The End of Science

>I'm not smart enough to be a physicist
you can say that twice

I don't have the resources to fag.

>I don't have the resources to fag.
Alright, then string theory remains falsifiable despite your tiny wallet.

lmao stinky poorfag thinking he can have an opinion that matters

You dumb fags, you didn't answer my question. Why hasn't someone done the experiment yet, faggots?

Pop Veeky Forums checklist:
>[x] Dramatic title
>[x] Bold, earthshaking proclamation that is itself unfalsifiable
>[x] Author not a scientist
>[x] Wall Street Journal citation

>Why hasn't someone done the experiment yet, faggots?
How am I supposed to know everyone's motives, why don't you go ask them?

horgan is a brainlet

kek

The book is clearly provocative since there is no way to tell, but the concept in itself shouldn't easily dismissed.
There is probably a limit to what we can really know, but most people seem to think like there isn't and just going into the future means discovering more and more in an endless fashion.
It's a bit like moore's law.

At least have a scientific degree before you write something like this jesus christ

It's true. Not sure why STEM kids are crying so hard over it. Accept the facts and make SOME sort of meaning to your robotic lives.

That's just not true. I'm not going to pretend to know dick about physics but theoretical life sciences, system/network science are just taking off. And the potential for metaphysical findings are way better than the failed old guard. We are facing new frontiers in philsophy and science.

I think you missed the point of the story there lad.

>look up the author
>journalist
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Lower than a peasant.

>writing about our current issues for the masses
>exposing the modern world
>peasant

I hate undergrads. I really do. You're probably in either high school or a state school.

"When your former secretary honoured me by asking me to read a paper to your society, my first thought was that I would certainly do it and my second thought was that if I was to have the opportunity to speak to you I should speak about something which I am keen on communicating to you and that I should not misuse this opportunity to give you a lecture about, say, logic. I call this a misuse, for to explain a scientific matter to you it would need a course of lectures and not an hour's paper. Another alternative would have been to give you what's called a popular scientific lecture, that is a lecture intended to make you believe that you understand a thing which actually you don't understand, and to gratify what I believe to be one of the lowest desires of modern people, namely the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of science." - Wittgenstein, A lecture on ethics

If a journalist can write pieces claiming to know what happens in the scientific community then a person from the scientific community can write pieces claiming to know what happens with journalists. They're all trash.

fuck off
people thought they understood the whole of the universe when physics only consisted of incomplete classical mechanics

these things are not understanding the universe at all, they're building models to best describe certain aspects of it, based on limited and skewed data. The scientific method is a continuous process to make these models more and more robust/accurate/useful. They are not actual things in nature, simply ascribed descriptions that are useful. When there are discrepancies in these models, they get refined or dismissed.

there is no end to it, nor does it impart absolute truths of reality

The "end of science" predicted at the turn of the 20th century was invalidated by the invention of the integrated circuit.

What's the next integrated circuit?

+1

There's science happening that doesn't rely on the integrated circuit, single inventions don't keep science running.

Feynman put it really nicely:
Eventually we will get to a point that we know everything or we will get to a point where even a small advancement becomes so expensive that we never do it

>falling this hard for the pop-sci meme

>You're probably in either high school or a state school.
Don't project your lack of achievement onto me. My contempt for science journalism is the product of my serious commitment to research. There is nothing to applaud in a journalist superficially explaining scientific concepts to laymen. He is only spreading his own ignorance about scientific work through bold and baseless claims such as stating that there will no longer be any revolutionary scientific discoveries. Make no mistake, such sensationalist works have no purpose other than to fatten the pockets of their authors.
>t. MIT PhD candidate

>The End of Science
wooooah there

there's more to science than physics theories by the way

>t. MIT PhD candidate

Holy kek, that's the equivalent to
>your disrespecting a future US Marine!! :0

No, you're not.

Checklist for the End of Science:
>[_] Unified Theory of Everything
>[_] Room Temperature Superconduction
>[_] Hard Problem of Consciousness

Well shit. That's not even counting the sci-fi shit like zero-point energy or FTL travel.

you're fucking retarded bro

Still makes him far more qualified to speak on the subject than a journalist who isn't even an MIT PhD candidate.

A PhD candidate is someone actively doing research. It's very unlike a future US Marine.

Didn't Sagan say in page fucking one of cosmos that we would never reach the end of science?

>t. Enginerd

If the universe is made of strings wouldn't they get in knots? I can't leave my headphones in my pocket without being a giant knot. Sounds like it should be called knot theory.

Maybe so for the physicist-shaman, but chemists will always be making new drugs and materials, or old ones with a better method due to new catalysts and reactions.

That's literally the reason we warn against putting the universe into a tube.

So we can't make our own universe in a test tube? Seriously asking if it's possible or just popsci.

t. Medical field

Do you think physicists actually have an answer tot his? Because they don't.

