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WORK TITLE: Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 9/18/1976
WEBSITE:
CITY: Heidelberg
STATE:
COUNTRY: Germany
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born September 18, 1976, in Germany.
EDUCATION:Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, B.S.; Ph.D., 2003.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Theoretical physicist. Frankfurt University, Frankfurt, Germany, instructor, 1999-2001; GSI (Heavy Ion Society), Darmstadt, Germany, research fellow, 2003-04; University of Arizona, postdoctoral research fellow, 2004-05; University of California, Santa Barbara, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2005-09; Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, postdoctoral, 2006-09; Nordita, Stockholm, Sweden, assistant professor, 2009-15; Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany, research fellow, 2015–.
WRITINGS
Author of the physics blog, Backreaction. Contributor of scientific articles to various publications, including New Scientist, Scientific American, and NOVA.
SIDELIGHTS
German theoretical physicist, researcher, and writer Sabine Hossenfelder is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. Her areas of expertise are phenomenological quantum gravity and modifications of general relativity. She has written scientific articles for publications like New Scientist and Scientific American, and writes the popular physics blog, Backreaction. Her debut book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, explores the elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology. Hossenfelder holds a Ph.D. in physics from Goethe University Frankfurt and lives in Heidelberg, Germany.
Lost in Math laments that physicists’ obsession with the beauty, naturalness, and elegance of mathematical equations lead to bad science in the form of experimental futility and intellectual confusion. Framing her discussion around physics problems like black holes, CERN particles, supersymmetry, dark matter and dark energy, and a grand unification theory, Hossenfelder explains that major breakthroughs in the foundations of physics have been lagging over the last forty years. Rather than focus on aesthetic criteria and conceptual style that are beautiful but untestable, physicists must rely on observation of reality. In her discussions, she presents the work of important researchers, such as Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg and social media-savvy Australian astrophysicist Katherine “Astrokatie” Mack.
Hossenfelder discussed the problem with Prisco Giulio on the Turing Church website: “I think what has happened here is that arguments which are perfectly sensible in certain situations have been carried over to situations where they don’t apply—and this has gone unnoticed because physicists are sloppy in stating their assumptions….Personally I think (as I say in the book) that focusing on mathematical consistency and experimental guidance is most promising.”
According to a Kirkus Reviews book critic, “Even educated readers will struggle to understand the elements of modern physics, but they will have no trouble enjoying this insightful, delightfully pugnacious polemic about its leading controversy.” In a review in Booklist, Bryce Christensen observed that Hossenfelder challenges her colleagues’ single-minded commitment to mathematical elegance in her “provocative appeal for unattractive but fruitful science.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted: “This layreader-friendly, amusing treatise gives an enlightening look at a growing issue within physics.”
Hossenfelder has had a long interest in the relationship between physics and reality. She told John Horgan in an interview online at Scientific American: “I was interested in mathematical truths only to the extent that they could teach me something about the real world. My main interest has always been in the structure of natural law, the question what makes the universe run this way. And physics is the discipline that delivers the sharpest answers to this.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2018, Bryce Christensen, review of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, p. 54.
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2018, review of Lost in Math.
Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2018, review of Lost in Math, p. 54.
ONLINE
Scientific American, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ (February 1, 2016), John Horgan, author interview.
Turing Church, https://turingchurch.net/ (July 19, 2018), Prisco Giulio, review of Lost in Math.
November 2016 (Volume 25, Number 10)
Q&A with Sabine Hossenfelder: Consultant for Armchair Physicists
APS News interviewed Sabine Hossenfelder to learn about her experiences consulting science enthusiasts online, and what she can do to help them with their next steps in their own research.
By Sophia Chen
When funding for her quantum gravity research started to look spotty, Sabine Hossenfelder came up with an unusual solution to pay the bills. First, Hossenfelder, a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany and well-known physics blogger, wondered, “What is all this knowledge in quantum gravity good for?”
And then she thought about all those armchair physicists out there, the ones who cook up their own theories of everything and proclaim in Internet comments that they can prove Einstein wrong. She posted an offer to act as a physics consultant on Facebook and on her blog: for 50 U.S. Dollars, she would spend 20 minutes on Skype answering your questions and setting you straight on your pet theory. If you were open to it, she’d also suggest concepts to learn and papers to read. The clients have rolled in: Since starting the service a year ago, Hossenfelder has expanded the operation to include five more physicists.
In addition to quantum gravity research and this consulting service, Hossenfelder writes prolifically about physics in her blog for non-technical audiences, Backreaction, and in publications like Forbes and Aeon. She spoke with APS News last month about her experiences counseling physics enthusiasts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I can sort of relate to your experience. When I was studying physics in grad school, we’d get emails from random people pushing their pet theories on us. But we’d delete them and laugh it off. Why’d you decide to engage with them?
I admire their drive a lot. These people have spent a lot of time on their theories, and they really want to understand [the physics] and contribute. They love the science. They’re not people I like to ignore.
Has anyone come up with anything publishable?
Not yet. I’ve only offered this service for a little over a year, and you know, nobody can immediately publish when they first start studying physics. But before this service existed, people were already asking me about their theories, and one person actually did publish a paper. It was a minor thing, a new way of looking at a known phenomenon in special relativity. But he worked it through and got it published, and that was really encouraging.
