Sabine Hossenfelder: Difference between revisions

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-arguments-for-building-bigger.html

Nonsense arguments for building a bigger particle collider that I am tired of hearing (The Ultimate Collection)

5:32 PM · Mar 27, 2019

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.

1:13 AM · Mar 28, 2019

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..

1:13 AM · Mar 28, 2019

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.

1:13 AM · Mar 28, 2019

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.

1:13 AM · Mar 28, 2019

Calcifer

@StefanTarr

I) "We gotta get FTL"
II) "Might be unexpected bonuses"
III) *appeals to emotion*

1:26 AM · Mar 28, 2019

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.

1:26 AM · Mar 28, 2019

Fourliquin

@Fourliquin

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

1:41 AM · Mar 28, 2019

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).

1:48 AM · Mar 28, 2019

Wyvern

@David2APatriot

Lord Kelvin called from the past.

1:20 AM · Mar 28, 2019

You should answer his call because he clearly doesn’t have my number. He’s a few digits off.

1:50 AM · Mar 28, 2019

2022

Instantly stop all progress in the world’s most successful scientific community using only two words inducing permanent paralytic failure that cannot be questioned.

I’ll go first: “Quantum Gravity”

3:26 PM · Nov 7, 2022

you're confusing the symptom with the disease

4:47 PM · Nov 7, 2022

Hi Sabine!

I don’t follow your statement here. How am I confused?

4:54 PM · Nov 7, 2022

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.

5:01 PM · Nov 7, 2022

Hmm. As you know I’m 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.

5:09 PM · Nov 7, 2022

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 and…words fail me…outright quackery.

5:13 PM · Nov 7, 2022

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)…but not to Pati-Salaam SU(4) x SU(2) x SU(2) for example.

5:16 PM · Nov 7, 2022

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 don’t want to see you on it. As a friend.

5:19 PM · Nov 7, 2022

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 Plato’s cave.

5:25 PM · Nov 7, 2022

2025

It’s 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:

“I don’t give a damn about the Standard Model.”

“The Standard Model is ‘Ugly as Sin’.”

“I haven’t had a lepton or hadron enter any work I’ve done in 25 years.”

“We 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.”

“It’s okay that you don’t get all the magnificent progress made in quantum gravity and theoretical physics since Juan [Maldacena]. It’s not for everyone. It requires a powerful mind and is very subtle if you are still focused on the physical world.”

“Outsiders can’t 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.”

“Right. I just don’t care about the physical world. Sorry.”

“We 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 everything…And then rebuild String Theory again in light of what we learned.”

——-

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 don’t 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 isn’t about funding anymore Sabine. It’s not about predictive power. It’s not about being seduced by beautiful mathematics.

It’s 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.

2:43 PM · Dec 26, 2025

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.

12:43 PM · Dec 26, 2025

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.

5:04 PM · Dec 26, 2025