I think the video's thesis is overstated; in this video Hossenfelder makes it sound like there are no (real) problems with the Standard Model and therefore no necessary reason to postulate any new particles. While I agree completely with Hossenfelder about "pseudo-problems" such as the hierarchy problem not being real problems in need of a solution, my understanding is that there is at least one real problem and the solution may require new particles.
Specifically, neutrino oscillation is experimentally confirmed, but my understanding is that you can't just bolt it on to the Standard Model without getting inconsistencies unless you make one of the following two changes: Either make neutrinos their own antiparticles, or introduce sterile neutrinos. That seems like a pretty good reason to look for sterile neutrinos!
Also, I have to disagree with what she says about dark matter (or modified gravity, the distinction is irrelevant here -- both presumably introduce new particles); to say "All we need to know is the distribution of it so we can make predictions, who cares what it actually consists of?"... to my mind the point of fundamental physics should be to build a complete model of the laws of physics, and that sort of instrumentalism is just giving up.
(We can also generalize from this to other cases where problems from cosmology or other areas of physics would seem to require explanations from particle physics, e.g., baryogenesis, since the Standard Model doesn't seem to produce enough CP-violation to explain that. I don't think it makes sense to exclude such indirect evidence from other fields when we speak of tests of the standard model.)
None of this is to disagree that there's a lot of work on what Hossenfelder calls "pseudo-problems", which I agree seems to have produce a lot of failed predictions for little reason.
Well, as you indicate, you think that some of the problems she labels as pseudo are not pseudo. But who is to decide which are pseudo problems, and which are not?
And you are absolutely right about the "who cares" stance. If our estimates of DM and dark energy are right, only 5% or so of total energy in the universe is in SM physics (visible matter). How can we be satisfied with that?
"Random hypotheses (here particles) are not good science."
One of the points I expected when she was showing the graph of predictions and how they shift as we get more data is that while individual theorists may be making testable predictions, the sum total of the field and all the various predictions on offer ends up combining to produce a prediction of essentially everything. The net result is that you don't get much more than that out of the whole process. That's not 100% true; there is still an aspect of exploring what the math landscape permits. But it's much closer to 100% true than we should be comfortable with.
Especially with the repeated history, the very repeated history, of some specific hypothesis being falsified (such as SUSY) and the reaction being to just move the goalposts. Again, individually, each such action may be justified, but taken as a collection of all of them, it becomes difficult to distinguish from the way that you can easily justify breaking the world into earth/air/water/fire elements; every time an observation seems to contradict a previous theory you just adjust the 4 elements theory to fit. It's the same basic procedure that kept such theories aloft for centuries when we now easily recognize them as just absolute garbage. Not just because we have better theories, but because when approached with a modern scientific mindset such things can be annihilated easily, being obviously wrong and false even if you don't have a better theory immediately on hand to replace it.
As her Venn diagram showed, 'scientific' is a subset of 'falsifiable'. Scientific requires falsifiable, but falsifiable doesn't by itself imply scientific. 'In five minutes the Pacific Ocean will turn to liquid gold' is falsifiable but not scientific. Why would you predict that, what data does it align with, what model of matter and liquids does it work with, by what mechanism might it happen, why five minutes and not sooner or later, etc?
They are not that random. They typically are motivated by some observation of something, for example discrepancies from Standard Model predictions, or obvious holes in the SM (like the Higgs). Yes, there a many, and people jump on many things which turn out to be noise. But "new particle" as the solution has a rather impressive track record: Atoms, Nuclei, Nucleons, Quarks, Neutrinos, Higgs. The list is not complete.
A question on logic. Why is that second if needed? I often see the "if and only if"(iff) structure in logic. however I am never able to figure out how it is different than a single if. what exactly is the difference between the following three statements.
a theory should be considered scientific if, and only if, it is falsifiable.
a theory should be considered scientific if it is falsifiable
a theory should be considered scientific only if it is falsifiable
My experience going through physics in undergrad + 1 year of grad school was that we had made enough progress that it takes ~8 years of book learning to get to a basic competency at the forefront of a narrow part of physics. If you want to make a fundamental connection with a different field.. then adding enough knowledge to be able to formulate your hypothesis will take ~1-2 years of further book reading. Unfortunately people have finite lifespans, and by the time someone hits their mid-thirties - children and other priorities will start pulling you away from working 40-60 hours for subsistence wages. The Risk budget for exploring ideas shrinks.
