6 ms·

I look forward to it. I listened to her a lot recently because YouTube decided ever “next video” bump while I drove should be her.

refulgentis 2y ago
Blissfully, I found an IEEE article that collects the stuff I'm aware of in one neat package. https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders The shell games are: 1. claiming it is a proton collider[^1 source] designed to look for new particles [^2 comment]. 2. false equivalence between China putting in their latest 5 year plan to make a plan to make something that will transition to being a proton collider. And it's worse than that: If they immediately started after the plan was complete and on schedule, they'd be done in 2048 and transition from e/p to protons in 2066. CERNs plan is to be done with e/p in 2042 and transition to protons in 2070. That's 4 years later, but it's comically irrelevant. That's not getting done sooner, that's just transitioning to doing stuff we already can do faster, the cool thing and why both are interested in building one is the electron/positron collider stuff, not scaled up proton collider stuff. Content: - The project would transition to a proton collider at the end of its lifespan as a novel tool, in 2070. - It is proposed to operate by 2042, assuming funds dispersed over 12 years, starting in 2030. - It will operate as a electron-positron collider for the intervening ~3 decades before transitioning to essentially LHC with 4x power. - Electron / positron is a unique collision form, chosen to allow for more precise measurement, such as the LHC discoveries of discrepancies in the Standard Model. - This is very important work. The more precise you nail down these uncertainties, the more theorists can do to verify their work, allowing the experimentalists to know where to look for new stuff, if any. [^1 source] Via Sabine link: "CERN wants to build a new particle collider which will smash protons together at roughly 6 times the energies seen at the Large Hadron Collider." [^2 comment] This is the undercurrent of the whole criticism, I cannot explicitly source it to one sentence. It's also bizarre: I can't remember the last time experimentalists got to discover something without the theorists telling them where to look. It's cheaper that way! LHC was a failure too by that standard. There simply aren't any candidates in the theory that are accessible at humanities near-term energy levels, the Standard Model's worked beautifully, modulo these tantalizing discoveries at LHC of small discrepancies that electron/positron collisions let you explore.
- raziel2701 2y ago
  Why is this work important? To me it just feels so distant from my reality. At the core of this, is there an answer to the "who cares?" attitude? Because if the answer is that we might incidentally create new useful technology in the build up of a new collider, why not just diversify the investment and put that money into a bunch of smaller projects? Hedge your bets sort of thing. Why support this and not allocate more into high temperature superconductivity for example? I don't understand what is the justification that entitles such a large amount of money to a singular project.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    First thought: I'm not the greatest at coming up with a stirring polemic justifying pushing out boundary science. Next thought that come to my head is, how do I boundary-test this. ex. work my way backwards, what was the last collider worth building? It's perfectly rational and intellectually honest to say "whichever one gave us something that got commercialized / helped people / etc." As far as high-temperature superconductivity, I'm virtually certain if there was consensus a $XXB facility would concretely advance that, I assume it'd get funded. I'm not certain, but I believe someone with more wherewithal / had skin in the game would argue that there's no reason to think this isn't that facility. (in that, advancing the boundary of physics tends to bring breakthroughs down the pipeline)
    - gonzobonzo 2y ago
      > what was the last collider worth building?...It's perfectly rational and intellectually honest to say "whichever one gave us something that got commercialized / helped people / etc." It seems like the LHC wouldn't pass this test? In which case, continuing down the path wouldn't make sense under this criteria.
      - refulgentis 2y ago
        Right! :) (the thing is, "continuing down the path" is a Not Even Wrong (in the Pauli sense) description of what's going on. It's a hopelessly confused. At least, I have given up hope: I wrote a quite detailed post, with both a TL;DR and longer, linking out to an approachable article, explaining this.)
AshamedCaptain 2y ago
> I listened to her a lot recently because YouTube decided ever “next video” bump while I drove should be her. I hope there was _any other criteria_ at play here? Why would I not be surprised that the answer is "NO" for 99.9% of the population? The world is really doomed...
- anoncareer0212 2y ago
  > The world is really doomed... Sadly, it absolutely 100% is. She's an amazing case of this. I'll spend the next 2 years gently walking people down from her clickbait, and I'll end up with net-negative karma for it. I honestly had given up entirely until I saw a subthread about a month ago where people who knew the area were exchanging info of lesser-known youtubers who come and clean up her messes after. The sad news is, they are getting more and more attention (I saw one over 400K+ views), but a lot of that just comes from being loud, proud, and aggressive, as well as having 30 minutes of video to justify the up front "hey, she's at best a not even wrong contrarian, and honestly, lets be clear at this point, shes a liar for views!!!!" Thankfully I'm old enough to see this stuff happens in waves, within 2 years it'll become common wisdom that she's X, Y, and Z, and even if I disagree and just think she's misguided, that'll be enough for the tide to ebb.
  - dbqpdb 2y ago
    Can you share the info about these other youtubers, or this subthread?
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      I can't find the subthread, oddly. Really oddly... They linked out to this Professor Dave @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70vYj1KPyT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70vYj1KPyT4 IIRC. (1M views!) He's got a couple more on it. Note I'd never say she was a fraud but I also don't know what to do with someone who has grown into being Not Even Wrong regularly. This might be the only way, fire with fire, but it makes me squeamish.
sigmar 2y ago
My view- she, like many, has been conditioned by social media to optimize for clicks by having contrarian and anti-establishment views. She's not positioned to have a particularly well-researched opinion on 95%+ of the topics she covers (which is understandable considering how many hundreds of videos she has made). I watched her for a bit, but stopped when I researched a topic deeper and found her analysis very superficial. Physics is a huge field. Think it is always better to find experts in a particular subfield and hear their views, rather than follow the feed of someone who repeatedly expresses the "everyone else is wrong" schtick
- davrosthedalek 2y ago
  Every time I tried to listen to her she was peddling a book. Her stick is it to criticize current research, first in her field (where the mainstream seem to disagree with her), but now in more and more fields of physics/science. She clearly has an agenda.
- sonofaragorn 2y ago
  I'm not sure that is fair. I've been reading her blog for over a decade, and she has always taken a contrarian view.
  - SiempreViernes 2y ago
    I think it's fairly accurate, it's true that she was always contrarian, but back in the 2010's it was a more respectable type of questioning. These days she's clearly rage baiting with titles, which is typical algorithm submission behaviour.
- matusp 2y ago
  I agree. I enjoyed her physics content. Then she made a few videos about AI, a field where I have more expertise than her, and I found her opinions very shallow and without much nuance. Ever since, my trust in her other videos went down as well. She is just trying to be overly sceptical and everything that is done in science is some sort of conspiracy.

