Thursday, September 07, 2006
is this true?
The Centre for Research on Globalization, an organization in Quebec, featured a rather interesting article two days ago:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060904&articleId=3140
By "interesting" I mean "not meant to be taken seriously." This article- written by a physicist- claims that 80% of physicists work for the military.
Okay, so... where did that number come from? And why is this- if it were actually true- such a big deal?
Physicists are sometimes stereotyped as being militantly apathetic people, but this article suggests otherwise... except for the militant part :) While some physicists have no interest in politics or the military, this article completely shatters that stereotype. Physics evidently is far from some ivory-tower activity that no one will ever actually use; the ivory-tower image comes from ignorant people who criticize science because they can't grasp even the basic concepts. Many of those people post comments on "Not Even Wrong."
The article does far more than denigrate the military, though. It states that physicists are DUMB.
That's right, dumb. "How many unified field theorists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" jokes come to mind.
Everyone knows (or maybe they don't) that physicists are not dumb. Some of them are misguided, but none of them are dumb. Some of them came up with bizarre dissertations (e.g. the Bogdanov brothers), but none of them are dumb. Some of them have tried to make their data more convincing than it should be, but none of them are dumb. What other people have such a grasp of underlying phenomena in the physical world? What other people burden themselves with advanced calculus, PDE's, integral equations, computational methods of solving problems, AND physics?
The fact that the article was written by a physicist is what should trouble everyone. Or not. Complexity is physics, and physics is complexity. Physics is not stamp collecting. Introductory-level physics is made accessible to other people so they won't run away in horror. That is why I've heard several people claim that chemistry, biology, engineering, etc. are harder than physics. Such statements are blatant lies. While chemistry, biology, engineering, and other related disciplines are hard, they are just applications.
That does not mean that everything other than physics is worthless; it just means that every other discipline can be traced (albeit in a convoluted way) to the underlying principles of physics. If you support the Anthropic Principle, the universe has just the correct parameters that enable us to survive. If we weren't alive, we wouldn't be able to study why the universe is the way it is, etc., etc. That's just one connection to philosophy, and biology. As well as all of the humanities disciplines, because without our existence, the humanities would have no meaning. Axioms, lemmas (or lemmata), theorems, etc. in mathematics wouldn't have been developed, but... mathematics is special. It is special because academics are divided as to its underlying origins. To some, math is embedded in nature, as something physically realizable. To others, it is a human construction. As Leopold Kronecker stated, "God created the natural numbers; everything else is the work of man." Of course, this further suggests that God exists, and any such discussion is far more debatable (other than in a group consisting entirely of either very religious or atheistic people) than the Grand Unified Theory (at least at the present time).
Anyway, are physicists dumb and unable to perceive complexity? I hope you can deduce the answer from my above arguments. ¶ 8:54 PM
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060904&articleId=3140
By "interesting" I mean "not meant to be taken seriously." This article- written by a physicist- claims that 80% of physicists work for the military.
Okay, so... where did that number come from? And why is this- if it were actually true- such a big deal?
Physicists are sometimes stereotyped as being militantly apathetic people, but this article suggests otherwise... except for the militant part :) While some physicists have no interest in politics or the military, this article completely shatters that stereotype. Physics evidently is far from some ivory-tower activity that no one will ever actually use; the ivory-tower image comes from ignorant people who criticize science because they can't grasp even the basic concepts. Many of those people post comments on "Not Even Wrong."
The article does far more than denigrate the military, though. It states that physicists are DUMB.
That's right, dumb. "How many unified field theorists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" jokes come to mind.
Everyone knows (or maybe they don't) that physicists are not dumb. Some of them are misguided, but none of them are dumb. Some of them came up with bizarre dissertations (e.g. the Bogdanov brothers), but none of them are dumb. Some of them have tried to make their data more convincing than it should be, but none of them are dumb. What other people have such a grasp of underlying phenomena in the physical world? What other people burden themselves with advanced calculus, PDE's, integral equations, computational methods of solving problems, AND physics?
The fact that the article was written by a physicist is what should trouble everyone. Or not. Complexity is physics, and physics is complexity. Physics is not stamp collecting. Introductory-level physics is made accessible to other people so they won't run away in horror. That is why I've heard several people claim that chemistry, biology, engineering, etc. are harder than physics. Such statements are blatant lies. While chemistry, biology, engineering, and other related disciplines are hard, they are just applications.
That does not mean that everything other than physics is worthless; it just means that every other discipline can be traced (albeit in a convoluted way) to the underlying principles of physics. If you support the Anthropic Principle, the universe has just the correct parameters that enable us to survive. If we weren't alive, we wouldn't be able to study why the universe is the way it is, etc., etc. That's just one connection to philosophy, and biology. As well as all of the humanities disciplines, because without our existence, the humanities would have no meaning. Axioms, lemmas (or lemmata), theorems, etc. in mathematics wouldn't have been developed, but... mathematics is special. It is special because academics are divided as to its underlying origins. To some, math is embedded in nature, as something physically realizable. To others, it is a human construction. As Leopold Kronecker stated, "God created the natural numbers; everything else is the work of man." Of course, this further suggests that God exists, and any such discussion is far more debatable (other than in a group consisting entirely of either very religious or atheistic people) than the Grand Unified Theory (at least at the present time).
Anyway, are physicists dumb and unable to perceive complexity? I hope you can deduce the answer from my above arguments. ¶ 8:54 PM
Comments:
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I support an entropic intepretation of the anthropic priniciple.
There are crackpots on Woit's blog, but many are not.
I believe that math is "unreasonably effective"... ;)
There are crackpots on Woit's blog, but many are not.
I believe that math is "unreasonably effective"... ;)
# posted by 
: 5:35 AM
: 5:35 AM
Thank you, island, for posting the first comment. I see you have commented a lot on this issue on the other physics blogs.
The entropic principle, which was discussed a great deal on the "Reference Frame" here: http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/02/entropic-principle.html
compares the entropy of a black hole to the state of the universe. It seems very unusual to use this analogy if the state of the universe at the Big Bang (as a singularity) isn't taken into account.
While Dr. Motl doesn't "like this result too much", he does offer a description of it in the context of string theory, so it may be a drastic improvement over the current anthropic principle.
It is true that many of the people on Dr. Woit's blog are serious physicists, but there are still far more uneducated crackpots.
Math certainly is extroardinarily effective; this is why the results of the entropic principle are more scientific than many of the anthropic principle's qualitative arguments. And in that regard, the entropic principle may be a great improvement.
The entropic principle, which was discussed a great deal on the "Reference Frame" here: http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/02/entropic-principle.html
compares the entropy of a black hole to the state of the universe. It seems very unusual to use this analogy if the state of the universe at the Big Bang (as a singularity) isn't taken into account.
While Dr. Motl doesn't "like this result too much", he does offer a description of it in the context of string theory, so it may be a drastic improvement over the current anthropic principle.
It is true that many of the people on Dr. Woit's blog are serious physicists, but there are still far more uneducated crackpots.
Math certainly is extroardinarily effective; this is why the results of the entropic principle are more scientific than many of the anthropic principle's qualitative arguments. And in that regard, the entropic principle may be a great improvement.
Yes, I remember when Lumo posted on the entropic principle, but my entropic anthropic interpretation is different.
Good luck with your blog and your studies.
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Good luck with your blog and your studies.
# posted by : 11:20 AM
: 11:20 AM<< Home
