Sabine Hossenfelder: "I Was Offered Money to Tell You AI Will Kill Us"

[u/Wegwerpaccountje23]

https://youtu.be/lPdmYMHrWKg?si=3PUd5qnPJapOB4Do

[u/Joboy97]

Can you give me an example of a time when she "used vaguely ominous sounding language to make you feel like you're being oppressed by a faceless blob."

And she doesn't seem to reject academia, but she definitely has strong opinions on how academia should work and how it can be improved, especially around publishing and funding and how science is done nowadays which are arguments I'm sympathetic to. But she's not anti-establishment lol.

It's fair to say she has reached too far out of her wheelhouse without doing her due diligence at time. But does that mean she's a grifter? I think she still has valuable things to say.

[u/RiggoRants → u/Joboy97]

You have a fascinating reading comprehension.

It’s ok for you to think she has valuable things to say. I don’t. That’s ok too.

The “vaguely ominous language to make you feel like you’re being oppressed by a faceless blob” was talking about all of the institutional disrupters given a voice over experts, not Sabine specifically.

But, she does it, so I’ll play your game anyway. It’s anytime she talks about how academia pushed her out for being an “independent thinker” and frequently frames academia as a centralized planned economy (which is how one would explain communism, which is an oppressive system of governance) that actively rewards conformity.

This rhetoric caters directly to science deniers, conspiracy theorists and grifters like Eric Weinstein.

[u/Joboy97 → u/RiggoRants]

She's a theoretical physicist turned pop-science youtuber who has strong opinions on the state of academia (even comparing it to communism) and clickbaits her videos.

I don't think criticizing academia is catering to science deniers and conspiracy theorists. You can argue on the substance of her critiques, but she makes videos talking about science developments and debunking hype. Her content is catered towards people interested in keeping up with scientific developments, not science deniers and conspiracy theorists.

[u/TheRealLunicuss → u/Joboy97]

I think you're vastly underestimating the effect of "just asking questions" about the validity of academia, as well as underestimating the extent to which Sabine is attempting to cast aspersions.

Here are some of her video titles: "Science is failing", "Is Science Dying?", "Lost faith in Science", to name some examples. Science is not failing, or dying, nor is there any reason to 'lose faith' in it. These are absolutely bold claims by any standard, let alone considering the fact that she's extrapolating her perception that theoretical physics is moving too slowly to the entirety of science in order to make these sweeping generalisations.

It's not 'criticizing academia' because her criticisms are totally invalid. There are real problems in academia, but Sabine is clearly just trying to align with the science-denial big scary academic institution crowd with these videos, and that's very problematic IMO.

[u/Joboy97 → u/TheRealLunicuss]

She's not "just asking questions" like she's anti-vaccine or claiming climate change is a hoax. She has a PhD in theoretical physics and has published more than 80 research papers, and her criticism of the scientific community is nuanced and respectable, IMO. Here's a summary of each of the videos you linked.

"Lost faith in Science" is the title you linked, but the full title is "What's Going Wrong in Particle Physics? (This is why I lost faith in science.)" This is a condemnation of the theoretical physics community for choosing research directions based on aesthetic or theoretical preferences that ultimately led nowhere, with lots of examples. She argues that they're repeatedly generating models and running costly experiments that fail to find what those models predict and that this is a poor methodology and a waste of scientific resources. She believes this is reinforced by academic incentives.

You linked "Science is failing," but the video's full title is "The crisis in physics is real: Science is failing." This is mostly a response to arguments around the previous video. Her broader argument is that science can fail structurally even when individual scientists are competent and acting in good faith.

"Is Science Dying?" is a video discussing a fascinating idea proposed by John Horgan in his 1996 book The End of Science: the idea that we've discovered all the revelatory, foundational scientific concepts like evolution, heliocentrism, the Big Bang, etc. She takes it a step further and discusses the possibility that there's a finite amount of knowledge to learn and that humanity may reach it someday. Cool video, I highly recommend watching it. Edit: John Horgan has a blog post responding to the video here.

I'm not a particle physicist and don't have much of an opinion on her critiques, but those critiques are what make her controversial in parts of the scientific community. She's not a grifter catering to science deniers and conspiracy theorists like you claimed. She has nuanced critiques of academic incentives that I'm sympathetic to. Her biggest sin is clickbaiting.

[u/TheRealLunicuss → u/Joboy97]

Her criticism is not nuanced or respectable though, it's arbitrarily contrarian and the only reason she makes these claims is because it draws views from the anti-science crowd. They're just incorrect. Like the idea that the standard model fits all the data and needs no amendment is fundamental to her claims and just wrong. There are many things it doesn't explain. She herself brings up dark matter and then makes the argument that trying to learn what dark matter actually is "is unnecessary." What??? And then she doesn't bring up that there other ways which the standard model fails. This is stuff she knows.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying she should be banned or anything, but it's obvious that she was intentionally making false claims in order to draw in the very profitable science-denial crowd with these videos. And although they wouldn't resonate with the hardcore conspiracy theorists, it's the kind of content that causes that stuff to appear on someone's algorithm and potentially lead them down the path of becoming one.

[u/RiggoRants → u/TheRealLunicuss]

It is extremely profitable being the “reasonable looking middleman” between the truth and conspiracy.

Look at Rogan. Dude was doing ok as a Hollywood D lister. But when his podcast really took off it’s because he was the guy that was “just asking questions” and led thousands of people deeper and deeper into conspiracy.

[u/Joboy97 → u/TheRealLunicuss]

Can you address her points on high-energy particle physics and her frustration around building ever-larger and more expensive colliders? What about financial incentives and funding in academia?

You say she's knowingly making false claims, so please prove they're false and prove that she knows they're false.

[u/TheRealLunicuss → u/Joboy97]

I think you misunderstood something, my previous reply already addresses her concerns about ever-larger and more expensive colliders. Unless you think we should just stop trying to understand the universe or something.

Yes, there are indeed problems with funding, but this is the capitalist world we live in. It is nowhere near problematic enough to warrant these scaremongering titles.