Confusions in physics: scientific ethics and Ethics

The trouble with physics: the rise of string theory, the fall of a science

Chinese translation <confusions in physics>.

Different scientific styles

How do the smartest and best-educated scientists study string theory under the best conditions face the danger of failure? I have been confused for many years, but now I want to know the answer. In my opinion, what is about to fail is not a special theory, but a scientific style. It is suitable for the problems we encountered in the middle of the 20th century, but not suitable for the basic problems we face today. The standard model of particle physics is a special scientific style of success, which leads the world alone in 1940s. It is very different from the Scientific Style of Einstein, Boer, hesenber, schörör, and other scientific revolutionaries in the early 20th century. Their work stems from the most fundamental issues of time, space, and material. They regard their work as part of a broader philosophical tradition they are familiar.

In particle physics methods developed by Feynman, Dyson, and others, basic issues do not need to be considered, which frees them from the debate on the significance of quantum physics, however, their predecessors have been entangled in those arguments and brought about rapid progress over the past 30 years.This should be the case: different research styles are required to solve different problems.Using existing frameworks requires different ideas and thoughts than building those frameworks at the beginning.

What have our generation left for young scientists? They probably don't want to use the ideas and methods. There are also stories of local success in different directions, but they fail to complete the career that Einstein created a hundred years ago. the worst case is that we pull them back and ask them to inherit our ideas. The last part of this book is the question I asked myself every morning: do we do our best to support and encourage young scientists, including ourselves, should we go beyond what we have done over the past 30 years to pursue theories that can truly answer the five major physics questions?

We have discussed some common causes of failures in the last 25 years:

• Not because of the lack of data, there are enough new results that can stimulate the imagination of the theory.
• Not because it takes a long time to test the conclusion. From the new theory to the new phenomenon, experiments prove that there are few more than 10 years.
• Not because of insufficient efforts, the number of people doing basic physics research today far exceeds the total number of people in the history of physics.
• Of course, you cannot complain about the lack of talent.

I have assumed in the previous chapters that failure is not so much a special theory as a research style. If those who walk in the camp of the string theory House and those who have an independent background quantum gravity for a while, he will surely be shocked by the huge differences in style and value studies between the two factions. These differences reflect the split of theoretical physics that began half a century ago.

• The style of the quantum gravity world inherits the tradition of the so-called theory of relativity. This was led by AI's assistants and their students, such as Bergman, gorborg, and whirlpool. The core value of this group is to respect personal thoughts and research programs, doubt fashion, and rely on the pure demonstration of mathematics, they are convinced that the key issues are closely related to the basic problems related to space, time, and quantum nature.
• On the other hand, the style of the string theory family is the extension of the basic particle physics culture. This style is always full of impulsive, aggressive, and competitive intentions, and theoretical practitioners prefer to respond to new developments first (before 1980, it is usually experimental) without believing in the philosophical problem.

When the center of science is transferred from Europe to the United States, and the focus of intelligence is shifted from the interpretation of the new basic theory to the application of theory, this style also replaces the speculative and philosophical style of Einstein and the creators of quantum theory, and succeeded.

To solve different types of problems, the scientific community needs different styles. My assumption is that the mistake of string theory is that it develops with the Research Style of basic particle physics, which is not suitable for the discovery of new theoretical frameworks. If you leave the experiment, it is difficult to stick to the style of standard model success. This type of fighting and fashion style can only play a role under the arm of the experiment, but it can only fail when there is no fashion and only the views and tastes of a few outstanding figures. When I started learning physics in 1970s, both research styles were sound. There are more basic particle physicists than relativity experts, but both of them have active proprietary. For those who want to solve the basic problems of space, time, and quantum theory, although there are not many ways to develop their own ideas, good ideas can be well supported.Since then, although the needs of the Theory of Relativity style have increased, their field in academia has been reduced because string theory and other major research plans have become the leading role.

