8 ms·

As an academic I will again make the dull but necessary point: figuring out the fundamental laws of nature is hard, stagnation is the norm, and the advances of

by knzhou 7y ago

As an academic I will again make the dull but necessary point: figuring out the fundamental laws of nature is hard, stagnation is the norm, and the advances of the mid-20th century were the aftershocks of the great revolutions of quantum mechanics and relativity. You can't just make that happen again on demand. Fundamental laws are in short supply. Whenever people tell me we're stagnating I ask them to name an alternative. So far, from best to worst case, every answer has fallen into one of the following buckets: - a subfield that already exists and already has plenty of people working on it - an idea that was extensively investigated and carefully ruled out over 50 years ago - something that requires more money than the field will receive in total over the next 50 years - a mathematical formalism which simply refactors existing laws in a way that makes them unreadable to almost everyone, without a chance of leading to any new predictions - a complicated, ad hoc model that isn't any more predictive than simpler models, but gives the modeller hundreds of shiny knobs to tune - a metaphysical suggestion about how to view what nature "truly" is, which amounts at best to rewriting existing laws with bigger, more "profound" words I can't see how this is going to be fixed by changing how citations work. If anything, in my experience the particularly bad stuff has been correctly punished by low citations.

tasogare 7y ago
What you wrote make total sense for fundamental sciences. However, a lot if not most scientific fields are removed from that, and the supply of ideas or things to investigate is way larger. In this context, gaming the system is easier. I see it in my field, where lot of published stuff is junk written for publication count.
laughinghan 7y ago
I strongly disagree. You make a great argument for why stagnation in physics is to be expected, but advances in physics were a minority factor in the technological advances of the 20th century. Advances in chemistry were by far the primary driver, followed by biology, and then by physics. (I love physics, I minored in it in undergrad, and didn't minor or major in chemistry, lest you think I'm biased.) Chemistry brought us: - the Haber-Bosch process, artificial nitrogen fixation that revolutionized food production - the Bessemer process, modern steel production, necessary not just for modern buildings but also engines, modern guns, cars/boats/planes, modern supply chain via shipping and trucks, industrial factory and farm equipment, etc - modern plastics. Seriously, look around your room, wherever you are. How many things don't have some amount of plastic in them? Less than half, probably? - petroleum extraction and processing, which powers those steel engines, powers most of our electricity, and is the raw materials for plastic - modern explosives, especially smokeless gunpowder (did you know that people totally built Gatling-style rotary machine guns in the Victorian Era? The were useless because black powder creates too much smoke for you to be able to aim a black powder-powered machine gun) Biology brought us germ theory and modern medicine, and of course these fields are all interrelated because engines required thermodynamics and electricity is mostly physics, but none of that required relativity or quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the foundation for the physical chemistry subfield of chemistry, is crucial to modern silicon integrated circuit manufacturing, and of course—the atomic age. But none of those have had the impact on society as oil alone, for example. As mentioned, I love physics, but the fact is, details about the fundamental laws of nature just did not have the impact on society that higher-level, less fundamental scientific advancements have had. The Wright brothers created aviation without any quantitative understanding of aerodynamics; and 100% of the societally impactful advancements in aerodynamics since then has had no relation to relativity or quantum mechanics.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Hmm, I agree, the answer to the question posed varies a lot between different fields. That's another aspect of these articles that I don't like: they talk about "problems with science" as a whole as if it were a monolith.
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    Yeah, I totally agree. Within fundamental physics, I think you're totally right that people were, in a sense, "spoiled" by the great revolutions of quantum mechanics and relativity, and seem to think the next revolution is right around the corner if they can just gedankenexperiment hard enough in their heads. But it probably isn't. It's probably going to be a long slog of hard work and incremental advances that will be necessary to set us up for the next breakthrough.
- 0xBABAD00C 7y ago
  > Advances in chemistry were by far the primary driver Seems like a pretty biased view of recent progress, to be honest. One could come up with similar lists from any number of other areas (Physics - Nuclear Energy, Biology - DNA & biotech, Computer Science - The Internet, etc.)
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is. As I explained, I am biased towards physics, if anything. And I acknowledged that each field has had societally impactful advances, I never claimed chemistry was the sole driver. Surely you're not arguing that physics, chemistry, and biology have all had exactly equally-sized impacts on society over the 20th century? What a surprising coincidence that would be! If you think one could come up with similar lists, by all means, please do. I actually did mention the impact of nuclear energy (I called it "the atomic age" to include nuclear weapons as well), but surely you wouldn't claim that has had as large an impact on society as petroleum alone, which powers most of our electricity, internal combustion engines that made modern trade and supply chains possible, and is the raw material for the hundreds of pieces of plastic in the very room you're sitting in?
Gatsky 7y ago
The opportunity today to do great work is seemingly better than at any other time in history (internet, number of people interested in a field, absence of war/famine) so it does feel like we are stagnant despite having many great tools and collaborative potential. Of course in reality the most important work often happens often under very difficult conditions, Hamming said that.
btrettel 7y ago
I see that you work in particle physics. I don't think particle physics is representative of science in general. My impression is that particle physics is seen as sexy and attracts a larger proportion of better researchers than many other fields for that reason. The stagnation in fluid dynamics (my general field) seems fairly obviously linked to incentives. Pumping out papers is seen as more important than doing a good job as far as I can tell. In the past few years I think I've made a lot of progress in my subfield by simply compiling tons of data from the open literature [1], which apparently no one thought to do on the scale that I've been doing. (It's a lot of work up front, which would lead to a delay in publishing results.) In the process I've found that a lot of what's written in review articles and books on the subject is obviously wrong. This is not a sign of a healthy field! And I don't think you can do this in particle physics, but I think you can in many fields of engineering. [1] https://github.com/btrettel/pipe-jet-breakup-data https://github.com/btrettel/pipe-jet-breakup-data
