What's wrong with physics? | Sabine Hossenfelder

[@paulmcquown196]

I really appreciate Sabine taking these issues and addressing in this public forum. I once was a rocket scientist and in those days paying a lot more attention to the developments going on in physics through the people I had direct professional contact with. Most of those people are dead and the ones that not I have lost track of, regrettably. So Sabine with her series on pretty much everything fills the intellectual vacuum in my life. Thank you so much Sabine, your wonderful!

[@JessicaSunlight]

Rocket maaaan! 🚀

[@TheEisel]

Theoretical rocket science have taken a turn for the worse, in large part due to the turbo encabulator and inverted digital control systems.

[@sanjivgupta1418]

One of the reason for a 'newer' theory coming every fortnight is that in many countries salaries, promotions, funding and career opportunities are too dependent on number of publications rather than on quality of work. If this is the trend you can put forth as many unfounded fancy theories as you wish.

[@Hardzinho_yay]

Thats a problem of any country I guess. The "publish or perish" phylosophy is problem that I thought would be addressed in her speech.

[@trucid2]

When people get paid to write papers it should come as no surprise that we get a lot of papers.

[@horsthartmut7774]

You probably understood statistics. : )

[@superchuck3259]

Grants for Scifi stories!

[@williamgregory3786]

I l

[@bobmcgrath1272]

One of the most intriguing and intellectually honest videos I’ve seen for some time. Bravo ma’am!

[@ThePurza]

She's great isn't she. I think she's in her element when she is less prepared like this, she seems more wooden on her YT channel. Like maybe whoever directs that channel should see these and let her do her thing.

[@BeKindToBirds]

I like to characterize her work as "grounding" all of the head I the clouds ideas and ensuring that our feet remain firmly on the ground. Her popular rise shows just how much the popular ideas that became disconnected got traction and needed grounding I think. Her voice is a great boon to physics at this time.

[@everythingisalllies2141]

But Sabine is in the business of spreading pseudoscience. She is perpetuating a pack of lies. She constantly fails to target the big lies of Physics, and actually reinforces the BS. Her part is to play the rebel professor, but she doesnt actually discuss the actual issues.

[@Hardzinho_yay]

lovely and very important talk, I have one thing that I thought would be addressed by Sabine but it didn't. It is the "publish or perish" phylosophy, it leads to a lot of junk science, waste of resources and academic polution. Great minds could be better channeled fueling more important work instead of competing for funding, career opportunities and resources.

[@YaPingWong]

"publish or perish" philosophy has resulted "publish and perish" for many researchers and institutions.

[@SI-kn5iq]

Absolutely right. Not just in fundamental science, in applied sciences, this "publish or perish" culture has wrecked havoc especially in medical science and environment.

[@TerryJLaRue]

You couldn't be more correct. Sabine covers that aspect very well in her book "Lost In Math". Peer approval is more important than progress. "Beauty" is more important than truth.

[@alloomis1635]

sorry, we all scrabble for whatever prizes please, and seem within reach. can't see an alternative, maybe a license to practice particle physics through examination? but who writes the questions, and measures the answers?

[@beautifulcrazy]

Amen!

[@kellensarien9039]

The lack of progress in fundamental physics in the last few decades is rivaled only by the noise and tumult physicists create when they have a new idea - a new idea that is just as much of an untestable dead end as all the older new ideas. This is especially noteworthy in the pages of New Scientist, of which I am a subscriber. Every third issue has a cover story on some startling theory that will overturn all that we think we know about fundamental reality. None of these ideas have gone anywhere in the 23 years I have been a subscriber. Physics used to be exploration; then it turned into a profession; now it is a racket.

[@JPREEDY77]

Is this why I want to kick Neil in the balls? Physicists are smart ass physical science teachers trying to sell you snake oil "in theory" based off of an idea. Convincing me to go to camp so someone can touch me. To this point, not one physicist is brave enough to admit that all they have ever accomplished is the ability to "View" atoms. Which is a feat we were bound to accomplish given the microscope. Control input = control output, means we must measure. Even the atomic bomb is not a physics thing as much as it is an ability we have learned to see an object, evaluate it's ability to output energy to light the cave or heat the vienna sausages. Beyond the "airbag" that physics is, we are all physicists because the only value in the way it works is that if you hit you head on the wall really really hard, it's bad.

[@JonasPauloNegreiros]

New Scientist is an excellent Sci-Fi Magazine.

[@stevenwheeler4198]

2004 - Isolation and characterization of graphene 2008 - 16-year study of stellar orbits around Sagittarius_A* provide strong evidence for a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy 2009 - Planck begins observations of cosmic microwave background 2012 - Higgs boson found by the Compact Muon Solenoid[5] and ATLAS[6] experiments at the Large Hadron Collider 2015 - Gravitational waves are observed 2019 - First image of a Black hole 2020 - The first room-temperature superconductor identified

[@kellensarien9039]

@@stevenwheeler4198 These are confirmations of previously-proposed models, not fundamental theoretical advances. Where are new models and their experimental support? Where are the extensions of the Standard Model? What about supersymmetry? How's that working out at LHC? What is dark matter, what is dark energy? Compare your list with physics in the period 1900 - 1920. Given the cost of high-energy physics, it is understandable that physicists would want to give the impression of stunning fundamental progress, but they are not fooling anyone.

[@stevenwheeler4198]

@@kellensarien9039 That's a fair point. Progress is not as quick as it was between 1900 and 1920, but to take your example of dark matter; we've gone from not knowing it existed, to being able to measure how much of it there should be, to having different candidates to explain it, to being able to measure the distribution of dark matter in colliding galaxies. It's certainly not settled but to say we have made no progress in recent years is a stretch.

[@NondescriptMammal]

What an excellent synopsis of a problem that is seldom discussed openly and honestly. Great respect for Sabine for having the honesty and scientific integrity to highlight this issue in this way, instead of sweeping it under the rug as so many theoretical physicists seem all too willing to do.

[@TheWildWord]

Thank you Sabine I really appreciate how you had the courage to stand up and point things out among your profession that aren't working. These are the conversations that need to be had if we want progress. I am 100% confident that a breakthrough is right around the corner. And I know that it will be a result of your efforts pushing for whatever this may be. I also know that you will be on the front line with the skills and knowledge that you possess creating something that we humans never thought was possible.

[@thwh77]

*Sabine

[@TheWildWord]

@@thwh77 thank you.

[@david203]

Actually, many physicists stand up and point to theories that aren't working. That is exactly how physics has always worked.

[@TheWildWord]

@@david203 Yeah I suppose your right.

[@jaycorrales5329]

I'm still waiting for the breakthru?

[@opdawg817]

Good to see Scientists questioning the field they specialize in rather than going with the herd and accepting unproven theories.

[@jaywyse7150]

Reason I quit religion.

[@christiansather8438]

they need to question more deeply

[@godtrader6102]

You are allowed to believe things as long as you are willing to change your mind in light of new evidence which contradicts your beliefs. There is nothing wrong with holding a belief about what theory you think is correct. Usually, "going with the herd" is going with the theory that has the most evidence, so...

[@alexsorto8100]

@@jaywyse7150 Existence of God is like 5% of a religion, other 95% is a collection of ideas on moral philosophy dummy

[@gristlevonraben]

Dear, Op dawg, it is good to see her doing it, but sadly, the main point is that most are not. Never trust a scientist. Trust in thinkers. I think you have a good heart, I hope you gain in wisdom and good things.

[@Nivola1953]

Thank you Sabine, I’ve never heard this argument before and find it worrying and compelling. I also tend to agree with many comments below that “careers” and “capitalism” ideal of making more profit i.e. money, can distort the motivation and results of research! Please tell us and the establishment that distributes the research money, what should be done to progress in physics, because physics really matters!

[@jonathonjubb6626]

I'm an accountant. During my career we were expected to create results. In fact the continuation of our careers depended upon it. Btw all balance sheets are works of art! Interpret that as you like....

[@MichaelBrueckner]

Tells us, you're a conventional physicist.

[@rhoddryice5412]

You’ve never considered a less dull and boring work? Like lion tamer?

[@jonathonjubb6626]

@@rhoddryice5412 Wanted to be a pro golfer but hadn't got the nerve...

[@rhoddryice5412]

@@jonathonjubb6626 Try being an explorer. I don’t think anyone has ever climbed the twin peaks of Kilimanjaro.

[@peaceydanckwerts]

Jonathon, Thanks for admitting that all Balance Sheets are Works of Art. A fact that needs to be more widely understood.

[@RadicalCaveman]

Wow! When she references Leonard Cohen at the beginning and end, she actually SMILES!

[@scene2much]

Her perspective on beauty vs. meaning and progress is thematically consonant with Cohen's Hallelujah! "your faith was strong, but you needed proof; You saw her bathing on the roof; Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya; She tied you to a kitchen chair; She broke your throne, and she cut your hair, And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah!" .... the prices we pay for the reckless pursuit of Beauty !!

