Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

Post by seanhunter » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 9:27 AM UTC

zachf wrote: post #107

seanhunter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It predicted supersymmetry, which has been experimentally disproved.

The kind of supersymmetry you’re referring to (global spacetime supersymmetry) is not required by string theory; this is a common misconception. Looking for super partners in a collider is actually only telling you about global supersymmetry, which unlike local supersymmetry is not a universal feature of string theory at low energy, in fact the opposite, it is probably non-generic. It so happens that a class of appea…

Post by moomin » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 9:30 AM UTC

canjobear wrote: post #122

ordu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> physics is stuck at a local optimum. I think I heard somewhere that the trouble with string theory is it can describe anything if you tune it just in a right way. It reminds me of epicycles, they also had this property, you can add more and more epicycles to describe literally any observation data. > Way (1) is what kicked off quantum mechanics. Way (2) is what kicked off Newtonian mechanics. Hmm... What was the wa…

Copernicus used the same circular-orbit-plus-epicycles system as Ptolemy, just the orbits were centered around the sun (kind of---each planet had its own circle, with the sun only approximately in the middle). The system actually had more epicycles than Ptolemy's and was less accurate. It wasn't an advance in any meaningful sense. The real breakthrough was Kepler, who dropped the idea that planets moved in circles. I…

Post by atmosx » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 9:43 AM UTC

herodotus wrote: post #120

This might be too weird to be true, but when I heard that Geoff Hinton got the Nobel prize for Physics, I wondered if the prize committee was having trouble finding "real" physicists who had made fundamental advances.... This is not meant to knock Prof Hinton. These are his own words: “I’m not a physicist, I have very high respect for physics,” Hinton said. “I dropped out of physics after my first year at university…

Post by m101 » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 10:06 AM UTC

feoren wrote: post #49

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 requ…

Post by lazide » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 10:11 AM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #45

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.