I don't have a quick explanation, but rather a quick anectode. The incompatibility of MOND with relativity used to be called "Bekenstein's Theorem", based on the idea that Bekenstein had tried to write down such a theory but failed to do so. Since Bekenstein was a very smart guy, if he couldn't do it, it couldn't be done. When he heard about this, he proceeded to write down an incredibly ugly theory called TeVeS, but, well, that theory's got fields too (Tensor, Vector, Scalar), so in the end it's just dark matter all the way down.
hah - did you intentionally refer to ugliness there?
I think one of her most cogent points is that theoreticians are often driven by "beauty", which is not a valid epistemological or metaphysical principle.
She's said some of her views on theories are contentious. I'd like to hear from the other side. What claim does she make about quantum gravity, and how is it inconsistent with special relativity?
side note: I just wish that everyone that was "trying to keep an open mind" wasn't so impressionable and susceptible to the most unsubstantiated theories
one of my side projects just sells merchandise to conspiracy theorists, such a predictable lot
I dunno if she's a crank yet but having a youtube fan base (really just a fan base at all) in part built on her disagreements with other physicists means she's probably going to end up as one.
Special relativity is an article of faith now? So far it has survived all experimental tests, that doesn't mean it is guaranteed to do so in the future
Any theory that would supplant special relativity must agree with special relativity on everything that has already been experimentally verified. So it's not the theory of special relativity that's an article of faith, it's the associated mountain of evidence that imposes requirements on new theories.
Nobody said it has to take the exact form of special relativity. The comment in question here only said that it needs to respect special relativity. A new theory can offer a wildly different explanation, as long is it does explain all the correct predictions of special relativity. In mathematical terms, that does mean your theory will produce the equations of special relativity when some limit or restriction is applied, just as special relativity reduces to Newtonian mechanics in the limit of velocities being much less than c.
The comment has been flagged, so you can't see it without turning on the showdead option. The line in question is:
> If you're promoting research into quantum gravity that doesn't respect special relativity, you're a crackpot.
Using the word "crackpot" apparently went too far for some people, but it's not controversial to say that a theory of quantum gravity needs to respect special relativity: quantum gravity is about trying to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity, and general relativity is the generalization of special relativity to include gravity.
Sure, but implying she is a crackpot for investigating what are presumably extensions of special relativity is too far. I'm not familiar with her research, but I very much doubt she proposes disregarding special relativity all together.
I've never actually watched or listened to anything by Sabine Hossenfelder, so I don't have a particular opinion on her work. But...
>If you're promoting research into quantum gravity that doesn't respect special relativity, you're a crackpot.
I think this statement is off the mark. Theoretical physics is often about simplifying a problem to a form that you know how to solve, even if it's not physically realistic. Once you have a solution in your toy domain, you might have a chance of modifying it to find a physically viable theory. A solution can also be useful in restricted domains, even if it's not true in the general case.
If we look at the historical development of quantum theory, it wasn't modified to take relativity into account until 1928. Even then, the non-relativistic theory has independent value and makes many valid predictions.
Another example is the AdS/CFT correspondence. We know we don't live in anti-de Sitter space, but study of it has led to a better understanding of black holes.
I don't think we should rule out any line of research a priori. We should throw a bunch of different approaches at the problem and see which ones help us to make progress.
Of course, crackpots are a real thing. In my mind, the definition of a crackpot is someone who claims to have a revolutionary theory without any track record of engaging with research-level ideas. Perusing Sabine's Google Scholar page shows that she has a respectable number of papers and citations, so it is worth taking her ideas seriously, even if you disagree with them.
Really misplaced negativity, her youtube channel is a treasure, almost nobody in the world manages to produce a breakthrough in physics research, that doesn’t make them garbage.
I don't understand how alternative research makes you a crackpot. If she was presenting her theories as fact without evidence then perhaps, but I haven't seen her doing that.
Overall, she comes across as a very clear communicator with criticisms (rightly or wrongly) of some current research.
How many didnt get famous? Thats what no one reports.
If the UN report on the attention economy is saying 0.5% of content produced is consumed and dropping, then how are people getting views? It doesnt make any sense. Unless the game is rigged.
People have limited attention to give anything but unlimited capacity to receive attention. The platforms are taking full advantage of that fact to keep this ponzi scheme running.
as long as you approach this kind of thing with knowledge of how Youtube works, I actually think there's a pretty high chance of success
if you have a good mic and camera, show your face, speak clearly, consistently upload, and - most importantly - you broadly make one-off videos about common denominator subtopics - never going too deep or numbering your videos - then I wouldn't bet against you. there really aren't that many successful science Youtubers
The UN report on the attention economy actually said:
By the 2000s, so much information was being generated
worldwide that only a small fraction (0.5% in 2015) of the
digital data generated was being analyzed at all.
Where "analyzed" probably means something other than "got any views". In any case, the claim is unsourced, so I wouldn't put much stock in it.
The way I see it, people's ability to give attention is limited, but the ability to do something worth paying attention to is even scarcer, so even the most trivial feat (like writing a comment on HN) is likely to garner at least a few views.
Becoming famous is much harder than getting any views at all, because now you need to do something so attention-grabbing that some of your few initial viewers will tell others about it and your audience size snowballs from there.
In the econtalk podcast, she does a really poor job (and is also somewhat rude with the host) in explaining why the periodic table, for example, is not analogous with supersymmetry or with grand unification. The question : One cannot have any expected prediction from supersymmetry (unlike say the periodic table) because ____________ (no explanation given)?
Can someone expand?
Transcript :
Russ Roberts: I think that moment in science, and other related moments in physics, were things that were predicted--the Higgs boson being one example where things did show up. They just think, 'Well, it's just a matter of time; we don't have powerful enough colliders. We'll eventually develop them. And all these things have to be true.' They're holding onto that. And I get that. Because the history seems to encourage that viewpoint.
Sabine Hossenfelder: No, it doesn't.
Russ Roberts: Okay. Why not?
Sabine Hossenfelder: That's a very sloppy look at the history (it continues)
The periodic table is a classification of the chemical elements based on their atomic number, electron configuration and chemical properties. It is a result of the empirical observation of the elements and their regular patterns. The periodic table does not depend on any particular theory of physics, but it can be explained by quantum mechanics and the structure of atoms.[1]
Grand unification is a hypothetical scenario in which the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces are unified into a single force at very high energies. This would imply that the elementary particles of the Standard Model are composed of more fundamental particles, such as quarks and leptons, that interact through a single gauge group. Grand unification is motivated by the observation that the strengths of the three forces converge at high energies, suggesting a common origin. Grand unification also predicts the existence of new particles, such as magnetic monopoles and proton decay.[2]
Supersymmetry is a theoretical framework that proposes a symmetry between fermions and bosons, two classes of particles with different spin properties. It implies that for every known particle, there exists a superpartner with the same mass and quantum numbers, but with a different spin. Supersymmetry is not based on any empirical evidence, but on mathematical aesthetics and theoretical convenience. Supersymmetry can solve some problems in the Standard Model, such as the hierarchy problem and the dark matter problem, but it also introduces many new parameters and complications. Supersymmetry has not been observed in nature, despite extensive searches at the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments.[3]
The main difference between supersymmetry and the periodic table or grand unification is that supersymmetry is not a natural consequence of any observed phenomenon, but an ad hoc assumption that has no experimental support. The periodic table and grand unification are based on empirical data and physical principles, while supersymmetry is based on mathematical beauty and speculation. Therefore, supersymmetry does not make any expected predictions, unlike the periodic table or grand unification, because it is not constrained by any reality check. Supersymmetry can be adjusted to fit any observation or avoid any contradiction, making it unfalsifiable and arbitrary.[4]
"The periodic table" in this case refers to the original idea of Mendeleev to arrange elements into eight columns. This was done emprically based on a few elements, but its predictions continued to hold after many more elements were discovered.
I'm not familiar with high energy physics, but from your description of supersymmetry: "It implies that for every known particle, there exists a superpartner with the same mass and quantum numbers, but with a different spin. Supersymmetry is not based on any empirical evidence, but on mathematical aesthetics and theoretical convenience.", it is on the same basis as the periodic table was when Mendeleev first published in 1869. It was only later that additional elements were found to validate the arrangement.
>The main difference between supersymmetry and the periodic table or grand unification is that supersymmetry is not a natural consequence of any observed phenomenon, but an ad hoc assumption that has no experimental support.
Can you clarify this? I would argue the periodic table to be "natural consequence of any observed phenomenon", insofar as there was no evidence or only circumstantial evidence to support that grouping. Indeed, that grouping was chosen because of aesthetic reasons and speculation: "I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."
>Therefore, supersymmetry does not make any expected predictions, unlike the periodic table or grand unification, because it is not constrained by any reality check. Supersymmetry can be adjusted to fit any observation or avoid any contradiction, making it unfalsifiable and arbitrary.[4]
Your reference doesn't seem to agree with you here. It claims several predictions that supersymmetry has gotten correctly, and doesn't claim that supersymmetry can be adjusted to fit any observation.
Interesting that you cut off your quote right where you did. I feel her explanation makes complete sense:
> So, this is one of the points that I try to get across in the book, but I know that for someone who doesn't really know the math of the theories, it's hard to understand. So, let's take this example of the Higgs boson. If you have the standard model of particle physics without the Higgs boson, this theory just does not work at LHC [Large Hadron Collider] energies. You cannot make predictions with it. You get probabilities that are larger than 1; so this is obviously mathematical nonsense.
This seems to me like one of those cases where a woman can’t be confident or assertive without looking like an asshole. He was wrong, and wrong in a way she literally dedicated part of a book about, at that.
Academics in general can be rude and condescending if you look up all the stories on the phd subreddit about the experiences of phd students with their supervisors. There are lots of stories of academia being a toxic workplace. I would presume at this point that the academic researchers themselves are a core causal factor of that phenomenon.
It doesn’t sound rude to me at all, just matter of fact. I would guess Sabine is ND in some way and this is a common misinterpretation of ND behaviours.
AS far as i know, both the standard model and the higgs boson are proven. Why would you caveat that predictions cannot be made, by taking out the Higgs Boson ?
The analogy to what Russ Robers is making, is equivalent to her saying: "take radioactivity out of chemistry" "AHA! Now since atoms can't decay, then you cannot get certain elements, so now i can conclude that the periodic table is crap! it can't make predictions about atom size!"
I'm with her. If you're interviewing someone, you should do your homework. Especially for someone like her with days of YT video out there, plus books to review, there's no excuse for asking dumb questions.
Terry Gross manages to do it right. So does Joe Rogan (sorry, you haters).
Though I'd argue there are many much-better interviews. Those two are instances of combative subjects, well-handled IMO. Total archive has > 20k segments.
which I gather is the establishment take. After 20 years, no one cares anymore. However...
Leaving aside the fact that he IS a jerk and didn't do himself any favors: I don't think she handled it well at all. Her fixation on his makeup is weird. He gave her lots of openings at the beginning to make it an interesting interview, and she blew them off.
He started with some philosophy on why KISS is successful, and there was plenty of dumb things to argue with there, if she wanted to pick them up.
Instead she went on about his makeup, and how much money he had. Who, really, is going to answer that question?
Maybe it's a matter of interpretation but in that sort of context I don't interpret it as rudeness because she's not really arguing with the host. The host is just setting up questions so the listeners can understand her views. When she says "that's a very sloppy look at history", she is actually arguing with the other physicists that Roberts has set up in his question and is merely expressing her opinion on those views.
You can't really be rude to views or ideas, only to people, so that matters.
Now if she had been debating with someone who disagreed with her, and then she said "You're looking at history very sloppily" that might be rude, but that isn't the case here.
Also this is a storm in a teacup compared to the other things she does and says. Hossenfelder pretty routinely names specific physicists and states openly that they're defrauding the public by lying about their research in order to gain grant funding. She states this politely but so what, it's obviously far more severe of an attack than using the word sloppy. If you want to pick on her style you'd really want to talk about that, but it's hard to abstractly criticize her for that because it immediately goes in the direction of whether she's telling the truth or not.
Love Sabine. Great to have a news source that’s geared to those with a scientific background. Reminds me a little bit of a time when news was created to standards rather than attention metrics.
I don't read many books these days, but I read her book "Lost in Math", and appreciated it. It provided a perspective to physics research that was enlightening to me as an outsider.
I really like Hossenfelder's physics videos. However, once she leaves her area of expertise, the quality drops off a cliff. Most of these videos are just summaries of random articles with no critical thought.
... and bad stock photos, like the one about microchips, where for a long time all the imagery is photos of PCBs, sometimes without any component that would resemble an integrated circuit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QFO_SXOcYM.