What’s a typical email exchange like?
They’ll say, “Hello, my name is so-and-so, and I’ve been working for ten years on this theory of, insert something, and I have a problem with something. Can I talk to you?” Sometimes they’ll send me twenty, thirty pages about their theories. I’ll write back yes or no, and if it’s outside of my expertise, I might refer them to someone on my team.
Then, we’ll talk over Skype. They’ll have images in mind and use concepts they’ve heard of but don’t exactly understand. If they use equations, they use very few, and they are typically the wrong ones. They might use the equations you learn in high school, which you can’t use to construct a fundamental theory. I have to explain that if you want to deal with these topics, you need to know what a Hamiltonian is, what a quasiparticle is, et cetera, and you need to learn how to compute them. And I often have to tell them that they’re not offering anything new.
Are you straightforward with them about that?
Yeah. Some of them get pretty offended, I think. A lot of people, strangely enough, also find it outrageous that I ask for payment, because certainly I must be interested in their great theory, and I’m just like, no, I’m not that interested.
Do you enjoy reading the theories?
To tell you the truth, I don’t read them because I don’t have the time. It’s not the point of the service. I’m there to answer questions to help them meet a high scientific standard. So I tell them, if you want my opinion, you’ll have to talk to me. Some of the people on my team will read the theories, though, and they charge a rate per word.
Do you think the large demand for these services means that the academic system is failing somewhere?
It’s not the academic system; it’s a problem with science communication. These people are interested in topics like quantum gravity and foundations of quantum mechanics. But all they have is popular science writing on one side and textbooks on the other. If you start with popular science, it’s very difficult to get to the other side. Physicists do it through ten years of education. I don’t think you can shortcut those ten years, but I’m trying to bridge that gap a little.
You’ve written that journalists make science seem too easy and can mislead readers to interpret their analogies too literally. How can science communicators improve on that?
It’s difficult. Popular science articles have to cater to a diverse audience. They often end up targeting the least common denominator and become wishy-washy nuggets that don’t tell you much. I see nothing wrong with this, though. Many readers just want to be inspired or to have something to talk about.
But some readers want more, and they’re the ones who get it badly wrong. One big misunderstanding is about the importance of mathematics in theoretical physics. I find this very badly communicated in popular science. Because they don’t have the experience, they seem to think mathematics is optional and is something physicists do to offend other people.
One way you can improve on this without scaring people away is to provide layers of explanation. You can have a fluffy article that also includes options for the reader to choose different levels of detail. For example, you can imagine clicking a button for additional information. It’s not impossible, but someone has to do it, and there’s no money and no interface for it right now.
What do you think is the responsibility of garden-variety physicists to communicate their work?
They definitely need to communicate their work within the community. But when it comes to communicating with the public, I don’t think scientists generally have an obligation to do this. Not every scientist is skilled at it, and I don’t see the point of forcing them to do it.
But a current problem facing scientists who are good at science communication is that they don’t get any benefits from it. You get points for teaching, for research, and for leadership positions, but public outreach isn’t really good for anything. Well, actually — you’ll get emails from people who want to share their theories with you. That’s what it’s good for.
Sophia Chen is a freelance science writer based in Tucson, Arizona.
Sabine Hossenfelder is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and the author of the popular physics blog Backreaction. She has written for New Scientist, Scientific American, and NOVA. She lives in Heidelberg, Germany.
Sabine Hossenfelder
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Sabine Hossenfelder
Born
18 September 1976 (age 41)
Nationality
German
Alma mater
Goethe University Frankfurt
Employer
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
Known for
Quantum Gravity
Sabine Hossenfelder (born 18 September 1976) is a blogger and Theoretical Physicist who researches quantum gravity. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group. She is the author of "Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray", which explores the elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology.
Contents [hide]
1
Education
2
Research
3
Public engagement
4
References
Education[edit]
Hossenfelder completed her undergraduate degree in 1997 at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main.[1] She remained there for a Masters degree under the supervision of Walter Greiner, entitled "Particle Production in Time Dependent Gravitational Fields", which she completed in 2000.[2] Hossenfelder received her doctorate "Black Holes in Large Extra Dimensions" from the same institution in 2003, under the supervision of Horst Stöcker.[3]
Research[edit]
Hossenfelder remained in Germany until 2004 as a postdoctoral researcher at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany.[1] She moved to North America and completed research fellowships at the University of Arizona, Tucson, University of California, Santa Barbara and Perimeter Institute, Canada.[4][5][6] She joined Nordita Institute for Theoretical Physics, Sweden in 2009 as an Assistant Professor.[7][8] In 2018 she was a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.[9]
Hossenfelder's research interest is in the phenomenology of quantum gravity.[7] She focuses on the role of Lorentz invariance and locality, which would be altered in the discovery of quantum gravity.[7] Hossenfelder is trying to find experimental evidence of quantum gravity.[10][11][12][13] Since 2007 she has been involved with the annual conference series "Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity".[14] Hossenfelder has created a number of YouTube videos exploring the topic.[15][16][17] She has been employed by the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies since 2015, where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group.[18]
Public engagement[edit]
Hossenfelder is a freelance popular science writer who has kept a blog since 2006.[19] She contributes to the Forbes column "Starts with a Bang" as well as Quanta Magazine, New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American and Physics Today.[20][21][22][23][24][25] In 2016, Hossenfelder offered to act as a physics consultant on her blog—$50 USD for twenty minutes of discussion—and had to recruit five extra physicists to deal with the demand.[26][27] In 2017 she created cards featuring pioneering quantum physicists.[28] Live Science and The Guardian quoted Hossenfelder as an authority when trying to evaluate the importance of Stephen Hawking's last scientific publication.[29][30]
Basic Books are the publishers of Hossenfelder's first book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, released in June 2018.[31][32][33] It has been described as "provocative" by Nature.[34]
Interactions: Conversation with Sabine Hossenfelder
April 6, 2018 | 11:43 am | Posted by Iulia Georgescu | Category: Interactions
Post by Iulia Georgescu.
