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I have a pet conspiracy theory for why there has been so little progress in physics for so long. The invention of the nuclear bomb scared a lot of people, it m

by rapjr9 2y ago

I have a pet conspiracy theory for why there has been so little progress in physics for so long. The invention of the nuclear bomb scared a lot of people, it made them scared of physics. What else might physicists turn up that could change the world in dramatic ways? Anti-gravity? Ray guns? Other dimensions? Travel to other worlds? All bad for business, no one is going to buy your airplanes or air craft carriers if they can buy an anti-gravity machine. So physics was suppressed by both business and government. Physicists were given "safe" work to do (ITER, quants) that would occupy them and keep them from exploring wild stuff. Grant financing was controlled so that only safe research would be conducted. It would be fairly invisible to the world, just a few high level decisions would determine how the funding was directed. I get the impression that if this was indeed a conscious decision that it's starting to fall apart as younger generations take over and become frustrated with the direction of physics. They weren't there when the A-bomb was invented, and nuclear weapons have not been on peoples minds much for a long time, most people have not lived in a time when one was used. So they see interesting topics and want to explore them and encounter resistance from more established scientists. It's a conspiracy theory because it would involve some buy-in from a fair number of physicists to make it work, but a lot of physicists when I was getting my BA in physics were very loudly saying "never again" about atomic weapons and felt it had tarnished the whole profession. It's very difficult to say what humanity would be capable of handling in terms of radical new inventions. Anti-gravity could solve many large problems, but it might make it even easier to destroy Earth. Once new knowledge exists it is hard to suppress it. Stopping it from from ever existing seems easier. I guess we'll find out if physics has been suppressed if the dam breaks and new ideas start proliferating. The nature of the new physics would be a big clue as to whether research in it was suppressed. I'm reminded of Elon Musk, he seems to have had really radical success in some very stagnant industries, just by trying instead of accepting limits, and being able to fund his ideas himself.

