I really like Hossenfelder's physics videos. However, once she leaves her area of expertise, the quality drops off a cliff. Most of these videos are just summaries of random articles with no critical thought.
I've been learning a lot of quantum physics and she's a mixed bag. On the one hand, most people's (and even textbooks') understanding of quantum observation and the quantum eraser experiment are incorrect, and Sabine is one of the few voices on Youtube that calls them out instead of joins them, which is why I suspect why she is so popular.
On the other hand, she embraces the very niche superdeterminism hypothesis. This hypothesis basically says that cause and effect and reversed for any Bell's Inequality related experiment in that using uncorrelated data as inputs into the experiment causes them to become correlated because you used them for the experiment. In other words, she believes that the universe is puppeteering Bell's Inequality experiments so that we can't trust results from those experiments. This has serious issues related to non-falsifiability, where we could technically do this with any experiment we don't like the results of.
However, that's not even the worst part of it. The worst part is that she does not explain her niche viewpoints in her videos. If any of the more popular hypotheses about entanglement are correct, then Einstein's hidden variables hypothesis where entanglement acts like a pair of gloves will be disproven. However, in her videos about entanglement, she constantly refers to entanglement acting like a pair of gloves like it is a fact, because her niche viewpoint is the single viewpoint where it is not disproven.
It's a bigger shame most students aren't taught that Copenhagen is not the only interpretation consistent with experiment and are often thought it as absolute truth.
Let's not get into the compatibility with free will philosophical issues, because that'd need physics to recognize metaphysics once more.
That freedom is what needs to be emphasized because a lot of paradoxes in one interpretation are not in another because they basically boil down to your choice of metaphysical assumptions about the universe.
None of them alter the calculations or observables (so far) which is why saying one is more practical than the other is missing the point.
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/the-fantasy-behind-sabine...
I believe this criticism implicitly assumes realism, which is another metaphysical assumption that is not trivial in the light of Bell-style results. It's circular in that way, like a lot of surface critique of superdeterminism (which I don't particularly like and don't subscribe to).
Confusing metaphysics and physics is a real issue here.
Why the double standard?
One example is she calculated the power output of fusion reactions as energy created by fusion * heat to electricity conversion efficiency. However, energy that’s heating the plasma should also recoverable at the same conversion efficiency. Largely irrelevant a Q=1,000 but it plays a major role in what Q is breakeven and what Q is economically useful.
Not on the surface such a big deal, but a sign she should reach out more to actual experts in these fields.
It also explains why Q is formulated in terms of energy added to the plasma vs energy gained from fusion which she didn’t understand. This formula for Q ends up being a term in the equation for economic viability, but she attacked it as if such a formulation was misleading.
Basically the total energy spent on the facility including cryogenic cooling, pumps, etc matters + Q as defined by fusion experts + fusion output energy + conversion energy lets you find the total net energy gain which you then compare with the cost of the facility to find economic viability. Roughly, [ (Fusion energy) * (1 + 1/Q) * (conversion efficiency) - (Total energy use by facility) ] / (cost per hour of operation) = energy per dollar.
There are other ways you can calculate that same number, but they require a lot more details.
There is significant literature on functioning perpetual motion machines in physics as well. If you were to read it and report on it, that would make your reporting shit.
Well, no, you absolutely need some data, axioms, or facts to support your thoughts, too. Pure thought only works for mathematics and some areas of philosophy.
So, please - what are some of the facts from which that few minutes thought would proceed? Is it the case that there is a hard upper-limit on the range (imposed by constraints in battery technology), or that some road surfaces are unsuitable for EVs, or that electric engines are unsuitable for some chassis types (e.g. heavy haulage), or...?
Distance -- electric cars promote building places inefficiently. The car and the commute are synonymous
Drop the constraint of needing cars, and you can make much better solutions
Adoption of each isn't exclusive of the other, so that's irrelevant.
> Distance -- electric cars promote building places inefficiently
No, they don't, as a replacement for ICE vehicles. If anything, they promote building things more efficiently.
> Drop the constraint of needing cars, and you can make much better solutions
Replacing some share of ICE cars with electric cars does not require active maintenance of a constraint of needing cars. Reconfiguring cities to not need cars is a slower process than replacing what cars are used, so there is a role for the latter even if the former is the main long-term solution (and even if it is and reduces the scope of pervasiveness of the need for cars, it is unlikely to replace all need.)
> “EVs,” notes King, “pull an invisible trailer filled with required major lifestyle changes that the public is not yet aware of.” > > When it does, do not expect the public to acquiesce quietly.
To electrify any significant proportion of ICEs you will need to massively ramp up mining in developing countries. This is going to crush their populations like a meat grinder at the same time that it blights their ecologies with the after-effects of mining. It's a new colonialism with a race to acquire resources for EVs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ev-cob...
You only need a little thought to see that each increment of electric vehicle adoption shifts the market context and incentives away from “as things stand today” in a way which makes your claim, to the extent its true as written, irrelevant in practice.
That... sure is an interesting position to take.
Because she still gives good statistical overviews/analysis.
This kind of misunderstanding of the science is suspect when coming from a scientist famous for her skeptical take in her own field. Her sorta dismissal of ROGD is also suspect, because she seems to sorta believe the anecdotal “evidence” for it why also noting the lacking of actual evidence. This is the opposite of the kind of skeptical take she is known for. I call it suspect because here we have a social issue surrounding a minority where she flips her philosophy. I wonder why she did that.
