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Comment by jetrink | Hacker News Reader

As I read that paragraph, I thought to myself that the author should read Sabine Hossenfelder's recent book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray. In that book, Sabine argues quite convincingly that our aesthetic judgements of new theories can mislead us. She says of simplicity,

> This dream still drives research today. But we do not know whether more fundamental theories necessarily have to be simpler. The assumption that a more fundamental theory should also be simpler—at least perceptually simpler—is a hope and not something that we actually have reason to expect.

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> As I read that paragraph, I thought to myself that the author should read Sabine Hossenfelder's recent book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray.

The author is Sabine Hossenfelder :)

I realized when I reached the bottom of the post. It is odd to me to see her saying that the new theory is disqualified for not being as simple as alternatives after reading her book.

It's not disqualified for not being simple, it's disqualified for not making testable predictions. Given two theories, neither of which make testable predictions, the simpler one (and the one that has been studied more thoroughly) is the more reliable.

Otherwise, why not just say that the missing mass is unicorns? And the energy driving the accelerated expansion of the universe is the energy of their love? There's no shortage of radical explanations for dark mass/energy. The scientific community takes them seriously to the extent that they are compatible with past observations and make testable hypotheses that distinguish them from other theories.

The author of the negative mass theory said that it will be testable via the cubic kilometer ice array in Antarctica when it comes online (though I'm not sure how). He mentions it in his chain of 17 tweets that summarize the theory .

Then we'll find out when it comes online! If the new theory is compatible with past observations, and correctly predicts something that GR gets wrong, that will be a huge finding! But the press has gone wild prematurely, as they often do. As others have mentioned, that seems to be the real issue to which Dr. Hossenfelder objects.

I thought he was planning to use the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope which is still in the works, and not to be confused with the Ice Cube neutrino detector which has been operational for several years.

https://cdr.skatelescope.org/

https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/icecube/detector

Yep, you are right - I was confusing the Square Kilometer Array for the Ice Cube neutrino detector. Heres a direct link to his tweet: https://twitter.com/Astro_Jamie/status/1070304980224172033

>It's not disqualified for not being simple, it's disqualified for not making testable predictions

That's not uncommon. In their early development, most theories don't make testable predictions, especially when they attempt to expand the status quo, and not just add some incremental detail...

> odd to me to see her saying that the new theory is disqualified for not being as simple

No. Her main argument is, the way I read her article, is:

"Farnes in his paper instead wants negative gravitational masses to mutually repel each other. But general relativity won’t let you do this. "

The way I understand it, the author of the paper fails to be compatible with the theory that was confirmed time and again during the last 100 years. She just avoided to formulate that so bluntly.

In which case she probably has read the book.

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