ManuelKiessling 2y ago
The theory stops working imho if you take competition into account. The world is not aligned as a single bloc of power. While it’s not completely unthinkable (but extremely unlikely, imho) that some scientists plus some decision makers from, say, the liberal west might collude to achieve this kind of suppression, their counterparts from one or multiple other blocs might not, because they want to dominate and anti-gravity guns surely give you some nice advantage.
- theendisney4 2y ago
  You'd be amazed how quickly powerful discoveries find military purpose.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    An important thing to consider here is that the first engineering project which had to make use of Einstein's Theory of Relativity was GPS --- the time/position calculations to triangulate location based on satellites is so exacting that it has to take into account gravimetric distortions based on the receivers being further down in the gravity well than the GPS satellites: https://xkcd.com/808/ https://xkcd.com/808/
    - theendisney4 2y ago
      This seems fun https://www.alternativephysics.org/book/GPSmythology.htm https://www.alternativephysics.org/book/GPSmythology.htm Why would the receaver need a clock if they are comparing pulses from satelites. All the satelites are all up there.
- rapjr9 2y ago
  The desire to dominate can take a weird turn if using your anti-gravity guns reveals them and makes it likely others will soon invent the same. There is precedent for this, say in electronic warfare or cyberwarfare. As soon as you reveal your uber virus, anyone can take it apart and modify it for their own purposes. So you don't reveal it except as a last resort. Competition doesn't come into play then, everyone hides their secret weapons and never uses them unless they have to, and tries to make sure information in that area is suppressed. However, as I say in other comments, this may have been a bottom up conspiracy, not a top down conspiracy, though it may have moved to the top as the scientists themselves gained power. But the fear would still exist at all levels; sure your anti-gravity gun gives you an advantage, but what if it eventually causes random micro black holes to appear near where you use it, obliterating infrastructure before evaporating? We just don't know what the repercussions of new technologies will be, and while the risks have seemed low in areas like software, the risks seem higher with fundamental new physics. People are historically pretty bad at predicting how technology/science will play out in the long term. AI was a joke for a long time, until it wasn't. The internet was hailed as revolutionary, but it seems very different than it did in the year 2000. It's a lot like computer security, you can imagine the possibilities, but you probably can't imagine ALL the possibilities. It takes time and collaboration to scope out what it is that is new that can now be accomplished. That uncertainty scares some people and excites others. Seems kind of like walking through a minefield littered with Christmas presents. Some people might decide to leave the presents where they are.
theendisney4 2y ago
Perhaps this is of interest to you. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yTiztUNrhhM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yTiztUNrhhM
- rapjr9 2y ago
  I'd heard the name LaRouche but I've never read his history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche Quite astounding, he seems to have been both woke in some ways (climate change) and fundamentally misguided. I can see a lot of Trump's playbook in his life. I was imagining a much more passive conspiracy, people refusing to participate for ethical reasons, rather than an elite conspiracy by the Venutians/Illuminati. The video seems unintelligable, he makes so many references to obscure history that may or may not be true (and how would he know?) it becomes meaningless without years of research and even then, the intentions and thoughts of historical figures are difficult to ascertain.
  - theendisney4 2y ago
    Yeah, would take years to fact check.
kragen 2y ago
What time frame are you talking about here? Starting in 01950, 01995, 02010? If we're talking about 01995, it's conceivable that, say, the US and CERN could coordinate to suppress research into hafnium bombs, AVLIS, antigravity, or whatever. If we're talking about research much prior to that point, though, you'd have to include the Russians in the conspiracy. Probably not just any Russians, either; probably Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Tsar-Bomba-era Sakharov, and his successors. And, on the other side, people like J. Edgar Hoover, JFK, McNamara, Kissinger, Johnny von Neumann, and Teller. I don't want to say it's literally impossible for Brezhnev or his underlings to have made a secret agreement with Kissinger and Teller to suppress the development of theoretical physics in order to keep the world predictable. But I do think it's pretty implausible, and there would have been an enormous incentive to cheat on any such secret agreement. In the 01990s, though, it could have become plausible. But, remember that that's also when Pakistan became a nuclear weapons state, shortly followed by North Korea in 02006. And the People's Republic of China has had nuclear weapons since 01964, so they evidently had significant physics capabilities that they were willing to use for warfare (which was a huge priority; Mao reorganized the country's economy to resist an anticipated US invasion), and they dominated the TOP500 supercomputer list until this year, when they withdrew from it in apparent protest against the efforts of the USA to reverse their technological progress with a worldwide system of export controls. So I think there's maybe a ten-year window when this could have happened somewhat, about 01992 to 02002. Both before and after that, there are too many countries with strong physics communities that are too bitterly opposed to make such cooperation plausible.
- rapjr9 2y ago
  Reading the comments here my thinking has been revised. I'm no longer suggesting the elites were conspiring, at least initially, I'm suggesting the physicists were conspiring for ethical reasons. Some of them may have moved up the ladder and reached positions of some power. Physics is magic to most people, hiding possibilities in math and technicality seems possible. Anyone who has written code professionally has probably been faced with similar decisions, biases can be encoded, and you have to decide how you are going to approach these things. For example, do you add a race field to the medical database or not? In 1990 it was often left up to the programmer. Sometimes things are decided far below the level of the people running the show. Regardless, I do think my theory is far fetched, innate curiosity seems likely to have caused some people to explore further regardless of the risks, and an overt conspiracy that eventually reached high levels seems likely to have been soon discovered.
rapjr9 2y ago
There are some good comments here, thanks! There has been an international component to physics research cooperation. It seems not inconceivable that physicists in many countries, meeting at paper conventions and such might have agreed and recruited each other to try to prevent the next atomic bomb type invention. So while competition between countries is certainly real, competition between scientists might be somewhat different. You'd think there would be some people who would pursue it regardless, but they'd probably have to work with a team, and not everyone on the team may have supported the goals. It's just a theory, but it has some plausibility. Perhaps there are people everywhere who have decided not to be part of endeavors that could be disruptive and they've done us all a favor or have kept us from discovering the secrets of the universe. Who knows? The ethics of science has been mostly left to chance and individual decisions.
carapace 2y ago
Some secrets keep themselves.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  > "The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." —EP
  - gradschoolfail 2y ago
    This is why… “science” needs lions ever ready to deploy the quite never old ultraviolence of wit (echoing FWN?)? [and not awards or nobel prizes: “A good sciencing is its own reward” - not Faora-Ul] (EP,wrong era, similar to HRV?)
    - 082349872349872 2y ago
      Wit may be the epitaph of an emotion, but it may also be the shem capable of animating a golem... If PE had been from Krypton, would death have been the moment one left the essential truths of mathsing for the accidental truths of sciencing?
      - gradschoolfail 2y ago
        Sounds about right? EDIT: placeholder for thinking more about this in context of Acemoglu & Restrepo: according to them ai as pointed at science today will not lead to even midterm econ growth “Why zero-to-one’s cannot be automated” id=41839542, note that nongoverning glamour-chasing elite Swedes didnt accolade Acemoglu for the institution-agnostic (“weird”er?) parts of his work that we were recently interested in Edit: on 2nd slightly sleep deprived thought, seems to me that its flipped: sciencing is conerned with the essential and mathsing is the data-to-code..
        082349872349872 2y ago
        If sleep deprivation gets you to anything near FAKvS' benzene structure (what did TAE think?) it may yet be useful! Sounds like we've greatly constrained our IRL hops to {1,2}. Are you familiar with any tulle-clad tensor inventors? > Another damned thick heavy book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr Gibbon? —P WH, DoG&E
pfdietz 2y ago
An easier theory is that the Standard Model is so good that it's very difficult to find anywhere it fails. So there's no experimental fuel to propel physics forward.
- rapjr9 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_p...

