4 ms·

Visions of Future Physics

38 points by Bootvis 11y ago

rubidium 11y ago
The naturalness questions seems outside the realm of importance for physics and over-hyped by this article (and perhaps by Arkani-Hamed). A much more sober approach was put forth by David Gross in the article "And Gross, who considers naturalness a murky concept, simply wants a last-ditch search for new physics. “We need more hints from nature,” he said. “She’s got to tell us where to go.” This is the reality of particle physics right now: we have a theory that works for pretty much all the measurements we've made, but it's not particularly elegant. There are big questions certainly (like dark matter) but we have no particle physics data to really study there. Particle physicists like elegant theories (b/c they learned and loved Maxwells equations) and therefore aren't satisfied with correct physics.
- pcmaffey 11y ago
  Seems like the question of naturalness or "knowability" speaks more to the nature and limits of the human mind than of the universe itself. Definitely agree with Gross. It's why the loss of species, destruction of our environment, etc--replaced with mechanisms that are a reflection of ourselves--is all so disturbing. We are depriving ourselves of the potential to learn from the unique diverse world around us.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    >Seems like the question of naturalness or "knowability" speaks more to the nature and limits of the human mind than of the universe itself. Certainly, the apparent fact that we can only know our own perceptions (images of observations) severely limits what we can know about the larger universe that may contain our perceptions. It would be foolish to believe that you know the ultimate reality; we already know that it is impossible to know since we can only ever access perceptions of the projections of "reality". Either all that exists is our perceptions, or we can never know the ultimate reality.
JabavuAdams 11y ago
How likely is a plan to build a new accelerator, over 30 years, to succeed? If we look at the technological changes of the preceding 30 years, anything we started in 1985 and finished in 2015 would likely be eclipsed by modern capabilities. Should I work on Physics, or General AI, or IA? It seems that GAI or IA solve the other two.
- mariusz79 11y ago
  And how will GAI solve physics? AI is not god.
  - adwn 11y ago
    Indeed. This is a common fallacy among believers of bootstrapping, superintelligent AI: In order to understand and master the real world (and humans, for that matter), you first have to interact with the real world – i.e., you have to run experiments. Thinking really, really hard about a physical problem will not solve that problem. Ancient philosophers tried it, without much success.[1] [1] e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics
    - qrendel 11y ago
      Except ancient philosophers weren't even working with scientific methodology. The issue is with how much empirical data you need to be able to form hypotheses about the world and falsify them, of which humans are almost certainly not doing a near-optimal job. Otherwise we might as well say scientific revolutions are independent of intelligence and the edifice of pre-existing knowledge, and depend only on observed data about the world, and there's substantial evidence against this[1]. For a counterargument from one of the believers of bootstrapping, superintelligent AI: http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/ [1] http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-i... ... In addition to evidence such as the long periods of time before simple understandings like natural selection, the heliocentric model, and constant acceleration of gravity were developed.
ixtli 11y ago
I'm pretty sure Nima was featured in the fantastic documentary Particle Fever ( http://particlefever.com/ http://particlefever.com/ )
- astrodust 11y ago
  He basically took over the movie, but not in a bad way. Very engaging.
qnaal 11y ago
> fluid dynamics is hard, let's smash particles!

38 points by Bootvis 11y ago

The naturalness questions seems outside the realm of importance for physics and over-hyped by this article (and perhaps by Arkani-Hamed). A much more sober approach was put forth by David Gross in the article "And Gross, who considers naturalness a murky concept, simply wants a last-ditch search for new physics. “We need more hints from nature,” he said. “She’s got to tell us where to go.” This is the reality of particle physics right now: we have a theory that works for pretty much all the measurements we've made, but it's not particularly elegant. There are big questions certainly (like dark matter) but we have no particle physics data to really study there. Particle physicists like elegant theories (b/c they learned and loved Maxwells equations) and therefore aren't satisfied with correct physics.

pcmaffey 11y ago
Seems like the question of naturalness or "knowability" speaks more to the nature and limits of the human mind than of the universe itself. Definitely agree with Gross. It's why the loss of species, destruction of our environment, etc--replaced with mechanisms that are a reflection of ourselves--is all so disturbing. We are depriving ourselves of the potential to learn from the unique diverse world around us.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  >Seems like the question of naturalness or "knowability" speaks more to the nature and limits of the human mind than of the universe itself. Certainly, the apparent fact that we can only know our own perceptions (images of observations) severely limits what we can know about the larger universe that may contain our perceptions. It would be foolish to believe that you know the ultimate reality; we already know that it is impossible to know since we can only ever access perceptions of the projections of "reality". Either all that exists is our perceptions, or we can never know the ultimate reality.

JabavuAdams 11y ago

How likely is a plan to build a new accelerator, over 30 years, to succeed? If we look at the technological changes of the preceding 30 years, anything we started in 1985 and finished in 2015 would likely be eclipsed by modern capabilities. Should I work on Physics, or General AI, or IA? It seems that GAI or IA solve the other two.

mariusz79 11y ago
And how will GAI solve physics? AI is not god.
- adwn 11y ago
  Indeed. This is a common fallacy among believers of bootstrapping, superintelligent AI: In order to understand and master the real world (and humans, for that matter), you first have to interact with the real world – i.e., you have to run experiments. Thinking really, really hard about a physical problem will not solve that problem. Ancient philosophers tried it, without much success.[1] [1] e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics
  - qrendel 11y ago
    Except ancient philosophers weren't even working with scientific methodology. The issue is with how much empirical data you need to be able to form hypotheses about the world and falsify them, of which humans are almost certainly not doing a near-optimal job. Otherwise we might as well say scientific revolutions are independent of intelligence and the edifice of pre-existing knowledge, and depend only on observed data about the world, and there's substantial evidence against this[1]. For a counterargument from one of the believers of bootstrapping, superintelligent AI: http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/ [1] http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-i... ... In addition to evidence such as the long periods of time before simple understandings like natural selection, the heliocentric model, and constant acceleration of gravity were developed.

ixtli 11y ago

I'm pretty sure Nima was featured in the fantastic documentary Particle Fever ( http://particlefever.com/ http://particlefever.com/ )

astrodust 11y ago
He basically took over the movie, but not in a bad way. Very engaging.

qnaal 11y ago

> fluid dynamics is hard, let's smash particles!