Dr. Angela Collier plays the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and talks at length about what went wrong with string theory, and how that affected science communication.
It seems a little over-the-top to be angry at physicists from 30-40 years ago for being wrong.
Scientists aren’t priests, and science isn’t a religion. Expecting scientists to always be right, always be humble, and everything they add to “science” to be sacred and correct and immutable is a little silly.
This is how science works. It’s messy. It goes in delicious looking directions that turn out to be dead ends. Humans create ideas (with all the hubris and errors of being human) that other humans test (with all the hubris and errors of being human.)
I was struck by how angered she was by physicists thinking they were right and saying “we’re doing something real”. They were doing something real: they were exploring and testing an idea. Without that work, the idea could never have been proved wrong.
(My personal “string theory” is that string/cordage is humanity’s greatest invention, and my user name is a joke.)
I didn’t see it as her being angry at the ones 40 years ago, but the ones who continued the hype even though it was obvious string theory wasn’t falsifiable
The ones who were human and were full of hubris and errors and didn’t want to give up their pet theory?
Being angry at humans for being human is kinda futile. Humans have always done this, and always will.
And the excited physicists didn’t destroy science communication any more than Stephen Jay Gould did. People can be wrong. People can cling to things they cherish and that they poured their heart and years of effort into.
People are people, and this too shall pass.
It’s also very human to commit murder; humans have always committed murder, and always will. That doesn’t mean I can’t be mad at someone for doing it…
I think murder might be a leeeeeeeetle bit different than refusing to give up on a theory you worked on for 30 or 40 years.
My point is that saying you can’t hold something against someone because it’s human nature isn’t a reasonable argument.
It is if you don’t believe in free will, and as long as we’re talking physics, there is zero evidence of free will existing.
In that context being mad at someone is only useful in so far as it influences future behaviour. In this case, it won’t, because she’s not actually angry in a way that anyone could use to help guide their own behaviour. What message do I take from her distracted rant? That Brian Greene is a self serving dingus? That self serving dinguses exist in every field? That every single string theory physicist is a lying asshole?
It’s ironic that she’s complaining about people making science education hard when she’s actively distracting herself from making a more cohesive argument by playing a pointless video game.
Not sure if you are serious? If so, I think you probably didn’t understand why she is angry. As she clearly states, studying string theory in itself is totally valid. But the way they presented their ideas or let their ideas be presented is the reason she is angry.
Yes, I’m serious.
They presented their ideas the way every excited scientist does. Being angry at them for that is kind of silly. Should I be angry that I was taught the “fact” that animals and plants migrated between stationary continents via land bridges? That scientists were excitedly drawing up complex bridges and timelines? That they told everyone about their fabulous revolutionary bridges? Nope. It’s just one funny step in a funny dance humanity does.
Angrily putting up a picture of herself as a child in the 90’s who was excited about string theory and saying she was betrayed by later work? I don’t get it.
I watched the video a couple of weeks ago, I think, so my recall might not be exact. However, my takeaway wasn’t that the scientists expressed excitement about their ideas. Instead, I think her issue was that they continued to outwardly express excitement and hype their field even after it was obvious that it was an avenue of inquiry that could never be meaningfully tested. I think she found these later actions to be disingenuous and harmful to the larger field.
Whether her assessment is accurate, I can’t really say since this isn’t my field. However, I recall many of the discussions she cites in her summary and her characterization seems fair. My gut says that there is at least some validity to her criticisms.
Who is “they”? Every string theorist ever?
Her rant is dumb because she’s mad at Brian Greene and is instead othering an entire group of physicists who simply worked hard on theory they thought might lead somewhere.
Well, I meant the field of string theory and the leadng scientists she mentioned. And calling her rant dumb seems like you are dismissing her argument without actually thinking about it. So you probably aren’t interested in an open discussion either…
Well, I meant the field of string theory and the leadng scientists she mentioned.
She only mentions Brian Greene and then lumps every single other string physicist in with him.
And calling her rant dumb seems like you are dismissing her argument without actually thinking about it.