refulgentis 2y ago

Blissfully, I found an IEEE article that collects the stuff I'm aware of in one neat package. https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders The shell games are: 1. claiming it is a proton collider[^1 source] designed to look for new particles [^2 comment]. 2. false equivalence between China putting in their latest 5 year plan to make a plan to make something that will transition to being a proton collider. And it's worse than that: If they immediately started after the plan was complete and on schedule, they'd be done in 2048 and transition from e/p to protons in 2066. CERNs plan is to be done with e/p in 2042 and transition to protons in 2070. That's 4 years later, but it's comically irrelevant. That's not getting done sooner, that's just transitioning to doing stuff we already can do faster, the cool thing and why both are interested in building one is the electron/positron collider stuff, not scaled up proton collider stuff. Content: - The project would transition to a proton collider at the end of its lifespan as a novel tool, in 2070. - It is proposed to operate by 2042, assuming funds dispersed over 12 years, starting in 2030. - It will operate as a electron-positron collider for the intervening ~3 decades before transitioning to essentially LHC with 4x power. - Electron / positron is a unique collision form, chosen to allow for more precise measurement, such as the LHC discoveries of discrepancies in the Standard Model. - This is very important work. The more precise you nail down these uncertainties, the more theorists can do to verify their work, allowing the experimentalists to know where to look for new stuff, if any. [^1 source] Via Sabine link: "CERN wants to build a new particle collider which will smash protons together at roughly 6 times the energies seen at the Large Hadron Collider." [^2 comment] This is the undercurrent of the whole criticism, I cannot explicitly source it to one sentence. It's also bizarre: I can't remember the last time experimentalists got to discover something without the theorists telling them where to look. It's cheaper that way! LHC was a failure too by that standard. There simply aren't any candidates in the theory that are accessible at humanities near-term energy levels, the Standard Model's worked beautifully, modulo these tantalizing discoveries at LHC of small discrepancies that electron/positron collisions let you explore.

