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The Hidden Reality Draws Ire From Physicists
eldavojohn writes "Scientific American is running a piece by science journalist John Horgan attacking pop physicist Brian Greene's latest offering, titled The Hidden Reality. He's not entirely alone; Not Even Wrong backs him up and reminds us of a growing list of multiverse propaganda. The journal Nature ran a short piece (subscription required) trying to remind everyone that Greene's book is more theory than fact, but apart from those three responses, the popular press seems to be gobbling up this tantalizing concept of a multiverse. NPR offers an excerpt while SFGate and The Wall Street Journal entertain us with interviews of the controversial Greene. The New York Times and Salon seem to think it's worthwhile, with Salon even calling it 'the science behind' the multiverse theory. The New York Times thought it worthwhile to give Greene an op-ed column. For better or for worse, Greene has certainly brought this great debate to the public's attention — similar to his exhibition of String Theory."
The press repeating pseudoscience as fact? Say it ain't so!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
You can check out a fairly entertaining interview of Brian Greene by Stephen Colbert from last Thursday on Colbert's web site.
I can't say this will educate you further one way or another and I am certainly not qulified to weigh in on either side of the debate but the guy was pretty candid with Stephen and, well, I found it entertaining...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
But the conservation of ire insures that an equal amount of economists will chill out.
This means that I can travel to the other universes, kill off the me from other ones and become stronger? I am pretty sure that the awesome Jet Li movie came out first (seriously, when he is going in regular motion and the sparks are in slow motion at the end, awesome). And yes, this is all 100% on topic since the movie discusses the multi-verse (it is not everyday that I can figure out a way to shove a Jet-Li reference into /.)
The world is how you make it
We may one day have the science to punch a hole in the universe and go elsewhere. To do the same with a god you need to epic level handbook and a munchkin like devotion to being a rules-lawyer.
Sounds like the submitter doesn't know the meaning of the word theory?
His sole beef is that it's impossible to prove or disprove.
Which means it is not and cannot be science. Unless someone comes up with a way to test the "multiverse" theory, it is nothing more than a mental exercise.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
more theory than fact
To scientists, these terms are not mutually exclusive.
Errm - well, the double slit experiment is kind of observable, and there are lots of sort of explanations of it that don't involve a multi-verse.
But you could say that Feynman should have been taken literally, although he didn't want to be.
To be frank, Feynman should have been taken literally (and with a bucket full of worship) full stop.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
unobservables
Irrespective of whether I agree with Green or not — these can be inferred. Dark matter and dark energy come to mind.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
OK, it seems that even people who should know the difference can't distinguish between the word theory and hypothesis. What was meant in the write up when this was said "Greene's book is more theory than fact" is "Greene's book is more hypothesis or conjecture rather than theory". A theory has been tested and more than once. It is as close to fact as humans can get. This watering down of the word theory is bad, it causes people to be confused and discount theories. Which is why people doubt the theory of evolution or global climate change.
Use the word right or don't use it.
OK, I'll stop ranting.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
He actually addressed this when he was on Colbert the other night. His point is that the maths indicate that this may be true, but that there is no way to scientifically prove it given current technology and understanding. This is similar to the fact that several aspects of Einstein's theories were indicated via math but not verifiable via experimentation. Einstein didn't even believe them. They were ultimately proven true as technology advanced to the point that the relevant experiments became possible.
The premise of his position is simply that math, while ultimately a mental exercise, can help guild the focus of scientific experimentation by indicating possibility. That's not really a controversial position in and of itself.
What the media are doing with this, on the other hand, is pretty much par for the course in science reporting.
Culture is more than commerce
Absolutely. Any decent cleric can plane shift, but meeting their God (other than by the usual means) requires a very friendly DM.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
...where this book is up for a Pulitzer, so sticks and stones, ya haters!
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Why all the negative spin in the summary? As far as I can tell, nobody is accusing Greene of "propaganda." Rather, this is /. propagandizing at its absolute worst.
Here's the real summary: Brian Greene has written on string theory for a popular audience in the past, and he's also fascinated by some of the more fringe-y elements of physics, such as the multiverse theory. He has a new book out. He has not taken any public stance on the Tea Party, abortion, or the Iraq war -- and honestly, I think it's sad that it seems to have become a requirement of modern journalism to pretend that he has.
Breakfast served all day!