I’m calling it dumb because I listened to the whole thing, thought about it, and assessed it to be dumb.
You don’t need half an hour to say “Brian Greene is a dingus who overrepresented his confidence in string theory to sell books”, and that was the only legitimate point she actually made.
Yeah, people are distrustful of science in America, but to blame that all on string theory is absurd. Nothing about her argument is backed up by anything remotely resembling sociological research on trust in science, she just complains that people didn’t want to spend 200B dollars on a particle accelerator and blames string theory cause she heard one crackpot mention it one time.
I do think this is more an issue with science communication broadly than string theory specifically - every field has its own examples, and medicine is notorious for it - but she is right that scientific researchers (the subject matter experts) have a responsibility to accurately communicate their work when speaking to the public.
Its one thing for an enthusiast to inadvertently oversell a concept to the public as fact because they are excited and only understand at only a basic level. It’s another entirely for someone who’s been researching that concept for 30-40 years, with the express intent of proving or disproving its validity, to oversell it as fact when they’re whole job is to be intimately familiar with its shortcomings. They, of all people, should know better - and that means they have a responsibility to do better.
Science does get messy, by design, but it is the duty of those who communicate their science to be honest about that messiness, not mask it by unfounded statements to sell their ideas to people that don’t have the research expertise to spot the falsehoods.
Scientists aren’t priests. And should not be treated that way. But they frequently assume the authority of priests and are treated as such. Want to know what heresy is? Disagree with some scientists.
I think she leaned a bit too heavily onto the notion that string theorists, as a whole, were lying. I think more likely they genuinely thought they were on to something. They may have been wrong but they didn’t think they were wrong. A lie is deliberate misinformation, not simply being mistaken.
Like, ok, at first? Sure, I can go with “it’s not a lie if you actually believe it,” in 1985 or even 1995. But by 2010? Come on. And then in 2020, to be like “Well, I mean, I never specifically said I believed in it, just that, you know, it was a thing…” is so gross. It’s like some shit my ex-wife would have said after a three-day-long running argument about some basic fact of the universe.
That’s 1 string theorist, Brian Greene. It is absurd to call all string theorists liars. Are all psychologists liars because they had a reproducibility crisis?
This was a half-cocked and not through rant that others and blames a whole group of hard working physicists just because they were wrong. This kind of rant has no place in the scientific process or science communication.
That’s 1 string theorist, Brian Greene. It is absurd to call all string theorists liars. Are all psychologists liars because they had a reproducibility crisis?
That’s like saying NDT is “one astrophysicist” or Freud is “one psychologist”. We’re talking about the guy who brought the entire concept to the public, and he’s sure as shit not the only guy who wrote fantastically optimistic treatises about a concept that real physicists didn’t bother with because it was inherently unfalsifiable due to being entirely untestable.
None of them wrote books that said “Yeah, this is a cool thought experiment that will never be able to do anything scientific hypotheses are supposed to be able to do”. Fuck, just make another thread asking “What do y’all think about the Many Worlds hypothesis?” and you’ll get a hundred comments talking about how cool it is as they walk straight out of the real of science and into the realm of crackpot woo-woo speculation. BECAUSE OF THESE PEOPLE.
Yeah, I agree with the video. After a certain point (I’ll be generous and say that point was 2000-2005), it was a lie. A scam. A con. No different from the guys who say the pyramids were alien landing markers and Stonehenge was built by fairies. It was a load of people saying nonsense stuff to sell books and speaking engagements.
That’s like saying NDT is “one astrophysicist” or Freud is “one psychologist”. We’re talking about the guy who brought the entire concept to the public, and he’s sure as shit not the only guy who wrote fantastically optimistic treatises about a concept that real physicists didn’t bother with because it was inherently unfalsifiable due to being entirely untestable.
Yeah, again, if she has a problem with Brian Greene or specific people, call them out, don’t slander an entire branch of physicists. Most of them were working very hard on the math and theory to try and figure out if there was anything that could be testable, for those who even understood their field well enough to realize how important that was.
