Sabine Hossenfelder and Beauty in Physics

[fresh_42]

I find it baffling that anybody would suggest that beauty is anything but subjective.

I do. I find it baffling that anybody would suggest that beauty is something like taste. And yes, this does imply that not everybody can judge it. I find it exceptionally arrogant to assume that someone can actually judge on beauty regardless of what he knows. That is taste, not beauty.

We have a saying here: You cannot argue about taste. Either you have it or not.
That's an exaggeration, but it bears a germ of truth.

 

[Auto-Didact]

I find it baffling that anybody would suggest that beauty is anything but subjective. In quantum transport for instance, one can go the route of second quantization along with all of the associated dazzling Feynman diagrams and abstract representations, followed by conventional Green function methods, or for a number of other quantum kinetic approaches which are more crude or simple, where applicable (I confess that I like Wigner functions as, under the proper circumstances, I can look at the equation of motion cock-eyed until it looks like a Boltzmann equation, which is tractable to pleasing and comparatively simple Monte Carlo approaches).

By virtue of my different biases (applications to electronics in my case), my definition of beauty changed. If theoretical physicists are all clustering around the same biases (i.e. same standard of beauty) without progress in 40 years, Hossenfelder may have a point.

You have applications in mind, there's your problem ;) Hadamard and Poincaré, among others, have written on this exact topic.

Beauty in physics is an offshoot of beauty in pure mathematics. The branching off of the physicists perspective away from that of the mathematician occurred during the 19th century. Up until then physicists and a subset of mathematicians, mostly analysts and geometers, shared mostly the same standards of beauty.

Since then beauty in the eye of physicists has evolved in a few particular directions, while beauty in pure mathematics has split into several different opposing points of view: analysts, geometers, algebraists, logicists, formalists, and so on, each claiming superior beauty while simultaneously scoffing at that of the other.

 

[bhobba]

We have a saying here: You cannot argue about taste. Either you have it or not. That's an exaggeration, but it bears a germ of truth.

Not as much of an exaggeration as some may think. I used to be heavily into wine tasting and train people in how to do it. Many had never even tried to do it, and most in fact thought these great wines that you pay sometimes a bomb for is all hooey. Leaving aside the fact that some relatively cheap wines costing only $20,00 are in fact great, and a bottle of wine you can pick up here in Aus for $60.00 won the greatest wine in the world competition, wines with a great reputation and often because of that a very high price tag have that for very good reasons, and those reasons can be taught. The people were told what to look for eg examine color, nose, and palette separately and score using the international system. The palate must literally make your mouth juices flow - you should not be able to help it, it must reek of fruit, it must be in balance ie neither the fruit, acid or tannins should predominate, and of course it must delight you. Once given a bit of training you then do a proper blind wine tasting. Surprise surprise - they (as a group) pick the wines virtually in the same order as reputed quality from other tastings by professionals. Its sometimes a big shock. Then they become worried - how can I afford these wines - the others now taste so ordinary. A true wine lover knows to drink less but drink better.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Auto-Didact]

Not as much of an exaggeration as some may think. I used to be heavily into wine tasting and train people in how to do it. Many had never even tried to do it, and most in fact though these great wines that you pay sometimes a bomb for is all hooey. Leaving aside the fact that some relatively cheap wines costing only $20,00 are in fact great, and a bottle of wine you can pick up here in Aus for $60.00 won the greatest wine in the world competition, wines with a great reputation and often because of that a very high price tag have that for very good reasons, and those reasons can be taught. The people were told what to look for eg examine color, nose, and palette separately and score using the international system. The palate must literally make your mouth juices flow - you should not be able to help it, it must reek of fruit, it must be in balance ie neither the fruit, acid or tannins should predominate, and of course it must delight you. Once given a bit of training you then do a proper blind wine tasting. Surprise surprise - they (as a group) pick the wines virtually in the same order as reputed quality from other tastings by professionals. Its sometimes a big shock. Then they become worried - how can I afford these wines - the others now taste so ordinary. A true wine lover knows to drink less but drink better.

Thanks
Bill

Sounds exactly like expert training in medical diagnostics. One can definitely be trained to reliably identify certain signs and symptoms given proper medical history/physical examination training and sufficient exposure to physiological and pathological states; this isn't just my opinion, there is over 40 years of cognitive and psychological research on this. It is somewhat difficult to appreciate from the outside of medicine as one tends to get drowned in all the noise and small details, which tend to differ quite considerably between different specialties.

