Sabine Hossenfelder: There are areas where physics blurs into religion

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/26/physicist-sabine-hossenfelder-there-are-quite-a-few-areas-where-physics-blurs-into-religion-multiverse

by pseudolus • 4 years ago

132 135 4 years ago

theguardian.com

emsign• 4 years ago

I've noticed she gets some more attention outside her blog and YT channel recently.

cratermoon• 4 years ago

She's refreshingly keen on evidence and testability for physics advances. The entire niche of taking the equations and treating the results they give when pushed to the limits as reality is very dodgy. This is true even though black holes we predicted by plugging extreme values into general relativity. While black holes do exist, we don't know yet how well their real physical properties match those predicted by GR.

String theory in particular has had a testability problem from the very beginning. https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=533

ars6• 4 years ago

Actually the event horizon of a black hole has never been observed.

All current observations are also consistent with quark stars. We don't know what the quark degeneracy pressure is, so there's no current way to differentiate.

oceanghost• 4 years ago

She's got someone doing good PR for her. I've been a subscriber for years and never seen her on HN except for the last few months.

I'm probably an order of magnitude less intelligent than her, but her arguments seem extremely reasonable to me. She seem to me to be a bridge from the PBS, pop-science mentality to more serious considerations.

Also, she's a fox. :-)

axiom92• 4 years ago

She has a dedicated channel for her music videos! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eWOxKcpsXU

Tozen• 4 years ago

Here is the original version of the song, https://youtu.be/WmP3OJLJbB0, though not sure why there needed to be a remix. My goodness, strange on so many levels. Kind of looks like she is having fun, but hard to tell.

tasty_freeze• 4 years ago

I think the comparison is facile. I'm just a layman, but it is my strong impression that nearly all scientists working at the edge of astrophysics and quantum theory know what they have is a model, sometimes stunningly predictive and accurate but still a model. The vast majority of experimentalists (and theorists) would love to get some result that is inexplicable, far more than another experiment that takes years and doesn't turn up any surprises. Dark matter, dark energy -- as far as I know, everyone working on them see our current ideas as placeholders until someone comes up with a good explanation.

Sure, there are many examples of scientists clinging on to old ideas too long, but eventually when enough evidence is marshaled by someone to overturn the old model, they are heralded and given honors.

That is all to say: frontier physics is utterly unlike religion, where so may claim to KNOW the truth, where the most tenuous claims are literally gospel, where there is little desire admit counter-evidence.

naasking2• 4 years ago

but eventually when enough evidence is marshaled by someone to overturn the old model, they are heralded and given honors

You mean when the old guard retires and dies, like Planck said.

lamontcg• 4 years ago

If there were as many PhDs working on stuff like twistors, loop quantum gravity, MOND, gravitational wave function collapse, etc as there are working on string theory and dark matter/energy I'd agree the argument was made up.

But they're vastly outweighed by the PhDs working in String Theory which is going on 50 years now with nothing really to show for it experimentally. And they do claim that they know the truth, and they defend their PhDs, and their grants and grad students, with rationalizations that aren't testable and don't admit any evidence. It very much seems like a religion.

Nobody has patched the holes in the theories that I mentioned, but almost nobody works on them, so the problems become self-fulfilling. And it just isn't that easy these days to have a single Einstein come along and upend the apple cart with a handful of rapid fire papers.

taylorius• 4 years ago

"nearly all scientists working at the edge of astrophysics and quantum theory know what they have is a model"

That is a good distinction to make, singling out the people who are truly at the frontier of understanding. As you say, they are far less likely to be certain of their findings.

However, I would say it makes sense to draw a similar distinction in terms of religious thinkers, because they're certainly not all the same. If one were to ask those at the religious frontier of understanding, one might well find an analogous lack of certainty as to what is going on.

dan_mctree2• 4 years ago

That is all to say: frontier physics is utterly unlike religion, where so may claim to KNOW the truth, where the most tenuous claims are literally gospel, where there is little desire admit counter-evidence

There's frontier theologists too that are very open to evidence from all sorts of angles. Yes, most religious people aren't trying to hit new ground, but most scientists (and physics loving laymen) aren't either. Most physicists work within established models, just like most religious people

MomoXenosaga2• 4 years ago

Every once in a while a brilliant scientist comes up with a new model while theologians will always adhere to an old book.