I'm honestly curious if ChatGPT will help in this regard. Working with ChatGPT on physics/math problems allows one to get immediate knowledgable feedback on any idea - you can even have ChatGPT write out a semi-broken version of complex derivations if you just want to see if anything interesting comes out of the idea.
ChatGPT qua ChatGPT can never help with the most advanced physics research. By its very nature, it will tend to pull you back to consensus, which is exactly what you don't want it to do in this case. It'll just sit there and plausibly babble about physics. It is super unsuitable for understanding such a mathematical domain that is so unlike language grammar.
An AI that uses transformers for language understanding and then adds something more like our frontal cortex might be useful, through.
I'd be curious to know what it's like in big tech firms who are doing quantum computing. Is that well-funded cutting edge science? Or if not, what is it like?
I'm more bullish on something like UBI advancing the cause of particle physics. If there was 0 risk that your family was going to go hungry/become homeless, it'd be easier to stomach the many years of training required to get to the forefront of physics.
Sabine has spoken on this topic a number of times, but I think this is the clearest explanation I’ve seen of why the current research approaches are so unlikely to make efficient progress.
Get it together people! Quantum Gravity, I want some answers!
> The difference between a progressive and a degenerative research programme lies, for Lakatos, in whether the recent changes to its auxiliary hypotheses have achieved this greater explanatory/predictive power or whether they have been made simply out of the necessity of offering some response in the face of new and troublesome evidence.
For me her positions are like a breath of fresh air. Sabine brings valid epistemological questions from a totally original angle. The questioning of the methods of the Academia is science in its purest form. The truth will only come out of this kind of stance.
Very good talk. However I would only disagree with her on the idea that funding will dry up for particle physicists and that the model of funding helps to drive the useless cycle if bad ideas in physics (and any government funded science).
1) Obtaining grants to continue study in any field of science is greatly improved if you are iterating on an established idea that is already understood. Getting a grant on a completely novel idea outside of the mainstream field of thoughts is going to be much harder. Along with this is the reality that government grants are managed by a revolving door of industry and university insiders which is both a terrible and great thing. On one hand you don't want lobotomized bureaunaughts making uninformed decisions on which researchers to support. On the other hand your knowledgable staff on granting agencies are going to be the ~top of a given field and as such will weed out non-mainstream ideas for funding as "they already know" that a new line of thought to be foley.
2) While governments freely waste taxpayers money, they still do it strategically. After Hiroshima the world understood how important it is to keep a close eye on the physics community. Every country with a viable nuclear program must continue to engage in this game of useless increments in particle physics. Making progress is not what is important, what is truly important is that a country has its own base of physics knowledge and active development so that should another physics breakthrough happen elsewhere then they have a chance of recreating it on their own within a short enough window for it to make a difference. If you didn't already have physicists engaged in their craft then you would be 5-10 years behind the curve of any post-nuclear-physics breakthrough. The same game is played in many other fields of science...
Why do the big fruitless experiments get funded? Are they funded for non-scientific reasons such as creating jobs, engineering experience gained from building the thing, etc?
The problem with Sabine Hossenfelder's dismissing way of reporting is that it makes an impression that she does not faithfully represent the position of the other side.
That's a great heuristic to give the point to anybody that holds indefensable positions.
I recommend people to be much more interested on whether she is actually right or not, instead of whether the views that she opposes are simply bad.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that very few people actually hold all of those bad ideas as true (I'm met more than one, so they exist). But the normalized speech of the area surely did, and for quite a long time (I believe it's changing). And that's what reaches students and news, not the detailed opinion of individuals.
I will never understand comments like this, where the author had to actively click on one of a large number of headlines to even get there, and than make a deliberate decision to spend even more effort on writing a comment.
