Premium 182: Playing Fast and Loose with Particle Physics

You can always point to the whole problem that quantum mechanics posed to the scientific method, and is still not resolved. And many ignore the implications. Basically how observation or measurement creates fundamental changes in the thing observed. So they had to introduce probability into their conclusions. When I look at the way physicists try to account for this, and also say at the same time that it doesn’t matter, and the scientific method is still the best thing we have(it is as far as I know), I can’t help but hear how they must believe that science is sound and worthy, b/c their entire career or schooling or just outlook on life depends on it. You can find all kinds of opinions on this in actual physics physics, not theoretical physics. And to comment on the guy above about having a chemist on, do some research into how quantum mechanics and chemistry relate. Also, I think people wouldn’t have to run around “asking questions” if some of these serious issues were just admitted. Often everything is dumbed down bc whoever thinks this actually helps. But I think most people can agree that this just makes their claims easy to disprove. And then, what can you believe from these people at all? So I wouldn’t go around blaming people for questioning things. People can sense when what they’re being told is bs. Maybe open dialogue about everything would help, but they can’t do that because then all the money would come into the discussion and how that effects everything. So, we’re heading to manufactured ignorance instead. Yay.

Katherine Moss

It's weird to me how much of this is completely not applicable to science in any form except pop sci blurbs in has-been rags like the Mountain Eagle. I'd honestly like to hear you have a chemist on to discuss your "just asking" questions, because at this point you sound like Joe Rogan or worse, especially that phrase Tarence keeps repeating about "not being against any of this," some half-baked nonsense and then finishing up with saying he's against all of it, because it's completely misframed.

Great Joe

I mean it's 5 bucks, a cum town subscription is the same price. What were you expecting?

Josh Aych

Terence's Mike Ehrmentraut sounds exactly like Lunchlady Doris

Epic Soundtracks

I think a big thing to remember is the difference between what the scientists are saying, and what the media says the scientists are saying. The God particle was just something somebody called the higgs boson, and then suddenly there were headlines about just trying to find the God particle and then that evolved into scientists "trying to find proof of god/disprove God." The scientists aren't trying to make dogmatic or sweeping claims, so much as the people trying to sum up the science, or the newspaper people trying to sell a headline. And I'm sure any attempt to explain a complex scientific idea requires so much dumbing down that it essentially becomes inaccurate or useless to the layperson being explained to.

Andrew Dunn

I didn’t plop down my $5 to hear the dumbest kids at the lunch table talk about The Big Stuff. Come on y’all.

Andrew Locke

Mr. Surewater

infestahDeck

great ep! these books are written by a marxist geneticist at harvard (i know... but he managed to be one of the good ones) who has a lot to critique about the modern ideology of science. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185152.The_Dialectical_Biologist https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185153.Biology_as_Ideology

Sean Johnsen

🔥 as fuck. My second favorite episode after Playing Fast and Loose with Virology or whatever it’s called. Some of your best work keep it up bois

Julian Berman

that's cuz most math profs were MK-Ultra'd though, right? In all seriousness, most of my closest friends in STEM are lefties in large part because they have the (perhaps slightly misguided modern) belief that 1) humanity can unluck the secrets of the universes through the natural sciences to 2) be leveraged to free us from the burdens of class society because 3) the secrets of the universe will open a post-scarcity world. but also they were MK-Ultra'd.

Sizzle Dizzle

Cause they're smart I guess. I work with engineers - to the extent that they think about politics, I think all engineers are naturally communists (even though we pump out reports through consultancies that are equally dedicated to neoliberal economics - it is a contradiction). Engineering implies planning.

Rock Wallie

I’m in mathematics and most of my Dept is leftists, if not vocal communists. Something about mathematics just does it to you. It reshapes your brain and suddenly Ted Kaczynski also starts making a lot of sense

Madison Perry

I used to argue with one of my physics department classmates about philosophy and it's importance all the time and he would just say it's dumb and that it already served it's purpose. After doing this for two year or something a teacher had us write a paper on the Bohr Einstein debates and he linked us a paper that talked about ontology and epistemology and kant and all I could be like "how can you say philosophy is dumb now, you can't even DO physics without philosophy." I also know too many STEM majors who are not subtle in their belief that they deserve more than everyone else. I have been meaning to dive more into the phenomenon of like the most right wing people coming out of more traditional STEM fields, and recently I discovered the anonymous author of the old right wing book club favorite "Might is Right" was written by a physics professor. I'm just a brain poisoned wonk tho, huehue.

Jon Juan Travis Hallowell

As a physics PhD, I loved this conversation. Philosophy is the science of sciences!