Theology is never more than rearranging the deck chairs.

shrubble• 4 years ago

Werner Heisenberg: "In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.” From “Scientific and Religious Truth” (note that Heisenberg was a devout Lutheran from what I have read)

locallost3• 4 years ago

As she points out in this interview, she liked the church as a community, but was not a believer. I think most religious people fall in this category, their religion is more about everyday life than the divine. It gives them peace of mind and a set of rules to go by, which eliminates a lot of friction and doubt in life. So in that way it's not incompatible, but at the core they are the most incompatible things possible - one is about overcoming your limitations to understand the world better, the other to either accept things without questioning them or even try to find proof for something you already believe, ignoring all contradictions.

zozbot234• 4 years ago

So in that way it's not incompatible, but at the core they are the most incompatible things possible ...

There are many ways of understanding the world; rational thinking is only one of them. Note however, that the kind of theology that organized religion is usually known for is a kind of, perhaps misguided, rational thinking. The real core of religious thought is closer to direct theophany.

(Note that a genuinely rational account of theophany and such is quite possible, but only at a meta level. The way you directly engage with such things is what leads to the distinction I'm referencing here.)

squaredot2• 4 years ago

I don't see the difference so much in the methodology as in the kind of reality one wants to observe.

The sciences have the experimental part, which is a method made possible by the kind of phenomena you observe. As far as religion is concerned, I don't want to oversimplify, as I think we run the risk of lumping everything together, as there are different interpretations as to what a religion is.

dan_mctree2• 4 years ago

the other to either accept things without questioning them or even try to find proof for something you already believe, ignoring all contradictions.

I feel like this isn't at all what most religious people are doing and that you're presenting some kind of strawman to make them seem alien and dumb

There's really roughly two camps, one which is very much questioning the existence of God and are actually busy trying to find the answer to the existence question by finding evidence. Sometimes in scripture, sometimes in others or in nature. Often these people are actually somewhat open to counter arguments. These people are generally somewhat equivalent of physicists with a pet theory they're trying to pursue, develop and prove, say string theorists.

The other camp believes strongly, and isn't so much involved with whether or not God exists, but instead they deal with the details. They might think about how the trinity works, talk about trying to reach the youth, working on helping people in their local community, etc. These people are kind of the equivalent of physicists who work within the existing framework of established physics. Whether that's through applied physics or by say trying to analyze the composition of some star.

IIAOPSW• 4 years ago

Heisenberg did a lot of important work obviously, but that doesn't excuse him from making a real argument. Does he have anything to justify his assertion beyond personal feeling and intuition?

squaredot2• 4 years ago

I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking

He doesn't really speak about personal feelings, but more about the frontiers of a personal investigation.

Antipaxos• 4 years ago

This may provide some context on Heisenberg's thoughts —

SCIENCE AND RELIGION [Edge.org, 2007]: https://www.edge.org/conversation/werner_heisenberg-science-...

akomtu• 4 years ago

It occurred to me that modern science and major religions study the same thing. The central axiom of religions is the consciousness-matter duality. The one uber consciousness (aka the god, the one without the other) brings everything into existence and splits itself into many pieces to inhabit this world. Compare this to the QM-GR duality: GR tells us what the matter really is, while QM tells the story of one uber wave-function that brings everything into existence and splits itself into many "particles" that evolve more or less independently.

There is one important difference, though. Religions say that all this has a purpose: the one great consciousness wants to understand itself. Science, on the other hand, believes in chaos.

jemmyw• 4 years ago

Ultimately any purpose is circular because there's always another why. And science doesn't necessarily describe chaos.

There are some questions science just doesn't answer and doesn't need to. We might never get the tools to peer past the boundaries of space and time, so speculation made by scientists in those areas is still kind of religious or at least not science. Religion can simply say God created everything last Thursday as if it had always been, and science has no refutation for that and doesn't need one.

Therefore I disagree with your analysis just because currently you can make that analogous comparison. There's probably always something like that because social discourse will spread current science to religion and vice versa, but they do not really need to compete. Also science has a chance of solving it's split but religion and philosophy will bang on about consciousness forever.

terminal_d3• 4 years ago

"Who watches the watchmen?"

We need more Sabine Hossenfelders. Too bad natural hierarchies seek to excommunicate such people.

colechristensen• 4 years ago

She’s a bit of a charlatan who leans too heavily on criticism of mainstream or even criticism and exaggeration of the Selena of developing theories.

