Many that are worth listening to are controversial. But many that are controversial are not worth listening to. Which is which is a hard question to answer :)
yes, but this means that if you divide people into those with controversial opinions, and those without, you should direct 100% of your listening to the first group. at some point you will have to be more selective than that, but that's clearly the first step
You can't make that division. Controversialness is not binary. Almost every researcher has a few controversial ideas, that's just natural when trying to push the envelope. Unfortunately, some like to be controversial for the sake of being controversial, and some are so far out there that it would be a waste of time to listen to them.
having controversial ideas is unavoidable when you think, and sure, you can have more or less of them. but if you have none then you're not thinking and there's no benefit in listening to you
Unless I misunderstood you, you're saying that every undergrad textbook is not worth reading, which cannot be right. Are you assuming everyone is already aware of all the uncontroversial opinions?
I listened to many uncontroversial opinions in undergrad and grad school, and it was well worth it because they were all new to me. It's like Picasso said: you need to know the rules before you can break them. Learn the uncontroversial status quo first, then listen to the uncontroversial stuff or come up with your own. Skipping the uncontroversial would be a mistake.
you have a point. while biology textbooks might be controversial among creationists, and physics textbooks might be controversial among flat-earthers, in mainstream society the only thing controversial about them is the idea that they're worth devoting attention to
on the other hand, if the authors of the textbooks don't have any controversial ideas, they probably aren't qualified to write the textbooks and will fill them with their half-understood memories of what someone else told them, which is more likely than not false in the first place. (examples abound: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/01/16/1...) ideally you want the authors of your textbooks to habitually practice the kind of critical thinking that will enable them to avoid filling the textbooks with errors, and which also guarantees that they will have controversial opinions
case in point: you're a lot better off learning chemistry from linus pauling's physical chemistry than from 95% of current textbooks, both because it's better written and because it's better thought out and more carefully written. as far as i can tell, the book doesn't have any controversial opinions in it, but pauling notoriously did; at some point he became convinced megadoses of vitamin c were great for your health. i'm pretty sure he was wrong about that, but at the time it was controversial
clearly. ideally, in a field you don't know well, you would listen to only the uncontroversial opinions of people who also have controversial opinions, which you should ignore since you're not equipped to evaluate them
I said “many”, not all. There’s plenty of leeway to listen to established experts on boring things. You don’t have to be at the cutting edge of every single field, all the time. Nobody needs to listen to controversial opinions about the shape of the planet.
i've known a number of established experts in different fields, and they all had controversial opinions. sometimes not in the fields they were recognized in, but somewhere
She is a physicist who is not into string theory or dark matter, which is definitely more controversial of a position within the physics community than outside.
She also made a video on capitalism, which was politically controversial (obviously) but also made several blatantly, objectively wrong claims that were based on no research whatsoever (cough barter economy cough).
Most people have bad takes outside of their field of expertise. I haven't seen her video on capitalism, but honestly no matter how horrible it is, i doubt it would change my view on her videos on physics.
Nobody remotely agrees with the barter economy thing. She also completely omitted any mention of the political economy, while basically saying the solution to climate change is the political economy. Like, really, why does she think a carbon tax hasn't already been implemented? Political economy.
It's a good idea to not listen to Physicists talking about Economics, or Economists on Physics either.
An even better idea would be people not producing these "authoritative-seeming hot takes outside of their field of expertise" in the first place though.
The position is: quantum gravity might not be that big of a mysterious problem as most physicist make it out to be so they would rather ignore that prediction by Wetterich.
That's it, that's the entire position. I don't know, that's not a lot of substance to work with. I don't think it's a particular controversial stance. It does fit very well into her "I'm not like the other physicists" shtick, though.
> That's it, that's the entire position ... that's not a lot of substance
With reference to 2 specific papers, one by Weinberg, the other by Shaposhnikov and Wetterich; which she claims are overlooked; and the correct prediction in the second paper. Is that not a little more substance?
I don't think so. She's making a meta comment about those papers. Also, it feels like you're trying to get me to say something, but I don't know what. I already said that I don't think this position is particularly controversial. She thinks QG is less mysterious than other physicists believe, big deal.
I'm not trying to get you to say any particular thing; rather to engage with her claims (tell us how they're wrong if you like). I think we're now approaching that, so thank you for the commentary.
Why she’s controversial? That’s easy, it’s because she repeatedly pushes theories that are not widely accepted and disagrees vocally with the direction that she thinks physics is going in. This means that almost every discussion of her devolves into “wow she is a genius who is speaking truth to an entrenched and rigid field” versus “she’s a crank that just says unsubstantiated stuff for popularity”. This means that any comment section that involves her is somewhat tiresome, honestly.
Depending on what counts as “reasonable” (the bar seems rather high for you, as I’ve seen plenty of laymen-friendly explanations reasonable to me, e.g. the sibling comment), you may need to have at least been to a PhD program in high energy physics to understand the explanation.
