"The crisis in physics is real: Science is failing" by Sabine Hossenfelder

[Carl-Richard]

On 15.11.2024 at 4:36 AM, Leo Gura said:

A stage Orange zombie.

I watched some of his "debunking" of Chris Langan being interviewed by Michael Knowles. Besides making me want to facepalm myself into the afterlife, it made me have an idea of making a "debunking the debunkers" concept where I would watch through the entire thing unedited and comment on it, because I just found so many things to say about it.

But then I figured that I would just buy into the whole debunking format and poison my mind (and my audience, fictive audience) that way. There are just so many in-built structural problems with it that caters to one's biases (generally a lack of attentional scope) that is essentially unethical in itself. The way you really debunk a person is by intently listening to their perspective, ideally because you're interested, and multiple times and from multiple angles, and then form a holistic image of them in your mind and see if it resonates or not. Essentially, get to know them. But that doesn't make for good entertainment, maybe a good essay.

Then I thought maybe engaging with the debunking concept with the semi-ironic tone I had in mind could help show the absurdity of the format in itself. But for someone who only consumes information through that format, they would not pick up on it and instead need it spelled out in, well, an essay. Which is kinda what this is, so "you're welcome"  (mmm-it's a rant). Meh, I feel like giving these people zero time.

Edited Thursday at 10:08 PM by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

@Carl-Richard You don't have to debunk, you can present a constructive alternative way of understanding reality.

But I get the temptation to deconstruct Dave's shitty materialist arguments.

Edited Wednesday at 05:37 AM by Leo Gura

[RightHand]

5 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I watched some of his "debunking" of Chris Langan being interviewed by Michael Knowles. Besides making me want to facepalm myself into the afterlife, it made me have an idea of making a "debunking the debunkers" concept where I would watch through the entire thing unedited and comment on it, because I just found so many things to say about it.

But then I figured that I would just buy into the whole debunking format and poison my mind (and my audience, fictive audience) that way. There are just so many in-built structural problems with it that caters to one's biases (generally a lack of attentional scope) that it's essentially unethical in itself. The way you really debunk a person is by intently listening to their perspective, ideally because you're interested, and multiple times and from multiple angles, and then form a holistic image of them in your mind and see if it resonates or not. Essentially, get to know them. But that doesn't make for good entertainment, maybe a good essay.

Then I thought maybe engaging with the debunking concept with the semi-ironic tone I had in mind could help show the absurdity of the format in itself. But for someone who only consumes information through that format, they would not pick up on it and instead need it spelled out in, well, an essay. Which is kinda what this is, so "you're welcome"  (mmm-it's a rant). Meh, I feel like giving these people zero time.

It would be interesting to see the median age of Professor Dave's community. My guess is that it would be below 20 years old.

After you become an adult, it becomes obvious that a significant portion of the video (the Chris Langan one) is spent poisoning the well. 

[zurew]

On 2024. 11. 15. at 8:11 PM, Jodistrict said:

If there is no possibility of empirical observation, then it nevers goes beyond speculation.

That doesnt follow

[zurew]

9 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

But then I figured that I would just buy into the whole debunking format and poison my mind (and my audience, fictive audience) that way. There are just so many in-built structural problems with it that caters to one's biases (generally a lack of attentional scope) that it's essentially unethical in itself.

 

I dont see  the inherent issue  with debunking. 

If there is an idea that you think is false then you can engage in debunking and thats probably good in a lot of circumstances. In my view, debunking entails that you arent arguing against a strawman but you are arguing against ideas that the other person actually holds (and therefore debunking in my view entails  the understanding of the other side's point).

Of course one can engage in arguments where you argue against a strawman - but thats not an argument against debunking, thats an argument against a specific type of debunking.

With respect to the issue of making one's audience more biased - 1) I don't see how thats necessarily entailed. Also there are ways to get around this  for instance - by showing the weakpoints and limitations of your own argument and by showing some ways how your argument can be undermined and what kind of assumptions its built upon   2)  If you are truly right , then its probably good that you audience will try to defend something that is actually true.