Sabine Hossenfelder talks to us about her provocative upcoming book “Lost in math: How beauty leads physics astray”. The book will be available in June, but below you can get a sneak preview (with no spoilers).
You mention that some of your colleagues tried to dissuade you from writing this book. Why? What were their arguments?
“Don’t write a popular science book before you are tenured. It takes up too much time and doesn’t count on your CV. And even then, better don’t because it will look like you aren’t serious about doing research.”
They were right, of course, it took up time – time I did not spend doing research.
Was it worth it, then or is it too early to say?
The book has not yet been released, so I can’t tell whether it will cause the rethinking that I hope for. But from a personal point of view it was totally worth it, more so than I could have anticipated. I have been writing a blog for more than 12 years, but books are a different kind of beast. I wasn’t at all sure I could pull it through. But, well, I did. And along the way I’ve proved – to myself more than anybody else – that theoretical physics isn’t the only thing I can do with my life. So from the perspective of self-development it has been an asset already.
How do you expect this book will be perceived by physicists and the broader scientific community?
I expect most researchers in the areas that I criticize will complain that I should not have made this criticism publicly. But I don’t think the community will take on this problem without significant external pressure. So that was my only option. Besides, I have raised this criticism “internally” before (see my comment) which (unsurprisingly) led to zero rethinking.
As for the physicists outside the community: I really don’t know. The topics that I write about (as with multiverses and new particles and dark energy and such) get a lot of media attention despite the lack of scientific relevance, and I know that physicists in fields which get less attention are sometimes annoyed about that. So maybe they’ll be sympathetic to what I have to say.
Do you worry that it can be wrongly used to undermine the general public’s trust in science?
In my book I highlight problems with the present organization of scientific research. These problems make scientists untrustworthy. What undermines the public’s trust in science is ignoring these problems, not speaking about and trying to solve them. If nothing changes, of course you can use my book to argue that scientists shouldn’t be trusted, because in fact they cannot be trusted.
What do you think is the extent of the aesthetic bias in other areas of physics? Should we start questioning our compasses in other fields as well?
I don’t know, really. You should ask some people in other disciplines. It has not been all that easy to disentangle the aesthetic criteria from the mathematical ones in the areas I wrote about. You have to dig deeply into the literature to get to the bottom of what are now commonly used arguments. It was not fun, didn’t make me friends, and I am not keen on becoming the aesthetic-bias doctor of physics. But yes, by all means, question everything.
The theoretical particle physics community appears very isolated. Shouldn’t it try to come out and take other people more seriously, not only philosophers as you suggest in the book, but also physicists from other fields? What can one do to start the dialogue?
I am not opposed to specialization. Specialization has benefits. It allows researchers to use resources efficiently to solve specific problems. And science needs that. But science also needs a healthy dose of dialogue across disciplines because there is unexplored potential in applying insights from one discipline to the other. So we need a balance of both. But, where exactly that balance lies, I don’t know. I therefore think we should just avoid directing researcher’s interests by incentivising specialization. It’s easier to produce five papers on one topic than to produce five papers on different topics. Hence, if you look at productivity, sticking to one topic is a benefit. This leads me to think presently the balance is likely off in favour of specialization. How much, I can’t tell you.
But remove the obstacle and we’ll see if makes a difference.
But what is the use of even trying to develop these theories?
For one, I think knowing how the world works has a value in and by itself. And that there is a market for books and movies about the foundation physics shows to me that this value isn’t merely recognized by those who do the research themselves. I believe people want to understand natural laws out of a basic sense of curiosity, or maybe a desire to know what is their own place in this universe. This isn’t a desire that’s reserved to theoretical physicists.
Having said that, it is arguably true that high energy particle physics doesn’t presently have much practical use. There really isn’t a lot you can do with a 25 km particle collider other than colliding particles. But I don’t think this research will remain useless forever. I am thinking here not about what will happen in 10 or 100 years, but maybe in 1000 or 5000 years. Who knows what this technology will one day be good for? I don’t. But, I would find it very surprising if it would remain an academic pursuit.
I think particle physics suffers from a lack of vision, or you could even say a lack of science fiction. This has been on my mind a lot while writing the book. See, astrophysicists have all the good stories about space-travel and alien life and warp drives and Dyson spheres and all that. And computer scientists have tales about sentient robots and omniscient AIs and, omg, we may live in a computer simulation. But particle physicists have nothing comparable. They have no stories. Give it 5000 years of technological development and what may particle colliders be good for? I think the field could benefit from some wild speculations here.
