The nerds and the jocks, the saga continues

Recently, after reading another blog, I was reminded of this issue. There are jocks and there are nerds. The jocks are popular and influential. They like to run the show and order others around. Nerds, on the other hand, are not popular. They are not good at running the show, but they make everything else runs smoothly. They tend to be the backroom boys and the behind-the-scene people that make sure things work.

Image from Revenge of the Nerds movie

The one place where the nerds use to hold their own was the academic world. They are particularly excellent at figuring out how things work and therefore they thrived in the sciences. Much of what we know about the physical world is thanks to the nerds who passionately, tenaciously and meticulously studied the physical phenomena.

That was how things were up until roughly the second world war. Then their knowledge started to have a big enough impact that they appeared on the radar screen of the jocks. So, the jock said to themselves, “Wait a minute, what is going on here? Why are we not aware of this?” And so the jocks started to infiltrate the academic scene.

Today the situation is very different. The jock are running the show in the academic world. They are involved in academic research. The most prominent academic are, with almost no exception, all jocks.

Make no mistake, the jocks are not stupid. They are good enough to maintain successful academic programs. In fact, the way that currently works has to a large extent been invented by the jocks. The funding process, the way academics are currently recruited, and even the way publications are evaluated and judged for suitability are based on the methods typical of the way that jocks would run things. It’s all based on popularity, impact and influence.

However, the jock are not as good at academic research as the nerds are. The consequences can be seen in the lack of progress in fundamental research. You see, jocks are more concerned about their egos and they are only doing this research thing for the fame and glory that first popped onto their radar at the time of the second world war. They are not primarily interested to gain an understanding. No, it is all about the glory. Ostensibly, the goal is still to gain the understanding, and for that the reward comes with all the fame and glory. However, when the reward and goal is not one and the same thing, it is always possible to reap the reward without achieving the goal. This is something I call rewardism.

For the nerds, the understanding itself is the reward. Anything less is simply not good enough. Sure, it is good to receive recognition, but that is not the reason for getting up in the morning.

So, the more I think about the situation in fundamental physics, the more convinced I become that the reason for the lack of progress is at least partly due to the bloated egos of those people running the show there. There may still be some nerds that are actively trying the figure out how nature works, but they are marginalized to the point of being totally ignored. Instead, we have all these people with their crazy predictions and unjustified inventions, that has reached the point where they even consider dispensing with the scientific method itself.

I don’t see how this will ever change. Perhaps several generations need to pass to weed out the jocks by depriving them of the fame and glory that they were hoping for. Then the nerds can come back and pick up where they left off. Who knows? I won’t be around by then.

Vanity and formalism

During my series on Transcending the impasse, I wrote about Vanity in Physics. I also addressed the issue of Physics vs Formalism in a previous post. Neither of these two aspects are conducive to advances in physics. So, when one encounters the confluence of these aspects, things are really turning inimical. Recently, I heard of such a situation.

In an attempt to make advances in fundamental physics, the physics community has turned to mathematics, or at least something that looks like mathematics. It seems to be the believe that some exceptional mathematical formalism will lead us to a unique understanding of the fundamentals of nature.

Obviously, based on what I’ve written before, this approach is not ideal. However, we need to understand that the challenges in fundamental physics is different from those in other fields of physics. For the latter, there are always some well-established underlying theory in terms of which the new phenomena are studied. The underlying theory usually comes with a thoroughly developed formalism. The new phenomena may require a refinement in formalism, but one can always check that any improvements or additions are consistent with the underlying theory.

With fundamental physics, the situation is different. There is no underlying theory. So, the whole thing needs to be invented from scratch. How does one do that?

Albert Einstein

We can take a leave out of the book of previous examples from the history of physics. A good example is the development of general relativity. Today there are well established formalisms for general relativity. (Note the use of the plural. It will become important later.) How did Einstein know what formalism to use for the development of general relativity? He realized that spacetime is curved and therefore need a formalism that can handle curved spacetime metrics. How did he know that spacetime is curved? He figured it out with the aid of some simple heuristic arguments. These arguments led him to conceive of a fundamental principle that would guide him in the development of the theory.

That is a success story. Now compare it with what is going on today. There are different formalisms being developed. The “fundamental principle” is simply to get a formalism that can handle curved spacetime in the context of a quantum field theory so that the curvature of spacetime can somehow be represented be the exchange of particles. As such, it goes back to the old notions existing before general relativity that regarded gravity as a force. According to our understanding of general relativity, gravity is not a force. But let’s leave that for now.