 

If you want to argue something like - the reason why its inherently bad is because it creates a bad environment (almost like claming that it is a 0 sum game , where the game is about pursuing truth) - my response to that would be that its not necessarily entailed. If you do debunking in an adverserial and smug way, then yes , that will probably foster an environment where all sides become less interested in the pursuit of truth and that  can be an issue.

But if you do it in a non-adverserial and non-smug way then it can be helpful and good.

Edited Wednesday at 12:54 PM by zurew

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, zurew said:

Of course one can engage in arguments where you argue against a strawman - but thats not an argument against debunking, thats an argument against a specific type of debunking.

I was specifically thinking about the format of taking a piece of content you have not watched yet, especially an interview, where you have also have essentially zero background knowledge of the person involved, and watching the interview from start to finish and severely picking it apart along the way and presenting it under the guise of "this person is being debunked". This is painfully obvious with Dave. It's his shtick. And it's extremely susceptible and effective for creating an inaccurate narrative, because it's such a limited representation of the person but yet so rife for giving an opposing take.

It's of course especially pernicious when you add the humoristic commentator snark and hyper-reductionistic picking apart like Dave does where he is unaware of like 5 layers context and decides to focus in on something wholly inconsequential like the definition of a single word (which Dave only has one of for each word, because he views everything through the paradigm of modern physics), making claims like "hueee, he doesn't know what the word means, this is basic 5th grade physics, he has no idea what he is talking about". 

But even if you're not blessed with Dave's hyper-reductionist context-blindness, again, the format itself is like a random number generator for biased thinking. It constrains your cognition and attention to this very limited and linear format. When engaging in it (which we all do by watching videos), it shouldn't be presented as a final analysis on a person, which is generally what debunking videos do. Again, the real way to "debunk" a person is to take in their whole character through repeated exposure, many contexts and over long periods.

You won't really find a video titled "partial debunking video from my unknowledgeable perspective". That would be a reaction video. It's not like a Destiny stream where he will say "well, that sounds fucked, but I will wait for more information before making up my mind".

Edited Wednesday at 05:24 PM by Carl-Richard

[hundreth]

Professor Dave is right, both about her and Chris Langan.

He does a good job of calling out the BS and rightfully pointing out that Sabine is milking sensationalist headlines and anti authoritarian talking points to appeal to a Russel Brand-esque audience. She gets views and money by doing this, but it's harmful and dishonest.

Chris Langan is an even greater level of stupid.

We need MORE people like Professor Dave, not less. 

His content isn't about spirituality or religion, though he's obviously atheist. I don't really think it matters. In the context of our physical world, he's much closer to understanding what's happening. Just because you accept that there's more than the material universe doesn't mean you aren't susceptible to massive loads of bullshit.

On the net, content like Dave's is helpful. We need more critical thinking, and less sensationalism. 

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, hundreth said:

On the net, content like Dave's is helpful. We need more critical thinking, and less sensationalism. 

I rarely use Leo to make a point, but why do you think Leo chooses to not do "react content" or "debunking videos"?

[zurew]

24 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I rarely use Leo to make a point, but why do you think Leo chooses to not do "react content" or "debunking videos"?

Cause he is bad at it 

[zurew]

@Carl-Richard Given now that you clarified what you were trying to make an argument against I largely agree with what you are saying.

I also agree that generally speaking Dave's content is a problematic type of debunking and not a good type of debunking .

Edited Wednesday at 04:47 PM by zurew

[hundreth]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

I rarely use Leo to make a point, but why do you think Leo chooses to not do "react content" or "debunking videos"?

For the same reason Marques Brownlee and Linus tech tips don't do videos on God Realization. What kind of a question is that? They have different areas of interest.

He also did not "debunk" Sabine. He spoke about her more generally, espoused her as a good science communicator, showed examples of where she made great videos, and then explained what was problematic about her recent videos.

As long as you are being fair and making coherent arguments, there is nothing wrong with being critical of someone else's work and challenging narratives. In fact, that's literally what Sabine is doing - she's being critical of the entire scientific establishment. The difference is, she has been essentially grifting and misleading around her anti establishment narratives to generate clicks, views, and revenue for her channel.

