Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Higgs
One of the "journalists" compared the Higgs "discovery" to the moon landing.
Good comparison. Both "accomplishments" involved a huge waste of money and contributed precisely zero to human knowledge and human welfare.
I'm trying to stay relatively open-minded, but it's hard.
The problem is: Science needs to proceed by observation of nature, and this is not an observation of things that actually happen in nature.
The older "particles" (proton, neutron, electron) were also inferred indirectly, but they were inferred from actual events that happen all around us. Experimentation showed that chemical reactions happen in certain standardized numerical patterns, and those patterns were easily explained by unitary things, something like neutrons and protons. The movements and relations of these unitary things were clearly and precisely established before we had any way to see the "particles", directly or indirectly.
Several commentators, attempting to defend the "practicality" of "particle" physics, have stated that we wouldn't have all the wonders of modern technology without the discovery of the electron.
Incorrect, fuckheads. All the practical uses of electricity, from lights to telegraph to telephone to motors to wireless, were already in full commercial use by 1899, when Thomson came up with the notion of the electron. All these developments, and all the math and engineering that made them work properly, arose from the analogy of fluids and flows, not from the analogy of "particles".
The Higgs and its fellow "short-lived particles" appear only when you smash things together with a force that doesn't exist in ordinary nature, and these new "particles" are not needed to explain anything that exists in ordinary nature. They only happen in an accelerator, and they only explain things that happen in an accelerator. Tautology.
The claims being made for this inferred "particle" are pure religious hokum. "The Higgs explains why matter exists." No it doesn't. If you're going to do a why-question, you have to answer the next why-question: "Why does the Higgs exist?" When you start running along the why-track, you have exactly two possible destinations: Turtles all the way down, or God.If you're doing science as a way of understanding God's purpose, then why-questions are perfectly appropriate. But these Big Science trillion-wasters spend most of their time HATING HATING HATING all religion and INQUISITING all religious believers, so they're NOT ENTITLED to ask why-questions.
Finally, the "discovery" is based on statistics. Basic rule: If you have to use statistics to make a claim, you don't have a claim. Science starts with direct observations and measurements of actual nature, not with mathematical equations.
If all of these objections can be knocked down ... if someone can show that the Higgs inevitably pops out of direct measurements of actual unforced Nature ... then I'll open my mind.
However: If they'd come out and admit that the "Higgs Field" is really the Luminiferous Aether, I'd be more sympathetic. After that admission, they'd have to abandon "particles" altogether and stick with waves, which would be a vastly more elegant and sensible way to analyze nature. There's no need to assume a distinction between mass and energy, thus no need to assume a bizarre "particle" that mediates the nonexistent distinction.
Good comparison. Both "accomplishments" involved a huge waste of money and contributed precisely zero to human knowledge and human welfare.
I'm trying to stay relatively open-minded, but it's hard.
The problem is: Science needs to proceed by observation of nature, and this is not an observation of things that actually happen in nature.
The older "particles" (proton, neutron, electron) were also inferred indirectly, but they were inferred from actual events that happen all around us. Experimentation showed that chemical reactions happen in certain standardized numerical patterns, and those patterns were easily explained by unitary things, something like neutrons and protons. The movements and relations of these unitary things were clearly and precisely established before we had any way to see the "particles", directly or indirectly.
Several commentators, attempting to defend the "practicality" of "particle" physics, have stated that we wouldn't have all the wonders of modern technology without the discovery of the electron.
Incorrect, fuckheads. All the practical uses of electricity, from lights to telegraph to telephone to motors to wireless, were already in full commercial use by 1899, when Thomson came up with the notion of the electron. All these developments, and all the math and engineering that made them work properly, arose from the analogy of fluids and flows, not from the analogy of "particles".
The Higgs and its fellow "short-lived particles" appear only when you smash things together with a force that doesn't exist in ordinary nature, and these new "particles" are not needed to explain anything that exists in ordinary nature. They only happen in an accelerator, and they only explain things that happen in an accelerator. Tautology.
The claims being made for this inferred "particle" are pure religious hokum. "The Higgs explains why matter exists." No it doesn't. If you're going to do a why-question, you have to answer the next why-question: "Why does the Higgs exist?" When you start running along the why-track, you have exactly two possible destinations: Turtles all the way down, or God.If you're doing science as a way of understanding God's purpose, then why-questions are perfectly appropriate. But these Big Science trillion-wasters spend most of their time HATING HATING HATING all religion and INQUISITING all religious believers, so they're NOT ENTITLED to ask why-questions.
Finally, the "discovery" is based on statistics. Basic rule: If you have to use statistics to make a claim, you don't have a claim. Science starts with direct observations and measurements of actual nature, not with mathematical equations.
If all of these objections can be knocked down ... if someone can show that the Higgs inevitably pops out of direct measurements of actual unforced Nature ... then I'll open my mind.
However: If they'd come out and admit that the "Higgs Field" is really the Luminiferous Aether, I'd be more sympathetic. After that admission, they'd have to abandon "particles" altogether and stick with waves, which would be a vastly more elegant and sensible way to analyze nature. There's no need to assume a distinction between mass and energy, thus no need to assume a bizarre "particle" that mediates the nonexistent distinction.
Labels: Blinded by Stats
¶ 4:19 AM
