
Post-Empirical Science? - neonate
https://aeon.co/essays/post-empirical-science-is-an-oxymoron-and-it-is-dangerous
======
lidHanteyk
The author would do well to read more philosophy of science. Popper's over a
century old; Quine's only just recently closer to Popper than to us! And the
author doesn't even _know_ about Quine.

Edit: In particular, while Popper was very concerned with _falsifiability_ and
how to reject pseudoscience, Quine was concerned with _compatibility_ and how
well different theories fit together. Quine's view is useful for physics
because it immediately highlights that relativity and QM work very well within
themselves, but not with each other; therefore we know exactly where the
interesting scientific discoveries ought to be found.

~~~
thanatropism
Popper led us astray into a reductive outlook on science that led us directly
to the replication crisis in the social sciences, Amy Cuddy and power poses
and much more. People act like this is a mathematical problem and it can be
fixed moving beyond p-values but it isn't.

Quine had the better thesis, if only for the word "confirmational holism".
Science must be holistic -- it must be one across all fields or at least hope
to -- or it's a credentials game. As it stands now you can get credit for
social science that contradicts physical anthropology directly and doesn't
apologize for it.

None of the truly great achievements of science were done through atomized
conjectures and refutations. Newton, Lavoisier, Mendeleyev, Darwin -- they all
posited entire worldviews that were supported by a patchwork accumulation of
evidence. The challenges to Newtonian or Darwinian theory couldn't be merely
empirical, they had to embody a whole philosophical attack on this worldview
(preferably with evidence of its own -- but challenges to the evidence would
never be enough to bring down Darwin in his time).

Quine's confirmational holism might have highlighted the dissonance between GR
and QM, but it might also have highlighted the differences between mid-19th
century geology (which was beginning to discover deep time) and taxonomic
biology. OTOH literally no experiment could be set up to evidence the
importance of deep time in biology. Not without the fundamental insights of
Darwin (and likeminded, less-accomplished contemporaries).

We need to bury Popper.

~~~
zby
"None of the truly great achievements of science were done through atomized
conjectures and refutations." \- that is kind of tautology - only the big
steps are called truly great - the small steps are just small steps.

~~~
Buldak
I don't think it's a tautology. The question is whether those "small steps"
ever add up to anything "great." When many people think of scientific progress
or "the scientific method," they imagine innumerable scientists working across
the world, each making incremental contributions to a shared body of
knowledge, one peer reviewed article at a time. There's something that seems
even virtuous about this picture, which I imagine is part of its appeal.

~~~
zby
The question is what do you call "great" and my hunch is that "great" means
"impressive" or "surprising" \- and when you see lots of small steps they
don't seem impressive and they don't surprise.

------
kingludite
I find it somewhat of a hopeless discussion. One can explore any angle of
science and reach a point where it looks insane and one can indoctrinate
himself or train himself beyond that point. At that point you don't know
anymore if you are on the cutting edge or if you are contributing to a new
religion. The cutting edge might be useful and god might be real.

I think we can humble ourselves with the idea that the unknown is so large
that puny humans will never figure out a significant part of it. Our knowledge
to the whole will always be near zero. This perspective makes practical things
a lot more interesting or a lot more important. I think there is a
sufficiently infinite amount of work left close to the applicable.

Perhaps a good analogy is to first explore the forest close to the village
rather than moving in a random direction. Its great of course to hear stories
of far away lands but when it comes to funding we should aim to get something
in return. At the same time we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss things that
seem implausible to us. There are plenty of empirical results out there that
are dismissed outright and will never see publication.

I use to play with magnets just for fun, in pure ignorance. I made quite a few
setups that behaved in an interesting way to me. Nothing complicated, they
take 1-10 min to make. When I told some book smart people they got angry and
told me I was lying. I'm not trying to accomplish or refute anything. To me
the effects were less interesting than their outright rejection. My ignorance
of the art was quite the advantage. All I have is my hands and my eyes. You
can't convince me I cant be seeing what I'm seeing but it is damn fascinating
to see people try.