Dave on the other hand is making an unpopular point, and jumping through hoops to thread the needle.

[zurew]

15 minutes ago, hundreth said:

Dave on the other hand is making an unpopular point, and jumping through hoops to thread the needle.

Dave spends a lot of time on talking about rhetoric and on psychoanalysing the other person and on speculating about motivations.

His video on formspaces is exceptionally bad and full of rhetoric rather than engaging with the substance.

15 minutes ago, hundreth said:

she has been essentially grifting and misleading around her anti establishment narratives to generate clicks, views, and revenue for her channel.

Do you have an argument for this?

Edited Wednesday at 06:41 PM by zurew

[Reciprocality]

Interactions are inherently euclidian, nothing physical is determined besides euclidian interactions, energy states are physical and everything euclidian must change energy states to be undetermined again thus trajectories follow from the euclidian nature to measurement or interaction.

Determination and interaction does not reify into every segment of reality just because their concepts does not intuitively or perceptively meet on any contradictions there.

 

Modern physics appears to me to only be aware of the evidence for these assertions, not the philosophical entailment. 

Edited Wednesday at 08:20 PM by Reciprocality

[hundreth]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

Dave spends a lot of time on talking about rhetoric and on psychoanalysing the other person and on speculating about motivations.

Ok, and? We do this all the time for other fraudulent figures like Trump. This is true for all political discourse. Are all of the political channels harmful as well?

Quote

His video on formspaces is exceptionally bad and full of rhetoric rather than engaging with the substance.

I'm not familiar with it, shoot it over and I'll take a look.
 

Quote

Do you have an argument for this?

Literally his entire first video on her is just that. Arguments for how and why she is doing that.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, hundreth said:

Ok, and? We do this all the time for other fraudulent figures like Trump. This is true for all political discourse. Are all of the political channels harmful as well?

And  - there are instances when its appropriate and there are other instances where its completely irrelevant and its just a red herring.

 In a fucking debate  - spending 50%+ of your time on speculating about why your debate opponent hold his/her views  rather than addressing the positon is problematic.

Even if you can address their position I don't know whats the relevance of speculating about their motivations.

In politics though thats not the case - in politics there are many cases where figuring out motivations behind actions can be incredibly relevant and important.

1 hour ago, hundreth said:

I'm not familiar with it, shoot it over and I'll take a look.

1 hour ago, hundreth said:

Literally his entire first video on her is just that. Arguments for how and why she is doing that.

He doesn't establishes that she is grifting , but he certainly speculates a lot about it.

He didn't provide a single argument in his video that would provide a symmetry breaker between the hypothesis of 'she genuinely believes in what she says and thats why she say the things she says' vs the hypothesis of 'she is exclusively doing it for the views and she is dishonest about her real position'.

What was one piece of evidence that he provided in his video that is incompatible with the hypothesis of 'she genuinely believes in what she says' ?

Edited Wednesday at 08:50 PM by zurew

[hundreth]

44 minutes ago, zurew said:

And  - there are instances when its appropriate and there are other instances where its completely irrelevant and its just a red herring.

 In a fucking debate  - spending 50%+ of your time on speculating about why your debate opponent hold his/her views  rather than addressing the positon is problematic.

Even if you can address their position I don't know whats the relevance of speculating about their motivations.

In politics though thats not the case - in politics there are many cases where figuring out motivations behind actions can be incredibly relevant and important.

 

He doesn't establishes that she is grifting , but he certainly speculates a lot about it.

He didn't provide a single argument in his video that would provide a symmetry breaker between the hypothesis of 'she genuinely believes in what she says and thats why she say the things she says' vs the hypothesis of 'she is exclusively doing it for the views and she is dishonest about her real position'.

What was one piece of evidence that he provided in his video that is incompatible with the hypothesis of 'she genuinely believes in what she says' ?

Watch the video. He doesn't spend 50% speculating, he goes through her points one by one and makes counter arguments. 

Motivations are always relevant, to pretend they're not is silly. They're only relevant in politics, but not social media? Her entire premise is that motivations are relevant in scientific research, and that it isn't purely science. So how can you say it's not relevant with regards to social media?