There does not seem to be any new physics principles that guide the development of these new formalisms. Here I exclude all those so called “postulates” that have been presented for quantum mechanics, because those postulates are of a mathematical nature. They may provide a basis for quantum mechanics as a mathematical formalism but not for the physics associated with quantum phenomena.

So, if there is no fundamental principle driving the current effort to develop new formalisms for fundamental physics, then what is driving it? What motivates people to spend all the effort in this formidable exercise?

Recent revelations gave me a clue. There was some name-calling going on among some of the most prominent researcher in the field. The proponents of one formalism would denounce some other formalism. It is as if we are watching a game show to see which formalism would “win” at the end of the day. However, the fact that there are different approaches should be seen as a good thing. It provides the diversity that improves the chances for success. More than one of these approaches may turn out to be successful. Here again an example from the history of science can be provided. The formalisms of Heisenberg and Schroedinger both turned out to be correct descriptions for quantum physics. Moreover, there are more than one formalism in terms of which general relativity can be expressed.

So what then is really the reason for this name-calling among proponents of the different approaches to develop formalisms for fundamental physics? It seems to be that deviant new motivation for doing physics: vanity! It is not about gaining a new understanding. That is secondary. It is all about being the one that comes up with the successful theory and then reaping in all the fame and glory.

The problem with vanity is that it does not directly address the goal. Vanity is a reward that can be acquired without achieving the goal. Therefore, it is not the optimal motivation for uncovering an understanding of fundamental physics. I see this as one of the main reasons for the lack of progress in fundamental physics.

Transcending the impasse, part VII

Vanity in physics

In this penultimate posting in the series on transcending the impasse in fundamental physics, I’ll address an issue that I consider to be one of the major reasons for the impasse, if the main reason. It is a topic that I feel very passionate about and one that I’ve written about in my book. It is a very broad topic with various aspects that can be addressed. So, I can see this topic becoming a spin-off series on its own.

Stating it briefly, without ranting too much, one can bring this issue into the context of the scientific method itself. As remarkable as the scientific method is with all the successes associated with it, if the very foundation on which it is based starts to erode, the whole edifice in all its glory will come tumbling down.

Now what is this foundation of the scientific method that could be eroded away? Well, the scientific method shares the property with capitalism and democracy in that it is a self-regulating feedback system. Each of these mechanisms is based on a property, a driving force, found in human nature that makes it work. For democracy, it is the reaction to the conditions one finds oneself in as provided by the authorities. For capitalism, it is basically greed and the need for material possessions. For the scientific method it is curiosity and need for knowledge and understanding.

So, the basic assumption is that those that are involved in the scientific process, the scientists, are driven by their curiosity. It has to a large extent been the case for centuries, and we have the accumulated scientific knowledge obtain through this process thanks to this curiosity.

However, during the past century, things started to change. It some point, due to some key event or perhaps as a result of various minor events, the fundamental driving force for scientists started to change. Instead of being internally motivated by their curiosity, they became externally motivated by … vanity!

Today, one gets the impression that researchers are far more concerned about egos than the knowledge they create. To support this statement, I can provide numerous examples. But instead of doing that, I’ll focus on only aspect: how this vanity issue impacts and causes the current impasse. Perhaps I’ll provide and discuss those examples in followup posts.

In the aftermath of the disappointing lack of results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), some people blamed other prominent researchers for their ludicrously exotic proposals and predictions. None of which survived the observations of the LHC.

Why would highly respected physicists make such ludicrous predictions? The way I see it, is as a gamble with high stakes. Chances were that these predictions would not have panned out. But if one of them did receive confirmation from the LHC, the return on investment would have been extremely high. The person that made the prediction would have become extremely famous not only among physicists, but probably also among the general public. It would probably have ensured that the person receives a Nobel prize. Hence, all the needs for vanity would have been satisfied instantly.

What about knowledge? Surely, if the prediction turned out to be correct, then it must imply a significant increase in our knowledge. True, but now one should look at the reality. None of these exotic predictions succeeded. This situation is not really surprising, probably not even to the people that made these predictions, because they probably knew the probability for their success to be extremely low. In that context, the motivation for making the predictions was never about the increase in knowledge. It was purely aimed at vanity.

An extreme example is this one physicists, who shall remain unnamed. He is known for making random predictions at a remarkable rate. It is obvious to everybody that he is not making these predictions because he expects them to work out. It is simply an attempt to be the first to have made a specific prediction in the off-chance that one of them came true. Then he’ll probably hope to receive all the vanity rewards that he so desperately craves.

It might have been amusing, were it not for the fact that this deplorable situation is adversely affecting progress in physics, and probably in science in general, albeit I don’t have such extensive experience in other fields of science. The observable effect in fundamental physics is a significant slowdown in progress that is stretching over several decades.