Backreaction

She provides one of her ideas immediately prior to that quote: ”I have said many times that looking at the history of physics teaches us that resolving inconsistencies has been a reliable path to breakthroughs, so that’s what we should focus on." And given that she has written at least one book on this general subject, I would guess that idea is elaborated in much greater detail there or on her blog. https://backreaction.blogspot.com

I wish I had good recommendations for you. Quanta can be quite good, but it misses sometimes. Most coverage of fundamental physics, especially theory, fails (for obvious reasons) to provide the key context that progress in the field is very slow and getting slower. There are a few excellent specialist blogs, like Resonaances for particle physics, http://resonaances.blogspot.com/ but they are not very accessible to outsiders. Sean Carroll, Sabine Hossenfelder, and Peter Woit are pretty good and accessible http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/ http://backreaction.blogspot.com/ http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ but they aren't neutral; that's fine since they are personal blogs, but it can be difficult for laymen to get an objective picture of the field.

I expected this to be an a new article or report of Sabine Hossenfelder's work, but apparently the author S is someone else? Hossenfelder's counterpoint, disussed on HN in the past: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray/dp/0465094252 "A contrarian argues that modern physicists' obsession with beauty has given us wonderful math but bad science Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, and elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ones. This is why, Sabine Hossenfelder argues, we have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades. The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity: observation has been unable to confirm mindboggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria. Worse, these "too good to not be true" theories are actually untestable and they have left the field in a cul-de-sac. To escape, physicists must rethink their methods. Only by embracing reality as it is can science discover the truth." Hossenfelder's blog: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/

One of "those guys" is Sir Roger Penrose. A quick search on "microtubule consciousness" brings forth an enormous amount of spilled digital ink on the subject. Sabine Hossenfelder had a "science daily" video about it recently on Youtube. Worth a watch/listen. https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/05/brain-really-uses-quantum-ef…

> I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. This is greatly exaggerated, if not outright false: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/04/addicted-to-social-media-is-… Which is not to say social media isn't harmful, but let's refrain from imputing pseudoscientific explanations for the dangers.

I have learned a lot at this not-even-layman level from following Sabine Hossenfelder - for example, her series on the basics of Quantum Mechanics: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/04/understanding-quantum-mechani… (each blog post is also delivered in YT video form, pick whichever you prefer)

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo.html Her claim is that there isn't enough secondary validation to truly conclude they detected gravity waves. the community disagrees and is building more detectors. The creators of the project were awarded Nobel prizes. At best, she raises some interesting questions but the narrative that the data isn't sufficient really doesn't work.

Hmm, I would love for Sabine Hossenfelder [0] to take me through the numbers that claim my country needs 3.6 earths if we were to invite everyone to our lifestyle. She did a very nice job changing my mind about nuclear power: [1] [0]: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/about.html [1]: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-nuclear-power-green.html

The only flat-earth article/video you need to read/watch - more or less the same argument, but much better presented: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/08/flat-earth-science-wrong-but-… "... This is why I think scientists should take flat earthers’ philosophical problem seriously. It’s a problem that any scientifically advanced society must address. It is not possible for each and every one of us to redo all experiments in the history of science. It therefore becomes increasingly important that scientists provide evidence for how science works, so that people who cannot follow the research itself can instead rely on evidence that the system produces correct and useful descriptions of nature. "

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-3-best-explanations-for-… associated HN thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29299686

It is not worth investing money in, because it will never supply grid power: http://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-energy-1803… Here is another physicist warning about the hype just a few days ago: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclear-fusion-p…

No, that is a misunderstanding of what decoherence does or does not buy you. Decoherence does explain why macroscopic systems can't (normally) exhibit self-interference and some other quantum effects. However, decoherence doesn't in any way solve the other aspect of the measurement problem: why the object is only ever found entirely at one location instead of appearing with different amplitudes at multiple locations, as the Schrodinger equation predicts. That is the source of the "fundamental randomness" and it is not explained by decoherence. For a slightly more mathematical (but still very understandable) explanation of what decoherence solves and what it doesn't solve, I recommend this article [0] by Sabine Hossenfelder. [0] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/08/understanding-quantum-mechan…

