Sabine Hossenfelder
2019
Iâve been talking about unmeetable âEmbedded Growth Obligationsâ or E.G.O.s as the reason why all our expert communities are under unbearable pressure to distort across our institutions. The physics community is *very* trustworthy on the experiment-theory level. Yet even here:
Particle physicists surprised to find I am not their cheer-leader
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02/particle-physicists-surprised-to-find-i.html?spref=tw
This allows us to use Fundamental Physics as a reference for deception.
These folks are our BEST. They arenât lying about their experiments. They arenât lying about agreement w theory. They arenât wrong about expecting another accelerator imho.
Yet the EGOs make even them fib.
I may disagree with @skdh on whether we should build another multi-billion dollar accelerator. But she is exactly correct that there is no longer any new physics beyond the Standard Model expected to be found. She is telling truths above her pay-grade in the eyes of our leaders.
This is why we need to rescue our experts & institutions. We need to stop asking them to lie to us about their needs for growth. If even high energy physics canât escape its inability to meet growth expectations, then all expert communities are suspect.
These are our very best.
1/ Sabine Hossenfelder has done an impressive job collecting and rebutting the arguments for building a new particle accelerator. I find them partially convincing. Let me give the big reasons that no one ever mentions as they are not in her list.
Nonsense arguments for building a bigger particle collider that I am tired of hearing (The Ultimate Collection)
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-arguments-for-building-bigger.html
2/
I) The physics community gave us both the hydrogen bomb and the Einsteinian speed limit. Humans who acquire the Bomb never lose the ability to make them and they only get cheaper with technology. Further, the speed limit of 'c' traps us on three rocks: Earth, Moon and Mars.
3/
The combination of these twin gifts likely doom humanity over the long run unless we can, somehow, get around the speed of light 'c'. For that we will need to make physics a *top* priority unless we want to pretend we are going to become wise, colonize Titan, etc..etc..
4/
II) Theoretical physics practically created the modern economy:
Chemistry
Semiconductors/Transistors
World Wide Web
Electrification
Wireless
Nuclear Power/Weapons
Molecular Biology
These are not simply taxpayer dollars. They began as physics dollars. We are being absurd.
End/
III) We are at the end of this thread...but also at the end of what may be the last chapter of physics. The three main equations (Dirac, Einstein, Yang Mills) are provably, in some sense, the best possible. No one would walk out just before learning the end of our story.
I) "We gotta get FTL"
II) "Might be unexpected bonuses"
III) *appeals to emotion*
I) Not exactly FTL...but that is fair from what I wrote. I was using shorthand. Guilty.
II) No. We have obligations to this community. We don't allow them to fully participate so they have economic rights that we are abusing. This is a foreign idea to most.
III) No: Meaning.
Curious... I just reviewed the 'Dirac Sea' issue last night.
@EricRWeinstein , could you 'lightly' outline the 'provably the best possible' claim? w/o definitions for dark matter/ energy/ fluid, etc. how can we be near the end of the 'story'? thx
Briefly: A) Dirac operator actually generates K-theory.
B) Einstein theory from Hilbert Lagrangian is simplest possible Lagrangian in pseudo-riemannian geometry (just scalar curvature).
C) YangMills Lagrangian simplest in Ehresmannian geometry (just norm square of curvature).
You should answer his call because he clearly doesnât have my number. Heâs a few digits off.
2022
Keep your mouth shut or lose job security.
Sometimes @skdh drives me nuts. Usually, itâs in a good way. Can no one with money or power fix this situation? No? Of course not. You want science slaves. Howâs that working in virology?
Somebody get our scientists wealth & freedom.
Of course the vast majority of people who work in the foundations of physics want me to stop pointing out they are working on pseudoscience. Of course I know that this means I will never get a permanent position.
I spent a lot of time in beautiful homes and second homes of older research scientists as a grad student.
We should be embarrassed how far into precariousness we pushed Generation X & Millennials. Our entire economy is now bet on bargain science provided way below market.#Enough
Instantly stop all progress in the worldâs most successful scientific community using only two words inducing permanent paralytic failure that cannot be questioned.
Iâll go first: âQuantum Gravityâ
you're confusing the symptom with the disease
Hi Sabine!
I donât follow your statement here. How am I confused?
I just meant the cause of the problem is that theoretical physicists don't understand the responsibility they carry when experimental tests take longer and longer. That they got stuck on (a particular idea of) quantum gravity is the effect, but not the cause.
Hmm. As you know Iâm historically a big supporter of your courage & insight as critic. Perhaps you know something here that I do not as a nonphysicist. Open to that.
But I disagree. The Q-Gravity Mass Delusion is quite different in character. It is highly specific in its effect.