I agree. I enjoy anything she produces that is physics-related but the social commentary and science topics outside her area of expertise are hit-or-miss. I also think she opens herself up to audience capture, especially now that she's being funded directly by viewers, and that concerns me.
She also made some significant errors in physics videos.
One example is she calculated the power output of fusion reactions as energy created by fusion * heat to electricity conversion efficiency. However, energy that’s heating the plasma should also recoverable at the same conversion efficiency. Largely irrelevant a Q=1,000 but it plays a major role in what Q is breakeven and what Q is economically useful.
Not on the surface such a big deal, but a sign she should reach out more to actual experts in these fields.
If she was talking about very high Q then it wouldn’t be a major issue, but she was specifically referring to the regimes where it was important. Aka energy breakeven and minimum economic viability.
It also explains why Q is formulated in terms of energy added to the plasma vs energy gained from fusion which she didn’t understand. This formula for Q ends up being a term in the equation for economic viability, but she attacked it as if such a formulation was misleading.
Basically the total energy spent on the facility including cryogenic cooling, pumps, etc matters + Q as defined by fusion experts + fusion output energy + conversion energy lets you find the total net energy gain which you then compare with the cost of the facility to find economic viability. Roughly, [ (Fusion energy) * (1 + 1/Q) * (conversion efficiency) - (Total energy use by facility) ] / (cost per hour of operation) = energy per dollar.
There are other ways you can calculate that same number, but they require a lot more details.
Her "capitalism is good" video is remarkably bad. I noticed that takedowns of it were making the rounds in left-ish online spaces recently, and figured it would be one of her worse videos, but even with that bias I was shocked at how bad it is. Hardly any real-world history or economics, and zero engagement with actual critiques of capitalism. She name-drops Adam Smith and Karl Marx, but doesn't really quote or integrate the ideas of either. Overall, it's a disorganized mess of pro-capitalism cliches, hypothetical examples, and eliding discussion of key issues with phrases like "that's another story". I'd honestly expect better from PragerU, let alone someone whose tagline is "science without the gobbledygook".
She provides a basic description of fiat money and the process by which capitalists allocate resources, taking on risk in the hopes that their investment produces goods/services that consumers value more than the price to produce them. It should be uncontroversial to state that that arrangement has facilitated extraordinary increases in global prosperity.
The many "that's another story" caveats are important because there are many ways in which the interaction between markets and governments can cause bad outcomes; far too many to be covered in a 20 minute video.
I'd like to hear just one example of a society which does not have capitalism (as defined by the ability to risk capital in hopes of future profits) which is a nice place to live.
You appear to have defined a universal practice as "capitalism", a person in a commune walks to a field, they "risk capital" (their very person) as they could be killed en route. Everytime you plant a crop (build a factory, launch a satellite, write a program,...) you risk capital in hopes of future gains, I'm struggling to see how a human society can proceed without doing that.
In short, your definition of capitalism seems extraordinarily deficient.
To attempt to get a little closer:
Capitalism is the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort.
Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices, but instead those who have inherited power, acquired through past violence, get to decide on the application of resources and cream off the benefits of the workers whom they have used to action their (the Capitalists) chosen activities.
Many actions (in a just society) would have been chosen in any case, things like delivery of water to each person; now the Capitalist gets to make delivery of water something for which they claim the right to profit from, ultimately extracting worth from the inherent nature of people's needs.
> Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices...
There is nothing about capitalism which prevents this from occuring. People can be allowed to invest while simultaneously participating in a democracy which elects to provide all sorts of publicly funded goods and services.
What has never existed (to the best of my knowledge) is a society which prevents "the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort," which is not also a terrible place to live.
What you are describing is basically social democracy and exists in large parts of Europe.
That said capitalism is a state enforced system, which is protected with violence. Every attempt to topple the system and provide an alternative has been met with violence by the state, and every successful revolutions have been through violence. It is hardly a scientifically pristine environment to provide a fair comparison of alternatives, is it?
There will come a time in human history where capitalism is a thing of the past, and only then will we have the tools to judge alternatives. As of now, we can clearly see that early attempts at capitalism were horrible, and resulted in travesties for the common working population. This is the same story of any system that preceded it. I have a feeling future peoples will largely blame the current system for the climate crisis, and deem it equally bad—if not worse—than our historic alternatives.
Like I said, all successful alternatives to the capitalist systems were made with violent revolutions. And were then further met with violent actions from other states. Cuba is still to this day suffering from an embargo despite it being 65 years since their revolution. Any alternative system is going to have to be violent or suffer being reverted back to capitalism. This is no basis in which to weigh alternatives.
My observation about the future is merely historical, not a prediction. Forever is a long time, and there is 0 chance that capitalism will be the dominant system for the remainder of human history. There are many systems of governments which exist in the past which we today look on favorably. However there has been no world—or even regional—dominating economic system enforced with violence which has survived the scrutiny of history. They all suck, though some more then other.
It is arrogant to think that capitalism will be any different, especially as we are now facing a potentially societal collapsing climate crisis which our economic system is not handling well, and the political class is reluctant to act on fearing damage to this very system.
Even in the short history of capitalism, history still does not look kindly on earlier attempts at the same system. The Laissez Faire capitalism of the late 19th and early 20th century yielded a series of depressions, and treated workers horribly. Attempts to reform the system yielded the great depression. It was only through severe regulations of Keynesian economics where this system had some lasting success, but this success was not to last as deregulation of neoliberalism took over. History doesn’t even look kindly on Reaganomics which isn’t even a 50 year old system.
My prediction about the future is just about as plausible as someone looking at the Sun in the post Galilean heleocentric universe, and predicting that perhaps one day humanity will discover that the Sun isn’t at the center of the universe either.
While I disagree with the video's framing of the question, I didn't find her position within that framing surprising at all. In that sense it's a pretty standard center-left embrace of capitalism with caveats/regulations. What surprised me is just how scattershot and circular the argument was, and the near-total dismissal of any kind of critique of capitalism (which I consider kind of a problem for someone arguing "capitalism is good" in light of a ~150-year tradition of "capitalism is bad" commentary).
It would be interesting for me to understand why you believe she should give more weight to critiques of capitalism when there's practically zero alternatives in the world today, and that's been the case for decades now. Yes, it's cliche to say "capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others", but that's absolutely true as far as anyone today can claim without completely losing sight of reality... and I say this as someone who really wished human nature didn't make this true.
It's not clear to me what the point is, or what it even means, to say that "capitalism is good" without any substantial reference point for what it would mean for an economic system to be bad.
The point of the video was to give a basic explanation of completely uncontroversial concepts covered in an economics 101 class.
Econ 101 is taught to people, and not "non capitalist systems that doesn't have money 101" because the experts have studied the topic extensively and the conclusions in her video are uncontroversial.
Of course she is going to listen to the experts on how economics works.
> It should be uncontroversial to state that that arrangement has facilitated extraordinary increases in global prosperity.
No it did not. Market economy combined with the positive feedback loop between science and productivity were the key components. They helped bring about prosperity for at least several thousand years. Recent fad of factory owner(s) hiring other people, paying them wages and skimming the difference is actually a net drag.
> I'd like to hear just one example of a society which does not have capitalism (as defined by the ability to risk capital in hopes of future profits) which is a nice place to live.
And if there is none because our societies co-evolved and at the present moment in history it is the universally dominant economical and political model? You sound like a person who would ask for an example of a non-feudal state in medieval Europe to prove the point that having a king is the best arrangement ever.
You can risk something else than capital ("time of people who do what I tell them to"), for example your own time. With that, everyone can risk something important to them to try to build something better and we don't even need a special social class to bravely take on the risk ("of wasting time of people who have to listen to them or starve"). Wooooot?!
Maybe we would have some such societies, if fascists in Europe and then fascists in US did not take great care to crush them.
> And if there is none because our societies co-evolved
Or maybe, instead of that that, those other societies just sucked.
Given that lots of societies have attempted and failed at non capitalist systems, how about instead of inventing excuses we can just use that as evidence that those other non capitalist systems are bad.
That was my final straw. Her video about rabid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) was bad. While she correctly (sorta) dismissed the theory of ROGD she was appallingly sympathetic to many of the ROGD talking points. Her worst offend was being skeptical of gender affirming care because of some vague and unproven long term-effects and because “the mental health of the treated kids didn’t improve, so much as the mental health of the kids that didn’t get treated declined”.
This kind of misunderstanding of the science is suspect when coming from a scientist famous for her skeptical take in her own field. Her sorta dismissal of ROGD is also suspect, because she seems to sorta believe the anecdotal “evidence” for it why also noting the lacking of actual evidence. This is the opposite of the kind of skeptical take she is known for. I call it suspect because here we have a social issue surrounding a minority where she flips her philosophy. I wonder why she did that.
The thing is, ROGD is not a scientific theory, it is a misdirection—or rather a debate tactic—by people with an interest in trying to discredit the existence of trans people. A true scientist would not have a “neutral take” on ROGD, just like a true scientist would not have a neutral take on the chemtrail conspiracy, or the theory that vaccines cause autism.
There are no evidence for ROGD other than very bad and highly suspicious anecdotal evidence. There isn’t even a statistical evidence for it. A scientist would know that, and would quickly dismiss this theory and all the talking points of those advocating for it.
btw. she raised more “concerns” than just the population skew in favor of trans people assigned female at birth—which btw. is not a concern, but at most a curiosity. She also had concerns about the efficacy and the long term health affects of gender affirming care. The concerns were without merit, and a true scientist with a neutral take would not find the long term health impacts “concerning” given the evidence we have, and as for the efficacy... well... see my parent post.
It's a reasonable hypothesis that happens to be politically inconvenient, as if it turns out to be the one that best explains the available data, this is another nail in the coffin of an ideology that is already severely weakened by significant challenges in many areas, despite so many of its acolytes having already gone all-in.
It is not any more reasonable as a theory—or even a hypothesis—than the theory that vaccine causes autism or that fossil fuel usage does not contribute to global warming. If there is no evidence to back up a theory—or a hypothesis—it is unreasonable to push it as a possibility.
What is reasonable is to assume that people are pushing these theories (or hypotheses) because they have an agenda. What ROGD is stating is basically that transgender people are contagious. This is a very disgusting thing to believe so they decorate it with science sounding terms and provide compelling—and suspicious—anecdotes to support it. This isn’t science and it is definitely not reasonable. I’m gonna call it what it is, this is hate speech, and it is not reasonable by any definition of that word (not even political convenience).
Hossenfelder is a technical person able to read technical literature, follow chains of argument and decipher statistical analysis. If such a person reads the literature in a field new to her, summarizes it, and then you disagree with it (oh but the papers really meant something else), then the problem is with the literature, not the reader.
Every field is filled with technical literature that is complete bullshit. The entire point of consulting an expert who has been in the field is they have spent enough time to sift through that.
There is significant literature on functioning perpetual motion machines in physics as well. If you were to read it and report on it, that would make your reporting shit.
Or it's because she is often fishing for a contrarian position to take. I can't remember the specifics but when discussing electric cars for example she just comes across as whinging to own the eco people.
You only need a few minutes of thought to understand why electric vehicles will never be able to replace internal combustion engines as things stand today. They are little more than a way for rich people to demonstrate how green they are.
> You only need a few minutes of thought to understand why electric vehicles will never be able to replace internal combustion engines as things stand today.
Well, no, you absolutely need some data, axioms, or facts to support your thoughts, too. Pure thought only works for mathematics and some areas of philosophy.
So, please - what are some of the facts from which that few minutes thought would proceed? Is it the case that there is a hard upper-limit on the range (imposed by constraints in battery technology), or that some road surfaces are unsuitable for EVs, or that electric engines are unsuitable for some chassis types (e.g. heavy haulage), or...?
Adoption of each isn't exclusive of the other, so that's irrelevant.
> Distance -- electric cars promote building places inefficiently
No, they don't, as a replacement for ICE vehicles. If anything, they promote building things more efficiently.
> Drop the constraint of needing cars, and you can make much better solutions
Replacing some share of ICE cars with electric cars does not require active maintenance of a constraint of needing cars. Reconfiguring cities to not need cars is a slower process than replacing what cars are used, so there is a role for the latter even if the former is the main long-term solution (and even if it is and reduces the scope of pervasiveness of the need for cars, it is unlikely to replace all need.)
There are many varied and systemic reasons, from supply chain, to mass consumer behaviour, politics, battery technology, access to minerals and the sheer insane scale of mining that we would need to ramp up to, to meet the demands of electrifying even a fraction of today's ICEs. This article explains it pretty well: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-ev-transition-explained-265931...