You don't provide any information for evaluation, all we know is that you think you heard it too often. And why make a disparaging comment about her on top of that, without any substance added?
I would not have added a comment if I didn't find it disturbing how much attention your mean comment gets. Another person even saying they cannot "stand her" - of course also without anything of substance added. I hate adding my own comment along this mean-spirited, substance-free and OT thread, but I don't want to say nothing either.
If you dislike the topic, just don't click. Easy. Or, provide some real meat for the discussion, not an expression of personal dislike, especially not of the person, unless they actually did something despicable worthy of such dislike.
To be fair, high energy experiments are still taking up a lot of money and effort. If you agree with her arguments then maybe it's a horse worth beating.
I have some concerns about the dark matter point but I think she is more or less right and I think it sucks to be competing for funding with work that's not well-directed.
This is the only ‘shtick’ she has left. She’s already burned all her bridges with her field. She’s now become a professional gadfly.
This happens to anyone who goes into a highly specialized, close-knit academic field; has a private disagreement with their field; and subsequently goes public.
[+] [-] Sniffnoy|3 years ago|reply
Specifically, neutrino oscillation is experimentally confirmed, but my understanding is that you can't just bolt it on to the Standard Model without getting inconsistencies unless you make one of the following two changes: Either make neutrinos their own antiparticles, or introduce sterile neutrinos. That seems like a pretty good reason to look for sterile neutrinos!
Also, I have to disagree with what she says about dark matter (or modified gravity, the distinction is irrelevant here -- both presumably introduce new particles); to say "All we need to know is the distribution of it so we can make predictions, who cares what it actually consists of?"... to my mind the point of fundamental physics should be to build a complete model of the laws of physics, and that sort of instrumentalism is just giving up.
(We can also generalize from this to other cases where problems from cosmology or other areas of physics would seem to require explanations from particle physics, e.g., baryogenesis, since the Standard Model doesn't seem to produce enough CP-violation to explain that. I don't think it makes sense to exclude such indirect evidence from other fields when we speak of tests of the standard model.)
None of this is to disagree that there's a lot of work on what Hossenfelder calls "pseudo-problems", which I agree seems to have produce a lot of failed predictions for little reason.
[+] [-] davrosthedalek|3 years ago|reply
And you are absolutely right about the "who cares" stance. If our estimates of DM and dark energy are right, only 5% or so of total energy in the universe is in SM physics (visible matter). How can we be satisfied with that?
[+] [-] hackandthink|3 years ago|reply
I am not sure whether Popper is the right reference.
Karl Popper: "a theory should be considered scientific if, and only if, it is falsifiable." (1)
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
[+] [-] jerf|3 years ago|reply
One of the points I expected when she was showing the graph of predictions and how they shift as we get more data is that while individual theorists may be making testable predictions, the sum total of the field and all the various predictions on offer ends up combining to produce a prediction of essentially everything. The net result is that you don't get much more than that out of the whole process. That's not 100% true; there is still an aspect of exploring what the math landscape permits. But it's much closer to 100% true than we should be comfortable with.
Especially with the repeated history, the very repeated history, of some specific hypothesis being falsified (such as SUSY) and the reaction being to just move the goalposts. Again, individually, each such action may be justified, but taken as a collection of all of them, it becomes difficult to distinguish from the way that you can easily justify breaking the world into earth/air/water/fire elements; every time an observation seems to contradict a previous theory you just adjust the 4 elements theory to fit. It's the same basic procedure that kept such theories aloft for centuries when we now easily recognize them as just absolute garbage. Not just because we have better theories, but because when approached with a modern scientific mindset such things can be annihilated easily, being obviously wrong and false even if you don't have a better theory immediately on hand to replace it.
[+] [-] jodrellblank|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davrosthedalek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somat|3 years ago|reply
a theory should be considered scientific if, and only if, it is falsifiable.
a theory should be considered scientific if it is falsifiable
a theory should be considered scientific only if it is falsifiable
[+] [-] anthk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lumost|3 years ago|reply
I'm honestly curious if ChatGPT will help in this regard. Working with ChatGPT on physics/math problems allows one to get immediate knowledgable feedback on any idea - you can even have ChatGPT write out a semi-broken version of complex derivations if you just want to see if anything interesting comes out of the idea.
