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Now you've made me feel like I was too hard on ADS/Cft! Empirical confirmation is not, in my opinion, a requirement for taking a scientific idea seriously. The

Now you've made me feel like I was too hard on ADS/Cft! Empirical confirmation is not, in my opinion, a requirement for taking a scientific idea seriously. There is a lot of discussion of relativity in the threads on this comment, but most of it misses what I think is the salient point: _general_ relativity was formulated not because of any compelling physical observation which demanded a theory of curved spacetime or some other relativistically invariant theory of gravity. General Relativity was formulated because _special relativity_ more or less demanded that the effect of gravity propagate in some way coherent with the idea that causes and effects are ordered and move from place to place at a finite speed. There is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with undertaking a research program on the basis of a compelling outstanding but purely theoretical problem. I don't think the existence of such research programs alone, nor their discussion in public per se, tends towards a kind of scientific authoritarianism. My problem with the article is entirely in how it communicates the ideas here, which is badly and, more importantly, without situating them in the greater epistemological context of progress in physics. I suppose the presenting the material without that context does kind of support "scientism" but such is so common in media that this doesn't seem like a particularly outstanding example. Really, the inability of the public or the press to understand science is a deep cultural and political problem of which this kind of reporting is just a symptom.

pdonis 4y ago
> Empirical confirmation is not, in my opinion, a requirement for taking a scientific idea seriously. Taking it seriously as far as investigating it, I agree; you don't need empirical confirmation for that, indeed it would make no sense to insist on it, since at least one major point of investigating it is to see if you can find empirical confirmation (though you might have to expend a lot of theoretical effort to get to that point). Taking it seriously as far as claiming it is true, no. For that you need empirical confirmation.
- atoav 4y ago
  You can investigate whatever, but at a certain scale of investigation it starts to make sense to think about how wise it is to spend the resources, time and collective effort on any given investigation carried out in the way it was meant to be carried out. E.g. we could do a really hardcore investigation into whether the moon is made of cheese despite all evidence to the contrary. Then we could fly there have one guy be like "Yep it is not cheese". Then have a psychological analysis of that guy and send another one just to be sure, ad infinitum leaving nothing for actual serious, on the edge of knowledge investigations. That overdriven would dadaist investigation is of course just a carricature I made up now, but the underlying issue is real: science costs us all and we should spend it where it helps. Sometimes that must also mean not knowing to which ends we do investigate something. But it should not become dadaist in a way similar to the outlined story.
  - nathan_compton 4y ago
    Very true. But the fact is that theorists like Susskind are cheap to maintain.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      Reminds me of an old joke about the dean of a university complaining to the head of the experimental physics department about how much his department costs. "You have all that expensive equipment," he says. "Look at your counterparts in the theoretical physics department. They're as cheap as the math department: all they ask for is pencils, paper, and erasers." He stops and thinks for a moment. "And the philosophy department is cheaper still. They don't even ask for erasers."
    - atoav 4y ago
      That is true as well.

pdonis 4y ago

> Empirical confirmation is not, in my opinion, a requirement for taking a scientific idea seriously. Taking it seriously as far as investigating it, I agree; you don't need empirical confirmation for that, indeed it would make no sense to insist on it, since at least one major point of investigating it is to see if you can find empirical confirmation (though you might have to expend a lot of theoretical effort to get to that point). Taking it seriously as far as claiming it is true, no. For that you need empirical confirmation.

atoav 4y ago
You can investigate whatever, but at a certain scale of investigation it starts to make sense to think about how wise it is to spend the resources, time and collective effort on any given investigation carried out in the way it was meant to be carried out. E.g. we could do a really hardcore investigation into whether the moon is made of cheese despite all evidence to the contrary. Then we could fly there have one guy be like "Yep it is not cheese". Then have a psychological analysis of that guy and send another one just to be sure, ad infinitum leaving nothing for actual serious, on the edge of knowledge investigations. That overdriven would dadaist investigation is of course just a carricature I made up now, but the underlying issue is real: science costs us all and we should spend it where it helps. Sometimes that must also mean not knowing to which ends we do investigate something. But it should not become dadaist in a way similar to the outlined story.
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  Very true. But the fact is that theorists like Susskind are cheap to maintain.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    Reminds me of an old joke about the dean of a university complaining to the head of the experimental physics department about how much his department costs. "You have all that expensive equipment," he says. "Look at your counterparts in the theoretical physics department. They're as cheap as the math department: all they ask for is pencils, paper, and erasers." He stops and thinks for a moment. "And the philosophy department is cheaper still. They don't even ask for erasers."
  - atoav 4y ago
    That is true as well.