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As a PhD in physics - progress in pure physics is slowing down (or at least progress per scientist). The delay between a discovery in physics and a Nobel prize

by stared 11y ago

As a PhD in physics - progress in pure physics is slowing down (or at least progress per scientist). The delay between a discovery in physics and a Nobel prize is getting bigger and bigger [1]. It's true for all fields, but the effect is particularly strong for physics. '''It is safe to say that late 1920s and early 1930s were the “Golden Age” of 20th century physics, when the progress was lightning-fast and new discoveries lay like low-hanging fruits. In the 1940s Dirac commented bitterly, in view of problems quantum field theory was having at the time: “Then, a second-rate physicist could do first-rate work – now, it takes a first-rate physicist to do second-rate work”. Every physicist would love to live in such “interesting times”, when a new unexplored scientific territory opens up.''' [2] So, its started decreasing quite some time. Also, as there are more an more people involved, the brainmass gets diluted. As of now there is no chance to get a photo of a concentration of luminaries as from the famous Solvay conferences [3]. So, if you (like me) read Feynman lectures of physics and know physics from 1920s-1950s, you are likely to get disappointed by the current pace. ...and just compare to recent progress in machine learning, when we can play on our computers with things, which a few years ago were thought to be out of our reach. (But it shouldn't be surprising, technologies and science do have their growth time, and usually it's finite time.) [1] http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-getting-older/ http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-get... [2] https://woodtickquarterly.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/graham-farmelo-the-strangest-man-the-hidden-life-of-paul-dirac-quantum-genius/ https://woodtickquarterly.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/graham-fa... (BTW: I recommend this book a lot) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference

verelo 11y ago
I do not disagree that things feel slower to some degree, but I'd also bet absolutely anything that 100 years from now people will look at our time and say "Can you believe they didn't understand X? There was so much low hanging fruit in 2015." The issue is that what appears simple, 100 years from now, takes a significant shift in how we're currently thinking. The problems are complex and the prior knowledge needed to get to a breakthrough is always growing, but I really do believe its self defeating to look at 100 years ago and think they had it easy as I believe people will undoubtedly say the same thing about us 100 years from now.
- hellameta 11y ago
  I agree with you but not with respect to Physics. I believe it is very likely that in 100 years we will think "Can you believe they didn't understand X" in things like psychology and all of the new emerging cross disciplinary fields that have emerged from it. Economics is a good example as well I believe... Up until the second half of the 20th century many economists were not basing their theories on data but rather under assumptions that we are all "rational" actors. I will concede that the 'data' was not really available until the last 50yrs anyway but the 'behavioral' movement has hopefully set Economics as a whole on a 'straight' path and no doubt the next 100yrs will show the low hanging fruit which now dangle above us. How poetic. EDIT - The economics example I gave was very sweeping. Just an example.
  - btilly 11y ago
    Your belief about economics indicates that you are part of a minority paradigm that has produced interesting data but not managed to transform economics yet. If it does succeed, then your hope for it will be perfectly justified. But most such movements do not succeed. The problem is that success has to be so compelling that people who are working within different paradigms (economics have many) generally figure out that they are thinking about it wrong and need to restructure everything in terms of behavioral economics, rather than looking at behavioral economics as a low order correction term to their own way of understanding them.
    - hellameta 11y ago
      I think that my original comment wasn't specific enough and that we are in agreement. I do see it as a 'low order correction' but one that will (and has already) added a lot to the field. Richard Thaler puts it much better than me when he roughly says that the best economics work in the last decade is by classic economists doing good empirical work. Which, at least in my understanding, is the real 'gift' of the 'behavioral' approach.
  - carapat_virulat 11y ago
    I think it's very unlikely that we will see in psychology or economics any kind of progress like what we saw in physics. In physics anything new that we learn doesn't change the experiments at all, that is we can't ignore physical laws just because we are aware of them. But in psychology or economics as soon as you learn something new, that new knowledge is going to be a new variable to account for, for example as soon as you are made aware of the Bystander effect[1] it is trivial to avoid it, but you can't really predict what will come out of it. You can as well find ways to game any economic prediction by being aware of it, I guess you can find stable models that sort of work until something like the 2008 financial crisis happens and they don't anymore. So either the investigators stay out of the economy/society or they will mess with their own results by making them public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
pwnna 11y ago
Do you think there's a limit on how much we can understand in physics/any field? My reasoning on this is that since everyone has a finite lifespan, understanding/work will be lost as the researcher retire, move to a different field, or die, unless this information is transmitted to someone else during their life time. However, as we understand more, we have to teach people more. This brings in two problems that I see: - It takes longer for people to learn up to the frontier of science, which means they might be in their 30s, 40s, and that number may keep getting larger. - We might be able to teach these things in the same amount of time, but the understand of these topics by the younger generation might be less overall, which makes it difficult for them to make certain connections, as they might not have the deep enough understanding to see a connection. My worry is the eventually we will reach a stage where the amount of knowledge we have is so much that no one can feasibly master a field. We can subdivide the fields, but no one will know enough general knowledge to make insightful connections that simplifies our models, or something to that effect. As an example: my fluid dynamics professor said that the fluids mechanics I course we take in second year undergrad is what people worked on as their masters/phd thesis 100 years ago, whereas we don't even derive the formulas anymore now simply because we do not have the time to do so.
- mdup 11y ago
  The point of your comment is disproved by your last paragraph! The more science is discovered, the more it gets compacted into the essentials of this knowledge. If 100 year old PhD level fluid dynamics can be taught to undergrads, this means it got digested into the most useful part of the work. Similarly, it's considered basic undergrad work to understand Fourier decomposition; but the notations and clarity we get the insight from is the result of two centuries from the 1807 paper by Fourier. It was certainly PhD level at the time. Certainly science is compacted and that's how it gets transmitted to younger generations. And remember that our brains get bigger, so maybe we'll never hit any "limit" to understanding? :)
  - nvader 11y ago
    Not to mention that lifespans get longer!

