〈 Berger | Dillon 〉

The premise of the criticisms I take issue with is that “new physics” can only mean “new particles,” and can only be discovered by bigger linear accelerators. The certainty with which Sabine’s critics believe that there is only one way forward in physics is the problem.

But saying theoretical physicists have made a terrible life choice is not only wrong, but it’s philosophically naive, as if QM, EM, and GR etc weren’t once “pure theory”. We follow our nose, and it’s the best we can do..

If you look at my whole rant, I mention quantum information, condensed matter, and non-eq thermo just off the top of my head as things that physicists in “our generation” (I’m 36) might have found more interesting/fruitful than searching for beyond SM-physics via new particles

The problem is that those are investigating different things.. none of those (except for QIS) are “fundamental” Physics .. they’re neat, sure but they don’t tell us anything deep

See that’s where you’re back at the assumption that “fundamental” only has one meaning and that it’s impossible for anything to be “deep” unless it’s a new excitation.

The ingredients are more fundamental than the cake.. the cake tastes good, but it’s not a fundamental quanta of cake..

If you want to get philosophical the building-block view could be the unquestioned premise that is preventing the Kuhnians from getting excited. If we know all the ingredients already then quantum gravity likely involves a problem with our assumptions about what is fundamental

I’m saying that part of the reason that people scream at the suggestion that a bigger collider is not a good idea right now is that they have made up their minds in advance about what fundamental physics means and what forms “new physics” could take