There is an attraction to having “real” knowledge that everybody else is full of manure, i know some people whose small children have found conspiracy youtube and are struggling at dinner conversation over every “well actually”.

matthewmacleod• 4 years ago

There’s a certain attraction to counter-mainstream views of course—the idea of being part of a secret smart club—but it’s a massive red flag when someone starts to define themselves and their views substantially in terms of that opposition.

Interesting counter-mainstream ideas are important and valuable - but I don’t hear about any of them from Hossenfelder’s writing, and it’s all about how broken “the system” is. Everything I watch or read from her leaves me deeply suspicious.

terminal_d3• 4 years ago

I wouldn't call her a charlatan, but I would call many people on the "other side" that. Wading through BS is practically a full-time job and she's very good at it.

If "low morale" is really the bottleneck then we aren't getting any science done anyway.

And as an aside, I don't believe in group / peer based "science". There's a few geniuses (often not credited) that define the entire thing while everyone else seems to practically be in marketing by comparison.

Science can be a group institution, but educational institutes are far from it.

Criticism and disbelief are the bedrock of Science, and calling people that don't flock to still-unproven claims "science deniers" is very dystopian. There's also entire groups of phenomena that "hard" / popular science conveniently ignores. They all fall under Science by definition, but not under science-the-religion.

oska• 4 years ago

She’s a bit of a charlatan

A fairly serious accusation to make, which you did little to nothing to back up.

LarsDu88• 4 years ago

She's absolutely right. When I was a kid I watched and read a lot of Brian Greene's stuff about string theory. I even saw him give a talk in person about the multiverse in grad school (I studied biology). The truth is, Greene is brilliant but his idea of science veers into fantasy. There's an entire generation of physicists who grew up during an era where all the low hanging experimental fruit evaporated. A modern physics experiment costs millions if not billions of dollars. Some of these physicists in their 50s have no idea what experimental science looks like, and this mentality has bled into the popular consciousness of what scientists do.

It's in biology where you still have ample low hanging fruit in terms of experiments. I feel if you're a brilliant physics grad in 2022, don't waste your time on string theory - apply some of that knowledge to chemistry and biology

europeanguy8• 4 years ago

She's absolutely right.

I wonder how much contact you have with the world of research in theoretical physics that lead you to this conclusion. More to the point: do you have any, or is this person your only source of information?

Do you know that phenomenon where you think you're learning good information from a source, until that source talks about a subject you're an expert in and you realize they have no idea what they're talking about? That's how I feel every time I see Sabine hossenfelder on HN. I have a PhD in theoretical physics in a string-adjacent field[1], and my view is that this person has had negative net contribution to physics. First by contributing zero from poor research, and second by detracting by spreading the impression amongst the general population that experts aren't really experts, they don't know what they're talking about, are stupid or corrupt etc etc. Seems to be the theme of the 2020s that the most incompetent of any field become financially the most successful by making a business out of writing about how their colleagues are ignorant.

[1] my experience interacting with the kinds of muppets that are fans of Sabine is that at this point you'll have learned the argument that "well of course you think that way, that's because you're in the system and benefit from its rotting, being a PhD in X". If that's what you think about me, don't bother even responding. In reality I've left the academia for industry and am doing 10x better financially than any of my ex-colleagues - I benefit nothing from the effort I make in trying to communicate what is really going on here.

epgui• 4 years ago

I don't have a dog in this fight but as a biochemist, your frustration is exactly what I've felt for the last few years.

halpmeh4• 4 years ago

Ultimately, people want results. A lot of public money gets spent on physics research, and it’s a totally valid question to ask what have we gotten in return for that investment. I’m not involved in the industry, but it doesn’t seem like our fundamental understanding of things has improve substantially over the last few decades? The proliferation of new models, e.g. MOND and super-determinism, is kind of evidence that there isn’t a definitive answer to many questions that have been around for many years.

kalimanzaro• 4 years ago

Most of my friends and colleagues in string-adjacent fields --I doubt anybody would lately admit to doing string theory proper-- have the integrity to begrudgingly confess that string theory is Mathematics done poorly. My guys are healthy, they have neither Philosophy nor Maths envy. Calling String Physics Experimental Mathematics isn't even wrong, there are other fields of physics, computer science, or statistics that deserve that moniker. So what nomens do we have left? Not many. "Religion" is one of them, would appreciate more interesting suggestions here.

geysersam2• 4 years ago

until that source talks about a subject you're an expert in and you realize they have no idea what they're talking about?

She is (was) a physics researcher, perhaps a mediocre one, most are. But saying she has no idea what she's talking about requires some justification.

Specifically, what do you disagree with her about?

