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The contrarian physics podcast subculture

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Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#211

Post by hermitcrab »

tsongas4 wrote: post #146
tptacek wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That particular meaning of "audience capture" might be Weinstein's coinage, but the term itself predates that; you can just search Google Scholar to confirm.

Mathematicians went nuts trying to invalidate Gödel. Imo similar phenomena to our senses; chasing an endlessly big numbers with no real outcome but growing some number that ostensibly represents an audience but who knows if its real or just numbers on a screen. Religious belief is same biological phenom, chasing endless propagation of the religion. Minds go fractal. It's like Snowcrash but they’re not blank, they spe…

>Mathematicians went nuts trying to invalidate Gödel.

But they failed. Gödel's incompleteness theorm is now a widely accepted part of mathematical canon.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#212

Post by jimkri »

> Attack the Person, Not the Science

This article and this quote are something I have also noticed recently.

I've been working on researching AI and trying to visualize more data structures to help connect ideas, and I want to bounce ideas off of people to make sure I'm truly comprehending things. I've been trying to have conversations to talk more in depth, but I haven't been able to get anyone to read a research paper. That doesn't stop anyone from telling me something about what I have been researching without reading the research or comprehending it. Everyone feels empowered with AI. But when asked to debate the merits of their ideas, everyone I have asked has said people won't stick to the debate. I think you pointed it out clearly. People can't debate a topic they truly don't know.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#213

Post by pdonis »

gwerbret wrote: post #184
pdonis wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scientific disagreements are intricate matters that require the attention of highly trained experts. Actually this isn't true, at least as far as anything the public needs to care about is concerned. There is a simple test the public can use for any scientific model: does it make accurate predictions, or not? You don't need to understand how a model works to test that. The model can use whatever intricate math it w…

> There is a simple test the public can use for any scientific model: does it make accurate predictions, or not? You don't need to understand how a model works to test that. It's quite obvious from your position on this matter that you're not a practicing scientist, so it's very unfortunate that your position is so assertive, as it's mostly wrong. To understand the predictions, as it were, you do have to understand t…

> It's quite obvious from your position on this matter that you're not a practicing scientist

You're correct, I'm not. But I'm also not scientifically ignorant. For example, I actually do understand how GPS works, because I've read and understood technical treatments of the subject. But I also know that I don't have to have any of that knowledge to know that my smartphone can use GPS to tell me where I am accurately.

In other words, it's quite obvious from your position that you haven't actually thought through what the test I described actually means.

> To understand the predictions, as it were, you do have to understand the experiments; if you don't, you have no way of knowing if the predictions actually match the outcomes.

Sure you do. See my examples of GPS and astronomers' predictions of comet trajectories downthread in response to MengerSponge.

It's true that for predictions of things that the general public doesn't actually have to care about, often it's not really possible to check them without a fairly detailed knowledge of the subject. But those predictions aren't the kind I'm talking about--because they're about things the general public doesn't actually have to care about.

> There is; it's called a textbook.

Textbooks aren't independent. They're written by scientists.

I'm talking about a record that's independent of scientists. For example, being able to verify that GPS works by seeing that your smartphone shows you where you are accurately.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#214

Post by throwawaymaths »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #182
throwawaymaths wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There are some routes that are obviously pointless in foresight, and funding them is just giving money to someone's pet project, for example: Everything Julius Rebek does. Then, there are people who are defrauding by making claims that are for SURE easy to know are sketchy. I promise you every active researcher (grad student, postdoc) can off the top of their head tell you AT LEAST three results that they know ar…

Yeah, but was it really obvious we shouldn't pursue String Theory? It seemed promising in the beginning. Even for Alzheimer’s, it isn't as slam dunk obvious as a perpetual motion machine. Recent discussion on pro/con of Alzheimer’s controversy. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-h... I'm just super wary of the 'right's tendency to throw the baby out with bath water, like JFK JR, and set the US…

yes of course JFK jr is brainwormed to hell but he's not setting back the US decades. many things he tears down will be rebuildable and some things he puts in are fine, actually. what is far far more dangerous is the rot in the science infrastructure. because that will take decades to unwind (if we even do), and it's not an obvious problem like the way anything in politics is. people implicitly trust science, which is the problem. people implicitly distrust at least the politics on the other side of the aisle so there's some adversarial challenging going on and the opportunity for growth and integration. science is devoid of that right now.

the FDA is all fucked up anyways and if you doubt that, look up propublicas expose on serious drug safety lapses there.

> Alzheimer’s, it isn't as slam dunk obvious as a perpetual motion machine

it wasn't perpetual motion level fraud, but it was bad. you weren't there. everyone doing work in the salt mines was like why the fuck arent my experiments working but nobody really stood up to say this is bullshit, because that would be the end of your career if you were a junior researcher... much easier to half ass a result, get the publication, and move on with your life.

> String Theory, It seemed promising in the beginning

maybe it shouldn't have been. there is a heuristic for what actually makes discoveries in science. and the string theory approach is not it. people were sounding the alarm at the time, like, among others some guy named richard feynman. but nobody was listening to them evidentally.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#215

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

ecshafer wrote: post #47
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sabine is in no way neutral. She’s made the journey over the last couple of years to the kinda “academia is terrible, string theory is a scam” grift that her buddy Weinstein did.