> “EVs,” notes King, “pull an invisible trailer filled with required major lifestyle changes that the public is not yet aware of.”
>
> When it does, do not expect the public to acquiesce quietly.
To electrify any significant proportion of ICEs you will need to massively ramp up mining in developing countries. This is going to crush their populations like a meat grinder at the same time that it blights their ecologies with the after-effects of mining. It's a new colonialism with a race to acquire resources for EVs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ev-cob...
Fossil fuel mining has had the same effects, e.g. Shell's shenanigans in Nigeria, Angola's general malaise, the mishmash of autocratic monarchies in the ME, their effects on air quality everywhere, … yet somehow they get a pass and are regarded as a given.
I don't give fossil fuel mining a pass. I advocate for mining a much more energy-dense mineral, which has an order of magnitude less impact on the population and ecology.
> You only need a few minutes of thought to understand why electric vehicles will never be able to replace internal combustion engines as things stand today.
You only need a little thought to see that each increment of electric vehicle adoption shifts the market context and incentives away from “as things stand today” in a way which makes your claim, to the extent its true as written, irrelevant in practice.
Unfortunately, her physics videos are worse than people realize too, at least the quantum physics ones.
I've been learning a lot of quantum physics and she's a mixed bag. On the one hand, most people's (and even textbooks') understanding of quantum observation and the quantum eraser experiment are incorrect, and Sabine is one of the few voices on Youtube that calls them out instead of joins them, which is why I suspect why she is so popular.
On the other hand, she embraces the very niche superdeterminism hypothesis. This hypothesis basically says that cause and effect and reversed for any Bell's Inequality related experiment in that using uncorrelated data as inputs into the experiment causes them to become correlated because you used them for the experiment. In other words, she believes that the universe is puppeteering Bell's Inequality experiments so that we can't trust results from those experiments. This has serious issues related to non-falsifiability, where we could technically do this with any experiment we don't like the results of.
However, that's not even the worst part of it. The worst part is that she does not explain her niche viewpoints in her videos. If any of the more popular hypotheses about entanglement are correct, then Einstein's hidden variables hypothesis where entanglement acts like a pair of gloves will be disproven. However, in her videos about entanglement, she constantly refers to entanglement acting like a pair of gloves like it is a fact, because her niche viewpoint is the single viewpoint where it is not disproven.
Super determinism is a perfectly valid interpretation of quantum mechanics no less valid than Copenhagen.
It's a bigger shame most students aren't taught that Copenhagen is not the only interpretation consistent with experiment and are often thought it as absolute truth.
Let's not get into the compatibility with free will philosophical issues, because that'd need physics to recognize metaphysics once more.
What set the ideas of physicists like Bohr, Born, Heisenberg and Pauli apart is that they led to the creation of quantum mechanics. The criticisms Schrödinger made in his time are worth a lot of attention as well, but nothing really since that era has come from the mere interpretation of physics. Whereas they fundamentally changed the course of physics, chemistry, engineering, etc. as sciences. The Copenhagen interpretation remains mainstream for the same reason that it had to come "first" (imo), which is simply that it is the most practicable.
I have nothing against Copenhagen per se (I prefer Rovelli's RQM which is a minor extension of it), it's that until we have evidence otherwise there's quite a space of consistent metaphysics that are equally valid.
That freedom is what needs to be emphasized because a lot of paradoxes in one interpretation are not in another because they basically boil down to your choice of metaphysical assumptions about the universe.
None of them alter the calculations or observables (so far) which is why saying one is more practical than the other is missing the point.
> After all, how can what a particle is depend on what is measured about it? Shouldn’t measurement simply reveal what the particle already was, just as it does in the case of a table? How can the particle change what it is merely because the detector is set up in a different way?
I believe this criticism implicitly assumes realism, which is another metaphysical assumption that is not trivial in the light of Bell-style results. It's circular in that way, like a lot of surface critique of superdeterminism (which I don't particularly like and don't subscribe to).
Confusing metaphysics and physics is a real issue here.
I love watching Sabine. It's nice to be able to both get great science educational content from someone who isn't afraid to put their own personality in the mix as well.
She also often refers back to where she was "wrong" about things in the past, mostly where she said one thing, further research came out and she updated her takes based on it.
I think there should be different types of channels for different types of viewers. While I appreciate VSause and Veritasium, Kurzgesagt as about equally informative, Sabine's quality humor makes her content very special.
Sabine seems to believe any intellectual darkweb-esque argument she hears as long as it makes her feel heterodox. Her coverage of autism, transgender issues and capitalism were embarrassing.
I only saw some of the "capitalism is good, actually" video and was horrified at how ideological it was. It was Prager-U level propaganda. She seems to fall in line with a few popular physicists (like Neil Tyson) who display chauvinist tendencies in their knowledge of everything that is.
All of those are prone to highly emotionally charged reactions. Whether she is right or wrong, there would have been strong reactions, and therefore (in a bayesian sense) the strong reactions give you no information about whether she's right or wrong.
We can tell an argument is rational when it upholds existing power structures and diminishes people who are already marginalized. They're probably just complaining because being marginalized upsets their emotions.
Funny you mention this because I have a child with (severe) Autism and with so much misinformation out there about Autism I was blown away that her video about this topic was so spot on and incredibly well researched. In particularly she nailed the so called "neurodiversity movement" and its many problems it causes quite well.
I think it's interesting to hear how some people are upset with her non-physics videos and how that compares with how her videos are received by experts in those fields. Her videos are generally well received, whereas people complaining rarely have more to say than some form of "stay in your own lane". When people have a hard time coming up with complaints that are actually about the subject matter, you're probably doing a good job :)
I like the quote in the article from Patricia Rankin: "[challenging] people's assumptions ... because that's really what science is all about."
I have much more respect for someone who disagrees with me, with whom I can discuss differences reasonably, than with someone who agrees with me, but does so dogmatically. The latter is unfortunately more common than the former, and I think that's why Sabine holds a special place in my heart.
I like Sabine's work but in the areas where I do have substantial context or expertise she is sometimes subtly off. It tends to happen in feature videos more than in her weekly science summaries. To her credit, she does tend to issue corrections when it's pointed out.
Same. I appreciate her "hard" science videos very much, but dislike and skip the rest. Usually I have no problem switching to entertainment mode on YouTube, but her authoritative tone puts me off enough to not watch them.
I have substantial layman's expertise in quantum physics and while she correctly points out many mistakes that are even in textbooks, she also follows the very niche Superdeterimistic viewpoint and then presents hypotheses that follow from that viewpoint (Hidden Variables and Einstein's gloves) as if they are facts. For a science educator, this is a massive problem, and so she's become my least popular quantum physics educator even though she explains many quantum physics concepts very well.
Can you be more specific about how how her viewpoints create problems for you as a science educator? (I am speaking specifically about her content relevant to physics/particle physics/cosmology.)
Generally, she is careful to point out when she is voicing views based on her own preferences, speculating about things that have no observational data to back them up or giving personal hot-takes on various topics.
For everything else, aka, the things she accepts provisionally as true, she appears to favor the least speculative among current solutions/theories/approaches in physics. Much of her popular work is focused on critiques of the many speculative musings of physicists who, in her opinion, have moved into a kind of post-science research program.
Her acceptance/popularizing of the standard model and of general relativity as humanity's current best models of the universe indicate that her viewpoints tend to be highly conservative and evidence-based.
Again, most (all?) of her musings about things that might be true or things that might be interesting directions for research are clearly called out as such.
Looking around, it does look like she's explained things better in other videos than the one I saw, so maybe I was too harsh.
The video I saw at the time is "Why is quantum mechanics weird? The bomb experiment" where she describes entanglement as a photo being torn in half and then sent apart, and then vaguely says that it is a "stronger" correlation than that.
On looking for that video though, I watched "What did Einstein mean by “Spooky Action at a Distance"?", where she describes things a bit more thoroughly with socks, where she explains that the correlations were created locally but when you measure the one particle on one side the other particle's wave function changes. She then goes on to actually explain that the sock explanation does not work as it does not sufficiently create strong correlations, which I think is a much better explanation
Looking back, I think I've learned a lot more about quantum physics since I last watched her videos. Back then, I think I saw her repeated use of explaining entanglement as a "stronger correlation" to be a cop out. Now that I've dove into the actual Bell Inequality experiment and understand how it works, I actually quite like that description as a placeholder for a very strange phenomenon that none of us really understand yet. Still, I do think she should have clarified just a bit better on the first video I mentioned, but I guess when you make lots of videos on one of the most complicated topics of all time it's rather easy to omit a crucial detail here or there.
You’re right, we should continue to teach the Copenhagen interpretation forever just to make life easier for educators. Let’s also talk about free will to make sure physics has a hint of the spiritual in it. Otherwise how would we ever find God through then study of his marvellous creation!?
A canary in the coalmine, Einstein did not stay silent on social issues, and did use his fame to write social commentary. Unlike most of his peers, however, his position was that of empathy and solidarity:
I think scientists (and actually people of other trades) are best when they talk about stuff they actually know.
Sometimes people start thinking that because they got successful in one area it gives them blanket check to talk about everything. Usually, the end result is they greatly overestimate their capability.
This is how many youtube channels die. The authors think they exhausted the topic and are looking to talk about other stuff and they start alienating their fan base because not only they are much less knowledgeable about those other topics, but also because the fan base just did not expect/appreciate those other topics. They came here because they liked the original videos and now the channel became something else which is unlikely to be what they wanted.
As for Sabine, I watched some of her videos on quantum physics and they were very interesting. Then I stumbled on one or two newer videos on other topics she started adding later and they were jarring, on the verge of misinformation/pseudoscience.
Yeah one was 5G. I did not like she didn’t cut off speculation and stopped watching her videos afterwards. But ultimately she is correct - there just isn’t evidence that microwave heating is safe. I wanna roll my eyes as much as next guy, but need to respect objective reporting.
The 5g one was wrong on many levels and very definitely pseudoscience. I also disagree that there is no evidence that microwave heating is safe. There is in fact no real evidence that it isn't safe (and largely no physics mechanism that would suggest otherwise).
I think it's sometimes argued that you can def cook food using microwaves... But yeah I agree - the "lack of evidence is not evidence" is often used by quacks.
You can also cook food using sunlight. And yet I take walks and run in the sun and I feel perfectly fine.
Just because a 5G antenna can heat up humans around it by 0.00001C (I am guessing at the number of zeroes here), is in no way a valid argument that it is bad for us. A study would have to specifically link this kind of microwave radiation to some ill effects, at the dose of 5G installations in use today. As of now, no such study exists.
She has 1 million subscribers , most of whom of also interested in the non-physics stuff. You don't get that many followers by only talking about technical physics stuff.
Science as a method is a universal tool though. And if one branch needs protection from intruders by the other critical scientist.. Maybe it just ain't science, but a religion performing cargo cult mimicry for clout.
Science as a method is not a universal solution to problems.
For example, a scientist who starts talking about politics is usually well outside his/her area of competence. A scientific method does not seem to lend itself to solving political problems.
The scientific method is about performing experiments, not about making YouTube videos.
If a scientist who is an expert in one field decides to make videos on other fields, they are not applying the scientific method, they are doing the same thing any YouTuber does.
The scientific method is just an empirical method for acquiring knowledge and they certainly can apply the scientific method outside their field (indeed they really should when doing a literature review to inform their opinion on the subject). The credentialism in this thread thread is utterly out of control.
I can't really agree with that. I love getting to know people through what they think. Obviously everyone isn't a subject matter expert on about 99.99% of everything they know. I don't think that should stop them from speaking about it.
Now what it should do is not speaking about it with authority. If you are speaking in a formal setting on something you either need to disclose you are not an expert or not speak on the matter, if you are not an expert.
Her non-physics videos tend to be a bit off, but not terrible; on the whole, they're still reasonably well-researched and educational.
Where she really gets into trouble is farther out into the social sciences. I think she should be much more careful there. I don't want her to stop, I just want her to be more careful!
An interesting example is one of her two videos on transgenderism. It had an absolutely appalling both-sidesing intro that literally called people who crazy who are just concerned about suicide rates among trans people. The contents of the video were actually pretty reasonable, although she messed up a few key interpretations so that some parts ended up being misleading. I don't think she's transphobic, but on an issue like this I think a bit more care needs to be taken.
More recently she had a piece on capitalism that was incredibly anemic. I think she tried to bite off more than she could chew (for a 20 minute video) and so she kind of missed the entire "what are the problems" side of the topic, even while laying out some reubttals to common statements. I feel like she'd have done better than that on a more close-to-home topic.
I think it's important to increase our range on our knowledge. You aren't always going to have an expert's opinion to evaluate every piece of information coming at you, and there's only so much that an authoritative source can do for you.
