4 ms·

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 highligh

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!
      - drdeca 7y ago
        Pardon, I meant given the current evidence. Newton didn’t have that evidence. I thought that was obvious. And at first I had written “probably foolish” as a hedge, but thought “oh, I hedge the things I say too much, and it makes what I say less pleasant and more difficult to read. I’ll leave it out.”. By “foolish” I maybe I really meant something closer “probably reasoning incorrectly”.
        dnautics 7y ago
        The exact point of my comment is that the evidence is not as strong as claimed in the popular conception, as there has not been independent confirmation via a multimodal technique. To date there has been a single, unreproduced, nonindependent, multimodal observation... A good start, to be sure, but still folks like yourself are saying that it would be foolhardy to merely believe GW.
  - tlb 7y ago
    The observations are still subject to debate. The signals are far below the noise and can only be discerned with fancy statistics, which some groups have failed to reproduce. See Hossenfelder's detailed critique at https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo...
    - brutt 7y ago
      This video is better, IMHO (same author): Have we really measured gravitational waves? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWTvNlfkvoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWTvNlfkvoI
    - SiempreViernes 7y ago
      No, it is not a detailed critique, it is a list of little more than rumours. Hossenfelder is satisfied with describing the LIGO collaboration as suspicious and then backing off with ”of course, I don’t belive this. If you belive that clickbait I feel bad for you, but it’s too low quality to spend time debunking.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    I believe with exceptionally high degrees of confidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. I have this belief because the sun has been observed to rise every day for something like a few million times in a row and I've never once witnessed it not rise. This belief is so strong I could comfortably call myself certain of it, but it's still nevertheless a belief. For most practical purposes, 'certainty' means an exceptionally high degree of confidence, where the margin for doubt becomes too small to bother ourselves with. But true certainty seems like something that can only arise from pure mathematics, not through observations of the world. I am truly certain that triangles have three sides, whereas I am 'merely' exceptionally confident that gravity exists.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Eh? You can’t point a telescope at an event that happened (here) years ago! Also, if it ever came out you’ve wasted good night skies on fake events, preventing other astronomy from being carried out by interrupting it with too’s that are known to be fake?! Like non-transient observers get their time sniped enought already?!!! You wouldn’t have friends left in the funding agency at best. Anyway most events are BHBH mergers with no EM counterparts, so non-detection of those mean nothing.

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!
    - drdeca 7y ago
      Pardon, I meant given the current evidence. Newton didn’t have that evidence. I thought that was obvious. And at first I had written “probably foolish” as a hedge, but thought “oh, I hedge the things I say too much, and it makes what I say less pleasant and more difficult to read. I’ll leave it out.”. By “foolish” I maybe I really meant something closer “probably reasoning incorrectly”.
      - dnautics 7y ago
        The exact point of my comment is that the evidence is not as strong as claimed in the popular conception, as there has not been independent confirmation via a multimodal technique. To date there has been a single, unreproduced, nonindependent, multimodal observation... A good start, to be sure, but still folks like yourself are saying that it would be foolhardy to merely believe GW.
- tlb 7y ago
  The observations are still subject to debate. The signals are far below the noise and can only be discerned with fancy statistics, which some groups have failed to reproduce. See Hossenfelder's detailed critique at https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo...
  - brutt 7y ago
    This video is better, IMHO (same author): Have we really measured gravitational waves? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWTvNlfkvoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWTvNlfkvoI
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    No, it is not a detailed critique, it is a list of little more than rumours. Hossenfelder is satisfied with describing the LIGO collaboration as suspicious and then backing off with ”of course, I don’t belive this. If you belive that clickbait I feel bad for you, but it’s too low quality to spend time debunking.
- catalogia 7y ago
  I believe with exceptionally high degrees of confidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. I have this belief because the sun has been observed to rise every day for something like a few million times in a row and I've never once witnessed it not rise. This belief is so strong I could comfortably call myself certain of it, but it's still nevertheless a belief. For most practical purposes, 'certainty' means an exceptionally high degree of confidence, where the margin for doubt becomes too small to bother ourselves with. But true certainty seems like something that can only arise from pure mathematics, not through observations of the world. I am truly certain that triangles have three sides, whereas I am 'merely' exceptionally confident that gravity exists.
SiempreViernes 7y ago
Eh? You can’t point a telescope at an event that happened (here) years ago! Also, if it ever came out you’ve wasted good night skies on fake events, preventing other astronomy from being carried out by interrupting it with too’s that are known to be fake?! Like non-transient observers get their time sniped enought already?!!! You wouldn’t have friends left in the funding agency at best. Anyway most events are BHBH mergers with no EM counterparts, so non-detection of those mean nothing.