6 ms·

> they know their current understanding of physics could be wrong. Sure, we do know! And we know how to recognise when someone masters current literature (a.k

by pif 6y ago

> they know their current understanding of physics could be wrong. Sure, we do know! And we know how to recognise when someone masters current literature (a.k.a. factual knowledge) and proposes a breaktrough in a yet uncovered field, and when someone is speaking out of his ... nothing! If you prefer a non-car analogy: we all do know that a hundred consecutive heads is possible, still you are not going to bet your week pay on it, even if you were promised 2^100 weeks of pay in return.

RyEgswuCsn 6y ago
> we all do know that a hundred consecutive heads is possible, still you are not going to bet your week pay on it, even if you were promised 2^100 weeks of pay in return The expected reward is just one-week's pay --- you have to offer better than that with all the uncertainty ;) What if the reward is potentially infinite amount of money? If the investigation proved our current understanding of physics wrong, that could lead to historic breakthroughs in natural science. Better yet, we don't know what the odd is. It might only need 32 consecutive heads.
rini17 6y ago
I'd be very curious how it's possible to have 2^100 of anything :)
- pif 6y ago
  Oh, it's just 1024^10, a bit more than 10^30, or 10 million moles. A water molecule contains 18 nucleons, thus a mole of water weighs 18 grams. 10 million moles of water are 180 cubic metres: an Olympic pools contains an order of magnitude more moles than that! ;-) Sure, I hope nobody is paid so poorly that 2^100 times its week salary exists!
  - mannerheim 6y ago
    There are certainly people who aren't paid anything.
galangalalgol 6y ago
There are plenty of cases where someone who doesn't understand the underlying theory has contributed due to the outsider effect or just pure luck. The hype, and the swindling are not ok, but when an organization like NASA thinks they maybe successfully reproduced an experiment that invalidates a law of nature you have to keep trying. Sure I'm hoping for new science, always, because that is more fun, but mostly you need to know for sure what the experimental error was so that you don't repeat it in an experiment whose result you aren't as skeptical of.
- arbitrage 6y ago
  > There are plenty of cases where someone who doesn't understand the underlying theory has contributed due to the outsider effect or just pure luck Are you talking about anyone who was born in the last 100 years?
  - dotancohen 6y ago
    Lemaitre?
  - tobmlt 6y ago
    A low number of dollars spent to put to bed an idea that would have upended physics is a fairly cost effective play in the risk to reward game. That’s what it comes down too. Negative results are good. Utter quackery is not good. But hard data from experiment is usually not quackery. Even if the whole thing stands outside the established paradigm. I’d argue we could stand a bit more of it, in this age of funding bandwagons and careerism.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - thenewwazoo 6y ago
      > Utter quackery is not good. That's the OP's point. The EmDrive is utter quackery. It cannot exist because it necessarily violates the laws of thermodynamics. Anything that disproves those will literally undermine the entire foundation of what we understand about the universe. It would be directly comparable to discovering that the earth is flat.

by pif 6y ago

RyEgswuCsn 6y ago

> we all do know that a hundred consecutive heads is possible, still you are not going to bet your week pay on it, even if you were promised 2^100 weeks of pay in return The expected reward is just one-week's pay --- you have to offer better than that with all the uncertainty ;) What if the reward is potentially infinite amount of money? If the investigation proved our current understanding of physics wrong, that could lead to historic breakthroughs in natural science. Better yet, we don't know what the odd is. It might only need 32 consecutive heads.

rini17 6y ago

I'd be very curious how it's possible to have 2^100 of anything :)

pif 6y ago
Oh, it's just 1024^10, a bit more than 10^30, or 10 million moles. A water molecule contains 18 nucleons, thus a mole of water weighs 18 grams. 10 million moles of water are 180 cubic metres: an Olympic pools contains an order of magnitude more moles than that! ;-) Sure, I hope nobody is paid so poorly that 2^100 times its week salary exists!
- mannerheim 6y ago
  There are certainly people who aren't paid anything.

galangalalgol 6y ago

There are plenty of cases where someone who doesn't understand the underlying theory has contributed due to the outsider effect or just pure luck. The hype, and the swindling are not ok, but when an organization like NASA thinks they maybe successfully reproduced an experiment that invalidates a law of nature you have to keep trying. Sure I'm hoping for new science, always, because that is more fun, but mostly you need to know for sure what the experimental error was so that you don't repeat it in an experiment whose result you aren't as skeptical of.

arbitrage 6y ago
> There are plenty of cases where someone who doesn't understand the underlying theory has contributed due to the outsider effect or just pure luck Are you talking about anyone who was born in the last 100 years?
- dotancohen 6y ago
  Lemaitre?
- tobmlt 6y ago
  A low number of dollars spent to put to bed an idea that would have upended physics is a fairly cost effective play in the risk to reward game. That’s what it comes down too. Negative results are good. Utter quackery is not good. But hard data from experiment is usually not quackery. Even if the whole thing stands outside the established paradigm. I’d argue we could stand a bit more of it, in this age of funding bandwagons and careerism.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - thenewwazoo 6y ago
    > Utter quackery is not good. That's the OP's point. The EmDrive is utter quackery. It cannot exist because it necessarily violates the laws of thermodynamics. Anything that disproves those will literally undermine the entire foundation of what we understand about the universe. It would be directly comparable to discovering that the earth is flat.