by rapjr9 2y ago

ManuelKiessling 2y ago

The theory stops working imho if you take competition into account. The world is not aligned as a single bloc of power. While it’s not completely unthinkable (but extremely unlikely, imho) that some scientists plus some decision makers from, say, the liberal west might collude to achieve this kind of suppression, their counterparts from one or multiple other blocs might not, because they want to dominate and anti-gravity guns surely give you some nice advantage.

theendisney4 2y ago
You'd be amazed how quickly powerful discoveries find military purpose.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  An important thing to consider here is that the first engineering project which had to make use of Einstein's Theory of Relativity was GPS --- the time/position calculations to triangulate location based on satellites is so exacting that it has to take into account gravimetric distortions based on the receivers being further down in the gravity well than the GPS satellites: https://xkcd.com/808/ https://xkcd.com/808/
  - theendisney4 2y ago
    This seems fun https://www.alternativephysics.org/book/GPSmythology.htm https://www.alternativephysics.org/book/GPSmythology.htm Why would the receaver need a clock if they are comparing pulses from satelites. All the satelites are all up there.
rapjr9 2y ago
The desire to dominate can take a weird turn if using your anti-gravity guns reveals them and makes it likely others will soon invent the same. There is precedent for this, say in electronic warfare or cyberwarfare. As soon as you reveal your uber virus, anyone can take it apart and modify it for their own purposes. So you don't reveal it except as a last resort. Competition doesn't come into play then, everyone hides their secret weapons and never uses them unless they have to, and tries to make sure information in that area is suppressed. However, as I say in other comments, this may have been a bottom up conspiracy, not a top down conspiracy, though it may have moved to the top as the scientists themselves gained power. But the fear would still exist at all levels; sure your anti-gravity gun gives you an advantage, but what if it eventually causes random micro black holes to appear near where you use it, obliterating infrastructure before evaporating? We just don't know what the repercussions of new technologies will be, and while the risks have seemed low in areas like software, the risks seem higher with fundamental new physics. People are historically pretty bad at predicting how technology/science will play out in the long term. AI was a joke for a long time, until it wasn't. The internet was hailed as revolutionary, but it seems very different than it did in the year 2000. It's a lot like computer security, you can imagine the possibilities, but you probably can't imagine ALL the possibilities. It takes time and collaboration to scope out what it is that is new that can now be accomplished. That uncertainty scares some people and excites others. Seems kind of like walking through a minefield littered with Christmas presents. Some people might decide to leave the presents where they are.

theendisney4 2y ago

Perhaps this is of interest to you. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yTiztUNrhhM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yTiztUNrhhM

rapjr9 2y ago
I'd heard the name LaRouche but I've never read his history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche Quite astounding, he seems to have been both woke in some ways (climate change) and fundamentally misguided. I can see a lot of Trump's playbook in his life. I was imagining a much more passive conspiracy, people refusing to participate for ethical reasons, rather than an elite conspiracy by the Venutians/Illuminati. The video seems unintelligable, he makes so many references to obscure history that may or may not be true (and how would he know?) it becomes meaningless without years of research and even then, the intentions and thoughts of historical figures are difficult to ascertain.
- theendisney4 2y ago
  Yeah, would take years to fact check.