Now, making videos on topics outside of your expertise? That's a dangerous minefield, but there are ways to approach it.
For example, there's whole youtube channels to taking on challenges and learning new stuff.
> An interesting example is one of her two videos on transgenderism. It had an absolutely appalling both-sidesing intro that literally called people who crazy who are just concerned about suicide rates among trans people.
This was what she actually said in the introduction to that video:
"Should transgender teens transition? This rather personal question occupies a prominent place in the American culture war. One the one side you have people claiming that it’s a socially contagious fad among the brainwashed woke who want to mutilate your innocent children. On the other side there are those saying that it’s saving the lives of minorities who’ve been forced to stay in the closet for too long. And then there are normal people, like you and I, who think both sides are crazy and could someone please summarise the facts in simple words, which is what I’m here for. So what’s going on?"
What's objectionable about that? Sounds quite fair to me.
The only thing objectionable is the soi-disant left making a religion of erasing gender-nonconforming people with medical interventions that don't work.
By work, I mean the surgical procedures do not produce body parts that reliably perform the intended function. In one case, the hole closes. In the other, the arm-sausage rots off.
This comment section is full of people afraid of their HR departments, not people considering the actual outcome of the procedures.
"On the other side there are those saying that it’s saving the lives of minorities who’ve been forced to stay in the closet for too long. And then there are normal people, like you and I, who think both sides are crazy"
I think this fragment speaks for itself. It is not "crazy" to care about suicide rates or suicidal ideation. It is "crazy" to not care about that.
That first sentence is quite euphemistic though. There's a lot more to both sides that she quietly implies (by reference to "normal people" finding it "crazy") but doesn't outright mention.
The difference between the two sides is that one is correct and the other is not, and that what "normal" (uninformed lay) people think is not really relevant.
Funnily enough, that's what those on the other side say too.
No matter what the topic, those at either end of strongly polarised collections of views do tend to believe that they are correct and everyone else is wrong and informed.
The fact that both sides think they're correct has absolutely no bearing on who is actually correct. For that we must turn to evidence. The evidence in favor of trans healthcare and identities is overwhelming, and the evidence presented by the other side is laced with non-evidenced religious beliefs like "someone being cis and unhappy is a better outcome for society than someone being trans and happy".
Which side cares about them? Those who are stigmatizing a population with high suicide rates? Or those who have successfully spearheaded a societal shift which has led more people to identify as trans, while trans people collectively still claim high rates of suicidal ideation.
I don’t see any evidence that mental health in the transgender or general population has actually improved, I’ve seen numbers suggesting societal wide mental health is on the decline, and I have seen a pretty large increase in the absolute numbers of people who say their gender dysphoria makes them suicidal. I can find research that suggests transgender people who receive more medical treatment and societal acceptance are less suicidal than those who do not, but that doesn’t actually demonstrate that trans acceptance will lead to less suicidality and better mental health at the societal level. Or even really at the individual level, since correlation is not causation.
On top of all that, most past research of this sort is potentially non-reproducible at this point because the trans population has expanded so rapidly. Three times as many trans men started visiting clinics in the course of a decade. So the research will have to be done all over again to discount this possibility but this has not been done.
So I don’t know, I’m with Hossenfelder and her radical centrism because I think nobody is actually acting scientifically re: trans people and they’re just playing it by ear. What I detest is the unwarranted certainty and lack of scepticism people have on this topic; People are just guessing and are acting like they are not.
You've strung a lot of words together that are not attached to reality. Plenty of people are acting very scientifically with regard to trans people—there are hundreds of studies in this regard. "Correlation is not causation" is the beginning of the conversation about the relationship between the two, not the end. (Observational data plus a solid theory is a very powerful way to establish causation.)
The idea that social acceptance of transness is causing more people to identify as trans is is not entirely without merit, but needs to be thought about critically. It is true that people who have low-key gender dysphoria would treat it with increased salience if they became more aware that trans people exist, but that is very clearly a good thing. Society should generally allow people to be true and happy to their selves.
Moreover, while the general direction of social progress has been encouraging, the magnitude of it has been relatively small. We have a very long way to go before we can even begin to control for social stigma as a factor in trans suicidality rates. This last point is evidenced by comments in this very thread.
« saving the lives of minorities who’ve been forced to stay in the closet for too long »
I mean, this is literally true, and doesn't sound crazy at all. Why is she saying that normal people think it's crazy? That's not the vibe I get from the general population, who are broadly in support of gender-affirming care. There's a relatively small, very loud contingent on the "mutilating the children" side of things and yeah, some of them sound a little crazy to me (although I suspect most are just uninformed or confused -- or using trans people as a political football, and know exactly what they're doing.) Most people either a) don't give a shit or b) have empathy for people who experience gender dysphoria.
This is classic both-sides-ism, equating two things as "equally wrong" or "equally right" that are pretty obviously on different footings.
If one scratches the surface of the "saving lives" claim to see what assumptions and beliefs this is based on, it very quickly gets just as crazy as the other side, if not more so.
This is a plague among high-IQ people like physicists, quant people and engineers (speaking as someone who has consistently tested 2.5-3 standard deviations above the population average). They're good at pattern matching which is rewarding in those fields but think they can just think through areas outside their expertise without engaging with the literature.
I would like to see the actual quote from Patricia Rankin because [challenging] people's assumptions is not at all what science is about. I mean, sure sometimes it turns out that people's assumptions don't actually line up with the natural world but science certainly doesn't have any particular focus on those cases.
If you believe something because it is assumed, that is not science. When you challenge that assumption, it may ultimately be that your guess was right, but your _assumption_ has nonetheless been challenged.
Some things seem prima facie to be true, but turn out not to be consistent with the rest of our scientific understanding.
If we're to be thorough then we should not just assume knowledge, we should put it to the test. This is scientific IMO.
Did you assume that challenging an assumption meant opposing it?
> Did you assume that challenging an assumption meant opposing it?
I think the phrase 'challenging an assumption' leaves a bad taste in some people's mouth due to negative associations. I have definitely seen people use 'challenging assumptions' as a shield for their argument or actions when it was not justified. Or worse be upset when the phrase does not get people to back their idea or actions.
Questioning, reexamining, challenging what have you is important in scientific progress. 'challenging assumptions', 'challenging the establishment', and probably other similar phrases I am not familiar with have been used conspiracy theorists and pseudoscientists and the association has tainted the phrase leaving a bad taste in some people's month.
> people have a hard time coming up with complaints that are actually about the subject matter
Do they? That's not what I've seen. The criticism of her most recent video "Capitalism is good, let me explain" [1] is surprisingly concrete and substantive for a subject that usually degrades into a vitriolic dunk-fest within seconds. In particular, the popular reply videos [2] and [3] raise the criticism that:
* She opens with the "money emerged to fix barter" origin story, which fell out of favor a while ago [2]
* The focus on money as opposed to credit and ownership isn't just ahistorical, it avoids the core of what is usually meant by "capitalism" [2]
* She handwaives the problems of the industrial revolutions and the capitalism critic by saying "that's another story." Is it? [2]
* She botched the Penicillin example [3]
* Her discussion on externalities absentmindedly missed the problems with positive externalities [2]
* She attributes successes to markets and failures to regulation without justifying why [2]
... and more. Regardless of what you think about the underlying debate or whether you agree with these points, it seems pretty clear to me that they are substantive. Not only that, a few of them pretty clearly seem to be the result of an expert leaving their lane and speaking authoritatively on a subject they don't have deep knowledge of. Do you disagree?
These are fair criticisms. No matter which side of the 'capitalism is good' debate you are on this video was so bad, with errors of history and even of definition, that I was left doubting how good a scientist she actually is.
I don’t think this is—nor should it be—a judgment on her quality as a scientist. Rather this should be a judgment on her as a person.
Instead of questioning her as a scientist, rather ask your self, why she applies this non-scrutinizing philosophy to the field of economics and sociology (as well as health care; see video about gender affirming care), while she so well known and successful for her extreme skeptical takes on the field of her expertise. Like she must have a personal reason—not a scientific one—for this dissonance.
I think you're right about her having personal reasons for this. I watched her video on GAC after writing the comment above. I think what it has in common with the capitalism video is that she is trying to back up a personal bias with poorly reasoned and evidenced arguments.
It's possible that she's a great scientist, I don't know enough physics to tell whether there is a dissonance or whether it's all snake oil. My skepticism comes from seeing such (conscious or not) intellectual dishonesty on her part
>she opens with the "money emerged to fix barter" origin story
This is a misrepresentation of Sabine's video. It should be obvious from the generic contemporary products that she chose that she wasn't talking about the history of money, but of course anti-capitalists can't help but smugly inject the ideas of their favorite pop-anthropologist everywhere they can.
A gift economy may work in a tribe 100,000 years ago, but most of the goods and services that we rely on today comes from strangers who won't give you anything unless if you give them something that they consider at least equivalent in return. Sabine's point is that money is the most efficient medium of exchange for this sort of equivalent exchange.
I didn't bother to investigate most of the other criticisms, but I feel like they're going to be just as bad faith. For example, the penicillin video criticizes Sabine because her 1 minute history of penicillin wasn't as nuanced as a 20 minute explanation of the history of penicillin. Fair enough, and I did find the video interesting. However, judging that the title of the video is "Capitalism would've killed penicillin", I doubt author has the same standards of nuance towards people she agrees with.
The thing is, the penicillin anecdote was the only evidence she cited as the reason for capitalism being good, which is the main thesis in the video.
What people are criticizing that the video isn’t well argued, and that even the only evidence she gives which favors her main thesis isn’t—and doesn’t even directly support it might I add—isn’t even true.
Any video that tries to condense all of economics into 16 minutes is going to be wrong to a certain extent, but I think anyone without a strong negative opinion of capitalism would get the point she makes. Penicillin would be useless without industrialization, and industrialization wouldn't have happened without capitalism, so therefore capitalism is good.
There are allot of assumptions in your line of reasoning. It can be argued that it is just as likely—if not more likely—that the only people watching this video that came out of it with a positive opinion on capitalism, are the people that already believe these assumptions to be true, don’t need any evidence to further believe them—may even reject the evidence showing the contrary—and already held the faith that capitalism is good.
Either way it was a bad video, and not at all to par with the scientific standard she sets in her previous work, in the field she is an expert at.
I didn't make any assumptions. Most people, including Karl Marx, agree that capitalism is what lead to industrialization. All Sabine did is make the obvious connection between capitalism, industrialization, and the widespread availability of penicillin. "Ackchyually, there was some resistance to pharmaceutical companies conducting research for penicillin production" is something you care about if you're being hypercritical.
It is still an assumption, and an ahistorical one at that. Many countries industrialized without capitalism, and humanity has seen much greater technological revolutions without this system. And yes, Karl Marx was wrong about many things, if he stated that industrialization would not happen without capitalism, he would be wrong.
But there is another—much worse—assumption you made. Even if we conclude that industrialization only happened because of capitalism, and even if we conclude that industrialization and capitalism is what made penicillin useful, we still cannot conclude that capitalism is a good system. You run into the black swan problem here. Just because you can point to a single white swan, and even if you can point to a million white swans, this is no basis to conclude that all swans are white. Similarly, even if all your other assumptions are correct, your anecdote about penicillin is not a conclusive about the quality of the system.
This is why scientists like Sabine Hossenfelder usually only take anecdotes at face value, and use them only as hints to justify further research. For some reason Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t do that when she concludes that capitalism is a good system. I wonder why.
> Many countries industrialized without capitalism
I'm not talking about countries. I'm talking about industrialization in general. It is less of an accomplishment to replicate an innovation that you already know works. Obviously, Marx who never lived to see any communist revolutions, wasn't talking about countries either.
> You run into the black swan problem here.
Saying "capitalism is the best system ever" is like saying there are no black swans. Saying capitalism is "good" merely requires the existence of a large number of white swans, or at best more white swans than black swans.
> Saying "capitalism is the best system ever" is like saying there are no black swans. Saying capitalism is "good" merely requires the existence of a large number of white swans, or at best more white swans than black swans.
I don’t follow the logic here.
You should come into this knowing that you have a bias towards favoring capitalism, as you are not only living within that system but very likely benefiting heavily from it. You should also come into this knowing that you have a very limited scope to weigh alternatives, as you don’t have much real world data, and all historical data is heavily tainted with both your biases, as well as the filtered through lenses of your current system.
Imagine your self to be an astrophysicist, this is akin trying to compare our sun to a star that is on the other side of the galaxy directly behind the sun, without having many instruments or even a telescope to observe the latter. Whenever you try to look at that star, 99.9999% of all the light you see is coming from our sun, not that star, and you have to account for that when comparing them.