It depends on the volume of the universe in question. Small universes can fit in a tube as long as the edge of the universe doesn't interact with the tube.

I'd argue that Sagan might have said that not because there's an end to be reached, but he pretty strongly believed that humankind or its descendants weren't going to make it out of the solar system, if not the planet, and put a somewhat short (cosmologically) time limit on human existence.

Though I still agree. The idea of reaching the "end of science" is pretty much incomprehensible because it implies humanity would be omniscient.

>Basically, the author thinks that we are close to learning everything we *can* learn through science.

That's a conservative estimate, imo. When we discovered that the world is based on just four fundamental forces we discovered the ultimate limit of knowledge, and it has not taken long to fill in the gaps. Just a century.

>confusing science fiction with reality

I really hope all the smart physicists that are surpassing me right now keep experimenting with particle sex in big tubes so I can actually get a job

Should have gone into fusion. There's a reason fusion proponents always say fusion is X years away where X is the average career time for a physicist.

What do you mean? I specifically called the sci fi stuff scifi

The theory of everything will be as useless as the discovery of the higgs boson.
There's no reason to assume that room temp superconductors can exist.
Consciousness isn't a hard problem. Consciousness exists as a processor for sensory data.

Sci fi stuff.

You can't determine without one that a theory of everything would be useless.
There's no reason to assume room-temp superconductors cannot exist
Dennet-sama pls go, sapient beings use consciousness for more than pure sensory processing and your statement wouldn't solve the problem even if they didn't; you just provide another definition for consciousness without answering any of the questions the hard problem implies.

>The theory of everything will be as useless as the discovery of the higgs boson.
Practical use is not why men in basic research do their work.
>There's no reason to assume that room temp superconductors can exist.
Research is conducted to investigate whether or not it is possible. Blind dismissal is worthless.
>Consciousness isn't a hard problem. Consciousness exists as a processor for sensory data.
That's not what 'the hard problem of consciousness' means.

You seem like a low-tier researcher, if a researcher at all.

>You can't determine without one that a theory of everything would be useless.
It's useless because we could never make a device that relies on phenomena that only exist at the temperature of the big bang.

>There's no reason to assume room-temp superconductors cannot exist
They rely on quantum effects that require low temps.

>sapient beings use consciousness for more than pure sensory processing
No they don't.

>the hard problem implies.
>like woah dude weed lol philosophy duuude
No.

>Practical use is not why men in basic research do their work.
No they do it because it pays well and they're too autistic to otherwise function in society.

>Research is conducted to investigate whether or not it is possible. Blind dismissal is worthless.
Research can be conducted on whether the earth is flat from now until everything stops. It won't make a damn bit of difference.

>the hard problem of consciousness
It's a post modernist argument based on ghosts.

>No they do it because it pays well and they're too autistic to otherwise function in society.
Pleb.
>Research can be conducted on whether the earth is flat from now until everything stops. It won't make a damn bit of difference.
This answer is irrelevant.
>It's a post modernist argument based on ghosts.
The hard problem has nothing to do with post-modernism.

It's quite amusing when brainlets like you larp on Veeky Forums. Keep the laughs coming please.

>drown out any opinions you dislike

This is why science is ending.

Some positions are too stupid to engage with in serious argument. Either you're a man of science or you aren't, and there's no more of a point to justifying scientific research to plebs than there is to teaching speech to dogs.

>Some positions are too stupid to engage with in serious argument.
Is what they said to galileo.

>Either you're a man of science or you aren't
No true scotsman.

>and there's no more of a point to justifying scientific research to plebs than there is to teaching speech to dogs.
It makes consumer goods. I understand that. Do you?

>No they don't

Yes they do. Sapience is the ability to have abstract thought; sapient beings are conscious and abstract thought is beyond just processing incoming sensory information. You can express sapient thought in a sensory vacuum.

>They rely on quantum effects that require low temps.
The threshold for superconductors has been slowly going into higher temperatures, though.

>It's useless because we could never make a device that relies on phenomena that only exist at the temperature of the big bang.
How does that make a unified theory of everything useless? There are still many questions in physics/cosmology that a unified theory of everything could help solve.

>Is what they said to galileo.
Comparing yourself to Galileo is rich.

>No true scotsman.
Not how this fallacy works.

>It makes consumer goods. I understand that. Do you?
Justifying scientific research to plebs makes consumer goods now?

>Yes they do. Sapience is the ability to have abstract thought; sapient beings are conscious and abstract thought is beyond just processing incoming sensory information. You can express sapient thought in a sensory vacuum.
You do know that sapience is a sci-fi term with no biological grounds? Most mammals, including humans, are sentient. Abstract thought only exists to take past sensory data and use it to make predictions that will benefit the survival of the organism. That's why we learn.

