Saw this the other day. While it's not saying anything too new or revolutionary - it's a nice highlight on the current state of things.

While new theories and experiments emerge all the time, nothing new seems to be coming from them

There is an overwhelming stagnation in many fields of science and study ever since the industrial revolution.

A lot of things changed for the worse at that point and unfortunately the only way to move forward in certain regards is to "pick up where they left off".

I dont know much about physics but I am an absolutely a nutcase for all "Natural Laws/Principals".

Such things really have lost the interest of humanity by and large, its like all the magics gone for most people sadly.

Not for me though, I intend to revitalize the study of these "Laws/Principals"!

This article makes it seem as if they're forgetting that their theories are not a direct description of reality, but only of a certain perspective on it.

In philosophy the idea that you cannot ever directly know the real world is old news.

Maybe modern physics has been so succesfull that they forgot about that.

What is it that brings comfort in the notion that to study our environment is impractical and unprosperous?

You literally just said that the study of physics is in itself a fallacy because no one can understand anything in the whole world.

I know what its like to reduce all arguments to that level, and speaking personally its like sticking a needle of Heroin in my arm every few hours.

After that I found out the hard way about how things have laws of cause and effect, physics often touches upon subjects such as cause and effect, and in fact what some might call physics, in terms of "what comes up must come down" hit me right in the face when I was the one who "came down".

So maybe part of the problem is even how we define a term like "physics" to begin with.

Also you start off by criticizing the notion of a "certain perspective of reality" but you provide no basis for an objective viewpoint thereof.

I would really appreciate some examples of objective viewpoints thereof because personally I am constantly on the hunt for all forms of objectivity.

No, i don't think studying physics is by definition a fallacy. Not as long as you can reproduce some results. You can say something about that objectively. About the context in wich these results where obtained. About what they mean in that given context.
So the math, for instance, has to be pretty solid then.

But even in math, uncertainty, undecidability, and incompleteness are recurring themes.

You could say that in math, your perspective is also leading the way and almost by definition limiting you in most cases. But in logic and math, this perspective is simply given with a set of axioms or rules. So it is always perfectly reproducible: If you accept these rules, then this must always be the outcome.

But there are limits. You can never go beyond the boundaries of the rules. But maybe the rules are incomplete. A result of this is that you can never prove the consistancy of a logical system, within that system itself. So for instance, with the math and logic we currently have, we cannot build an AI that can prove of itself, that it is right about something, that can prove it's own consistency.

It is undecided yet btw, if we, humans, can. Normally you would need an endlessly expanding set of rules to be able to do it.

you said that the theories are only a perception and contain no objectivity, also that you cannot ever directly understand the real world.

to me, personally I would consider it a fallacy to explore/study something under the belief that its not understandable and that no perception of it is ever objective.

to me thats more what I would call playing a guessing question and answer game, where you guess both the question and the answer.

maybe its just a misunderstanding of the definition of fallacy in the manner which I am using it though which is : "an often plausible argument using false or invalid inference".

by that definition if you claim that philosophy reveals the truth which all study of the world is impossible for the reasons stated above it would indeed be a fallacy to claim to have any knowledge of the world.



The only rules we can register as existing beyond a shadow of a doubt are those which can be
shown as guaranteed by the scientific method without any margin for outliers unless it is a margin which reaches a microscopic percentage of the total experimentation on which we draw our conclusions from.

As you just said math has its own set of situations which are outliers that go "against the rules" but we can measure the significance of these things and in fact we must measure it before concluding how stable things are or not.

The point is thus, that many things which are objectively observable and reproducible and applicable can and have been documented. Such things are facts and do not fall short just because of a margin of .00000000000000000000000001% of instances where the "rule" is broken.

This is the manner in which the "Natural Laws/Principals" that I am referring to exist.

The study of these things should NEVER be hypothetical because we need to be able to observe the study of them to understand them, unfortunately as you touched upon too much of what has been hypothesized by "Physicists" has not been something which is verified in a consistantly reproducible manner.

I find this to be a shame and only personally make a point to explore the elements/facets of "Physics" in ways which will hold a direct application to the physical world and thus my physical life.

I see what you mean there and agree with that [regarding the description of things]. Seems she sort've went hard in the paint talking on the points he raised. But for sure - I see what you're saying and agree. They're a [incomplete] model of things.

Regarding philo and what it says about never being able to directly apprehend/know reality as it stands - being old news, yup I agree.

And I think that's a valid point about modern physics in terms of how they've been successful with what they've been successful with by forgetting the particular direction of how things seemed to follow in the past.

I read this article a few weeks ago. I thought author was a bit sensationalist. Especially in saying the LHC isn't finding new dimensions. The energy required to probe extra dimensions predicted by string theory are way above anything we can conceivably build on planet earth using current approaches. So that isn't a surprise. The LHC confirmed the Higgs boson which was huge but not a new prediction.

The lack of super-symmetric particle observation is a bit disappointing but by no means is the search over in that instrument. Lack of discovery could lead to new theories too. It is true that a lot of theories don't pan out but thats not a problem either thats normal when you've gotten so much right already.

Things like dark matter, dark energy, and extra dimensions are incredibly difficult to test and confirm. I think the problem is theoretical physics has gone so much further then what can be tested experimentally its going to take a while to catch up. Maybe its not even possible to catch up.

Can we have a club of great minds like this again?

Yeah she was a little sensationalist, agreed. I still think though that she presented a decent perspective on things, but how she came across in saying some things was hard and fast, or that's how it seemed to me. But I won't say too much here as she's the one at the research institute studying and working in this field haha.

Yeah I knew about how the LHC needed a greater amount of energy in order to smash things down into further levels, but I had no idea that it'd require such a significant step up in energy requirements[tech]. Interesting.

Yeah I knew about them confirming the higgs [and in consequence proving the higgs field]. I remember when they'd discovered it - they'd ran several other analysis after the fact and said it displayed the given properties that were predicted in theory. I wonder how completely accurate that last statement is? [that was said from the officials at Cern]. Not downplaying it though, I think it's pretty awesome they confirmed the characteristics of something that matches their theory. Pretty cool.




For sure. The death of once thought or sought after theories can/could give way to things of greater value - which to consequently lead to a greater understanding in other areas and maybe even as a whole. The shedding of the old to bring in fresh potential for the new.

Yeah I think when you step back and look at things given the context of this area of study and the timespan/s - we've done well, at least in the sense of what's observable/testable.



The whole idea of darkmatter I think is more interesting than most of the other areas of study. The fact that it doesn't interact with the electromagnetic force and doesn't absorb, emit, reflect light.

The crazier bit of it all with the speed of the galaxies/clusters and their given observable gravity that's enacted on them that in turn shouldn't have allowed them to stay together as they have (they should've been ripped apart and flung out). That whole idea of some unseen force giving the extra mass through additional gravity for this to happen & this force comprising around 30% of the known universe.

Then dark energy making up something like 70% of the known universe, it's even keel distribution throughout and not showing any sort of gravitational effect, so damn interesting.

I'd really like to see physics head in the direction of studying the latter two. Personal preference.

I should say that I do agree with the articles overall sentiment. Just some statements I found a bit inacurate or misleading (although I doubt that was intention). Things have stagnated quite a bit. I'd imagine there are a lot of bored scientists crawling through algorithms to read LHC data.



I think that would be normal. I don't think they directly observe the higgs, I don't think you can because it falls apart so fast but you see what it degrades into or something like that. Nobel prizes were handed out.