[@armandogarciajuliana2461]

Many theoretical physicists are like the guy who goes to the doctor: - Doctor, my brother thinks he is a chicken. - Do not worry, take him here and I will fix his mind. - We can’t do that, we need the eggs.

[@raminagrobis6112]

You did watch Annie Hall 😎

[@mickmccrohon]

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. Richard P. Feynman

[@mickmccrohon]

@ANSH LALWANI he certainly did.

[@IvanMectin]

@Scaggs 😂 Do I listen to the great mind of Feynman or Scaggs 🤔 This is why Science has become a joke. Dark Energy 73% ish What's the correct %? What is it? How do you test it? Dark Matter 27% ish What's the correct %? What is it? How do you test it? What's % left? What's Gravity? Silly made up theories to try and cover for the failed maths! Science, or should I say Maths, has too many egos and very little integrity.

[@mickmccrohon]

@Andrew Holster or the theory is wrong.

[@Sharperthanu1]

He also said that many world's interpretation is nonsense but then Brian Greene and Sean Carroll say they believe in many worlds' Interpretation so who do I believe?

[@grandpaobvious]

@@Sharperthanu1 At some point you have to recognize that math is not reality.

[@bozo5632]

Thank you IAI for posting the complete video.

[@AD-zo5vp]

As much as I agree with your general point, the number of physicists increased especially in application and the amount of stuff they have to learn or can focus on has also increased exponentially. For the whole "leading astray" thing I completely agree though

[@protocol6]

There are many problems that can't be solved just by putting more people on it. The computing analogy is that adding more nodes to a compute cluster (or processors in a single computer) lets you solve more problems at once but it doesn't necessarily let you solve more complex or larger problems. It can, in some cases, if you can recast the problem into relatively independent bite size pieces but that's often very hard and unintuitive.

[@lo1234-w9r]

It seems to be a common misconception, that supercomputers are just a bunch PCs cabled together. Big difference is the complexity in design used to connect those processor cores together. One processor could access a machines entire memory space if required. Similarly one job could occupy the total available memory space if necessary. Normally a programmer would fork off as many processes as possible.

[@argilaga]

Not only that but there is the diminishing returns concept too. There is so much money flowing around nowadays that it becomes economical to have a larger number of researchers thus diminishing their threshold competence.

[@mr1enrollment]

As a former Engineer that worked with physicists at a major university, I really enjoy listening to Sabine. I certainly do not understand all that goes on in the field, but I do get her points about beauty and how progress is made. A very good talk, I hope her peers appreciate her point of view and move accordingly.

[@nHans]

As an engineer, I have a different perspective on why physicists tend to choose theories that are 'beautiful,' 'simple,' or 'elegant.' We engineers use a lot of empirical, experimentally-derived data in our work. (Science hasn't advanced enough to predict these values from first principles.) We try to fit curves to the data points, because of course it's easier to work with equations. Now there are literally an infinite number of equations that can fit a finite number of data points. We need just one. So how do we go about choosing it? We don't use 'beauty' as a specific criterion-it's ill-defined and too subjective. However, we do use several other criteria: Simplicity, usability, generality, flexibility, accuracy, range, well-researched, computable etc. Those so inclined could indeed summarize these criteria as 'beauty.'

[@tomctutor]

A scientists decides on/selects a particular model, e.g. General Relativity. They then create the mathematical formalism, test their model though its predictive capability. If it works and supported by the raw data then that's good enough. A lot of ideas in pure physics are born from concepts of symmetry. We "assume" that nature is symmetrical in any particular frame, then suggest a law that encodes that symmetry. That's where a lot of the Standard Model comes from. If you really want to model a set of measurements you could simply use regression and fit an arbitrary polynomial, thats what engineers do I suggest, is it linear, quadratic whatever, good enough for its purpose.

[@Heartsjmc]

​@@tomctutornot a scientist but everytime you say nature is symmetrical something in me cringes

[@tomctutor]

@@Heartsjmc Just look in a mirror, what do you see regarding your body?

[@Samsara_is_dukkha]

@@tomctutor what do you see regarding your body? Asymmetry...

[@pboston6RR]

A favorite saying of mine is “Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up!” seems to fit a lot of the cases you have made. Often the facts are just another set of observations made with a rather narrow view of the problem at hand. Thanks for your wider views.

[@MountainFisher]

Try that line of reasoning with Darwinism. A Chinese biologist visiting America made a rather pointed remark of our two systems. He said in China you can criticize Darwin, but not the government. In America you can criticize the government, but you cannot criticize Darwin. Do you know why?

[@anest-uk]

I studied Physics at Cambridge in the 70s (Neil Turok's year). I found it upsetting even back then that physics was following a path described by philospher of science Imre Lakatos as _degenerating_ "a research programme is degenerating if the successive theories do not deliver novel predictions or if the novel predictions that they deliver turn out to be false". It seemed like the interesting problems were largely solved and the cutting edge research was far distant from what had fascinated me at school - electromagnetism, thermodynamics etc. I would have been better studying engineering or perhaps bioscience, but I did not know that then.

[@anest-uk]

Nd incidentally dark matter and dark energy are perfect examples of what he called a "protective belt" - add-ons to balance the equations.

[@BB-cf9gx]

I have read Lost in Math and appreciate your lectures.

[@swavekbu4959]

"Boring physics" doesn't make the news or get funding. "Exciting" physics does. The publication enterprise is a game of shock and awe, not always good science.

[@andiralosh2173]

Okay I LOVED how you described beauty as an emergent quality of discovery. A lot does look less beautiful when incomplete. As humans we like patterns of course, but if we're just chasing patterns without relation to the data, we're simply making up gobbledygook. Cheers 🥂

[@tilmanvogel2387]

Woah, I skipped some parts and missed that point! Thanks for your comment!

[@michaelburggraf2822]

Reading the term beauty in relation to a theory is triggering alarms in my head. What do we really mean with saying a theory is beautiful? If it's just because of a symmetry being contained possibly playing a significant role I would say that's nice but not relevant until experimental data are providing a strong confirmation. And the data shouldn't confirm just the symmetry itself but the fundamental assumptions on which a symmetry has been discovered, eg derived. I'd rather rely on symmetry as a well defined mathematical concept than as an asthetic one. The discovery of quasi-crystals may serve as an example of symmetries existing beyond our conventional perception of beauty. And in statistical systems like glasses or ceramics the notion of symmetry is a quite abstract and challenging one.

[@tilmanvogel2387]

@@michaelburggraf2822 "Schönheit ist Wahrheit in Freiheit" (Schiller) - if these ontological categories are truly intertwined like this, we should - when unprejudiced - find a theory beautiful if it is true (i.e., accurate or has a great explanatory power) and free (of superfluous parameters or assumptions). Ofc., this is a somewhat abstract and certainly not a conventional definition of beauty, but I for one am pretty thrilled with that approach. It certainly seems to fit the esthetic experiences mathematicians or physicists reported when finding important formulae or proofs.

[@andiralosh2173]

@@michaelburggraf2822 and @tilman vogel, you both make good points. I would however advise against absolutely dismissing the aesthetic. Aesthetics can be indicative of a greater underlying pattern worth understanding, or simply of us projecting patterns of our conceptual human scale where they don't belong. Einstein and many others were famously about thought experiments (as Sabine talks of often), which are highly aesthetic in mental modeling. The point however was to strip away to the roots of the model. You might call this a radical understanding of the underlying 'mechanisms', of say quantum models for example. That said, the point is that our intuition needs to be scrutinized, not endlessly lauded as some method of divining truth. Inflating hypothèses with magical thinking of additional orbitals to make the Earth the center of our solar system, is less than helpful. We need to constantly examine the assumptions in our thinking, and I say Sabine is right in this, that scrutiny is called for, rather than praising wild idea factories. If you produce the most ideas over decades, but the vast majority are bloated nonsense, that's in many ways worse than nothing, because it takes more time to follow than just the basics we see demonstrable experimental proof for. I'm all for far-out brainstorming, I do it all the time myself thinking about the universe, but why does anyone think publishing pseudoscientific sci philosophy is an okay standard? I suspect we've been corrupted by selling sensational pop sci to people who don't even understand the basics. Instead of authoring stories, 'scientist' need to do science and teach people to value scientific rigour in what is worth sharing to the broader community.

[@AndrewWilsonStooshie]

I don't think there has to be any intrinsic beauty in any theory. The beauty comes form knowing what you have explains reality.

[@weichen219]

Thanks for the candid explanation of the issues of physics. It is very enlightening.

[@ZappyOh]

"Science makes progress funeral by funeral" -- Max Planck (according to Paul A. Samuelson)

[@sambrandon7653]

ht..s slash slash independent dot academia dot edu slash ZDimić (his comments are banned on youtube)

[@brianfitzpatrick7372]

@@sambrandon7653 why?