>The threshold for superconductors has been slowly going into higher temperatures, though.
With diminishing returns.

>There are still many questions in physics/cosmology that a unified theory of everything could help solve.
Esoteric ones, yeah.

>Comparing yourself to Galileo is rich.
I'm not comparing myself to galileo. I'm comparing your attitude to that of 15th century Catholics.

>Not how this fallacy works.
Of course it is. You set your imagined definition for "a man of science" and judge people based on it.

>Justifying scientific research to plebs makes consumer goods now?
The end product of scientific research is consumer goods.

>You do know that sapience is a sci-fi term with no biological grounds? Most mammals, including humans, are sentient. Abstract thought only exists to take past sensory data and use it to make predictions that will benefit the survival of the organism. That's why we learn.

Not all -- or possibly even most -- abstract thought is created for the purpose of survival. Art/music/hobbies aren't survival-critical abstract thought patterns and many people do not do them for the purpose of finding a mate (the most common argument provided against them).

>With diminishing returns
How are the returns diminishing if it's still a superconductor?

>Esoteric ones, yeah.
Just because it's not the popsci question of the day does not mean it's pointless to answer it.

>Art/music/hobbies aren't survival-critical abstract thought patterns and many people do not do them for the purpose of finding a mate (the most common argument provided against them)
>artists don't have a better chance of survival than the average peasant
That's why we didn't have art or music or hobbies until we invented machines, right?

>How are the returns diminishing if it's still a superconductor?
Because they become too expensive to implement.

>Just because it's not the popsci question of the day does not mean it's pointless to answer it.
You can find meaning in anything if you want to. But does it help humanity? No.

>artists don't have a better chance of survival than the average peasant
>That's why we didn't have art or music or hobbies until we invented machines, right?

>Implying every artist has made it to the point of social status or increased odds for survival
>Implying such is even the goal for the human understanding and affinity for art.

>Things that are expensive when first discovered never become cheaper and practical.

>You should only answer questions that help humanity and I know which questions those are.

String theory has too many knobs and buttons (or parameters) that they can shift around fr every counter point that comes up.

Thus in practice it cannot be falsified and thus it fails the criteria for science.

Last I heard the clowns demand an exemption from predictive power on grounds of hypothesis being "elegant". Unbelievable.

Based

>String theory has too many knobs and buttons (or parameters) that they can shift around fr every counter point that comes up.

still infinitely less than the standard model or anything else proposed so far

>Last I heard the clowns demand an exemption from predictive power on grounds of hypothesis being "elegant". Unbelievable.

there are two ways to test a scientific theory - prediction and postdiction.

Predictive tests in high energy physics are extremely hard because it is extremely hard to get any new data. This applies to ANY theory, not just string theories. The low hanging fruit era of prediction - experiment - result is basically over.

However postdiction is where string theory shines, because it is the only theory capable of naturally explaining the fact that our world has quantum gravity.

This fact alone makes it the most promising approach by far.

Another thing: there may not even be any way for humanity to pin down the exact string theory complactification we live in. Maybe there are even multiple valid (dual) descriptions. Such knowledge is a valid scientific result in itself.

I can't even imagine the boner the author must have had when he came up with that title

>Not how this fallacy works.
>Of course it is. You set your imagined definition for "a man of science" and judge people based on it.
That's really not how that fallacy works famalam.

I'm not much for bold claims, but I think what this could she'd light on, is that "new" topics are starting to come to an end. We are pretty much at the point of science, where all that is left is the nitty gritty detail that has probably been studied before but without context. This requires extremely niched professions and studies, that are starting to get harder and harder to progress into.

Any theory of quantum gravity faces the problem of the energies at which interesting things happen being too high to reasonably test, not just string theory. At least there are finitely many string models to check, it postdicts general relativity, is unitary and Lorentz invariant, etc.

There's a lack of better alternatives. If you think high energy physics should be shelved for a century or so, that is a discussion you can have.

Theories which cannot be tested empirically have their value as explanatory models. There are many heuristics other than experimentation to arbitrate between models, such as notions of economy (the so-called Occam's razor being one such heuristic). Shelving a whole area of research for a century or so just risks having that research be lost to time.

I agree, what I'm suggesting is that anti-string theory people should put forth superior models that give something interesting at testable energies, suggest that HET ought to be shelved because all QG theories face the high energy issue, or shut the fuck up. Personally I endorse option 3.

good post

>Basically, the author thinks that we are close to learning everything we *can* learn through science.
Meanwhile in the real world, we still don't fully understand what sleep is for, or how aging works. We've described ways we think computers can run at terahertz clock speeds and consume under one billionth of the current energy required to perform a basic arithmetic operation electronically, but we haven't built one. We've never taken a single measurement of any sort from an instrument outside the galaxy, or even from orbit around a different star, and it's going to take a fair while for anything we build to get there to take those measurements.