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-bullet-cluster-as-evidenc… And same thing applies to LCDM. How does it explain bullet cluster, and several others, existing in the first place? Disclaimer: I'm not a cosmologist even if I do have a background in physics. I do like following the field. It's just not quite so clear as you imply. And if we go into things like superfluid dark matter then it doesn't really matter if its dark matter or some kind of modified gravity. One has bunch of equations and what matters is how they behave.

Sabine Hossenfelder has a great quote about this: > Science tells us what situation we are in and what consequences our actions are likely to have, but it does not tell us what to do. Science does not say you shouldn’t pee on high voltage lines, it says urine is an excellent conductor. http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/09/follow-science-nonsense-i-say…

> Others here refer to the author as Dr. Hossenfelder. But to you she is Sabine. Would you refer to Brian Greene as Brian or Sean Carroll as Sean? It seems you are not even aware of your biases. I doubt anyone is aware of all of their biases. I'm assuming you're making reference to gender bias - totally possible that I am susceptible to that, although I think: a. Sabine is a more unique name than Brian. b. In almost all discussions I see of her, she is referred to as Sabine - I was just following along with that precedence. She also goes by "Bee" and dislikes her last name [0] [1] [0]: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/physicist-sabine-hoss… http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/09/name-game.html

You are repeating the nonsense arguments Sabine has countered before http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-arguments-for-buildi… I agree with her. These are nonsense arguments. > Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. (2. The “No Zero Sum” argument) > new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack 5. It is not a waste of money 11. It may lead to spin-offs. 12. A big particle collider would benefit many tech industries and scientific networks.

Well I just went down the rabbit hole http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superd… and I still don't see how this is not a cop-out of theological proportions Two statistical dependent variables "can be made" independent, for example by feeding one into an PRNG. This seems like a similar cop-out as the "particle changes behaviour when it is observed hence consciousness is needed in the universe" (And this answer explained it better https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-crackpot-scientists-go-after-super-d… as usual for Quora, awful questions with great answers)

The kind of superdeterministic theories proposed by t'Hooft are falsifiable. From [0] "If engineers ever succeed in making such quantum computers, it seems to me that the CAT is falsified; no classical theory can explain quantum mechanics." By "such quantum computers" he means computers that can run Shor's algorithm. "...but factoring a number with millions of digits into its prime factors will not be possible – unless fundamentally improved classical algorithms turn out to exist." As for the author of the article I've never seen a clear proposal but it appears the idea is to do repeated measurements that display quantum effects while reducing noise as much as possible and check if there are deviations from quantum theory. EDIT: found a more concrete proposal http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2013/10/testing-conspiracy-theories.h… [0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548

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-religion-no…

> something that will do amazing things for science Maybe it will, maybe it won't. http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/particle-physicists-want-mone… http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/12/cern-produces-marketing-video…

> If even the reporter doesn't think this is newsworthy The "reporter" is a working physicist, not a "reporter" http://backreaction.blogspot.ie/p/about.html

I used to take lots of L-Tyrosine and Magnesium supplements to help restore the toll Adderall takes on your body. I was on 30 MG of XR daily and would indeed do the work of 2 or 3 of myself ... but you do pay for it at the end of the day. Ever wish you could clone yourself? You can. It's called Adderall. I miss it dearly. Moving to Sweden has meant that I can't get it any longer. Heading back to the US in a week to pick up a 5 month supply. I tried to quit, but to be honest the benefits are simply too great. I often wonder the number of successful people that are on Adderall or similar drugs ... because I genuinely think some of the amazing things people are doing these days are impossible as a "baseline human" ... or I am a severely broken one. This is a nice post that sums up my thoughts nicely: http://backreaction.blogspot.se/2012/08/erdos-and-amphetamines-check.h…

