4 ms·

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

by 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.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Were there other theories that explained why the elementary particles have mass except for the Higgs? Regardless, the point stands: we knew that something is missing from the Standard model, and we knew that it must exist in a very precise range of energy. If it didn't exist there, it could have called into question the whole SM. In contrast, we don't know that there must be some kind of dark matter at the 100TeV scale. We know that one particular type that we have thought about could exist, but we have other candidates as well, and there are ways that the 100TeV prediction could also be moved to higher energy levels. Meanwhile, we don't even know if dark matter is a kind of matter or a modification of the force of gravity or a problem with approximations of Einstein's equations used in practice etc.
    - mnl 6y ago
      Sure, for instance EWSB by strong dynamics such as Technicolor. Here's a well known review from back in the day: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0203079 https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0203079 I'm not sure we're done with composite models. There are more exotic alternatives and then the fact remains that neutrino masses aren't in the SM. I consider pretty hopeless to keep thinking that you can modify GR like plasticine in all the instances in which putting amounts of matter that doesn't radiate works (maybe it works because it's there and its effects on other stuff is how you "see" it). It has the appeal of making some people feel like they can call a whole profession or several a bunch of crooks, and that's pretty much what it has going for it outside of the scientists working in earnest on it.
tsimionescu 6y ago
> you make the experiments to confirm the theory The scientific method has usually worked by either coming up with theories and testing them; or by measuring things we thought we knew and finding new explanations when those turn out to be false. What has not really worked too often has been coming up with mathematical models out of thin air, fitting them to all of the current data, extrapolating them to things we haven't been able to observe yet, and then building those things to check if they also worked. That is why research into astronomical objects to ever greater precision is a promising candidate: we know what we expect to find if our current theories are correct, we know of real problems with our theories, and we can come up with new theories that predict such and such structures that should be visible in precisely such and such conditions. This is the exact same model of how physics advanced from Tycho Brahe to Newton - people had models of the motions of the stars, they collected data to confirm those models, and found problems that they couldn't explain. Then Newton came along and found a mathematical model that, for the first time, explained those observations, and even reconciled them with other observations on the ground. We then spent a lot of time testing Newton's theories and didn't find any holes for a few hundred years. Along came electromagnetism, the study of its dynamics, and the discovery of the speed of light problem, which couldn't be explained - requiring a new model that could actually explain everything we knew + the new data, and so on.
- johncolanduoni 6y ago
  > What has not really worked too often has been coming up with mathematical models out of thin air, fitting them to all of the current data, extrapolating them to things we haven't been able to observe yet, and then building those things to check if they also worked. But this is the story of early to mid 20th century physics! General relativity, the initial quantum mechanical theories, Dirac’s equation and anti-particles, neutrinos were all the product of this process of adding mathematical conveniences and extrapolating to things that turned out to be real. You can argue that more recent efforts in this direction have been much less successful than those were, but I think you have to turn a completely blind eye to the history of modern physics to claim that method “has not really worked too often”.
  - 6y ago

by mnl 6y ago

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.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Were there other theories that explained why the elementary particles have mass except for the Higgs? Regardless, the point stands: we knew that something is missing from the Standard model, and we knew that it must exist in a very precise range of energy. If it didn't exist there, it could have called into question the whole SM. In contrast, we don't know that there must be some kind of dark matter at the 100TeV scale. We know that one particular type that we have thought about could exist, but we have other candidates as well, and there are ways that the 100TeV prediction could also be moved to higher energy levels. Meanwhile, we don't even know if dark matter is a kind of matter or a modification of the force of gravity or a problem with approximations of Einstein's equations used in practice etc.
  - mnl 6y ago
    Sure, for instance EWSB by strong dynamics such as Technicolor. Here's a well known review from back in the day: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0203079 https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0203079 I'm not sure we're done with composite models. There are more exotic alternatives and then the fact remains that neutrino masses aren't in the SM. I consider pretty hopeless to keep thinking that you can modify GR like plasticine in all the instances in which putting amounts of matter that doesn't radiate works (maybe it works because it's there and its effects on other stuff is how you "see" it). It has the appeal of making some people feel like they can call a whole profession or several a bunch of crooks, and that's pretty much what it has going for it outside of the scientists working in earnest on it.

tsimionescu 6y ago

> you make the experiments to confirm the theory The scientific method has usually worked by either coming up with theories and testing them; or by measuring things we thought we knew and finding new explanations when those turn out to be false. What has not really worked too often has been coming up with mathematical models out of thin air, fitting them to all of the current data, extrapolating them to things we haven't been able to observe yet, and then building those things to check if they also worked. That is why research into astronomical objects to ever greater precision is a promising candidate: we know what we expect to find if our current theories are correct, we know of real problems with our theories, and we can come up with new theories that predict such and such structures that should be visible in precisely such and such conditions. This is the exact same model of how physics advanced from Tycho Brahe to Newton - people had models of the motions of the stars, they collected data to confirm those models, and found problems that they couldn't explain. Then Newton came along and found a mathematical model that, for the first time, explained those observations, and even reconciled them with other observations on the ground. We then spent a lot of time testing Newton's theories and didn't find any holes for a few hundred years. Along came electromagnetism, the study of its dynamics, and the discovery of the speed of light problem, which couldn't be explained - requiring a new model that could actually explain everything we knew + the new data, and so on.

johncolanduoni 6y ago
> What has not really worked too often has been coming up with mathematical models out of thin air, fitting them to all of the current data, extrapolating them to things we haven't been able to observe yet, and then building those things to check if they also worked. But this is the story of early to mid 20th century physics! General relativity, the initial quantum mechanical theories, Dirac’s equation and anti-particles, neutrinos were all the product of this process of adding mathematical conveniences and extrapolating to things that turned out to be real. You can argue that more recent efforts in this direction have been much less successful than those were, but I think you have to turn a completely blind eye to the history of modern physics to claim that method “has not really worked too often”.
- 6y ago