7thaccount• 4 years ago

"until that source talks about a subject you're an expert in and you realize they have no idea what they're talking about?"

This reminds me of the power grid. Practically any news article or video is woefully ignorant and a LOT of studies that get put on here have a mountain of assumptions that render their conclusions as far less firm than the readers on here understand. There are some experts on HN in this area, but a lot of folks just blindly parroting stuff they don't understand.

adastra228• 4 years ago

I see a lot of venting here. You seem upset and I'm sorry about that. But also all you've offered is an ad hominem.

DemocracyFTW24• 4 years ago

muppets that are fans of Sabine

... said Stadler to Waldorf.

Her main point to me, which she is quite good at repeating, is roughly that just because the maths works out, doesn't mean it's physically real. I think this is a very healthy caveat which is all too often neglected in popular science reporting.

lynx23• 4 years ago

Thanks for your viewpoint. I am definitely not from the field, and stumbled across Sabine a few weeks ago on YT. At first, I found the format and presentation interesting... Then I started to become suspicious. And then, I saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY_4S_dfUv4 which finally convinced me that she is playing her own kind of game. My feeling strange about what she does combined with your comment above finally convinced me to unsub her. Good.

ogogmad2• 4 years ago

second by detracting by spreading the impression amongst the general population that experts aren't really experts

How do we know who's an expert here? Peer review is only as good as your peers. Genuine question.

It looks like Beyond Standard Model physics is becoming increasingly more abstract, increasingly less mathematically well-defined*, and not getting any closer to physically testable. So I don't know how to judge who's an expert.

* - What are the equations of M-Theory?

plaguepilled• 4 years ago

Weak argument soz. You're appealing to your authority as a Theory PhD but haven't posted your papers so who cares. I can at least read Sabine's papers if I want to do that.

However, reviewing Sabine's cosmology papers to assess her arguments that theory research is poorly incentivised would be nonsensical anyway, so why even bother?

(To make my position clear, I actually don't agree with Sabine's angle that theory research is overvalued, but I do agree it focuses weirdly on some topics. I do read contemporary papers outside of what's presented via pop sci. But that should not be the content of your response if you are as credentialed as you say)

compiskey2• 4 years ago

Feynman said the same:

https://youtu.be/obCjODeoLVw

I’ll take him and Sabine, and my 24 yo masters in elastic structures, over your entitled screed any day.

davidguetta• 4 years ago

Bad opponents dont make a compelling argument

adastra228• 4 years ago

It's really frustrating because there are actual experimental results that need explaining. Particularly in cosmology and quantum gravity, but there are also open questions regarding neutrino flavors that don't conform to the standard model. But even more simply there is real work being done on such things as quantum computing and superconductors. Not to mention even more basic and practical things which are still not characterized well like the mechanics of piles of sand or grain (yes, really).

I left physics in 2008 in part because I was in the same boat as you and had gotten disillusioned with both string theory and particle physics. Now I kinda wish I had stuck it out and focused on more practical, less hyped-up areas.

s1dev• 4 years ago

What experimental evidence of quantum gravity is there? I like to argue for theoretical evidence of quantum gravity, but afaik there hasn’t been any experiments to rule out classical GR coupled to a quantum matter sector

herdcall• 4 years ago

She's been critical of string theory and multiverse, in good part due to their inability to be verified via experimentation. She comes off as abrasive to some and tends to ruffle feathers, but she is the only physicist I've found that isn't afraid to take a stand and is great in explaining hard concepts in relatively simple terms. Try watching a few of her videos, specifically on Physics, before forming an opinion of her. Especially see her debate, along with Roger Penrose (2020 Nobel), against Michio Kaku that is especially brutal on string theory and multiverse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W39kfrxOSHg

flobosg• 4 years ago

She has (or had?) a consulting service for autodidact physicists:

* http://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/talk-to-physicist_27.html

* https://aeon.co/ideas/what-i-learned-as-a-hired-consultant-f...

renewiltord2• 4 years ago

She's quite popular for this "emperor wears no clothes" stuff but has she done any meaningful research? All my friends with Physics Ph.D.s are in industry so they aren't of much use.

sampo• 4 years ago

but has she done any meaningful research?

If you want someone with a stronger track record in research, but with essentially the same message, there is Lee Smolin and his book "The Trouble with Physics".

