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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> Jonathan Oppenheim, who runs a program exploring post-quantum alternatives at University College London, suspects that’s because gravity simply can’t be squeezed into a quantum box.

So... he is still part of the Orthodoxy. He is challenging ideas, but as an employee of University College London he is hardly any sort of outsider to the physics community.

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This sort of objection only arises because titles say baity things like "challenging orthodoxy". There's no information there—not in the bait and not in the objections the bait triggers.

The solution is to have a more substantive title. Fortunately the article supplies one of those in its HTML doc title, so we've switched to that (plus the s/the/a/ debaiting trick).

Let's focus on the article content now please.

You have to be trained in physics to theorize about it. Thinking otherwise is the realm of the crackpot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11lPhMSulSU

I love Dr. Collier's videos. Her method of story telling/video essay is extremely unconventional but very effective.

Me too bestie, I haven't taken physics since undergrad but I appreciate that it's a layer of understanding above popular science (that never covers any of the math) while remaining accessible.

I’m a quantum physicist and you wouldn’t believe how many people try and sell me on their theory that solves everything that is literally just an idea in their head and can’t even produce any quantitative predictions. The levels of self delusion that these people display is astounding and we need to mock it more openly imo

if i have a crackpot theory and i’d like a real physicist to look it over and am willing to pay for their time where would i find one? asking for a friend

Sabine Hossenfelder apparently does this [1, 2] for $50/20min.

[1] http://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/talk-to-physicist_27.html

[2] https://aeon.co/ideas/what-i-learned-as-a-hired-consultant-f...

Agreed. Those who confuse “astronomy” and “astrology” are confused.

The newage people are the worst at this.

Beware, you may want to gouge your own eyes out: https://www.watkinsmagazine.com/quantum-life-of-healing-crys...

There is this thing that I like to call 'the cult of stupid' where people are somehow proud of their lack of knowledge and they are not afraid of putting it out there. They tend to laugh when asked pointed questions because in their world 'truth' has no value, it's all about belief. One family member of mine wears healing crystals because they keep her cancer free. It's really sad and it irks me that given the excellent educational opportunities we have that so many people choose willingly not to avail themselves of those opportunities. But they do have opinions on all that stuff that you need to work at to learn.

What do you intend to achieve by mocking these people?

To make them feel bad (I am salty)

Genuine question here, when was the last time a total outsider made a significant contribution to physics?

When was the last time an insider made one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEVE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subauroral_ion_drift

Not exactly the discovery of a new quark, but it triggered realworld research into the cause of the phenomena. That qualifies as contribution imho.

Ask yourself; why are they outsiders in the first place?

It's like asking why hasn't anyone who is not a player in major league baseball ever won a world series?

Those are disanalogous in the case of theoretical physics where you don’t need access to any expensive equipment. There’s nothing in principle preventing someone from learning math and physics on their own or from a traditional university and then coming up with new theories alone. And in fact this happens all the time and most of those people get called crackpots.

A better analogy is asking why someone who is bad at baseball isn't on an MLB team

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