 

Some general themes from the video:

- She takes her personal experience and extrapolates generalizations across all of academia

- She labels incremental non revolutionary science as "bullshit"

- She takes her experience from physics and applies them to all scientific fields without deep knowledge of them

 

Regarding her motives, one can only speculate but when you see an insane multiplier of her view count from her first meta science critique video, and then a trend where more and more of her videos scratch the science denialism itch, you can infer it has something to do with it.

This is the same thing that happens to other intelligent figures with controversial takes. Jordan Peterson for example used to have lots of content that was about psychology, his books, etc. As he saw that right wing content was good for business, he is now exclusively a right wing propagandist. Was he always that? No. Now he is. So it is worth noting.

The same thing happened to Russel Brand. He went from someone who makes generally interesting content, to being purely a conspiracist channel because that's what gets the clicks.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, hundreth said:

Watch the video. He doesn't spend 50% speculating, he goes through her points one by one and makes counter arguments. 

He did engage with some things, but he also spent a lot of time on speculating about her motivations.

1 hour ago, hundreth said:

Motivations are always relevant, to pretend they're not is silly. They're only relevant in politics, but not social media? Her entire premise is that motivations are relevant in scientific research, and that it isn't purely science. So how can you say it's not relevant with regards to social media?

No, motivations are not always relevant and this is obvious.

In the context of a debate - if I say X is true, its irrelevant why I say it, whats relevant is whether X is actually true or not. You can speculate endlessly  why I hold my positon, but that doesn't engage with whether my postion is true or not.

1 hour ago, hundreth said:

Some general themes from the video:

- She takes her personal experience and extrapolates generalizations across all of academia

- She labels incremental non revolutionary science as "bullshit"

- She takes her experience from physics and applies them to all scientific fields without deep knowledge of them

I watched the video and Dave didn't engage with some of her points.

So for example, she made a criticsm about theory making and that there hasn't been any progress on that in the last 50 years . Dave didnt directly address this, he pivoted to talk about sub-disciplines , and then he brought up one valid point about Higgs boson. Yes, it can be said that finding the Higgs boson was an achieviement when it comes the foundations of physics, however this doesn't reply to whether the methods that are used in physics and in theory making are effective or good or  not.

She brought up specifically the method that she has an issue with which is "guessing math". Where you come up with something and then after that you start to search for it (and not inversely) . She tried to point to how absurd it would be if the same principle would be used in any other field . For instance - " Biologists  inventing new species and then making expeditions to find them. Chemists inventing a hidden dark  sector of the periodic table. Neurologists arguing it’d be pretty if synaptic connections  followed the E8 root diagram and then putting people into MRI machines to search for it." -

Now Dave did respond to that point with "Physicist work within models to predict with  firm empirical basis what particles ought to exist  should the Standard Model be accurate." - which is a fair reply , however  1) I don't know whether that can be said in all cases 2) That doesn't reply to the fact that she has an issue with this method -  which would be a philosophy of science disussion around what kind of methods should be accepted in science, and more specifically what kind of methods should be accepted in physics and used by physicist for research and for theory crafting. 

The idea or the implication that there is no room for philosophy of science talk in any scientific field is ridiculous.

1 hour ago, hundreth said:

Regarding her motives, one can only speculate but when you see an insane multiplier of her view count from her first meta science critique video, and then a trend where more and more of her videos scratch the science denialism itch, you can infer it has something to do with it

I think thats not enough evidence. I think it can be perfectly explained by the bad experience she had with academia in general. I would be surprised if she would have such a good opinion about academia after the experience she had with it.

I also disagree with framing it as science denialism. Its not science denialism, its supposed to be a philosophy of science (and more specifically philosophy of physics) critique.

Edited Wednesday at 09:58 PM by zurew

[hundreth]

4 minutes ago, zurew said:

No, motivations are not always relevant and this is obvious.

In the context of a debate - if I say X is true, its irrelevant why I say it, whats relevant is whether X is actually true or not. You can speculate endlessly  why I hold my positon, but that doesn't engage with whether my postion is true or not.

