I don't know what to say

[bombo1]

[Camacha]

I would help if you could indicatie why you do not know what to say, and give a brief summary of what content you are interested in. Just posting a link to a text, website or movie is generally not considered a good way of starting or participating in a discussion

[jwenting]

maybe it's a silent movie?

[vexx32]

It's a Michio Kaku thing. Stuff about physics and the universe in general. 45 minutes long or thereabouts.

[jwenting]

oh gods, that idiot. He's smart, but has some pretty far out ideas, adheres to pretty much every conspiracy theory out there.

[The Jedi Master]

oh gods, that idiot. He's smart, but has some pretty far out ideas, adheres to pretty much every conspiracy theory out there.

I don't know, I've watched some of his stuff, I like him. He's a theoretical physicist, of course some of his stuff is going to sound far-fecthed.

[Camacha]

I think that is the point of being a scientist right out on the frontier. Unless you are really sure your current model is satisfactory, you will need to evaluate and look at proposed models, no matter how silly they look at first glance. Only after finding a flaw you can put them aside. And of course, even if your current model is satisfactory you would be wise to keep an open mind if you want to be a proper scientist.

To be honest, the scientists that are only adhering to known and proven models are never going to further science, and are actually not even proper scientists. Science is probing what you do not know, not just dishing up what you do know. That is the key.

[jwenting]

he has some valid scientific ideas, but he's also a fervent conspiracy theorist and believer in ancient astronaut theories. And THAT's not science at all.

[K^2]

I think that is the point of being a scientist right out on the frontier. Unless you are really sure your current model is satisfactory, you will need to evaluate and look at proposed models, no matter how silly they look at first glance. Only after finding a flaw you can put them aside. And of course, even if your current model is satisfactory you would be wise to keep an open mind if you want to be a proper scientist.

To be honest, the scientists that are only adhering to known and proven models are never going to further science, and are actually not even proper scientists. Science is probing what you do not know, not just dishing up what you do know. That is the key.

I'm sorry, but that's a load of crap. Understanding limitations of known models, and searching for ways to improve on them is completely different from simply throwing all the known rules out of the window and making stuff up.

Not a single significant discovery has been made without basing it on foundation of work done before. From Newton, to Einstein, to modern day scientists, everything has been done taking previous works into account. Even something as seemingly revolutionary as General Relativity is based on the works of such people as Euler, Lorentz, and Reimann, to name but a few, who have laid the foundation for understanding space as something more complex than the Eucledian space people used to picture.

I'm not going to call Michio Kaku a kook, because he does seem to be capable of separating scientific principles from fantasy, but general public doesn't seem to be capable of it, and he certainly comes off as one if you just watch any of his shows.

[Camacha]

I'm sorry, but that's a load of crap. Understanding limitations of known models, and searching for ways to improve on them is completely different from simply throwing all the known rules out of the window and making stuff up.

It always scares me when scientifically inclined people talk like that, because I feel they are missing an important part of what science is about. There are two sides to the story, with one being the methodical approach, advancing step by step. It would not be science without it, because it warrants the reproducible results that are so important. The other part is often overlooked, but is equally important. It is where you play with concepts, conduct thought experiments and go way out into uncharted territory to come up with crazy theories - or theories that are considered crazy at that point in time. It is looking at a problem in totally new and often very creative ways. Most of it will yield no results, as the ideas are actually nonesense, but the sometimes it will cause a major breakthrough. Those insights are not always something that can be won by methodically working towards them - even though methodical steps are often needed to get closer to them - sometimes they just need to click.

To be honest, being smart is not enough if you want to be a great scientist. The ones that shine are most often very creative too.

Of course, reality is not black and white and often these two sides are very much interwoven.

[K^2]

go way out into uncharted territory to come up with crazy theories

I'm not sure you understand what "theory" means in context of science.

Again, absolutely not a single new theory has been constructed the way you are saying. If you actually spend a bit of time studying theory and history behind it, you will find that no matter how crazy the theory sounds by itself, when you take it in context of how it came to be, you'll see that it has been arrived at very methodically. There are no exceptions to it, because it is simply impossible to build a good theory, consistent internally and with observation, without following through systematically.