What is your bet as to where clues are likely to come from and solve the current crisis in particle physics?
I bet on dark matter and quantum gravity. Dark matter because at least we know it’s there. So, keep poking it, I say, sooner or later we’ll figure out what it is. Quantum gravity because we know there must be something new to find. As I lay out in the book it’s a good problem, a problem of mathematical consistency, not just an aesthetic itch. And I don’t think that it’s impossible to measure quantum gravitational effects. I wrote about proposals to measure it here.
Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder Fears Theorists, Lacking Data, May Succumb to "Wishful Thinking"
Blogger “Bee” Hossenfelder is not afraid to sting her fellow physicists.
By John Horgan on February 1, 201610
“Writing is what keeps me sane. I’m not sure whether that’s a career advantage in high-energy physics today.” Sabine Hossenfelder. Photo: Stefan Sherer.
I have reasons to resent Sabine Hossenfelder. 1: She has criticized my end-of-science thesis. 2: She’s a free-will denier. 3: Scientists who write for non-scientists make it harder for mere journalists to make a buck. In December, she lectured at a physics conference in Germany, and then she reported on the conference in Forbes. Come on, how can journalists compete with that?
But I enjoy Hossenfelder’s brisk, blunt style too much to dislike her, even when her views diverge from mine. Born and educated in Germany, she got her doctorate in theoretical physics in 2003 and soon started writing popular articles as well as technical papers. She maintains a blog, Backreaction, and contributes to the Forbes column “Starts with a Bang.” She has also written for Scientific American, Physics Today and other publications. Now based at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (after stints at the University of Arizona, the Perimeter Institute and elsewhere, see her bio here), Hossenfelder seems to be everywhere lately, chiming in on string theory, loop-space theory, multiverses, black holes and the physics of lightsabers, among other topics. We recently had the following email exchange:
Horgan: Why are you called “Bee”?
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Hossenfelder: The last two syllables of my first name are pronounced like the German word for bee. You have to credit my mom for the nickname. But a tiny buzzing creature that stings and kills itself in that process seemed an apt blogger pseudonym.
Horgan: Why physics?
Hossenfelder: I originally studied math, not physics. I later switched to physics because I realized I was interested in mathematical truths only to the extent that they could teach me something about the real world. My main interest has always been in the structure of natural law, the question what makes the universe run this way. And physics is the discipline that delivers the sharpest answers to this.
Horgan: Do you ever regret your career choice? I hear physics might be ending.
Hossenfelder: No regrets. I have learned – am still learning – a lot about the fundamental nature of reality, and I don’t think this would have been possible in any other profession. I doubt physics will end any time soon. At some point maybe parts of it won’t be called physics any more.
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And Harry Cliff… My summary of his talk would be that it might become more difficult for particle physicists to find jobs. But if he’d just say that nobody would invite him to give a TED talk about it.
Horgan: In 2002 I bet Michio Kaku $1,000 that no one will win a Nobel Prize “for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature.” Who’s going to win?
Hossenfelder: By 2020?! Of course you will win. I think though there will be a Nobel Prize for finding experimental evidence for quantum gravity in the next, say, 25 years.
Horgan: Okay, readers heard it here first. Ed Witten recently told me that string theory is still our best candidate for a unified theory. [See link below.] Agree?
Hossenfelder: Does “best” mean that the most papers have been written about it? Then I suppose he is right. Other than that, how do we know which theory is the “best” if there is no observational evidence that could distinguish between theories? (And yes, there are alternatives to string theory, such as for example asymptotically safe gravity.)
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How to decide which theory is the most promising one is a pressing question in an area starved of data, and it was also the central question at the Munich workshop I attended in December. How can non-empirical arguments increase confidence in a theory?
The use of non-empirical arguments in theory development is nothing new, what is new is that its relevance is much larger now that it takes so long to test theories.
Theorists use non-empirical theory assessment all the time, when they decide what to work on or even what conference to go to. In principle that is reasonable, taking into account all knowledge that has accumulated about a theory, such as how well it’s been shown to be compatible with already confirmed theories or how many alternative explanations there are. But the problem is that this non-empirical assessment can, and almost certainly is, skewed by social and cognitive biases.
As you wrote recently, how many alternatives one has found depends on how hard one tried to find them. Tell me how this effort-counting in science is not affected by job opportunities and peer pressure.
If you want to rely on non-empirical assessment, you have to make really sure that scientists’ judgment is as objective as humanly possible. And the environment in academia presently is absolutely unsuitable for this. You just can’t be sure how much sociology affects judgment. And no physicist I know makes any effort to consciously address cognitive biases, such as wishful thinking, loss aversion, or the use of aesthetic criteria. It’s just not something that they pay attention to because it’s never been necessary before. As long as you have data for guidance, you’ll be swiftly corrected.
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Horgan: Paul Steinhardt, an originator of inflation, is now a critic of inflation and of multiverse theories. Do you share his concerns?
