3 ms·

so "double copy" means "squared". no wonder no one can follow any of this. they intentionally obfuscate everything.

jiggawatts 6y ago
That's a general problem caused by "Publish or perish". Essentially, we've incentivised intellectual wankery. Contrast this to any field of engineering: intelligibility is selected for by market forces. Obscure, hard to follow stuff is slowly (but surely) weeded out in favour of the clear and simple. In the more theoretical sciences, that's just not a goal. Quite the contrary: The goal is to make the published papers look impressive. More jargon, more complex equations, fewer diagrams, all help achieve this goal.
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ssivark 6y ago
No, “square” is the more crude analogy (there’s a lot more to “multiplication” than you might be familiar with in the case of numbers), and “double copy” is more natural. Don’t ask for a simpler explanation because the actual story is not yet well understood — after all it’s active research, so scientists are still groping in the dark trying to figure things out! Nobody is trying to intentionally obfuscate anything; the authors working in this area deserve tremendous credit for their sincere and sustained (decade+) effort in trying to elucidate the structure of gravitational interactions. Please don’t go around slandering them just because you don’t understand what’s going on.
- suifbwish 6y ago
  No one is cast doubt on their work; we are saying their choice of terminology SUCKS.
suifbwish 6y ago
Agree. They might as well have included the phrase “super duper” in the title to sound a bit more scientific.
mannykannot 6y ago
Even if ssivark's position that 'squared' would be less appropriate than 'double copy' were debatable, would it really help you to understand what is going on here to call it squaring rather than double copying, or would it just be giving the impression that it is clearer because it is expressed with a term that you are more familiar with? All I can say is that it would not make me more enlightened.

That's a general problem caused by "Publish or perish". Essentially, we've incentivised intellectual wankery. Contrast this to any field of engineering: intelligibility is selected for by market forces. Obscure, hard to follow stuff is slowly (but surely) weeded out in favour of the clear and simple. In the more theoretical sciences, that's just not a goal. Quite the contrary: The goal is to make the published papers look impressive. More jargon, more complex equations, fewer diagrams, all help achieve this goal.

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ssivark 6y ago

No, “square” is the more crude analogy (there’s a lot more to “multiplication” than you might be familiar with in the case of numbers), and “double copy” is more natural. Don’t ask for a simpler explanation because the actual story is not yet well understood — after all it’s active research, so scientists are still groping in the dark trying to figure things out! Nobody is trying to intentionally obfuscate anything; the authors working in this area deserve tremendous credit for their sincere and sustained (decade+) effort in trying to elucidate the structure of gravitational interactions. Please don’t go around slandering them just because you don’t understand what’s going on.

suifbwish 6y ago
No one is cast doubt on their work; we are saying their choice of terminology SUCKS.

suifbwish 6y ago

Agree. They might as well have included the phrase “super duper” in the title to sound a bit more scientific.

mannykannot 6y ago

Even if ssivark's position that 'squared' would be less appropriate than 'double copy' were debatable, would it really help you to understand what is going on here to call it squaring rather than double copying, or would it just be giving the impression that it is clearer because it is expressed with a term that you are more familiar with? All I can say is that it would not make me more enlightened.