
Why the Higgs Boson Discovery Is Disappointing - evo_9
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/why-the-higgs-boson-discovery-is-disappointing-according-to-the-smartest-man-in-the-world/259468/
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gfodor
Wolfram's ego really is a parody of itself at this point. Here we can read a
grand tour of particle physics over 35 years and the only specific figure
Wolfram manages to mention and give accolades to is Stephen Wolfram. His links
to his own publications, his book, his his his, me me me, I I I. Unbelievable.

Edit: Higgs gets a mention, but just to highlight Wolfram's complaints to him
about his theory, which turned out to be correct!

~~~
hammock
I agree that the Higgs mechanism feels like a hack. Something in my intuition
raises a flag. Even more so when I was learning about theoretical particles
called "gravitons" back in grade school. It's always seemed forced (no pun
intended) the way many scientists shoehorn gravity in with the other three
forces (weak strong and EM), which share much more in common with each other
than with gravity. One of these things is not like the other...

Likewise, and related, dark matter/energy is a total hack. It's a shortcut
contrived to sweep something we don't fully understand under the rug.

The idea of gravity as an emergent force, related to inertia, has been more
appealing:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html?pag...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html?pag..).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropic_gravity>

~~~
rpbertp13
Wolfram and you both make the mistake of thinking that there is any value in
saying that an established natural fact 'feels like a hack' or 'disagrees with
your intuition'. One of the most important lessons of modern physics is that
intuition is a terrible guide when it comes to understanding the physical
world at its most fundamental level.

~~~
nu23
To me, 'hack' and 'unintuitive' carry different meanings. 'Hack' indicates
some kind of ad-hoc patch to fix the model. Even if it fits the data, there
could be a theoretical irregularity. I suspect that programmers experience
this quite often when making a change that keeps the program working. Sure, it
is possible that ultimately the hack is indeed how nature works, but its still
worth exploring and making precise the nature of the irregularity.

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DanielBMarkham
<rant> This submission is like a parody of HN.

First, it's based on a Wolfram blog, which should have been submitted instead
of this. Perhaps it was. I don't know.

Second, cue up the "I hate Wolfram because he has a big ego" chorus which
always runs on ad infinitum whenever the man's name comes up.

Third, it's a post from The Atlantic -- yet again. Can a day go by without
multiple posts from that place appearing on HN? Is The Atlantic so incredible
to _not even get the mandatory blogspam comment_ that any other attempt like
this would receive here? </rant>

Come on guys. We can do better than this.

~~~
scott_s
Fourth: a high level comment scolding everyone else.

~~~
modarts
(nth): a followup commentary of (n-1)'s reaction to (n-2)'s comment. {n > 4}

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javert
_Discovering the Higgs boson is a victory for physicists but a sad day for
physics._

That's just perfectly backwards.

This is great for physics - now humanity knows that much more about the
reality in which we live.

Bad for physicists, becuase now they will have a harder time getting grants.

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Vivtek
Dear God, now Stephen Wolfram is the smartest man in the world?

~~~
vl
Quality of this article appears to be below regular standard of The Atlantic.
Not only added content is full of exaggerations and stupid epithets, it's
mostly a quote of a blog post!

~~~
Harkins
I've gotten the feeling the Atlantic has made a major change in publishing
policy in the last two or three months. They now seem to have a lot of what
the print world calls blogs, which is to say: linkbait by notables that is
conspicuously below their long-established reputation for quality. I hope
they're not in trouble, this is one of those metrics-driven last ditch moves
that media companies having trouble moving to the web pull.

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ggchappell
A bit more meaty read is the followed blog post by Stephen Wolfram (which is
linked to in the posted article):

[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/07/a-moment-for-
particle...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/07/a-moment-for-particle-
physics-the-end-of-a-40-year-story/)

------
aik
I agree with a lot of the sentiments here about Wolfram's ego. Aside from all
that, I found his blog post interesting. The below items I found the most
interesting (note: I haven't read NKS, and I'm aware of the criticisms, but
his insistence on the significance of it is intriguing nonetheless):

\-----

> Was it worth spending more than $10 billion to find this out? I definitely
> think so. Now, what’s actually come out is perhaps not the most exciting
> thing that could have come out. But there’s absolutely no way one could have
> been sure of this outcome in advance.

> Perhaps I’m too used to the modern technology industry where billions of
> dollars get spent on corporate activities and transactions all the time. But
> to me spending only $10 billion to get this far in investigating the basic
> theory of physics seems like quite a bargain.

> I think it could be justified almost just for the self-esteem of our
> species: that despite all our specific issues, we’re continuing a path we’ve
> been on for hundreds of years, systematically making progress in
> understanding how our universe works. And somehow there’s something
> ennobling about seeing what’s effectively a worldwide collaboration of
> people working together in this direction.

> That in fact there’s no reason all the richness we see in our universe
> couldn’t arise from some underlying rule—some underlying theory—that’s even
> quite simple. There are all sorts of things to say about what that rule
> might be like, and how one might find it. But what’s important here is that
> if the rule is indeed simple, then on fundamental grounds one shouldn’t in
> principle need to know too much information to nail down what it is. But
> what I suspect is that from the experimental results we have, we already
> know much more than enough to determine what the correct ultimate theory
> is—assuming that the theory is indeed simple.

------
jakeonthemove
Yep, it turns out our theories are true and there's no magical way to create
an anti-gravity field or go faster than light. Disappointing, but definitely
not unexpected...