Hossenfelder: Steinhardt’s argument in a nutshell is that inflation doesn’t solve the problem it was meant to solve because for all we presently know it (the potential) requires finetuning to fit current data. I don’t have a problem with fine-tuning. It’s fine by me. Consequently I don’t share this aspect of Steinhardt’s concern. It’s a model, it fits the data, all is good. I don’t really care what was the original motivation. The concern I share is that landscape arguments will just turn out to be a huge waste of time. But I don’t have a big problem with people who want to study the physics of the multiverse. I think it’s unlikely but maybe there is something to learn here.
Horgan: Do you ever suspect that black holes exist only in our imaginations?
Hossenfelder: I do on occasion suffer from a bout of solipsism in which I suspect that the whole universe is only my imagination. But on my better days I think black holes are a straightforward and plausible explanation for many astrophysical observations, and I consider their existence very well confirmed.
Horgan: Steven Weinberg recently told me that science will never explain why there is something rather than nothing.
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Hossenfelder: I agree with him. It’s not a scientific question, or at least I don’t see how to make a scientific question out of it. Unless of course you want to reinterpret “nothing” as “quantum vacuum” as Lawrence Krauss does. I would argue though that even a quantum vacuum is still something.
Horgan: If physics can’t solve that problem, does that mean we’ll always be stuck with religious explanations?
Hossenfelder: Religious explanation is an oxymoron. Religion is what people draw upon if they don’t want to admit that they have no explanation. Will we always be stuck with problems to which scientists don’t have an answer? Yes, I think so.
Horgan: Do you believe in God?
Hossenfelder: No.
Horgan: What is “the free will function”? And why doesn’t it persuade you that free will is real?
Hossenfelder: The free will function allows the universe to evolve in such a way that the future is neither determined by the past nor its becoming fundamentally random. If you want to hang on to the belief in free will, then you need to find a law for the universe’s evolution which is different from the laws in our current theories. This new evolution law must partly be based on a process that was neither random nor pre-determined. This process is what the free will function provides.
It doesn’t persuade me because the example that I constructed isn’t embedded into the current theories of nature and I don’t know whether it’s possible to do this. It is not a realistic construction – it is merely a proof of principle to demonstrate that is possible at all. And of course I am cognitively biased to believe in free will, so how much can I trust myself in my own argument?
Horgan: In this case, you should trust yourself. Can physics help solve the mind-body problem, as Roger Penrose and others have suggested?
Hossenfelder: Yes. Though, as I said above, at some point it might not be called physics any more.
Horgan: Has your popular writing harmed your career as a physicist?
Hossenfelder: Writing is what keeps me sane. I’m not sure whether that’s a career advantage in high-energy physics today.
Horgan: Nice! You recently said on your blog: “The biggest task of science bloggers--like Peter Woit, Ethan Siegel and myself--has become to clean up after sloppy science journalism.” Please elaborate.
Hossenfelder: I often find myself having to correct articles that mislead the reader about some recent research. The way much science journalism appears today, it is impossible for someone with no background in the field to tell how serious to take claims. Like, that new research shows black holes don’t exist, or that we will make contact with parallel universes, will soon test quantum gravity, or string theory, or that the information loss paradox has been solved (again!). And so on.
People don’t learn from this, they just get confused, doubt the trustworthiness of science, and it’s no good. I recently went to visit my mom and first thing she says after she opens the door is that she’s read the LHC proved we live in a multiverse and if I could please tell her what that is supposed to mean.
Yes, there is good science journalism. But then there are a lot of outlets that just seem to uncritically repeat press releases or what a scientist told them about their own research. And after one major outlet picked it up, it will appear in a dozen other places, each trying to make a bigger headline than the others. How come we still haven’t confirmed string theory if we’ve read two dozen times that it’s soon going to happen?
This statement you quote is just my observation that it often falls to bloggers to clarify what the research was actually about and what it means. If I come across a big headline in a field outside my expertise, I look for a blogger who puts things in context.
Horgan: Do you find philosophy useful?
Hossenfelder: Sometimes. I find philosophy useful to understand what it is that we really do in science, or at least the different ways to think about it. I would classify myself as an instrumentalist, but not all my colleagues are. And it’s good to know what their attitude is because it helps me put their motivations and interests into context.
For this very reason also I found the (above mentioned) workshop in Munich very useful. See, the non-empirical assessment is something theorists do constantly, but not really consciously, it’s just part of the practice. This discussion with the philosophers has helped me very much to structure my thinking, and also to pinpoint what aspects of non-empirical assessment are legit and which are questionable.
Horgan: What’s your utopia?
Hossenfelder: That we finally use scientific methods to restructure political and economic systems. The representative democracies that we have right now are entirely outdated and unable to cope with the complex problems which we must solve. We need new systems that better incorporate specialized knowledge and widely distributed information, and that better aggregate opinions. (I wrote about this in detail here.) It pains me a lot to think that my children will have to live through a phase of economic regress because we were too stupid and too slow to get our act together.
Sabine Hossenfelder, aka Bee
Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
I am a physicist. More exactly, I am a theoretical physicist. People often wonder what a theoretical physicist does. You might not believe it, but most of the time I think. Sometimes, I scribble funny looking things with a pencil on a notebook. Processes like this usually involve lots of coffee and walking up and down the corridor.
I am working on physics beyond the standard model, phenomenological quantum gravity, and modifications of general relativity. You find more about my research on my homepage. If you want to know more about me, read my blog.