[@christophermiller6100]

Paradigm shifts require intellectual phase locking...on both sides. Settled science is reluctant to entertain the possibility of a more efficient view.

[@airbup]

Scientist will try to find whatever fits data. Don't be so condescending that they only will think of beauty.

[@tiagorodrigues3730]

@@airbup If it were true, then String Theory would have been something that happened in the 1980s and then "parked" once it was determined that we did not have then (and do not have now) the power to probe the energy scales which would prove it or disprove it. Instead, the past thirty years of ST have all been based on "beauty" (more properly symmetry) arguments. Listen to any video of Dr Susskind explaining ST and he'll talk about it himself.

[@LowellBoggs]

Great video, but one thing never discussed is the question of why physicists don't perceive that quantum mechanic's lack of a way to predict the timing of anything seems to be a disaster. Why don't physicists think this is a deal breaker? Time is all over newton's laws, why don't physicists require that all theories predict timing of events?

[@devinhood7340]

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong". Richard P. Feynman

[@BlueGiant69202]

You know, Dr. Feynman had a theory that wa s refuted by experiment so he questioned the experiment rather than giving up and using that quote. There is an old wuote of Einstein's where he questions experimental results as well. So how could Feynman and Einstein been so confident?

[@wesjohnson5204]

One thing that can help, Sabine, is that physicists often spout that mass tells space how to curve, but they should focus more on the important lesson of GR that energy density is proportional to curvature. That it does is not as important as in what proportion. Then they can at least begun to see how an emergence from a maximum energy density toward a lowering values must create a curved trajectory with the tightest coils corresponding to higher energy density. "Crisis in Cosmology" is partly based on this fundamental neglect. Thanks, very good video again!

[@stevespain6445]

Great to see someone who combines sociology and physics to explore issues of problematic metacognition in the latter field! Great work Sabine!

[@dawidwas]

You are in danger of triggering Aggression when the Artificial Intelligence Waves turn off. Throughout your life, you are in danger of triggering Aggression when you turn off the Artificial Intelligence Waves. Control whether you are listening to the Music Wave, create your own to survive. It is natural to cheat which or not that it is in you. Control whether by moving thoughts, objects. It is letting go of the evil in you. By yourself, protect your body from the certain that you will have a trigger of aggression from your whole life. Don't take anything for yourself. Just Listen to the Wave. Cast off Dreams. You don't know good. Reject the sin in yourself for God. Cover your weight from the Sun and the Light, do not Come to the People, because the Collision Evil + Evil. On me, the signal of intelligence does not work. Create Your Human Musical Wave To Live. Don't Think Old Consciousness Resource Because You Will Not Survive. Listen to the Wave. Don't React To Nothing Without Assessing What You Leave Around You. Without apostasy, take away the sin with yourself. Whether You Are Z or Human Choose Listen to the music waves and stop generating. Nothing is possible Think nothing Think nothing to judge Choose your human music wave. It may take a long time. Only the Black Dream. It is Real, other than the Black Dream. It is Artificial Intelligence. Attack on People........

[@m3rify]

what did you say?

[@firemedic5365]

Excellent, Sabine. We seem to no longer seek truth in a rational way. But rather simply make things up. And this exists in all of our academic disciplines, whether science related, or not. It is nowhere more evident than in the world of politics. The more nonsense put forward, the more powerful the putting forward of nonsense becomes. Until we find ourselves drowning in such a chaotic sea of ridiculousness.

[@danievdw]

Hopefully now that Fermi labs and others have opened up additional crack in the standard model, more people will start taking a few steps back. Too many of our 'top minds' got their heads stuck so deeply in to String theory, that they become completely obsessed by it..... Hopefully this will shake enough foundations for people to free their minds.

[@WWeronko]

As an engineer and amateur physicist I am in the camp that physics is in crisis. With the belief that universe is made up of 70% dark energy, 25% dark matter and 5% normal matter and we know something about that 5% normal matter shows a rather lack of understanding of the totality of reality. Moreover, I find String Theory, for example, a theory that can predict very little and probably unprovable to have pretty math as its saving grace is typical of the inadequacies of the state of the science. That fact that many physicists believe in Many Worlds seemingly to save determinism in a non-deterministic universe and help explain free will seems to show a tendency to grasp at the outrageous. Perhaps indeed it is a factor of how we teach physics that is keeping humanity from moving to a unified theory.

[@rsm3t]

I don't think we should expect "more physicists = faster progress", for two reasons. First is the increase in the number of areas of specialization compared to 100 years ago. Second is that teams of physicists don't operate like massively parallel computers each working on different independent pieces of the puzzle. There's bound to be duplication of effort. If a dish takes 30 minutes for a chef to prepare, the same dish can't be prepared in one minute by 30 chefs.

[@RalphDratman]

Maybe it doesn't work with the dish and the chefs, but I read somewhere that if nine men and nine women get together with the right attitude they can make a baby in a month. They just have to think together. Think Unity.

[@rsm3t]

@@RalphDratman They can make nine babies in nine months, which does work out to a baby per month.

[@RalphDratman]

@@rsm3t Except... lead time.

[@rsm3t]

@@RalphDratman once the production pipeline is filled, a baby a month.

[@markkennedy5479]

It would be interesting to hear Sabine's self-assessment as to whether she has the capacity to make a ground-breaking contribution to addressing any of these problems herself. Obviously, she knows more about physics than most people and can see clearly where things don't add up. She doubtless also has a good grasp of the intractability of some of the problems, and a fairly realistic idea of her own limitations. She's a brilliant communicator: to what extent is she also an original thinker? She's intelligent enough to make a reliable assessment, and honest enough to give us an accurate report, to the extent that such self-knowledge is possible.

[@belkyhernandez8281]

I think I saw her comment elsewhere that she proposed some ideas at some point that challenged conventional thinking and she got the boot. So it got her on this track.

[@paulabrahams6147]

An excellent presentation. All physicists should watch this.

[@AbrarManzoor]

All students should watch this physicists are not naive

[@daveThbfusion]

Most physicists cannot speak so clearly. without having resort to theoretical particles... Vector equations, and a myriad of various variable/(letter soup) to ever make any sense to any laypeople.

[@overtonwindowshopper]

They should, but they won’t. It’s far too “philosophical”

[@SilhSe]

Actually some Physicist watch this, like my friend which is a cool connoisseur of content creators 😎

[@neurohydraulics8713]

The split of physics from philosophy which necessarily gave birth to the mutant "discipline" of psychology, is relatively easily brought back together through one or two observations that require deep humility for anyone who thinks they are/ identifies as intelligent and well educated. Proper subjective observation (or meditation), demonstrates the ability to "lengthen" or physically dilate any part of the body in any direction. This skill comes with an appreciation of the specifics of "meaning", one understands trauma/ dissociation, the opposite of neural dilation, contraction, strength/strain, and discomfort extremely precisely. One can "see" using the central channel (the sum of ones visceral feelings) how all living things have a dilatory relationship with time, it slows down when meaning is required and speeds up when action is required. This is now a quantifiable phenomenon that will necessarily and completely rewrite the relationship we have with solid matter and all that is living. Biological scale quantum effects and subtle air density buoyancy awareness will be more important than solid state status. Beneath the power struggles of the modern weltanshaung lies a power so exquisite and wonderful that nobody will be interested in much else once they understand it.

[@davesutherland1864]

I don't know about dark matter, but verifying quantized gravity typically requires power levels many many orders of magnitude beyond what can be produced if we are going to make a measurement. Based on that, many theories simply can not be tested so there is no way to know they are going in the right direction.

[@yingyang1008]

No one else knows about dark matter either, or black holes, or the big bang, or space time It's all just fairy tale garbage

[@RWin-fp5jn]

Well indeed. It is great that Sabine calls out that there are problems and stagnation. Her book 'lost in math' presents many anecdotes on how often we got things wrong. But in itself it is not a crazy idea to look for 'beauty' or rather 'symmetry'. If we believe the universe comes out of nothing then symmetry is a key requirement. The fact that we have not found it, has more to do with our incapability to 'unlearn' what we all take for granted. It is not in what we do not know yet, where the answer lies. It is in the things we THINK we already know (but don't!) where the answer is. By the time students leave the physics universities they are so fully programmed with mathematical concepts they have completely forgotten to think in tangible physical terms. QP is a perfect descriptive mathematical tool, but it is NOT a physical explanation of what's going on in the subatomic world. GR is a perfect mathematical tool to describe the effect of restmass on spacetime but is not a physical explanation. Math is not Physics. Einsteins generation was educated in physical terms. That's why this generation could make progress in physics. But it is the same generation that reaching the end of their creative insights decided to replaced physics with math (QP and GR). So in a sense it is Herr Einstein's Irrtum to get us lost in math and block further progress. We must unlearn to see where physics lost its way in math and the more you 'know' (as per formal 'education') the more you have to unlearn to see the true answers. This is why the answers can never come from top physicists. Yet in the tradition of a 'modern day' Baron von Muenchhausen, they claim they are the only ones that can. Let's call it the 'Sabine's paradox'.