raziel2701 2y ago
Why is this work important? To me it just feels so distant from my reality. At the core of this, is there an answer to the "who cares?" attitude? Because if the answer is that we might incidentally create new useful technology in the build up of a new collider, why not just diversify the investment and put that money into a bunch of smaller projects? Hedge your bets sort of thing. Why support this and not allocate more into high temperature superconductivity for example? I don't understand what is the justification that entitles such a large amount of money to a singular project.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  First thought: I'm not the greatest at coming up with a stirring polemic justifying pushing out boundary science. Next thought that come to my head is, how do I boundary-test this. ex. work my way backwards, what was the last collider worth building? It's perfectly rational and intellectually honest to say "whichever one gave us something that got commercialized / helped people / etc." As far as high-temperature superconductivity, I'm virtually certain if there was consensus a $XXB facility would concretely advance that, I assume it'd get funded. I'm not certain, but I believe someone with more wherewithal / had skin in the game would argue that there's no reason to think this isn't that facility. (in that, advancing the boundary of physics tends to bring breakthroughs down the pipeline)
  - gonzobonzo 2y ago
    > what was the last collider worth building?...It's perfectly rational and intellectually honest to say "whichever one gave us something that got commercialized / helped people / etc." It seems like the LHC wouldn't pass this test? In which case, continuing down the path wouldn't make sense under this criteria.
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      Right! :) (the thing is, "continuing down the path" is a Not Even Wrong (in the Pauli sense) description of what's going on. It's a hopelessly confused. At least, I have given up hope: I wrote a quite detailed post, with both a TL;DR and longer, linking out to an approachable article, explaining this.)

AshamedCaptain 2y ago

> I listened to her a lot recently because YouTube decided ever “next video” bump while I drove should be her. I hope there was _any other criteria_ at play here? Why would I not be surprised that the answer is "NO" for 99.9% of the population? The world is really doomed...

anoncareer0212 2y ago
> The world is really doomed... Sadly, it absolutely 100% is. She's an amazing case of this. I'll spend the next 2 years gently walking people down from her clickbait, and I'll end up with net-negative karma for it. I honestly had given up entirely until I saw a subthread about a month ago where people who knew the area were exchanging info of lesser-known youtubers who come and clean up her messes after. The sad news is, they are getting more and more attention (I saw one over 400K+ views), but a lot of that just comes from being loud, proud, and aggressive, as well as having 30 minutes of video to justify the up front "hey, she's at best a not even wrong contrarian, and honestly, lets be clear at this point, shes a liar for views!!!!" Thankfully I'm old enough to see this stuff happens in waves, within 2 years it'll become common wisdom that she's X, Y, and Z, and even if I disagree and just think she's misguided, that'll be enough for the tide to ebb.
- dbqpdb 2y ago
  Can you share the info about these other youtubers, or this subthread?
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    I can't find the subthread, oddly. Really oddly... They linked out to this Professor Dave @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70vYj1KPyT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70vYj1KPyT4 IIRC. (1M views!) He's got a couple more on it. Note I'd never say she was a fraud but I also don't know what to do with someone who has grown into being Not Even Wrong regularly. This might be the only way, fire with fire, but it makes me squeamish.

sigmar 2y ago

My view- she, like many, has been conditioned by social media to optimize for clicks by having contrarian and anti-establishment views. She's not positioned to have a particularly well-researched opinion on 95%+ of the topics she covers (which is understandable considering how many hundreds of videos she has made). I watched her for a bit, but stopped when I researched a topic deeper and found her analysis very superficial. Physics is a huge field. Think it is always better to find experts in a particular subfield and hear their views, rather than follow the feed of someone who repeatedly expresses the "everyone else is wrong" schtick

davrosthedalek 2y ago
Every time I tried to listen to her she was peddling a book. Her stick is it to criticize current research, first in her field (where the mainstream seem to disagree with her), but now in more and more fields of physics/science. She clearly has an agenda.
sonofaragorn 2y ago
I'm not sure that is fair. I've been reading her blog for over a decade, and she has always taken a contrarian view.
- SiempreViernes 2y ago
  I think it's fairly accurate, it's true that she was always contrarian, but back in the 2010's it was a more respectable type of questioning. These days she's clearly rage baiting with titles, which is typical algorithm submission behaviour.
matusp 2y ago
I agree. I enjoyed her physics content. Then she made a few videos about AI, a field where I have more expertise than her, and I found her opinions very shallow and without much nuance. Ever since, my trust in her other videos went down as well. She is just trying to be overly sceptical and everything that is done in science is some sort of conspiracy.