These are most of those I follow... as you'll see, it's very difficult to find good material on maths and physics blogs, or at least I've had difficulties on finding it. Maths: http://www.arsmathematica.net/ http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ (not exactly maths but...) http://plus.maths.org/blog/ http://terrytao.wordpress.com/ http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/ http://blog.plover.com/ (sometimes) http://blog.wolfram.com/ http://gowers.wordpress.com/ Physics: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/ http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress (very biased) http://angryphysicist.wordpress.com/ http://scottaaronson.com/blog http://motls.blogspot.com/ (very biased)

Several of her first-or-sole-author minimal length quantum gravity phenomenology papers have more than a hundred citations: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaQZcyYAAAAJ&hl=en and if nothing else, that's strong evidence that she has made a contribution to academic dialogue in that area. Hossenfelder et al. 2003 in particular, is quite striking for an early career researcher: <https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&a… Also noteworthy are several early publications on either side of her 2003 doctoral thesis on microscopic black holes in large extra dimensions. In that period numerous co-authors, reviewers, and editors supplied indirect evidence against your claim that her papers "were pretty bad". Quite a lot of strong constraints on large extra dimensions came out of the LHC work eight to twelve years after these publications. Her old link-rotting written blog captures some of that: <https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2011/06/extra-dimensions-at-lhc-stat… for instance. There is an enormous difference between being wrong and publishing nonsense. > at least those I read You could have usefully supplied a short annotated bibliography. It would certainly make your final sentence > She is pure show less likely to be seen as nonsense and more likely to be seen as wrong. Whatever she has become in the past couple of…

Sabine's argument has been frequently bad faith after the fact and currently. Just skimming some of her written work: "Before the Large Hadron Collider turned on, particle physicists claimed that it would either confirm or rule out supersymmetry. ... The answer is that the LHC indeed did not rule out supersymmetry, it never could." https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/04/did-w-boson-just-break-stand… "I hope they’ll finally come around and see that they have tried for several decades to solve a problem that doesn’t exist" https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/02/what-does-it-mean-for-string… Here she says physicists will just keep building bigger colliders because they can and not on merit https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-doesnt-need-a-new… Here she said CERN's push for an FCC is "full of lies" http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/12/cern-produces-marketing-video… When people are accused of ignoring or dismissing credible points where a program is legitimately problematic is exactly an accusation of operating "bad faith". "Good faith" means doing legitimate and believable science with the best information. These are claims it was done to the contrary.

(I'm not a theoretical physicist). 20 years ago, I read "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, as an introduction to string theory. I was initially impressed by the brilliance of the theories it presented. What really threw me for a loop, though, was realizing (as far as I understood or remember) that string theory isn't one neatly packaged theory. Instead, it's this colossal family of theories, with so many parameters that it's hard to make predictions, and to justify "why this one and not the other ones?". Then, over the last 20 years, I read the 3 following books, which confirmed my initial impression. - "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit, a deep-dive critique of string theory for the mathematically inclined. Woit's basically saying, "If we can't test it, can we even call it science?" - "The Trouble With Physics" by Lee Smolin, which zooms out a bit. Smolin's beef with string theory isn't just about the science; it's about how this obsession is hogging resources and blocking other potentially groundbreaking ideas (including, but not limited to, his own). Think of it as a mix of a science critique and an insider's look at the politics and sociology of physics. - "Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder, which asks if physicists' quest for beauty in equations and theories is leading them astray. This one's the most accessible, mixing in history, interviews, personal stories, and a bit of philosophy. All three books are good, so if you have to chose one: - Woit's book is…