It is tied to all sorts of weirdness involving top physics and math people, bizarre funders, forgotten research institutes, aerospace companies, post Manhattan Project government secrecy, the golden age of General Relativity andâŚwords fail meâŚoutright quackery.
GUTs are a good test case. I believe you are in error going after Beauty when it comes to Grand Unified Theory. Your critique to Neil Degrasse Tyson recently applied to Georgi and Glashow Basic SU(5)âŚbut not to Pati-Salaam SU(4) x SU(2) x SU(2) for example.
I caution that you not fall into the trap of using Beauty as critique.
The abuse of Beauty in String Theory and Quantum Gravity more generally is valid as a target.
Critiquing the use of beauty, by contrast is a suicide mission. And I donât want to see you on it. As a friend.
Beauty *is* a light in the darkness as experiment becomes less accessible. Perhaps our best one.
But not all lights in the darkness are natural daylight leading to the exits from Platoâs cave.
2023
Now I feel completely alone.
I want our wanting out of this story. I have a huge dog in this fight. I spend every day fighting my own human desire for GU to be proven correct.
I believe this is how String Theorists stopped being scientists.
I just want our data & the physics.
If biological aliens were here from others star systems in crafts that defy the current physics of the standard model and, more importantly, general relativity, I would be one of the few people who would have a guess on day one as to how they must have gotten here. Itâs tempting.
I donât think biological interstellar alien visitors using GR and the SM make much sense. So I try to have a war *inside* my own mind as to what is true. I have a genuine âNeed to Knowâ as to whether this is BS NatSec space opera disinformation theater. Because to me, it is data.
What just happened isnât data. Itâs that a sober individual just pushed one of the many longstanding highly conserved NHI narratives collected from *many* diverse sober NatSec informants over the sworn testimony line. And it gets a LOT crazier from here. But itâs not science yet.
As Iâve been saying, there is so much deliberate NatSec BS out here that our own scientists are being propagandized. Weâre drilling holes in our own scientistsâ lifeboat. Last time we saw this it was virologists/immunologists/epidemiologists being gaslit. Now itâs physicists.
Let me be very careful in what I am about to say. We have at least the appearance and optics of scientific self-sabotage. And wanting things to be true is how science dies.
I fight like hell to promote my theory. But Iâd sign on to another to know the truth if I was wrong.
We may be looking at the birth of a new UFO religion. Or a moment of contact. Or a long running Disinformation campaign. Etc.
To go beyond GR, letâs be scientists & get NatSec out of our data first. Where is our data pruned of space opera disinformation and cultic religiosity?
What I want to know:
Why was the Mansfield Amendment passed?
Why did NSF fake a labor shortage in our MARKET economy destroying American STEM labor markets?
What stopped the Golden Age Of General Relativity?
Why was the SSC really cancelled?
StringTheory & STAGNATION: WTF?
What the hell was the 1957 Behnson funded UNC Chapel Hill conference actually about?
Why are we not stopping to QUESTION quantum gravity after 70 years of public *FAILURE* inspired by Babson-Behnson patronage of RIAS, the Institute of Field Physics and the precursor to Lockheed?
This is the 50th year of stagnation in the Standard Model Lagrangian. It is AS IF we are deliberately trying to forget how to do actual physics. Everyone who has succeeded in Particle Theory in standard terms is now over 70. This is insane. In 25 years there will be no one left.
Why are we not admitting that quantum gravity is killing physics and is the public respectable face of 1950s anti-gravity mania that lives on to murder all new theories in their cradle?
Quantum Gravity is fake and works to stop actual physics.
There. I said it. Now letâs talk.
If you want to know whether there are biological interstellar visitors here observing us, the short answer is âAlmost *certainly* not if they are using our current stagnant non-progressing theories of physics.â
Letâs finally get serious about this whacky subject? Thanks. đ
I swear I didn't write my tweet to make you feel alone and I'm genuinely sorry if that was the result. That said, I think it's better to acknowledge one's hopes and desires than to pretend they don't exist and thereby overestimate one's own rationality.
@skdh I acknowledge my desires as you see from what I wrote. But a stagnant community always wants outcomes. It wants SUSY. Or Strings. Or some g-2 muon anomaly. Etc.
I want too. But what I want is mostly just a desire to get the BS out of physics so we can get back to succeeding.
2024
And the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics does not go to physics...
âAnything but Physicsâ has tremendous predictive power.
We can discuss Spin Foam.
Or Boltzmann Brains.
Or 3D Chern-Simons.
Or Strings.
Or Alien warp drives.
Or Quantum computing.
Or Calabi-Yau manifolds.
Or Machine Learning.
Or Tenure/PeerReview/Grants.
Etc Etc
But not physics.
2025
Many of you are asking me to comment on this video.