When I was still in the physics world, almost every high energy guy I talked to thought string theory was a scam. It seems like everyone that wasn't a string theorist thought it was scam. I don't know enough of the topic to know one way or the other, but it seemed a common idea.

I don’t know the same people, so I can’t really speak to common sentiments in the industry. I think the issue with the way that Sabine goes about it is that she uses string theory as a cudgel against the entirety of academia. She kind of frames it as though string theory is the only game in town, and as though they’re all deliberate liars or stupid. To me, it reads the same way any us-versus-them grifter message does, which is unfortunate because a couple years ago I would watch all her videos. That was back when she would just explain physics concepts and trash talk quantum computing.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#216

Post by elphinstone »

gwd wrote: post #82

There's something strange about this whole narrative. I don't know anything about the science or personalities at all (except for having seen a number of Hosselfelder's videos, and what she said in her recent video about Weinstein). But here in this blog post we have story after story of people who seemed really enthusiastic about talking to Nguyen, and then later ghosted him or changed the topic of conversation or s…

I would say the other common denominator is Weinstein, his wealth, and willingness to sue.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#217

Post by AIorNot »

timmytokyo wrote: post #207
AIorNot wrote: post #177

It seems like this thread has become a referendum on Sabine - who along with Lex is the more popular of the podcasters mentioned But I think that’s a pity and we need to acknowledge the great value they all these podcasts bring instead of just complaining about audience capture and various biases of one - we’re all human - if Einstein or Newton had or was on a podcast we’d be criticizing it just the same IMHO. Human…

Sorry, it's one thing to interview cranks like Chris Langan and Eric Weinstein, bad enough as that is. It's quite another to promote them as brave champions of suppressed truths.

Did you read my comment? I’m not promoting Langan and Weinstein either -

I’m promoting Jaimungals podcast (which was disparaged on this thread) which is an absolutely wonderful for cross-disciplinary exploration of TOEs and cutting edge concepts in physics, AI, biology and consciousness and philosophy

For example this podcast Frederic Schuller, an award-winning theoretical physicist and professor

https://youtu.be/Bnh-UNrxYZg?si=2PwkFzH4OJ2r8eMT

And this with Harvard physicist Jacob Barandes https://youtu.be/gEK4-XtMwro?si=bYAHDO4iWh9WRV8J

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#218

Post by uncircle »

xenotux wrote: post #159
cycomanic wrote: post #46

I have written previously about Sabine. I think it's fascinating to follow her trajectory. Initially I quite liked her show and my impression was that it gave valuable insights and critique of some branches of modern theoretical physics. At some point I noticed that her shows were starting to significantly diverge from her area of expertise and she was weighing in on much broader topics, something in her early shows…

> I think it's fascinating to follow her trajectory. I think it's a lesson that we all consistently fail to apply to ourselves. It is so pervasive on social media - HN included - yet it's something we only attribute to others. Our hot takes on quantum physics, molecular biology, and economics are always reasonable and rooted in keen insights. It happens for a reason. There's something deeply satisfying about being a…

Someone once posted a video by Jonathan Bi, a lecture on Rousseau and his views that intellectuals with large egos eventually play contrarian positions just to have a chance to argue and prove how smart they are; Rousseau’s opinion was that the democratization of knowledge, the printing press at the time as he couldn’t foresee the internet, would amplify this phenomenon until society would lose itself arguing about pretty much everything, and people would delight being contrarian even about the most mundane of things.

https://youtu.be/C8ucJ29O1kM?feature=shared

I have watched that lecture 6 months ago and I haven’t been able to read any forum, HN included, without being reminded of Rousseau’s discourse. The Internet and social media is a cacophony of skeptics and big brains that, if you were to tell water is wet, would earnestly open a debate on why that is not the case. It’s endless churning around the obvious, as everyone’s opinion is valid however idiotic and off-topic it is, there’s no foundation to build an intelligent argument before Johnny Anonymous comes to sidetrack it either with intentional trolling or just pedantic nonsense.

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#219

Post by [deleted] »

krunck wrote: post #95

"Scientific disagreements are intricate matters that require the attention of highly trained experts. However, for laypersons to be able to make up their own minds on such issues, they have to rely on proxies for credibility such as persuasiveness and conviction. This is the vulnerability that contrarians exploit, as they are often skilled in crafting the optics and rhetoric to support their case." Touché.

[deleted]

Re: The contrarian physics podcast subculture

#220

Post by 400thecat »

hermitcrab wrote: post #176
hermitcrab wrote: post #172

I waded through some of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m7LnLgvMnM Carroll comes across as very reasonable. Weinstein comes across _very_ badly. The only positive thing I can think to say about him, is that he kept the equally awful Peirs Morgan quiet for a while.

There are some great comments below this video. "The phrase "Fake it until you make it" has become "Weinstein until you Einstein"" "My reactions as a physicist were every time Sean Carroll explains something: "I could not think of a simpler way to explain this" every time Eric Weinstein explains something: "I could not think of a more complicated way to explain this"" "Eric Weinstein is the Steven Seagal of Physics"

> Eric Weinstein is the Steven Seagal of Physics

he reminds me of Jordan Peterson. Both are clearly smart (raw IQ) but are deranged, they speak in convoluted sentences that are intentionally overcomplicated and that make no sense and

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