No, Matt, this is no crisis

I find it extremely distressing that we are still discussing this even though it's abundantly clear that naturalness arguments have historically worked extremely badly. It's a pseudo-scientific method that physicists need to stop using.

00:00 Introduction
00:47 Naturalness
03:30 The Supposed Crisis
06:11 A Little Bit of History
07:49 Technical Naturalness
11:41 Past Successes?
12:53 The Confusion
18:36 In the End
20:30 Hollyland Mic Review

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#science #math #physics

[gregolas]

"The age of the universe increases with the age of the universe" -- classic Sabine deadpan delivery 😂

[KangShinMin]

And the physicist beheld the theory, that it was simple and symmetric; and lo, it was elegant. And the physicist saw that it was good.

[markproulx]

The notion that the universe is obligated to follow arbitrary rules that we humans find pleasing is beyond nonsensical.

[dewiz]

Delightful to hear from someone who has been liberated from “Publish or Perish”. . .

[georgecoville]

In the mid- 1970's I was an undergrad at the University of Washington Werner Heisenberg visited and I attended his lecture. As I recall, he was speaking about how there were Nobel Prizes being awarded for the the discovery of new particles. With a kind twinkle in his eye he suggested that sooner or later Nobel Prizes would be awarded to scientists who did not find a new particle... He was soft spoken and seemed like a very nice person.

[TheGbelcher]

I’m an eternal optimist. I truly believe, from the bottom of my heart, that someday we’ll convince the universe to behave.

[mattym]

the universe is under no obligation to make sense to humans

[joejohns]

Matt O'Dowd is a personal role model of mine and likely one to many others. People can be wrong and it seems like that's the case here. Still, I wanted to make a comment to show support for him. Matt does GREAT work and is a excellent source for sophisticate physics information. PBS space time has been a favorite channel of mine since it started years ago. Sabine, you do great work as well and I genuinely believe these two channels have helped me greatly in my understanding of the universe.

[Sucralose]

it kind of makes sense in the sense of "why is it like this let's study it"

but there's also a jump between "why isn't it like that" and "it's supposed to be like that"

[fastradioburst]

"Yes, but the age of the universe increases on a one-to-one ratio with the age of the universe, so it can be canceled out by factoring it into both sides of the equation, then dividing itself by itself to get one, which is the loneliest number." -- Some physicist probably.

[KarlinaVilaboa]

Psychedelics are just an exceptional mental health breakthrough. It's quite fascinating how effective they are against depression and anxiety. Saved my life.

[mangoldm]

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” --Francisco d’Anconia

[johnwollenbecker]

The microphone ad was the most natural part of the video. 😃

[xitheris]

In other words, there isn't a crisis in _physics, _ but there *is* a crisis among _physicists._ The crisis is psychological, not practical.

[BCzepa]

i really appreciate the ad at the end, very good to include the actual specs for audio people.

[AlessandroCoppo-mcvd]

Very simple: all physics relates to mathematics but not all mathematics corresponds to physics.

[taigenraine]

With all these crises, physics needs to get a therapist.

[johnday]

Sabine, I’m glad you referenced ‘t Hooft’s paper. For me, this is typically shown to be the technical “validation” of naturalness arguments. At then end of the day, we should remember that our theories are just models of a physical observation. It is our best guess at understanding and predicting physical observations, but there is certainly no guarantee that the universe is bound by our concepts / bias of dimensionless constant magnitude.

[scottmiller]

I was lucky enough to have a front-row seat to one of PAM Dirac's lectures on this topic. It was quite interesting and Dirac displayed a good sense of humor and an appropriate tentativeness about his conclusions. He phrased it in terms of "What if we look at these ratios? Isn't that a peculiar coincidence?" He was kind enough to answer questions from the audience, including mine (no, I don't recall what it was). He found the numerical coincidences worth further investigating, with interesting predictions, but in no way concluded in the lecture that this was "natural" nor "required."

[grinpisu]

If I'm not mistaken, the alpinist and journalist Jon Krakauer said once (free quote): "mountain doesn't care you are enchanted there or you are dying in desperation, it only is there". Likewise, our Mother Nature doesn't care a bit what we think about it.