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What is going on with the incredibly hostile tone in the article? As far as I’m aware, cosmologists are working hard to actually find answers and would be happy

What is going on with the incredibly hostile tone in the article? As far as I’m aware, cosmologists are working hard to actually find answers and would be happy about any result that holds up.

ravar 6y ago
If you spend enough time in physics grad school its very easy to end up feeling that way. I personally loved the tone of the article.
- goostavos 6y ago
  Ditto. The tone is what keeps me subscribed to his site. I don't know anything about physics, but I still enjoy reading his rantings.
happytoexplain 6y ago
It's really unfortunate. People hate elitism so much they will frame any achievement by somebody "humble" or in any way outside a perceived circle of experts as a triumph against assholes
- bjornsing 6y ago
  Na... I’m pretty elitist but I like this kind of tone. It depends on who you see as the elite.
floatingatoll 6y ago
Cosmologists would be rationally happy once the result holds up, but as with most science fields, the folks within the field will be irrationally hostile to an outsider showing them an insight they’ve overlooked, and may spend the next ten or twenty years aggressively fighting against it regardless of its merits. To provide an IT analogy, imagine being tech support for a bunch of alpha-cowboy engineers. They’ll tell you they did all the obvious things, they’ll object to being asked to perform simple diagnostic tests (“does the problem go away if you create a temporary new user account on your system?”), they’ll resent you for not having an immediate solution, and they’ll resent you when you find the basic step they missed. Yes, they’ll accept the solution you offer, but they’ll fight you tooth and nail until it’s unarguably proven that you’re right. That’s often what cross-domain innovation in science is like. EDIT: per comment below, this is a much better explanation: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works
- bbatha 6y ago
  Tokamak plasma physics is a cousin of cosmology anyway — at the end of the day they’re studying balls of plasma it just depends on if they’re natural and giant or man made and small. I worked in a plasma physics department and people did both reactor physics and cosmology all of the time. So thisnt really an outsider perspective.
- naringas 6y ago
  > and may spend the next ten or twenty years aggressively fighting against it regardless of its merits. it seems more accurate to say that they retire and the new generation of physics professors are more open to those ideas because they encountered them as students before building a career on some sub-sub field which migh have ended up as a dead end...
  - BalinKing 6y ago
    (Possibly) obligatory SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works
    - floatingatoll 6y ago
      I’m going to edit this into my post now because it’s so much better than what I said! Thanks!
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    As Max Planck is quoted, "Science progresses one funeral at a time". (He probably said it in German.) I just wonder how many biochemists will need to retire and get Alzheimer's before work on suppressing amyloids is finally abandoned, and something that could possibly work gets a grant. In the meantime, take your valacyclovir!
- willis936 6y ago
  Alfvein cosmology was largely abandoned after the discovery of CMB. It’s too bad really, since it holds up quite well in many regards. The hostile tone when discussed is frustration that it is no longer even discussed by mainstream cosmologists. We teach kids about plum pudding but not the career cosmologists about MHD?
smsm42 6y ago
I've read the headline and thought to myself "sounds like something from Locklin". And surely enough... It's just how he writes (sometimes), I think. Doesn't bother me too much but I see how it could be off-putting to some.
jamesgreenleaf 6y ago
It's the author's style: https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/about/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/about/ I bet it gets more clicks than a moderate tone would. "Cosmologists hate him! See how he solved dark matter with this one weird trick..."
- dylan604 6y ago
  But I already know what happens next. We've seen it before
amelius 6y ago
I don't think such a great finding deserves an article in this tone. Posting the original paper instead would be more appropriate.
- mieses 6y ago
  Thanks for adding a much needed air of self-importance and sanctimony to the discussion.
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    I don't detect either of those in the parent post. What are you referring to?
lumost 6y ago
In fairness, I think many physics students assumed that someone had done the GR to show that DM wasn't just a GR effect. I recall a near identical situation as the author when it came to someone presenting galaxy rotation curves based on newtonian gravity and thinking "that's odd, but someone has surely done the math by now".
exabrial 6y ago
It's humor. Lighten up.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  Even cringe humour requires good delivery
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  The command, "lighten up", is a double edged sword.
  - exabrial 6y ago
    It's a play on words since the topic is dark matter, but I also think that humor was lost...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
slibhb 6y ago
Looks like the author got banned from HN for that tone: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=scottlocklin https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=scottlocklin I find him hilarious but I suppose it's a cultural thing and I understand that lots of people find it degrading.
narag 6y ago
What is going on with the incredibly hostile tone in the article? No idea. But the question that bothers me is: is he right? I mean, is this idea something obvious? I'm not even asking if it's true, just if this is one of the first explanations you should come up with when facing this particular problem. Because, in that case, it's puzzling.
protastus 6y ago
I don't think we should shoot the messenger. There are too many academics with huge egos. Too many papers obfuscate simple results behind unnecessarily complex and brittle mathematical models, because huge formulas and proofs make the authors look smart, and impressing the reviewers is a requirement for publication. Everyone who has a PhD in engineering knows professors who make careers out of solving made up problems with tenuous connection with the real world, and thus highly questionable utility. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think engineering is about solving practical problems and building shit. And then in physics, it's apparently now mainstream to produce theories that aren't testable. Of course, the math has to be very sophisticated and specialized -- dead-end work with simple math wouldn't get funded, much less become an entire field of study. Which is to say: explaining reality is hard, and all the linear problems have solutions. Today, some find it more convenient to invent another universe that still has open problems, and solve those. To obfuscate, in comes a ton of math with weird notation invented with colleagues who also play this game. It would be awesome if 3 generations of researchers got scooped by an applied physicist from a different field because nobody bothered to model galaxy rotation curves with general relativity. GR would be too boring, entirely lacking in crazy math.