What debate? They aren't having a debate. He is pointing out why her recent videos are problematic. He directly addresses why he believes X isn't true, and then speculates on why she may be so strongly leaning into this kind of content. This is a commentary video, not a debate.
 

Quote

I watched the video and Dave didn't engage with some of her points.

So for example, she made a criticsm about theory making and that there hasn't been any progress on that in the last 50 years . Dave didnt directly address this, he pivoted to talking about sub-disciplines , and then he brought up one valid point about Higgs boson. Yes, it can be said that finding the Higgs boson was an achieviement to progress on the foundations of physics, however this doesn't reply to whether the methods that are used in physics and in theory making is effective or not.

She brought up specifically the method that she has an issue with which is "guessing math". Where you come up with something and then after that you start to search for it (and not inversely) . She tried to point to how absurd it would be if the same principle would be used in any other field . For instance - " Biologists  inventing new species and then making expeditions to find them. Chemists inventing a hidden dark  sector of the periodic table. Neurologists arguing it’d be pretty if synaptic connections  followed the E8 root diagram and then putting people into MRI machines to search for it." -

Now Dave did respond to that point with "Physicist work within models to predict with  firm empirical basis what particles ought to exist  should the Standard Model be accurate." - which is a fair reply , however  1) I don't know whether that can be said in all cases 2) That doesn't reply to the fact that she has an issue with this method -  which would be a philosophy of science disussion around what kind of methods should be accepted in science, and more specifically what kind of methods should be accepted in physics and used by physicist for research and for theory crafting. 

The idea or the implication that there is no room for philosophy of science talk in any scientific field is ridiculous.

The "guessing math" contention you brought up is a great example. You're misrepresenting what he said. He isn't arguing that guessing math is a great strategy or that scientific methodology can't be debated. He's saying that this isn't what is actually happening in practice. That she's misrepresenting how scientists are going about theorizing new particles and searching for them. 

No need to strawman, it was fairly self explanatory. 

[zurew]

14 minutes ago, hundreth said:

You're misrepresenting what he said.

What ? If you reread what I wrote you can see that I say "She brought up specifically the method she has an issue with, which is guessing math" -I didn't say there that he said  it.

14 minutes ago, hundreth said:

He isn't arguing that guessing math is a great strategy or that scientific methodology can't be debated.

Never said anywhere the he said that guessing math is a great strategy. What I said was, that he didn't demostrate  that the current methods that are used are effective or helpful for making progress on the foundations of phyiscs (which was one of her contention and that is one point that he didn't address).

With respect to the comment about  'scientific methodology can't be debated '- yes thats what the implication is, because  he frames it as science denialism.

14 minutes ago, hundreth said:

He's saying that this isn't what is actually happening in practice.

Really? I wonder whether I included that in my previous post (that you replied to ) or not 

24 minutes ago, zurew said:

Now Dave did respond to that point with "Physicist work within models to predict with  firm empirical basis what particles ought to exist  should the Standard Model be accurate." - which is a fair reply

Maybe next time read my post more carefully before you try to defend Dave with this level of passion.

Edited Wednesday at 10:14 PM by zurew

[hundreth]

7 minutes ago, zurew said:

What ? If you reread what I wrote you can see that I say "She brought up specifically the method she has an issue with, which is guessing math" -I didn't say there that he said  it.

Never said anywhere the he said that guessing math is a great strategy. What I said was, that he didn't demostrate  that the current methods that are used are effective or helpful for making progress on the foundations of phyiscs (which was one of her contention and that is one point that he didn't address).

With respect to the comment about  'scientific methodology can't be debated '- yes thats what the implication is, because  he frames it as science denialism.

Really? I am wondering whether I included that in my post or not 

Maybe next time read my post more carefully before you try to defend Dave with this level of passion.

You're missing the point. She's portraying the current scientific methods as mostly "guessing math." That's not what's actually happening. Guessing math isn't the current method.

When Dave says "physicists work within models" that means the math flows from the model, they aren't guessing. They didn't just randomly guess there would be a higgs boson and get lucky. 

The science denialism is that she misrepresents how scientists actually do physics to appeal to science denialists who would love to simply flush all experts down the toilet in favor of their "vibes" science.