The guy is out on the most feeble of limbs with his multiverse idea, since 'string theory' itself is little more than conjecture... but to take the edge off the 'not science' rhetoric here, the guy is a very well regarded theoretical physicist. Is it any less scientific-wild-ass-guess than Hawkings' notions about black holes? No. He at least has enough clout to get data access to the CERN supercollider experiments, so its not like its -me- throwing this crap out there hoping it will stick.
I read Fabric of the Cosmos and thoroughly enjoyed it. I then read the Elegant Universe and grew more and more frustrated with each page as Greene delved into theories that can never be proven or disproven. At a certain point, this become little more than fantasy and has as much credibility as religion and mythology, both of which can also never be proven or disproven.
In a parallel universe, Brian Greene is lauded as a genius and his interpretation of multiverse theory is universally accepted!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And that's the problem. It's one thing to play with various mathematical models like M-theory, and to some extent it is science in that researchers in these areas are trying to work out mathematical models that might give us a quantum theory of gravity. But something pretty peculiar has happened, particularly with some of the string theorists, in that they tend not to speak in the normal, cautious language that physicists usually do when talking about very hypothetical models. They seem to start talking in terms that would suggest to an uninformed layman that they have the Answer, so to speak. Science journalists, sadly, are among the most gullible of laymen, and will happily give guys like Greene far to much credence, and guys like Greene in return seem to take this as an opportunity to try to fight the scientific battle in the public press, which to my mind is quite inappropriate. Greene, will of course, in front of the proper audience (his peers in the physics community) speak much more cautiously, and though I hesitate to call that duplicitous behavior, I sometimes wonder. Being a science popularizer like Sagan or Hawking, is a delicate balancing act. On the one hand you want to include hypothetical solutions to long-standing problems to give an account of the state of physics and cosmology, but at the same time you want to make sure that your layman audience understands that these are in fact hypothetical solutions, currently untestable (and with variants on M-theory and its kin, for all intents and purposes pretty much completely untestable with the level of technology at our disposal for the foreseeable future, if ever).
Another thing I don't particularly like about Greene and his gang of string theorists is that they tend to poo-poo the major competitor, loop quantum gravity. While LQG isn't currently testable either, unlike the various superstring theories, which just seem to get messier as you look at them, LQG works within the 3+1 dimensional framework of classical physics. It too may be wrong, but it has a certain attraction in its own right.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Science popularizers like Greene have to tread a careful line. They're not paid to talk about the most important work, which most people wouldn't understand. Real cutting-edge physics is comprehensible only to those extremely skilled in the art, which cuts out even the vast majority of scientists. But people like believing that they're getting dispatches from the front, especially in physics, because that's where people imagine lays the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything.
You can't even pretend to know much about string theory without some very advanced work in quantum mechanics AND general relativity, which means knowing an awful lot of very, very difficult calculus. For 99.9% even of readers of Scientific American, they're skipping straight past all of that.
Which means, in essence, telling comforting lies. That's common in education, simplifying a subject to the point where it's essentially false. It's common in science (cf. genetics), but in other fields as well. History, as taught in schools, is so far from reality that college professors have to spend a full year (at least) undoing the damage.
It's similar to the situation with space research: most of the actual science is done by the robots, but people like the human stories associated with manned flight. The real science is done practically with the rounding errors in the budget.
In the case of string theory, that means that a bunch of people doing interesting but (bluntly) irrelevant speculation get far, far more attention than they deserve. It's not that they're right, wrong, or Not Even Wrong. People want to know what they're doing, because they've been told that we're Just Around The Corner from The Big Answers. It's a lie, and essentially everybody familiar enough with the work knows it. But they also know it's where the funding comes from.
I mean seriously... a multi-billion-dollar supercollider? How on earth does that get funded? Because a bunch of people who can't tell a fermion from a boson imagine that they're part of a grand human experiment. And maybe, in the grand human scheme of things, it is worth the money, though I personally doubt it. Still, it's the dirty little secret of scientific work: popularizers write a lot of books about stuff that's really of very little earthy interest, in order to attract enough attention to the field of science to keep the actual work going on. The grad students counting bacterial colonies or coming up with new protein folding algorithms or other tedious stuff that slowly an un-telegentically advances understanding.