Saying that capitalism is good and backing it up with a few stories, also ignores all the stories which demonstrates that capitalism is bad. For every story of your penicillin—which isn’t even that clear cut, but let’s ignore that—there are stories like the Bhopal disaster, the climate disaster, of wage theft, of poverty and exploitation, of people dying of preventable and curable diseases, etc. Those are the black swans in the system, and they are all over the place. People arguing that capitalism is good are choosing to ignore these stories, and focus on the penicillin.
Saying that “capitalism is good” based on observing white swans, should follow with “capitalism is bad” based on observing the black swans. A scientist like Sabine Hossenfelder should know better.
That second video is a horrible example of a counter argument. At the start of the video, the creator admits to having an agenda against Sabine due to her past comments on LGBT stuff. She also says at the start that she believes capitalism lead to most of society's ills. She also states clearly in her video that she doesn't have the proper knowledge of economics to be able to make a commentary. There is such a blatant predisposition and agenda that I am seriously baffled that you linked that video as an objective critisism of Sabine.
> She also states clearly in her video that she doesn't have the proper knowledge of economics to be able to make a commentary
She states that she doesn't have the proper knowledge of economics to comment on other parts, but then comments on the errors in the subject matter she does know enough to comment on.
Many here see only problems with her technical videos, but what I find is that after initially talking about and criticising research in her areas of expertise it is very obvious she became popular with a certain "anti-scientific establishment" (for lack of a better word) crowd and now really peddles to that audience.
In the process she has diverted from topics she knows to scientific areas where she has at best a undergraduate level understanding but still talks like she is a subject expert and always taking a contrarian stance. After seeing videos where I have significant expertise where she was clearly wrong (and again peddling the "anti-establishment" angle) I stopped watching. That she is now making videos about capitalism and other social science topics just illustrates the point.
I agree that she absolutely is fostering an “anti-establishment” audience, she’s also doing it in a lackadaisical way and that’s harmful.
A good example of this was on her video on free will, she made the argument that free will does not exist because human brains operate on principles that are deterministic. She followed that conclusion with a tirade on climate change and how people should stop trying to build the “political will” to do something on climate change, because free will does not exist. I have to wonder what the reasoning behind including that in a video was. It absolutely alienates anyone working on building coalitions for climate solutions, and she didn’t even need to bring up the topic to make her point.
You could say that she could be making that point to curry some favor with people who do not believe in climate change and would like to see content by a scientist, with credentials, indicating skepticism. However, she has videos that talk about the drivers behind climate change in detail that are in line with the scientific consensus on the issue. It makes zero sense to me from a messaging stand point why she takes contrarian views on social issues.
I can appreciate the scientists who stay out of the limelight because, while many are smart, not all are “media trained” and are wise enough to know it. Scientists who drift into fame, but are not equipped to navigate it, are controlled by the whims of the public they serve.
I interpreted her statements about free will and climate change very differently.
My perception was that she thought she was getting pushback from climate groups when she said that free will didn’t exist, and that this groups were effectively accusing her of being opposed to climate action, on the basis of of them thinking their free will was the only way to fix climate change.
I like her sense of humour. I respect her as a physicist. I respect her as a general science news reporter.
These are however very different things, and "science reporter" is something where my expectations in general — not just her, everyone doing this — is that at best and when trying sincerely and with skill, they will still misunderstand and misrepresent as per a game of telephone.
This means I do still listen to what she has to say "out of her lane", but I don't rank it as highly as her videos in her own domain of expertise, instead treating them more like a Tom Scott video. (Tom, if you're reading this, that's still a decent standard).
Interesting - you don't seem to have researched your own opinion. A cursory search of Youtube for rebuttal videos shows plenty of people that provide evidence and sources to show how wrong she is in her "out of her lane" videos.
She's no better than any YouTuber looking for clicks and monetization.
Can we un-click-bait this by replacing "she" with "Sabine Hossenfelder"? Yes, the article itself uses the title as used but there is no reason to not clarify who this is about.
Such an annoying trend of click-bait too, and it's all over news sites.
"Click here to know who this _woman_ is who did something so great"... As if being a woman, to the author and their target readers, supersedes in importance what the person actually achieved or had to say.
She's taken a weird and disturbing turn lately. She did a few videos about transgender and other lgbtq related topics. And well she had some seriously disappointing and eronious views on the subject. And was mostly regurgitatimg anti trans, terf talking points.
It's sad and disappointing thatnshe has started using her credibility in one field to make propogandaish videos on other subject she either ignores or is lying to profit off the terf grift.
It takes away from her well earned credibility in her field of expertise.
Which is unfortunate, as those who would be most accurately described by that label, if it was taken literally and not used as a slur, actually have a sensible and thoughtful middle ground between the two extremes who are currently battling it out in the political arena.
> Which is unfortunate, as those who would be most accurately described by that label, if it was taken literally and not used as a slur, actually have a sensible and thoughtful middle ground between the two extremes who are currently battling it out in the political arena.
Perhaps not as many people self-identify as "TERFs" now that the term is widely viewed negatively, but as of a few years ago there were several subreddits on reddit where people identified themselves as TERFs (I'm not sure whether these subreddits still exist).
However, the prevailing view on these subreddits was that all men are inherently poisoned by testosterone and dangerous.
For this reason, I'm not sure it's actually a "thoughtful middle ground" as much as you might think.
I know the subreddits you're referring to (which now exist off-site), and that wasn't my experience of them. I considered these to be a supportful space for people, mostly women, to discuss and critique this recent ideological shift towards women and men being redefined as a 'gender identity' rather than a material biological reality, and the harmful effects this belief system has when implemented in law and policy.
One person who I feel exemplifies the sensible middle ground here is JK Rowling. She wrote a very thoughtful essay on this topic which I think is well worth reading, if you haven't already: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-....
I like Sabine and overall enjoyed her book Lost in Math, but I feel like her particular style of "snark" (mockery) is unproductive and kind of cheap. It makes some sense on YouTube, but not as much when she's interviewing colleagues for print.
One of her recurring points is that physicists get to sort of make stuff up for their own gain now, because the public (and grant institutions, politicians etc) have become very interested in the field while being mostly illiterate in it. But she does this as well. Lay people aren't fit to judge whether eg the sampling algorithms used at the LHC detector are laughably stupid, nor compact dimensions of space, inflation, etc.
No one's perfect, but I'm a fan because she'll tell you if something is her-possibly-unpopular opinion (see particle physics), well-accepted scientific fact, or her pet opinion. You know where she stands, and tells you her agenda, if any. Or, if she's trying really hard to stay away from _any_ bias (see her video on trans).
More generally, I don't like the "stay in your lane" opinion. To more forward as a society, we need _more_ interdisciplinary work, not less. Mathematicians need to work with engineers and architects, psychologists with economicists, etc.
Of course, let's call out bad science or bias, but let's not ignore valuable insights because they came from the wrong lane.
I like her videos because I'm generally curious what a fairly unbiased intelligent person thinks about trans issues, economics, etc. Even if I don't agree with them on everything, not should you.
Fwiw, the only video of hers that I remember watching is the economics one because of the discussion it sparked, but I didn't get the impression there that she was communicating her ignorance or bias well at all. Rather, she made a bunch of dubious claims with all the appearance of authority and knowledge.
She also doesn't seem particularly unbiased to me. Like, I don't think one can ever be unbiased, but someone with a lot of knowledge about a subject can do a good job of identifying the biases they have in that area and try and approach things more objectively, or at least indicate where they're speaking for themselves and where they're describing beliefs in the field. For example, I'm a frontend developer with a bunch of biases for certain technologies and styles of development, because those are the ones I'm used to and invested in. But I know the field well enough to - I hope - be able to recognise those biases and tell you that you don't need SolidJS for your next project, even though I think it's really cool and want more people to get involved there.
Rather, Hossenfelder feels like she just doesn't know what her biases are in the first place, at least when discussing something like economics. Based on your comment, I'm sure that's not true for the subjects that she is knowledgeable in - you bring up particle physics as an example of an area where she knows her opinions aren't necessarily standard. But in the video I watched, she presented herself as this neutral figure telling you only the facts, and then said things that ranged from being out-of-date or untrue, to things that didn't even really make much sense.
I agree with you that "stay in your lane" is a bad counter to these sorts of videos, because collaboration between fields is good. But good collaboration takes a lot of humility - you need to come to the table knowing that you know almost nothing about the other field, and accepting that you're going to have to learn a lot of stuff. At least from the stuff I've watched, I don't get the impression that Hossenfelder has put the work in to understand what she doesn't understand. And that, to me, is pretty much the definition of wilful ignorance - she knows she is not an expert in this field, but she doesn't seem to want to put the effort in to get the opinions and feedback from real experts. Instead, she's assumed her own knowledge is enough.
> Rather, Hossenfelder feels like she just doesn't know what her biases are in the first place, at least when discussing something like economics
She is biased in favor of what the experts say on a topic.
Her video was a bog standard explanation of topics that are covered in econ 101. They were completely uncontroversial.
Yes, the profession of economics, which are the experts on the topic, are all strongly biased in favor of the scientific opinion which is that economics is real and that capitalism is good.
Contrary to many of the opinions in these comments, I actually appreciate Sabine's videos that are not in her area of expertise.
Not because I think they're accurate, or fully informed, or anything like that.
But because usually they're a decent attempt at grokking important information from another field, which is a challenge we face nowadays in this sea of conflicting information about everything.
When she gets something wrong, it's another indicator of how even a trained scientist can still make mistakes in these interpretations, and so brings me to a more realistic expectation of what myself, or any other person, could do on their own.
Her latest video on how to do your own research puts this challenge in perspective.
For someone who's brought clarity to complex physics topics, Sabine Hossenfelder's “Capitalism is good” video jumps the shark. It feels like a slow-motion crash (course) into the Dunning-Kruger effect. With simplistic, naive interpretations and moralistic undertones, it propagates myths that many experts have spent years trying to debunk from the public space - some of them Nobel laureates, and, multiple times requiring the use of the expression "Zombie Ideas" in the book’s title.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 437 ms ] threadIs there a short argument for why MOND cannot agree with relativity, at least on the relevant scales?
https://youtu.be/9-jIplX6Wjw?si=nLokQYuvv2KRzCak
side note: I just wish that everyone that was "trying to keep an open mind" wasn't so impressionable and susceptible to the most unsubstantiated theories
one of my side projects just sells merchandise to conspiracy theorists, such a predictable lot
Can you make a cogent argument against one bit of her research instead of calling her a crackpot for challenging things?
> If you're promoting research into quantum gravity that doesn't respect special relativity, you're a crackpot.
Using the word "crackpot" apparently went too far for some people, but it's not controversial to say that a theory of quantum gravity needs to respect special relativity: quantum gravity is about trying to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity, and general relativity is the generalization of special relativity to include gravity.
>If you're promoting research into quantum gravity that doesn't respect special relativity, you're a crackpot.
I think this statement is off the mark. Theoretical physics is often about simplifying a problem to a form that you know how to solve, even if it's not physically realistic. Once you have a solution in your toy domain, you might have a chance of modifying it to find a physically viable theory. A solution can also be useful in restricted domains, even if it's not true in the general case.
If we look at the historical development of quantum theory, it wasn't modified to take relativity into account until 1928. Even then, the non-relativistic theory has independent value and makes many valid predictions.
Another example is the AdS/CFT correspondence. We know we don't live in anti-de Sitter space, but study of it has led to a better understanding of black holes.
I don't think we should rule out any line of research a priori. We should throw a bunch of different approaches at the problem and see which ones help us to make progress.
Of course, crackpots are a real thing. In my mind, the definition of a crackpot is someone who claims to have a revolutionary theory without any track record of engaging with research-level ideas. Perusing Sabine's Google Scholar page shows that she has a respectable number of papers and citations, so it is worth taking her ideas seriously, even if you disagree with them.
Overall, she comes across as a very clear communicator with criticisms (rightly or wrongly) of some current research.
If the UN report on the attention economy is saying 0.5% of content produced is consumed and dropping, then how are people getting views? It doesnt make any sense. Unless the game is rigged.
People have limited attention to give anything but unlimited capacity to receive attention. The platforms are taking full advantage of that fact to keep this ponzi scheme running.
if you have a good mic and camera, show your face, speak clearly, consistently upload, and - most importantly - you broadly make one-off videos about common denominator subtopics - never going too deep or numbering your videos - then I wouldn't bet against you. there really aren't that many successful science Youtubers
By the 2000s, so much information was being generated worldwide that only a small fraction (0.5% in 2015) of the digital data generated was being analyzed at all.
https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/attention_economy_...