- m-ee 7y ago
  Could you elaborate on some of the obviously wrong stuff that you've seen? I'm curious. I have an ME background but strayed away from it into electronics, then oddly enough ended up in a fluids heavy business.
  - btrettel 7y ago
    Here's a recent preprint of mine: https://engrxiv.org/nqhs5 https://engrxiv.org/nqhs5 This paper is on the different varieties of liquid jet breakup, e.g., for applications like fire hose streams and fuel sprays. At low speeds you have more regular breakup but this changes to various types of less regular breakup at higher speeds. (There are photos of each type in the preprint.) These varieties are called "regimes" in the literature. Because models are typically only valid in a particular regime, it's important to identify the correct regime. This is often done with a "regime diagram". There's a lot I could write about what was wrong before. The easiest thing to do is compare figure 3 (old regime diagram, p. 5) and figure 4 (my new diagram, p. 13). These are in exactly the same coordinates but don't resemble each other much. If science were working correctly then the change would not be anywhere near as dramatic as it was. Now, with the small amount of data past researchers used to construct these diagrams, they couldn't see that the diagram was wrong. The data was simply too sparse to see the big picture. But once you start adding tons of data it becomes dead obvious that the diagrams you see in textbooks and review articles are wrong. So I can't blame previous researchers that much, but compiling open data is something that should happen regularly. The current academic system does not incentivize data compilation, at least in engineering. The most recent study mentioned in the paper used a grand total of 11 data points and claimed to have enough resolution to move some of the established boundaries slightly. This actually is a regression. The first study to construct a regime diagram had 63 data points. Mine has roughly 1200, and I still want more data! 11 data points is not scientifically acceptable, but it was enough to get a publication. (I've since revised and extended this paper but I can't upload the new version yet due to the publisher's policies. One example: I determined that "turbulent dripping" is probably not possible so I removed it from the diagram. ;-) I could list more if you want. There's no shortage of problems. But keep in mind that these problems are usually only obvious after you get enough data.
Balgair 7y ago
In physics we have two (smaller?) areas that are ripe for some real progress: Optics, electronics. Electronics: The memristor. Though it seems that the HP breakthrough was a bit premature, the promise of a solid-state memristor would allow for very energy efficient computation. Think top-of-the-line modern GPUs that can run off a small solar cell or watch battery. The actual physics of such circuits may have some fun things hidden in them. I think it'll really change how we use computers. Optics: As our manufacturing revolution reaches out of semi-conductors and into more difficult materials, we're seeing cheap and interesting optics happen. I'm not sure where it's going, but grads are 'playing' more in the lab with cheaper stuff, allowing for kismet to happen faster. Especially as bio becomes 'thirstier' for optics, as there is a LOT of money there from disease research. Though these aren't re-writing the fundamental laws, they are looking to have real impact on human life, and not in ways that are just making things more efficient (though there is a lot of that too).
StandardFuture 7y ago
1. You have effectively attempted to straw man all possible suggestions and conversation around modifying STEM-based progress by using a few anecdotes as a basis. This is not 'a point'. These are only a handful of observations. 2. You seem to be framing all possible STEM-based progress from the perspective of progress within the physics community. And this comment being at the top (currently) really diverts so many other possible enriching discussions around this topic. As another comment pointed out progress in chemistry during the 20th century that effectively donated as much to human progress as physics even though it goes mostly unnoticed by a larger audience. 3. Your argument only mentions how citations have allowed for better filtering of true-negative papers/authors, but it does not explain away overly citated papers/authors which are essentially false-positives as to being progressive. 4. It does not take extraordinary logic to find flaws in any system, so I am not sure why so many from an academic background (although not all) adopt a more defensive stance towards the existing system as if it was provably a global optimum. Would you mind engaging in conversation around this?
- btrettel 7y ago
  > You seem to be framing all possible STEM-based progress from the perspective of progress within the physics community. While I'm not knzhou, knzhou recognizes this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22659861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22659861 > It does not take extraordinary logic to find flaws in any system, so I am not sure why so many from an academic background (although not all) adopt a more defensive stance towards the existing system as if it was provably a global optimum. Would you mind engaging in conversation around this? I have seen similar defenses of various things in academia over the years. It's very easy for someone who is successful in a particular system to think that system must be generally good. I can recall going to a talk nominally about writing good grant proposals where the speaker would add random comments about how the current funding system is the most effective known to man, etc. The speaker was a tenured professor. They're going to be inclined to think that whatever system they succeed in must be fundamentally good. After all, it recognized their brilliance! Similarly, knzhou is a graduate student at Stanford on a NSF fellowship. He seems like a very smart guy. But his experiences are not representative of science as a whole. It seems obvious that his opinions are going to differ from someone like me. I was rejected by Stanford, MIT, and Caltech and also rejected from every graduate fellowship I applied to. (Don't read too much into the schools: Later I decided that those schools would not have been a good fit for me, so I'm glad to have been rejected from them.) I think I do good quality research that isn't recognized by the current system. To do my research I've had to take whatever scraps of funding were available or work as a TA. This doesn't strike me as optimal. People like knzhou haven't had these experiences. This is triply true because I've been in grad school for about 9 years now, but knzhou has only been in grad school for about 3. Maybe in a couple of years, knzhou's opinions will sour? After 3 years I didn't have the same opinions I do now.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by knzhou 7y ago