------
evanpw
slatestarcodex had a take on this recently:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/06/building-intuitions-
on...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/06/building-intuitions-on-non-
empirical-arguments-in-science/)

------
reilly3000
Sabine Hossenfelder's work on the subject of the multiverse sums up this
entire point very succinctly. I highly recommend the video linked in the
article, too:

[http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/why-multiverse-
is-r...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/why-multiverse-is-religion-
not-science.html)

~~~
jhanschoo
I would agree that it isn't a scientific hypothesis, but it's an important
perspective, in a similar way that heliocentrism was an important perspective
as opposed to geocentrism+epicycles.

For example, if we take Hossenfelder's argument and apply it to relativity, we
have the argument that talking about a region of space is quite nonsensical
because at any point in time an observer can only know that things in the past
up to the distance light has travelled used to exist. But it is useful to
model reality as a universe that can communicate at most at the speed of
light.

Now, our current experimentation and exploitation of high-particle physics is
still sufficiently immature, and the computations sufficiently inefficient
that we can, and have to still rely on obvious collapse events. But if you
eventually wanted to talk about, say, the two systems converging to the same
state or diverging from the same state, then the MWI is a useful perspective,
modeling the evolution of universe-space.

------
t-h-e-chief
Really enjoyed this article. I agree with some of the top comments, but still
thoroughly the read.

------
Elrac
Underneath the eloquent prose and the many helpful examples and showcases,
this is an anti-science hit piece.

How dare theoretical physicists develop ideas about the world around us that
can't be quickly and obviously supported by real-world observations? It's
apparent that science is in a crisis! We might as well just throw up our hands
and place our faith in homeopathy and creationism, which are no better.

Sorry, Mr. Baggott, that's a shitty argument for a target audience of stupid
people.

A counter-argument could be built on science stories like Ignatz Semmelweis'
ideas about hand-washing before surgery. Semmelweis suspected that _something_
was transferred from cadavers to birthing mothers via the hands of unwashed
surgeons, but he had no idea what that something was, and could certainly not
provide empirical proof. He was later vindicated by the work of Pasteur and
Koch. Too late for poor Dr. Semmelweis, who died in a nuthouse, but today hand
washing is an essential practice in modern medicine.

Mr. Baggott is telling us that science talks about things that are obviously
real, like bacteria, but also things that may or may not be, such as
multiverses. He's trying to convince us that because multiverses aren't
obviously real, science shouldn't be talking or even thinking about them. He's
implying that science is dishonest because it claims that multiverses are
real. Actually, he's the one who's being dishonest, not science.

Especially in fields where it's not feasible to stick the subject matter into
a test tube, hypothesis and speculation are valid tools of science. Hypotheses
are proposed with the expectation that science will later refute or
substantiate them. Contrary to what Mr. Baggott brings across, this is part of
science's process, a process that has proven wildly successful and valuable in
the past.

Most scientists are honest; and if asked by someone interested in more than a
catchy headline, they'll gladly tell you which theories are solidly supported
by a wealth of evidence, which are just ideas being thrown at the wall, and
which are in between. People who fail to understand this are poorly informed;
people who intentionally paper over the differences are dishonest. Please,
let's ignore and shame that kind of people.

~~~
pron
Here's an actual theoretical physicist, though, saying pretty much the same
thing as the article not two weeks ago:
[https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-crisis-in-
phys...](https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-crisis-in-physics-is-
not-only-about.html) :

> Instead of examining the way that they propose hypotheses and revising their
> methods, theoretical physicists have developed a habit of putting forward
> entirely baseless speculations. Over and over again I have heard them
> justifying their mindless production of mathematical fiction as “healthy
> speculation” – entirely ignoring that this type of speculation has
> demonstrably not worked for decades and continues to not work. There is
> nothing healthy about this. It’s sick science. And, embarrassingly enough,
> that’s plain to see for everyone who does not work in the field.

> This behavior is based on the hopelessly naïve, not to mention ill-informed,
> belief that science always progresses somehow, and that sooner or later
> certainly someone will stumble over something interesting. But even if that
> happened – even if someone found a piece of the puzzle – at this point we
> wouldn’t notice, because today any drop of genuine theoretical progress
> would drown in an ocean of “healthy speculation”.