(1) Google Scholar lists a person's publications in the order of the most cited first [1]. Hossenfelder's 2 most cited articles [2,3] try to figure out the implications of the idea of what if there is a minimum length scale in nature. (Like the speed of light is maximum possible speed. What is there is a minimum possible length, i.e. what if nature has a resolution, like computer graphics?)

[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaQZcyYAAAAJ

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrr-2013-2

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037026930...

renewiltord2• 4 years ago

I see. I recall when I was young that I believed that the universe was on a Planck length grid and then was disabused of this notion but I don't remember why.

Is her work significant? I will check out your book recommendation.

gorgoiler• 4 years ago

When you look up at the stars, do you see the constellations? When astronomers refer to V509 Cassiopeiae, they believe in the shape of the stars they call Cassiopeia. Do they believe the shape is a real thing? Of course — I can draw it for you, it’s there every night and looks like a W! Of course not — you cannot touch it, it’s just an artifact of how we try to understand the Universe and our place in it!

The God of Christianity is a concept that is there if you believe in him, and is not there if you don’t. To prove his existence is meaningless. It provides the same struggle as trying to prove that Cassiopeia exists, or what it means at an atomic level to touch an object, or whether complex multicellular organisms are one single being or a colony of many beings.

beloch• 4 years ago

"But from a scientific perspective, if you want to make progress in our understanding of natural law, I’d say it’s a waste of time exactly for that reason, because you can’t test it."

Science is doing what works, and you can't tell what works if you rely on theories that aren't testable. (What does it even mean for an untestable theory to work?)

But...

What if some theories that aren't testable eventually lead to theories that are testable and useful? How do we know when to abandon a chain of inquiry? What about theories that are technically possible to test, but currently impractical? Do we stop developing them until the technology to test them exists, or might further work reveal easier tests?

For a long time, physicists were fairly ruthless about abandoning work that didn't quickly lead to something that could be tested experimentally, but not always (e.g. Bohmian mechanics was pursued quite ardently even though it's predictions do not differ from standard quantum mechanics.) In the last few decades, as we've increasingly searched for things like grand unifying theories that might bridge the chasms between fields, we've begun to tolerate an increasing amount of work that is not founded in anything testable. The key developments that will tie a field back into reality often seem just around the corner but never appear.

It boils down to a question of how we allocate resources. Work done on untestable theories that never become testable is wasted, so where do we draw the line?

adastra228• 4 years ago

What if some theories that aren't testable eventually lead to theories that are testable and useful?

The history of physics is such that this almost never happened. In fact I'm struggling to think of an example in which it did, though I'm sure there are some examples somewhere.

The few things I can think of are stuff like antimatter, which popped out of the theory and weren't taken seriously until they were unexpectedly confirmed by experiment.

On the other hand as you mention the history of physics is littered with theories and frameworks pushing beyond the experimental frontier, only to be discarded. String theory being only the most recent example.

nl• 4 years ago

She points to both the big bang and the idea of a multiverse as things that cannot be tested.

fidgewidge2• 4 years ago

Issue is that the "we" in your final sentence is really governments and their science agencies. At some point there's a tradeoff between funding particle accelerators or stuff like defense, social care, medical subsidies, welfare, research in other areas. So only politicians can make this tradeoff. But we have a world where politicians aren't allowed to criticize scientists even if they're doing as Hossfelder calls it "ascientific" or even totally unscientific stuff. So the money will just continue flowing towards theoretical castles in the sky.

MomoXenosaga2• 4 years ago

We live in a world were science and technology won. Religion is desperately trying to latch on in order to remain relevant.

ogogmad2• 4 years ago

It looks like steady progress is being made in Mathematical Physics (which I believe is physics done from rigorous mathematical definitions - so you can no longer bullshit the Dirac delta "function" for instance). Some of that stuff is apparently supersymmetry-inspired and strings-inspired, but doesn't technically rely on any of these theories being true.

rajman187• 4 years ago

I read her book Lost in Math [1] which I have to say was quite a laborious endeavour. It is essentially a long-winded argument that is better summarised in this article and her YouTube channel, though she got to visit many scholars across the globe. Some agreed with her to a certain extent while others simply didn't (Nima Arkani-Hamid, for example, had no interest in her point of view).

What I found most lacking was a viable path forward, an alternative to all this nay-saying. She had a section in the end with bullet points on what to do and not do, but it was quite brief and generic.

I had a short but interesting exchange on Twitter with Dr. Tony Padilla who has spoken about the case for string theory on Numberphile [2]. He stands at the opposite end of the spectrum of course, and it's worth listening to what he has to say as well.

