7 ms·

> She's absolutely right. I wonder how much contact you have with the world of research in theoretical physics that lead you to this conclusion. More to the po

> She's absolutely right. I wonder how much contact you have with the world of research in theoretical physics that lead you to this conclusion. More to the point: do you have any, or is this person your only source of information? Do you know that phenomenon where you think you're learning good information from a source, until that source talks about a subject you're an expert in and you realize they have no idea what they're talking about? That's how I feel every time I see Sabine hossenfelder on HN. I have a PhD in theoretical physics in a string-adjacent field[1], and my view is that this person has had negative net contribution to physics. First by contributing zero from poor research, and second by detracting by spreading the impression amongst the general population that experts aren't really experts, they don't know what they're talking about, are stupid or corrupt etc etc. Seems to be the theme of the 2020s that the most incompetent of any field become financially the most successful by making a business out of writing about how their colleagues are ignorant. [1] my experience interacting with the kinds of muppets that are fans of Sabine is that at this point you'll have learned the argument that "well of course you think that way, that's because you're in the system and benefit from its rotting, being a PhD in X". If that's what you think about me, don't bother even responding. In reality I've left the academia for industry and am doing 10x better financially than any of my ex-colleagues - I benefit nothing from the effort I make in trying to communicate what is really going on here.

epgui 4y ago
I don't have a dog in this fight but as a biochemist, your frustration is exactly what I've felt for the last few years.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Please allow me to state a more refined stance than either Sabine's or the perception of the type of criticism levelled against theoretical physics especially. I'm going to use biochemistry and several other fields as great examples to compare and contrast what happens when "religiosity" creeps into a field. Something that stuck with me was an article[1] describing how certain fields of medicine had languished, whereas others had made dramatic strides forward during the same period. For example, psychology is basically 90% hogwash. Meanwhile, the study of the the brain's biochemistry and therapeutic medication-based remedies for many common brain dysfunctions have made huge strides forward in recent decades. Back in the mid 20th century, the only treatment for most brain-related problems was "talk to a psychiatrist". This generally did nothing except help psychiatrists rack up billable hours. When medications eliminated the "need" for one-on-one therapy sessions, how do you think it went, trying to convince psychiatrists that their entire lucrative field is a giant waste of time? Yeah. Precisely how you think it went. Similarly, when I was at University around the late 1990s, the entire field of AI research revolved around only logic. As in, some person or a few people had decided that the path to general intelligence was to be via "fuzzy logic", or "predicate logic", or "probabilistic logic", or... well... some kind of logic at any rate. We had to learn LISP, Prolog, and Boolean algebra, and so on. That entire path was a giant waste of time, but... none of it was wrong. Not one bit. They were correct, confidently making slow but steady progress, and they weren't even going in the wrong direction! They were advancing AI! Just... very slowly, and with no chance at achieving the modern miracles of AI such a text-to-image generation. (DALL*E, Imagen, Stable Diffusion, etc...) Let's circle back to Sabine's criticism of theoretical physics. They're the same. They're confident that they're correct because they're not wrong! Sabine doesn't argue that they're wrong. I also don't believe physicists are wrong, and I've even studied physics to a graduate level, agreeing with at least 99% of it. What I believe is that theoretical physics specifically has gone down a parallel path that leads to a dead end. The path leads in the right direction, and every step along it leads to forward progress. The issue is that there are people that simply refuse to believe that maybe, just maybe, we're all stuck in a dead end. Quantum Mechanics researchers especially love to point to a small number of successes such as the precision numerical calculations related to the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron as proof that they're on the right path. This is cheerfully ignoring the minor detail that the equivalent calculation for the muon has a 3.5 standard deviation error when compared to reality. Oops. Just ignore that. We're on the right path, remember, because the step we took with the electron was forward! This is the problem. I remember my professors being so earnest about AI and