Fuck, just make another thread asking “What do y’all think about the Many Worlds hypothesis?” and you’ll get a hundred comments talking about how cool it is as they walk straight out of the real of science and into the realm of crackpot woo-woo speculation. BECAUSE OF THESE PEOPLE.
No, you and her are just lashing out and looking for someone to blame for a distrustful public. How about you both take a step back and notice that not every western country is as science-phobic as the US, and maybe there are other issues at play (like having a shitty public education system for one).
Again, if you want to huff and puff and get all red in the face at someone that’s fine, but name specific people who you think lied and say why, don’t just cattily say “it was all of them”
Back in the late-80s or early-90s, I remember OMNI Magazine ran an interview with a researcher of veracity in science publications as a topic, don’t remember anything but a whopper of a quote in which he said that around a third of science papers fudge the numbers, even if just a little bit, to make them fit the hypotheses.
Which is why the funding mechanism of science is so profoundly unscientific. Funding must be based on the quality of the experimental process, not positive results.
I’d go further, and say that most scientific papers are profoundly unscientific: without the data and analysis process they base their claims on, most papers are no different than just saying “believe me, I’m a scientist”.
There are some honorable exceptions, of papers which publish accompanying data and the tools they used to process it, but the vast majority don’t.
The fact that negative results don’t get published at all, is just disrespecting the word “science”. One of its basic premises is that of falsability, so proving a theory wrong, is just as valuable as proving a different one right.
To be a fly on the wall when he heard about the reproducibility crisis
science is a liar sometimes
@FaceDeer @interolivary What is this in relation to? I am still trying to figure out mastodon
@admin I’m viewing this thread from a kbin instance, not Mastodon. It’s a threaded discussion in the style of Reddit. https://kbin.social/m/science@beehaw.org/t/91867/string-theory-lied-to-us-and-now-science-communication-is should show it as I’m seeing it. The community is actually on beehaw.org, so it’s posted via Lemmy.
I know that Kbin and Mastodon interact, but honestly I’m a little unclear on the details myself. I thought I had to go to the “microblogging” tab for the Mastodon stuff.
I’ve got an account on kbin too, just out of curiosity. Mastodon posts (what’s the Mastodon equivalent of a tweet?) end up over on microblogging, but people on Mastodon can see “regular” posts too so they are often in the comments.
No idea how these comments show up on Mastodon, I don’t use it. “Microblogging” just isn’t my thing
I don’t have a lot to contribute to the overall discussion, but I’ve seen Mastodon’s version of tweets called toots.
@interolivary @GreyEyedGhost Toot!
@GreyEyedGhost @interolivary Sorry 😅 I just Tooted!
https://kbin.social/m/science@beehaw.org/t/91867/string-theory-lied-to-us-and-now-science-communication-is
Found my new favorite science communicator, she did such an awesome job here! I’ll have to check out the rest of her videos because she seems to cover a lot of different science topics.
I’ve been watching a lot of her videos lately! I found the one on Gell-Mann amnesia to be really interesting and linked it here the other day; maybe a good one for a next watch if you haven’t picked yet.
Definitely, thanks for the suggestion! 😄
Her video on the most important material in science (spoiler: it’s glass) is my favourite video of hers so far. Another one is on robots doesn’t need to be in human form.
Fun fact, Michael Crichton (that one) coined that, Gell-Mann amnesia after Murray Gell-Mann, who had nothing to do with it.
Less fun fact, Micheal Crichton was an active climate change denialist.
In one public debate his team argued so convincingly that the audience went from 57% believing climate change was a global crisis down to 46% after the debate.
Given the climate (pun) of politics at the time he was alive and playing that role, and given that hindsight has taught us An Inconvenient Truth was more political than it was based in science, and given that Crichton’s argument was that environmentalism had to be apolitical in order to ever be effective … yeah I’m not a climate change denier but neither was Crichton.
Crichton was a Democrat. And he was right, Al Gore’s movie was about fear-driven politics, not actionable goals and plans.
