Should we abandon the multiverse theory? | Hacker News Reader

Should we abandon the multiverse theory?

youtube.com

14 pointsIdeabile6 comments

Holy shit the comments are terrible. Not because it's YouTube, but since when physics has become a celebrity contest, with fans fighting over their favorite theory and physicist while talking shit about other people?

I see it on YouTube like I see it on here any time any Sabine Hossenfelder article is posted.

Did a massive delegation of K-pop stans get into astrophysics? Is everything a "my idol will demolish yours any time" these days, even in hard sciences?

Sorry for the off topic. I know nothing about physics and I don't have a favourite physicist.

Could be from just “the internet“. But I’m wondering if people/bots are dialed up to 11 on outrage right now…

I think is the channel that attracts that kind of commenters. There's this video [1] where a extremely unprepared moderator insists in the question if we should get up the idea of the problematic "antimatter theory". Thing is, there's no such question, there's no problem with antimatter and even the guests (Smolin and Hossenfelder) insisted in that. But the moderator was annoyingly focused on trying to make a controversy in an already accepted theory. I think you won't find insightful comments in a channel clearly ill-equipped to discuss such topics.

[1] https://youtu.be/-2ngmVwXteE

I'm getting a bit of a sense of the making it controversial vibe here too. For instance I don't find Michio and Sabine's viewpoints in conflict. Theories can take a long time for confirmation and even a long time before they can even be considered science. Sabine has a problem with calling it science or believing in the 'existence of mathematics'. I have a problem with that because we have found mathematical anomalies to exist: singularities/black holes, cosmological constant/inflation. That dispute seems to be about where to put research resources, which comes down to personal convictions and how much support you can raise for them. Roger of course isn't having any of the controversy building: "What are we talking about here?"

The two points I found the most interesting were Michio's description of multiple things existing in the same space but we're only 'tuned into' one of them and Roger's theory of a continuous series of big bangs which he didn't care to discuss because it has nothing to do with multiverse(s).

I'll watch/listen to "Sabine Hossenfelder, Roger Penrose, Michio Kaku".

Michio: If someone in the audience can come up with a unified theory of everything, it just has to meet these three criteria...yadda yadda... and if you do come up with that, please tell me first.

:-D

i feel bad for Sabine because it seems like the moderator keeps pronouncing her name 'Sabina'. maybe that's correct?

and i feel bad for Michio b/c Sabine (and Roger) was crushing him and all String Theory. the weird part about what she said is, she's like String Theory is ridiculous, but so is the idea that mathematics has to make sense, and theories have to be testable, but i would say -- how can we have testable theories when math doesn't have to make sense? i've thought of Sabine as a troll - maybe because she does that kind of in your face, 'everyone is stupid but me'-way of speaking. reminds me of the EA crowd.

in String Theory's defense, Michio mentioned how Fermilab got some result that does not obey the Standard Model:

https://news.fnal.gov/2021/04/first-results-from-fermilabs-m...

man, people be hating on string theory.

i think of George Saunders quoting Einstein:

  “No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.”

i figure, at a minimum, some wacky theory might open up some lines of thought that might not present themselves otherwise.

and i think of the smartest scientists in the world at any given time, shitting all over all the 'stupid' people who believe, say, that the world is round, or that the earth revolves around the sun, etc.

chomsky talks about how humans are limited -- thus, able to be creative -- but only up to a certain point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc1hsQWzUKc

that's the kind of explanation that makes me think, well, string theory (for one example) might be exactly correct, but we can't even properly conceive of it, much less test it, etc.

and Sabine and Roger are like, "ok fine, BUT JUST DON'T CALL IT SCIENCE."

ok.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com