tasogare 7y ago

What you wrote make total sense for fundamental sciences. However, a lot if not most scientific fields are removed from that, and the supply of ideas or things to investigate is way larger. In this context, gaming the system is easier. I see it in my field, where lot of published stuff is junk written for publication count.

laughinghan 7y ago

I strongly disagree. You make a great argument for why stagnation in physics is to be expected, but advances in physics were a minority factor in the technological advances of the 20th century. Advances in chemistry were by far the primary driver, followed by biology, and then by physics. (I love physics, I minored in it in undergrad, and didn't minor or major in chemistry, lest you think I'm biased.) Chemistry brought us: - the Haber-Bosch process, artificial nitrogen fixation that revolutionized food production - the Bessemer process, modern steel production, necessary not just for modern buildings but also engines, modern guns, cars/boats/planes, modern supply chain via shipping and trucks, industrial factory and farm equipment, etc - modern plastics. Seriously, look around your room, wherever you are. How many things don't have some amount of plastic in them? Less than half, probably? - petroleum extraction and processing, which powers those steel engines, powers most of our electricity, and is the raw materials for plastic - modern explosives, especially smokeless gunpowder (did you know that people totally built Gatling-style rotary machine guns in the Victorian Era? The were useless because black powder creates too much smoke for you to be able to aim a black powder-powered machine gun) Biology brought us germ theory and modern medicine, and of course these fields are all interrelated because engines required thermodynamics and electricity is mostly physics, but none of that required relativity or quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the foundation for the physical chemistry subfield of chemistry, is crucial to modern silicon integrated circuit manufacturing, and of course—the atomic age. But none of those have had the impact on society as oil alone, for example. As mentioned, I love physics, but the fact is, details about the fundamental laws of nature just did not have the impact on society that higher-level, less fundamental scientific advancements have had. The Wright brothers created aviation without any quantitative understanding of aerodynamics; and 100% of the societally impactful advancements in aerodynamics since then has had no relation to relativity or quantum mechanics.