Different scientific methods

There seems to be two opposite scientific views. One way is to think that science is the territory of the rebels. The so-called rebels are those with ambitious new ideas. They strive for life to prove that they are correct. This is the myth of Galileo. Today, in the struggle of several admirable great scientists, such as the mathematical physicist Peng Ross, the complexity thinker Kaman and the biologist magzos, we can see the shadows of that myth. In another view, science is regarded as a conservative and consistent Community, and almost cannot tolerate any deviation from orthodox ideas. Instead, it inputs the energy of creation into a determined research program.

In a sense, both views are correct. Science requires both rebellion and rebellion. At first glance, there seems to be a conflict. How can we make the rebels coexist with those who have been thriving for more than a century? The trick is:Let the rebels and the neators compete in the scientific community for a lifetime, and to some extent, they are also in the hearts of the individual, so that they cannot be peaceful for a lifetime.But how is this done?

Every scientist has his own voice. Science is a democracy, but it is by no means subject to the law of the majority. In addition, although everyone's judgment has been taken seriously, consensus plays a decisive role. When most of my professionals welcome a research project that I cannot accept, even if it is good or unwilling to accept, what else can I do? The answer is that democracy is not just the law of the majority. There is also a system of consciousness and ethics beyond the law of the majority.

Therefore, if we want to say that science is not only about sociology, but also about academic politics, we must have a concept about what science is) science is the idea of an autonomous group of mankind. To say which special organizational form or special behavior is good or bad for science, we must have a basis for value judgment that surpasses universal things. We must have a foundation that can be separated from the majority and will not be said to be a weirdo.

Let's go back to the earlier philosophers. In 1920s and 1930s, there was a call in ViennaLogic evidentiaryPhilosophical Movement. The logic validators propose that assertions become knowledge only after being confirmed by world observations. They call scientific knowledge the sum of these proven propositions. Science advances when scientists make assertions that can be tested but are indeed tested. Their motivation is to get rid of the metaphysical philosophy, which is full of empty books. At this point: They have partially succeeded, but their careful scientific features have not been sustained for a long time. Many problems have emerged. One of them is that there is no tie between observation and statement. The simplest observation also involves assumptions and prejudices. It is unrealistic or even impossible to break the comments of scientists into small atoms that are deprived of theoretical observation.

When the empirical theory fails, philosophers propose scientific progress because scientists have taken the path to truth. The suggestions for scientific methods were proposed by karnapp and oppenhönpener. Popur also put forward his own suggestion, that is, scientific progress lies in the fact that scientists have put forwardCan be falsifiedThat is, they have made a statement that can be negated by the experiment. In popur's view, the theory can never be proved to be true, but if it has undergone many experiments trying to deny it, then we begin to have the truth it contains, at least before it is finally denied.

The philosophy of feyarbend was initially to attack these ideas. For example, he proved that denying a theory is not that easy. In many cases, after a theory seems to have been negated, scientists will stick to it; they only need to change the experiment interpretation to achieve this. They will also challenge their results. Sometimes this ends a theory, because it is indeed wrong. sticking to a theory in the face of obvious experimental conflicts is sometimes the right approach. How do you know what situation you are in? Feye ambend thinks that you cannot know. Different scientists hold different ideas and let luck prove themselves. There is no general rule that tells us when to discard or maintain a theory.

Proof of feyer ambend,Scientists will make progress by breaking the rules at a critical moment, which attacks the idea that methods determine scientific progress in general.Moreover, he also pointed out that, in my opinion, science may be stagnant if it is always followed by the "method" law. The scientific historian Ku en attacked the idea of "scientific methods" from another aspect. He said scientists use different methods in different ways. however, he is not as radical as fiyarbeni, and he wants to advocate two methods: the method of "normal science" and the method of scientific revolution.

Another key to popur's thinking is the philosopher rakatos, who points out that there is no such large asymmetry between proof and proof as popur assumes. If you see a bright Swan, you are unlikely to give up the theory that all the swans are white. Instead, you will find someone who colors it.

