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Secular scientifically oriented mind considers theoretical physics as a fundamental. Alas, very few can really understand what the high priests at the Institut

Secular scientifically oriented mind considers theoretical physics as a fundamental. Alas, very few can really understand what the high priests at the Institute for Advanced Study are actually doing. Visualizations and animations provide the analog of religious iconography. They convey the feeling of sublime to 'mere mortals'. Person may not be able to understand the Latin sermon, but there are beautiful pictures on the wall to look at.

walterbell 9y ago
Like the inscrutable algos & images of "social" media walls?
badosu 9y ago
I have always thought of the modern way to do science very 'unscientific', i.e. science as the activity scientists perform as opposed to the classical tripartite definition ('Justified True Belief'), as it is simply not feasible that all scientists can perform experiments for every bit of knowledge and must accept some propositions by authority or consensus. Your comment gave me a good insight into this idea, thanks!
- whatshisface 9y ago
  The "unscientific" side might be best explained by a little editorializing. Theory, experiment and now computation have ended up split between specilaists because the required knowledge for each can no longer practically fit into one education. The effect of this is that since one brain has been separated into many heads, lots of partly-formed ideas must be communicated between them to replace what used to be internal musing. Lots of published theory has little experimental or numerical footing; theory is the superego of the split mind and plays the closest role to imagining goals and setting courses. Experiment would be lost without theory: experimental papers are relatively light on interpretation and usually serve to "check out" theorized results. To continue the metaphor they're the Id: sometimes experiments come up with results that no rational mind could have expected, grabbing the wheel and bringing theory crashing back down to earth, and upon reaching the earth again launching it off in amazing new directions. Computational physicists (I'm including anyone who spends most of their time with numbers in this) are left as the integrating Ego, trying to write code that models the theories and analyses the data and on a good day gives the same answers for both. Finally, I should add that all of these intermediate results are very carefully worded to be true, claiming no more than can be claimed. The system would still work if they were phrased assertively but there's such a strong culture of truth that nobody does that. So, you can trust the papers, but not so much the magazine write-ups which usually clobber the careful stepping.
dwaltrip 9y ago
The vast majority of theoretical physicists know that they need strong experimental confirmation. It is disingenuous to imply that this isn't the case. What are you trying to get at? Vague poetic denigration may be fun to write, but it isn't an effective way to communicate.
- romwell 9y ago
  This was not a jab at scientists, but at people who eat up scientific factoids without having much understanding of science thereof.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    If that was the intention, there are certainly much better ways of responding to such people, than to snidely put them down. I'm not really sure what the expectation is either... Theoretical physics is not exactly something you pick up in afternoon.

walterbell 9y ago

Like the inscrutable algos & images of "social" media walls?

badosu 9y ago

I have always thought of the modern way to do science very 'unscientific', i.e. science as the activity scientists perform as opposed to the classical tripartite definition ('Justified True Belief'), as it is simply not feasible that all scientists can perform experiments for every bit of knowledge and must accept some propositions by authority or consensus. Your comment gave me a good insight into this idea, thanks!

whatshisface 9y ago
The "unscientific" side might be best explained by a little editorializing. Theory, experiment and now computation have ended up split between specilaists because the required knowledge for each can no longer practically fit into one education. The effect of this is that since one brain has been separated into many heads, lots of partly-formed ideas must be communicated between them to replace what used to be internal musing. Lots of published theory has little experimental or numerical footing; theory is the superego of the split mind and plays the closest role to imagining goals and setting courses. Experiment would be lost without theory: experimental papers are relatively light on interpretation and usually serve to "check out" theorized results. To continue the metaphor they're the Id: sometimes experiments come up with results that no rational mind could have expected, grabbing the wheel and bringing theory crashing back down to earth, and upon reaching the earth again launching it off in amazing new directions. Computational physicists (I'm including anyone who spends most of their time with numbers in this) are left as the integrating Ego, trying to write code that models the theories and analyses the data and on a good day gives the same answers for both. Finally, I should add that all of these intermediate results are very carefully worded to be true, claiming no more than can be claimed. The system would still work if they were phrased assertively but there's such a strong culture of truth that nobody does that. So, you can trust the papers, but not so much the magazine write-ups which usually clobber the careful stepping.

dwaltrip 9y ago

The vast majority of theoretical physicists know that they need strong experimental confirmation. It is disingenuous to imply that this isn't the case. What are you trying to get at? Vague poetic denigration may be fun to write, but it isn't an effective way to communicate.

romwell 9y ago
This was not a jab at scientists, but at people who eat up scientific factoids without having much understanding of science thereof.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  If that was the intention, there are certainly much better ways of responding to such people, than to snidely put them down. I'm not really sure what the expectation is either... Theoretical physics is not exactly something you pick up in afternoon.