knzhou 7y ago
Hmm, I agree, the answer to the question posed varies a lot between different fields. That's another aspect of these articles that I don't like: they talk about "problems with science" as a whole as if it were a monolith.
- laughinghan 7y ago
  Yeah, I totally agree. Within fundamental physics, I think you're totally right that people were, in a sense, "spoiled" by the great revolutions of quantum mechanics and relativity, and seem to think the next revolution is right around the corner if they can just gedankenexperiment hard enough in their heads. But it probably isn't. It's probably going to be a long slog of hard work and incremental advances that will be necessary to set us up for the next breakthrough.
0xBABAD00C 7y ago
> Advances in chemistry were by far the primary driver Seems like a pretty biased view of recent progress, to be honest. One could come up with similar lists from any number of other areas (Physics - Nuclear Energy, Biology - DNA & biotech, Computer Science - The Internet, etc.)
- laughinghan 7y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is. As I explained, I am biased towards physics, if anything. And I acknowledged that each field has had societally impactful advances, I never claimed chemistry was the sole driver. Surely you're not arguing that physics, chemistry, and biology have all had exactly equally-sized impacts on society over the 20th century? What a surprising coincidence that would be! If you think one could come up with similar lists, by all means, please do. I actually did mention the impact of nuclear energy (I called it "the atomic age" to include nuclear weapons as well), but surely you wouldn't claim that has had as large an impact on society as petroleum alone, which powers most of our electricity, internal combustion engines that made modern trade and supply chains possible, and is the raw material for the hundreds of pieces of plastic in the very room you're sitting in?

Gatsky 7y ago

The opportunity today to do great work is seemingly better than at any other time in history (internet, number of people interested in a field, absence of war/famine) so it does feel like we are stagnant despite having many great tools and collaborative potential. Of course in reality the most important work often happens often under very difficult conditions, Hamming said that.

btrettel 7y ago

I see that you work in particle physics. I don't think particle physics is representative of science in general. My impression is that particle physics is seen as sexy and attracts a larger proportion of better researchers than many other fields for that reason. The stagnation in fluid dynamics (my general field) seems fairly obviously linked to incentives. Pumping out papers is seen as more important than doing a good job as far as I can tell. In the past few years I think I've made a lot of progress in my subfield by simply compiling tons of data from the open literature [1], which apparently no one thought to do on the scale that I've been doing. (It's a lot of work up front, which would lead to a delay in publishing results.) In the process I've found that a lot of what's written in review articles and books on the subject is obviously wrong. This is not a sign of a healthy field! And I don't think you can do this in particle physics, but I think you can in many fields of engineering. [1] https://github.com/btrettel/pipe-jet-breakup-data https://github.com/btrettel/pipe-jet-breakup-data

m-ee 7y ago
Could you elaborate on some of the obviously wrong stuff that you've seen? I'm curious. I have an ME background but strayed away from it into electronics, then oddly enough ended up in a fluids heavy business.
- btrettel 7y ago
  Here's a recent preprint of mine: https://engrxiv.org/nqhs5 https://engrxiv.org/nqhs5 This paper is on the different varieties of liquid jet breakup, e.g., for applications like fire hose streams and fuel sprays. At low speeds you have more regular breakup but this changes to various types of less regular breakup at higher speeds. (There are photos of each type in the preprint.) These varieties are called "regimes" in the literature. Because models are typically only valid in a particular regime, it's important to identify the correct regime. This is often done with a "regime diagram". There's a lot I could write about what was wrong before. The easiest thing to do is compare figure 3 (old regime diagram, p. 5) and figure 4 (my new diagram, p. 13). These are in exactly the same coordinates but don't resemble each other much. If science were working correctly then the change would not be anywhere near as dramatic as it was. Now, with the small amount of data past researchers used to construct these diagrams, they couldn't see that the diagram was wrong. The data was simply too sparse to see the big picture. But once you start adding tons of data it becomes dead obvious that the diagrams you see in textbooks and review articles are wrong. So I can't blame previous researchers that much, but compiling open data is something that should happen regularly. The current academic system does not incentivize data compilation, at least in engineering. The most recent study mentioned in the paper used a grand total of 11 data points and claimed to have enough resolution to move some of the established boundaries slightly. This actually is a regression. The first study to construct a regime diagram had 63 data points. Mine has roughly 1200, and I still want more data! 11 data points is not scientifically acceptable, but it was enough to get a publication. (I've since revised and extended this paper but I can't upload the new version yet due to the publisher's policies. One example: I determined that "turbulent dripping" is probably not possible so I removed it from the diagram. ;-) I could list more if you want. There's no shortage of problems. But keep in mind that these problems are usually only obvious after you get enough data.

