Sabine's test
Hossenfelder offers a smart 'decision point' for fashionable nonsense in physics, like Dark Matter, Dark Energy, String Theory, and Multiverses.

She credits Lakatos for this rule:

Is this speculation clearly leading to results, or has it gone on for a long time without leading anywhere?

She then runs through the list and shows that all of them have been processed for decades without any progress. There's no map, no gradual development of better ideas and techniques. Just the same question tossed back and forth.

I'd use a more practical test:

Are you trying to SOLVE A REAL PROBLEM? Are you trying to help real people live better? If so, keep trying for as long as necessary. If not, stop**.

Some lines of invention and development can run for a long time with no progress. Easy example: Flying. For thousands of years we dreamed of flying like a bird, and hundreds of inventors tried and died.

Flight had to wait for two things: Chemical understanding of gases, and engines. After we understood buoyancy, balloons were possible. After engines, Wright Flight was possible.

Birds didn't give us the slightest hint of these two methods, though we realized after using balloons that birds have a controllable internal hot-air balloon.

Flight is a real problem with a determinate solution. We knew when it was solved because we were able to fly long distances consistently and regularly. Still, it took thousands of years and hundreds of external prerequisites before we could see the path to solution. The solution was perfectly invisible until reciprocating steam engines started turning fans.

Theories do not solve problems. Theories provide mental exercise for theorists, and provide tenure and grants for academicians.

Relying on theories leads to GENOCIDE every fucking time.

EXPERIENCE SURVIVES. THEORY KILLS.

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** Clarification from the science as entertainment view. Tossing around theories is a form of entertainment for some hobbyists. When I say STOP, I really mean STOP USING GOVERNMENTAL FUNDS AND AUTHORITY TO PURSUE YOUR PRIVATE ENTERTAINMENT. If you want to discuss sci-fi on your own time, or make money writing stories and videos for other hobbyists, that's wonderful. Entertainment is a good and necessary part of life. But GOVERNMENTAL FUNDS AND ARMIES AND AUTHORITY should never be involved in private entertainment.

Later, a perfect example via RCS. Philosophers working for public universities are arguing about what would happen if an unusual human didn't have consciousness but appeared to have consciousness. The entire subject of consciousness fits firmly in the Lakatos category. No possibility of any progress, utterly and conclusively pointless and resultless by every possible standard. These TAX-PAID philosophers have managed to make the subject even more convolutedly hyperpointless than it was before.

Labels: Entertainment, Metrology

  ¶ 5:36 AM