I'm awaiting Jean Pierre Petit's analysis. He's developed a twin universe theory involving negative mass/energy using bimetric relativity (without the runaway effect). At one point in the development of his theory in the mid 2010s, he stumbled upon: Hossenfelder, S.: A bimetric theory with exchange symmetry. He contacted her but she refused to collaborate on a common paper, calling him a plagiarist and a crank. She did the same to Tim Palmer (a Royal Society meteorologist) when he approached her with ideas on superdeterminism: > But Tim Palmer turned out to not only be a climate physicist with an interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, he also turned out to be remarkably persistent. He wasn’t remotely deterred by my evident lack of interest. Indeed, I later noticed he had sent me an email already two years earlier. Just that I dumped it unceremoniously in my crackpot folder. http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-path-we-didnt-take.html Back to Petit and plagiarism: compare: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-014-2106-5 https://januscosmologicalmodel.com/cptsymmetry with Julian Barbour's Janus Point book blurb: > In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time -- and shapes the destiny of the universe. Time is among the universe's greatest mysteries. Why, when most laws of physics allow for it to flow forward and backward, does it only go forward?…

> That's an uncharitable interpretation. People have an objection to speculations like many-worlds because they aren't corroborated by observation, and by nature can't be (iiuc), and are therefore unscientific (though not necessarily untrue). Well-established physicists like Sabine Hossenfelder hold this position and it's not as clear-cut as "the facts don't care about your feelings" like some make it out to be. The disagreement with MWI and the general disdain for QM are separate issues. MWI is an interpretation that doesn't necessarily invalidate the framework, but attempts to extend it. However there's also been a general disdain for QM from various folk who attempt to completely replace it. Whether Sabine Hossenfelder likes a theory or not is not really an argument, given you're arguing from authority. As an example of her clickbaity title where she doesn't really seem to respect QM: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/05/quantum-mechanics-is-wrong-t… I think it's well known in the theory community QM can be updated for a more complete framework (carefully obviously), but the idea that QM is "completely wrong" because it's incomplete or introduces some complexities she doesn't like, is completely laughable. It's akin to saying classical mechanics is "completely wrong" because it doesn't predict quantum behavior (despite many anti-QM people claiming QM is wrong because they want to impose their classical understanding onto the quantum world) and then…

> never about what should be funded instead. This isn't entirely true. In this blog post (http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/04/does-world-need-larger-partic… she recommends: > "One of the key motivations for building a larger particle collider that particle physicists like to bring up is that we still do not know what dark matter is made of. But we are not even sure that dark matter is made of particles. And if it’s a particle, we do not know what mass it has or how it interacts. If it’s a light particle, you would not look for it with a bigger collider. So really it makes more sense to collect more information about the astrophysical situation first. That means concretely better telescopes, better sky coverage, better redshift resolution, better frequency coverage, and so on." Though she goes on to say > "But really my intention here is not to advocate a particular alternative. I merely think that physicists should have an honest debate about the evident lack of progress in the foundations of physics and what to do about it."

Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder has a great article on the lack of progress in fundamentals of physics: "The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal " [1] Choice quotes: >We know this both because dark matter is merely a placeholder for something we don’t understand, and because the mathematical formulation of particle physics is incompatible with the math we use for gravity. Physicists knew about these two problems already in 1930s. And until the 1970s, they made great progress. But since then, theory development in the foundations of physics has stalled. If experiments find anything new now, that will be despite, not because of, some ten-thousands of wrong predictions. >Ten-thousands of wrong predictions sounds dramatic, but it’s actually an underestimate. I am merely summing up predictions that have been made for physics beyond the standard model which the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was supposed to find: All the extra dimensions in their multiple shapes and configurations, all the pretty symmetry groups, all the new particles with the fancy names. You can estimate the total number of such predictions by counting the papers, or, alternatively, the people working in the fields and their average productivity. According to her, and many other physicists, there hasn't been any major progress in phenomenology since 1970s when Higgs boson was postulated. [1] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-present-phase-of-stagnat…