Balgair 7y ago

In physics we have two (smaller?) areas that are ripe for some real progress: Optics, electronics. Electronics: The memristor. Though it seems that the HP breakthrough was a bit premature, the promise of a solid-state memristor would allow for very energy efficient computation. Think top-of-the-line modern GPUs that can run off a small solar cell or watch battery. The actual physics of such circuits may have some fun things hidden in them. I think it'll really change how we use computers. Optics: As our manufacturing revolution reaches out of semi-conductors and into more difficult materials, we're seeing cheap and interesting optics happen. I'm not sure where it's going, but grads are 'playing' more in the lab with cheaper stuff, allowing for kismet to happen faster. Especially as bio becomes 'thirstier' for optics, as there is a LOT of money there from disease research. Though these aren't re-writing the fundamental laws, they are looking to have real impact on human life, and not in ways that are just making things more efficient (though there is a lot of that too).

StandardFuture 7y ago

1. You have effectively attempted to straw man all possible suggestions and conversation around modifying STEM-based progress by using a few anecdotes as a basis. This is not 'a point'. These are only a handful of observations. 2. You seem to be framing all possible STEM-based progress from the perspective of progress within the physics community. And this comment being at the top (currently) really diverts so many other possible enriching discussions around this topic. As another comment pointed out progress in chemistry during the 20th century that effectively donated as much to human progress as physics even though it goes mostly unnoticed by a larger audience. 3. Your argument only mentions how citations have allowed for better filtering of true-negative papers/authors, but it does not explain away overly citated papers/authors which are essentially false-positives as to being progressive. 4. It does not take extraordinary logic to find flaws in any system, so I am not sure why so many from an academic background (although not all) adopt a more defensive stance towards the existing system as if it was provably a global optimum. Would you mind engaging in conversation around this?

btrettel 7y ago
> You seem to be framing all possible STEM-based progress from the perspective of progress within the physics community. While I'm not knzhou, knzhou recognizes this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22659861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22659861 > It does not take extraordinary logic to find flaws in any system, so I am not sure why so many from an academic background (although not all) adopt a more defensive stance towards the existing system as if it was provably a global optimum. Would you mind engaging in conversation around this? I have seen similar defenses of various things in academia over the years. It's very easy for someone who is successful in a particular system to think that system must be generally good. I can recall going to a talk nominally about writing good grant proposals where the speaker would add random comments about how the current funding system is the most effective known to man, etc. The speaker was a tenured professor. They're going to be inclined to think that whatever system they succeed in must be fundamentally good. After all, it recognized their brilliance! Similarly, knzhou is a graduate student at Stanford on a NSF fellowship. He seems like a very smart guy. But his experiences are not representative of science as a whole. It seems obvious that his opinions are going to differ from someone like me. I was rejected by Stanford, MIT, and Caltech and also rejected from every graduate fellowship I applied to. (Don't read too much into the schools: Later I decided that those schools would not have been a good fit for me, so I'm glad to have been rejected from them.) I think I do good quality research that isn't recognized by the current system. To do my research I've had to take whatever scraps of funding were available or work as a TA. This doesn't strike me as optimal. People like knzhou haven't had these experiences. This is triply true because I've been in grad school for about 9 years now, but knzhou has only been in grad school for about 3. Maybe in a couple of years, knzhou's opinions will sour? After 3 years I didn't have the same opinions I do now.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]