> And so, what we have here in the foundation of physics is a plain failure of
> the scientific method. All these wrong predictions should have taught
> physicists that just because they can write down equations for something
> does not mean this math is a scientifically promising hypothesis. String
> theory, supersymmetry, multiverses. There’s math for it, alright. Pretty
> math, even. But that doesn’t mean this math describes reality.

~~~
lidHanteyk
And it's just as stupid-sounding when it comes from somebody who has training
and skills. Stupider-sounding, even.

It's not like theoretical physicists have a perfect track record. Prior to
modern thermodynamics, there were so many failed attempts to explain heat.
Remember caloric? Phlogiston? The ultraviolet catastrophe? There have been
periods of time where physics advances rapidly, and periods of time where
there are long stalls and no good ideas.

Additionally, it's pretty common for a theoretical idea to turn out to be
extremely practical, just in a way that wasn't obvious at first. In the past
300 years, we've gone from complex numbers being "imaginary" to being standard
components of quantum mechanics. While people of Cardano's time might say that
square roots of real numbers aren't real, we today understand that QM requires
complex amplitudes instead of classical probabilities.

It's easy to point to where people can find interesting stuff to study.
Einstein's work stemmed from noting that existing models of physics did not
completely predict the solar system's behavior. Similarly, when we look at
what these string theorists are aiming at, they turn out to have very
reasonable idiosyncratic observations that they are trying to explain. They're
examining the vacuum catastrophe, they're examining the Big Bang, they're
examining quantum electronics. These are the places where our theories aren't
able to explain every observation coherently; these are where we need new
explanations.

~~~
pron
I'm not sure we've read the same text. Hossenfelder explicitly acknowledges
all that -- in fact, she makes the exact point you are -- and yet says that
physicists today _do not_ practice the theoretical methodology that led to
success in the past.

~~~
lidHanteyk
In the past, how did we figure out Mercury's orbit? We looked for Vulcan for
half a century before Einstein figured out that our maths needed another term.
Was the search for Vulcan founded on "entirely baseless speculation", in
Sabine's words? No, there was a strong expectation that, since other planets
had been found this way, particularly Neptune, only a few decades prior!

By analogy, the string theorists _did_ present some falsifiable guesses, not
based purely on speculation, but based on generalizations of mathematical
patterns which were first observed in the beginnings of QM. They guessed at
supersymmetries, and we've falsified most of the low-energy (easy)
possibilities. This is fine; this is science as normal. And the string
theorists have reacted to an inability to design new experiments by
parameterizing the swampland.

Sabine doesn't seem to care that, during this same time period, we've seen
weakening of more _classical_ symmetries too! Remember charge-parity symmetry?
These days we're down to CPT, and neutrinos are even weirder than we thought,
and we can't explain all of this yet, but the maths needs to become more and
more flexible to model these interesting observations.

To quote Sabine from her comment section:

> This lack of careful math is basically where the idea comes from that
> supersymmetry solves some problem. It has never been cleanly formulated just
> what the supposed problem is. Instead you get this community narrative that
> keeps people thinking there must be something to it. And such a shared
> belief is basically impossible to correct once you have sufficiently many
> people on it.

The only problem that supersymmetry solves is the problem of experimentalists
wanting to be able to falsify/verify string theory. That's it. That's the only
reason that it's interesting. And we failed to verify or falsify so far. This
isn't bad, but people seem to think that it's bad.

The main gripe that I have with these rants of Sabine's is that, at this
point, if we're so direly "lost in maths", then what non-mathematical
alternative is she putting forward? How are we going to escape? I feel like
there's not really any substance to that part of her argument, just a vague
suggestion that somehow we'd better find somebody with the new and ground-
breaking thought experiments who can lead physics out of a dark and demented
era. It reeks, even if the odor isn't offensive.

To recall the thread-starter that got you worked up:

> How dare theoretical physicists develop ideas about the world around us that
> can't be quickly and obviously supported by real-world observations?

How dare we guess that microscopic organisms might exist before we can see
them? How dare we guess that a planet might be out there before we can see it?
How dare we guess that a subatomic particle might exist before we can measure
it? How dare we presume symmetries before we can test their breaking points?
How dare people put dark matter, dark energy, cosmological constants, or any
other grandiosely-indirect hypothetical universal information into their tiny
little parochial experiments done here on Earth!?

At some point, this line of thinking breaks down into absurd skepticism of
_any_ sort of mathematical modelling. Okay, fine; so, instead of maths, what
shall we use?