logic, and how "one day", there will be intelligent robots programmed in Prolog. I also remember my Quantum Mechanics lessons where the professor very earnestly told me that microscopic systems change magically only when you look at them, which is patent nonsense, but is repeated to this day, just like Freud's idiocy is still taught to psychiatrists decades after much of their profession has been largely superseded by therapeutic drugs. [1] I wish I could dig it up, but I read it over a decade ago. The gist is pretty clear though, in that not all "sciences" are equal, and small branches even within the same larger field are often dramatically more effective and/or correct due to "cultural" reasons, or a better approach. The article listed many examples, but the criticism of certain areas of medicine and psychology were the most scathing. For a similar rant, see Richard Feynman's take on the topic: http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html
  - davidkunz 4y ago
    > This is cheerfully ignoring the minor detail that the equivalent calculation for the muon has a 3.5 standard deviation error when compared to reality. Oops. Just ignore that. The opposite of what you write is true. Physicists are eager to see where theory doesn't fit reality, that might even lead to a nobel price. Even statistical fluctuations are sometimes hyped as breakthrough experiments.
    - jiggawatts 4y ago
      Of course it could lead to something new! Nobody is debating that. The point is that people point to the equivalent result for the electron as evidence that the existing theory is correct, when it gets only one correct out of the three leptons. There is no guarantee that the "new" thing will be another step along the same path as the existing theory. I very strongly suspect that we'll need to backtrack a bit, perhaps a lot, and then walk along another parallel path to get to that new thing. It might look very similar, but the subtle differences can make all the difference in allowing forward progress.
  - doubleunplussed 4y ago
    > also remember my Quantum Mechanics lessons where the professor very earnestly told me that microscopic systems change magically only when you look at them, which is patent nonsense, but is repeated to this day I've also been pretty frustrated by Copenhagen interpretation orthodoxy, but decoherence and open quantum systems generally has made great strides as a subfield in recent times. People are thinking about it better than ever.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- europeanguy 4y ago
  I hear you brother. If anything, biochemistry has to be even worse than physics in this respect, as it's easier for laymen to have unreasonable expectations. "Have you cured cancer yet? No? What are you doing then? The taxpayer demands results"
halpmeh 4y ago
Ultimately, people want results. A lot of public money gets spent on physics research, and it’s a totally valid question to ask what have we gotten in return for that investment. I’m not involved in the industry, but it doesn’t seem like our fundamental understanding of things has improve substantially over the last few decades? The proliferation of new models, e.g. MOND and super-determinism, is kind of evidence that there isn’t a definitive answer to many questions that have been around for many years.
- europeanguy 4y ago
  > Ultimately, people want results. In science, laymen most often don't know what a result looks like.
  - halpmeh 4y ago
    Whose fault is that?
    - jfengel 4y ago
      There are many at fault for that. Educators, parents, scientists, politicians... It's a complex web of blame. But the layman's belief that a YouTube video is sufficient background to reject the work of scientists... that's on them. They should know that a video, or even several videos, is not enough. We should all be able to recognize Mount Stupid.
      - halpmeh 4y ago
        As far as I know, and feel free to correct me, string theory has received many million in funding and yielded exactly zero empirical results. I agree that you won’t become an expert in theoretical physics from a YouTube video, but one can definitely tell when nothing of use has been produced.
        jfengel 4y ago
        That's exactly it. What the videos never mention is that experimental results aren't really expected. The unification energy is stupid high. Which is why the other thing the videos never mention: you won't expect experimental results from any of the competing theories, either. This isn't a serious scientific debate. It's a few scientists annoyed that they're getting less funding, and accusing the string theory people of exactly the same things they do. There is a genuine scientific debate here, and a lot of real problems. None of which they make videos about. Note in particular that "millions" is probably right, and it's pocket change compared to the LHC -- which is NOT a string theory experiment. Its energies are well within the standard model, which is the problem. There is no practical way for us to get outside that range. String theory persists because it's pencil and paper and grad students, and doesn't cost that much. An argument could be made for shutting down the LHC and sending the money to soil science or lupus or something else more likely to produce results. But the string theory arguments being conducted via YouTube are abysmal science.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kalimanzaro 4y ago
