Category: Science, Physics, and Philosophy of Science

ON “MATHINESS” IN PHYSICS ‘Mathiness’ is a f–cking pseudoscientific plague. And people wonder why Hayek called the 20th century an age of mysticism, and I call it the age of pseudoscience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathiness MATHINESS = SCIENTISM = PSEUDOSCIENCE = “LITERATURE” I think the pejorative “Scientism” refers to pseudosciences (overreach in particular), just as “Mathiness” Refers to pseudoscience (“Overreach”). FROM THE ARTICLE —“Physicists today “write a lot of papers, build a lot of [theoretical] models, hold a lot of conferences, cite each other — you have all the trappings of science,” he says. “But for me, physics is all about making successful predictions. And that’s been lacking.””— —“Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can’t explain what was not observed. And they’re not even good at that.”— THE ANSWER FROM ECONOMICS As far as I know the problem is (a) we have far too many unproductive academics paid to write papers rather than spending money on experiments. And (b) the low hanging fruit has been captured and we may not be able to (yet) capture and use enough energy to perform necessary experiments. SCIENCE IS THE DISCIPLINE OF TESTIMONY AND TESTIMONY REQUIRES OBSERVATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS REQUIRE TESTS Tests can be “PRE-dictive” if the production of the data is controlled, or “DE-scriptive” if the production of the data is uncontrolled. But if we don’t have an observation, and a system of measurement then we don’t have science.

ON “MATHINESS” IN PHYSICS ‘Mathiness’ is a f–cking pseudoscientific plague. And people wonder why Hayek called the 20th century an age of mysticism, and I call it the age of pseudoscience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathiness MATHINESS = SCIENTISM = PSEUDOSCIENCE = “LITERATURE” I think the pejorative “Scientism” refers to pseudosciences (overreach in particular), just as “Mathiness” Refers to pseudoscience (“Overreach”). FROM THE ARTICLE —“Physicists today “write a lot of papers, build a lot of [theoretical] models, hold a lot of conferences, cite each other — you have all the trappings of science,” he says. “But for me, physics is all about making successful predictions. And that’s been lacking.””— —“Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can’t explain what was not observed. And they’re not even good at that.”— THE ANSWER FROM ECONOMICS As far as I know the problem is (a) we have far too many unproductive academics paid to write papers rather than spending money on experiments. And (b) the low hanging fruit has been captured and we may not be able to (yet) capture and use enough energy to perform necessary experiments. SCIENCE IS THE DISCIPLINE OF TESTIMONY AND TESTIMONY REQUIRES OBSERVATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS REQUIRE TESTS Tests can be “PRE-dictive” if the production of the data is controlled, or “DE-scriptive” if the production of the data is uncontrolled. But if we don’t have an observation, and a system of measurement then we don’t have science.