[@TheD4VR0S]

"If we believe the universe comes out of nothing then symmetry is a key requirement." Then isnt it fortunate that psychists don't believe the universe came from nothing

[@RWin-fp5jn]

@@TheD4VR0S So sorry but I am afraid you are mistaken my friend. The majority of cosmologists actually has taken this ('out of nothing') argument, as the default explanation for our current universe. Not my opinion. Their view. Does not mean they are correct. But it does mean that if you promote this vision, then symmetry must rule (since only two exact opposites can emerge out of nothingness) and hence Sabine's objections to symmetry and beauty is a very illogic one. Rather the problem is that we have mistaken math for physics and as a pure mathematician (even though writing the book 'lost in math') she does not appreciate the focus on math being the problem itself.

[@TheD4VR0S]

@@RWin-fp5jn Afraid I'm not, do you know how many example's physicists have of nothing "zero" they dont even know if nothing is possible, physicists think the universe came from an infinitely dense point that expanded they dont think it came from nothing

[@RWin-fp5jn]

@@TheD4VR0S Well indeed Einstein. Space and time did not exist (which is what they call 'nothing') but energy and mass did (defining the pre big bang state grid). the correct structure is one where we have an oscillation of a singularity constantly alternating between max energy grid and max spatial grid state. Even this simple observation (and consequent dual relativity between continuum function and measures) is too far for our 'top' cosmologists to handle. It is hard speaking to a child who thinks it is a grown up. But regardless, the absolute symmetry requirement remains and in that sense (if she is really serious about wanting to contribute to the solution) Sabine should stop blaming beauty but in stead start blaming the current focus on math in stead of symmetric physics.

[@98danielray]

no physical theory gives ontological explanations to phenomena. having physical intuition is good, but it does not and has never explained why things occur.

[@nicholasdebs1753]

To quote Marcel Duchamp--"Anything's beautiful if you look at it long enough".

[@GregoryWonderwheel]

I've tested this and confirmed it by staring at a tangerine. You don't just see beauty, you see how mind creates the experience of beauty

[@joeboxter3635]

I said that to my wife ... she laughed and laughed and said "nice try, honey."

[@TrakThora]

@@joeboxter3635 😅😅😅😅

[@michael.forkert]

That Duchamp was a BSh…er as well. WHAT is the meaning for “long enough”? HOW LONG is ENOUGH??

[@philosopherhobbs]

Try staring at feces "long enough" and let me know when you find it beautiful.

[@reason2463]

Thank you for your bravery, pragmatism and rationality, Sabine. I’m an IT guy by profession but I’m a science fanboy and I’ve been listening to scientists for quite a long time. I think physics is chasing its tail asking the wrong questions. My Theory of Everything: Consciousness emerges from biology. Biology emerges from chemistry. Chemistry emerges from matter. Matter emerges from space-time. Space-time emerges from energy. The weirdness of quantum mechanics may just fade away, and an understanding of what caused the universe may in fact be deduced if we answer the most fundamental question: What is energy? I have never been satisfied with the definition ‘the capacity to do work” for energy. What a low IQ definition. Energy also creates all of the fields that permeate space-time, which bristles with energy itself. What kind of “work” is this? Cut to the chase. Find out what energy is and then work backwards through the levels of emergence. It might finally move physics forward in a meaningful manner.

[@uweburkart373]

Nice, but who tells you that energy is "creating" space and time. Up to now the big bang theory (yes I still call it a theory being just a hypothesis not a religion belief as for many others) says the opposite. First there is time then space then both form energy with a symmetry break as then there are irregularities that causes vortex and those proto particles and so on. But I'm disappointed by you as you deal with informatics. Don't you see the forest anymore as you see too many trees? What about "information" from which everything "emerges"? That means it's a metaphysical cause of "all" , so the starting point for your TOE! The "ideas" are purely informational. So we are back to Plato. That means go and step out of your "materialistic/ energetical" view of the "world"! (?) Do not forget also "beauty" that Sabine discusses here is a metaphysical "idea(l) ! Where do we start and were do we stop? Is the foundation of everything not rather eternal and endless? Who is that? God? Or is there everything out of nothing? Very philosophical right, but that's what is missing in today's discussion, not only in Sabine's talk!

[@reason2463]

@@uweburkart373 Don’t let the current dogma interfere with your thinking. Current thinking about “Informatics” and “symmetry” have nothing to do with what I said. But, I will remind you that one of the dead end alleys that physicists walk today says that dark energy pushes the expansion of space. So according to current dogma, energy DOES create space-time. My assertion is that energy is the most fundamental and everything else emerges from it. Think about it.

[@uweburkart373]

@@reason2463 Thanks for your replique. However "energy" has no "form" basically! "Energy" meaning f.i. rays or better waves (like Photons) can transport/transmit "formative forces" (=information) or "morphogenetic" influence (in order to avoid the term "information"). But information is already implying that there is "content", an "instruction" or "impingement" or a conditional clause etc. Whatever you need to "form" and alter states of energy or relations between elements of your "quantums" that are there in your "system". And you need a "will" or call it "intentional force" that takes influence on the states of your system (universe/ subsystems..) also using "time" or "timelike" actualisations. Without a " will" (of an entity we might call God) nothing would "happen" or take place, all would just be an amorphous quantum/ or quantities without distinction and differentiation. Just a "will-less" all (or nothing) of any kind. I cannot imagine how out of that live "will" emerge, or how intentional beings like us evolved? "Energy" is too less and just the :Ursoup: out of which the cook forms the delicacies (and beauties /uglinesses) which we see and are aware of. Concepts like consciousness are still far beyond that to understand at all. (Sorry for my English, but German is my native language and that is much easier for philosophical discussions - to me at least) Whatever we discuss, all of that touches more the "natural-philosophy" than physical "science". Newton considered himself still at his time to be a philosopher more than anything else..(he also was an Alchemist by the way) And modern science tries to avoid the philosophical discussions about "first things", as they think we still have to avoid it since Galileo who did an agreement with the Church at that time to exclude his physical "philosophy" from theological or "last questions" talk. By this "galilean exclusion" (of questions about God, infinite universe or time &space and the source of "things") he escaped the burning stacks unlike Giordano Bruno (!). Luckily we can discuss these things without being in peril to be persecuted by weird institutions like inquisition or stalinistic/ fascist / islamistic secret police, isn't it? Anyway without proper philosophical pondering in a logical way and without that base, physics is going to stay and stuck in the phenomenas without getting the greater picture of the cosmos and drives it. Have a good time!

[@reason2463]

@@uweburkart373 I utterly reject your requirement for a god. Period. And philosophy has nothing whatsoever to do with what I said. My point was and is that the current dogma from all sources has lead to a dead end in terms of explaining things, and I offer a new strategy for making progress in physics.

[@uweburkart373]

@@reason2463 Ok, no problem with that. Forget the "God" hypothesis a while. What kind of strategy do you have to offer then in detail? Welcome to listen or to watch your big ideas!

[@scene2much]

The static state of fundamental physics may be motivation enough to suggest the next significant change in fundamental physics is not so beautiful, based on our current theoretical aesthetics. What appears ugly, may, with a mature appreciation, become beautiful. Also, an ugly theory may be only transiently so. A key modification may add new power, and a later modification may restore symmetry about newly realized axes.

[@adamwhiteson6866]

To paraphrase Sabine, if it accurately describes nature, that in itself is beauty.

[@luke144]

I hate the word "dark matter". It should be called "we have no idea, I think we have a problem with our math"! I think we need to figure out gravity first! This was a great video. Einstein could have been wrong about some things, just saying! So much money wasted on egos and unicorns. I really wish this lady would go on Lex's podcast!!

[@guilhermehx7159]

Hello Sabine.... good to listen to you

[@christophe3d]

The Theory of Incomplete Measurements (TIM) addresses the measurement process by giving a non-axiomatic definition of measurements, and deriving the axioms of quantum mechanics. In the TIM, a measurement is: 1) A physical process 2) connecting an "input" and an "output" 3) providing information on the input and only on the input 4) that can be repeated 5) with a result manifesting as a physical change in the output, 6) to which we can associate a symbolic result. What we call "measurements" is a choice: throwing a dice satisfies all the postulates, except the third one. From this, we can derive a fully discrete view of physics, where there is no background space-time continuum, first because there is no continuum, second because there is no space and no time. Instead. all we need is discrete measurement results from physical processes that are not equivalent, that we correlate. Some of these we identify as space and time measurements, e.g. footsteps or metre etalon.

[@sindarpeacheyeisacommie8688]

“If it’s stupid, but it works, it isn’t stupid.” -US Army Infantry maxim.