by stared 11y ago

verelo 11y ago

I do not disagree that things feel slower to some degree, but I'd also bet absolutely anything that 100 years from now people will look at our time and say "Can you believe they didn't understand X? There was so much low hanging fruit in 2015." The issue is that what appears simple, 100 years from now, takes a significant shift in how we're currently thinking. The problems are complex and the prior knowledge needed to get to a breakthrough is always growing, but I really do believe its self defeating to look at 100 years ago and think they had it easy as I believe people will undoubtedly say the same thing about us 100 years from now.

hellameta 11y ago
I agree with you but not with respect to Physics. I believe it is very likely that in 100 years we will think "Can you believe they didn't understand X" in things like psychology and all of the new emerging cross disciplinary fields that have emerged from it. Economics is a good example as well I believe... Up until the second half of the 20th century many economists were not basing their theories on data but rather under assumptions that we are all "rational" actors. I will concede that the 'data' was not really available until the last 50yrs anyway but the 'behavioral' movement has hopefully set Economics as a whole on a 'straight' path and no doubt the next 100yrs will show the low hanging fruit which now dangle above us. How poetic. EDIT - The economics example I gave was very sweeping. Just an example.
- btilly 11y ago
  Your belief about economics indicates that you are part of a minority paradigm that has produced interesting data but not managed to transform economics yet. If it does succeed, then your hope for it will be perfectly justified. But most such movements do not succeed. The problem is that success has to be so compelling that people who are working within different paradigms (economics have many) generally figure out that they are thinking about it wrong and need to restructure everything in terms of behavioral economics, rather than looking at behavioral economics as a low order correction term to their own way of understanding them.
  - hellameta 11y ago
    I think that my original comment wasn't specific enough and that we are in agreement. I do see it as a 'low order correction' but one that will (and has already) added a lot to the field. Richard Thaler puts it much better than me when he roughly says that the best economics work in the last decade is by classic economists doing good empirical work. Which, at least in my understanding, is the real 'gift' of the 'behavioral' approach.
- carapat_virulat 11y ago
  I think it's very unlikely that we will see in psychology or economics any kind of progress like what we saw in physics. In physics anything new that we learn doesn't change the experiments at all, that is we can't ignore physical laws just because we are aware of them. But in psychology or economics as soon as you learn something new, that new knowledge is going to be a new variable to account for, for example as soon as you are made aware of the Bystander effect[1] it is trivial to avoid it, but you can't really predict what will come out of it. You can as well find ways to game any economic prediction by being aware of it, I guess you can find stable models that sort of work until something like the 2008 financial crisis happens and they don't anymore. So either the investigators stay out of the economy/society or they will mess with their own results by making them public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

pwnna 11y ago

Do you think there's a limit on how much we can understand in physics/any field? My reasoning on this is that since everyone has a finite lifespan, understanding/work will be lost as the researcher retire, move to a different field, or die, unless this information is transmitted to someone else during their life time. However, as we understand more, we have to teach people more. This brings in two problems that I see: - It takes longer for people to learn up to the frontier of science, which means they might be in their 30s, 40s, and that number may keep getting larger. - We might be able to teach these things in the same amount of time, but the understand of these topics by the younger generation might be less overall, which makes it difficult for them to make certain connections, as they might not have the deep enough understanding to see a connection. My worry is the eventually we will reach a stage where the amount of knowledge we have is so much that no one can feasibly master a field. We can subdivide the fields, but no one will know enough general knowledge to make insightful connections that simplifies our models, or something to that effect. As an example: my fluid dynamics professor said that the fluids mechanics I course we take in second year undergrad is what people worked on as their masters/phd thesis 100 years ago, whereas we don't even derive the formulas anymore now simply because we do not have the time to do so.

mdup 11y ago
The point of your comment is disproved by your last paragraph! The more science is discovered, the more it gets compacted into the essentials of this knowledge. If 100 year old PhD level fluid dynamics can be taught to undergrads, this means it got digested into the most useful part of the work. Similarly, it's considered basic undergrad work to understand Fourier decomposition; but the notations and clarity we get the insight from is the result of two centuries from the 1807 paper by Fourier. It was certainly PhD level at the time. Certainly science is compacted and that's how it gets transmitted to younger generations. And remember that our brains get bigger, so maybe we'll never hit any "limit" to understanding? :)
- nvader 11y ago
  Not to mention that lifespans get longer!