Most of my friends and colleagues in string-adjacent fields --I doubt anybody would lately admit to doing string theory proper-- have the integrity to begrudgingly confess that string theory is Mathematics done poorly. My guys are healthy, they have neither Philosophy nor Maths envy. Calling String Physics Experimental Mathematics isn't even wrong, there are other fields of physics, computer science, or statistics that deserve that moniker. So what nomens do we have left? Not many. "Religion" is one of them, would appreciate more interesting suggestions here.
- leereeves 4y ago
  Isn't all of theoretical physics just a search for mathematics that fits the observations obtained by experimental physicists? It's all a subset of math. What makes string theory particularly poor, in your opinion?
  - adastra22 4y ago
    It's not trying to explain any experimental results. There is literally not a single piece of evidence in need of an explanation. There are a very small handful of anomalies which aren't adequately explained by the standard model, but string theorists didn't base their models around resolving these questions. They sought a grand, unified, simple theory out of a philosophical (religious?) belief that one ought to exist.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
      I don't see that there's anything wrong with that approach. Sometimes progress is a slow and steady refining of existing models, sometimes it is wild new perspectives that come out of left field and change everything. And generally speaking we have good reason to believe the universe operates on a simplistic rule set that evolves in complex ways because finding a simple equation at the heart of complex interactions is pretty much the history of physics.
      - adastra22 4y ago
geysersam 4y ago
> until that source talks about a subject you're an expert in and you realize they have no idea what they're talking about? She is (was) a physics researcher, perhaps a mediocre one, most are. But saying she has no idea what she's talking about requires some justification. Specifically, what do you disagree with her about?
- sigmoid10 4y ago
  >She is (was) a physics researcher Why would you say "was" - she's still a fellow at FIAS and lists herself as a researcher on her own website. Conversely, her only publication in the last decade with more than 100 citations was her popular science book aimed at non-physicists and most of the things before that were borderline hack stuff, basically going back to Milgrom's theory with very little content that would justify moving this research from fringe to mainstream [1]. She definitely hasn't established herself as an authority on foundations of quantum mechanics or string theory, which she has taken a liking to discredit. So the commenter above was not wrong. [1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaQZcyYAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaQZcyYAAAAJ&hl=en
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    How would one go about establishing themselves as an academic authority on a topic or field which one believed was based on nothing real?
    - sigmoid10 4y ago
      How would you know if something is "based on nothing real" if you haven't actively worked in and contributed to said field? I for example know very little about virology or immunology and I have never published anything in those fields. Would you listen to me discrediting covid researchers or mRNA-vaccines if I say I think they are based on nothing real?
      - munch117 4y ago
        You are putting up a ridiculously high bar for expressing an opinion, where not even a research fellow in theoretical physics can pass. If you were a research fellow in virology or immunology, and you had read and understood the relevant papers, then I would listen to you, yes. That doesn't mean I would take what you said as the final word.
7thaccount 4y ago
"until that source talks about a subject you're an expert in and you realize they have no idea what they're talking about?" This reminds me of the power grid. Practically any news article or video is woefully ignorant and a LOT of studies that get put on here have a mountain of assumptions that render their conclusions as far less firm than the readers on here understand. There are some experts on HN in this area, but a lot of folks just blindly parroting stuff they don't understand.
adastra22 4y ago
I see a lot of venting here. You seem upset and I'm sorry about that. But also all you've offered is an ad hominem.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  I mean the comment they've responded to was essentially one too, and even worse combined with hero worship... I guess the good old adage is proven again: never argue with an idiot, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience
DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
> muppets that are fans of Sabine ... said Stadler to Waldorf. Her main point to me, which she is quite good at repeating, is roughly that just because the maths works out, doesn't mean it's physically real. I think this is a very healthy caveat which is all too often neglected in popular science reporting.
- lioeters 4y ago
  > Statler and Waldorf are a pair of Muppet characters best known for their cantankerous opinions and shared penchant for heckling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statler_and_Waldorf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statler_and_Waldorf
  - DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
    > Statler [...] Waldorf [...] Muppet [...] cantankerous [...] heckling "That's right!, and we're doing 10x times better up here in our box than you muppets down there on the stage!"
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  This is actually why I dismissed Elon's belief about us being in a simulation. You can't know that, even if the math technically works. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't, it's really about what you choose to believe.
lynx23 4y ago
Thanks for your viewpoint. I am definitely not from the field, and stumbled across Sabine a few weeks ago on YT. At first, I found the format and presentation interesting... Then I started to become suspicious. And then, I saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY_4S_dfUv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY_4S_dfUv4 which finally convinced me that she is playing her own kind of game. My feeling strange about what she does combined with your comment above finally convinced me to unsub her. Good.
- theossuary 4y ago
  What about that video did you dislike exactly?
ogogmad 4y ago
> second by detracting by spreading the impression amongst the general population that experts aren't really experts How do we know who's an expert here? Peer review is only as good as your peers. Genuine question. It looks like Beyond Standard Model physics is becoming increasingly more abstract, increasingly less mathematically well-defined*, and not getting any closer to physically testable. So I don't know how to judge who's an expert. * - What are the equations of M-Theory?
- europeanguy 4y ago
  > How do we know who's an expert here? That's a fair question. Let me give you a rule of thumb. I must emphasize you can't take it _too_ seriously. But it seems to hold quite well that in hard sciences, not just physics, looking from the inside, you notice that the ones who talk to the media are normally the bottom of the barrel. This makes a lot of sense. If your goal is to learn about the fundamental building blocks of the universe, writing blog posts the societal aspects of science doesn't help you with that. Real scientists spend their time doing science. There's very few exceptions to this. In fact right now I can think of a single person who's a world class researcher _and_ a prolific blogger; Terrence Tao, but he's a mathematician. My point is, you can't judge who's the expert based on the quality of the science produced because you don't have the expertise for that. But believe you me, if someone spends a lot of time doing things other than research, they're probably not the best.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    That Albert Einstein, always talking to the media, what an idiot. Don’t get me started on that Stephen Hawking either, what a conman. And that Leonard Susskind - complete moron. Richard Feynman - complete booby. Roger Penrose - fool. Bottom of the barrel, all of them. Real scientists work on real science 16 hours of the day and nothing else and spend the remaining 8 hours dreaming about real science. Any one else is a complete poser. If they even so much as speak to anyone who isn’t a physicist or write anything that isn’t a paper that’s a sure sign you’ve found a faker. The only exception is hacker news comments. Stay vigilant people.
plaguepilled 4y ago
Weak argument soz. You're appealing to your authority as a Theory PhD but haven't posted your papers so who cares. I can at least read Sabine's papers if I want to do that. However, reviewing Sabine's cosmology papers to assess her arguments that theory research is poorly incentivised would be nonsensical anyway, so why even bother? (To make my position clear, I actually don't agree with Sabine's angle that theory research is overvalued, but I do agree it focuses weirdly on some topics. I do read contemporary papers outside of what's presented via pop sci. But that should not be the content of your response if you are as credentialed as you say)
compiskey 4y ago
Feynman said the same: https://youtu.be/obCjODeoLVw https://youtu.be/obCjODeoLVw I’ll take him and Sabine, and my 24 yo masters in elastic structures, over your entitled screed any day.
davidguetta 4y ago
Bad opponents dont make a compelling argument

