Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

Oh, yes, I meant predict a value we had already measured at the time the "prediction" was made. I should have made that clear in my original comment. I would add it now except that the editing time has run out. Maybe I should have said "postdicted".

Actually, I think the value might have been something like, the electron mass? Or something like that. (Which, obviously, had been measured before string theory made a "prediction" of it.)

> Well, if you want a simple argument from authority, John Carlos Baez's confirmation that she's right is pretty good. If you want a better one, she very rarely gets any of her facts wrong.

It is not what I want. I read the linked comment by John Carlos Baez[1] and do not agree with the wording of your conclusion "that she's right". There is some alignment, but you have removed any nuance.

> Again, that would be a very different video. In 10 minutes for a general audience, you have to make decisions about what you will and will not cover. It's not a valid criticism of her that she made a choice. Particularly in a video that she disclaims as a personal rant.

My specific comments are about why I do not find value in Sabine's video not about not about a general audience. The over all arch is a point that I do not find her videos or the discussions in the comments valuable on hacker news in response to Dang's comment:

> so I think we can give this thread a second chance

[2]

So my comments are not about how she decides to reach her general audience.

I think this covers some of your pervious comments too.

> This is not according to her, this is according to an argument that comes from Lee Smolin.

"What I said in my pervious video" is what she said in her video. So this idea may not have originated from her, but my word choice is correct by saying according to her. This does no assert she came up with the idea or is 100% sure of it.

> A region of space that has a specific amount of area will, according to special relativity, ...

> ...

> Please note that John Baez, who worked on LQG for 10 years, specifically complimented her presentation of this particular issue. Her description of where research stands is accurate.

My comment about about the video and why it is not useful to me or useful seeing it on HN, not about the correctness or incorrectness of Sabine's statements which is what you seem to be addressing here.

> It was a good place to start. After 20 years of research that has failed to turn that idea into anything workable, most people would conclude that this is an analogy that will not apply in the end. But apparently Rovelli gets mad at anyone who doubts that it will work out. One of the triggers for this rant was whatever Rovelli said to her in private. Personally, I excuse her for being human here in her reaction.

You are making some assumptions here and empathizing with Sabine, which is understandable. Arrogant Physics professor gets mad when someone questions their pet theory is not unrealistic but is not headline worthy either. Does it matter if he was mad? Is this any different than any other celebrity spat? If not, that is not what I read HN for.

> Rants generally do not come with properly cited references.

I know it was a rant, I saw the labeling. That does not help make it good material for HN or lead HN commenters to interesting and curious comments though. The reverse is often true regardless of the source of the rant.

> No, it really is the gotcha it claims to be. It's directly inside of the math. This demonstration is no different than, say, proving that sqrt(2) is irrational by proving that if you start with the smallest fraction that equals it, you can find a smaller one.

Physics is not practiced like math though, so it is different. A contradiction in physics theories is not the same as saying true = false in math. Experimental evidence and observation rule the day until we find the fundamental laws of physics, after that it will be more like math(well at least some physics will).

> Her previous video (that triggered the nasty emails)_made this point more clearly. She's saying that there is a mathematical contradiction between having minimal areas and Lorentz invariance. This forces us to choose to have one or the other. Minimal areas leads to a testable and now falsified theory. Lorentz invariance has yet to lead to a theory that doesn't blow up with unnormalizable infinities, let alone one which can produce a testable prediction.

Comments like this, and much of what you said before this, lead me to think Sabine's pervious video would be less likely to cause me to write a comment like I did.

> Is that Sabine's fault, or yours?

Nothing I have said is about Sabine being at fault of something. I can stand corrected if something I wrote was too misleading though.

> This video is much lower quality than her normal ones.

This seems like it would argue against Dang giving this Sabine video an exception.

> Perhaps, rather than looking for things to complain,

That is not what happened here. My response was to Dang about giving this video a exception and the comment on "sensational style".

> you should try figuring out what she actually said.

And if I was having a conversation with Sabine or if I was corresponding with her then both people are responsible for reaching out to cover any communication gaps. That is not what this is, this was Sabine's rant as labeled by her and you.

> Even though it skewers some sacred cows.

I do not think Sabine's videos "skewer sacred cows". At least not any in the physics community at large, maybe some sub disciplines. The physic's community at large does not seem to have many if any sacred cows, that is my experience at least.

[1] https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/113285631281744111

[2]

> so I think we can give this thread a second chance

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41811140

I have a pet conspiracy theory for why there has been so little progress in physics for so long. The invention of the nuclear bomb scared a lot of people, it made them scared of physics. What else might physicists turn up that could change the world in dramatic ways? Anti-gravity? Ray guns? Other dimensions? Travel to other worlds? All bad for business, no one is going to buy your airplanes or air craft carriers if they can buy an anti-gravity machine. So physics was suppressed by both business and government. Physicists were given "safe" work to do (ITER, quants) that would occupy them and keep them from exploring wild stuff. Grant financing was controlled so that only safe research would be conducted. It would be fairly invisible to the world, just a few high level decisions would determine how the funding was directed. I get the impression that if this was indeed a conscious decision that it's starting to fall apart as younger generations take over and become frustrated with the direction of physics. They weren't there when the A-bomb was invented, and nuclear weapons have not been on peoples minds much for a long time, most people have not lived in a time when one was used. So they see interesting topics and want to explore them and encounter resistance from more established scientists. It's a conspiracy theory because it would involve some buy-in from a fair number of physicists to make it work, but a lot of physicists when I was getting my BA in physics were very loudly saying "never again" about atomic weapons and felt it had tarnished the whole profession. It's very difficult to say what humanity would be capable of handling in terms of radical new inventions. Anti-gravity could solve many large problems, but it might make it even easier to destroy Earth. Once new knowledge exists it is hard to suppress it. Stopping it from from ever existing seems easier. I guess we'll find out if physics has been suppressed if the dam breaks and new ideas start proliferating. The nature of the new physics would be a big clue as to whether research in it was suppressed. I'm reminded of Elon Musk, he seems to have had really radical success in some very stagnant industries, just by trying instead of accepting limits, and being able to fund his ideas himself.

If you want to reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41811140 or say something Sabine-adjacent, please do it here.

(This is so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41808143 doesn't get too offtopic)

Your complaint is that it is hard to extract truth from her videos.

However extracting truth from what you said is trivial if you believe that what she reports as fact, is fact. And what she reports as her opinion, is her opinion. If you pick any 5 videos you want, I'd be happy to help you spot check them. Just like I did with this one.

Now I'd like to pull out three specific issues.

1. Your point about settling physics with experiment is not applicable here. The result is about what the math will predict if you make a specific assumption in a specific mathematical model. Testing that is like trying to test the frequency with which 1+1 gives you 3. It's a question of logic. What becomes a question of experiment is whether a particular model is a good description of reality.

2. She may not be skewering cows that are sacred to all of physics. But a lot of her videos skewer cows that are sacred to some group, and she's constantly getting an earful about it.

3. Why this video? The reason why I voted for it was not quality, but topic. I think it is very important to be aware how easily branches of science become pseudoscience. And with John Baez' support, it's clear that her complaint is more than simple sour grapes. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41808404 for some of my thoughts that are specific to this topic.