“My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition there.” (Indira Gandhi)
I think I actually disagree with Gandhi here. Lol. There are a lot of people that do the work. The numbers of those who take the credit are much less. However, there is usually a power imbalance that yields to their ability to do so. So it's not about numbers. It's about power.
I think that's still consistent though. Lots of people try to take credit, only a few succeed. There is no shortage of work to be done, so there is enough room for everyone to do work.
True, unless you were a child hunted by cannibals during the Soviet era famines.
My observation is simply that giving credit to community-minded scientists costs nothing, but giving credit to psychopaths with the Kings ear can cost everyone their lives. There are always problems with a Meritocracy, as someone eventually has to define what has merit.
I am thankful to have goldfish crackers and jellybeans. Have a wonderful day =)
There are unfortunately a lot of hard workers who think credit magically appears when you are smart enough, valuable enough, etc., and that seeking appropriate credit is beneath their dignity. This attitude often nicely coincides with their complete lack of skill at sticking up for themselves.
There is no shame in shining a bit of light on your own value. Just don’t make it blazing sun pointing at a small accomplishment.
Sometimes the inability to stick up for themselves is less due to lack of skill than lack of a sense of value in themselves apart from their achievements.
Sure! But be intentional about the cost/benefit of opting out, rather than being pissed that the game-players are getting something you want.
Or find somewhere that operates differently. Some people hope that academia will be different and better than business. From what I can see it is often worse, but ymmv.
Sure. But I’ve seen a lot of resentment from people that they weren’t being treated well, resentment that was directed at others who should have done this, should have said that, etc. Sometimes that’s correct. But the armchair psychologist in me sees a lot of blame applied to others when it shouldn’t be.
There also shouldn’t be any shame in focusing on the work, if that’s what you want.
It follows that shining light on value should be a shared responsibility. It’s not just the creator that’s negatively impacted when we fail to do so. We all are.
Like most pop-sci, there's enough nuance to be found in the papers to tell its own story. I wasn't familiar with the Shaposhnikov and Wetterich paper, or asymptotic safety in general, and that 126 GeV Higgs mass prediction is the best I've seen. Their paper ends with
"Detecting the Higgs scalar with mass around 126 GeV at the LHC could give a strong hint for the absence of new physics influencing the running of the SM couplings between the Fermi and Planck/unification scales"
which seems surprisingly prescient after a decade of null results from the LHC. So why is this ignored in mainstream (aka not youtube) physics?
Well, a quick search on InspireHEP shows a 2019 paper [1] that adds on Shaposhnikov and Wtterich's. Of note is that an updated top mass value changes the Higgs mass prediction to 132 GeV, rather in tension with 125 GeV. (The paper then cleverly tries to extend the Standard Model to adjust the prediction back to the measured Higgs mass.) The original argument doesn't look like such a slam dunk anymore.
[1] Kwapisz, "Asymptotic safety, the Higgs mass and beyond the Standard Model physics"
You can calculate the error yourself for the most recent experimental values of the Higgs vacuum combined with the numerically calculated lambda from the paper linked above. You get a Higgs mass of 129.6 ± 1.0 GeV at two loops. That's more than three standard deviations from the current Higgs mass measurement. So Hossenfelder's video is - as often - some outdated half-truth. At the current level of research, these values very much suggest that there is more to the Standard Model than we know below the Planck energy. Her whole shtick of bashing CERN always falls apart when you look a bit closer, which is why she only does popsci now and noone in the field listens anymore.
That being said, I still believe that asymptotic safety in quantum gravity is a really cool idea and it's well worth pursuing. It deserves better than to be used as a hammer for people bashing other legit science.
Thanks. But weird… The previous error bounds on the top quark mass were grossly incorrect then? I mean a new estimate for the top quark mass, which is within the bounds of the previous estimate, shouldn’t make the predicted mass of the Higgs jump out of its error bounds, right?
The top quark mass itself was much, much more uncertain back then. The original paper referred to a mass with an error of 2.4GeV[1], while the latest direct measurements give an uncertainty of 0.3GeV[2]. That's an order of magnitude improvement thanks to new data collected by the LHC over the last decade. Also bear in mind that these uncertainties are given as standard deviations. Almost a third of all statistical measurements will fall outside one standard deviation, while less than 0.3% will exceed three standard deviations. Anything less than two standard deviations is usually considered not statistically significant in most scientific fields. The new value is not surprising at all in that light.
Thanks again. But in my mind that doesn’t really explain the Higgs mass prediction/estimate going from 126 +/- 2.2 GeV to 130 GeV… The reason you have that +/- 2.2 GeV is (among other things) that the mass of the top quark mass is uncertain, right? So how could a new measurement of the top quark mass make the prediction for the Higgs mass jump so far (unless the new top quark mass was wildly unexpected)?
