Physics isn't pretty | Sabine Hossenfelder

Sabine Hossenfelder explains why Physics' foundations are messy, not beautiful.

In our society exists the pervasive belief that science – and physics in particular – must be beautiful. But theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is here to dispose of this idea. Physics is messy and should be treated as such.

#physics #science #SabineHossenfelder

Sabine Hossenfelder is an author and theoretical physicist who researches quantum theory. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group.

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What do you think of this talk? Leave a comment below.

[scottbrower]

Dr. Hassenfelder is a delight. She speaks directly & clearly, articulating her thoughts in a manner that can be digested by the average adult, w/o oversimplification. A+

[Teth]

One's sense of beauty should be guided by what functions in reality. The thing that works best is most beautiful. That is the function an assessment of beauty approximates in the first place. It's a coarse assessment of fitness.

[richardvivian]

I like the thought that the universe keeps becoming more complicated the more we scrutinize it.
This will keep us interested with problems to solve.
Imagine how boring things would be if we had a simple equation that described everything perfectly all the time.

[edwardlarson]

I think the increasing difficulty is a major part of the problem. Much like Moore's Law; a slowdown was inevitable.

[MarkAhlquist]

In Wolfram's New kind of science, it's only the ugly, messy automata that can be Turing complete. The others are just pretty, plain patterns or vast fields of sameness.
Maybe it's important for a universe to have awkward and unbalanced physics in order to develop intelligence within it.

[fnutarf]

the universe is under no obligation to make sense to us

[david_porthouse]

The Ugly Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics says that objects lighter than the Planck mass are governed by the Schroedinger equation and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, while heavier objects form a Hamiltonian system with a bit of classical Brownian motion and a Fuerth Uncertainty Principle on the same scale. These are asymptotes, it's just a rule of thumb and cannot deal with Bell's inequalities, but we get an opening for introducing a random number generator into a computer simulation of quantum mechanics so we have something to investigate. If we have an electron in a potential well, the well itself is in classical Brownian motion as a dimple in a heavy object, and can decohere the wave function. The entities in our computer simulations tend to lie at either asymptote so we can use modelling which is as different as the difference between waves and Brownian motion. Not at all pretty !

I think underlying this is tachyonic Brownian motion, but TBM will be much more difficult to model while leaving us not much wiser about what is going on. It's one for the future once we have plenty of experience of modelling the Schroedinger equation (with the mass term), the Dirac equation and quantum field theory all interacting with a bit of randomness. Our computer simulations can be written in Excel VBA and we can put one in every home. Then anyone who disagrees with what is said here can modify the simulation according to their own ideas.

[johnkim]

Physicists have made so many progresses based on Symmetry. I wouldn't give it up easily and build everything entirely based on a new paradigm. I'd try to build on the existing Symmetries but add or change parts like they did, e.g., with the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking.

[joethestack]

The problem may be related to our education system as it applies to science and physics and the academic and research environments. As each science develops over time, the educational programs and curricula become increasingly occupied by what is really the history of scientific achievement, as written by the achievers. And only those that can tolerate an undergraduate and then a graduate program actually have a non-trivial chance of studying unsolved problems. It occurs to me as a response to the video that an education in physics could be a lot different. Instead of memorizing the facts of the history of scientific achievement and the solutions to problems that prove those achievements, students could be taught to start with the right basics and actually develop the theories themselves, or re-develop might be a better term before all the wonder is spoiled by the telling of the answers that their predecessors extolled. Students developing scientific theories even knowing others already found the answer would be a lot more instructive than how we do it now.

[smkh]

Zizek told a funny story ; apparently Heisenburg quipped that God is like a videogame creator.
He renders the foreground accurately, but just sketches in the background, leaving it somewhat chaotic!

[Levon]

I have lots of respect for Sabine, I would rather to know the truth where we are standing than hear all kind of bullshit stories make no sense so ever. At least we know how much work needs to be done to correct our current understanding of the phycs.

[philippemartin]

I love métaphysic, also I love are Sun, love your people who comment on your show. Hi all of you. Sabine you right on the right now issue awnsome.☀️😎♒ Sincères salutations Philippe Martin

[alejandrotkaczevski]

I love her opinions and analysis of current state of physics. I have posed these very questions, such as why dark matter? Only to get a definitive answer as if it is all solved. Thank you for perspective. Now the real question: are protons racist? 🤪

[kripsangratu]

I watched the video from the beginning to the end with full of quriosity and interest, but still I did not understand. The ugly of the physic is that it hardly is comprehensible by ordinary human like me. Anyway, I thumbed up the video

[AdrianJamesEllis]

Very clear and informative. Thanks! It reminds me of a famous quote from Richard Feynman, '“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how many letters you have after your name. If your theory doesn’t agree with the results of the experiments, it’s wrong.”

[rogeremmerson]

I've noted before that I'm an architect not a physicist. However, the conventional attribution of beauty in architecture seems to suffer from the same issue as in physics in that it is construed classically in terms of simple one-point or two-point perspective, Platonic solids, symmetry, progressive proportionality or angular proportionality among others. These are the findings of classical times and art and architecture since have found a much wider and more sophisticated range of systems or arrangements of systems that are pleasing: multiple vanishing points, parallax, syncopation, balanced asymmetry, seriality, left or right ascendency. The issue here is that they work and are consequently, a posteriori, pleasing. They do not ascribe to an a priori condition that they must be beautiful. Thank you again for a stimulating talk.

[Earwaxfire]

I really enjoyed this talk. it reminds me of my graduate school experiences. I entered a Physics grad school program in 1980 and noticed the same thing. Tragically the mathematicians led all of the theoretical fields and they did not communicate well with the experimentalists. The result was that many of my brightest friends wasted their time on pointless failed theories instead of asking the experimentalists what was missing. I hope that the younger Physicist out there learn from what she is saying.

[magnushelliesen]

She must be like a rock in the shoe for many physicists. I think she is refreshing :)

[gregorysagegreene]

"Beauty being the endpoint" is exactly the thought I was having as you were evolving your discussion professor. No reason that the fundamental nature of reality shouldn't be elegant and simple. However, as you say, looks like the physicists have it the wrong way around in not first looking for problems of inconsistency to solve. Guess we have to wait for another Einstein to come along, and appears that we are far from the next lower level of description. At least Astronomy is making a lot of progress, by doing actual observations. And what seems more exciting to me is seeing the explosion in Biology, since the 'Human Genome Project' - which has brought us all the wonders of the inner universe and workings of the cell, CRISPR tech, and the latest vaccines.