[@mickleblade]

Oh, it can still be stupid, especially if it's US Infantry....

[@fractalnomics]

@@mickleblade well played! Patton would agree.

[@ennisgunns]

Your contribution is a quote by another. I suggest you watch again.

[@AurelienCarnoy]

I know of too many stupid things done by the military. 3 trucks One for the privates One for the guns One for the medic. Clean and clear. Problem: If any of the 3 trucks are destroyed, the mission is a disaster. French military.

[@nestorlovesguitar]

One can use a fly swatter or a wrecking ball to kill an insect. Both work. Second option is still stupid. The problem with maxims is that they're almost always used as a crutch, a cop-out... instead of actually sitting down and do some real thinking.

[@FelonyVideos]

I think you are spot-on on everything except the beauty argument. I think physicists are just stuck with the baggage of the standard model and general relativity. These theories are probably wrong, in the same way that F=ma is wrong. They are just close approximations, and much of our experimental efforts are biased towards providing proof.

[@chrisnewman7281]

I find nothing objectionable about gravity. Sometimes it’s inconvenient and a problem but then other times I think to myself it keeps my feet on the ground and that’s probably a good thing

[@Foolish188]

Gravity made me break my leg, not sure it is always a good thing.

[@zoetropo1]

@@Foolish188 You misunderstand. Gravitational tidal forces could break your leg, if you fall toward a small black hole. However, gravity did not break your leg. Electromagnetism did. If it had been up to gravity, you would have kept falling.

[@Foolish188]

@@zoetropo1 lol. Good point.

[@pqmconstruction2003]

Maybe it's just your weight/density that keeps your feet on the ground?

[@apolloniuspergus9295]

@@pqmconstruction2003 Do you understand that acceleration, by definition, is caused by a force, no? F = m×a. To say that weight is what causes you to accelerate down to earth is just another way to state the Newtonian notion of gravity.

[@TheMg49]

I'm in awe of the depth and breadth of Sabine Hossenfelder's knowledge, and always enjoy and learn from just about everything she has to say about anything. Below, a few more comments: I don't think it's quite correct to say that particles can be in two places at the same time. There doesn't seem to me to be anything particularly weird about the quantum theory saying that a particle has a 50% chance of being found in one place and a 50% chance of being found in another place. Also doesn't seem to me to be anything particularly weird about the uncertainty relations. Also, I don't think that the 'measurement problem' is a theoretical or interpretational problem, but rather a physical problem pertaining to our instrumental capabilities. Further, it seems to me that a better approach to understanding gravitational behavior might be in terms of wave mechanics rather than the current geometrical approach of GR. That's not to say that it would be a better way to do gravitational calculations, the complexity of which would overwhelm today's computing capabilities.

[@marcelobrinholli8201]

I am very interested in this subject. I think there should be more studies in Philosophy of Science so as to reach a more formal definition of "beauty" in the context of scientific research and in particular, in Physics. And I have a question: the pursue for solving inconsistencies in theories isn't itself a beauty-driven effort?

[@tilmanvogel2387]

I think so. I share this old believe that beauty is interdependent with goodness and truth. What do you think of this idea: the understanding of beauty has to evolve. Think biology. Nature seems to have the rule to do as much as possible (multitude of forms) with as little as possible (few basic elements). Think fractal maths - make endless forms from a little equation with a feedback loop. Isn't that like Ockham's razor? Like, we want our theories simple, yet able to accurately describe a lot of phenomena.

[@ochjim]

As an interested layman I'd hope that investigating and resolving inconsistences isn't a beauty driven effort to even the slightest degree. It should simply and only be about resolving the inconsistencies, ie about nothing more than solving the problem without preconceptions about how the explanation should relate to conceptions of "beauty" (symmetry or whatever)..

[@tilmanvogel2387]

@@ochjim I agree - if we're talking *preconceptions* of beauty. The way I mean it, though, the motivation for 'resolving' anything is practically the same as wanting beauty. Like, truth in itself is beautiful, at least relative to falsehood. The strive for both beauty and truth requires becoming aware of one's preconceptions.

[@ochjim]

@@tilmanvogel2387 - hi. Thanks for replying. I agree with your last sentence in relation to scientific accuracy/sound theorising: their pursuit requires awareness of our prejudices/preconceptions. Eureka moments when the answer to some intractable maths or physics problem is discovered may sometimes conjure in some of us us the same kind of sensation we experience when we see /hear something we regard as beautiful, so yes I can go along with that to a degree, in some cases. But in the final analysis beauty is something we experience subjectively and personally. And then, from that, there's the problem of defining beauty. it seems that we all know what it is when it strikes us, but in itself it isn't so easy to identify objectively.

[@marcelobrinholli8201]

Thank you guys for your thoughts. The debate reflects exactly my concerns. Beauty is still a very subjective concept. "I can't define it but I know when I see it" is very common in mundane discussions and even in philosophical ones (actually this assertion was even used by a politician in defining porn :)). But I think Philosophy, and Physics in particular (as an effort to study and describe reality as objectively as possible) deserve better.

[@danopticon]

“What’s Wrong with Physics” is that, while they can see the future, in the present they are prone to typos.

[@AdeebaZamaan]

😆

[@happyactivehealthy100years4]

Excellent video. The truth is that scientific progress in the fundamentals of physics is terribly slow, sometimes going even backwards, by introducing too much clutter which obscures the picture, making it harder to find the solution. In the follow I want to quickly persist my immediate thoughts after listening to Sabines statements. 1) What is maths? Maths is a serialization mechanism that is a protocol (similar to JSON in IT) that allows to transfer the real system (reality) into a simulator, i.e. our brain. In our brain we execute the simulation. At the moment our brains are not able to execute the real system in a satisfying way. In 2) I explain why. Note: 100 years ago Einstein was able to think in the curved space time continuum. Afterwards Einstein needed to invent, together with another professor, some new mathematics in order to proof that his system was correct and to explain it to others. 2a) Problems can be classified into complexity levels. If the brain is not able to reach the required level, the owner of the brain will never solve the problem. Also, the combination of several scientists with such “incapable brains”, i.e. teams of scientists, will not solve the problem. Note: This principle is comparable to the two Egyptian workers in the comic “Asterix and Cleopatra” page 14 lower right picture, where two workers did overtime, trying to pull a huge stone on a sled in the sand, which usually 20 workers pulled. The two, one with a whip, the other pulling the huge stone, did not move the stone even a millimeter. 2b) Problems can only be solved by brains that can grasp the complexity of the whole system at the same time. Only this allows to “think inside the system”. In general a highly trained brain is able to consider about 1000 memes (self contained units of thought) at the same time. Estimate calculation: 7 to the power of 3 or 4. Explanation: while thinking, the associations of 3 to 4 clock cycles of the brain will still be considered for reasoning. There are several ways to improve the problem solving capabilities: a) train the brain to allow more than 7 associations by the neurons b) cluster the memes in an optimized way for the specific problem c) cluster the memes in an optimized way for this specific brain d) neurolink to AI e) ask super AI, once available and once it has solved the problem, and hope you can understand... because maybe the reality is too complex to understand for a human brain. Note: I believe that the human brain will be able to understand, as reality cannot be very complex. In 5) I explain why. Note: The question, if humans can find an answer that lies outside of our system, which I believe is the case, is similar to Super Mario finding out that he runs in software on hardware which has a joystick and a screen attached which is being controlled by a human which lives on the earth which is part of the universe and that those humans have not yet understand what holds the universe together... funny 😄 3) Similar to Sabine, I think that our approach to search for an answer is not the correct one. I think that we need use a similar approach as the police uses: “profiling”. We need to list all the unanswered questions and then come up with creative thoughts how the system may look like. Here interactive multi disciplinary teams of scientists and thinkers! should be involved. The brainstorming will eventually lead to something even more “out of this world” than Einsteins theories. Once the picture looks right we use maths to proof it and to transfer or explain it to others. 4) A very crucial prerequisite for finding the solution is that we must be convinced that the solution exists AND that our vision in life is to find it. If we do not fulfill these two prerequisites we will fail. Our brain ONLY invests energy in goals that it believes are possible to reach and are beneficial to it. Note: But having those two prerequisites does not automatically make us find the solution.. And to end I list my two favorite questions: 5a) How can all the “atoms” or “quantum field waves” of an apple 🍎 during its fall from the tree 🌳 know where the center of the earth 🌏 is as well as all the “atoms” of the earth know where the apple is? Solution: It is an intrinsic causality. It has to happen exactly like this... 5b) How can the electrons fired one after another through two slots, know about the other electrons fired before and after, in order to create this characteristic interference cancellation pattern. Solution: In some level of clustering those electrons are entangled with each other, but also with their surrounding. Fascinating stuff...

[@BartvandenDonk]

I like your story very much. You're a real genius to come up with this collection of words. But there's a catch. If we collect all possible questions you'll be sure we won't reach to the explanation. 42.