I think you misunderstand the way the Higgs mass is calculated here. This is a highly non-linear relationship that is extremely sensitive to the top quark mass. In fact the second most massive quark would only contribute a fraction of one thousandth to the result (which is why it was ignored in the paper).
Consider this toy example: The mass m is calculated from some parameter like m~=b^4 and that parameter b was measured b=2.0±0.1. Using Gaussian error propagation, m would be 16±3.2. Now update the measurement of b just slightly to b=2.1±0.05. That 5% change in b changes the result to m=19.45±1.85 -> more than 20%, and with just one standard deviation of difference in b. The relationship is not linear.
That’s a clarifying example. But note that what happened with the Higgs mass was significantly more extreme than your example. All I’m saying is that I found that surprising. But you’re right, it could potentially be an extreme non-linearity that caused the surprise.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadI listened to many uncontroversial opinions in undergrad and grad school, and it was well worth it because they were all new to me. It's like Picasso said: you need to know the rules before you can break them. Learn the uncontroversial status quo first, then listen to the uncontroversial stuff or come up with your own. Skipping the uncontroversial would be a mistake.
on the other hand, if the authors of the textbooks don't have any controversial ideas, they probably aren't qualified to write the textbooks and will fill them with their half-understood memories of what someone else told them, which is more likely than not false in the first place. (examples abound: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/01/16/1...) ideally you want the authors of your textbooks to habitually practice the kind of critical thinking that will enable them to avoid filling the textbooks with errors, and which also guarantees that they will have controversial opinions
case in point: you're a lot better off learning chemistry from linus pauling's physical chemistry than from 95% of current textbooks, both because it's better written and because it's better thought out and more carefully written. as far as i can tell, the book doesn't have any controversial opinions in it, but pauling notoriously did; at some point he became convinced megadoses of vitamin c were great for your health. i'm pretty sure he was wrong about that, but at the time it was controversial
Non controversial people are worth listening to as well.
An even better idea would be people not producing these "authoritative-seeming hot takes outside of their field of expertise" in the first place though.
But how controversial is this one?
That's it, that's the entire position. I don't know, that's not a lot of substance to work with. I don't think it's a particular controversial stance. It does fit very well into her "I'm not like the other physicists" shtick, though.
With reference to 2 specific papers, one by Weinberg, the other by Shaposhnikov and Wetterich; which she claims are overlooked; and the correct prediction in the second paper. Is that not a little more substance?
At the same time people never really seem to be able to give a reasonable explanation as to why, beyond that they disagree with some of her takes.
From someone who happens to have been to one.
A prediction for the weight of Higgs boson particle using this, and it came true.
Sure this is shocking news, but hardly surprising given the shift in behavior of late. =)
And of course, many binary segmentations work well for most cases and fail in unusual cases that can generally ignored.
I'd explain why your informal fallacy is off-topic, but am rather focused on goldfish crackers and jellybeans at the moment.
Have a Gloriously wonderful day =)
Also, goldfish crackers... nom... nom... nom...
Have a great day, and no more hints. =P
People who take the credit are, almost by definition, competing with each other.
My observation is simply that giving credit to community-minded scientists costs nothing, but giving credit to psychopaths with the Kings ear can cost everyone their lives. There are always problems with a Meritocracy, as someone eventually has to define what has merit.
I am thankful to have goldfish crackers and jellybeans. Have a wonderful day =)
There is no shame in shining a bit of light on your own value. Just don’t make it blazing sun pointing at a small accomplishment.
Or find somewhere that operates differently. Some people hope that academia will be different and better than business. From what I can see it is often worse, but ymmv.
It follows that shining light on value should be a shared responsibility. It’s not just the creator that’s negatively impacted when we fail to do so. We all are.
Well, a quick search on InspireHEP shows a 2019 paper [1] that adds on Shaposhnikov and Wtterich's. Of note is that an updated top mass value changes the Higgs mass prediction to 132 GeV, rather in tension with 125 GeV. (The paper then cleverly tries to extend the Standard Model to adjust the prediction back to the measured Higgs mass.) The original argument doesn't look like such a slam dunk anymore.
[1] Kwapisz, "Asymptotic safety, the Higgs mass and beyond the Standard Model physics"
That being said, I still believe that asymptotic safety in quantum gravity is a really cool idea and it's well worth pursuing. It deserves better than to be used as a hammer for people bashing other legit science.
[1] https://pdg.lbl.gov/2008/tables/rpp2008-sum-quarks.pdf
[2] https://pdg.lbl.gov/2022/tables/rpp2022-sum-quarks.pdf
Consider this toy example: The mass m is calculated from some parameter like m~=b^4 and that parameter b was measured b=2.0±0.1. Using Gaussian error propagation, m would be 16±3.2. Now update the measurement of b just slightly to b=2.1±0.05. That 5% change in b changes the result to m=19.45±1.85 -> more than 20%, and with just one standard deviation of difference in b. The relationship is not linear.
Prediction: https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.1059 Review and discussion: https://arxiv.org/abs/1211.2231