Where "analyzed" probably means something other than "got any views". In any case, the claim is unsourced, so I wouldn't put much stock in it.
The way I see it, people's ability to give attention is limited, but the ability to do something worth paying attention to is even scarcer, so even the most trivial feat (like writing a comment on HN) is likely to garner at least a few views.
Becoming famous is much harder than getting any views at all, because now you need to do something so attention-grabbing that some of your few initial viewers will tell others about it and your audience size snowballs from there.
Internet Archive's first capture is April 2023.
The most recent references within the report are for 2021.
Can someone expand?
Transcript :
Russ Roberts: I think that moment in science, and other related moments in physics, were things that were predicted--the Higgs boson being one example where things did show up. They just think, 'Well, it's just a matter of time; we don't have powerful enough colliders. We'll eventually develop them. And all these things have to be true.' They're holding onto that. And I get that. Because the history seems to encourage that viewpoint.
Sabine Hossenfelder: No, it doesn't.
Russ Roberts: Okay. Why not?
Sabine Hossenfelder: That's a very sloppy look at the history (it continues)
https://www.econtalk.org/sabine-hossenfelder-on-physics-real...
Grand unification is a hypothetical scenario in which the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces are unified into a single force at very high energies. This would imply that the elementary particles of the Standard Model are composed of more fundamental particles, such as quarks and leptons, that interact through a single gauge group. Grand unification is motivated by the observation that the strengths of the three forces converge at high energies, suggesting a common origin. Grand unification also predicts the existence of new particles, such as magnetic monopoles and proton decay.[2]
Supersymmetry is a theoretical framework that proposes a symmetry between fermions and bosons, two classes of particles with different spin properties. It implies that for every known particle, there exists a superpartner with the same mass and quantum numbers, but with a different spin. Supersymmetry is not based on any empirical evidence, but on mathematical aesthetics and theoretical convenience. Supersymmetry can solve some problems in the Standard Model, such as the hierarchy problem and the dark matter problem, but it also introduces many new parameters and complications. Supersymmetry has not been observed in nature, despite extensive searches at the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments.[3]
The main difference between supersymmetry and the periodic table or grand unification is that supersymmetry is not a natural consequence of any observed phenomenon, but an ad hoc assumption that has no experimental support. The periodic table and grand unification are based on empirical data and physical principles, while supersymmetry is based on mathematical beauty and speculation. Therefore, supersymmetry does not make any expected predictions, unlike the periodic table or grand unification, because it is not constrained by any reality check. Supersymmetry can be adjusted to fit any observation or avoid any contradiction, making it unfalsifiable and arbitrary.[4]
[1]Supersymmetry - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersymmetry.
[2] Supersymmetry and what it means for particle https://www.space.com/supersymmetry-particle-physics-string-....
[3] The status of supersymmetry | symmetry magazine. https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-status-of-super...
[4] Supersymmetry: what? why? when? - Ohio University https://inpp.ohio.edu/~inpp/nuclear_lunch/archive/2005/kane_....
I'm not familiar with high energy physics, but from your description of supersymmetry: "It implies that for every known particle, there exists a superpartner with the same mass and quantum numbers, but with a different spin. Supersymmetry is not based on any empirical evidence, but on mathematical aesthetics and theoretical convenience.", it is on the same basis as the periodic table was when Mendeleev first published in 1869. It was only later that additional elements were found to validate the arrangement.
>The main difference between supersymmetry and the periodic table or grand unification is that supersymmetry is not a natural consequence of any observed phenomenon, but an ad hoc assumption that has no experimental support.
Can you clarify this? I would argue the periodic table to be "natural consequence of any observed phenomenon", insofar as there was no evidence or only circumstantial evidence to support that grouping. Indeed, that grouping was chosen because of aesthetic reasons and speculation: "I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."
>Therefore, supersymmetry does not make any expected predictions, unlike the periodic table or grand unification, because it is not constrained by any reality check. Supersymmetry can be adjusted to fit any observation or avoid any contradiction, making it unfalsifiable and arbitrary.[4]
Your reference doesn't seem to agree with you here. It claims several predictions that supersymmetry has gotten correctly, and doesn't claim that supersymmetry can be adjusted to fit any observation.
> So, this is one of the points that I try to get across in the book, but I know that for someone who doesn't really know the math of the theories, it's hard to understand. So, let's take this example of the Higgs boson. If you have the standard model of particle physics without the Higgs boson, this theory just does not work at LHC [Large Hadron Collider] energies. You cannot make predictions with it. You get probabilities that are larger than 1; so this is obviously mathematical nonsense.
This seems to me like one of those cases where a woman can’t be confident or assertive without looking like an asshole. He was wrong, and wrong in a way she literally dedicated part of a book about, at that.
Although without knowing the tone of the interviewer before the excerpts above, I don’t know if it’s warranted
I don’t think this has anything to do with being a woman
AS far as i know, both the standard model and the higgs boson are proven. Why would you caveat that predictions cannot be made, by taking out the Higgs Boson ?
The analogy to what Russ Robers is making, is equivalent to her saying: "take radioactivity out of chemistry" "AHA! Now since atoms can't decay, then you cannot get certain elements, so now i can conclude that the periodic table is crap! it can't make predictions about atom size!"
Why ?
Terry Gross manages to do it right. So does Joe Rogan (sorry, you haters).
I think Gross handled both appropriately.
Simmons: <https://freshairarchive.org/guests/gene-simmons> (2004-2-4)
O'Reilly: <https://freshairarchive.org/segments/bill-oreilly> (2003-10-8)
Though I'd argue there are many much-better interviews. Those two are instances of combative subjects, well-handled IMO. Total archive has > 20k segments.
somehow I'd avoided ever listening to this. But now, my take is a little different from this:
https://www.insidehook.com/article/music/gene-simmons-terry-...
which I gather is the establishment take. After 20 years, no one cares anymore. However...
Leaving aside the fact that he IS a jerk and didn't do himself any favors: I don't think she handled it well at all. Her fixation on his makeup is weird. He gave her lots of openings at the beginning to make it an interesting interview, and she blew them off.
He started with some philosophy on why KISS is successful, and there was plenty of dumb things to argue with there, if she wanted to pick them up.
Instead she went on about his makeup, and how much money he had. Who, really, is going to answer that question?
You can't really be rude to views or ideas, only to people, so that matters.
Now if she had been debating with someone who disagreed with her, and then she said "You're looking at history very sloppily" that might be rude, but that isn't the case here.
Also this is a storm in a teacup compared to the other things she does and says. Hossenfelder pretty routinely names specific physicists and states openly that they're defrauding the public by lying about their research in order to gain grant funding. She states this politely but so what, it's obviously far more severe of an attack than using the word sloppy. If you want to pick on her style you'd really want to talk about that, but it's hard to abstractly criticize her for that because it immediately goes in the direction of whether she's telling the truth or not.
One example is she calculated the power output of fusion reactions as energy created by fusion * heat to electricity conversion efficiency. However, energy that’s heating the plasma should also recoverable at the same conversion efficiency. Largely irrelevant a Q=1,000 but it plays a major role in what Q is breakeven and what Q is economically useful.
Not on the surface such a big deal, but a sign she should reach out more to actual experts in these fields.
It also explains why Q is formulated in terms of energy added to the plasma vs energy gained from fusion which she didn’t understand. This formula for Q ends up being a term in the equation for economic viability, but she attacked it as if such a formulation was misleading.
Basically the total energy spent on the facility including cryogenic cooling, pumps, etc matters + Q as defined by fusion experts + fusion output energy + conversion energy lets you find the total net energy gain which you then compare with the cost of the facility to find economic viability. Roughly, [ (Fusion energy) * (1 + 1/Q) * (conversion efficiency) - (Total energy use by facility) ] / (cost per hour of operation) = energy per dollar.
There are other ways you can calculate that same number, but they require a lot more details.
Because she still gives good statistical overviews/analysis.
But I could be wrong this particular video I haven't seen yet.
The many "that's another story" caveats are important because there are many ways in which the interaction between markets and governments can cause bad outcomes; far too many to be covered in a 20 minute video.
I'd like to hear just one example of a society which does not have capitalism (as defined by the ability to risk capital in hopes of future profits) which is a nice place to live.
In short, your definition of capitalism seems extraordinarily deficient.
To attempt to get a little closer:
Capitalism is the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort.
Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices, but instead those who have inherited power, acquired through past violence, get to decide on the application of resources and cream off the benefits of the workers whom they have used to action their (the Capitalists) chosen activities.
Many actions (in a just society) would have been chosen in any case, things like delivery of water to each person; now the Capitalist gets to make delivery of water something for which they claim the right to profit from, ultimately extracting worth from the inherent nature of people's needs.
> Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices...
There is nothing about capitalism which prevents this from occuring. People can be allowed to invest while simultaneously participating in a democracy which elects to provide all sorts of publicly funded goods and services.
What has never existed (to the best of my knowledge) is a society which prevents "the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort," which is not also a terrible place to live.
That said capitalism is a state enforced system, which is protected with violence. Every attempt to topple the system and provide an alternative has been met with violence by the state, and every successful revolutions have been through violence. It is hardly a scientifically pristine environment to provide a fair comparison of alternatives, is it?
There will come a time in human history where capitalism is a thing of the past, and only then will we have the tools to judge alternatives. As of now, we can clearly see that early attempts at capitalism were horrible, and resulted in travesties for the common working population. This is the same story of any system that preceded it. I have a feeling future peoples will largely blame the current system for the climate crisis, and deem it equally bad—if not worse—than our historic alternatives.
> That said capitalism is a state enforced system, which is protected with violence.
As opposed to the hands-off, peaceful Soviet state which flourished without horrible capitalism.
My observation about the future is merely historical, not a prediction. Forever is a long time, and there is 0 chance that capitalism will be the dominant system for the remainder of human history. There are many systems of governments which exist in the past which we today look on favorably. However there has been no world—or even regional—dominating economic system enforced with violence which has survived the scrutiny of history. They all suck, though some more then other.
It is arrogant to think that capitalism will be any different, especially as we are now facing a potentially societal collapsing climate crisis which our economic system is not handling well, and the political class is reluctant to act on fearing damage to this very system.
Even in the short history of capitalism, history still does not look kindly on earlier attempts at the same system. The Laissez Faire capitalism of the late 19th and early 20th century yielded a series of depressions, and treated workers horribly. Attempts to reform the system yielded the great depression. It was only through severe regulations of Keynesian economics where this system had some lasting success, but this success was not to last as deregulation of neoliberalism took over. History doesn’t even look kindly on Reaganomics which isn’t even a 50 year old system.
My prediction about the future is just about as plausible as someone looking at the Sun in the post Galilean heleocentric universe, and predicting that perhaps one day humanity will discover that the Sun isn’t at the center of the universe either.
The point of the video was to give a basic explanation of completely uncontroversial concepts covered in an economics 101 class.
Econ 101 is taught to people, and not "non capitalist systems that doesn't have money 101" because the experts have studied the topic extensively and the conclusions in her video are uncontroversial.
Of course she is going to listen to the experts on how economics works.
No it did not. Market economy combined with the positive feedback loop between science and productivity were the key components. They helped bring about prosperity for at least several thousand years. Recent fad of factory owner(s) hiring other people, paying them wages and skimming the difference is actually a net drag.
> I'd like to hear just one example of a society which does not have capitalism (as defined by the ability to risk capital in hopes of future profits) which is a nice place to live.
And if there is none because our societies co-evolved and at the present moment in history it is the universally dominant economical and political model? You sound like a person who would ask for an example of a non-feudal state in medieval Europe to prove the point that having a king is the best arrangement ever.
You can risk something else than capital ("time of people who do what I tell them to"), for example your own time. With that, everyone can risk something important to them to try to build something better and we don't even need a special social class to bravely take on the risk ("of wasting time of people who have to listen to them or starve"). Wooooot?!
Maybe we would have some such societies, if fascists in Europe and then fascists in US did not take great care to crush them.
http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/0.html
Or maybe, instead of that that, those other societies just sucked.
Given that lots of societies have attempted and failed at non capitalist systems, how about instead of inventing excuses we can just use that as evidence that those other non capitalist systems are bad.
This kind of misunderstanding of the science is suspect when coming from a scientist famous for her skeptical take in her own field. Her sorta dismissal of ROGD is also suspect, because she seems to sorta believe the anecdotal “evidence” for it why also noting the lacking of actual evidence. This is the opposite of the kind of skeptical take she is known for. I call it suspect because here we have a social issue surrounding a minority where she flips her philosophy. I wonder why she did that.