Do you, or I, or anyone know how oats, peas, beans, and barley grow?

>Some positions are too stupid to engage with in serious argument. Either you're a man of science or you aren't, and there's no more of a point to justifying scientific research to plebs than there is to teaching speech to dogs.

Fucking euphoric as fuck man! Have an upvote!

That's not fundamental stuff. I think science might be fractal, so you can always go to a deeper level of description, but we are most of the way there I think.

OP here. I made this as a bait thread, expecting somewhat serious discussion, but a day later it is clear that you fags think John Horgan is a direct threat to your academic epeen, so you refuse to take him seriously. Oh well. Have fun masturbating to anime.

Click bait in book form

unfortunately for you, you need to convince plebs to give you funding, you idiot

>All the singularity bullshit, the string theory bullshit, and the multiverse bullshit is just unfalsifiable bullshit.

There is more to science than "sexy science" that brainlets jerk off to and pretend is real. Besides, that it a pathetic and arrogant view to have. "No need to try to experiment or discover something, we know everything there is to know"

The low hanging fruit has been plucked so the credulous take this as a sign that science is almost over. It's not.

The point of the book is unclear. It may be that he discusses the "knowledge event horizon", which has been discussed for decades.

>Technology has a saturation problem too due to human limitations. In
>the old days knowledge was limited so it took litteltime to reach the
>edge of unknown and then start pushing the frontiers back. In our time
>it takes noticably longer time to reach the frontiers leaving much
>shorter time for creative work. Newer tools, methods, faster computers,
>better and faster education and more will allow progression to be
>prolonged. In the end this becomes like a "knowledge event horizon".

>reads first chapter of a book trashing modern physics
>author is scientifically illiterate
>"lmao DAE think string theory is dumb haha lol"

>unified theory of everything
Wew lad.
Forgetting the other obvious problems.
What if I reject the part-whole composition of nature? There is no rational reason to believe that everything is not just different arrangements of mereological simples, whatever those may be. Explanatory reductionism and holism repeatedly fail to discern the abstract from the concrete in foolish quests to identify universals in a non-actual universe.
>hard problem of consciousness
This meme again.
Consciousness is what happens when a mind interprets itself. I'd say in the widest sense, This requires symbols that represent reality, and memory.Like vibrations being interpreted as sound, and a memory that can remember that interpretation, thus creating the experience of hearing a sound. This memory is dependent on a physical location for the symbols to be remembered. Like a neural network

You talk with convictions of things nobody understands clearly. This is especially true when looking at what you write on the mind, where you take for granted some of the most contentious ideas in cognitive science. It's also quite strange to defend a theory of consciousness which both accepts mental symbols while being seemingly connectionist. Maybe you're referring to hybrid models, but the more obvious explanation seems to be that you're larping.

How much is the next gen LHC going to cost?

>You talk with convictions of things nobody understands clearly
I have to fantasize about things before I can conceptualize them because of some sort of schizoid mediation of my experience. This forces me to lend credulity to my open mind, which I am aware of and quite content with, as it takes me to curious places.
>It's also quite strange to defend a theory of consciousness which both accepts mental symbols while being seemingly connectionist. Maybe you're referring to hybrid models
It's biosemiotics

But bruh, what if, there's like, senses beyond sight sound smell touch and taste? What if, breh, there are senses that we can't perceive? And then we develop the technology to perceive them, brah? Wouldn't that like, blow the doors open on research into the workings of the world, broh?

I think it's reasonable to say we're getting near the end of physics, because it won't be long before the necessary instrumentation to go further is beyond the collective resources of all humanity.

To suggest we're near the end of any other scientific field is dumb.

>I have to fantasize about things before I can conceptualize them because of some sort of schizoid mediation of my experience. This forces me to lend credulity to my open mind, which I am aware of and quite content with, as it takes me to curious places.
That doesn't excuse you skipping to rash conclusions.
>It's biosemiotics
That doesn't address the fundamental problem in your claim, viz. that you refer to mental symbols while speaking of neural networks. Connectionist models of consciousness, except for those specific ones which are hybrids of connectionism and computationalism, are not systems which manipulate symbolic representations.

cuckfag

I actually posted this quote as a thread.

Funny that you say that, because I know a fusion scientist that pretty much has said exactly that!

Why are you all insufferable cunts to each other? Do you realize throwing shit at each other constantly gets you nowhere and is counterproductive? This is a fucking "science" board for fuck's sake yet it's on the discourse level of a Youtube comment section. I realize it's Veeky Forums and all, but you can't even top Youtube, and that's pathetic.

As for the the book, it's someone making claims on something he is not qualified in. End of story. Have fun being cunts for another 200+ posts.