4 ms·

Related sentiment to the above post: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/09/the_mathematical_vocation.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/09/th

Related sentiment to the above post: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/09/the_mathematical_vocation.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/09/the_mathematica... .

jiggawatts 3y ago
For reference, I enjoy (and have formally studied) both theoretical physics and pure theoretical mathematics. I get the "value" of both, even when the value is extremely abstract and removed from practical utility. However. Theoretical physics especially is grounded in reality. Sure, it has its frictionless cows and whatnot, but generally a connection with the real world is maintained.[1] In other words, it's possible to take an idealised theory and then sprinkle the messy details on top, such as friction and air resistance. What I'm seeing in computer science is different. Their theories are not the type that need a slight quantitative adjustment to match reality in the sense of adding a 1% extra fine-tuning factors, but they're qualitatively wrong. They're wrong not by constant factors or constant offsets, but big-O notation wrong. The equations have the wrong powers in them! Missing square roots or logarithms! It's as if the working engineers had switched from Newtonian to Relativistic Mechanics because we've colonised the Solar System, but all theoretical physicists are basically pretending that only Newtonian mechanics is worthy of study and that Lorentzian mechanics is just a fudge factor that can be ignored forever and ever. Even when we all live in space with multi-hour communication delays caused by the speed of light. "Just set that to zero and then..." [1] One notable exception to this that grinds my gears is a habit of publishing papers about results that only apply in non-real toy models, such as 2+2 dimensional spacetime, but not putting a big warning box before the abstract to warn journalists that nothing in the paper applies to our reality.

Related sentiment to the above post: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/09/the_mathematical_vocation.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/09/the_mathematica... .

jiggawatts 3y ago

For reference, I enjoy (and have formally studied) both theoretical physics and pure theoretical mathematics. I get the "value" of both, even when the value is extremely abstract and removed from practical utility. However. Theoretical physics especially is grounded in reality. Sure, it has its frictionless cows and whatnot, but generally a connection with the real world is maintained.[1] In other words, it's possible to take an idealised theory and then sprinkle the messy details on top, such as friction and air resistance. What I'm seeing in computer science is different. Their theories are not the type that need a slight quantitative adjustment to match reality in the sense of adding a 1% extra fine-tuning factors, but they're qualitatively wrong. They're wrong not by constant factors or constant offsets, but big-O notation wrong. The equations have the wrong powers in them! Missing square roots or logarithms! It's as if the working engineers had switched from Newtonian to Relativistic Mechanics because we've colonised the Solar System, but all theoretical physicists are basically pretending that only Newtonian mechanics is worthy of study and that Lorentzian mechanics is just a fudge factor that can be ignored forever and ever. Even when we all live in space with multi-hour communication delays caused by the speed of light. "Just set that to zero and then..." [1] One notable exception to this that grinds my gears is a habit of publishing papers about results that only apply in non-real toy models, such as 2+2 dimensional spacetime, but not putting a big warning box before the abstract to warn journalists that nothing in the paper applies to our reality.