Go look at how climate scientists described that movie. “The basic truth and it’s inconvenience remains” one researcher was quoted saying. Tacitly admitting everything beyond the basic truth of the film was inaccurate. Go on, check out what retrospectives have to say about it. There’s a lot of em.
Again, Crichton was right, and he was absolutely not in denial of climate change. He was against using social problems with scientific solutions as political ammunition in the fear cannons.
Bottom line is any time someone insists a complex problem has a solution as simple and clear cut as “vote Democrat”, they’re wrong. More wrong than they are right, especially given any timeline longer than 4 years. And that’s exactly what you’re doing here. “Crichton deviated from the party line on the environment ergo he’s just a ‘denier’”. There’s far more nuance in this life than that.
The approach to climate change cannot ever be apolitical. Once you see the facts, it’s very fucking clear what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what must be done to stop it, and simply “vote democrat” has never been the answer.
Further, nothing is ever apolitical, cannot be, and should not bel. Your politics, biases, and overall worldview affect everything you do. It’s easy to say you’re “apolitical” when your views align with the status quo. But status quo does not mean neutrality.
There are no solutions to climate change that are contingent on a particular party being in power in a single nation when the problem isn’t confined to a single nation. Making the environment about Democrats over Republicans is wildly dangerous because it breeds contentment: people think they did their part in electing the “right” person and stop giving a damn. Politics isn’t going to offer a solution to climate change, but they’ll certainly tell you they’ve got em.
Tell me you’re okay with being lied to in order to be made afraid, tell me you’re okay with science being misrepresented for political brownie points, and I’ll tell you you’re no better than a grubby politician yourself, because that’s all that standpoint serves. Political brownie points. It’s “ends justify the means” logic. “Its fine to fear monger and lie and misrepresent facts as long as you’re doing so on support of the right ideology” is wildly stupid and dangerous reasoning.
Who is lying and fearmongering? The only ones lying or misrepresenting data are people who deny that climate change is happening or that it’s as severe as it is.
And while I have no faith in Democrats in the US to do anything meaningful, because they haven’t, it’s undeniable that when Republicans are in power, things get significantly worse. In the US we have one party that has no spine or will to do anything, and another that is not only actively denying climate change, but seeks to continue actions that accelerate it, all while gutting regulatory bodies and dismantling previous efforts.
However
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If you think scientists and activists are lying and misrepresenting the data, then you haven’t actually looked at the data. I’m not going to debate the realities of climate change with you or anyone else. The data is incontrovertible. There aren’t two sides here, and debate only gives credence to people who try to claim it isn’t happening.
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The core of the issue is human greed. And that greed is given free reign under capitalism. Capitalism is the problem, and it’s end is the only way forward. That is a political issue and, short of people forming militias and destroying fossil fuel companies, is going to have to be dealt with in a political arena.
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Notice that never once have I said “vote Democrat” or “I endorse fearmongering to get people to vote Democrat”
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Politics isn’t going to offer a solution to climate change, but they’ll certainly tell you they’ve got em.
I would argue that only politics is going to offer a real solution here. Individual actions can help, but climate change is a huge problem that will take coordination on a massive scale to deal with. Politics is how we do that. “Politics” means much more than just which box you tick come election season.
yeah I’m not a climate change denier but neither was Crichton.
That dirty motherfucker wrote a whole-ass book denying climate change.
Same. I really like the way she presents ideas.
I’ve seen this one and the Michio Kaku one, and they were both great.
Angela is great! Love her passion and how she phrases things.
Sure the videos could usually be half as long without losing much in the way of her argument but I enjoy her personality so I don’t mind.One of my favourite videos I’ve watched recently. The sheer skill to beat Binding of Issac and explain an entire lecture’s worth of info about science communication is great.
“Science communication is hard so I’m going to play a game while explaining science, cuz that’s not distracting at all.”