epgui 4y ago

I don't have a dog in this fight but as a biochemist, your frustration is exactly what I've felt for the last few years.

jiggawatts 4y ago
Please allow me to state a more refined stance than either Sabine's or the perception of the type of criticism levelled against theoretical physics especially. I'm going to use biochemistry and several other fields as great examples to compare and contrast what happens when "religiosity" creeps into a field. Something that stuck with me was an article[1] describing how certain fields of medicine had languished, whereas others had made dramatic strides forward during the same period. For example, psychology is basically 90% hogwash. Meanwhile, the study of the the brain's biochemistry and therapeutic medication-based remedies for many common brain dysfunctions have made huge strides forward in recent decades. Back in the mid 20th century, the only treatment for most brain-related problems was "talk to a psychiatrist". This generally did nothing except help psychiatrists rack up billable hours. When medications eliminated the "need" for one-on-one therapy sessions, how do you think it went, trying to convince psychiatrists that their entire lucrative field is a giant waste of time? Yeah. Precisely how you think it went. Similarly, when I was at University around the late 1990s, the entire field of AI research revolved around only logic. As in, some person or a few people had decided that the path to general intelligence was to be via "fuzzy logic", or "predicate logic", or "probabilistic logic", or... well... some kind of logic at any rate. We had to learn LISP, Prolog, and Boolean algebra, and so on. That entire path was a giant waste of time, but... none of it was wrong. Not one bit. They were correct, confidently making slow but steady progress, and they weren't even going in the wrong direction! They were advancing AI! Just... very slowly, and with no chance at achieving the modern miracles of AI such a text-to-image generation. (DALL*E, Imagen, Stable Diffusion, etc...) Let's circle back to Sabine's criticism of theoretical physics. They're the same. They're confident that they're correct because they're not wrong! Sabine doesn't argue that they're wrong. I also don't believe physicists are wrong, and I've even studied physics to a graduate level, agreeing with at least 99% of it. What I believe is that theoretical physics specifically has gone down a parallel path that leads to a dead end. The path leads in the right direction, and every step along it leads to forward progress. The issue is that there are people that simply refuse to believe that maybe, just maybe, we're all stuck in a dead end. Quantum Mechanics researchers especially love to point to a small number of successes such as the precision numerical calculations related to the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron as proof that they're on the right path. This is cheerfully ignoring the minor detail that the equivalent calculation for the muon has a 3.5 standard deviation error when compared to reality. Oops. Just ignore that. We're on the right path, remember, because the step we took with the electron was forward! This is the problem. I remember my professors being so earnest about AI and logic, and how "one day", there will be intelligent robots programmed in Prolog. I also remember my Quantum Mechanics lessons where the professor very earnestly told me that microscopic systems change magically only when you look at them, which is patent nonsense, but is repeated to this day, just like Freud's idiocy is still taught to psychiatrists decades after much of their profession has been largely superseded by therapeutic drugs. [1] I wish I could dig it up, but I read it over a decade ago. The gist is pretty clear though, in that not all "sciences" are equal, and small branches even within the same larger field are often dramatically more effective and/or correct due to "cultural" reasons, or a better approach. The article listed many examples, but the criticism of certain areas of medicine and psychology were the most scathing. For a similar rant, see Richard Feynman's take on the topic: http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html
- davidkunz 4y ago
  > This is cheerfully ignoring the minor detail that the equivalent calculation for the muon has a 3.5 standard deviation error when compared to reality. Oops. Just ignore that. The opposite of what you write is true. Physicists are eager to see where theory doesn't fit reality, that might even lead to a nobel price. Even statistical fluctuations are sometimes hyped as breakthrough experiments.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    Of course it could lead to something new! Nobody is debating that. The point is that people point to the equivalent result for the electron as evidence that the existing theory is correct, when it gets only one correct out of the three leptons. There is no guarantee that the "new" thing will be another step along the same path as the existing theory. I very strongly suspect that we'll need to backtrack a bit, perhaps a lot, and then walk along another parallel path to get to that new thing. It might look very similar, but the subtle differences can make all the difference in allowing forward progress.
- doubleunplussed 4y ago
  > also remember my Quantum Mechanics lessons where the professor very earnestly told me that microscopic systems change magically only when you look at them, which is patent nonsense, but is repeated to this day I've also been pretty frustrated by Copenhagen interpretation orthodoxy, but decoherence and open quantum systems generally has made great strides as a subfield in recent times. People are thinking about it better than ever.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
europeanguy 4y ago
I hear you brother. If anything, biochemistry has to be even worse than physics in this respect, as it's easier for laymen to have unreasonable expectations. "Have you cured cancer yet? No? What are you doing then? The taxpayer demands results"

halpmeh 4y ago

Ultimately, people want results. A lot of public money gets spent on physics research, and it’s a totally valid question to ask what have we gotten in return for that investment. I’m not involved in the industry, but it doesn’t seem like our fundamental understanding of things has improve substantially over the last few decades? The proliferation of new models, e.g. MOND and super-determinism, is kind of evidence that there isn’t a definitive answer to many questions that have been around for many years.