~~~
pron
I am having a hard time following this, because you're not engaging with the
point Hossenfelder makes, but with one she doesn't. In fact, you're trying to
rebut her by agreeing with her.

She's not against mathematical modeling and hypothesizing -- quite the
opposite. She's in favor of mathematical modeling of the kind that has worked
so far -- as you acknowledge -- _and from which physicists have strayed_ , at
least according to her. She is _for_ hypothesizing microorganisms and that is
why she's against current hypotheses. She's against the latter _because_ the
former is works, and the latter is different.

Her point, as I understand it, is as follows. Theory and experimentation have
worked hand in hand when there was a certain balance between them. But the
cost, and therefore the nature of experimentation has changed, and, as a
result, if theory wants to work _as it has in the past_ , it must change as
well in order to maintain this mutually-beneficial balance. In particular,
she's talking about recognizing more or less promising hypotheses based on
this balance. But even if she doesn't offer what you see as a solution, the
lack of a solution does not imply the lack of a problem, and recognizing the
problem is usually a good first step.

Pointing out that theory has worked in the past is agreeing with her, not
disagreeing with her. If you actually disagree with her, are you saying that
the nature of experimentation has _not_ changed and therefore theory should
not change? Are you saying that theory has already changed to maintain the
balance? Or are you saying that the balance is not important? Because in order
to disagree with her -- which I think is what you're trying to do -- you need
to argue one of these.

And by the way, the existence of microorganisms was experimentally verified,
and in many experiments, well before -- or separately from -- direct
observation.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease))

~~~
lidHanteyk
I don't buy the bullshit that there's some sort of good math vs. bad math in
physics, or that there's some necessary balance between theory and experiment.
It all sounds like an attempt to forget that mathematics is harder than any
hard science.

I'm saying that we have no reason to expect that we are somehow doing science
any more wrongly than we used to do science. This is why I find the "Lost in
Maths" critique so empty: It wants to discard all of what has worked, for no
reason other than discomfort with what people are doing based on what has
worked, and offers no compelling replacement bedrock.

~~~
pron
> I don't buy the bullshit that there's some sort of good math vs. bad math in
> physics

Good, because no one is saying that the math is intrinsically either good or
bad. Hossenfelder says that math (in physics) works best when it focuses on
things that are at least aspirationally testable. Your examples agree with
her.

> I'm saying that we have no reason to expect that we are somehow doing
> science any more wrongly than we used to do science

Hossenfelder gives a reason: there needs to be a certain balance between
experimentation and theory because that's what works, experimentation has
changed, therefore theory needs to change but it hasn't. If you want to argue
with the actual argument she's making -- rather than an argument you've made
up and put in her mouth -- you need to challenge her premise or her
conclusion, yet you're doing neither.

> It wants to discard all of what has worked

Quite the contrary: She argues that theoretical physics today is what's
discarding all that has worked. She wants to _continue_ all that has worked
and discard a _new_ approach that hasn't. Again, you're not disagreeing with
anyone as you don't seem to engage with the actual argument.

> and offers no compelling replacement bedrock.

She does offer a "replacement": maintain the balance that has worked. You may
not find it specific enough, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a problem,
and that doing something that _hasn 't_ worked is the best we can do just
because we don't know how to do what worked before.

