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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 be

by 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.

by 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.