europeanguy 4y ago
> Ultimately, people want results. In science, laymen most often don't know what a result looks like.
- halpmeh 4y ago
  Whose fault is that?
  - jfengel 4y ago
    There are many at fault for that. Educators, parents, scientists, politicians... It's a complex web of blame. But the layman's belief that a YouTube video is sufficient background to reject the work of scientists... that's on them. They should know that a video, or even several videos, is not enough. We should all be able to recognize Mount Stupid.
    - halpmeh 4y ago
      As far as I know, and feel free to correct me, string theory has received many million in funding and yielded exactly zero empirical results. I agree that you won’t become an expert in theoretical physics from a YouTube video, but one can definitely tell when nothing of use has been produced.
      - jfengel 4y ago
        That's exactly it. What the videos never mention is that experimental results aren't really expected. The unification energy is stupid high. Which is why the other thing the videos never mention: you won't expect experimental results from any of the competing theories, either. This isn't a serious scientific debate. It's a few scientists annoyed that they're getting less funding, and accusing the string theory people of exactly the same things they do. There is a genuine scientific debate here, and a lot of real problems. None of which they make videos about. Note in particular that "millions" is probably right, and it's pocket change compared to the LHC -- which is NOT a string theory experiment. Its energies are well within the standard model, which is the problem. There is no practical way for us to get outside that range. String theory persists because it's pencil and paper and grad students, and doesn't cost that much. An argument could be made for shutting down the LHC and sending the money to soil science or lupus or something else more likely to produce results. But the string theory arguments being conducted via YouTube are abysmal science.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kalimanzaro 4y ago

Most of my friends and colleagues in string-adjacent fields --I doubt anybody would lately admit to doing string theory proper-- have the integrity to begrudgingly confess that string theory is Mathematics done poorly. My guys are healthy, they have neither Philosophy nor Maths envy. Calling String Physics Experimental Mathematics isn't even wrong, there are other fields of physics, computer science, or statistics that deserve that moniker. So what nomens do we have left? Not many. "Religion" is one of them, would appreciate more interesting suggestions here.

leereeves 4y ago
Isn't all of theoretical physics just a search for mathematics that fits the observations obtained by experimental physicists? It's all a subset of math. What makes string theory particularly poor, in your opinion?
- adastra22 4y ago
  It's not trying to explain any experimental results. There is literally not a single piece of evidence in need of an explanation. There are a very small handful of anomalies which aren't adequately explained by the standard model, but string theorists didn't base their models around resolving these questions. They sought a grand, unified, simple theory out of a philosophical (religious?) belief that one ought to exist.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    I don't see that there's anything wrong with that approach. Sometimes progress is a slow and steady refining of existing models, sometimes it is wild new perspectives that come out of left field and change everything. And generally speaking we have good reason to believe the universe operates on a simplistic rule set that evolves in complex ways because finding a simple equation at the heart of complex interactions is pretty much the history of physics.
    - adastra22 4y ago

geysersam 4y ago

> until that source talks about a subject you're an expert in and you realize they have no idea what they're talking about? She is (was) a physics researcher, perhaps a mediocre one, most are. But saying she has no idea what she's talking about requires some justification. Specifically, what do you disagree with her about?

sigmoid10 4y ago
>She is (was) a physics researcher Why would you say "was" - she's still a fellow at FIAS and lists herself as a researcher on her own website. Conversely, her only publication in the last decade with more than 100 citations was her popular science book aimed at non-physicists and most of the things before that were borderline hack stuff, basically going back to Milgrom's theory with very little content that would justify moving this research from fringe to mainstream [1]. She definitely hasn't established herself as an authority on foundations of quantum mechanics or string theory, which she has taken a liking to discredit. So the commenter above was not wrong. [1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaQZcyYAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaQZcyYAAAAJ&hl=en
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  How would one go about establishing themselves as an academic authority on a topic or field which one believed was based on nothing real?
  - sigmoid10 4y ago
    How would you know if something is "based on nothing real" if you haven't actively worked in and contributed to said field? I for example know very little about virology or immunology and I have never published anything in those fields. Would you listen to me discrediting covid researchers or mRNA-vaccines if I say I think they are based on nothing real?
    - munch117 4y ago
      You are putting up a ridiculously high bar for expressing an opinion, where not even a research fellow in theoretical physics can pass. If you were a research fellow in virology or immunology, and you had read and understood the relevant papers, then I would listen to you, yes. That doesn't mean I would take what you said as the final word.

7thaccount 4y ago

"until that source talks about a subject you're an expert in and you realize they have no idea what they're talking about?" This reminds me of the power grid. Practically any news article or video is woefully ignorant and a LOT of studies that get put on here have a mountain of assumptions that render their conclusions as far less firm than the readers on here understand. There are some experts on HN in this area, but a lot of folks just blindly parroting stuff they don't understand.

adastra22 4y ago

I see a lot of venting here. You seem upset and I'm sorry about that. But also all you've offered is an ad hominem.

