6 ms·

Something is wrong in the state of QED

38 points by beefman 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
helloooooooo 4y ago
[flagged]
- gordian-mind 4y ago
  Why do you have such an emotional attachment to the truthiness of a scientific theory?
- redivysoft 4y ago
  The guy who first described the wave-corpuscle duality, of course
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
l__l 4y ago
There was discussion of this a while back on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BrilliantLightPower/comments/ffnnxw/something_rotten_in_the_state_of_qed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BrilliantLightPower/comments/ffnnxw... Sounds like the arxiv author may be greatly exaggerating or misunderstanding, but I'm not up to speed enough on the math to say for myself
spekcular 4y ago
This has already been posted a few times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431033 The summary is that the author doesn't know what he's talking about.
- gordian-mind 4y ago
  I don’t understand how because a mathematical technique has existed since the 1800s, it makes sense to use it in a physics setting. This does not seem like an argument. Also, you say that his calling the Karpus and Kroll result a fraud is “libel,” but the paper references “Karplus and Kroll confessed that they had not independently reached the same result; instead, they had reached a consensus result.” There’s even a Feynman quote saying, “It turns out that near the end of the calculation, the two groups compared notes and ironed out the differences between their calculations, so they were not really independent.” You seem to be trying to discredit this paper. Why is that so? Trying to frame it as “libel”, in particular, is quite ridiculous in this setting and seems to betray some personal wish for the author to be punished for his audacity of criticizing physics research.
  - spekcular 4y ago
    If a mathematical technique helps understand and predict nature, why not use it? The quote criticizing the method misunderstands it. It's certainly not "wrong" or "absurd." I dislike the paper because it is sensationalist and highly misleading. For example, as far as I can tell, Karplus and Kroll didn't "confess" to anything (no direct quote is provided in the paper); we just have a secondhand assertion by Feynman. Nothing they did is "fraud," as the author claims - this is false and defamatory. Further, the issue got wrapped up by Petermann in 1957; the author is just annoyed that he didn't publish full details of the calculations. The suggestion that there is somehow lingering uncertainty is just wrong. I no particular wishes for the author, other than that he cease writing bad papers.
    - gordian-mind 4y ago
      I don't think that's a bad paper, it was quite interesting to me. I see no valid argument in what you're saying, sorry. I also just want to point out that you used the word "just" three times in four phrases, to minimize and psychologize the author's arguments. For me, not being able to neutrally expose someone's point of view is a sign of emotional bias.
      - 4y ago
TchoBeer 4y ago
I wouldn't put too much stock into this, the author is some random post-doc with a YouTube channel and the barrier to entry for arXiv is not very high. QED not not nearly as suspect as the author portrays and this should be considered against the entire field of Physics which is built on QED.
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >the barrier to entry for arXiv is not very high True but still seems more like something one will find ViXra.
renewiltord 4y ago
Doesn't pass the sniff test.
prof-dr-ir 4y ago
A sad sight: so much effort and background research went into this paper, and yet so superficial is the author's understanding of QED and renormalization. In another discussion on HN today Feynman's little book "QED" came up. It is still a great read and I think it conveys the theory's elegance very well. So I would suggest to read it instead of this article. Unfortunately I do not know any good books explaining renormalization to the general public. Maybe someone else has an idea?
- xaml 4y ago
  Maybe the "No-Nonsense" book series by Jakob Schwichtenberg.
- ChainReaktion 4y ago
  As someone with neither the background nor the mathematics to fully understand renormalization, I'll say that the wiki entry isn't terribly helpful: "Renormalization, in this example, mathematically replaces the initially postulated mass and charge of an electron with the experimentally observed mass and charge." That sure sounds like adding an arbitrary constant into your theory and turning the knob until the theory matches the results. The comments here suggest that's not the case, but it's easy for me to see where the skepticism comes from.
sashank_1509 4y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case and I come from ML research which tends to have a very high standard of transparency and we still end up with nonsense results

