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The contrarian physics podcast subculture

timothynguyen.org

11–20 of 269 posts

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#11

Sabine's early video's seemed pretty sincere, and had a lot of valid points. But later, I think the pressure of creating constant content, and moving into non-expert areas, has gotten just as pop-sci as anybody else. Still think she is on another level from Eric who will throw out any crazy idea he can if someone will listen.

She has gone way beyond this. She is actively undermining the entire academic scientific enterprise, even as she makes money popularizing it. It's unclear why she does this. She portrays herself as speaking truth to power, but -- much like certain actors in US public life these days -- is simply doing the easy work of tearing things down, without doing the hard work of building things.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#12
post #7

Sabine's early video's seemed pretty sincere, and had a lot of valid points. But later, I think the pressure of creating constant content, and moving into non-expert areas, has gotten just as pop-sci as anybody else. Still think she is on another level from Eric who will throw out any crazy idea he can if someone will listen.

I think "just as pop-sci" is a bit generous. https://x.com/C_Kavanagh/status/1956336194352230570 explains it better than I can.

I think that list applies more to Eric. He is definitely in the 'conspiracy of nefarious forces are aligned against me' camp.

Sabine, I think she was just referring to how institutions can become calcified around certain ideas. The old concept that 'new' ideas need to wait for the founders of old ideas to die off. (can't remember exact quote).

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#13

Sabine's early video's seemed pretty sincere, and had a lot of valid points. But later, I think the pressure of creating constant content, and moving into non-expert areas, has gotten just as pop-sci as anybody else. Still think she is on another level from Eric who will throw out any crazy idea he can if someone will listen.

Sadly this is a common path for many people on Youtube. Once they reach a certain level of popularity the original topic of their channel becomes a vehicle for "content creation" which they try to maximize for "engagement". The quality of the original content always nosedives.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "just as pop-sci" is a bit generous. https://x.com/C_Kavanagh/status/1956336194352230570 explains it better than I can.

I think that list applies more to Eric. He is definitely in the 'conspiracy of nefarious forces are aligned against me' camp. Sabine, I think she was just referring to how institutions can become calcified around certain ideas. The old concept that 'new' ideas need to wait for the founders of old ideas to die off. (can't remember exact quote).

Max Planck is the source of the famous quote.

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it"

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "just as pop-sci" is a bit generous. https://x.com/C_Kavanagh/status/1956336194352230570 explains it better than I can.

I think that list applies more to Eric. He is definitely in the 'conspiracy of nefarious forces are aligned against me' camp. Sabine, I think she was just referring to how institutions can become calcified around certain ideas. The old concept that 'new' ideas need to wait for the founders of old ideas to die off. (can't remember exact quote).

[deleted]

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#18

Sabine's early video's seemed pretty sincere, and had a lot of valid points. But later, I think the pressure of creating constant content, and moving into non-expert areas, has gotten just as pop-sci as anybody else. Still think she is on another level from Eric who will throw out any crazy idea he can if someone will listen.

She has gone way beyond this. She is actively undermining the entire academic scientific enterprise, even as she makes money popularizing it. It's unclear why she does this. She portrays herself as speaking truth to power, but -- much like certain actors in US public life these days -- is simply doing the easy work of tearing things down, without doing the hard work of building things.

the scientific enterprise has undermined itself already. Look at how we lost decades of research in alzheimer's as a good example.

This problem is WAY worse than even sabines says. If a scientist publishes something sketchy, even sometimes just a little bit, they might wind up sinking years of research of other people who are honest truthseeking researchers just chasing the sketchy results. These good people then burn out or flip to the dark side, only leaving rotten people. It's like a fucking market of lemons, except if becoming lemons were viral.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#19
post #6

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oipI5TQ54tA "Professor Dave" interviews 6 physicists regarding Hossenfelder including one guy whose name you particle physicists in particular might recognize.

Oh, This is the first time I have seen Michael peskin. I have known him through his famous QFT book. I did not even know he is still alive.

Feels good putting a face to the author of one the books that made you struggle but also enjoyed.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#20

Tim Nguyen has put an extraordinary effort into finding the truth in this entire long exchange, and it's been mostly thankless. His appearance on Decoding the Gurus was a highlight of the show's early seasons. https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/special-epis... Perhaps you would agree with Weinstein and Hossenfelder that physics today is broken. But that does not in itself prove that the people peddling a…

The real root of brokenness in physics is not bad ideas or a lack of good ideas but it is that experiments are nowhere near being able to answer the big questions. Ok, we will probably get some insight into the neutrino mass from KATRIN but we are in the dark when it comes to dark matter, proton decay (predicted by all GUTs including string theory), etc.

In the absence of real data there is all sorts of groupthink and nepotism [1] but it is really beside the point. People are fighting for a prize which isn’t there. As an insider-outsider myself I have had a huge amount of contact with (invariably male) paranoid delusional people who think they’ve discovered something great in physics or math [2], it’s really a mental illness.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9755046/ is the master scandal of academia

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Westley_Newman stole away a really good lab tech from the EE department at my undergrad school

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