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I think it goes beyond the scientific press. There seems to be a general tendency to squash the intricacies of anything and react impulsively to some red herrin

I think it goes beyond the scientific press. There seems to be a general tendency to squash the intricacies of anything and react impulsively to some red herring or whatever; such comments dominate all online forums I've ever seen. Here is a fantastically interesting article that maybe has some new insight on the nature of spacetime; top comment on HN thread about it is some person loudly and incredibly pretentiously mistaking their own misunderstanding of the intricacies of 'truth' in science (and how there are different levels) for some flaw in the work itself. You know, the underlying sentiment here is a good one. How do we know what we know, what do our theories really tell us, etc. All excellent questions. But you didn't express that at all, instead you say these things shouldn't be 'touted as discoveries about the real world.' That's all you man! No theorist ever has wanted people to think this of their work, it slaughters the beautiful intricacies of it and leads to public relations disasters like this. Don't go misunderstanding shit and then confidently be blaming it on other people man. Rhetoric matters. The whole "it's just a theory" thing has done so much harm to public understanding and appreciation. It's an impossible starting point for a conversation, if you think "it's just a theory", you're not wrong, as much as entirely missing the point. How do you start with that and get to an understanding that things aren't always absolutely right or wrong, that contexts and assumptions matter, that things can be true in one setting (the math) and uncertain in another (the real world). That for most things what we are more than anything is uncertain. That there are many different kinds of uncertainty. How are the subtle intricacies of things (that the answer to almost everything starts with "well, that depends...") supposed to survive forums where conversations are heavily selected for ability to grab attention? Not a rhetorical question, if you got ideas I want to hear them. PS noobermin, I don't mean to be overly-critical of you although it sure sounds like it. I'm using 'you the pronoun'. Just something I think about a lot that you catalyzed me into trying to express...

krastanov 8y ago
I really appreciate the clarity of this comment. While hacker news is certainly one of the better forums, the amount of armchair analysis and pseudointelectualism, especially on scientific non-IT posts, is pretty frustrating. It reminds of the "middlebrow dismissal" style https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224
pmiller2 8y ago
IMO, your premise is a strawman. I don't detect any "it's just a theory" sentiment in the top level comment. What the comment says is that mathematical statements about "hitherto unestablished and untested theories" should not be taken as statements about the world. This, to me, shows a rather sophisticated understanding of scientific truth, namely that we should demand that a scientific theory (as opposed to a mathematical construction) should be falsifiable. AFAIK, there is no question that the mathematics of string theory et. al is sound; the question is whether these theories are physical, and whether they are falsifiable. These are the exact objections the top-level comment makes when referring to "unestablished and untested theories".
- krastanov 8y ago
  There is an important point you are not addressing: it is one thing to make a statement about one single mathematical construct (it is cute, but not a big deal). It is another thing to make a statement that constrains a whole family of seemingly disconnected mathematical constructs (this is now a serious constrain on what the laws of the universe can plausibly be). From a sibling comment: > There are some results around QG, such as holography, which seem to be universal. That is, they make sense with strings, loop quantum gravity or any of about ten other lines of work that people can do quantum gravity calculations with today. > If you can prove that all of those have to say the same thing, that is a powerful result and probably means something about our world.
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    I'm not exactly sure which version of "If you can prove that all of those have to say the same thing...." you're arguing for. It doesn't scientifically matter what statements you can make about any number of mathematical constructs if none of those constructs make testable predictions. Remember, falsifiability is a necessary condition for a construct to be a valid scientific theory. OTOH, it does matter if you are able to make a statement of the form "Any mathematical construct that accurately describes X must have property Y." It is not clear that quantum gravity (or the linked article) meets this latter standard.

krastanov 8y ago

I really appreciate the clarity of this comment. While hacker news is certainly one of the better forums, the amount of armchair analysis and pseudointelectualism, especially on scientific non-IT posts, is pretty frustrating. It reminds of the "middlebrow dismissal" style https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224

pmiller2 8y ago

IMO, your premise is a strawman. I don't detect any "it's just a theory" sentiment in the top level comment. What the comment says is that mathematical statements about "hitherto unestablished and untested theories" should not be taken as statements about the world. This, to me, shows a rather sophisticated understanding of scientific truth, namely that we should demand that a scientific theory (as opposed to a mathematical construction) should be falsifiable. AFAIK, there is no question that the mathematics of string theory et. al is sound; the question is whether these theories are physical, and whether they are falsifiable. These are the exact objections the top-level comment makes when referring to "unestablished and untested theories".

krastanov 8y ago
There is an important point you are not addressing: it is one thing to make a statement about one single mathematical construct (it is cute, but not a big deal). It is another thing to make a statement that constrains a whole family of seemingly disconnected mathematical constructs (this is now a serious constrain on what the laws of the universe can plausibly be). From a sibling comment: > There are some results around QG, such as holography, which seem to be universal. That is, they make sense with strings, loop quantum gravity or any of about ten other lines of work that people can do quantum gravity calculations with today. > If you can prove that all of those have to say the same thing, that is a powerful result and probably means something about our world.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  I'm not exactly sure which version of "If you can prove that all of those have to say the same thing...." you're arguing for. It doesn't scientifically matter what statements you can make about any number of mathematical constructs if none of those constructs make testable predictions. Remember, falsifiability is a necessary condition for a construct to be a valid scientific theory. OTOH, it does matter if you are able to make a statement of the form "Any mathematical construct that accurately describes X must have property Y." It is not clear that quantum gravity (or the linked article) meets this latter standard.