38 points by beefman 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

helloooooooo 4y ago

[flagged]

gordian-mind 4y ago
Why do you have such an emotional attachment to the truthiness of a scientific theory?
redivysoft 4y ago
The guy who first described the wave-corpuscle duality, of course

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

l__l 4y ago

There was discussion of this a while back on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BrilliantLightPower/comments/ffnnxw/something_rotten_in_the_state_of_qed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BrilliantLightPower/comments/ffnnxw... Sounds like the arxiv author may be greatly exaggerating or misunderstanding, but I'm not up to speed enough on the math to say for myself

spekcular 4y ago

This has already been posted a few times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431033 The summary is that the author doesn't know what he's talking about.

gordian-mind 4y ago
I don’t understand how because a mathematical technique has existed since the 1800s, it makes sense to use it in a physics setting. This does not seem like an argument. Also, you say that his calling the Karpus and Kroll result a fraud is “libel,” but the paper references “Karplus and Kroll confessed that they had not independently reached the same result; instead, they had reached a consensus result.” There’s even a Feynman quote saying, “It turns out that near the end of the calculation, the two groups compared notes and ironed out the differences between their calculations, so they were not really independent.” You seem to be trying to discredit this paper. Why is that so? Trying to frame it as “libel”, in particular, is quite ridiculous in this setting and seems to betray some personal wish for the author to be punished for his audacity of criticizing physics research.
- spekcular 4y ago
  If a mathematical technique helps understand and predict nature, why not use it? The quote criticizing the method misunderstands it. It's certainly not "wrong" or "absurd." I dislike the paper because it is sensationalist and highly misleading. For example, as far as I can tell, Karplus and Kroll didn't "confess" to anything (no direct quote is provided in the paper); we just have a secondhand assertion by Feynman. Nothing they did is "fraud," as the author claims - this is false and defamatory. Further, the issue got wrapped up by Petermann in 1957; the author is just annoyed that he didn't publish full details of the calculations. The suggestion that there is somehow lingering uncertainty is just wrong. I no particular wishes for the author, other than that he cease writing bad papers.
  - gordian-mind 4y ago
    I don't think that's a bad paper, it was quite interesting to me. I see no valid argument in what you're saying, sorry. I also just want to point out that you used the word "just" three times in four phrases, to minimize and psychologize the author's arguments. For me, not being able to neutrally expose someone's point of view is a sign of emotional bias.
    - 4y ago

TchoBeer 4y ago

I wouldn't put too much stock into this, the author is some random post-doc with a YouTube channel and the barrier to entry for arXiv is not very high. QED not not nearly as suspect as the author portrays and this should be considered against the entire field of Physics which is built on QED.

forgotpwd16 4y ago
>the barrier to entry for arXiv is not very high True but still seems more like something one will find ViXra.

renewiltord 4y ago

Doesn't pass the sniff test.

prof-dr-ir 4y ago

A sad sight: so much effort and background research went into this paper, and yet so superficial is the author's understanding of QED and renormalization. In another discussion on HN today Feynman's little book "QED" came up. It is still a great read and I think it conveys the theory's elegance very well. So I would suggest to read it instead of this article. Unfortunately I do not know any good books explaining renormalization to the general public. Maybe someone else has an idea?

xaml 4y ago
Maybe the "No-Nonsense" book series by Jakob Schwichtenberg.
ChainReaktion 4y ago
As someone with neither the background nor the mathematics to fully understand renormalization, I'll say that the wiki entry isn't terribly helpful: "Renormalization, in this example, mathematically replaces the initially postulated mass and charge of an electron with the experimentally observed mass and charge." That sure sounds like adding an arbitrary constant into your theory and turning the knob until the theory matches the results. The comments here suggest that's not the case, but it's easy for me to see where the skepticism comes from.

sashank_1509 4y ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case and I come from ML research which tends to have a very high standard of transparency and we still end up with nonsense results