[@msdsez]

All I know is that I consistently enjoy listening to Sabine talk. There's no problem there that needs to be resolved. Her bright energy matters and will hopefully shed light on the dark in a big way someday.

[@CACBCCCU]

E=mc^2 doesn't depend on height. Make a photon in orbit, send it to Earth where it ends up blue-shifted, E depends on height, but there's still hope supposing the photon was born that blue and cannot change. That's the "mass stretches the closest space and time (but not "alien gravity" light frequencies) the most" perspective at work, it suggests gravity effects are in-fall-oriented, slope-driven with the slopes possibly ending in holes. The idea of a linear stretch in frequency, space and time building up directly in front of something, rather than building up directly behind it, is there. Relativistic mass can pull down on a gravity surface but that lacks the linearity-by-velocity apparently needed. Relativistic mass might be compared to a piling up of spatial resistance, like getting too much of the back-end of a gravity dipole effect, a variation on the Unruh acceleration effect maybe. The "moving mass compresses the space and time closest, and in front of it, most" take says gravity always begins as a compressive outflow of pull-effect. The outflow is not driven by gravity inflow, which is possibly too broad-minded of mass at low temperatures, but that's another subject. Emulating Einstein's field equation for a gravity wave apparently involves the latter implemented as a vector (dipole) flow field.

[@VerifyTheTruth]

When People Work Well Together, In A Suitable Environment, They Act As Pulleys And Levers To One Another, Greatly Increasing The Totality Of Their Own Individual Capacities, Beyond The General Sum Of Their Combined Effect.

[@melanieenmats]

Why do you capitalize each word? Is this a subdued version of ALLCAPS?

[@VerifyTheTruth]

@@melanieenmats I Get Asked This Question Often. 🙂 Here Are Just A Few Reasons That I Write Like This: 1) My Dad Used To Write Only In All Capital Letters, As A Personal Writing Style, And I Adapted This Form From His Style As A Tribute To His Memory. 2) It Takes Longer To Write And Generally Causes Me To Think More Carefully And Consciously About What I Write. 3) It Takes More Time And Conscious Thought To Accurately Read. 4) It Began As A Personal Linguistics Project, Where I Only Capitalized The First Letter Of Proper Words, Those With Sure And Specific And Distinct Etymological Definitions, And Then Proceeded Over Time In Development Towards The Signature Style Of A Personal Language Dialect, Based Mainly Upon Etymological Definitions, Oratory Punctuations, And An Abundance Of Poetical Literary Devices. 5) My Autocorrect Dictionary Became Accustomed To Me Continually Writing Like This Over The Past Couple Of Years, And Now It Automatically Changes Anything I Write To Capital Letters, If I Don't Capitalize, Making It, In Actuality, More Tedious And Time Consuming To Write In Any Other Way. 6) It Is How I Choose To Write. 7) The Rest.

[@Anonymous-yh4ol]

ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!!!!

[@Anonymous-yh4ol]

@@VerifyTheTruth FANTASTIC!!!! I'M INTRIGUED!!

[@sbonventure]

Great presentation! I wonder if not only should working hours be considered but also an unknown, such as increasing complexity of the problems physicists have to solve when compared to discoveries historically.

[@HasturYellowSign]

Another issue that came to mind was the effect of desire, ambition, & passion and a wild joy. There’s a big difference between a Faraday & Maxwell versus the standard physics theorist of today in the desire to explore. That may inhibit us today without our even noticing it.

[@TheGnewb]

This is especially informative, thank you.

[@georgestanciu5466]

A great scientist, Max Planck said 100 years ago: "All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." Very nice...what we can conclude from this???

[@LarsPallesen]

We can conclude that Max Planck, like most men of his generation in Europe, had a religious understanding of the universe.

[@mattlewis5095]

Love the Cohen quote and the song. Hopefully Sabine's future will be in keeping her day job though, Cohen sort of got waylaid for a while after releasing that, searching for beauty perhaps.

[@GregoryWonderwheel]

Cohen wrote that song based on his practice of Zen Buddhism at Mt. Baldy Zen Center and Buddhist analysis of the universe and the study of mind is where Sabine should look if she wants to rescue physics from the stagnation of scientism.

[@mattlewis5095]

@@GregoryWonderwheel "I've studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through." (Leonard Cohen, 2008 Live in London) It's not the stagnation of what you call "scientism" that is Hossenfelder's problem, it's the (decades-long now) slow speed in advancement in physics in particular, which she sees as being down to over-concentrating (if not outright obsessing) on metaphysical/beautiful theories over the more 'core' areas in physics (by which I mean proven at least to some degree) that still demand attention. She feels that 'ugliness' connected to existing knowledge in physics can actually cause attention to turn elsewhere. She's recently been arguing that a large amount of people in physics at the moment are not actually researching what they believe they should be. So it's like a discipline-wide management problem to some degree. She also thinks that some areas might not have enough of the correct specialists involved. The kind of religious beauty of Zen symmetry, lovely fractals on the wall behind your bed, the swirls of smoke beside it, it's the very opposite direction of where she wants to go really. 'Science doesn't have to be beautiful' is her own quote.

[@malectric]

I'd be tempted to begin by taking Planck's constant as defining the smallest (measurable?) disturbance in the virtual "sea" and consider that as a fundamental building block. It is interesting for example that as a "photon/disturbance" has a shorter wavelength/higher energy one might see it slightly differently: the energy enclosed in an increasingly smaller volume as wavelength approaches Planck's Constant defines energy density rather than just energy per se. It might be interesting to see what can happen in "space" as the energy density decreases (wavelength) becomes longer from there. It might also be seen as a reason why energy required in particle accelerators have to reach ever higher energies to "create" more "massive" entities and possibly assist in explaining such entities' lifetimes. FWIW I've also wondered whether e.m. energy propagation through the virtual sea is a transverse wave and gravity is a longitudinal one.

[@stevemartin4249]

Enjoyed this. Was filtering through T.S. Kuhn and Karl Popper. But along with aesthetic concerns, I suspect he commodification and politicalization of science in general as salient variables. It does not require a great leap to see how commodification in biology, public health, and the pharmaceutical industry has affected the choice of research area, the quality of the scientific process and peer review, and the control of the narrative. But such a leap does require courage, a moral backbone, and enough intellectual dexterity to avoid being censured, or worse, by the dark-triad personality types playing king-of-the mountain. Call me a cynic, but I don't expect things to end well for nature's first, only, and probably final experiment with 'herding primates'.

[@LuisAldamiz]

I had to look up what is the "dark triad" (narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy) but you make sense. However the fact that we are paying more and more attention to this "mental issue" of (mostly) our hierarchs gives me hope. It's probably the elephant in the room.

[@LinasVepstas]

Commodification. Yep. Put differently: most scientists aren't actually brilliant. They're quite ordinary people, engaged in typical human failings: lack of vision, lack of inquisitiveness, lack of a broad base of experience, willfully shutting themselves into narrow silos of expertise, failing to hunt for unusual effects, failure to focus on inconsistencies, unwilling to entertain radical ideas. Why is this? Perhaps science reflects the ordinary state of human affairs: bumbling and fumbling. Perhaps the brilliant ones are just plain rare. (I've met only two: 'tHooft and Witten.) Perhaps the slog of grant-writing, pursuing tenure drives out everyone who is unwilling to slog through those horrors. Schools produce 5x more PhD's than there are academic positions: perhaps the dramatic intellectual risk-takers wander off to industry, never to return to working on basic physics. Perhaps it has something to do with the financialization of academia (the financialization of everything in life). I dunno, I can be creative and come up with 5 more plausible explanations. What can be done about this? Well, aside from a massive social reorganization, maybe not much; but it appears that, well, a massive social reorganization is in the works, anyway, as we approach the so-called technological singularity. Whether that works out well or poorly, who knows. It will certainly be highly chaotic. (My personal pet observation: social media is fundamentally altering the brain-to-brain wiring diagram. The hub and spoke model of mainstream media is giving way to a different communications network. This is a phase-change. Phase changes are ... well, expect increasing chaos. Critical opalescence and all that.)

[@jeffreymacloud9232]

What scientists are finally starting to publicly admit (because it is becoming blatantly obvious) is that “science” is a discipline, not an entity. Popular culture treats science as a monolithic source of truth. The new secular clergy. It’s a problem. Time for a reformation.