Its quite peculiar how different this kind of 'very precise in devilishly vague circumstances' reasoning feels in stark contrast to the more regular exact reasoning, i.e. the kind of reasoning predominantly used when solving problems in physics and mathematics which have readily known solutions and solving strategies. This is often labeled 'mathematical reasoning', but I think that is a misnomer as it refers mostly to simple problems solvable by basic (undergrad level) math skills.

However, with regards to the solving of problems without known solutions, without readily available strategies (e.g. nonlinear PDEs) and which are possibly incompletely stated, it becomes quite clear that there is quite a significant overlap with this 'non-mathematical' type of reasoning. In physics, it is exactly in this kind of reasoning that experts, i.e. theoretical and mathematical physicists, tend to be capable of reliably outperforming non-experts, i.e. other physicists and students alike. It's not merely a case of having more or different knowledge, theoreticians tend to reason in a different manner altogether.

 

[fresh_42]

Not as much of an exaggeration as some may think. I used to be heavily into wine tasting and train people in how to do it.

This reminds me of a story which once happened to me. I don't want to tell it, because it's a bit long, however, I found myself incidentally into a wine testing situation. I remember how I've been told about the difference of some wines coming from the same region: one from the north with mainly sandstone soil and one from the south with mainly limestone. What a surprise, that my untrained tongue could easily taste it just by looking for it - and no, it was definitely no psychological suggestion. It was rather obvious, I just hadn't been used to recognize it before. In the end I went home with a couple of pretty good wines, which weren't expensive at all. The guy who sold them simply knew all of his farmers personally and had wines from small farms, i.e. low distribution costs.

 

[bhobba]

I just hadn't been used to recognize it before.

And that is exactly where beauty in math/physics comes from. You can read in a book a theory or theorem is beautiful, but until you have seen the details yourself you can't appreciate it. And almost everyone that sees those details agrees.

Thanks
Bill

 

[marthasimons2]

There is nothing surprising about scientists looking for elegant and simple explanations. The theories that have already been proved are the evidence to the fact that our world's physical laws are beautiful. The point that we've spent a lot of money on proving some of the theories and were unlucky to do so does not mean that we have to stop trying. The point is to keep exploring our planet and the physical laws. If the question is in the distribution of wealth and that it would have been wiser to spend this money on something more productive, I could argue with this idea. We do not know what will be the results of the next scientific discovery. It might bring more use to the planet than anything that seems 'more practical'.

 

[ZapperZ]

Abraham Loeb wrote his view on this topic:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...sics-is-pointless-without-experimental-tests/

Zz.

 

[fresh_42]

There is nothing surprising about scientists looking for elegant and simple explanations. The theories that have already been proved are the evidence to the fact that our world's physical laws are beautiful. The point that we've spent a lot of money on proving some of the theories and were unlucky to do so does not mean that we have to stop trying. The point is to keep exploring our planet and the physical laws. If the question is in the distribution of wealth and that it would have been wiser to spend this money on something more productive, I could argue with this idea. We do not know what will be the results of the next scientific discovery. It might bring more use to the planet than anything that seems 'more practical'.

Oh, there come a whole lot of more things to mind, which I think we could easily drop and save money. Big money.

 

[gleem]

George Will a political columnist wrote an unusual article IMO about basic research and it may not be what you think.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...0e80e1fdf43_story.html?utm_term=.adb563395e7f

 

[Crass_Oscillator]

Obviously if you begin with the same values, you will converge to an "objective" notion of beauty. For instance, I highly value parsimony, and, therefore, find GR to be aesthetically pleasing, even though in practice it is mathematically turgid. Some of you probably do too.

The problem is that some value systems are degenerate, in multiple senses of the word, such as the value system that concludes convoluted abstraction is automatically beautiful. These are the folks who are attracted to topological phases or string theory like mosquitoes to lanterns, and they often claim to appreciate GR for utterly the wrong reasons, which is how they market supersymmetry and other distractions.

I'm no idol worshiper but I highly doubt Einstein's aesthetic preferences would have tolerated something like M-theory.

 

[ZapperZ]

Sabine Hossenfelder's talk at BNL is now online.



Zz.

 

[Lish Lash]

Here's a direct link to one of Hossenfelder's points most relevant to this discussion, "what physicists mean when they talk about beauty":