In <method of opposition>, feye amond is talking about, where are you, kid? Don't dream about it! Science is not a philosopher sitting on the cloud. It is a human activity, as complicated and problematic as anything else. There is no single method for science, and there is no single standard for good scientists. Good science is what promotes our knowledge at a specific time in history. Don't bother me with how to define progress. It's right if you define it in any way.

I have learned from feyer ambend that deep philosophical thinking is sometimes required for progress, but most of the time it is not. Most progress is achieved by speculators copying shortcuts and exaggerating their knowledge and achievements. Galileo calculates one of them; many of his arguments are wrong, however, his opponent was one who was well-educated and well-versed in philosophical thinking at that time, and his mind loopholes were easily discovered by the Jesus club's astronomers. However, he was right and they were wrong.

I got to know feyer ambend.There is no prior argument to tell us what can adapt to all environments. The power to promote science at some point may be wrong at other times. From the story of Galileo, I also learned more: you must fight for your faith.

Scientific Ethics and Ethics

We are good at drawing conclusions from incomplete information. We constantly observe the world, predict it, and judge it. It is the practice of hunters and also the practice of particle physicist and microbiology. We will never have enough information to fully prove our conclusion. To become a good businessman, a good hunter, a good farmer, and a good scientist, one of the basic qualities is to guess with intuition, be confident in your actions when limited information is not proven completely. Because of this, humans become such successful species.

However, this kind of skill has paid a very high price, that is, we can easily cheat ourselves. Of course, we know that it is easy to be deceived by others. People can easily trust lies because they are effective. After all, we can only draw conclusions based on incomplete information, so we are powerless in the face of lies. Our basic attitude can only be trust. If we want to prove all the things, we have nothing to believe, and we cannot be able to leave the bed without feeling guilty, you cannot get married, make friends, or join any organization. Without trust, we will become lonely animals. Language works well because we often trust what others tell us.

The equally important and sober question of attention is how much we cheat ourselves. We not only deceive individuals, but also the whole group. People tend to trust something that is obviously wrong in the future. This kind of tendency is really ridiculous. Some of the most miserable things in the 20th century are that good people have taken the lead of bad leaders. However, reaching consensus is the basis for our survival. Only in this way can hunters reap the harvest and tribes avoid danger.

So,A group must have an error correction mechanism to survive.: Elders make young people unimpulsive because they have learned from their long experiences how easy it is to make mistakes. Young people challenge the beliefs of generations because those beliefs are outdated. Human society can progress because itI learned how to be rebellious and obedient, and found a social mechanism that balances two personalities over a long period of time.

I believe that science is such a mechanism. It is a way to nurture and inspire new knowledge discovery, but in the long history, it proves to be a complete set of techniques and practices that effectively expose mistakes. science is the best tool to overcome the inherent tendency of self-deception and deception.

From this section, we can see that science is the same as democracy. Both scientific and larger groups need to reach a conclusion and make a decision based on incomplete information. In both cases, incomplete information will lead to different ideas. Both scientific and non-scientific societies need mechanisms to resolve disputes and reconcile different opinions. This mechanism requires us to expose errors and allow us to use new methods to solve difficult old problems. Human society has many such mechanisms, some of which rely on force and power. The most basic idea of democracy is that society can run best only when disputes are resolved peacefully. Therefore, science and democracy both feel our tendency to deceive ourselves, and we are optimistic that we, as a society, can correct our mistakes and make us more and more intelligent than anyone else.

Now we have put science in the right context, And next we will discuss why it is so useful. I believe the answer is simple: Science is successful because scientists form a group that establishes and maintains a common moral standard. I believe thatLoyalty to certain moral norms, rather than any special facts or theories, plays a fundamental role in the self-correction of scientific groups.This set of specifications has two principles:

1. If a problem can be determined by a loyal person who uses reasonable arguments for public evidence, he can think that the result must be the same.
2. On the contrary, if a reasonable argument based on public evidence does not allow a loyal person to reach an agreement on a certain issue, this will inevitably allow or even encourage people to come up with different conclusions.

