Even for scientists, funding and career/job security concerns can trump application of reason in evaluating whether or not particular pursuits and sub-categories of physics should be kept alive. Whatever propaganda acrobatics and rewriting of disciplinary traditions it takes... Similar in spirit to the humanities jumping on the social justice and utopian aspirations bandwagon back in the 1950s so as to appear useful and relevant.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02...crazy.html
INTRO: How often can you hold up four fingers, hear a thousand people shout “five”, and not agree with them? How often can you repeat an argument, see it ignored, and still believe in reason? How often can you tell a thousand scientists the blatantly obvious, hear them laugh, and not think you are the one who is insane? I wonder. Every time a particle physicist dismisses my concerns, unthinkingly, I wonder some more. Maybe I am crazy? It would explain so much. Then I remind myself of the facts, once again.
Fact is, in the foundations of physics we have not seen progress for the past four decades. Ever since the development of the standard model in the 1970s, further predictions for new effects have been wrong. Physicists commissioned dozens of experiments to look for dark matter particles and grand unification. They turned data up-side down in search for supersymmetric particles and dark energy and new dimensions of space. The result has been consistently: Nothing new.
Yes, null-results are also results. But they are not very useful results if you need to develop a new theory. A null-result says: “Let’s not go this way.” A result says: “Let’s go that way.” If there are many ways to go, discarding some of them does not help much. To move on in the foundations of physics, we need results, not null-results.
It’s not like we are done and can just stop here. We know we have not reached the end. The theories we currently have in the foundations are not complete. They have problems that require solutions. And if you look at the history of physics, theory-led breakthroughs came when predictions were based on solving problems that required solution.
But the problems that theoretical particle physicists currently try to solve do not require solutions. The lack of unification, the absence of naturalness, the seeming arbitrariness of the constants of nature: these are aesthetic problems. Physicists can think of prettier theories, and they believe those have better chances to be true. Then they set out to test those beauty-based predictions. And get null-results.
It’s not only that there is no reason to think this method should work, it does – in fact! – not work, has not worked for decades. It is failing right now, once again, as more beauty-based predictions for the LHC are ruled out every day. They keep on believing, nevertheless....
MORE: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02...crazy.html
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02...crazy.html
INTRO: How often can you hold up four fingers, hear a thousand people shout “five”, and not agree with them? How often can you repeat an argument, see it ignored, and still believe in reason? How often can you tell a thousand scientists the blatantly obvious, hear them laugh, and not think you are the one who is insane? I wonder. Every time a particle physicist dismisses my concerns, unthinkingly, I wonder some more. Maybe I am crazy? It would explain so much. Then I remind myself of the facts, once again.
Fact is, in the foundations of physics we have not seen progress for the past four decades. Ever since the development of the standard model in the 1970s, further predictions for new effects have been wrong. Physicists commissioned dozens of experiments to look for dark matter particles and grand unification. They turned data up-side down in search for supersymmetric particles and dark energy and new dimensions of space. The result has been consistently: Nothing new.
Yes, null-results are also results. But they are not very useful results if you need to develop a new theory. A null-result says: “Let’s not go this way.” A result says: “Let’s go that way.” If there are many ways to go, discarding some of them does not help much. To move on in the foundations of physics, we need results, not null-results.
It’s not like we are done and can just stop here. We know we have not reached the end. The theories we currently have in the foundations are not complete. They have problems that require solutions. And if you look at the history of physics, theory-led breakthroughs came when predictions were based on solving problems that required solution.
But the problems that theoretical particle physicists currently try to solve do not require solutions. The lack of unification, the absence of naturalness, the seeming arbitrariness of the constants of nature: these are aesthetic problems. Physicists can think of prettier theories, and they believe those have better chances to be true. Then they set out to test those beauty-based predictions. And get null-results.
It’s not only that there is no reason to think this method should work, it does – in fact! – not work, has not worked for decades. It is failing right now, once again, as more beauty-based predictions for the LHC are ruled out every day. They keep on believing, nevertheless....
MORE: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02...crazy.html