411111111111111 4y ago
I mean the comment they've responded to was essentially one too, and even worse combined with hero worship... I guess the good old adage is proven again: never argue with an idiot, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience

DemocracyFTW2 4y ago

> muppets that are fans of Sabine ... said Stadler to Waldorf. Her main point to me, which she is quite good at repeating, is roughly that just because the maths works out, doesn't mean it's physically real. I think this is a very healthy caveat which is all too often neglected in popular science reporting.

lioeters 4y ago
> Statler and Waldorf are a pair of Muppet characters best known for their cantankerous opinions and shared penchant for heckling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statler_and_Waldorf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statler_and_Waldorf
- DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
  > Statler [...] Waldorf [...] Muppet [...] cantankerous [...] heckling "That's right!, and we're doing 10x times better up here in our box than you muppets down there on the stage!"
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
This is actually why I dismissed Elon's belief about us being in a simulation. You can't know that, even if the math technically works. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't, it's really about what you choose to believe.

lynx23 4y ago

Thanks for your viewpoint. I am definitely not from the field, and stumbled across Sabine a few weeks ago on YT. At first, I found the format and presentation interesting... Then I started to become suspicious. And then, I saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY_4S_dfUv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY_4S_dfUv4 which finally convinced me that she is playing her own kind of game. My feeling strange about what she does combined with your comment above finally convinced me to unsub her. Good.

theossuary 4y ago
What about that video did you dislike exactly?

ogogmad 4y ago

> second by detracting by spreading the impression amongst the general population that experts aren't really experts How do we know who's an expert here? Peer review is only as good as your peers. Genuine question. It looks like Beyond Standard Model physics is becoming increasingly more abstract, increasingly less mathematically well-defined*, and not getting any closer to physically testable. So I don't know how to judge who's an expert. * - What are the equations of M-Theory?

europeanguy 4y ago
> How do we know who's an expert here? That's a fair question. Let me give you a rule of thumb. I must emphasize you can't take it _too_ seriously. But it seems to hold quite well that in hard sciences, not just physics, looking from the inside, you notice that the ones who talk to the media are normally the bottom of the barrel. This makes a lot of sense. If your goal is to learn about the fundamental building blocks of the universe, writing blog posts the societal aspects of science doesn't help you with that. Real scientists spend their time doing science. There's very few exceptions to this. In fact right now I can think of a single person who's a world class researcher _and_ a prolific blogger; Terrence Tao, but he's a mathematician. My point is, you can't judge who's the expert based on the quality of the science produced because you don't have the expertise for that. But believe you me, if someone spends a lot of time doing things other than research, they're probably not the best.
- rcarr 4y ago
  That Albert Einstein, always talking to the media, what an idiot. Don’t get me started on that Stephen Hawking either, what a conman. And that Leonard Susskind - complete moron. Richard Feynman - complete booby. Roger Penrose - fool. Bottom of the barrel, all of them. Real scientists work on real science 16 hours of the day and nothing else and spend the remaining 8 hours dreaming about real science. Any one else is a complete poser. If they even so much as speak to anyone who isn’t a physicist or write anything that isn’t a paper that’s a sure sign you’ve found a faker. The only exception is hacker news comments. Stay vigilant people.

plaguepilled 4y ago

Weak argument soz. You're appealing to your authority as a Theory PhD but haven't posted your papers so who cares. I can at least read Sabine's papers if I want to do that. However, reviewing Sabine's cosmology papers to assess her arguments that theory research is poorly incentivised would be nonsensical anyway, so why even bother? (To make my position clear, I actually don't agree with Sabine's angle that theory research is overvalued, but I do agree it focuses weirdly on some topics. I do read contemporary papers outside of what's presented via pop sci. But that should not be the content of your response if you are as credentialed as you say)

compiskey 4y ago

Feynman said the same: https://youtu.be/obCjODeoLVw https://youtu.be/obCjODeoLVw I’ll take him and Sabine, and my 24 yo masters in elastic structures, over your entitled screed any day.

davidguetta 4y ago

Bad opponents dont make a compelling argument