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> They do not think about which hypotheses are promising because their education has not taught them to do so. Such self-reflection would require knowledge of t

> They do not think about which hypotheses are promising because their education has not taught them to do so. Such self-reflection would require knowledge of the philosophy and sociology of science, and those are subjects physicists merely make dismissive jokes about. Accusing working scientists of being insufficiently reflective on any topic, let alone themselves or the field they work in, seems without merit on its face, and frankly so bizarre as to be silly or even dim-witted. Further, the assertion that only the humanities will save science, or indeed the accusation that scientists are ignorant of the history of science, is a weighty charge that I see no reason to even consider believing. > They believe they are too intelligent to have to think about what they are doing. Come on.

Ma8ee 7y ago
I have a PhD in physics. Even though I have left the field, I’ve hung around with enough of them, and occasionally tried to raise some more philosophical questions with them. Sabine is unfortunately spot on.
- baked_ziti 7y ago
  > tried to raise some more philosophical questions with them. Like what? Genuinely interested, not seeking to argue.
  - Ma8ee 7y ago
    This is 10 years ago, so unfortunately I don’t remember details about discussions I never got going. Some were able to argue for their favourite interpretation of QM, or rather, how to resolve the measurement problem, but I mostly got blank stares when I tried to probe a bit more about the ontology. One of the reasons I left academia was that I never found the intellectual and curios environment I longed for. The successful people were successful mostly because they knew how to write grant proposals and which committees they should be on, not because they did really interesting science.
    - pas 7y ago
      Yeah, that's not surprising. Cutting-edge R&D is very boring hyper-parameter tuning basically, and requires a kind of person that is able to do things for a long long time (to gather data) and then to think a bit later. The same goes on with neuro folks. Consciousness, mind, hello? No, just let's poke rats, thanks. But this works. And that's why I don't understand Sabine's viewpoint. She can't just sit in an ivory tower and stare down the cosmos in a contest until it reveals its secrets. We need data, better models, better measurements, etc. Yes, sure, it needs better theorists too, but then why not let the experimentalists do what they do best? It's not like there isn't a bunch of theorists in every serious university on the planet, maybe organize them better?
      - Ma8ee 7y ago
        Sabine's point is that the current approach doesn't work any longer. > She can't just sit in an ivory tower and stare down the cosmos in a contest until it reveals its secrets. That is a gross misrepresenation of what she is saying. Did you actually read anything she wrote? She is criticising the notion that you can make progress, sitting in the ivory tower, as you exprss it, and coming up ideas about strings and super symmetries without any experimental data or other validation from reality. But she is also critical to the approach: just throw more money and manpower into even bigger experiments before we even know what to look for and hope something interesting reveals itself.
        pas 7y ago
        But.. but... she can't have it both ways. The current unexplained data is not much, and the best explanations involve a lot of hard to test things. Why? Because there's not enough unexplained data. The easy to test theories have been already thrown out. Yes, sure, what she is saying is nice, let's try to explain stuff the simplest way possible. Occam's razor. But theorists already do this.
        Ma8ee 7y ago
        Of course she can have it both ways. Don’t be stupid. There’s plenty to do in physics without building an even bigger collider which likely won’t teach us more than the current one.
- poelzi 7y ago
  Full Ack. Unfortunately training against confirmation bias (or other ones) is not part of any scientific study. We in general give very little attention to papers that falsify an accepted theory. For example, look at the papers http://cosmology.info http://cosmology.info has collected. If you have gone through some of them, you can not, at least as a scientist, still think that Big Bang is a true theory. But still, this bulls*t theory pops up all the time.... This is just one of them, in fact, nearly everything is falsified... It does not matter if theory X predict A correct, if prediction B is false your theory X is also not true but at most a model to calculate A. The model I have adopted also perdicted the "Higg-Boson", but it has nothing to do with gravity.
liara_k 7y ago
Tunnel vision is a thing. Taking some time to zoom out is often incredibly useful. Also, the philosophy and sociology of science are a VERY different thing from "the humanities".
- baked_ziti 7y ago
  > the philosophy and sociology of science are a VERY different thing from "the humanities". I'm not sure that they are. But my point is simply that accusing scientists of not being self-reflective is silly, accusing them of ignorance of history is silly, and for this piece to be elevated beyond the level of polemic would require something, anything, in the way of persuasion that its assertions were true.

