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0 pointsvanderZwan7y ago0 comments

This kind of reminds me of what Jeff Hawkins once claimed was the issue with making sense of how the brain works:

> So why don't we have a good theory of brains? People have been working on it for 100 years. Let's first take a look at what normal science looks like. This is normal science. Normal science is a nice balance between theory and experimentalists. The theorist guy says, "I think this is what's going on," the experimentalist says, "You're wrong." It goes back and forth, this works in physics, this in geology.

> But if this is normal science, what does neuroscience look like? This is what neuroscience looks like. We have this mountain of data, which is anatomy, physiology and behavior. You can't imagine how much detail we know about brains. There were 28,000 people who went to the neuroscience conference this year, and every one of them is doing research in brains. A lot of data, but no theory. There's a little wimpy box on top there.

Not that physics has no theories, but I dropped out of studying physics myself over a decade ago, and at that time it felt a lot like the balance in physics has shifted towards having to measure and process disproportionate amounts of data with so much precision that it has to be automated, or like you said do a ton of really complicated modelling. It feels a bit "stuck" that way.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hawkins_on_how_brain_science_...

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majewsky7y ago

I think you're seeing this in physics because, in terms of experimental accessibility, the low-hanging fruit are mostly picked.

Most parts of the Standard Model are verified to 5σ at all energy levels that are accessible to us in everyday life and in contemporary particle accelerators, so it's increasingly unlikely that we've missed any obvious mechanisms.

If we're going to find some completely new physics (in the same way that quantum theory and relativity theory were completely new at the turn of the 20th century), it's probably going to be at energy levels that contemporary particle accelerators cannot yet explore.

EDIT: That's not to say that we know everything that is to know about the accessible energy levels. There's so much in our theory that's yet unexplained, e.g. for all I know, we still don't have any idea why time works the way it does.

Anon847y ago

> Not that physics has no theories, but I dropped out of studying physics myself over a decade ago, and at that time it felt a lot like the balance in physics has shifted towards having to measure and process disproportionate amounts of data with so much precision that has to be automated, or like you said do a ton of really complicated modelling. It feels a bit "stuck" that way.

The reason for is just how damn good all the Physics Theory is. People keep having to look closer and closer to try to find a place, any place, where the theory "fails" (in a sufficiently spectacular fashion) hoping that that might point the way to new phenomena and new theory. There's a giant multibillion dollar hole on the ground in Switzerland who's main purpose was to find a chink in the armor of HEP or help point the way to new theories. It failed spectacularly, but they're already talking about building a bigger one :)

vanderZwanOP7y ago

> The reason for is just how damn good all the Physics Theory is.

> (majewski's comment below) I think you're seeing this in physics because, in terms of experimental accessibility, the low-hanging fruit are mostly picked.

I mean, yes and no. The Standard Model is amazing. But I think we're also kind of focused too much on the Big Questions, and in the arena of the not-so-big questions there are still a ton of gaps and missing insights.

Perhaps in the not-so-big questions, most of the low-hanging fruit may appear to be picked as well, but I suspect that is more a kind of myopia that can be solved by collaborating outside of our field.

Whenever I see an article these days about physics that really excites me, it tends to be a story where one or more physicists got excited about a seemingly small question, or ate a bit of humble pie and joined forces with chemists, biologists or some other field, and or both, and that working it out turned out to bring far-reaching consequences and novel insights. Same with maths, really.

I'm aware this is completely personal of course, and that there is a likely bias in that this kind of research tends to be more accessible and thus more fun to read for me, but still.

tericho7y ago

> It failed spectacularly, but they're already talking about building a bigger one

Awww it isn't that bad. They found the Higgs and at least verified we need to look at higher energy levels to find anything new.

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