
Just because it’s falsifiable doesn’t mean it’s good science - _aleph2c_
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/just-because-its-falsifiable-doesnt.html
======
taneq
Of course, but if it's falsifiable then once it's falsified _it will go away_.
If it's not falsifiable then it's "not even wrong" and it's impossible to
convince people to stop repeating it as if it's fact (or worse, an 'undeniable
possibility').

~~~
mabbo
Right, but how many billions of dollars are you willing to spend to falsify a
hypothesis?

The author is arguing that the proposal to replace the LHC with a 100km
replacement isn't worth the cost considering the low probability that any of
these theories it could prove actually turn out to be true. We have little to
gain by them being false and little reason to think they are true.

~~~
cheez
Say the member countries have 500 million people in a population. In order for
them to spend 20 billion on LHC, you would need to tax those people ~$40. My
intuition is that people would be willing to pay that to understand that some
theory is correct or incorrect. Even proving gravity waves could not be done
for 100 years after the theory.

~~~
forgotmypass2
> My intuition is that people would be willing to pay that to understand that
> some theory is correct or incorrect.

When doing this sort of calculations, you have to take into account that
you're taxing THE WHOLE population: completely destitute people, people near
the poverty line, children who ear exactly $0, etc. For some of these poeple,
$40 can be way too much. In practice, if you tax a child that doesn't earn an
income, you're taxing the parents. Of course it's possible that on average you
can tax $40 from each person, but that might require taxing $400 from some
people and $0 from other people.

That said, there might be better ways of spending that money than on this.

------
j16sdiz
He is arguing against building the larger particle collider.

There are too little theory support of such collider can find anything new
under the standard model.

IMO, it is not the matter of "science". This is economics.

~~~
bauerd
And economics isn't a science?

~~~
s3m4j
Is it falsifiable ? Is it testable even ?

~~~
AndrewDucker
When people are proven wrong, does the conversation move forward, or do large
swathes of people grip onto their beliefs anyway?

~~~
presscast
That has nothing to do with whether or not something is a science.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It is when the people who don't move on are the people doing the "science."

~~~
presscast
No, even then it has nothing to do with whether or not the subject of debate
is scientific.

Bad deontology on the part of an individual doesn't discredit the field as a
whole.

------
foxes
I can understand the argument, but what other methods do we have to test
particle physics other than building larger and more powerful colliders? Are
there some new designs that would make it cheaper?

Otherwise I don't mind spending money just for the sake of exploration, maybe
that money could be "more well spent", but that's true for a lot of things.
Who knows maybe it will find something interesting. It's not even a total
waste anyway as it will probably spur jobs / research / interest.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Currently there's a good chance there's nothing to test.

The _real_ problem in physics isn't lack of data, it's lack of direction. The
Standard Model has been a thing for decades now. It's good at what it does,
but there are a lot of fundamental things it doesn't do.

The proposed Future Circular Collider will cost at least €24bn.

That would fund any number of research programs willing to take a bold look at
fundamentals from different angles.

Currently there's superstring theory and various attempts at quantum gravity,
but none of them are moving much.

A number of less mainstream possible leads have been discarded for what are
really political reasons - prestige and funding - not because they're poor
science.

Imagine if we'd never had quantum theory or relativity. Physics would seem
incredibly backward. But realistically, in today's academic climate Einstein
would never be published.

€5bn a year for five years on open fundamental research with fewer political
and academic constraints has a better chance of generating a breakthrough than
spending €24bn on a big machine that will most likely produce no breakthroughs
at all.

Of course it's a gamble, but in international terms €25bn is pocket money.

~~~
throwawaymath
_> But realistically, in today's academic climate Einstein would never be
published._

Can you expand on this? This isn't a leading question, I actually don't
immediately see what you mean.

------
squirrelicus
Tangent: I find it interesting that futurists often claim technology is
accelerating such that a "Singularity" of technological development may occur.
To my eyes, however, the opposite seems true--each technological advancement
seems exponentially more expensive, as if we've picked all the low hanging
fruit. And now we're building $24bn particle accelerators to test really
obscure things that may or may not have any impact on the next breakthrough.

~~~
jandrese
It is a time honored tradition for futurists to look at an emerging
technology, see that it currently has exponential growth, and then project
that out to infinity.

So rarely do you hear them say "Dammit, yet another S curve! Why is it always
an S curve in the end!?!"

~~~
seppel
> So rarely do you hear them say "Dammit, yet another S curve! Why is it
> always an S curve in the end!?!"

Kurzweil's books and articles are full of this, see, e.g.:

[http://www.kurzweilai.net/seeing-the-s-curve-in-
everything](http://www.kurzweilai.net/seeing-the-s-curve-in-everything)

[http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-
returns](http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns)

------
presscast
What is meant by "natural" in the context of the Standard Model?