Ma8ee 7y ago

I have a PhD in physics. Even though I have left the field, I’ve hung around with enough of them, and occasionally tried to raise some more philosophical questions with them. Sabine is unfortunately spot on.

baked_ziti 7y ago
> tried to raise some more philosophical questions with them. Like what? Genuinely interested, not seeking to argue.
- Ma8ee 7y ago
  This is 10 years ago, so unfortunately I don’t remember details about discussions I never got going. Some were able to argue for their favourite interpretation of QM, or rather, how to resolve the measurement problem, but I mostly got blank stares when I tried to probe a bit more about the ontology. One of the reasons I left academia was that I never found the intellectual and curios environment I longed for. The successful people were successful mostly because they knew how to write grant proposals and which committees they should be on, not because they did really interesting science.
  - pas 7y ago
    Yeah, that's not surprising. Cutting-edge R&D is very boring hyper-parameter tuning basically, and requires a kind of person that is able to do things for a long long time (to gather data) and then to think a bit later. The same goes on with neuro folks. Consciousness, mind, hello? No, just let's poke rats, thanks. But this works. And that's why I don't understand Sabine's viewpoint. She can't just sit in an ivory tower and stare down the cosmos in a contest until it reveals its secrets. We need data, better models, better measurements, etc. Yes, sure, it needs better theorists too, but then why not let the experimentalists do what they do best? It's not like there isn't a bunch of theorists in every serious university on the planet, maybe organize them better?
    - Ma8ee 7y ago
      Sabine's point is that the current approach doesn't work any longer. > She can't just sit in an ivory tower and stare down the cosmos in a contest until it reveals its secrets. That is a gross misrepresenation of what she is saying. Did you actually read anything she wrote? She is criticising the notion that you can make progress, sitting in the ivory tower, as you exprss it, and coming up ideas about strings and super symmetries without any experimental data or other validation from reality. But she is also critical to the approach: just throw more money and manpower into even bigger experiments before we even know what to look for and hope something interesting reveals itself.
      - pas 7y ago
        But.. but... she can't have it both ways. The current unexplained data is not much, and the best explanations involve a lot of hard to test things. Why? Because there's not enough unexplained data. The easy to test theories have been already thrown out. Yes, sure, what she is saying is nice, let's try to explain stuff the simplest way possible. Occam's razor. But theorists already do this.
        Ma8ee 7y ago
        Of course she can have it both ways. Don’t be stupid. There’s plenty to do in physics without building an even bigger collider which likely won’t teach us more than the current one.
poelzi 7y ago
Full Ack. Unfortunately training against confirmation bias (or other ones) is not part of any scientific study. We in general give very little attention to papers that falsify an accepted theory. For example, look at the papers http://cosmology.info http://cosmology.info has collected. If you have gone through some of them, you can not, at least as a scientist, still think that Big Bang is a true theory. But still, this bulls*t theory pops up all the time.... This is just one of them, in fact, nearly everything is falsified... It does not matter if theory X predict A correct, if prediction B is false your theory X is also not true but at most a model to calculate A. The model I have adopted also perdicted the "Higg-Boson", but it has nothing to do with gravity.

liara_k 7y ago

Tunnel vision is a thing. Taking some time to zoom out is often incredibly useful. Also, the philosophy and sociology of science are a VERY different thing from "the humanities".

baked_ziti 7y ago
> the philosophy and sociology of science are a VERY different thing from "the humanities". I'm not sure that they are. But my point is simply that accusing scientists of not being self-reflective is silly, accusing them of ignorance of history is silly, and for this piece to be elevated beyond the level of polemic would require something, anything, in the way of persuasion that its assertions were true.