~~~
geuis
_These_ theories are now further supported by evidence. The Standard Model
isn't based on a couple of experiments. Its supported by thousands of
independent observations over a multitude of points in physics. There's still
a _lot_ of stuff left unexplained, and currently unpredictable by the Standard
Model. Dark matter and dark energy are just a couple of them. How the universe
even started is still another. The _big_ questions are still unanswered and
may well surprise us all.

Also remember that there is the Standard Model Higgs boson, the one predicted
by theory, and what's just being seen in experimental data. The team doing the
announcement the other day were very explicit in saying that they've found a
Higgs-like particle, but it may not be exactly the one in the Standard Model.
i.e. There may be multiple types of Higgs bosons. Its going to take years of
more research to really nail down what's just now being glimpsed.

Another good thing to keep in mind is the place of Newtonian physics in the
Standard Model. Up until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Newtonian
physics were very well understood, and some scientists thought that may well
have been all there was to know. Newtonian physics fits nicely inside the
Standard Model. Its entirely possible, though who's to say if probable or not,
that the current Standard Model will itself fit into an entirely new
overarching branch of physics in the decades to come.

The LHC will be operating for 3 more months so that even more data can be
collected, then will be shut down for about 2 years for repairs and upgrades.
When it comes back on line, it will be much, much more powerful and who knows
what might be discovered yet.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Technically, Newtonian physics estimates Einsteinian physics which observes
the means of the Standard Model.

------
eshvk
The most depressing thing about this article is the top comment(s) on how this
somehow is justification for an argument for intelligent design.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
You are going to live depressed If stupidity depress you; specially if you
have internet access.

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chmike
This is not true. Check <http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/STQ/STQ.pdf> for a
new theory extending the standard model. Beside predicting a bunch of new
elementary particles, it also propose a new organization of elementary
particles equivalent to the mendeliev table, except that it's a 3D structure.
These new particles have all no electrict charge and may combine together as
quarks to form hadron like particles my father call neutralons. These could
stand for black matter.

I heard similiar pessimistic claims from physicist in my lab: there is nothing
much left to discover in high energy physics. Maybe it's like a post partum
depression thing. Just after a major and popular question has been answered,
and before a new one, with a new theory, has been settled, some researcher may
feel lost.

From my father's work, many of which is not published yet, I know that there
is still allot to be discovered and tested. They just need a new theory.
That's all.

------
agentgt
I couldn't help but notice the Creationism flame-bait thread on that article
(bottom). Thank god :) hacker news is at a higher level of thought.

~~~
Roboprog
Too bad nobody asked him what was holding up _that_ turtle...

... First Cause is inexplicable. Get over it.

Ironically, I'd consider myself a believer, but some arguments are flat out
cringe-worthy.

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minikites
I don't actually know that much about Wolfram or _A New Kind of Science_ ,
this was my first exposure to either:
<http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/>

Would people who know the book or the man say this is accurate? It's all I
associate with the name now.

~~~
taliesinb
Here's a critique I wrote a few months ago about Shalizi's review:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3973173>

You know, when I was a teenager I was very excited about Stephen's book. Then
I found and read Shalizi's review, and reluctantly changed my mind. At the
time I didn't have enough background knowledge or intellectual confidence to
really see it for what it is, which is a kind of weird character assassination
masquerading as a scientific critique (it is interesting to note that
Shalizi's PhD advisor and Stephen go way back).

Much later, after some pure math and a bit of industry, I actually met
Wolfram, talked to him at length, did some science in the NKS style, and in
fact I found the whole thing so stimulating (and the other people so cool)
that I applied for a job at Wolfram Research, where is where I now work. In
fact, at this exact moment, I'm acting as an instructor at the Wolfram science
summer school, supervising students around the world ranging from gifted high-
school to PhD. It's a lot of fun.

NKS -- both the book and the methodology -- isn't perfect, and hasn't
delivered on some of its promises. However, I think it does represent a really
cool network of ideas and insights, if you take the trouble to understand
them, _especially_ in their historical context. Many of them familiar, of
course, but Wolfram puts them in a new light and unifies various ideas.

And I think in the next few decades it will really come into its own, when we
get memristor arrays that need to be programmed, universal constructors that
need simple rules to operate, algorithmic drugs that have to be both simple
and effective, and so on. "Watch this space", etc.

------
hrbrtglm
What would happen if you collide two Higgs Boson ? A different Boson ?

~~~
sh4na
A Cleavage

/me runs

------
ChristianMarks
Wolfram may be betting on the Nightmare Scenario, which is that the Higgs
turns out to be exactly the standard model Higgs, and nothing else is learned.

------
ck2
The disappointment is because of the minds that don't know of any EXPECTED
discoveries.

But it's the _unexpected_ that are the most exciting, no?