The only concern she mentioned was a statistical point of a few more girls potentially being / having a little bit too much rogd.
There are no evidence for ROGD other than very bad and highly suspicious anecdotal evidence. There isn’t even a statistical evidence for it. A scientist would know that, and would quickly dismiss this theory and all the talking points of those advocating for it.
btw. she raised more “concerns” than just the population skew in favor of trans people assigned female at birth—which btw. is not a concern, but at most a curiosity. She also had concerns about the efficacy and the long term health affects of gender affirming care. The concerns were without merit, and a true scientist with a neutral take would not find the long term health impacts “concerning” given the evidence we have, and as for the efficacy... well... see my parent post.
What is reasonable is to assume that people are pushing these theories (or hypotheses) because they have an agenda. What ROGD is stating is basically that transgender people are contagious. This is a very disgusting thing to believe so they decorate it with science sounding terms and provide compelling—and suspicious—anecdotes to support it. This isn’t science and it is definitely not reasonable. I’m gonna call it what it is, this is hate speech, and it is not reasonable by any definition of that word (not even political convenience).
There is significant literature on functioning perpetual motion machines in physics as well. If you were to read it and report on it, that would make your reporting shit.
Well, no, you absolutely need some data, axioms, or facts to support your thoughts, too. Pure thought only works for mathematics and some areas of philosophy.
So, please - what are some of the facts from which that few minutes thought would proceed? Is it the case that there is a hard upper-limit on the range (imposed by constraints in battery technology), or that some road surfaces are unsuitable for EVs, or that electric engines are unsuitable for some chassis types (e.g. heavy haulage), or...?
Distance -- electric cars promote building places inefficiently. The car and the commute are synonymous
Drop the constraint of needing cars, and you can make much better solutions
Adoption of each isn't exclusive of the other, so that's irrelevant.
> Distance -- electric cars promote building places inefficiently
No, they don't, as a replacement for ICE vehicles. If anything, they promote building things more efficiently.
> Drop the constraint of needing cars, and you can make much better solutions
Replacing some share of ICE cars with electric cars does not require active maintenance of a constraint of needing cars. Reconfiguring cities to not need cars is a slower process than replacing what cars are used, so there is a role for the latter even if the former is the main long-term solution (and even if it is and reduces the scope of pervasiveness of the need for cars, it is unlikely to replace all need.)
> “EVs,” notes King, “pull an invisible trailer filled with required major lifestyle changes that the public is not yet aware of.” > > When it does, do not expect the public to acquiesce quietly.
To electrify any significant proportion of ICEs you will need to massively ramp up mining in developing countries. This is going to crush their populations like a meat grinder at the same time that it blights their ecologies with the after-effects of mining. It's a new colonialism with a race to acquire resources for EVs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ev-cob...
You only need a little thought to see that each increment of electric vehicle adoption shifts the market context and incentives away from “as things stand today” in a way which makes your claim, to the extent its true as written, irrelevant in practice.
That... sure is an interesting position to take.
I've been learning a lot of quantum physics and she's a mixed bag. On the one hand, most people's (and even textbooks') understanding of quantum observation and the quantum eraser experiment are incorrect, and Sabine is one of the few voices on Youtube that calls them out instead of joins them, which is why I suspect why she is so popular.
On the other hand, she embraces the very niche superdeterminism hypothesis. This hypothesis basically says that cause and effect and reversed for any Bell's Inequality related experiment in that using uncorrelated data as inputs into the experiment causes them to become correlated because you used them for the experiment. In other words, she believes that the universe is puppeteering Bell's Inequality experiments so that we can't trust results from those experiments. This has serious issues related to non-falsifiability, where we could technically do this with any experiment we don't like the results of.
However, that's not even the worst part of it. The worst part is that she does not explain her niche viewpoints in her videos. If any of the more popular hypotheses about entanglement are correct, then Einstein's hidden variables hypothesis where entanglement acts like a pair of gloves will be disproven. However, in her videos about entanglement, she constantly refers to entanglement acting like a pair of gloves like it is a fact, because her niche viewpoint is the single viewpoint where it is not disproven.
Why the double standard?
It's a bigger shame most students aren't taught that Copenhagen is not the only interpretation consistent with experiment and are often thought it as absolute truth.
Let's not get into the compatibility with free will philosophical issues, because that'd need physics to recognize metaphysics once more.
That freedom is what needs to be emphasized because a lot of paradoxes in one interpretation are not in another because they basically boil down to your choice of metaphysical assumptions about the universe.
None of them alter the calculations or observables (so far) which is why saying one is more practical than the other is missing the point.
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/the-fantasy-behind-sabine...
I believe this criticism implicitly assumes realism, which is another metaphysical assumption that is not trivial in the light of Bell-style results. It's circular in that way, like a lot of surface critique of superdeterminism (which I don't particularly like and don't subscribe to).
Confusing metaphysics and physics is a real issue here.
She also often refers back to where she was "wrong" about things in the past, mostly where she said one thing, further research came out and she updated her takes based on it.
here's more:
https://github.com/localjo/awesome-text-only-news
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313232
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17787816
I like the quote in the article from Patricia Rankin: "[challenging] people's assumptions ... because that's really what science is all about."
I have much more respect for someone who disagrees with me, with whom I can discuss differences reasonably, than with someone who agrees with me, but does so dogmatically. The latter is unfortunately more common than the former, and I think that's why Sabine holds a special place in my heart.
Generally, she is careful to point out when she is voicing views based on her own preferences, speculating about things that have no observational data to back them up or giving personal hot-takes on various topics.
For everything else, aka, the things she accepts provisionally as true, she appears to favor the least speculative among current solutions/theories/approaches in physics. Much of her popular work is focused on critiques of the many speculative musings of physicists who, in her opinion, have moved into a kind of post-science research program.
Her acceptance/popularizing of the standard model and of general relativity as humanity's current best models of the universe indicate that her viewpoints tend to be highly conservative and evidence-based.
Again, most (all?) of her musings about things that might be true or things that might be interesting directions for research are clearly called out as such.
The video I saw at the time is "Why is quantum mechanics weird? The bomb experiment" where she describes entanglement as a photo being torn in half and then sent apart, and then vaguely says that it is a "stronger" correlation than that.
On looking for that video though, I watched "What did Einstein mean by “Spooky Action at a Distance"?", where she describes things a bit more thoroughly with socks, where she explains that the correlations were created locally but when you measure the one particle on one side the other particle's wave function changes. She then goes on to actually explain that the sock explanation does not work as it does not sufficiently create strong correlations, which I think is a much better explanation
Looking back, I think I've learned a lot more about quantum physics since I last watched her videos. Back then, I think I saw her repeated use of explaining entanglement as a "stronger correlation" to be a cop out. Now that I've dove into the actual Bell Inequality experiment and understand how it works, I actually quite like that description as a placeholder for a very strange phenomenon that none of us really understand yet. Still, I do think she should have clarified just a bit better on the first video I mentioned, but I guess when you make lots of videos on one of the most complicated topics of all time it's rather easy to omit a crucial detail here or there.
https://onbeing.org/blog/albert-einsteins-essay-on-racial-bi...
Depending on whether the person being challenged is a scientist, and the specific assumption/"fact".
Has no bearing whatsoever.
Sometimes people start thinking that because they got successful in one area it gives them blanket check to talk about everything. Usually, the end result is they greatly overestimate their capability.
This is how many youtube channels die. The authors think they exhausted the topic and are looking to talk about other stuff and they start alienating their fan base because not only they are much less knowledgeable about those other topics, but also because the fan base just did not expect/appreciate those other topics. They came here because they liked the original videos and now the channel became something else which is unlikely to be what they wanted.
As for Sabine, I watched some of her videos on quantum physics and they were very interesting. Then I stumbled on one or two newer videos on other topics she started adding later and they were jarring, on the verge of misinformation/pseudoscience.
Yeah one was 5G. I did not like she didn’t cut off speculation and stopped watching her videos afterwards. But ultimately she is correct - there just isn’t evidence that microwave heating is safe. I wanna roll my eyes as much as next guy, but need to respect objective reporting.
Just because a 5G antenna can heat up humans around it by 0.00001C (I am guessing at the number of zeroes here), is in no way a valid argument that it is bad for us. A study would have to specifically link this kind of microwave radiation to some ill effects, at the dose of 5G installations in use today. As of now, no such study exists.
Engineerguy 1.4 million Minutephysics 5.6 million PBS Spacetime 2.94 million Periodic Videos 1.59 million Veratasium 14.2 million
Can you cite an example?
For example, a scientist who starts talking about politics is usually well outside his/her area of competence. A scientific method does not seem to lend itself to solving political problems.
If a scientist who is an expert in one field decides to make videos on other fields, they are not applying the scientific method, they are doing the same thing any YouTuber does.
Now what it should do is not speaking about it with authority. If you are speaking in a formal setting on something you either need to disclose you are not an expert or not speak on the matter, if you are not an expert.
Where she really gets into trouble is farther out into the social sciences. I think she should be much more careful there. I don't want her to stop, I just want her to be more careful!
An interesting example is one of her two videos on transgenderism. It had an absolutely appalling both-sidesing intro that literally called people who crazy who are just concerned about suicide rates among trans people. The contents of the video were actually pretty reasonable, although she messed up a few key interpretations so that some parts ended up being misleading. I don't think she's transphobic, but on an issue like this I think a bit more care needs to be taken.
More recently she had a piece on capitalism that was incredibly anemic. I think she tried to bite off more than she could chew (for a 20 minute video) and so she kind of missed the entire "what are the problems" side of the topic, even while laying out some reubttals to common statements. I feel like she'd have done better than that on a more close-to-home topic.
(Her physics videos are of course fantastic.)
Now, making videos on topics outside of your expertise? That's a dangerous minefield, but there are ways to approach it.
For example, there's whole youtube channels to taking on challenges and learning new stuff.
This was what she actually said in the introduction to that video:
"Should transgender teens transition? This rather personal question occupies a prominent place in the American culture war. One the one side you have people claiming that it’s a socially contagious fad among the brainwashed woke who want to mutilate your innocent children. On the other side there are those saying that it’s saving the lives of minorities who’ve been forced to stay in the closet for too long. And then there are normal people, like you and I, who think both sides are crazy and could someone please summarise the facts in simple words, which is what I’m here for. So what’s going on?"
What's objectionable about that? Sounds quite fair to me.
By work, I mean the surgical procedures do not produce body parts that reliably perform the intended function. In one case, the hole closes. In the other, the arm-sausage rots off.
This comment section is full of people afraid of their HR departments, not people considering the actual outcome of the procedures.
I think this fragment speaks for itself. It is not "crazy" to care about suicide rates or suicidal ideation. It is "crazy" to not care about that.
edit: Your response has no actual content in it.
No matter what the topic, those at either end of strongly polarised collections of views do tend to believe that they are correct and everyone else is wrong and informed.
The fact that both sides think they're correct has absolutely no bearing on who is actually correct. For that we must turn to evidence. The evidence in favor of trans healthcare and identities is overwhelming, and the evidence presented by the other side is laced with non-evidenced religious beliefs like "someone being cis and unhappy is a better outcome for society than someone being trans and happy".
Indeed, your comments imply that you are fully immersed in this illusion and are unlikely to accept any suggestion to the contrary.
I don’t see any evidence that mental health in the transgender or general population has actually improved, I’ve seen numbers suggesting societal wide mental health is on the decline, and I have seen a pretty large increase in the absolute numbers of people who say their gender dysphoria makes them suicidal. I can find research that suggests transgender people who receive more medical treatment and societal acceptance are less suicidal than those who do not, but that doesn’t actually demonstrate that trans acceptance will lead to less suicidality and better mental health at the societal level. Or even really at the individual level, since correlation is not causation.
On top of all that, most past research of this sort is potentially non-reproducible at this point because the trans population has expanded so rapidly. Three times as many trans men started visiting clinics in the course of a decade. So the research will have to be done all over again to discount this possibility but this has not been done.
So I don’t know, I’m with Hossenfelder and her radical centrism because I think nobody is actually acting scientifically re: trans people and they’re just playing it by ear. What I detest is the unwarranted certainty and lack of scepticism people have on this topic; People are just guessing and are acting like they are not.
The idea that social acceptance of transness is causing more people to identify as trans is is not entirely without merit, but needs to be thought about critically. It is true that people who have low-key gender dysphoria would treat it with increased salience if they became more aware that trans people exist, but that is very clearly a good thing. Society should generally allow people to be true and happy to their selves.
Moreover, while the general direction of social progress has been encouraging, the magnitude of it has been relatively small. We have a very long way to go before we can even begin to control for social stigma as a factor in trans suicidality rates. This last point is evidenced by comments in this very thread.
