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Overfitted models do serve a purpose here though - particle physics has reached a point where you can't build models and theories on direct observation so inste

by klik99 4y ago

Overfitted models do serve a purpose here though - particle physics has reached a point where you can't build models and theories on direct observation so instead the community is throwing a huge number of falsifiable overfitted models with the expectation that all but one or two will actually be confirmed experimentally. It's certainly a time consuming, expensive, non-ideal approach, but valid. The authors argument seems to be that this approach is too expensive and slow, and it's time to revisit original assumptions to develop a new approach.

pas 4y ago
what does she propose instead? spend more on theorists? spend less on experiments? spend less on the whole?
- bane 4y ago
  She's proposing that the combined brain power of the community can be put to better propose.
  - addicted 4y ago
    How does this work in practice. Do you force everyone to work on a theory they don’t believe in or are not interested in? Do we think that will actually yield useful results? Scientists are individually working on theories/ideas that they find most interesting. The only way this sounds like practically enforceable is if we have a situation where funding agencies are only funding a single theory and refusing to fund people doing research in other areas. But I don’t believe that is the case.
- simiones 4y ago
  She proposes to develop theories in more promising areas, ones that have explicit conflicts between different theories (quantum gravity, quantum measurement) or conflicts between theories and observation (dark matter). The biggest problem with something like Supersymmetry is that, contrary to what the previous poster was saying, it is not a falsifiable theory. It has free parameters that can be used to predict that supersymmetric partners to the known particles would have any mass that hasn't been ruled out yet, more or less (maybe they can't be planet sized, but they can certainly have masses that would require accelerators the size of a solar system to rule out).
simiones 4y ago
Many of these models aren't really falsifiable though - or at least, not falsifiable with any technology we can even conceive of today. Supersymmetry has been ruled out twice already, but with a different choice of parameters, it is being proposed again - and, in fact, you can chose those parameters such that you would need the whole energy of the Sun, or more, to rule them out. String Theory and its few predictions are even worse in this regard. Models of black hole evaporation would not only require extreme measurement precision, but also a good few billion years to collect any sort of data to confirm or deny. Personally, I will note that I am hopeful some new insights into the measurement problem will come about from work on quantum computing, which is also eminently practical work.

by klik99 4y ago

pas 4y ago

what does she propose instead? spend more on theorists? spend less on experiments? spend less on the whole?

bane 4y ago
She's proposing that the combined brain power of the community can be put to better propose.
- addicted 4y ago
  How does this work in practice. Do you force everyone to work on a theory they don’t believe in or are not interested in? Do we think that will actually yield useful results? Scientists are individually working on theories/ideas that they find most interesting. The only way this sounds like practically enforceable is if we have a situation where funding agencies are only funding a single theory and refusing to fund people doing research in other areas. But I don’t believe that is the case.
simiones 4y ago
She proposes to develop theories in more promising areas, ones that have explicit conflicts between different theories (quantum gravity, quantum measurement) or conflicts between theories and observation (dark matter). The biggest problem with something like Supersymmetry is that, contrary to what the previous poster was saying, it is not a falsifiable theory. It has free parameters that can be used to predict that supersymmetric partners to the known particles would have any mass that hasn't been ruled out yet, more or less (maybe they can't be planet sized, but they can certainly have masses that would require accelerators the size of a solar system to rule out).

simiones 4y ago

Many of these models aren't really falsifiable though - or at least, not falsifiable with any technology we can even conceive of today. Supersymmetry has been ruled out twice already, but with a different choice of parameters, it is being proposed again - and, in fact, you can chose those parameters such that you would need the whole energy of the Sun, or more, to rule them out. String Theory and its few predictions are even worse in this regard. Models of black hole evaporation would not only require extreme measurement precision, but also a good few billion years to collect any sort of data to confirm or deny. Personally, I will note that I am hopeful some new insights into the measurement problem will come about from work on quantum computing, which is also eminently practical work.