3 ms·

I don't think that's Sabine's point or the parent comment's point, which is mainly about human capital opportunity cost, not funding. Regarding funding, Sabine

by jules 6y ago

I don't think that's Sabine's point or the parent comment's point, which is mainly about human capital opportunity cost, not funding. Regarding funding, Sabine IS against building a bigger particle collider, which WOULD cost a massive amount of money. The LHC cost ~$5000M.

auntienomen 6y ago
The parent comment is explicitly discussing funding. As for the human capital question, it seems absurd to me to call string theorists the 'most brilliant' and then try to dictate what they should work on.
- noch 6y ago
  > The parent comment is explicitly discussing funding. Funding is relevant. Tenure, graduate students, postdocs etc, all cost money. That money has to come from somewhere. Money is intimately tied to the human labour/capital question because there's a bijection between time and money. One of my main questions was: how do we measure this cost and reason about it in order to understand the past 50 years of dismal results and make reasonable decisions about the next 50 years? > As for the human capital question, it seems absurd to me to call string theorists the 'most brilliant' and then try to dictate what they should work on What is absurd is to claim that questioning the results of brilliant men and women is absurd. They are not gods to be worshipped blindly. In a startup, would it be absurd for me to question my co-founder and his team's results even though his IQ is 2 standard deviations beyond mine? Let's look further back for a sloppy analogy: is it absurd to criticise Newton's study of alchemy? Was it absurd for his contemporaries, rarely his intellectual equals, to question the results of such studies? What I want from this debate, is a rigorous way to account for the past 50 years of string theory in terms of human intellectual labour cost, general opportunity cost, and return on investment. You seem strangely hostile and defensive. But what I'm looking for is merely for the math to speak for itself so that the debate can be settled once and for all.
  - auntienomen 6y ago
    I've been a bit short with you because you've written long speculative comments without making any attempt to look up the numbers yourself. That's something to be embarrassed about. I don't have anything at stake here, personally. I am not a string theorist, nor am I dependent on grant funding. But I've worked in and out of academia as a scientist, and it offends me to see you play-acting as a critic of science without even understanding the lay of the land.
    - noch 6y ago
      > I've been a bit short with you because you've written long speculative comments without making any attempt to look up the numbers yourself. That's something to be embarrassed about. That's an assumption on your part, one that is both incorrect and unfortunate. (as far as theoretical physics is concerned.) Embarrassment, however, is largely irrelevant when trying to understand anything in a systematic way. > and it offends me to see you play-acting as a critic of science without even understanding the lay of the land. Offendedness. Well, we simply have different experiences and perspectives within academia. We see the land differently. If that's your threshold for offence then life must be difficult indeed. I don't envy your position. If it will somewhat assuage your being offended I should tell you that, as a mathematician, I champion science above any other human activity. But who I am and what I do should be irrelevant when testing hypotheses.

by jules 6y ago

auntienomen 6y ago

The parent comment is explicitly discussing funding. As for the human capital question, it seems absurd to me to call string theorists the 'most brilliant' and then try to dictate what they should work on.

noch 6y ago
> The parent comment is explicitly discussing funding. Funding is relevant. Tenure, graduate students, postdocs etc, all cost money. That money has to come from somewhere. Money is intimately tied to the human labour/capital question because there's a bijection between time and money. One of my main questions was: how do we measure this cost and reason about it in order to understand the past 50 years of dismal results and make reasonable decisions about the next 50 years? > As for the human capital question, it seems absurd to me to call string theorists the 'most brilliant' and then try to dictate what they should work on What is absurd is to claim that questioning the results of brilliant men and women is absurd. They are not gods to be worshipped blindly. In a startup, would it be absurd for me to question my co-founder and his team's results even though his IQ is 2 standard deviations beyond mine? Let's look further back for a sloppy analogy: is it absurd to criticise Newton's study of alchemy? Was it absurd for his contemporaries, rarely his intellectual equals, to question the results of such studies? What I want from this debate, is a rigorous way to account for the past 50 years of string theory in terms of human intellectual labour cost, general opportunity cost, and return on investment. You seem strangely hostile and defensive. But what I'm looking for is merely for the math to speak for itself so that the debate can be settled once and for all.
- auntienomen 6y ago
  I've been a bit short with you because you've written long speculative comments without making any attempt to look up the numbers yourself. That's something to be embarrassed about. I don't have anything at stake here, personally. I am not a string theorist, nor am I dependent on grant funding. But I've worked in and out of academia as a scientist, and it offends me to see you play-acting as a critic of science without even understanding the lay of the land.
  - noch 6y ago
    > I've been a bit short with you because you've written long speculative comments without making any attempt to look up the numbers yourself. That's something to be embarrassed about. That's an assumption on your part, one that is both incorrect and unfortunate. (as far as theoretical physics is concerned.) Embarrassment, however, is largely irrelevant when trying to understand anything in a systematic way. > and it offends me to see you play-acting as a critic of science without even understanding the lay of the land. Offendedness. Well, we simply have different experiences and perspectives within academia. We see the land differently. If that's your threshold for offence then life must be difficult indeed. I don't envy your position. If it will somewhat assuage your being offended I should tell you that, as a mathematician, I champion science above any other human activity. But who I am and what I do should be irrelevant when testing hypotheses.