Being a non-expert with just a casual interest in the inner workings of the universe, I am eagerly awaiting whatever the next breakthrough brings for our understanding of the cosmos, but I have to say that string theory and susy have seemed to over-promise and under-deliver with little prospect in sight, and perhaps at the detriment of a more fundamental or foundational approach. Indeed, the question of what is time has always bothered me, so I'm picking up Carlo Rivelli's book on this next [3].

[1] https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/sabine-hossenfelder/lost-i...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ccXzM3x8A

[3] https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/301539/the-order-of-time-by-...

sdht02• 4 years ago

Richard Feynman has a good talk on this tendency to do "cargo cult science" [0]:

  The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.  So you have to be very careful about that.  After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists.  You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

The history of science is rife with examples where eventual well established theories had a hard time getting off the ground because mainstream thinking at the time actively refused to consider them (plate tectonics, inflation, etc). I remember reading quite a few example in Max Tegmark's book Our Mathematical Universe [1].

All this to say, both the current state of our attempts to reach the next frontier of human knowledge (string theory, say) and Sabine's criticisms follow age old traditions of back and forth in science. Both are needed, the former to make actual progress and the later to keep the bad ideas in check.

Having said that, I personally detest the particular populist-with-lack-of-nuance approach Sabine (and others like her) take. I like Sean Carroll's books [2] and his Mindscape podcast [3] for a more nuanced view. For instance, his recent podcast with Raphael Bousso [4] is such a nice overview of the current state of the art Physics. On string theory:

   String theory, I think, has given us from my perspective, as far as I can tell, the only consistent candidates for theories of quantum gravity that are in any sense complete. In particular, it has led to the discovery of the AdS/CFT correspondence. That is a lot of letters. But what it means is that there’s a certain class of universes, unfortunately, not including the one that we seem to be living in, but still a very rich set of space times worlds that you can imagine, for which we have a complete quantum theory of gravity. Or at least it could be wrong. We haven’t tested it experimentally. But it’s a very significant statement that you have a theory which is complete in itself, it’s not missing anything. You could put it on a computer and run it, you can calculate things with it. And so that I would say is, from the physics perspective, the number one thing that has come out of String theory, there’s a lot of beautiful mathematical results, and many other applications that the theory has had.

[0] https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19395553-our-mathematica...

[2] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/books-courses/

[3] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/

[4] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2022/11/21/218-...

smnc• 4 years ago

Having said that, I personally detest the particular populist-with-lack-of-nuance approach Sabine (and others like her) take.

Not arguing against the point you are making, just highlighting a silly turn of phrase. Who ever encountered a nuanced populist?

sdht02• 4 years ago

Who ever encountered a nuanced populist?

One can hope :)

dav_Oz• 4 years ago

I think it isn’t inherently “bad” (until you begin to fight for “resources” i.e. academic careers - which in my mind is what this now long-standing “controversy” really boils down to) that physics/cosmology at the frontier bleeds into regions of (yet) untestable hypothesis.

It is kind of a natural progression of abstraction by defining physical objects, in the end you arrive at some endpoint like the “universe”. So, you wonder: “Hmm, in order to study it properly I need more than one. Let me see if there is some viable way to propose it. Which new predictions am I getting? Does it a better job than … ” etc

The same holds true for other frontiers like exobiology, consciousness etc. where one can easily wind up in woo-woo territory.

Hossenfelder mentions Penrose. Another prominent figure who pops up frequently is Stephen Wolfram with the means of financing himself. They are making bold claims which are most likely - surprise, surprise - false. But because the chances are astronomically or cosmologically low it is seen as somehow this high-stake game in reputation. Since there is only a tiny fractions of scientists with a lot of chips (say Noble Prize), when they get on the table the crowd cheers on.

So, unfortunately most play safe in the long term. One such strategy was/is to hide the “trouble” behind ever more sophisticated mathematical abstractions which at least undoubtedly require extraordinary and disciplined mind to be even able to grasp. Ever since Lee Smolin called bs on that I feel that string theorists, now, appear more humble, careful in their presentation and acknowledge the pitfalls. As an popular example Sean Carrol comes to my mind.

To put it constructively: level the playing field and measure your position with the same standard as you evaluate others. The more powerful, diverse and precise shots in the dark in terms of viable theories we get to test the better the chances.

pyinstallwoes• 4 years ago

Big bang theory and archaeology are both founded by Jesuit priests.

Sabine Hossenfelder: There are areas where physics blurs into religion

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