Having read this article, I have a modest proposal for a new, even geekier fantasy sport: fantasy physics departments. This would be like a typical fantasy sport. Each member of the league would have to draft academic physicists, with the proviso that you have to have a reasonably balanced department (e.g., you can't only pick people working on graphene or plasmonics, to goose your citation metrics). Then you use citations (via google scholar), federal grants (via public records), awards (via news blurbs and CVs), and graduated students/postdocs as a means of keeping score. The downside of this is that the winning roster may end up being a hiring plan for a university operating in the superstar model of academia.
Speaking of fantasy and physics, I see that there is a great deal of discussion going on out there in popular books and other settings about "the multiverse" (see here, for example) and even the idea that physics needs to set aside the notion that proper scientific theories need to be falsifiable. Sorry, but that way lies madness, or at least rampant speculation. It pains me greatly that a big part of the general public's impression of physics is dominated by people who express fantastical, speculative ideas with few or no qualifiers. Gahh.
quote from the post:
ReplyDeleteSome scientists, leaning on Popper, have suggested that these theories are non-scientific because they are not falsifiable.
The truth is the opposite. Whether or not we can observe them directly, the entities involved in these theories are either real or they are not. Refusing to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets.
Response in one of the comments
“The truth is the opposite. Whether or not we can observe Him directly, the Creator involved in this theory is either real or He is not. Refusing to contemplate His possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though He might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets.”
...
I like the fantasy science idea, except that we might all have to report conflicts of interest when we peer review papers and the like.
ReplyDelete"... that way lies madness, or at least rampant speculation." Google "space roar dark energy". Google "milgrom weizmann institute". Are the space roar and Milgrom's MOND the keys to understanding dark matter and dark energy?
ReplyDeleteWhat is measurement and why does it exist? Measurement might be the natural process that separates the boundary of the multiverse from the interior of the multiverse. Measurement might exist because there is a 26-dimensional model for bosonic string theory. What might be the empirical predictions of string theory? Wolfram suggested that nature has a model consisting of 4 or 5 simple rules that define a finite automaton — if Wolfram’s idea is correct then string theory might be the intermediary between the automaton and the automaton’s predictions. Mathematical considerations indicate that some form of string theory is nature’s way of unifying quantum field theory and general relativity theory. There might be 3 basic possibilities for nature’s fundamental model: (1) string theory with the infinite nature hypothesis, implying the string landscape, superpartners, and eternal cosmological inflation; (2) string theory with the finite nature hypothesis, implying the Fernández-Rañada-Milgrom effect, the Space Roar Profile Prediction, and the existence of a modified Standard Model with precisely 64 fundamental particles (61+graviton+inflaton+axion); or (3) string theory replaced by a much more complicated generalization of string theory, implying the existence of dark energy stars or other unknown phenomena.
Did you say "fantastical, speculative ideas with few or no qualifiers"? I thought that's what you said. Now I know what that means.
ReplyDelete