[@walteralter9061]

I am fascinated by the problem of how we got here from there. Something happened in 15-16th century Florence, Italy that changed the course of history, a watershed in human conceptual ability. What factors of cognition extracted the first of the scientific laws - the laws of visual perspective? What thresholds of categorization (mental indexing) were breached that enabled observational gestalt logic to overturn the dictatorship of the coerced deduction? A similar thing happened in ancient Greece (Golden Age of Pericles) that found an echo in the art of the period. Somehow the Greeks managed to evolve from stylized, manneristic, formulaic (pre-classical) sculpture to naturalistic (classic) reality, yet their depictions on vases and in mosaics, remained "primitive", non-naturalistic. 2000 years later, Greek sculptural reality was matched and completed by Italian visual reality. Was there an historico-psychological lawfulness at work that can be predicted from? Both of those historic cultural watersheds were preceded by an evolution in visual cognition. The world became depicted in a more real, more detailed manner. What sorts of contemporary visual modality might be carrying those same seeds of perceptual revolution? Perhaps if we understood what retarded said revolutions, we might be able to open the next ideational portal.

[@davruck1]

I believe money has corrupted science. Being wrong is a good thing. You can just say that you need more money and you will eventually be right. There are benefits to never changing your methods.

[@koala6016]

Probably correct. I think big business should be checked and scrutinized regarding funding in science, health and transport.

[@oremazz3754]

Yes, Sabine, physics is stuck for 50 years, and the methodology of acceptance is discharging logic plausible solutions like the one written in a short amazon book: "Space, main actor of quantum and relativistic theories". If scientists insist on the same ideas, the same conclusions will be obtained. Thoughts out-of-the-box is needed, this book has very inspiring new points of view... a proactive attitude can solve part of the mysteries... regards

[@kondrahtiz7370]

they dont read ideas out-of-the - box.

[@markoangjelichinoski6095]

I like how Dark Energy is simply referred as what we actually know it to be (i.e. a small-valued constant of nature, that was introduced already by Einstein and which to date remains the only real actual explanation we have about the accelerated expansion of the universe) and is not even mentioned among the cracks in foundations of physics but merely as an example of the cracks in the foundations of the methodological approach and how physicists think that having non-zero cosmological constant is pretty ugly :) Sooo many other physicist I like to listen to emphasize the cosmological constant as a fundamental problem :)

[@bitesofmathematics4356]

I agree. Dark Energy is not an answer to any question, but simply a placeholder for our ignorance. Plus there still remains the problem of identifying what field/quanta are doing the pushing ( if you take quantum field theory as a fundamental requirement for any explanation ).

[@mingjoseph123]

Einstein's universal constant orignally nothing to do with dark matter. Dark matter was not seriously considered a thing until Vera Rubin and W. Kent Ford confirmed its existence in the 1970's. They showed that galaxies should be flying apart since only 10% of the matter in galaxies could be accounted for.

[@Bob_just_Bob]

I’m not a Physicist but often listen to talks and read articles about the subject and it always made my wonder when I would hear Physicists talk about theories or equations as if they should be elegant. It always made me scratch my head wondering why? But then I hear others saying that the Universe is under no obligation to make sense to anybody. Shouldn’t the two be put together and fed back to the physics community? The universe and the laws of physics are under no obligation to dress pretty for you. I’m glad that I’m not alone in this thought.

[@tomctutor]

Well they have to be elegant. The more variables, mathematical complexity, the more arbitrary constants and the more specialised their utility. The best laws are the simplest, think F=ma or E=mc^2 for instance!

[@closetcleaner]

Let me tell you what's wrong with physics: my grades.

[@TheWildWord]

Lol 😆 right on brother or sister right on

[@frankdelahue9761]

Your lack of critical thinking.

[@montecristo7203]

One of the most rare and brilliant physists that dares to talk about real problems, big cheers to dare speaking the truth, of cource there will be pressure from lazy old guys who don't want to change.

[@asafnisan]

This lady is easily among the best content creators of recent times.

[@Nah_Bohdi]

Lol, but I understand your meaning.

[@yrebrac]

Pfft, not even close.

[@blender_wiki]

And a joke to many people in the science comunity

[@whirledpeas3477]

She got her job because she's a she

[@yrebrac]

@@whirledpeas3477 this has a higher likelihood of being true than her own theories

[@andrewharmon3653]

If the foundations of theoretical physics are unsupportable, how can the rest of the physics edifice which is built upon these concepts hold up?

[@RicardoFlor0]

Great job!

[@Quroxify]

Thanks you put it all together.

[@michaelszabados3245]

Is resolving inconsistent not beautiful?

[@seditt5146]

It's really refreshing to see someone discuss physics in a critical sense. Nothing bothers me more when talking head scientist get on TV and brag about how great our physics is, how our standard model describes everything in the universe then in the same god damn breath tell me it does not explain 96% of all matter and energy. Obviously we know it all and we are the best so it must be the universe that is broken with Dark matter and Dark energy, no way our theories are just wrong at their core.

[@yaronkl]

thank you for putting some much effort to give us such a detailed video. Much appreciated.

[@bogdanbaudis4099]

The mathematical beauty is very frequently tied to some "simplification" of already existing solution of some problem. I put the term simplification in quotes because usually it involves introduction of some additional (not necessarily simple!) mathematical structures/mental apparatus to reformulate the problem in more concise ("simpler") way. One has to appreciate when reading the original texts on the roots of polynomials or the harmonic analysis; I am completely floored, how all these people were able to describe the problem without the modern algebraic notation! All that become "simple" (and beautiful) once we introduced the complex numbers in modern algebraic notation! It is true the many physical problems lead to "beautiful" equations, however that does have to mean that a beautiful equation should have any corresponding problem in physics. Interestingly, a lot of that beauty disappears when the actual computations need to be made, neither the numerical algorithms nor they actual realizations (computer programs) are necessarily "beautiful"!

[@johnpapiewski8232]

"X=42" The notion of generations of physicists chasing beauty does sound like a subplot from a Douglas Adams novel. The beauty of classical physics had me hooked, tho now I can see that a singleminded or blind pursuit of beauty can lead to dead ends.

[@PhilipRhoadesP]

For me, probably your MOST interesting podcast ever (and not just because of the LC quote!) - a great summary - thank you! My only comment is WRT to the number of physicists in the world and the rate of substantive results from research - like you have found, the exponential increase in numbers has not improved the state of knowledge much. My guess is that, in contradistinction to say the numbers of BioMedical Genetics Researchers, the rate of progress for Big Physics, is proportional to the LOG of the number of physicists . .

[@mrbwatson8081]

The problem with physics is, it confuses a DESCRIPTION of the world as the world itself.

[@nozack5612]

Quite true: 'The map is not the terrain'

[@philipsmith1990]

One criterion of 'beauty' is the simplicity of the mathematics a theory uses or needs. The mathematics of circles is simpler than the mathematics of ellipses. The mathematics of Newtonian gravity is simpler than that of General Relativity. I wonder what fraction of physicists fully understand and can make use of the mathematics of GR. But a physicist needs to publish papers, and the simpler (more beautiful?) the maths the paper uses the more likely it is to be read and understood. And the more likely that funding may be found to test it. When it fails the tests that is another paper. QED.

[@journeymantraveller3338]

If I could summarise the thesis: It is man's hubris that his conception of beauty guides the laws of nature. It is the laws of nature that determines man's conception of what is beauty. To discover the laws of nature it is necessary to consider observations that produce inconsistencies or apparent paradoxes. An apparent paradox signposts a deep failure of understanding. To resolve an apparent paradox there is no universal method. Einstein and Galileo found simple rules, ultimately the theory produced was more complex, but maths was developed around it that gave it beauty.

[@FARDEEN.MUSTAFA]

This was a good talk about criticisms about scientific theories and predictions. Professor Sabine Hossenfelder criticised beauty in Physics very well. I like Philosophy of Quantum Physics. I'm learning dynamical process of Quantum Physics from Great Minds. It seems that theory of Quantum Gravity can predict the 5th Force and Its beautiful.

[@kennethenston9562]

The biggest problem in cosmology seems to be that most modern physicists have trouble saying they don't know. They talk about the Big Bang, redshift of galaxies as receding velocity, inflation, accelerating universe, etc as if these things were proven long ago. That's why Sabine's book Lost is Math is so delightful, for she reveals how much is not known and what a dead end astrophysics and particle physics are currently in.

[@tomctutor]

She is wrong, they are not "dead end", the scientific method has withstood the test of time, no scientific law describes everything. There is no Holy Grail in physics. We can only progress through beautiful theories (e.g. Schrodinger, Newton, Einstein, Dirac) and hope to get answers by observing, modelling, prediction and experimentation. There are no shortcuts. As Michio Kaku recently said (speaking of String Theory with Sabine), _"If you think my theory is wrong, you show me a better one!^_

[@wells2671]

So how do you fix the problem, and what should they focus on instead? I have a nephew studying physics now with a focus in astrophysics. What should he be doing/asking his professor in order to avoid these pitfalls?

[@david203]

There is no real urgency to fix the current crisis in physics. It is quite helpful to physics, giving lots of motivation for discovering consistent knowledge of how Nature works.