~~~
Certhas
This:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalness_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalness_\(physics\))

Hossenfelder wrote a book crtizising current mainstream thinking on the
importance and role of naturalness:

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

Here is an excellent review that also links to an article by Wilczek defending
the orthodoxy.

[https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.5086393?fbclid=IwAR...](https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.5086393?fbclid=IwAR2ObiWweyc-
GnBsJeRZ4qfAahPeLGcPHFWidgnqk2ZE3_PUc7iczTNPQIc)

~~~
presscast
Cool, thanks!

------
kwhitefoot
Did anyone ever say it did?

~~~
n4r9
It's more about whether this aspect is properly considered. Some physicist
think building bigger particle accelerators is good simply because it can
falsify more models. However the the quality of those models must also be
taken into account.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Then they should have led with that instead of the general point about
falsifiability.

When writing for an audience that has limited attention to give always put the
executive summary first.

~~~
n4r9
I think it's fine. In the second line it says

> A major reason we see so many wrong predictions in the foundations of
> physics – and see those make headlines – is that _both scientists and
> science writers take falsifiability to be a sufficient criterion for good
> science_.

Personally the line that caught my eye straight away was the one on it's own
that said

> Why does it matter?

after which comes the stuff about bigger accelerators.

------
nonbel
It is impossible to ever prove or disprove a theory, so falisfiability is a
red herring.

For a theory _T_ and observations _O_ , you can have 4 possible scenarios.
Where "!" indicates "not":

Starting from theory

    
    
      Modus Ponens            : T  therefore O
      Denying the Antecedant  : !T therefore !O
    

Starting from observation

    
    
      Affirming the Consequent: O  therefore T
      Modus Tollens           : !O therefore !T
    

Denying the antecedent and affirming the consequent are both invalid if other
theories may be consistent with the same observations (which is always the
case), leaving us with Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens as valid forms of
reasoning.

What this means is that we can deduce:

    
    
      1. what we should observe if our theory is really true (Modus Ponens)
      2. a theory is not true if we fail to observe what it predicts (Modus Tollens)
    

Modus Ponens reasoning is used to derive testable predictions from a theory,
and then Modus Tollens reasoning is used when checking if the theory predicts
the correct observations.

However, the relationship between theory and prediction _P_ is not so simple.
It is always the case that other assumptions _A_ must be made along with the
theory. These assumptions can be as simple as "the equipment is functioning
properly", but can get much more complicated.[1] I.e.:

    
    
      (T AND A) entails P
    

If we fail to observe the prediction _P_ , then the entire left side gets
negated:

    
    
       !P entails !(T AND A)
    

This is equivalent to saying _either_ T or A is incorrect:

    
    
       !P entails !T OR !A
    

So even in the best case scenario, you can never know if it is your theory
that is wrong or some other assumption you making is wrong.

This should tell us the real value of science lies somewhere else besides
falsifiability, e.g. in making _useful_ or _otherwise surprising_ predictions.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis)

------
_Nat_
tl;dr- They're arguing that there's little point to building a new, larger
particle collider to succeed the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) because, while
there are hypotheses that such a new collider could falsify, those hypotheses
aren't sufficiently motivated to be worth falsifying.

~~~
Yajirobe
So I take it the author is well-read in high-energy particle physics to make
this claim?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Yes, the author is well-read in particle physics.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder)

------
edoo
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can
prove me wrong. - Einstein

Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion. -
Feynmann

------
r721
Proper link: [http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/just-because-its-
fa...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/just-because-its-falsifiable-
doesnt.html)

------
fouc
Good article. So many armchair "physicists" in the comments it's hilarious.

I'm rather confused by how many got thrown by her comment about dark matter &
assuming an unspecified "fluid", somehow they didn't realize she was just
making a reference to the formulation of the original definition of "dark
matter".

------
logistark
I think this woman has a crusade against current modern physics, and only in
this kind of websites resonates. Wonder why.

~~~
Certhas
Eh, no. She's an established theoretical physicist. She explains her
motivations here:

[https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02/particle-
physicist...](https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02/particle-physicists-
surprised-to-find-i.html?spref=tw&fbclid=IwAR0zB0Jmf5clabM-
sP1npVpHp3_f2IVEo0z2OQ1AHOL2ZODOJkg4Jmw5oek)

