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Her opinion is totally legitimate and I’m glad people like her are speaking up. Everyone should agree that we need to spend money pushing the limits of science.

by 6nf 6y ago

Her opinion is totally legitimate and I’m glad people like her are speaking up. Everyone should agree that we need to spend money pushing the limits of science. That’s not the issue here. The point of Sabine’s criticism is that these empty promises need more scrutiny based on the failures of the recent past.

cedilla 6y ago
I don't really understand that argument. What does a failed prediction about super-symmetry in 1996 have to do with the opportunities of the next collider? How does "we didn't find evidence for or against supersymmetry at LHC" connect to dark matter experiments in its successor? I'm also not really convinced of what she categorizes as failure. She enumerates quite a few incorrect predictions, but is that sufficient to show that the experiments were a failure? There are literally thousands of papers published because of the LHC and CERN claims hundreds of results. Maybe you can show that they are mostly worthless (which is not the same as boring or not spectecular), but she doesn't really seem to even try to do that.
- ehvatum 6y ago
  > She enumerates quite a few incorrect predictions You make a good point - without the expensive accelerator data, we’d have no idea that these omg ridiculous stupid waaaa predictions are true or false!!!
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > You make a good point - without the expensive accelerator data, we’d have no idea that these omg ridiculous stupid waaaa predictions are true or false!!! No, even with the accelerator data we probably still won't be able to conclusively rule out many approaches. We'll only be able to rule out overly specific variants of those predictions. Which, given the infinitude of available theories, doesn't do much to narrow things down. Think of it this way: At one point, geocentric theories of planetary motion based on nested crystal spheres were requiring ever more elaborate arrangements with more spheres. More observations with greater precision only required adding more spheres. We're somewhat in the same situation WRT high-energy physics today, in that larger and more powerful accelerators will only rule out particular theory variants, just as more powerful telescopes would only have ruled out particular arrangements of crystal spheres. Just as geocentrism as a category of theories isn't falsifiable by greater precision, many of the current approaches toward HEP aren't falsifiable by ever more powerful accelerators. You can always add another dimension or mathematical elaboration to explain the observations. Which simply means that right now, another large particle accelerator probably isn't the most useful experimental approach to figuring out how to reconcile the two well-supported theories we do have.
- mnl 6y ago
  That's the Hossenfelder take on the scientific method for you: whereby you make the experiments to confirm the theory. Which is fantastic because if science had ever worked that way you would be done with all experiments as the sensible ones would give known results, so what's the point.
  - sgt101 6y ago
    The point is that you can spend a lump of money to check things out in that way, and fine - especially when you have the Higgs to confirm as well. But if you want to double down you need to have better evidence and a better argument. This is the logic that applies in any lab; sure take a punt look at x or y, if you're right then you'll get a grant and your career will thrive. If you're wrong you're out. That's happened to many people (Hossenfelder included?) but it's now happening to the community and no one likes it. But given that is how science as an institution operates they shouldn't be surprised. Here's a thought experiment. Would there be a bid for a new 100Tev machine if super symmetry had been confirmed at LHC? My bet is :for sure. And the key argument would be "we told you that we were good last time, so you have to back us this time"
    - mnl 6y ago
      The thing is we didn't know whether the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking involved the Higgs or something else. But we knew that there would be particles associated to electroweak symmetry breaking at TeV scale because of a unitarity bound, among other reasons (as happens with this particular kind of dark matter at 100 TeV that Sabine dishonestly calls "weasel words"). Something had to happen at that scale, the Higgs wasn't guaranteed. Sabine gets experimental physics backwards because no one planned the LHC to confirm the Higgs, but to know whether the Higgs existed and if it didn't what did instead. My money was mostly on it not showing up; many physicists were convinced it wouldn't, then it was there but we couldn't know beforehand. There's a scientific case for making precision measurements of it, as was done with the electroweak bosons for very good reasons that she dismisses without showing any kind of understanding about the research she wants to shut off.
      - 6y ago
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  > What does a failed prediction about super-symmetry in 1996 have to do with the opportunities of the next collider? There are two criticisms she articulates very clearly: 1. SUSY is not a testable theory, as it can always "retreat" to higher energy levels, without any real limit. 2. There is no scientific reason to believe SUSY should be true - it doesn't solve any real problem with any of the known theories of the universe. There are infinitely many ways that the universe could be different wherever we haven't looked yet - we can't possibly test all of those theories. The combination of both arguments leads to the following "law": until we have a theory that solves unsolved problems in physics AND that makes concrete predictions with bounded parameters (so that a failure will explicitly rule out this theory, instead of pushing it endlessly to "maybe at higher energy levels"), we shouldn't be paying huge amounts of money to test things blindly. This is the fundamental difference between, say, the Higgs prediction and SUSY - we were looking for a concrete thing that it was necessary to exist for the rest of the Standard Model to make sense; and we knew a clear range of energies where the Higgs must exist; if we found it like we did, we know the theory was correct. If LHC didn't find the Higgs, then it would have definitively ruled it out, leading to an explicit need for a new SM. By contrast, SUSY has not been confirmed, but it is also impossible to rule out entirely, and none of our models NEED SUSY to be right - so in the end, experiments for SUSY don't achieve anything. We might as well be launching space missions to look for Russel's teapot.

