maybe “a prediction” rather than “predictions”? I only heard about one, and I forget what it was.)

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#43

Post by lagpskd »

> What's even more insane is that the only two people I can think of who have pushed back against this are Peter Woit and Eric Weinstein, and both of them are trying to sell you their own theory of everything

Sabine forgot Stephen.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-t...

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#44

Post by drdeca »

farts_mckensy wrote: post #33
Shawnecy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think the mistake made is exactly an ad hom fallacy? I agree with the rest of your comment though.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#45

Post by jancsika »

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…

> 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.

Only if one believes the logical fallacy that the dependent steps of a process of elimination weren't useful.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#46

Post by btilly »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #38
Koshkin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I'm not the one you're replying to, but the claim seems very reasonable to me.

Fundamental breakthroughs in how to think about scientific subjects usually are created by fairly small groups of people. A lot more people are involved in popularizing it, and then filling out the details. But it is rare for it to start with a large number of people.

For example that list in the case of quantum mechanics was Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Erwin Schrödinger.

You can think of this as the scientific version of the 2 pizza rule.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#47

Post by btilly »

drdeca wrote: post #42
mhh__ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve heard that it also predicts at very low precision, some values that are practically measurable, and, unsurprisingly for how little precision these predictions have, these predictions are correct (I.e. the experimental results are within the predicted range). (Or, maybe “a prediction” rather than “predictions”? I only heard about one, and I forget what it was.)

I am aware of no case where it clearly made an advance prediction of any behavior that later turned out to be true.

I'm aware of quite a few where they managed to "predict" something we already knew.

That said, they've made so many "predictions" that I'm sure that some likely worked out by sheer coincidence.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#48

Post by Gooblebrai »

hggigg wrote: post #30
nabla9 wrote: post #2

John Carlos Baez thinks Sabine has a point. https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/113285631281744111 >Despite the silly clickbait title of this video, Sabine says a lot of interesting stuff in it: her criticism of claimed deviations from Lorentz invariance in loop quantum gravity is about as good as you'll get from anyone who hasn't actually worked on loop quantum gravity. I worked on it for about 10 years, and the…

30 years ago I spoke to a fairly well known and regarded physicist who said something rather interesting along the same lines. Quoting as accurately as I can "physics looks sexy from the outside due to some celebrities but inside it's mostly worse than anyone wants to admit." . He also suggested I go and study mathematics instead because at least there will likely be some applications for it. I did and I am glad I di…

Sounds like this criticism would be valid for fundamental physics but there are many other physics fields with experimental results that become technology.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#49

Post by feoren »

m101 wrote: post #34

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.

If by "theory of knowledge", you mean they need to have read a bunch of philosophical musings on epistemology, then I strongly agree with the downvoters, because that's utter nonsense. If you mean anything else by that, then you're being way too vague to contribute to a technical discussion, so again I agree with the downvoters. Try defining what you mean by "theory of knowledge" and explain why you think that's required to "understand science" (and you might want to explain what you mean by that too) and I suspect you'll see a lot fewer downvotes.
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