
The Emergence of Gravitational Wave Science [pdf] - fitzwatermellow
http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/2016-53-04/S0273-0979-2016-01544-8/S0273-0979-2016-01544-8.pdf
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CountHackulus
This article makes it clear that I'm missing a lot of math background. Anyone
have a good source for getting up to speed on tensors and manifolds?

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theideasmith
Here's a standard Topology textbook which will get you up to speed on
manifolds:
[http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/papers/munkres2.pdf](http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/papers/munkres2.pdf)

And here's Schroedinger's Space-Time Structure which has an intro to tensors:
[http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/schrodinger-st-
struc...](http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/schrodinger-st-struc.pdf)

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dschiptsov

       s/Science/Sect/

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GFK_of_xmaspast
Not following you here.

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bendbro
I think that's a vim replace command, swapping 'Science' with 'Sect'

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GFK_of_xmaspast
Yeah I got that much, but what does "The Emergence of Gravitational Wave Sect"
mean?

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dschiptsov
The meaning is the difference between a verified by the scientific method
approximation to the truth (some aspect of it) and a chimera, created from
math formulas.

Not everything which could be described with a set of equations necessarily
exist as a physical phenomena. Most of abstractions have no existence outside
peoples heads, except those verified by scientific method, which means
multiple independent replicable experiments which exactly the same results.

Unverified assumptions are called beliefs. Followers of some set of beliefs
and dogmas together is called a sect.

From the philosophical point of view, strictly speaking, this is a non-
science. When people trying to "prove" an abstract theory (a product of
imagination instead of a product of a process of reduction) they perform not
scientific tests, but complicated _simulations_. Any simulation, by
definition, cannot prove anything about existence or non-existence of a
simulated model, not even validity of the model. What could be concluded is
only that the simulation matches the model. Or not.

This performing of a simulation instead of controlled observations is the
essence of modern bad science, be it in economics, "medicine" or whatever is
based on a sophisticated models based on abstractions.

Simulation prove nothing. Observations do.

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Cogito
Have you heard about the (relatively) recent results coming from experiments
testing gravity waves?

Hopefully they live up to your standard of science.

Even if they don't, I think labelling maths and models and simulations as
'non-science'is disengenuous.

First, theorycrafting is an important step in science, it is a formalised way
of building hypotheses. If an individual or an entire discipline is devoted to
theorising what may be, while others test those theories, they are doing
science.

It is also science to test models with simulation. Proving a model does not
prove the system being modelled, but we still need to know if, for example,
the model is consistent. There are many situations where a model has no closed
solution, and so the only way to test it is through simulation. Models are a
key part of science; claiming that the testing of those models is somehow not
science seems a pointless pedantry even if it were true.