Again, I find hard to keep this up because you seem to be responding to an
argument that no one has made, and completely ignore the actual argument made.
You keep saying what she says is silly, yet don't raise a single argument
against her actual point. In fact, you call what she says "bullshit" and then
vehemently agree with her. To actually make a couterargument you need to
either say that experimentation hasn't changed, that theory has maintained its
balance with experimentation or that the balance isn't important. Anything
other than those three positions is irrelevant here, and certainly isn't in
disagreement with Hossenfelder. I'm not a physicist, but I know a thing or two
about logic, and I am honsetly interested in seeing one of these points made,
but you're just lashing out without arguing _anything_. Which of those three
possible counterarguments are you trying to express?

~~~
lidHanteyk
I'm saying that balance isn't important.

Science progresses by refinement of mathematical models, by crafting of
narratives, by thought experiments, and by the simplifying and compressing
actions of institutionalization and education.

It's irritating to be accused of not reading. Sabine's not exactly easy
reading, but let's start at the top:

> In the foundations of physics, we have not seen progress since the mid 1970s
> when the standard model of particle physics was completed. Ever since then,
> the theories we use to describe observations have remained unchanged. Sure,
> some aspects of these theories have only been experimentally confirmed
> later. The last to-be-confirmed particle was the Higgs-boson, predicted in
> the 1960s, measured in 2012.

Oh, and why did it take half a century to confirm the Higgs? What is glossed
over is that the confirmation of the Standard Model _required_ particle
accelerators, either ones we built or ones we improvised using Sol as a
radiation source. We theorized, we imagined, and then we experimented and
confirmed. Along the way, we discovered multiple different supporting reasons
why things are the way that they are, and demolished various optimistic hopes
that the answers to our questions would be simple.

To zoom out, Sabine has been slowly building up a campaign of doubting
gravitational-wave observation technology. I feel like her position is that
_any_ big-science expenditure is a poor use of public funds, and that she is
willing to work backwards from those conclusions.

Protip: When somebody argues against a specific thing that people are doing,
but otherwise argues for the status quo, to "continue all that has worked" but
"discard [a] new approach that hasn't", they are really arguing for
_exclusion_ of that specific thing. Okay, fine, but why and to what end? I
feel sometimes like this is an argument that particle accelerators are a waste
of public funds. (See also: top of thread.)

Y'know, _you_ are the only person saying that I'm agreeing with you and
Sabine, and then you gripe that I'm somehow saying nothing. I feel that I'm
directly addressing your attempts at communication. You aren't going to make
progress by accusing me of failing to commit to a position when I've been
pretty open about my position from the start _and_ when your position is
framed in opposition to the thread-starting comment.

~~~
pron
> I'm saying that balance isn't important.

Ok, now I finally understand your disagreement with Hossenfelder. BTW, I
neither agree nor disagree with her. I'm not a physicist, I just don't think
her argument, if her description of the facts is reasonable, is so obviously
silly, so I'm interested to know what those of her fellow physicists who
disagree with her argue.

So if I understand you correctly, you agree with her premise that the gap
between hypothesis and experiment is widening, but you think it's OK. She says
that this view is overly optimistic, and clearly you disagree with that
conclusion. I'm curious to know how you justify this optimism. Is it just
because you think there is no other way or do you see some more concrete
reasons for optimism?

> What is glossed over is that the confirmation of the Standard Model required
> particle accelerators

I don't think it's glossed over at all. I think her point is that the rising
cost of experimentation should have an impact on theory as well.

> We theorized, we imagined, and then we experimented and confirmed.

Right, and I think she would say that a great percentage of the work being
done now has no feasible plan for experimentation within a century, so instead
of spending that time on speculation, why not let the feasibility of
experimentation at least educate the theoretical focus?

> To zoom out, Sabine has been slowly building up a campaign of doubting
> gravitational-wave observation technology. I feel like her position is that
> any big-science expenditure is a poor use of public funds, and that she is
> willing to work backwards from those conclusions.

You may well be right about this. Not being a physicist, and not knowing her
record aside from that one article, which I found to be very well-argued, I
have no additional knowledge on the matter.

------
m4r35n357
Post-modern crap.

------
tempguy9999
Opening words are "There is no agreed criterion to distinguish science from
pseudoscience [...]"

Instantly wrong. Reproducibility and testable predictions are the
distinctions.

~~~
thanatropism
Darwin's "On the origin of the species" meets neither.

~~~
tempguy9999
An actual reply instead of a no-op downvote, thanks.

Ok then, why does it not? I've not read it but this from wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org)
/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species )

"It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common
descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence
that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent
findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation."

There is a further section that presents facts
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#Summa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#Summary_of_Darwin%27s_theory))
which is a bit long to quote here.

So, are you saying OTOOTS presents evidence but not the necessary
reproducability, in which case I may agree, and the book is not scientific
theory but a precursor to one? Or something else?

