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I understand your position. The real question is how much you should weigh a single experiment vs. the abstract idea of conservation of momentum. It's tempting

I understand your position. The real question is how much you should weigh a single experiment vs. the abstract idea of conservation of momentum. It's tempting to trust the experiment all the way, and imagine that science demands such open-mindedness. But the more physics you study, the more likely you are to trust the abstract idea instead, because you realize just how incredibly well-supported it is. It's a kind of certainty that has almost no analogue in other sciences. Even in a very careful experiment, measurement error is many times more likely than overturning conservation of momentum. (Also measurement error is much more devious than people imagine, but that's another story.) I'm very confident ($100 to $1 at least) that the EmDrive is a story of measurement error, compounded by ignorance and optimism.

vardump 10y ago
We're largely in agreement. On a philosophical point of view, it worries me that physics might be optimizing towards a local maxima. Which might or might not be the global one. That there even might be something big it has missed. How would we know? Even more so because physicists seem to be more and more specialized to a narrow sub-field. Everything is already so advanced it takes more and more years to just to master it. Individual contributions appear to be getting smaller and smaller. Is it possible there's something they don't see because they're too near looking at it? Studying a mountain with a microscope. Is possible we're stuck in a some sort of dead end? I really can't judge it either way. I just can't stop wondering about that.
tunesmith 10y ago
This discussion is like rationality vs empiricism in action.
- cousin_it 10y ago
  Yes, that's exactly it. In science, rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz) has been much more fruitful than empiricism (Locke, Hobbes, Hume...) It's really strange when you think about it. The guys who trusted in divine order ended up discovering tons of things, while Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism and the modern "scientific method", didn't discover anything. That's a big part of the reason why I identify as a rationalist.
  - vardump 10y ago
    Yet neither would be anywhere without the other.
marcosdumay 10y ago
By one experiment, you mean one actual experiment, made once, by a single group? Or one single experimental setup, replicated by different groups? If it's the former, I don't trust it at all, but if it's well practiced and interesting, it ought to be replicated. If it's the second, well, if its results are against theoretical models, theory is wrong. No questions, no exceptions. Now, theory correction does not automatically mean a fundamental change, "hey, this approximation we used has a problem here" is as valid a theoretical correction as "ops, all of our models are wrong, everything is much more complex than we thought". Specifically about the EmDrive, I'm not aware of anybody that could actually measure an effect yet. So, there's no experiment showing theory is wrong. There's only a lack of experiments confirming it either (or better, now there is one).
- deleted 10y ago
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vardump 10y ago

We're largely in agreement. On a philosophical point of view, it worries me that physics might be optimizing towards a local maxima. Which might or might not be the global one. That there even might be something big it has missed. How would we know? Even more so because physicists seem to be more and more specialized to a narrow sub-field. Everything is already so advanced it takes more and more years to just to master it. Individual contributions appear to be getting smaller and smaller. Is it possible there's something they don't see because they're too near looking at it? Studying a mountain with a microscope. Is possible we're stuck in a some sort of dead end? I really can't judge it either way. I just can't stop wondering about that.

tunesmith 10y ago

This discussion is like rationality vs empiricism in action.

cousin_it 10y ago
Yes, that's exactly it. In science, rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz) has been much more fruitful than empiricism (Locke, Hobbes, Hume...) It's really strange when you think about it. The guys who trusted in divine order ended up discovering tons of things, while Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism and the modern "scientific method", didn't discover anything. That's a big part of the reason why I identify as a rationalist.
- vardump 10y ago
  Yet neither would be anywhere without the other.

marcosdumay 10y ago

By one experiment, you mean one actual experiment, made once, by a single group? Or one single experimental setup, replicated by different groups? If it's the former, I don't trust it at all, but if it's well practiced and interesting, it ought to be replicated. If it's the second, well, if its results are against theoretical models, theory is wrong. No questions, no exceptions. Now, theory correction does not automatically mean a fundamental change, "hey, this approximation we used has a problem here" is as valid a theoretical correction as "ops, all of our models are wrong, everything is much more complex than we thought". Specifically about the EmDrive, I'm not aware of anybody that could actually measure an effect yet. So, there's no experiment showing theory is wrong. There's only a lack of experiments confirming it either (or better, now there is one).

deleted 10y ago
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