Sabine has a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and a PhD in physics. She graduated at Frankfurt University, Germany, in 2003 [read bio].
She has written more than 60 research articles, mostly dedicated to quantum gravity and physics beyond the standard model [check publication list].
Her research is or has been supported by the Foundational Questions Institute, the German Research Foundation, and the Swedish Research Foundation.
Bio
[Download CV as PDF]
Employment:
Since 12/2015
Research Fellow, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany
09/2009 - 11/2015
Assistant Professor at Nordita, Stockholm, Sweden
11/2010 - 03/2012
Parental leave
09/2006 - 08/2009
Postdoc at Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
09/2005 - 08/2006
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
2004-08/2005
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Physics, University of Arizona
2003-2004
Research Fellow of the GSI (Heavy Ion Society), Darmstadt, Germany
1999-2001
Instructor/Teaching Assistant for courses in mechanics, electrodynamics and quantum mechanics at Frankfurt University
1997-1999
Research Graduate Student at Frankfurt University, Germany.
Education:
Aug 2003: Ph. D., Theoretical Physics
J. W. Goethe Universit¨at Frankfurt (Germany)
‘mit Auszeichnung’ (excellent)
Adviser: Prof. Dr. H. Stöcker
Topic: “Black Holes in Large Extra Dimensions”
Aug 2000: Diplom (M.S.), Physics,
J. W. Goethe Universität Frankfurt (Germany)
‘mit Auszeichnung’ (excellent)
Adviser: Prof. Dr. Dr. hc. mult. W. Greiner
Topic: “Particle Production in Time Dependent Gravitational Fields”
July 1997: Vordiplom (B.S.), Mathematics
J. W. Goethe Universität Frankfurt (Germany)
‘sehr gut’ (very good)
Hossenfelder, Sabine: LOST IN MATH
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Hossenfelder, Sabine LOST IN MATH Basic (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 6, 12 ISBN: 978-0-465-09425-7
A theoretical physicist delivers an entertaining attack on her profession, arguing that it has fallen in love with theories that bear little relation to reality.
In her first book for a popular audience, a "story of how aesthetic judgment drives contemporary research," Hossenfelder (editor: Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity, 2017), a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany, expresses despair that the golden age of physics ended with her parents' generation. By the 1970s, a torrent of Nobel Prizes went to physicists who unified a confusing melange of subatomic particles into the elegant standard model and did the same for three out of four fundamental forces. While a brilliant achievement, the standard model failed to answer basic questions such as the nature of dark matter and energy, matter-antimatter asymmetry, and the impossibility of quantizing gravity. The author maintains that fashionable new theories addressing these issues are preoccupied with beauty and naturalness to the neglect of actual observation. Thus, supersymmetry solves several problems by predicting dozens of new subatomic particles that the most powerful accelerators have failed to find. String theory seems to explain almost everything, but its basis is pure mathematics, and its postulates are untestable by any conceivable technology. "I can't believe what this once-venerable profession has become," writes Hossenfelder. "Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can't explain what was not observed. And they're not even good at that....But there are so many ways not to explain something." A take-no-prisoners interviewer, the author asks pointed questions of the giants of physics and is not shy about arguing with them.
Even educated readers will struggle to understand the elements of modern physics, but they will have no trouble enjoying this insightful, delightfully pugnacious polemic about its leading controversy.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Hossenfelder, Sabine: LOST IN MATH." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375087/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=79ddaa8e. Accessed 26 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534375087
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
Publishers Weekly. 265.18 (Apr. 30, 2018): p54.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
Sabine Hossenfelder. Basic, $30 (304p)
ISBN 978-0-465-09425-7
Science writer and researcher Hossenfelder argues persuasively that physics has stalled because of a focus on mathematical "elegance" rather than reality. Hossenfelder begins with super-symmetry and the standard model of particle physics, created to explain all the elementary particles discovered in the 20th century. Supersymmetry theory, she writes, is accepted because it fits so well into previous theories. But it also predicts that more particles should be found at energies just above where physicists discovered the Higgs boson, but none have yet been discovered. Though physicists from Newton to Einstein have prized mathematical beauty in theories, Hossenfelder sees this belief as a dangerous limitation. Elegant theories, she observes, don't explain dark matter and dark energy, or how to find multiverses. Along the way, Hossenfelder introduces an array of important researchers, including stoic Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg and social media-savvy Australian astrophysicist Katherine "Astrokatie" Mack. This layreader-friendly, amusing treatise gives an enlightening look at a growing issue within physics. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray." Publishers Weekly, 30 Apr. 2018, p. 54. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537852300/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f0faa3d8. Accessed 26 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537852300
Christensen, Bryce. Booklist. 5/1/2018, Vol. 114 Issue 17, p54-54. 1/5p. , Database: Academic Search Premier
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics
Astray.
By Sabine Hossenfelder.
June 2018. 304p. illus. Basic, $30 (9780465094257).
530.
