
Has Physics Lost Its Way? - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/books/review/dream-universe-david-lindley.html
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heavyarms
I think this book [1] makes a similar argument, but in more concise and direct
terms. The gist of the argument is theoretical physicists have wasted too much
time and effort trying to come up with elegant math and grand theories that
sound plausible but can't be tested or, when they can, fail the test. And
rather than acknowledging that, the field as a whole keeps digging in without
making much progress.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36341728-lost-in-
math](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36341728-lost-in-math)

~~~
jandrese
I wonder if it is the same thing that stalled AI research for decades? After
the initial burst of hacks that seemed really impressive (ELIZA for example),
the field focused on finding formal mathematical solutions to the problems and
effectively stalled for 30+ years. It's only in the past few years with a
shift to doing statistical things on large sets of data--something that feels
a lot more like the hacky original efforts--that it feels like we're making
any progress again.

This is from a outsider's point of view so it may be completely wrong. But I
did try to take an AI course in the late 90s and it was so far divorced from
computer hardware that I joked it should have been in the math department.

~~~
friendlybus
Neural nets had been in development since the 80s. The hardware became
powerful enough to take advantage of the research quite recently.

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609venezia
Reading this review, I can't tell what Lindley hoped to contribute with this
book or why Al-Khalili found it noteworthy enough for a NYTimes book review
(which itself is so brief that it doesn't seem to say much beyond something
like "despite the claim to the contrary, Physics is more than math, and maybe
in the future we'll be able to test some of the untested ideas that came from
mathematical beauty.")

What am I missing here?

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thisrod
Personally, I think that the criticism of physics being driven too much by
mathematics is exactly wrong. The most sensible approach to quantum gravity
yet came out of Wheeler's group. It's a really obvious approach: I came up
with the basic idea independently, then looked up _Gravitation_ to see if it
was technically possible, and learnt that the authors thought of that 50 years
before I did.

But it was abandoned, because no one could do the maths.

So I think we're waiting for another Laplace and Euler, to solve the Wheeler-
de Witt equation.

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dieselerator
My experience in school was the best professors were in the physics
department. I learned a lot in those classes. I never asked, "Is this useful?"
Of course, it has been very useful, especially in understanding engineering
problems.

The physics professors worked hard at teaching their classes, and they all
supported graduate students. I think that is sufficient. I don't care if some
of their research gives mathematical results that are not testable. That is
what we call research. I will back those professors every time.

That is my opinion.

~~~
grugagag
Are you saying that those professors who i dont doubt are good and supportive,
beside teaching generate some junk because academia requires them? Maybe
something is broken

~~~
dieselerator
No, I do not believe those physics professors would publish any "junk". I
expect some research reaches a dead end. However, those professors seemed much
too driven by the pursuit of knowledge to waste their time on useless
research.

Though the math is beyond me, theoretical physics is pretty much all math. The
math being developed may or may not be useful eventually, but it adds to the
knowledge base. I think "is this testable?" is the wrong wrong question to
ask.

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hackinthebochs
All the hang-wringing about elegant mathematics misses the point. An elegant
theory is one that captures a lot of complexity with a minimal description.
That some small number of assumptions goes on to describe a multitude of
phenomena is the mark of a good theory. Given the choice between an elegant
theory and an inelegant one that describes the same data, the elegant one is
more likely to be true.

If there are problems with modern physics, its not that we're spending time
looking for elegant theories.

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anon102010
Totally agree that in general the endless naval gazing in physics (multi-verse
/ string theory etc) seems like a colossal waste of time.

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mensetmanusman
Another good interview on this topic:

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-
check/physicist-g...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-
check/physicist-george-ellis-knocks-physicists-for-knocking-philosophy-
falsification-free-will/)

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Mediterraneo10
It seems unfair to criticize some physicists for the fact that they haven’t
subjected their theories to experiment, when we know that testing certain
theories would require access to vast levels of energy that the human race
doesn’t yet have at its disposal (and may never have).

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dnautics
No but I think it's fair to criticize any physicist who establishes a theory
to be beyond testability and continues work on it, or who works on another
physicists theory that is established to be beyond testability.

Especially if they are using public money, because public monies need to be
accountable.

~~~
SkyBelow
>it's fair to criticize any physicist who establishes a theory to be beyond
testability and continues work on it

Would the same apply to people who further explore questions like P = NP and
what happens if it is true or false or what happens if the Riemann hypothesis
is true? Sometimes digging more into something that doesn't seem testable
results in a finding that is testable or into knowledge that helps advance a
related field.

I think the deeper question is, how do we make sure that public money is spent
in a justifiable fashion. And when it comes to science that is a hard question
to answer, especially if one considers that science works a bit differently
than the way the average voter thinks about things when it comes to notion
such as proven or disproven.

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andrewflnr
It might apply if P=NP or the Riemann hypothesis were remotely the same thing.
An open mathematical conjecture has uncertainty about whether effort into
cracking it will produce fruit. That's entirely different from a physical
theory where it certainly cannot be tested.

~~~
chr1
Any physical theory that cannot be tested is a mathematical theory that can
produce results useful in other places.

In general all of theoretical physics is mathematics that takes inspiration
from experiments, and takes shortcuts when proving theorems:).

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unixhero
Isn't this what Eric Weinstein is on about in his podcast as series The
Portal?

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angel_j
Academia lost its way, not Physics.

~~~
woodandsteel
Many words in the English language have more than one meaning. One of the
common meanings of the term "physics" is the academic physics community. Did
you really not know that?

~~~
redis_mlc
Actually, the snarky poster was correct.

US Academics is about grant-seeking and ass-kissing foremost (and living in
your car), not whatever the discipline at hand is.

Physics itself is oblivious to that.

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chaps
Anyone have a non-paywall copy?