The only concern she mentioned was a statistical point of a few more girls potentially being / having a little bit too much rogd.
There are no evidence for ROGD other than very bad and highly suspicious anecdotal evidence. There isn’t even a statistical evidence for it. A scientist would know that, and would quickly dismiss this theory and all the talking points of those advocating for it.
btw. she raised more “concerns” than just the population skew in favor of trans people assigned female at birth—which btw. is not a concern, but at most a curiosity. She also had concerns about the efficacy and the long term health affects of gender affirming care. The concerns were without merit, and a true scientist with a neutral take would not find the long term health impacts “concerning” given the evidence we have, and as for the efficacy... well... see my parent post.
What is reasonable is to assume that people are pushing these theories (or hypotheses) because they have an agenda. What ROGD is stating is basically that transgender people are contagious. This is a very disgusting thing to believe so they decorate it with science sounding terms and provide compelling—and suspicious—anecdotes to support it. This isn’t science and it is definitely not reasonable. I’m gonna call it what it is, this is hate speech, and it is not reasonable by any definition of that word (not even political convenience).
The many "that's another story" caveats are important because there are many ways in which the interaction between markets and governments can cause bad outcomes; far too many to be covered in a 20 minute video.
I'd like to hear just one example of a society which does not have capitalism (as defined by the ability to risk capital in hopes of future profits) which is a nice place to live.
No it did not. Market economy combined with the positive feedback loop between science and productivity were the key components. They helped bring about prosperity for at least several thousand years. Recent fad of factory owner(s) hiring other people, paying them wages and skimming the difference is actually a net drag.
> I'd like to hear just one example of a society which does not have capitalism (as defined by the ability to risk capital in hopes of future profits) which is a nice place to live.
And if there is none because our societies co-evolved and at the present moment in history it is the universally dominant economical and political model? You sound like a person who would ask for an example of a non-feudal state in medieval Europe to prove the point that having a king is the best arrangement ever.
You can risk something else than capital ("time of people who do what I tell them to"), for example your own time. With that, everyone can risk something important to them to try to build something better and we don't even need a special social class to bravely take on the risk ("of wasting time of people who have to listen to them or starve"). Wooooot?!
Maybe we would have some such societies, if fascists in Europe and then fascists in US did not take great care to crush them.
Or maybe, instead of that that, those other societies just sucked.
Given that lots of societies have attempted and failed at non capitalist systems, how about instead of inventing excuses we can just use that as evidence that those other non capitalist systems are bad.
The point of the video was to give a basic explanation of completely uncontroversial concepts covered in an economics 101 class.
Econ 101 is taught to people, and not "non capitalist systems that doesn't have money 101" because the experts have studied the topic extensively and the conclusions in her video are uncontroversial.
Of course she is going to listen to the experts on how economics works.
In short, your definition of capitalism seems extraordinarily deficient.
To attempt to get a little closer:
Capitalism is the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort.
Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices, but instead those who have inherited power, acquired through past violence, get to decide on the application of resources and cream off the benefits of the workers whom they have used to action their (the Capitalists) chosen activities.
Many actions (in a just society) would have been chosen in any case, things like delivery of water to each person; now the Capitalist gets to make delivery of water something for which they claim the right to profit from, ultimately extracting worth from the inherent nature of people's needs.
> Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices...
There is nothing about capitalism which prevents this from occuring. People can be allowed to invest while simultaneously participating in a democracy which elects to provide all sorts of publicly funded goods and services.
What has never existed (to the best of my knowledge) is a society which prevents "the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort," which is not also a terrible place to live.
That said capitalism is a state enforced system, which is protected with violence. Every attempt to topple the system and provide an alternative has been met with violence by the state, and every successful revolutions have been through violence. It is hardly a scientifically pristine environment to provide a fair comparison of alternatives, is it?
There will come a time in human history where capitalism is a thing of the past, and only then will we have the tools to judge alternatives. As of now, we can clearly see that early attempts at capitalism were horrible, and resulted in travesties for the common working population. This is the same story of any system that preceded it. I have a feeling future peoples will largely blame the current system for the climate crisis, and deem it equally bad—if not worse—than our historic alternatives.
> That said capitalism is a state enforced system, which is protected with violence.
As opposed to the hands-off, peaceful Soviet state which flourished without horrible capitalism.
My observation about the future is merely historical, not a prediction. Forever is a long time, and there is 0 chance that capitalism will be the dominant system for the remainder of human history. There are many systems of governments which exist in the past which we today look on favorably. However there has been no world—or even regional—dominating economic system enforced with violence which has survived the scrutiny of history. They all suck, though some more then other.
It is arrogant to think that capitalism will be any different, especially as we are now facing a potentially societal collapsing climate crisis which our economic system is not handling well, and the political class is reluctant to act on fearing damage to this very system.
Even in the short history of capitalism, history still does not look kindly on earlier attempts at the same system. The Laissez Faire capitalism of the late 19th and early 20th century yielded a series of depressions, and treated workers horribly. Attempts to reform the system yielded the great depression. It was only through severe regulations of Keynesian economics where this system had some lasting success, but this success was not to last as deregulation of neoliberalism took over. History doesn’t even look kindly on Reaganomics which isn’t even a 50 year old system.
My prediction about the future is just about as plausible as someone looking at the Sun in the post Galilean heleocentric universe, and predicting that perhaps one day humanity will discover that the Sun isn’t at the center of the universe either.
But I could be wrong this particular video I haven't seen yet.