by 6nf 6y ago

cedilla 6y ago

I don't really understand that argument. What does a failed prediction about super-symmetry in 1996 have to do with the opportunities of the next collider? How does "we didn't find evidence for or against supersymmetry at LHC" connect to dark matter experiments in its successor? I'm also not really convinced of what she categorizes as failure. She enumerates quite a few incorrect predictions, but is that sufficient to show that the experiments were a failure? There are literally thousands of papers published because of the LHC and CERN claims hundreds of results. Maybe you can show that they are mostly worthless (which is not the same as boring or not spectecular), but she doesn't really seem to even try to do that.

ehvatum 6y ago
> She enumerates quite a few incorrect predictions You make a good point - without the expensive accelerator data, we’d have no idea that these omg ridiculous stupid waaaa predictions are true or false!!!
- webmaven 6y ago
  > You make a good point - without the expensive accelerator data, we’d have no idea that these omg ridiculous stupid waaaa predictions are true or false!!! No, even with the accelerator data we probably still won't be able to conclusively rule out many approaches. We'll only be able to rule out overly specific variants of those predictions. Which, given the infinitude of available theories, doesn't do much to narrow things down. Think of it this way: At one point, geocentric theories of planetary motion based on nested crystal spheres were requiring ever more elaborate arrangements with more spheres. More observations with greater precision only required adding more spheres. We're somewhat in the same situation WRT high-energy physics today, in that larger and more powerful accelerators will only rule out particular theory variants, just as more powerful telescopes would only have ruled out particular arrangements of crystal spheres. Just as geocentrism as a category of theories isn't falsifiable by greater precision, many of the current approaches toward HEP aren't falsifiable by ever more powerful accelerators. You can always add another dimension or mathematical elaboration to explain the observations. Which simply means that right now, another large particle accelerator probably isn't the most useful experimental approach to figuring out how to reconcile the two well-supported theories we do have.
mnl 6y ago
That's the Hossenfelder take on the scientific method for you: whereby you make the experiments to confirm the theory. Which is fantastic because if science had ever worked that way you would be done with all experiments as the sensible ones would give known results, so what's the point.
- sgt101 6y ago
  The point is that you can spend a lump of money to check things out in that way, and fine - especially when you have the Higgs to confirm as well. But if you want to double down you need to have better evidence and a better argument. This is the logic that applies in any lab; sure take a punt look at x or y, if you're right then you'll get a grant and your career will thrive. If you're wrong you're out. That's happened to many people (Hossenfelder included?) but it's now happening to the community and no one likes it. But given that is how science as an institution operates they shouldn't be surprised. Here's a thought experiment. Would there be a bid for a new 100Tev machine if super symmetry had been confirmed at LHC? My bet is :for sure. And the key argument would be "we told you that we were good last time, so you have to back us this time"
  - mnl 6y ago
    The thing is we didn't know whether the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking involved the Higgs or something else. But we knew that there would be particles associated to electroweak symmetry breaking at TeV scale because of a unitarity bound, among other reasons (as happens with this particular kind of dark matter at 100 TeV that Sabine dishonestly calls "weasel words"). Something had to happen at that scale, the Higgs wasn't guaranteed. Sabine gets experimental physics backwards because no one planned the LHC to confirm the Higgs, but to know whether the Higgs existed and if it didn't what did instead. My money was mostly on it not showing up; many physicists were convinced it wouldn't, then it was there but we couldn't know beforehand. There's a scientific case for making precision measurements of it, as was done with the electroweak bosons for very good reasons that she dismisses without showing any kind of understanding about the research she wants to shut off.
    - 6y ago
tsimionescu 6y ago
> What does a failed prediction about super-symmetry in 1996 have to do with the opportunities of the next collider? There are two criticisms she articulates very clearly: 1. SUSY is not a testable theory, as it can always "retreat" to higher energy levels, without any real limit. 2. There is no scientific reason to believe SUSY should be true - it doesn't solve any real problem with any of the known theories of the universe. There are infinitely many ways that the universe could be different wherever we haven't looked yet - we can't possibly test all of those theories. The combination of both arguments leads to the following "law": until we have a theory that solves unsolved problems in physics AND that makes concrete predictions with bounded parameters (so that a failure will explicitly rule out this theory, instead of pushing it endlessly to "maybe at higher energy levels"), we shouldn't be paying huge amounts of money to test things blindly. This is the fundamental difference between, say, the Higgs prediction and SUSY - we were looking for a concrete thing that it was necessary to exist for the rest of the Standard Model to make sense; and we knew a clear range of energies where the Higgs must exist; if we found it like we did, we know the theory was correct. If LHC didn't find the Higgs, then it would have definitively ruled it out, leading to an explicit need for a new SM. By contrast, SUSY has not been confirmed, but it is also impossible to rule out entirely, and none of our models NEED SUSY to be right - so in the end, experiments for SUSY don't achieve anything. We might as well be launching space missions to look for Russel's teapot.