I believe that science succeeds because scientists have followed (maybe not so thorough) the two principles. To illustrate this, let's look at what these principles require us to do:

1. We agree to make reasonable arguments based on the shared evidence, regardless of the degree of consistency of the results.
2. Every scientist is free to draw his own conclusions based on evidence. However, each scientist also needs to present the arguments of these conclusions to the entire scientific community. These arguments must be reasonable and based on evidence that all Members can obtain. Evidence, methods for obtaining evidence, and the evidence logic used to derive conclusions based on such evidence must be tested by all members.
3. The ability of scientists to interpret reliable conclusions based on shared evidence is based on the ability to grasp tools and years of process. Learning those tools and processes is proven to produce reliable results. Every scientist trained by these methods is deeply touched by errors and self-deception.
4. At the same time, members of the scientific community are aware that the ultimate goal is to reach consensus. Consensus may suddenly appear, and it may take some time. Final referees of scientific work are members of the community who can better and more objectively evaluate the evidence in the distant future. Although scientific projects can temporarily unite some advocates, no project, statement, or opinion can succeed for a long time unless it can produce enough evidence to convince the doubters.
5. The scientific community is equal to all people. Status, age, gender, or any other personal characteristics cannot affect the scientist's consideration of evidence and argument, nor limit their consideration of other evidence, arguments, and information. However, entering the scientific community must meet two conditions. The first is to grasp at least one scientific method in the branch field and be able to independently make jobs highly recognized by other Members. The second is faithfully obeying the common moral norms.
6. Although Orthodox will be formed for the time being in some branches, the scientific community recognizes that opposing opinions and research projects are still necessary for the healthy development of the community.

People who do science generally have childish desires. They always think that they are correct and believe that they have absolute truth. But if you join the scientific community, these things will be taken away. On the contrary, they should know that they are a member of the development industry and will eventually achieve what they cannot achieve. They also need professional training to learn many things that cannot be learned by individuals in most cases. The Community then warrants that each member has the right to promote any viewpoint or research item that they believe to be supported by the evidence of those practices as a result of their efforts for professional practice.

I would like to call this groupEthical groupsThe organization depends on the loyalty to a behavior specification and the professional practice of that specification. Science is, in my opinion, the purest example of a group we have ever seen.

However, this is not enough to portray science as an ethical group, because some ethical groups exist to maintain old knowledge rather than to discover new truth. Religious groups meet ethical standards in many cases. In fact, the modern form of science evolved from the monks and the schools of theology. It is also an ethical group with the goal of maintaining religious doctrine. Therefore, if we say that our scientific feature is to establish power, we must add some principles that can clearly distinguish physics from the monastery.

Therefore, I want to introduce the second concept, that is, what I callImaginary Group. The norms and organizations of such groups are embodied inIt believes that progress is inevitable and the future is open.Openness leaves room for imagination or reality for new things and surprises. We not only believe that the future will be better, but also realize thatWe cannot predict how to achieve a better future.

Neither the Marxist countries nor the Orthodox religious countries belong to imaginary groups. They also yearn for a better end, but they believe they fully know how to reach the future. When I was a child, I often heard from my Marxist grandmother and her friends that they were sure they were correct because their "science" taught them how to "analyze the situation correctly ".

The imaginary groups believe that the future will bring surprises, new discoveries, and solutions to new crises. They do not trust their current knowledge, but trust their hopes in future generations, and pass on the rules and tools of thinking to them so that they can benefit and surpass the environment we cannot imagine today. Excellent scientists hope that students can surpass them. Although the academic system provides a lot of reasons for successful scientists to believe in their own authority, any good scientist understands that when you are more confident than the best students, you are no longer a scientist.

Therefore, the Scientific Group is both a moral standard group and an imaginary group.