I was trying very hard not to do so.
@skdh has not been treated properly by the physics community in my opinion. We are generally in agreement and I recommend her.
She is now bigger by herself than all of @bgreeneâs World Science Festival. And I believe that she has to think through these comments at her new scale.
Bottom Line: @skdh is far more in the right than her critics will acknowledge. But she is now at a new scale and these remarks are misleading in my opinion.
Fundamental Physics is, to me, what Mars and Rockets are to @elonmusk: manâs only hope for long term survival.
My belief is that @skdh is now so negative based on her egregious treatment at the hands of her community that her righteous position is actually endangering physics itself in the era of @DOGE.
I would consider debating her as a friend to give a more positive view.
Her and my tormentors in physics are our enemies basically because they are precarious. And precarious scientists are dangerous. Should we starve them or pay them?
@skdh and I agree that there are a lot of shitty physics folks behaving badly. Sabine is closer to saying cut off the bad scientists. I am closer to saying âWe have a Fauci problem in physics. Get rid of the means by which our âFaucisâ control us by making their colleagues precarious. Wealth is the solution to the ethics crisis in physics. The physics community that brought you the wealth of the modern world cannot be controlled by our Fauciâs. Honor the community by freeing them from economic tyranny and the problem gets solved in a positive manner.â
I despise the cowardly enemies of science, and of Sabine. In my opinion they are bullies and cowards really only because they were wrongly made precarious.
We desperately need our physicists. Free them. Pay them. Free them from our Fauciâs.
I would be happy to debate Sabine (and @bgreene, @seanmcarroll, @michiokaku and others) on this. Itâs literally life and death to me in the long term [See my pinned tweet.] and Sabine is wildly too negative here. Happy to defend this.
đ
I want to read you an email that I was asked to keep confidential because I think it explains some of my worries about academia.
Itâs not that String Theorists ended up forgetting details of the physical world, so much as they ended up resenting the physical world for existing.
Imagine being lectured on how physics works by these people:
âI donât give a damn about the Standard Model.â
âThe Standard Model is âUgly as Sinâ.â
âI havenât had a lepton or hadron enter any work Iâve done in 25 years.â
âWe all know Supersymmetry is needed to make our best models work. When nature decided not to provide superpartners at the LHC we retaliated and snubbed her right back by ignoring her from then on.â
âItâs okay that you donât get all the magnificent progress made in quantum gravity and theoretical physics since Juan [Maldacena]. Itâs not for everyone. It requires a powerful mind and is very subtle if you are still focused on the physical world.â
âOutsiders canât get that it is the physical world that held physics back. Luckily we solved that, but it is awkward to talk about this with people outside quantum gravity.â
âRight. I just donât care about the physical world. Sorry.â
âWe have to admit the truth. String Theory with a capital S failed as physics. Period. Which is why we have to go back and re-examine everythingâŚAnd then rebuild String Theory again in light of what we learned.â
ââ-
These people are lecturing others about what science is. As professors. As journal editors. As prize recipients. As members of the National Academy.
This is a mass delusion Sabine. Or a cover story. I think I donât have a third option. What is clear is that the above is 100% anti-science. It is trying to stop science from happening in public physics. It is a community mass delusion threatened not only by science, but now by the PHYSICAL WORLD itself.
Am I the only person on earth experiencing this at this level?? This is something you learn by putting up a real alternative focused on the real world of 3 generations of chiral matter. The above is what is unlocked when there are alternatives presented.
This isnât about funding anymore Sabine. Itâs not about predictive power. Itâs not about being seduced by beautiful mathematics.
Itâs about physicts stopping physics in physics departments by resenting and spurning the physical world for failing THEM. And then lecturing us on what science is when they have not a clue how science works. At all.
I would argue that denying a genetic basis of skin colour is on a different level than forgetting the details of the standard model, but same energy I guess.
I have certainly met people with this attitude but I've found that to be quite rare.
The mass delusion that still persists in the foundations of physics is the idea that just guessing some maths amounts to making a scientific "prediction". It's a major methodological problem that physicists are evidently unwilling to solve, even though I am perfectly sure that most of them know very well what I am talking about. And the major reason for this is that many of them quite literally live from inventing nonsense theories and publishing them. They haven't learned anything else.
That said, it's somewhat tangential for the point I was trying to make in the comment that you quote. I just meant that the basics of genetics are middle school knowledge and even leaving that aside, one doesn't need a PhD to notice that skin colour, like many other physical features, is highly heritable. In contrast, I don't expect people to know the symmetry groups of the standard model.
I think we have different experiences.
The first line of defense is âOf course if anyone had any more promising ideas on how to go beyond the Standard Model, weâd all work on thatâŚâ