kragen 2y ago

What time frame are you talking about here? Starting in 01950, 01995, 02010? If we're talking about 01995, it's conceivable that, say, the US and CERN could coordinate to suppress research into hafnium bombs, AVLIS, antigravity, or whatever. If we're talking about research much prior to that point, though, you'd have to include the Russians in the conspiracy. Probably not just any Russians, either; probably Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Tsar-Bomba-era Sakharov, and his successors. And, on the other side, people like J. Edgar Hoover, JFK, McNamara, Kissinger, Johnny von Neumann, and Teller. I don't want to say it's literally impossible for Brezhnev or his underlings to have made a secret agreement with Kissinger and Teller to suppress the development of theoretical physics in order to keep the world predictable. But I do think it's pretty implausible, and there would have been an enormous incentive to cheat on any such secret agreement. In the 01990s, though, it could have become plausible. But, remember that that's also when Pakistan became a nuclear weapons state, shortly followed by North Korea in 02006. And the People's Republic of China has had nuclear weapons since 01964, so they evidently had significant physics capabilities that they were willing to use for warfare (which was a huge priority; Mao reorganized the country's economy to resist an anticipated US invasion), and they dominated the TOP500 supercomputer list until this year, when they withdrew from it in apparent protest against the efforts of the USA to reverse their technological progress with a worldwide system of export controls. So I think there's maybe a ten-year window when this could have happened somewhat, about 01992 to 02002. Both before and after that, there are too many countries with strong physics communities that are too bitterly opposed to make such cooperation plausible.

rapjr9 2y ago
Reading the comments here my thinking has been revised. I'm no longer suggesting the elites were conspiring, at least initially, I'm suggesting the physicists were conspiring for ethical reasons. Some of them may have moved up the ladder and reached positions of some power. Physics is magic to most people, hiding possibilities in math and technicality seems possible. Anyone who has written code professionally has probably been faced with similar decisions, biases can be encoded, and you have to decide how you are going to approach these things. For example, do you add a race field to the medical database or not? In 1990 it was often left up to the programmer. Sometimes things are decided far below the level of the people running the show. Regardless, I do think my theory is far fetched, innate curiosity seems likely to have caused some people to explore further regardless of the risks, and an overt conspiracy that eventually reached high levels seems likely to have been soon discovered.

rapjr9 2y ago

There are some good comments here, thanks! There has been an international component to physics research cooperation. It seems not inconceivable that physicists in many countries, meeting at paper conventions and such might have agreed and recruited each other to try to prevent the next atomic bomb type invention. So while competition between countries is certainly real, competition between scientists might be somewhat different. You'd think there would be some people who would pursue it regardless, but they'd probably have to work with a team, and not everyone on the team may have supported the goals. It's just a theory, but it has some plausibility. Perhaps there are people everywhere who have decided not to be part of endeavors that could be disruptive and they've done us all a favor or have kept us from discovering the secrets of the universe. Who knows? The ethics of science has been mostly left to chance and individual decisions.

carapace 2y ago

Some secrets keep themselves.

082349872349872 2y ago
> "The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." —EP
- gradschoolfail 2y ago
  This is why… “science” needs lions ever ready to deploy the quite never old ultraviolence of wit (echoing FWN?)? [and not awards or nobel prizes: “A good sciencing is its own reward” - not Faora-Ul] (EP,wrong era, similar to HRV?)
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    Wit may be the epitaph of an emotion, but it may also be the shem capable of animating a golem... If PE had been from Krypton, would death have been the moment one left the essential truths of mathsing for the accidental truths of sciencing?
    - gradschoolfail 2y ago
      Sounds about right? EDIT: placeholder for thinking more about this in context of Acemoglu & Restrepo: according to them ai as pointed at science today will not lead to even midterm econ growth “Why zero-to-one’s cannot be automated” id=41839542, note that nongoverning glamour-chasing elite Swedes didnt accolade Acemoglu for the institution-agnostic (“weird”er?) parts of his work that we were recently interested in Edit: on 2nd slightly sleep deprived thought, seems to me that its flipped: sciencing is conerned with the essential and mathsing is the data-to-code..
      - 082349872349872 2y ago
        If sleep deprivation gets you to anything near FAKvS' benzene structure (what did TAE think?) it may yet be useful! Sounds like we've greatly constrained our IRL hops to {1,2}. Are you familiar with any tulle-clad tensor inventors? > Another damned thick heavy book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr Gibbon? —P WH, DoG&E

pfdietz 2y ago

An easier theory is that the Standard Model is so good that it's very difficult to find anywhere it fails. So there's no experimental fuel to propel physics forward.

rapjr9 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_p...