Comment by streetfighter64 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by streetfighter64 | Hacker News Reader

streetfighter64

Surprised at the quick dismissals in the comments here. Of course the title is a bit sensationalist, that's the case for all pop-sci articles. I don't think anybody would reasonably believe physicists disagree about for example Newtonian mechanics. Aren't the following facts still pretty interesting?

> The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics came in at 36%.

> Although it's often reported in the press that the black hole information paradox has been resolved in favour of information preservation, the survey found that 19% of physicists still side with Stephen Hawking's earlier view that information is lost.

To see how the survey is useful, consider the "null hypothesis" so to speak, that a majority of physicists agree that one answer is most likely. Such as the Collatz conjecture from mathematics, where if surveyed, probably around 80% of mathematicians would agree that it's true, even though it's not been settled yet. Clearly this is not the case for most of the ten questions in this survey.

The title isn't a bit sensationalist, it's a straight-up lie. That matters because most people won't actually read the article but will see the title and take it at face value. I see the erroneous title as disparaging to science.

> Aren't the following facts still pretty interesting?

Well, firstly, as another commenter pointed out, it's not clear that the respondents are actually representative of physicists.

But regardless, how interesting it is that those 10 questions are subject to debate depends, I suppose, on how familiar you are with the field of physics. I would feel better about the article if it addressed the same topic with higher quality.

> That matters because most people won't actually read the article but will see the title and take it at face value.

Welcome to, like any news article in the history of mankind. Also I disagree that it's a lie. Clearly it depends on your interpretation of "most", but any reasonable person would interpret it as "most of things that can have disagreement", i.e. "questions that have not been settled".

I'm not surprised by the copenhagen one, but it also isn't really load bearing for most of physics. Not discounting it as a true disagreement, it just doesn't have the impact popular science would have you believe.

Physics is an enormous field. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who knows the latest majority opinion on every problem, not to mention finding someone who thinks they are qualified to give an informed opinion. I guess the whole thing is kind of circular and the poll could be formed to give any answer.

For example your first sentence, if you DIDNT ask physicists if they thought newtons mechanics were disproven, then you have a biased poll. If you DID, you would think it was a kind of silly poll (although I guess it would be good signal to reject data). I don't know where you draw the line. I guess my true objection is how this poll will be interpreted, which is more about popular perception of how science works than anything else.

I'm not sure what you mean with "load bearing"?

My example of newtonian mechanics was actually to exemplify a simple model that's obviously correct to everybody (given that you use it for what it's useful for). Like, everybody would agree that a magnifying glass (newtonian mechanics) works for looking at stuff at a normal human scale, but an electron microscope (quantum mechanics) is something there can be more disagreement about among experts.

> I guess my true objection is how this poll will be interpreted, which is more about popular perception of how science works than anything else.

I don't know if I'm interpreting you correctly, but I for one have enough faith in people to guess that most people wouldn't interpret the poll as implying physicists disagree about the wavefunction of the ground state of hydrogen or something.

"I don't know if I'm interpreting you correctly, but I for one have enough faith in people to guess that most people wouldn't interpret the poll as implying physicists disagree about the wavefunction of the ground state of hydrogen or something."

I guess I'm on the opposite end. I think many people will have any idea what a ground state is and those very people will come away most confidently believing physicists don't understand shit.

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