I mean, this is literally true, and doesn't sound crazy at all. Why is she saying that normal people think it's crazy? That's not the vibe I get from the general population, who are broadly in support of gender-affirming care. There's a relatively small, very loud contingent on the "mutilating the children" side of things and yeah, some of them sound a little crazy to me (although I suspect most are just uninformed or confused -- or using trans people as a political football, and know exactly what they're doing.) Most people either a) don't give a shit or b) have empathy for people who experience gender dysphoria.
This is classic both-sides-ism, equating two things as "equally wrong" or "equally right" that are pretty obviously on different footings.
Some things seem prima facie to be true, but turn out not to be consistent with the rest of our scientific understanding.
If we're to be thorough then we should not just assume knowledge, we should put it to the test. This is scientific IMO.
Did you assume that challenging an assumption meant opposing it?
I think the phrase 'challenging an assumption' leaves a bad taste in some people's mouth due to negative associations. I have definitely seen people use 'challenging assumptions' as a shield for their argument or actions when it was not justified. Or worse be upset when the phrase does not get people to back their idea or actions.
Questioning, reexamining, challenging what have you is important in scientific progress. 'challenging assumptions', 'challenging the establishment', and probably other similar phrases I am not familiar with have been used conspiracy theorists and pseudoscientists and the association has tainted the phrase leaving a bad taste in some people's month.
Do they? That's not what I've seen. The criticism of her most recent video "Capitalism is good, let me explain" [1] is surprisingly concrete and substantive for a subject that usually degrades into a vitriolic dunk-fest within seconds. In particular, the popular reply videos [2] and [3] raise the criticism that:
* She opens with the "money emerged to fix barter" origin story, which fell out of favor a while ago [2]
* The focus on money as opposed to credit and ownership isn't just ahistorical, it avoids the core of what is usually meant by "capitalism" [2]
* She handwaives the problems of the industrial revolutions and the capitalism critic by saying "that's another story." Is it? [2]
* She botched the Penicillin example [3]
* Her discussion on externalities absentmindedly missed the problems with positive externalities [2]
* She attributes successes to markets and failures to regulation without justifying why [2]
... and more. Regardless of what you think about the underlying debate or whether you agree with these points, it seems pretty clear to me that they are substantive. Not only that, a few of them pretty clearly seem to be the result of an expert leaving their lane and speaking authoritatively on a subject they don't have deep knowledge of. Do you disagree?
[1] SH Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRPHp2EjNR8
[2] Reply 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfGgBfpD-Ao
[3] Reply 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7XAxiJGJdg
Instead of questioning her as a scientist, rather ask your self, why she applies this non-scrutinizing philosophy to the field of economics and sociology (as well as health care; see video about gender affirming care), while she so well known and successful for her extreme skeptical takes on the field of her expertise. Like she must have a personal reason—not a scientific one—for this dissonance.
It's possible that she's a great scientist, I don't know enough physics to tell whether there is a dissonance or whether it's all snake oil. My skepticism comes from seeing such (conscious or not) intellectual dishonesty on her part
This is a misrepresentation of Sabine's video. It should be obvious from the generic contemporary products that she chose that she wasn't talking about the history of money, but of course anti-capitalists can't help but smugly inject the ideas of their favorite pop-anthropologist everywhere they can.
A gift economy may work in a tribe 100,000 years ago, but most of the goods and services that we rely on today comes from strangers who won't give you anything unless if you give them something that they consider at least equivalent in return. Sabine's point is that money is the most efficient medium of exchange for this sort of equivalent exchange.
I didn't bother to investigate most of the other criticisms, but I feel like they're going to be just as bad faith. For example, the penicillin video criticizes Sabine because her 1 minute history of penicillin wasn't as nuanced as a 20 minute explanation of the history of penicillin. Fair enough, and I did find the video interesting. However, judging that the title of the video is "Capitalism would've killed penicillin", I doubt author has the same standards of nuance towards people she agrees with.
What people are criticizing that the video isn’t well argued, and that even the only evidence she gives which favors her main thesis isn’t—and doesn’t even directly support it might I add—isn’t even true.
Either way it was a bad video, and not at all to par with the scientific standard she sets in her previous work, in the field she is an expert at.
But there is another—much worse—assumption you made. Even if we conclude that industrialization only happened because of capitalism, and even if we conclude that industrialization and capitalism is what made penicillin useful, we still cannot conclude that capitalism is a good system. You run into the black swan problem here. Just because you can point to a single white swan, and even if you can point to a million white swans, this is no basis to conclude that all swans are white. Similarly, even if all your other assumptions are correct, your anecdote about penicillin is not a conclusive about the quality of the system.
This is why scientists like Sabine Hossenfelder usually only take anecdotes at face value, and use them only as hints to justify further research. For some reason Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t do that when she concludes that capitalism is a good system. I wonder why.
I'm not talking about countries. I'm talking about industrialization in general. It is less of an accomplishment to replicate an innovation that you already know works. Obviously, Marx who never lived to see any communist revolutions, wasn't talking about countries either.
> You run into the black swan problem here.
Saying "capitalism is the best system ever" is like saying there are no black swans. Saying capitalism is "good" merely requires the existence of a large number of white swans, or at best more white swans than black swans.
I don’t follow the logic here.
You should come into this knowing that you have a bias towards favoring capitalism, as you are not only living within that system but very likely benefiting heavily from it. You should also come into this knowing that you have a very limited scope to weigh alternatives, as you don’t have much real world data, and all historical data is heavily tainted with both your biases, as well as the filtered through lenses of your current system.
Imagine your self to be an astrophysicist, this is akin trying to compare our sun to a star that is on the other side of the galaxy directly behind the sun, without having many instruments or even a telescope to observe the latter. Whenever you try to look at that star, 99.9999% of all the light you see is coming from our sun, not that star, and you have to account for that when comparing them.
Saying that capitalism is good and backing it up with a few stories, also ignores all the stories which demonstrates that capitalism is bad. For every story of your penicillin—which isn’t even that clear cut, but let’s ignore that—there are stories like the Bhopal disaster, the climate disaster, of wage theft, of poverty and exploitation, of people dying of preventable and curable diseases, etc. Those are the black swans in the system, and they are all over the place. People arguing that capitalism is good are choosing to ignore these stories, and focus on the penicillin.
Saying that “capitalism is good” based on observing white swans, should follow with “capitalism is bad” based on observing the black swans. A scientist like Sabine Hossenfelder should know better.
She states that she doesn't have the proper knowledge of economics to comment on other parts, but then comments on the errors in the subject matter she does know enough to comment on.
In the process she has diverted from topics she knows to scientific areas where she has at best a undergraduate level understanding but still talks like she is a subject expert and always taking a contrarian stance. After seeing videos where I have significant expertise where she was clearly wrong (and again peddling the "anti-establishment" angle) I stopped watching. That she is now making videos about capitalism and other social science topics just illustrates the point.
A good example of this was on her video on free will, she made the argument that free will does not exist because human brains operate on principles that are deterministic. She followed that conclusion with a tirade on climate change and how people should stop trying to build the “political will” to do something on climate change, because free will does not exist. I have to wonder what the reasoning behind including that in a video was. It absolutely alienates anyone working on building coalitions for climate solutions, and she didn’t even need to bring up the topic to make her point.
You could say that she could be making that point to curry some favor with people who do not believe in climate change and would like to see content by a scientist, with credentials, indicating skepticism. However, she has videos that talk about the drivers behind climate change in detail that are in line with the scientific consensus on the issue. It makes zero sense to me from a messaging stand point why she takes contrarian views on social issues.
I can appreciate the scientists who stay out of the limelight because, while many are smart, not all are “media trained” and are wise enough to know it. Scientists who drift into fame, but are not equipped to navigate it, are controlled by the whims of the public they serve.
My perception was that she thought she was getting pushback from climate groups when she said that free will didn’t exist, and that this groups were effectively accusing her of being opposed to climate action, on the basis of of them thinking their free will was the only way to fix climate change.
These are however very different things, and "science reporter" is something where my expectations in general — not just her, everyone doing this — is that at best and when trying sincerely and with skill, they will still misunderstand and misrepresent as per a game of telephone.
This means I do still listen to what she has to say "out of her lane", but I don't rank it as highly as her videos in her own domain of expertise, instead treating them more like a Tom Scott video. (Tom, if you're reading this, that's still a decent standard).
I do appreciate that she explained how she does the research for these: https://youtu.be/nD6hS8WV3ic?si=raJ3UySkXZOgZfIn
She's no better than any YouTuber looking for clicks and monetization.
(This is in the site guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
The original submitted title (from NPR) was "She got famous on YouTube. Now it helps fund her research in quantum gravity".
I'd pinged HN mods about this, though dang ended up dong a wholesale replacement rather than s/She/Sabine Hossenfelder/.
"Click here to know who this _woman_ is who did something so great"... As if being a woman, to the author and their target readers, supersedes in importance what the person actually achieved or had to say.
It's sad and disappointing thatnshe has started using her credibility in one field to make propogandaish videos on other subject she either ignores or is lying to profit off the terf grift.
It takes away from her well earned credibility in her field of expertise.
You have to get specific if you want to convince anyone.
Perhaps not as many people self-identify as "TERFs" now that the term is widely viewed negatively, but as of a few years ago there were several subreddits on reddit where people identified themselves as TERFs (I'm not sure whether these subreddits still exist).
However, the prevailing view on these subreddits was that all men are inherently poisoned by testosterone and dangerous.
For this reason, I'm not sure it's actually a "thoughtful middle ground" as much as you might think.
One person who I feel exemplifies the sensible middle ground here is JK Rowling. She wrote a very thoughtful essay on this topic which I think is well worth reading, if you haven't already: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-....
One of her recurring points is that physicists get to sort of make stuff up for their own gain now, because the public (and grant institutions, politicians etc) have become very interested in the field while being mostly illiterate in it. But she does this as well. Lay people aren't fit to judge whether eg the sampling algorithms used at the LHC detector are laughably stupid, nor compact dimensions of space, inflation, etc.
More generally, I don't like the "stay in your lane" opinion. To more forward as a society, we need _more_ interdisciplinary work, not less. Mathematicians need to work with engineers and architects, psychologists with economicists, etc.
Of course, let's call out bad science or bias, but let's not ignore valuable insights because they came from the wrong lane.
I like her videos because I'm generally curious what a fairly unbiased intelligent person thinks about trans issues, economics, etc. Even if I don't agree with them on everything, not should you.
She also doesn't seem particularly unbiased to me. Like, I don't think one can ever be unbiased, but someone with a lot of knowledge about a subject can do a good job of identifying the biases they have in that area and try and approach things more objectively, or at least indicate where they're speaking for themselves and where they're describing beliefs in the field. For example, I'm a frontend developer with a bunch of biases for certain technologies and styles of development, because those are the ones I'm used to and invested in. But I know the field well enough to - I hope - be able to recognise those biases and tell you that you don't need SolidJS for your next project, even though I think it's really cool and want more people to get involved there.
Rather, Hossenfelder feels like she just doesn't know what her biases are in the first place, at least when discussing something like economics. Based on your comment, I'm sure that's not true for the subjects that she is knowledgeable in - you bring up particle physics as an example of an area where she knows her opinions aren't necessarily standard. But in the video I watched, she presented herself as this neutral figure telling you only the facts, and then said things that ranged from being out-of-date or untrue, to things that didn't even really make much sense.
I agree with you that "stay in your lane" is a bad counter to these sorts of videos, because collaboration between fields is good. But good collaboration takes a lot of humility - you need to come to the table knowing that you know almost nothing about the other field, and accepting that you're going to have to learn a lot of stuff. At least from the stuff I've watched, I don't get the impression that Hossenfelder has put the work in to understand what she doesn't understand. And that, to me, is pretty much the definition of wilful ignorance - she knows she is not an expert in this field, but she doesn't seem to want to put the effort in to get the opinions and feedback from real experts. Instead, she's assumed her own knowledge is enough.
She is biased in favor of what the experts say on a topic.
Her video was a bog standard explanation of topics that are covered in econ 101. They were completely uncontroversial.
Yes, the profession of economics, which are the experts on the topic, are all strongly biased in favor of the scientific opinion which is that economics is real and that capitalism is good.
Not because I think they're accurate, or fully informed, or anything like that.
But because usually they're a decent attempt at grokking important information from another field, which is a challenge we face nowadays in this sea of conflicting information about everything.
When she gets something wrong, it's another indicator of how even a trained scientist can still make mistakes in these interpretations, and so brings me to a more realistic expectation of what myself, or any other person, could do on their own.
Her latest video on how to do your own research puts this challenge in perspective.