Impression that any particular theory came about otherwise can only come from ignorance of the theory itself and of its history. So if you have such illusions about any branch of science, I urge you to spend a bit of time learning more about it.

[Camacha]

Again, absolutely not a single new theory has been constructed the way you are saying. If you actually spend a bit of time studying theory and history behind it, you will find that no matter how crazy the theory sounds by itself, when you take it in context of how it came to be, you'll see that it has been arrived at very methodically.

That is part of the story, yes, like I explained before. But claiming that you can methodically work your way up to great insights is shortsighted at best. For a great new scientific theory to be fully developed, you will first need an insight, a spark. Only then you can start investigating and experimenting to prove or disprove your hypothesis. Without that initial willingness to go way out into the crazy lands to come up with a new idea, you will only make small incremental steps. Valuable for sure, but usually not what leads to great steps forwards.

Without wild ideas science would not be where it is today. Creativity is a big part of the job.

[K^2]

All of science has been built in incremental steps. Again, there are no exceptions to that. There have never been any leaps, or any shifts into "crazy lands". It has always been rational increments.

If you'd like to provide a single counterexample, I'll be happy to explain what you've overlooked.

[Camacha]

All of science has been built in incremental steps. Again, there are no exceptions to that. There have never been any leaps, or any shifts into "crazy lands". It has always been rational increments.

You clearly do not understand what I am saying. First you formulate a new and sometimes crazy hypothesis, then you substantiate (or not) your hypothesis by doing research, almost always in steps. For a right and fitting hypothesis you sometimes need to think way outside of what the current direction of thinking is, because the current thinking sometimes is plain wrong and reality is not always intuitively logical. Assuming science is pure rationality and not creativity usually means only making small steps.

Also please note that a leap is also an incremental step.

I will leave you with some food for thought:

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

Creativity is intelligence having fun.

Edited December 30, 2013 by Camacha

[K^2]

Hypothesis is never crazy. Hypothesis is always based on prior observation and prior knowledge of the world. Crazy hypothesis is statistically guaranteed to be useless. There are not enough man-hours in the age of human kind to think up enough of them to yield any sort of progress.

Again, give me an example. Any example where you think the hypothesis has had to be far-reaching, and I will show you how it was not so.

[Camacha]

Hypothesis is always based on prior observation and prior knowledge of the world.

Yes, of course there is always some basis you use as a starting point. Shoulders of giants and such. However, a hypothesis is also a leap of faith. It is always based on certain assumptions and untested ideas, as that is pretty much the definition of a hypothesis. To get to great new insights, you often need to look a little further than the next linear step.

Anyway, if you are seriously maintaining that science is all about looking at what is straight ahead of you and not about looking around you, keeping an open mind and thinking creatively, I feel for you. It also means that I am going to cut this discussion short, as there seems to be a fundamental difference in views that we are not going to overcome by going back and forth.

Cheers!

Edited December 30, 2013 by Camacha

[Nibb31]

he has some valid scientific ideas, but he's also a fervent conspiracy theorist and believer in ancient astronaut theories. And THAT's not science at all.

Citation needed.

I was unable to find any evidence about him supporting conspiracy theories. Actually, I found a couple of YouTube clips where he shoots them down. I have seen him theorize about the existence of extraterrestrial life, which is a widely accepted statistical probability, but he's also said that it was unlikely that we were ever visited.

[J.Random]

Wow. Some idiot on the Internet is calling distinguished scientist and popularizer of physics an idiot? Nice.

After reading "Physics of the impossible" I'm quite sure that Kaku understands the difference between fantasy and theory very well. In some cases it's written very carefully specifically to prevent mixing fantasy into theory.

K^2, Special Relativity.

[JebidiahsBigSister]

oh gods, that idiot. He's smart, but has some pretty far out ideas, adheres to pretty much every conspiracy theory out there.

He graduated suma cun laude from Harvard University and has a PhD in theoretical physics. When you are half as educated or as honored you may well be qualified to comment on his intelligence or the validity of his ideas but that day is not today.

[ZetaX]

My 2 ¢ as a scientist* on the above debate:

Most of the development is actually quite expected, but not linear. Branching occurs a lot without fabulous new ideas just from digging deeper. Somebody sometimes creates a new theory, but this is always based on tons of development and insights gained before, thus calling them geniusses feels sometimes disrespectful to all those that also contributed to it.