The Romantic poet John Keats anticipated
the thinking of modern physicists when he
declared, “Beauty is truth.” To be sure, when
Paul Dirac, Henri Poincare, and Werner
Heisenberg identified beauty as their guide to
truth, they defined that beauty as the elegance
and simplicity of mathematics. But after decades
of working closely with the world’s
leading physicists, Hossenfelder challenges
her colleagues’ single-minded commitment
to mathematical beauty. That commitment,
she argues, has led to experimental futility
and intellectual confusion. Readers indeed
see how physicists irrationally committed to
mathematical beauty have drifted away from
empirical checks as they have researched
supersymmetry, multidimensional string
theory, and loop quantum gravity, generating
aesthetically appealing formulas but few verifiable
predictions. Even when physicists have
teased predictions out of their formulas, they
have repeatedly failed—despite costly and
technologically sophisticated attempts— to
confirm those predictions. Emphasizing how
much researchers have achieved in quantum
mechanics while using math that is decidedly
ugly, Hossenfelder urges her colleagues
to start focusing on reality, not conceptual
style. A provocative appeal for unattractive
but fruitful science. —Bryce Christensen
Giulio PriscoFollow
Writer, futurist, sometime philosopher.
Jul 19
Physics needs a reality check: Review of ‘Lost in Math’ by Sabine Hossenfelder
This review was written for another magazine, but things didn’t work out, so I am publishing it here. “Lost in Math,” by Sabine Hossenfelder, is a good book, highly recommended.
Many physicists working on fundamental theories believe that “they are on the right crack,” says Sabine Hossenfelder in her already controversial new book “Lost in math: how beauty leads physics astray.”
I think this must be a typo, surely the author means “on the right track.” Then another possible interpretation comes to my mind. I email Hossenfelder asking if this means that the physicists who work on supersymmetric theories must be on crack.
No, Hossenfelder replies, the passage refers to the “promising cracks in the foundations” of physics, which persuaded many researchers and decision makers that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN would soon find new fundamental particles.
But I remain with the impression that the reference to drugs isn’t entirely unintended. Perhaps physics is intoxicated with beauty? This is Hossenfelder’s main thesis: Many physicists are so much in love with their beautiful mathematical equations that physics is losing contact with the real world. Physics needs a reality check.
Costly experiments at LHC haven’t found any trace of supersymmetric particles. Hossenfelder explains that elementary particles come in two kinds, fermions that want to do their own thing, and bosons that are happy to group together. Just like, you know, libertarians and liberals. In supersymmetric theories, each fermion or boson has a heavier twin of the other kind.
Why? Because the equations of supersymmetry are beautiful. Does nature agree? No way. At least, the hypothetical supersymmetric particles haven’t bothered to show up in LHC experiments so far.
It’s worth noting that the LHC has found the new particle it was built to look for. In 2013, Peter Higgs and François Englert received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their theoretical prediction of the Higgs boson, which was eventually detected by the LHC in 2012.
But the theoretical work that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson was done in the sixties. “Since 1973 there hasn’t been any successful new prediction,” notes Hossenfelder.
The book is written in a clean and crisp conversational style. Using the language that we use every day, including the F word a couple of times, Hossenfelder covers a lot of modern physics at a level understandable by non-scientists and gives good conceptual explanations of advanced topics, such as quantum measurement, decoherence, symmetry breaking at low energies, and string theory.
Hossenfelder’s explanations are often simpler, clearer and at the same time more accurate than those found in other popular science books. For that alone, I wholeheartedly recommend “Lost in Math.” The book includes commented interviews with many other physicists, including Nobel laureates Steven Weinberg and Frank Wilczek.
Hossenfelder, who since 2006 writes the popular physics blog “Backreaction” and is on her way to social media stardom with 16,000 Twitter followers and counting, is likely to be criticized for what many will perceive as a harsh attack on the physics community. But her critique is mostly constructive, and I don’t find it too harsh. If physicists can’t take that, I think we have a problem.
Sabine’s main grudge is that contemporary research in physics is far too much driven by esthetics. “The conclusion I have drawn from my readings and the interviews is that our sense of beauty (for what the laws of nature are concerned) changes the more we learn,” she emails me. “Relying on beauty is putting the cart before the horse.”
Some current theories (unsupported by experiment) are motivated by a desire to explain the “fine tuning” of large numbers that almost exactly cancel each other. This is what happens when, for example, physicists try to match the observed expansion rate of the universe with theoretical predictions.
If you draw two numbers from an assumedly uniform random distribution between zero and one, and find that the difference between the two numbers is exceedingly small, you find this fine tuning unnatural and are tempted to look for a deep explanation.
But perhaps the random distribution was not uniform to begin with. Perhaps it was sharply peaked around the very numbers that you have found. If so, this is just the way things are and no deep explanation is needed. Hossenfelder explains to me:
“Naturalness arguments are good arguments if you do have statistics. E.g., it would be very ‘unnatural’ to throw a die and find it lands on a corner. You find that unnatural because you’ve thrown a lot of dice and never saw that happening before. i.e., you have statistics.”
“You could also go and calculate the probability of that happening based on a sample of initial conditions that you commonly encounter (statistics again) and would also find it’s exceedingly ‘unnatural’ or ‘fine tuned’ to find a die balanced on a corner. The problem is that when it comes to the constants in the laws of nature we have no statistics. We have only this one universe and this universe has these constants and that’s that. Making statistical inferences in such a case is just bad math.”