What is going on with the incredibly hostile tone in the article? As far as I’m aware, cosmologists are working hard to actually find answers and would be happy about any result that holds up.

ravar 6y ago

If you spend enough time in physics grad school its very easy to end up feeling that way. I personally loved the tone of the article.

goostavos 6y ago
Ditto. The tone is what keeps me subscribed to his site. I don't know anything about physics, but I still enjoy reading his rantings.

happytoexplain 6y ago

It's really unfortunate. People hate elitism so much they will frame any achievement by somebody "humble" or in any way outside a perceived circle of experts as a triumph against assholes

bjornsing 6y ago
Na... I’m pretty elitist but I like this kind of tone. It depends on who you see as the elite.

floatingatoll 6y ago

Cosmologists would be rationally happy once the result holds up, but as with most science fields, the folks within the field will be irrationally hostile to an outsider showing them an insight they’ve overlooked, and may spend the next ten or twenty years aggressively fighting against it regardless of its merits. To provide an IT analogy, imagine being tech support for a bunch of alpha-cowboy engineers. They’ll tell you they did all the obvious things, they’ll object to being asked to perform simple diagnostic tests (“does the problem go away if you create a temporary new user account on your system?”), they’ll resent you for not having an immediate solution, and they’ll resent you when you find the basic step they missed. Yes, they’ll accept the solution you offer, but they’ll fight you tooth and nail until it’s unarguably proven that you’re right. That’s often what cross-domain innovation in science is like. EDIT: per comment below, this is a much better explanation: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works

bbatha 6y ago
Tokamak plasma physics is a cousin of cosmology anyway — at the end of the day they’re studying balls of plasma it just depends on if they’re natural and giant or man made and small. I worked in a plasma physics department and people did both reactor physics and cosmology all of the time. So thisnt really an outsider perspective.
naringas 6y ago
> and may spend the next ten or twenty years aggressively fighting against it regardless of its merits. it seems more accurate to say that they retire and the new generation of physics professors are more open to those ideas because they encountered them as students before building a career on some sub-sub field which migh have ended up as a dead end...
- BalinKing 6y ago
  (Possibly) obligatory SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    I’m going to edit this into my post now because it’s so much better than what I said! Thanks!
- ncmncm 6y ago
  As Max Planck is quoted, "Science progresses one funeral at a time". (He probably said it in German.) I just wonder how many biochemists will need to retire and get Alzheimer's before work on suppressing amyloids is finally abandoned, and something that could possibly work gets a grant. In the meantime, take your valacyclovir!
willis936 6y ago
Alfvein cosmology was largely abandoned after the discovery of CMB. It’s too bad really, since it holds up quite well in many regards. The hostile tone when discussed is frustration that it is no longer even discussed by mainstream cosmologists. We teach kids about plum pudding but not the career cosmologists about MHD?

smsm42 6y ago

I've read the headline and thought to myself "sounds like something from Locklin". And surely enough... It's just how he writes (sometimes), I think. Doesn't bother me too much but I see how it could be off-putting to some.

jamesgreenleaf 6y ago

It's the author's style: https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/about/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/about/ I bet it gets more clicks than a moderate tone would. "Cosmologists hate him! See how he solved dark matter with this one weird trick..."

dylan604 6y ago
But I already know what happens next. We've seen it before

amelius 6y ago

I don't think such a great finding deserves an article in this tone. Posting the original paper instead would be more appropriate.

mieses 6y ago
Thanks for adding a much needed air of self-importance and sanctimony to the discussion.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  I don't detect either of those in the parent post. What are you referring to?

lumost 6y ago

In fairness, I think many physics students assumed that someone had done the GR to show that DM wasn't just a GR effect. I recall a near identical situation as the author when it came to someone presenting galaxy rotation curves based on newtonian gravity and thinking "that's odd, but someone has surely done the math by now".

exabrial 6y ago

It's humor. Lighten up.

dan-robertson 6y ago
Even cringe humour requires good delivery
happytoexplain 6y ago
The command, "lighten up", is a double edged sword.
- exabrial 6y ago
  It's a play on words since the topic is dark matter, but I also think that humor was lost...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

slibhb 6y ago

Looks like the author got banned from HN for that tone: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=scottlocklin https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=scottlocklin I find him hilarious but I suppose it's a cultural thing and I understand that lots of people find it degrading.

narag 6y ago

What is going on with the incredibly hostile tone in the article? No idea. But the question that bothers me is: is he right? I mean, is this idea something obvious? I'm not even asking if it's true, just if this is one of the first explanations you should come up with when facing this particular problem. Because, in that case, it's puzzling.

protastus 6y ago

I don't think we should shoot the messenger. There are too many academics with huge egos. Too many papers obfuscate simple results behind unnecessarily complex and brittle mathematical models, because huge formulas and proofs make the authors look smart, and impressing the reviewers is a requirement for publication. Everyone who has a PhD in engineering knows professors who make careers out of solving made up problems with tenuous connection with the real world, and thus highly questionable utility. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think engineering is about solving practical problems and building shit. And then in physics, it's apparently now mainstream to produce theories that aren't testable. Of course, the math has to be very sophisticated and specialized -- dead-end work with simple math wouldn't get funded, much less become an entire field of study. Which is to say: explaining reality is hard, and all the linear problems have solutions. Today, some find it more convenient to invent another universe that still has open problems, and solve those. To obfuscate, in comes a ton of math with weird notation invented with colleagues who also play this game. It would be awesome if 3 generations of researchers got scooped by an applied physicist from a different field because nobody bothered to model galaxy rotation curves with general relativity. GR would be too boring, entirely lacking in crazy math.