I don't like the little turf war going on between the string theoriests, who get more attention than they deserve, and the anti-string-theorists, who are doing equally unproductive work. Both are intriguing speculations that might one day be of intense interest, but at the moment are of little value either practical or philosophical. They get attention only because they're right at the edge, but most of us are so far from the edge that they'd be invisible under any other circumstances. Both should be left to labor diligently in quiet, and let their little funding turf war be lumped in with the rest of the academic bickering rather than become a great philosophical debate.
Unhh... but that's true of every single interpretation of quantum mechanics. The multiworld hypothesis is just as reasonable as the Copenhagen interpretation is just as reasonable as ...
There's a bunch of results that put fairly tight constraints about which theories are reasonable, but they don't uniquely identify which one is correct. When you've got 5-7 different theories that make exactly the same prediction everywhere you can check, then to favor any one of them over the others is unreasonable. And it might just be something that you haven't thought of yet.
So this guy is the devotee of the multiworld (Everett-Graham-Wheeler) hypothesis, and the other guy (I'm guessing) is a devotee of the Copenhagen interpretation (Niels Bohr, etc.). Neither can be shown to be wrong. Just because the Copenahagen interpretation came first historically doesn't make it any better. In fact, I'd argue that without evidence one should go with the mathematics, and not collapse the state function. (MultiWorld.) But you can't even use Occam's Razor to choose between them. They just make different simplifying assumptions when translating the math into English. They don't disagree on what the math says. And it can't be translated without simplifying assumptions.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
AGW would be easy to disprove if it wasn't true. I can think of half-dozen things off the top of my head which would disprove AGW.
1) Sustained decrease in global temperatures(i.e. not a one year fluctuation down or not being higher than a one year fluctuation up) without a decrease in greenhouse gas presence in the atmosphere.
2) Stratospheric heating rather than stratospheric cooling.
3) Relative decreases in nighttime temperature versus daytime temperatures rather than the reverse.
4) Relative decreases in polar temperatures versus equatorial temperatures rather than the reverse.
5) Much greater increases in solar output than have been observed.
6) Decreases in global CO2 levels.
7) Lack of evidence that the carbon in atmospheric CO2 isn't coming from fossil fuels via isotopic measurements.
Obviously all of those conflict with the world as we observe it to an almost ludicrous degree which is why the scientific consensus is that AGW is occurring.
loop quantum gravity .... It too may be wrong, but it has a certain attraction in its own right.
Hmmm .. gravity? .. attraction? ... You may be on to something there!
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Someone who whines that the multiverse theory must necessarily be false because it leads him to uncomfortable conclusions regarding his personal belief in morality has no business criticizing any scientific theory, no matter how speculative it is.
And seriously people, pseudoscience? You are claiming that Susskind and Hawking engage in pseudoscience, like Deepak Chopra?
This criticism isn't based on scientific merit, this is envy of popular attention.
what does it have to do with this world? multiverse cannot be science, it's talking about unobservables.
if we entertain the thought of multiverse, we might as well entertain the thought of a God. what's the difference?
Ohh you mean like dark matter, the big bang theory, string theory, the god particle, comet extinction theory, or even evolution?
All of them are theories. Theories try to explain something that may or not be observable. They're made because there's a problem of why something happens that isn't very straightforward. A lot of times they're wrong, but that's also part of scientific progress.
For they all are guilty of mental masturbation when it comes to physics. Oh, and include whomever postulated that the Higgs is so abhorrent to nature that it comes back through time to prevent its discovery.
It is a general "parallel universe" or "alternate reality" problem, and not any problem with your understanding. You (and everyone else) have failed to identify the matter/energy constraint. That is to say, if there is an alternative, it must be expressed in matter, and maintaining more than one reality requires additional matter (or base state of energy). I've conceptualized it with a familiar software developer concept: MVC: Model-View-Controller. Anytime when looking at gobs of data (including the state of reality) you need to look and interact with data in a uniform way. MVC allows for this. The model is the data model - the structure of, and data itself. List, tree, etc. The universe would probably express this as dimensional (3 or 10) planes of energy. Next is the view, with is the manifestation of the model. This would be an instantaneous snapshot of the universe, including velocities, etc. Finally the controller are the laws that work on the data. They do not work on the view, as the view is dependent of the model.
Every time you propose an alternate time line, then you need to copy the model (you can share the viewer and controller (if you didn't things would be "noticeably different")) But to copy the model is to acquire the energy to express a whole other universe, and not once, but at every decision point on the time line.
