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What is it about theoretical physics that makes people on the internet (with zero understanding of the context) feel entitled to snarkily attack results such as
by superposeur 3y ago
What is it about theoretical physics that makes people on the internet (with zero understanding of the context) feel entitled to snarkily attack results such as this?
The research in the article is about as innocuous as it gets — uncovering another possible way to get a handle on the math of quantum field theories. It’s not like millions of dollars went into the research (just the modest salaries of the four theorists). No major applications as yet — the Quanta title “…shaking up physics” is certainly not true. But it’s another stone in the edifice of science.
And my god when you see the esoterica in some (most?) other academic fields, the unrelenting complaints about the solipsism of physics seem totally misdirected. When an upper bound on some complicated measure on the distribution of prime numbers is lowered, no chorus of jackals assembles on the internet to mock the proof for its lack of real world relevance. The other day I spoke with a classics professor whose primary research was on a possible alternative interpretation of one line in a Latin poem. I found it interesting and worthwhile, but wow another level of remove from the so-called real world of engineering application and commerce.
Also, to be clear, whether or not mathematical physics work winds up elucidating experiments, it is still correct and “useful” math. It’s not for nothing that the math community gave Edward Witten a Fields medal.
- acchow 3y ago[flagged]
- ethanwillis 3y agoIf people wanted ChatGPT's response on this why couldn't they just ask it themselves? What is your thought on the topic?
- acchow 3y agoMy thought was the first sentence in my comment - that snarky responses are common in many subjects (not particular to theoretical physics). The Google results were absolutely useless (top result was "22 Screenshots Of Hilarious Internet Comments"). So I thought ChatGPT could tell me which subjects produced the snarkiest comments. It sort of worked.
- ethanwillis 3y agoFair enough. I think my concern is just that there is definitely some opaqueness here to the responses we can be provided. It may be providing a true insight or a false one. Of course Google result quality is quite bad.. and I'd be concerned with a link to a "let me google that for you" as a stand in for an analysis for the same reasons :)
- garbagecoder 3y agoDon't you think that the reporting of things in theoretical physics tends to be clickbait for pseudo-intellectuals that tends to dramatically oversell the findings? It's not the fault of the researchers most of the time, because as you said, the paper is innocuous. It's the reporting that makes it sound like tomorrow we're going to solve everything or talk to aliens or find the meaning of life. Example: Venus phosphene incident. The author of the paper basically said shrug idk what else this result is, maybe a bio process" but of course the internet said "LIFE FOUND ON VENUS!!11212`1!" So maybe that's why people are snarky. The Internet has turned science reporting into massive overpromising and under delivering on the results.
- tourgen 3y ago[dead]
- potsandpans 3y agoI've observed that this exists in all domains. Unsubstantial critique is cheap and at everyone's disposal. Generously, I think it can be interpreted as an appeal to common sense due to ignorance / lack of specialization. There's probably some heuristic like, "the more specialization required to understand information, the easier it is to invite empty critique." I'm not very generous though. I personally think the majority of people are more interested in being right or sounding clever than arriving at truth or understanding.
- gfody 3y ago> I personally think the majority of people are more interested in being right or sounding clever than arriving at truth or understanding. there's a term-of-hate for this "poser" like in parent's username. regardless of whether HN or the internet at large has a poser problem, drawing attention to it is off topic at best and hateful at worst - otoh we could be happy that the zeitgeist holds theoretical physics in high enough regard as to draw posers (iow we could have worse problems!)
- throwaway81523 3y agoI thought a superposeur was someone who prepares superposed quantum states. It's one of the steps on the way to getting the entangleur credential. You need the latter before you can build quantum computers. ;-)
- superposeur 3y agoyes pun intended
- goatlover 3y agoSabine is a theoretical physicists who works on the foundations of quantum mechanics. And she's not the only critic inside the field. The debate is over whether math should be elevated to the status that observation has in science, when it becomes difficult to make progress doing experiments.
- mannerheim 3y agoGP didn't say anything about Sabine. > What is it about theoretical physics that makes people on the internet (with zero understanding of the context) feel entitled to snarkily attack results such as this? This is about you.
- goatlover 3y agoSabine was in my initial comment. She makes videos criticizing physics which relies more on math and beauty over observation. This sounds like more of the past several decades of string theory related research.
- mannerheim 3y agoThis has literally nothing to do with string theory except for one object sharing the same name. > And within these theories it’s often necessary to go beyond points and particles to think about one-dimensional lines, or strings (which are conceptually distinct from the strings in string theory). And for that matter, they literally discuss observations in TFA, what are you on about. Anyway, if you don't know the role symmetries have played in physics for well over a century at this point, you aren't qualified to discuss the subject.