According to this description, we can easily seeDebate has fundamental significance for scientific progress.My first principle is that when evidence forces us to reach a consensus, we should reach a consensus. However, my second principle says that we should encourage different ideas before consensus is reached. This is useful to science, and I believe it is true, as feye amentd often says. When there is theoretical competition, the scientific progress is the fastest. In the past, there was a naive view that the theory was proposed one by one at different times to accept data tests. This does not take into account the extent to which our theoretical thinking affects our experiments and how we interpret them. If we only think about one theory at a time, we are likely to fall into the intellectual traps produced by that theory. The only way out is to let different theoretical competitions explain the same evidence.

Feyer ambend pointed out that even if there is a widely accepted theory that satisfies all the evidence, it is still necessary to propose a theory of competition to promote scientific progress. This is because the theory of competition is most likely to put forward an experiment that is in conflict with the established viewpoint, and those experiments are even hard to imagine if there is no theory of competition. Therefore, competition theory not only strengthens experiments, but also often raises abnormal experiments.

As a result, feye ambend insisted that,Scientists should never agree, unless they have.Science is dangerous if scientists reach an agreement too quickly before the evidence is established. So we have to ask, what is the impact on their immature conclusions? They are also people. People agree that all kinds of things without facts are caused by the same factors, such as religious beliefs and fashion trends of mass culture.

So it comes to the question: scientists agree that they want to be liked and praised by other scientists? Or is it because everyone they know is thinking the same thing? Or are they willing to stand in the winner's team? Most people are unable to agree with others because of these motivations. There is no reason to ask scientists to be an exception. After all, they are human beings.

However, if we want to maintain the vitality of science, we have to fight those desires. We must encourage opponents to have different points of view in the experiment. Considering that everyone is eager to win, we must be aware that if we succumb to these desires, science will fall.

Healthy scientific groups should encourage their differences and have other reasons. When we are forced to recognize something unexpected, science is moving forward. If we think we know the answer, we will try to make every result meet the preset thinking. Only disputes can maintain the vitality of science and promote its continuous progress. In a highly competitive environment, the power of sociology is not enough to drive people into a single point of view. In some rare cases, we have come to a consensus on one thing, just because we have no choice. Evidence forces us to do that, even though we don't like it. Because of this, scientific progress is real.

Loyalty to a standard is not thorough, so there is always room for improvement in scientific practice. This is especially true today when Fashion Trends (at least in physics) are so arrogant. Now, you can hear the smart young man with a new doctorate telling you privately that he would like to do X, but he is actually doing y, because it is the direction or technology maintained by the powerful older generation. They can only find jobs and get funding after doing so. Of course, as in other fields, there will always be a few people in science who choose to do X, even though they know that people who do y can get better rewards in the short term. Among those, the next generation of leaders is likely to emerge. As a result, scientific progress may be slow due to orthodox and fashion, but in the long run, the people doing X still have the opportunity to replace y, and science cannot be completely stagnant.

All of this shows that, just like anything else, scientific success depends largely on courage and personality. Although scientific progress ultimately depends on the possibility of reaching consensus in the long term, scientists can only rely on incomplete information to determine what to do and how to evaluate evidence. Scientific progress is based on the Organization norms in which everyone is equal in the face of incomplete information. No one can predict whether a method will lead to definite progress or waste years of work. All we can do is train students to master some methods. Experience has proved that these methods can often produce reliable results. Then, we must let them think freely and take time to listen to their reports. As long as the scientific community opens the door to new ideas and new ideas, adheres to the principles and norms, and establishes the final consensus on the basis of reasonable demonstration based on open evidence, science will eventually succeed.

The mission of building a scientific community will never end. It will always fight with the power of unification, fashion, age, and status. There will always be endless temptation to guide us to take shortcuts to cater to successful teams, rather than understanding new problems. Ideally, the scientific community should allow us to take full advantage of our personal impulse and passion. To run the scientific community, we must bring together the arrogance and ambition of each of us. Or feiman said:Science is to doubt the reliability of expert opinions in an organized manner.