4 ms·

I've read several of Sabine's blogs over several months. I think she has very good ends in mind, has courage to push back on corporate/academic inertia ... such

I've read several of Sabine's blogs over several months. I think she has very good ends in mind, has courage to push back on corporate/academic inertia ... such inertia comes with any human organization ... On the negative side she's big on complaining but small on alternatives. She's also a bit too blunt/dismissive of people -- this from a person who also dislikes corporate happy talk. As such it's not clear if she'd confer distinction if she had a large budget, an institution, and group of experimentalists. An Oppenheimer? No.

hhas01 7y ago
Aye, it’s easy to make criticisms (and Zeus knows the price of good science is eternal vigilance), but the easiest and most satisfyingly Ockhamite explanation of the slowdown in physics remains: all its low-hanging fruit is long since taken. And while there’s no harm in pondering the philosophical origins of the scientific method while debating where to go next, we should take care not to go backwards either, as that way lies fractal navel fluff and bloody string theory.
- 7532yahoogmail 7y ago
  Agree!
- achillesheels 7y ago
  It’s amusing you jocularly employ Zeus in this conversation. Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Maxwell, etc. did not have Zeus on their minds, maybe it would be wise for you not to either?
  - hhas01 7y ago
    https://comb.io/dqaqWp https://comb.io/dqaqWp
- mikhailfranco 7y ago
  You should open a diner: TZIF When I lived in the Middle East, I imagined a chain of dry bars called: TAIT (Up until about 6 years ago, the Omani and Saudi outlets would have been called TAIW)
SiempreViernes 7y ago
I've followed it for years, but I think lately (last ~year) she's become somewhat clickbait-y in some articles. In particular the posts where she keep highlighting the misguided fools that claim gravitational waves aren't real; she wrote a forbes contribution that made a big deal the LIGO people didn't respond to questions over facebook and saw it as suspicious, and awarded points to the GW denialists as a consequence. But maybe it's just that I know have a better understanding of what Hossenfelder is writing about, and can see for myself how thin the cases can be.
- dnautics 7y ago
  I believe in gravitational waves, but specifically with LIGO I wish they did a better experiment with the multimodal observations. An easy one would be:. For an [n] month period blind all of the results, and mix them with 3X fake data. Then instruct traditional EM astronomers to search for EM phenomena corresponding to these signals. If only 25% of them correlate, we know the multimodal search is not working.
  - brummm 7y ago
    There is no believing in them. Gravitational waves have been observed and you can't "believe" or "not believe" in them anymore than you can "believe" or "not believe" in electricity.
    - drdeca 7y ago
      A person can certainly disbelieve electricity, they would just be foolish to do so. While I think a person would also be foolish to disbelieve gravitational waves, I think it wouldn’t be quite as foolish, because while we clearly measure gravitational waves, we don’t exactly use them to do (as opposed to “look at”) stuff, so a person’s everyday life is less impacted by disbelieving GW than by disbelieving electricity.
      - Koshkin 7y ago
        > foolish to disbelieve gravitational waves How foolish of Newton!

hhas01 7y ago

Aye, it’s easy to make criticisms (and Zeus knows the price of good science is eternal vigilance), but the easiest and most satisfyingly Ockhamite explanation of the slowdown in physics remains: all its low-hanging fruit is long since taken. And while there’s no harm in pondering the philosophical origins of the scientific method while debating where to go next, we should take care not to go backwards either, as that way lies fractal navel fluff and bloody string theory.

7532yahoogmail 7y ago
Agree!
achillesheels 7y ago
It’s amusing you jocularly employ Zeus in this conversation. Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Maxwell, etc. did not have Zeus on their minds, maybe it would be wise for you not to either?
- hhas01 7y ago
  https://comb.io/dqaqWp https://comb.io/dqaqWp
mikhailfranco 7y ago
You should open a diner: TZIF When I lived in the Middle East, I imagined a chain of dry bars called: TAIT (Up until about 6 years ago, the Omani and Saudi outlets would have been called TAIW)

SiempreViernes 7y ago

I've followed it for years, but I think lately (last ~year) she's become somewhat clickbait-y in some articles. In particular the posts where she keep highlighting the misguided fools that claim gravitational waves aren't real; she wrote a forbes contribution that made a big deal the LIGO people didn't respond to questions over facebook and saw it as suspicious, and awarded points to the GW denialists as a consequence. But maybe it's just that I know have a better understanding of what Hossenfelder is writing about, and can see for myself how thin the cases can be.

dnautics 7y ago
I believe in gravitational waves, but specifically with LIGO I wish they did a better experiment with the multimodal observations. An easy one would be:. For an [n] month period blind all of the results, and mix them with 3X fake data. Then instruct traditional EM astronomers to search for EM phenomena corresponding to these signals. If only 25% of them correlate, we know the multimodal search is not working.
- brummm 7y ago
  There is no believing in them. Gravitational waves have been observed and you can't "believe" or "not believe" in them anymore than you can "believe" or "not believe" in electricity.
  - drdeca 7y ago
    A person can certainly disbelieve electricity, they would just be foolish to do so. While I think a person would also be foolish to disbelieve gravitational waves, I think it wouldn’t be quite as foolish, because while we clearly measure gravitational waves, we don’t exactly use them to do (as opposed to “look at”) stuff, so a person’s everyday life is less impacted by disbelieving GW than by disbelieving electricity.
    - Koshkin 7y ago
      > foolish to disbelieve gravitational waves How foolish of Newton!