Physicists are just now starting to realize this and many are starting to argue that space-time is quantized on the order of Planck length (and time). While this is infinitesimally small, it vastly reduces the possible outcomes from infinite to a manageable number, possibly 1. Quantized space time locks down the source state and limits the possibilities of the next state, so it is feasible that the laws of the universe would only allow 1 possible next state. Heim was the first (that I know of) to argue for quantized space-time. I've since seen other people derive it on their own and get a similar (yet not identical) result
(but all are some close value to Planck length)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Huh? Both theories of relativity have been quite well tested, special relativity especially so. Mass-energy equivalence, time dilation and mechanics (where different from Newtonian) have all had experimental tests. Similarly, for GR, differences in Mercury's orbit, gravitational time dilation (Pound-Rebka experment) and so forth.
By that same logic, though, you can flush most of Einsteins work too. We do not posses, nor are we likely to posses in our lifetimes barring alien intervention, the technology to directly test and observe either the General or Special theories of relativity.
Well I guess then you must believe in alien intervention because its all happened already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
There is a simple rule that has been used since science became science to deal with divergent hypotheses that explain observed facts. It is called Occam's razor. That is, until such a time as a means of testing comes along, the simplest theory that explains known facts is accepted as correct. Historically, this has saved quite a bit of time because when technology has reached the point of being able to test in almost every case it has turned out to be correct (it may be every case, but I do not know that for sure).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
From the TFA:
"Multiverse theories aren't theories—they're science fictions, theologies, [...]"
Theology is the keyword here. Postulating a multiverse with many similar universes to this one basically eliminates any objective significance this particular planet Earth with its history has. You can nuke everything and "know" that our culture will continue in other universes. So accepting a multiverse theory would destroy ethics: it would kill God.
I agree... although I live in a universe where we don't have atomic clocks, satellites, particle accelerators, atomic bombs, the planet Mercury, telescopes to observe the bending of light, etc. It is truly frustrating to live in the 18th century.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
More proof that we need to be able to moderate summaries
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Note that the string theoretic multiverse is not the same as the Everett multiverse. The two are not mutually exclusive (i.e. it could even be that we live in a "double-multiverse") but they are conceptually different. The string theoretic multiverse consists of universes which have different laws of physics, and which develop independent of each other. The Everett multiverse OTOH consists of worlds (universes) which follow the same laws of physics, and even share the same past up to some point. It's just that at random events the worlds split, and in each world that event had another result.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
By that same logic, though, you can flush most of Einsteins work too. We do not posses, nor are we likely to posses in our lifetimes barring alien intervention, the technology to directly test and observe either the General or Special theories of relativity. The math works, its elegant, and is therefore the best explanation people can come up with. String theory tries to tie the quantum aspects together with the space time and forces described by AE. Its only as credible as the information that its based on.
What? Both special and general relativity have been proven over and over again. Special relativity is used on a daily basis for a variety of applications such as GPS, particle accelerators, atomic clocks, etc etc. General relativity has made correct predictions about the orbit of mercury, and gravitational lensing has been directly observed around the sun and distant galaxies. Gravity waves have not yet been directly observed but there is indirect evidence for their existence in the measurements of falling binary stars.
Did you ever read Rational Mysticism ? Because I did, and I found it to be very fascinating, written from a skeptic's viewpoint (as opposed to a cynical skeptic) and he came away with a lot of interpretations that I found intriguing.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
As a physicist, I believe that the many-world interpretation of quantum physics is the best because it is more practical than its competitors.
The first major competitor is the theory that the world is deterministic and its just our lack of knowledge that causes us to perceive a non-deterministic world. The problem with this is that we have no evidence in favor of this proposition and to the extent we have any evidence it is *against* this proposition.
The other major competitor is the theory that the wave function of the whole universe collapses every time we make a measurement. This agrees very well with experiment as long as the person asking the question is the one doing the measurement, but it has a major problem: since wave functions don't collapse unless measured, what counts as a measurement? For example, does collapse only happen when *I* make a measurement? If so, why should I be uniquely privileged? Alternatively, does collapse happen whenever some human being makes a measurement --- that is, if I perform the Schroedinger's cat experiment but with a person instead of a cat inside the box, then has the wave function collapsed even if I never open the box (assuming it is perfectly insulated)?