I'm
[+] [-] jerf|3 years ago|reply
An AI that uses transformers for language understanding and then adds something more like our frontal cortex might be useful, through.
[+] [-] robertlagrant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jobs_throwaway|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lll-o-lll|3 years ago|reply
Get it together people! Quantum Gravity, I want some answers!
[+] [-] Perceval|3 years ago|reply
* https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/
* https://aeon.co/essays/imre-lakatos-and-the-philosophy-of-ba...
* https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Imre_Lakatos
> The difference between a progressive and a degenerative research programme lies, for Lakatos, in whether the recent changes to its auxiliary hypotheses have achieved this greater explanatory/predictive power or whether they have been made simply out of the necessity of offering some response in the face of new and troublesome evidence.
[+] [-] xrayarx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] T-A|3 years ago|reply
https://sabinehossenfelder.com/research-2/
"Sabine is currently an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Munich, Germany."
[+] [-] Vox_Leone|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SiempreViernes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saul_goodman|3 years ago|reply
1) Obtaining grants to continue study in any field of science is greatly improved if you are iterating on an established idea that is already understood. Getting a grant on a completely novel idea outside of the mainstream field of thoughts is going to be much harder. Along with this is the reality that government grants are managed by a revolving door of industry and university insiders which is both a terrible and great thing. On one hand you don't want lobotomized bureaunaughts making uninformed decisions on which researchers to support. On the other hand your knowledgable staff on granting agencies are going to be the ~top of a given field and as such will weed out non-mainstream ideas for funding as "they already know" that a new line of thought to be foley.
2) While governments freely waste taxpayers money, they still do it strategically. After Hiroshima the world understood how important it is to keep a close eye on the physics community. Every country with a viable nuclear program must continue to engage in this game of useless increments in particle physics. Making progress is not what is important, what is truly important is that a country has its own base of physics knowledge and active development so that should another physics breakthrough happen elsewhere then they have a chance of recreating it on their own within a short enough window for it to make a difference. If you didn't already have physicists engaged in their craft then you would be 5-10 years behind the curve of any post-nuclear-physics breakthrough. The same game is played in many other fields of science...
[+] [-] quantum_mcts|3 years ago|reply
https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/what_it_means_to_be...
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] consilient|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zajio1am|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosdumay|3 years ago|reply
I recommend people to be much more interested on whether she is actually right or not, instead of whether the views that she opposes are simply bad.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that very few people actually hold all of those bad ideas as true (I'm met more than one, so they exist). But the normalized speech of the area surely did, and for quite a long time (I believe it's changing). And that's what reaches students and news, not the detailed opinion of individuals.
[+] [-] sho_hn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tsimionescu|3 years ago|reply
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/02/whats-going-wrong-i...
[+] [-] SiempreViernes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amadsen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dave333|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JoBrad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davrosthedalek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nosianu|3 years ago|reply
You don't provide any information for evaluation, all we know is that you think you heard it too often. And why make a disparaging comment about her on top of that, without any substance added?
I would not have added a comment if I didn't find it disturbing how much attention your mean comment gets. Another person even saying they cannot "stand her" - of course also without anything of substance added. I hate adding my own comment along this mean-spirited, substance-free and OT thread, but I don't want to say nothing either.
If you dislike the topic, just don't click. Easy. Or, provide some real meat for the discussion, not an expression of personal dislike, especially not of the person, unless they actually did something despicable worthy of such dislike.
[+] [-] Y_Y|3 years ago|reply
I have some concerns about the dark matter point but I think she is more or less right and I think it sucks to be competing for funding with work that's not well-directed.
[+] [-] Pet_Ant|3 years ago|reply
Seems to know her shit and doesn’t seem to hate it.
[+] [-] jodrellblank|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k2xl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chongli|3 years ago|reply
This happens to anyone who goes into a highly specialized, close-knit academic field; has a private disagreement with their field; and subsequently goes public.