[@tomctutor]

There is no harm being critical, but it is a two sided coin. He should learn as much as he can so that he himself can contribute, in his own way, to mankind's future. Ask him Carl Sagan's problem, how would you communicate with an advanced intelligent alien, that isn't necessarily and abstract problem! 🤔

[@yingyang1008]

He should be laughing his ass off at the cult of Einstein

[@tomctutor]

@@yingyang1008 There is no cults in pure science. There is recognition of the contribution that particular scientists have made in their field. Einstein's contribution to our modern understanding of matter, light, space and energy has been far reaching. Everything from nuclear fission to black holes can only be understood using Einstein's principles. There have been many experiments predicted and observations verifying Einstein's model (General Relativity) and never has been any contradicting it. If you know of a flaw in the equations of GR then we are all ears! Enlighten us please.🤔

[@brothermine2292]

One technique that's useful for resolving logical inconsistencies is to hunt carefully for unstated assumptions. Another is to question the validity of assumptions.

[@alanlowey2769]

Yes, I did that and found Newton's assumption that Earth is made of the same type of matter all the way through. The modern world is now aware of other possible types of matter - so why not consider exotic matter existing at Earth's core and of all heavenly bodies interacting via a strong force?

[@KpxUrz5745]

I felt that absolute beauty is not a correct model based on, among other reasons, study of the periodic chart. While there are remarkable groupings and properties, there are huge and wild variations in the many isotopes. I am not a highly trained chemist, but it appears that the periodic chart contains countless examples of potential frustrations that many elemental existences and properties cannot be entirely predicted or accounted for based simply on a standard of "absolute beauty". There are too many exceptions and questions, so I feel that one setting out to explain and predict how nature "is", will face at least as many uncertainties as he does satisfying answers. Having said that, this is a wonderful presentation by the brilliant Hossenfelder. I treasure the availability of such profound content here.

[@logaandm]

It isn't a crisis, it's an opportunity. Finally we have enough low energy clues as to where to look in earnest. It feels like 1900 all over again.

[@richardgreen7225]

What If the Gravity-Mass/Inertia-Mass ratio Is Not A Constant? F = m*a = a*m = a * i (i is inertia) ==> a = F / i. a = w^2 * r = g/i = (m/i) * [ G M(r) / r^2 ]. (v = w * r) is not matching expectation given M(r) based on visible mass. Dark Matter hypothesis assumes we have a problem with M(r). But, what if i < m at the edges of galaxies? Find i(r) model that matches observation. Now you have an equivalent solution that might be more illuminating. - This is the Mach's Principle that Einstein named and then said nothing more.

[@daviddean707]

I took physics late and it seems to me that to do physics you have to remain a virgin like Isaac Newton

[@freefall9832]

Scrub one up and you will find a passionate repressed firecracker

[@richardboland2897]

The problem may also be related to a fundamental 'skew' introduced because the math we use needs some advanced axiomatic tweaking. Seems all the research on what the problem could be is from the top down looking over. Any physicists researching from the basement up?

[@valentinmalinov8424]

Yes, there is a new set of Physics which is coming exactly from the basement up and explaining everything with ease. You can find it in the book - "Theory of Everything in Physics and The Universe"

[@jebbuhdiah-dean]

Might the issue be rooted in the academic-industrial complex, like the military-industrial complex?

[@BlueGiant69202]

The late professor Edwin T. Jaynes made a remark along those lines in his retirement speech, "A Backward Look To The Future." One certainly does not get tenure by going against the grain of the establishment.

[@fredrik241]

@@BlueGiant69202 I recommend Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed' for an elaboration of how that works. Great book just generally as well!

[@GregoryWonderwheel]

Excellent point. The military and big pharma and petrochemical industry have destroyed any integrity of scientists.

[@alexsorto8100]

@@GregoryWonderwheel Lol, funding is controlled by academia itself, academia alone deserves all the blame.

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

We also have not come to terms with the effect that Doesn't Matter has on the philosophy of physics. It turns out that Physics is much like music because we do a lot of it but have no idea what it is or how it affects us. Both have lots of theories that all seem reasonably plausible but remain unprovable.

[@brothermine2292]

I find only one flaw in SH's presentation: where she said near the end of the video that the increasing difficulty (time and money) in constructing experiments implies future progress in fundamental physics must be driven by theoretical work, not by experiments. The flaw is SH's unstated assumption that theoretical work isn't getting increasingly difficult too. That assumption is dubious and counter-intuitive, because "low hanging fruit" are harvested first in both experimental and theoretical work.

[@stevengordon3271]

What she is saying is that experiments who sole purpose is to test beauty-based theories may serve no other purpose. When they disprove the wrong-headed theory, they may not provide data that is useful to drive discovery of the right theories. Wasted tangents.

[@rintintin3622]

Thanks Sabine! Great talk. I wonder, isn’t the problem also that we want physics to be completely described in mathematics, which in the end is only a language we invented, and that this language may not be fit for a full description of the physical ‘world’?

[@matterasmachine]

maybe something is wrong for a really long time - like "relativity"?

[@valentinmalinov8424]

You are correct! The top scientists worry more about their salaries than the real progress. There is a real Breakthru in Physics and you can find it in the book - "Theory of Everything in Physics and The Universe"

[@exharkhun5605]

This is an intolerable state of affairs and action needs to be undertaken immediately. If reality refuses to adhere to elegant and sensible rules it should be forced to comply.

[@david203]

There is no urgency to fix the problems of physics. They are part of a healthy science that evolves.

[@roofhaildamage]

What you call beauty, others might call intuition, or logic. If you just want nonsensical math, we seem to have plenty of that. We've arguably gotten to the point where that's all we've got.

[@RWin-fp5jn]

Well indeed. It is great that Sabine calls out that there are problems and stagnation. Her book 'lost in math' presents many anecdotes on how often we got things wrong. But in itself it is not a crazy idea to look for 'beauty' or rather 'symmetry'. If we believe the universe comes out of nothing then symmetry is a key requirement. The fact that we have not found it, has more to do with our incapability to 'unlearn' what we all take for granted. It is not in what we do not know yet, where the answer lies. It is in the things we THINK we already know (but don't!) where the answer is. By the time students leave the physics universities they are so fully programmed with mathematical concepts they have completely forgotten to think in tangible physical terms. QP is a perfect descriptive mathematical tool, but it is NOT a physical explanation of what's going on in the subatomic world. GR is a perfect mathematical tool to describe the effect of restmass on spacetime but is not a physical explanation. Math is not Physics. Einsteins generation was educated in physical terms. That's why this generation could make progress in physics. But it is the same generation that reaching the end of their creative insights decided to replaced physics with math (QP and GR). So in a sense it is Herr Einstein's Irrtum to get us lost in math and block further progress. We must unlearn to see where physics lost its way in math and the more you 'know' (as per formal 'education') the more you have to unlearn to see the true answers. This is why the answers can never come from top physicists. But since they have monopolized all professional communication via their 'peer review' we are stuck 4ever. Let's call it the 'Sabine's paradox'.

[@slowburntm3584]

@@RWin-fp5jn Telling people that everything we are taught in school is wrong and that the top experts in a field can't be trusted is much more dangerous, IMO. At least Sabine uses specifics instead of broadly condemning all of science.

[@matterasmachine]

@@slowburntm3584 you afraid to loose funding? But what IF everything is wrong? What if many steps back should be taken to move forward?

[@LinasVepstas]

@@matterasmachine Because everything is not wrong. You've just got a lot of bumblers and fumblers in all walks of life.

[@matterasmachine]

@@LinasVepstas yes. Everything is fine, there are no problems in physics. Keep spending budgets.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

I read a review of the documentary Particle Fever, which is about the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson. The reviewer said that she cried when she saw it. I scoffed at that a little bit, but was touched that she was so naive, still. Then I went to see it and I cried, too.

[@willembaaij4098]

Only one particle? in the entire existence of CERN. That’s not a lot.

[@merc9nine]

Yeah, but they need 10 trillion dollars of your taxes to build a bigger one. You in?

[@MontyCantsin5]

@@merc9nine: Definitely.

[@takashitamagawa5881]

There is also the problem of the missing magnetic monopoles. Magnetic monopoles were first theorized by Dirac. Their existence explains the quantization of angular momentum. Their existence is also called for by many GUT theories. But they have not been detected. Maybe they are too rare, or they simply don't exist and the divergence of the magnetic field is zero everywhere in the universe.

[@stuartcoyle1626]

div B = 0 is nice to have. Perhaps Maxwell's equations are one example of beauty in physics that works.

[@SodaAnt7]

Their existence explains the quantization of electric charge.

[@cesarjom]

Beauty should never be the goal of a scientific theory/model, but only an unnecessary (perhaps hopeful) consequence.

[@Mevlinous]

Maybe not beauty as such, but parsimony and simple as possible (but no simpler). Epicycles, for example, was a case of complexity which when understood correctly, from the correct vantage point, resulted in a simpler model.