It just wasn’t for me and I lost interest after a few minutes
I always had doubts about scientific theories on atomic particles and space but they were theory for a reason. Theory is what the word means, it is based on many assumptions. Like the big bang is a theory, It leads scientist to explore it from multiple angles through validation and verification (because science is hard). They are never put out as a fact. So I don’t even know what point she’s trying to make.
Theory in science generally means something much more stringent than it does in vernacular. From Wikipedia:
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that can be (or a fortiori, that has been) repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment.[1][2] In circumstances not amenable to experimental testing, theories are evaluated through principles of abductive reasoning. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.
A scientific theory differs from a scientific fact or scientific law in that a theory explains “why” or “how”: a fact is a simple, basic observation, whereas a law is a statement (often a mathematical equation) about a relationship between facts and/or other laws.
So when something is being put forward as “A Scientific Theory” it is meant to be taken as the best possible explanation we can make of why the universe is the way it is, backed by exhaustive tests using the best methods currently available to us.
In science, when something is just a theory in the way you mean, it’s called a hypothesis.
In grad school I audited a few classes of “The Physics of Evolution,” and there was one quote from the professor that stuck with me. It was, loosely, “Some people claim evolution is ‘only a theory,’ but they have it backwards — evolution is a fact, but it’s a lousy theory!”
@On @interolivary the point she was making was that her job is harder because some people are actively dishonest and that creates distrust towards her entire profession, not just the individuals.
Big focus on the how it happened for this case of string theory.
Like gravity is a theory. Or germs are a theory.
I didn’t watch this video but I suspect the sentiment is similar to Sabine’s (I highly recommend her channel)
- AnarchoYeasty ( @AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org ) English10•1 year ago
I love Sabines channel. Fantastic communicator of advanced ideas and you wouldn’t necessarily expect it from the tone of her voice while she talks but her humor is top notch too
Then I regret to inform you that Sabine has some not so great views on trans issues
I didn’t lie! Slander! Slander, I tell ya!
She seems to know more about both physics and Binding of Isaac than I do.
Thanks for this, liked and subscribed immediately!
That was very interesting viewpoint and as a representative of the"Public" - some of the finer intricacies of academia have escaped me, but I largely agree with what she’s saying.
I watched her video about silicon-based life recently and thought it was very well explained and super interesting. She’s a good communicator.
I know fuck all about physics but that was interesting! She was great
Im about 20 mins in. Seems interesting and knowledgeable but why the game? Is it a quirk of her or do ppl like to watch it? Is this what twitch did?
She made a comment about it early on. I think it’s to distract her a little so she doesn’t just spend the next hour talking in detail about maths.
Yeah. I’ve seen her do other videos and she doesn’t play a game. I think it might just have been a way to keep the tone conversational. Near the end, as she got the complex stuff, the game got harder and her presentation suffered a little. I’m hoping she doesn’t stick with this format: not my favority.
That’s what writing a script ahead of time is for.
Leave it to a physicist to think they need to resolve every problem in other fields.
I’m not sure what you mean, is string theory not part of physics? But yeah she said she has a list of things to go through, more dot points than a script. Her normal videos are typically scripted though.
Is this the difficulty in communication she’s referring to? That she has to play video games when discussing scientific topics like she’s Sam Bankman-Fried?
Nah she means the difficulties in science communication which the string theory proponents have caused through misleading the general public, and causing the average punter to view physicists with skepticism or assume that all physicists are string theorists.
I think she’s way overestimating the general public’s interest in physics and string theory. If anything has degraded trust in science, it’s all the anti-science right-wing propaganda being spread through social media. That’s what the general public is seeing daily, not some quotes from a physicist from 40 years ago.
Really? Lied to you?
I don’t normal watch YouTube (especially for this long) and I especially don’t watch people play games, but… Ive been wondering why I don’t hear about String Theory any more… and I’ve owned Binding of Isaac and have yet to play it. So I thought, why not!?
I was actually surprised by how interesting I found this. Dr Collier communicated some things I’ve been curious about while also teaching me several new things. The game added a fun element, but I’m afraid it’s probably going to remain dormant on Steam for a long while longer now. 😁
Anyway, thanks for the share.