“I think what has happened here is that arguments which are perfectly sensible in certain situations have been carried over to situations where they don’t apply — and this has gone unnoticed because physicists are sloppy in stating their assumptions.”
Some could criticize Hossenfelder for focusing on the research programs that she considers as lost in math, like supersymmetry, instead of the research directions that she considers as most promising. “Personally I think (as I say in the book) that focusing on mathematical consistency and experimental guidance is most promising,” is Sabine’s reply.
“That makes me think that quantum gravity and dark matter are good research projects. Of course there could always be more to discover. Indeed you could never know that a theory really is the most fundamental one.”
“[But] if special relativity isn’t respected by the theory of quantum gravity, this has consequences which we should be able to observe on cosmological distances. People have looked for this but so far they haven’t found anything.”
Hossenfelder is acutely aware that scientific research is driven by human behavior and a complex interplay of cultural, social and political factors. To my question on whether she agrees with the opinion, expressed by cosmologist George Ellis in “Lost in math,” that the militant atheist attitude of some scientists is dangerously damaging the public appreciation of and support for science, Sabine replies with a short “Yes.”
So far this review has been positive, and I very much like “Lost in math” overall. But Hossenfelder begins to lose me near the end, where she launches a vigorous call for action to reduce human biases in scientific research. Earlier in the book, she suggests that it might be a good idea to outsource parts of the process of selecting promising theories for further work and funding to Artificial Intelligences (AIs) when the time is right.
But it can be proven that the AIs we could build in the foreseeable future can’t match human intuition. Perhaps, I guess, the appreciation of “beauty” (whatever that is) is one of those uncomputable processes that happen in our brain but not in current computing machines.
I’m also left with a nightmare vision of committees, whistleblowers and angry mobs shaming noncompliant researchers and purging their ideas. “Killing ideas is a necessary part of science,” says Sabine. “Think of it as community service.”
I tend to think that scientific research is best when it’s constrained least. Sabine’s proposal to improve research practices seems too ordered and geometric to me. Too mathematical. Lost in math.
Sabine replies:
“My proposal is the very opposite of constraining researchers. Point is, scientists are presently constrained because they are not free to follow their interests. Essentially I am making a free-market argument for knowledge discovery. Requiring scientists to work on what produces papers and attracts citations is a form of regulation that results in inefficiencies.”
“That you refer to this as ‘shaming’ reflects the very problem. Criticism is essential for science, but it doesn’t come to us easily. People take it personally all too often. But I think this is cultural and this culture can change.”
Picture by João Trindade/Flickr.
Lost in Math
By Djuna Lize Croon 4 June, 2018
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
Sabine Hossenfelder
Basic Books
2018
304 pp.
Purchase this item now
Lost in Math is the debut book by Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist known to many from her blog, “Backreaction,” which is one of the most well-read of its kind by practitioners of theoretical high-energy physics. Hossenfelder has gained some notoriety for her strong opposition to common arguments that physicists make when formulating new theories.
Hossenfelder seems resigned to a dismal reception, predicting in October 2017, “This isn’t a nice book and sadly it’s foreseeable most of my colleagues will hate it. By writing it, I waived my hopes of ever getting tenure (1).” Although sure to be unpopular, her critical assessment of the field is appropriately timed. In recent decades, high-energy physicists have increasingly relied on theoretical guiding principles to develop new models of nature and to motivate new experiments. But these principles are losing validity, as the Large Hadron Collider has failed to verify many of their predictions. It is a real crisis: Just as the stakes surrounding experimental tests have risen (many experiments have become so costly that they need funding from several governments), our theoretical criteria are starting to fall apart.
Lost in Math paints a very bleak picture of the state of affairs, with Hossenfelder serving as the iconoclast. Our theoretical guiding principles, she insists, are more aesthetic than scientific. Although they may have influenced some historical successes, most of these successes were “postdictions” rather than predictions and should therefore not be counted as evidence. The theoretical physics community, she argues, is falling victim to group thinking and cognitive bias.
The book relies heavily on interviews with important stakeholders in the physics community, including several Nobel laureates and other well-known physicists. Hossenfelder interlaces direct quotes from the interviewees with her own interpretations of what they mean (and, often, why she thinks they are wrong). The interviews are the book’s main source of nuance, but her heavy-handed contextualization spoils them.
Hossenfelder’s book is not the first exposition on the state of theoretical physics for a general audience, but it is more sweeping in its scope. An academic dialogue might have been more appropriate, however; the choice to write for a lay audience is limiting. Although good analogies are found for some technical concepts, most readers will be left with only a high-level understanding of the arguments under discussion. Different concepts are conflated throughout the book (for example, technical naturalness, which has a statistical meaning, and mathematical elegance) and are somewhat mockingly referred to collectively as “beauty.” Even with these simplifications, however, the writing level will likely be challenging for nonphysicists.
Of course, all this might be forgiven if Hossenfelder offered a convincing alternative vision for the future of the field. Instead, the book’s last chapter includes a half-hearted argument in favor of more collaborations with philosophers (recognizing the philosophical nature of many of our theoretical guiding principles). But the reader is left to imagine what such a synergy would look like and what it would give rise to.
Editor’s Note: This review originally contained an unattributed quote, which has since been removed.
References
Backreaction blog; http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/10/book-update.html
About the author
The reviewer is at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.