A standard example: special relativity was not that special or new from a scientific point of view, physics "had it comming"; general relativity has more interesting new insights by Einstein itself, but in some way is also simply "going one or two steps further"; this is not to decrease or disrespect Einstein's contribution to science, but just to point out that things are to some degree automatic and just a matter of time. A good scientist is one that shortens the time needed and figures out the key aspects or concepts of things, like for example the underlying nature of curved space, and a breakthrough is such a new idea/concept/aspect that creates deeper understanding.

*: but a formal, not a physical one

[K^2]

K^2, Special Relativity.

ZetaX mentioned it briefly already, but it follows neatly from electrodynamics. Ever wondered why it's called "Lorentz Factor" and "Lorentz Transformation" if Einstein was the one who came up with Special Relativity? Most of the ideas behind Special Relativity were already floating around in scientific community. Einstein's contribution was primarily in organizing it all, and in building a self-consistent set of axioms from which SR follows. No easy task, and quite a creative one in places, but it was not a leap of logic by any means. When Special Relativity got published, it was instantly accepted specifically because it was not a leap of logic. Note, by the way, that it was work of Poincare and Minkowski that lead to formulation of SR in terms of unusual transformations of space-time, which is how we know it today. Einstein's original work read more along the lines of, "If we postulate that speed of light is the same in every frame of reference, as Maxwell's equations and Michelson-Morley experiment suggests, we get transformation laws for coordinates that are consistent with what we know from electrodynamics." There was nothing revolutionary about the suggestion. Revolution came from what followed logically from that. The fact that Lorentz Transform is just a hyper-rotation in space-time. This gives you Poincare symmetry of space-time. This leads to stress-energy tensor being the conserved charge by Noether's Theorem. And this launches us straight into General Relativity. Of course, the final pieces only fell into places by the late 50's, early 60's. Yang and Mills came up with the way to build a field theory from the Lie group symmetries in Lagrangian. That lead to formulation of General Relativity as a Yang-Mills theory on Poincare group, which finally closed the gap between General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory and opened the road towards the Grand Unified. But that's a whole another story.

[Camacha]

Ah, I see what the problem is. You are confusing things that are logical in hindsight with things that are logical when working towards new solutions. Those are two very different things. Any good theory is logical once you get it hammered out, so in hindsight everything seems to be all neatly ordered and logical. It does not mean that was the case when you were in the middle of figuring it all out.

[ZetaX]

Those differences between hindsight and foresight are only superficious. A better "knowing" of what to come spares you the time to find out the correct formulations, yes, but that's mostly work and not genius that solves this part. The ordering happens often much later only and is often done by completely different people.

[K^2]

Ah, I see what the problem is. You are confusing things that are logical in hindsight with things that are logical when working towards new solutions. Those are two very different things. Any good theory is logical once you get it hammered out, so in hindsight everything seems to be all neatly ordered and logical. It does not mean that was the case when you were in the middle of figuring it all out.

So the part where I described historical context and how it was logically built up from ground up you just missed?

You are conjecturing. You do not understand how the theory is built, so you assume that neither did people who built it until they did, in fact, build it. That's not how science works. I'm telling you that as a person who is actually involved in modern research, and I'm entirely prepared to discuss this on a case-by case basis. But even when I do that, all you get to dig into is your false conjectures without absolutely a shred of support for it.

You are making stuff up and arguing from ignorance rather than try and listen to somebody who knows what he's talking about. Again, I'm entirely happy to spend time clarifying any particular point, but you just keep repeating your conjecture over and over without any room for discussion. This does not make your point sound any more valid.

[78stonewobble]

I think this debate kinda illustrates, how we probably know more about the physics of the universe, than we understand how the human brain works.

I just found that kind of ironic.

PS: I believe that pretty much everyone with a certain bare minimum of skills and the proper (for this individual) education can become pretty much everything, but that it takes certain special "ephemereal" qualities to become truely exceptional at doing something.

PPS: By "ephemereal" I don't mean magic or "godgiven... I mean that how or why we think what we do, is not very well understood and that some people make better intuitive leaps and connections than others.