The advantage of the many-worlds interpretation is that it solves the problem of measurement by *not* treating measurement as being an special-case exception to the rules; it postulates that the wave function of the universe never actually collapses. Given this, how do we make sense of the fact we human beings *do* observe such a collapse? The answer actually appears right in the math: when we demand that a particle in a mix of states tell us which state it is in, it causes us to become entangled with the particle so that a *portion* of the universe splits into two states: one with the particle in the first state and us seeing it in the first state, one with the particle in the second state and us seeing it in the second state, and so on. So from the perspective of each of the observers the wave function has collapsed even though it never did. What happens then if you put an observer in a box and have him or her make a measurement? The answer also appears in the math: although the universe splits inside the box, it does not split outside the box.
This might seem fanciful, but it is something that we can actually test. Although we cannot put human beings in a box for ethical reasons, we can put increasingly large systems in the box that act as "observers" of some particle (by engineering an interaction between the observer and the particle) and then perform interference experiments to determine whether the wave function in the box has collapsed or not. Every such experiment we have performed has shown that the wave function does in fact *not* collapse inside the box but rather splits.
So what is the mathematical difference between being inside the portion of the universe that splits and being outside it? It is simple: if you are outside the portion that splits, then the wave function of the universe can be expressed as a tensor product between you and splitting portion. If you are inside the portion that splits, then this can never be the case.
Thus it turns out that measurement *already falls out of quantum mechanics* in a mathematically rigorous and observer-independent fashion, as long as we are willing to accept that a consequence of this is that from the view of someone external to the universe there is a (mathematically rigorous) sense in which there are multiple copies of you and I within the universe. Sure, if we don't like this consequence we can add a rule that gets rid of it by specifying that the wave-function collapses, but then you have to introduce some arbitrary rule that specified that some macroscopic bodies have the power to cause a collapse but not others. Now in fairness, there do turn out to be mathematically rigorous ways to do this and some of them even provide testable predictions so one of them might be proven correct one day, but there is
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
The main issue is that anyone familiar with the scientific process understands that there is a huge difference between the theory of evolution and string theory. People that learn about science in the wall street journal and the new york times don't understand this. Yes, the fringe of theoretical physics houses some exotic 'theories', but not all theories have the same level of evidence. I really wish that all of science used mathematical terminology, ie. string conjecture, the multi-verse conjecture etc. When something is proven to the extent of plate tectonics or biological evolution, then it should be promoted to theorem. This way, the idiot masses would know that when they read about string conjecture in the wall street journal, it's an idea that scientists are working on, trying to test etc.
It would also put an end to the "it's just a theory" crap when fact and reality run up against the magical fantasy's of two thousand year old Palestinian goat herding desert nomads.
It seems like this sort of romanticism is seen in all fields of study, and if you are active in that field, then it's going to annoy you. I'm endlessly irritated by the portrayal of computer programmers in hollywood and some science fiction. And in the end, it's not always that far off for some representative people in the field. There are a few people who have to consider adding a new universe (or whatever) in order to make the equations fit. It's just people such as Brian Greene who 'work downward' to create all of the imaginative aspects for their own purposes, even if it misrepresents what physicists actually do. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing; as a former science journalist at my university's paper, I had to try and inspire the imaginations of semi-literate undergrads every week with stories about esoteric research projects, and if that means using 'creative' imagery or speculation, then so be it, as long as you're careful not to misrepresent the original research (and I really don't believe Greene does so). As far as science journalists being the most gullible, it really is a difficult position they're placed in: they aren't (and can't be) experts in the field they're writing about, but they're supposed to be critical of their subject matter. It takes experts of the same caliber, if not greater, to critique another expert. Imagine if NPR called B.S. on Brian Greene or Stephen Hawking.
Asimov said it best:
"when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
I have damned little respect for science journalists in general. Every fucking time some study comes along that, say, pushes a date around a bit, the headlines read "Current Theories Overturned!", which is almost inevitably complete hyperbole, or more to the point pure unadulterated bullshit. I can either assume the journalist in question is a shameless liar, or a fucking twit, so I choose fucking twit because I'm assuming he's to stupid, ignorant and just plain lacking in curiosity to accurately report.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nice examples, but what's the difference in testability between the (pre-Hubble) comsological constant and current string theory?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
But something pretty peculiar has happened, particularly with some of the string theorists, in that they tend not to speak in the normal, cautious language that physicists usually do when talking about very hypothetical models.
Don't worry, there is at least one possible world in which theoretical physicist are much more careful in their popularizing efforts.