/sci/ - Science & Math

>>14833941
yeah, were fuvked

>>14833941
>We're all aware that both fields are progressing at an embarrassingly low rate compared to the centuries past.
I don't think this is true desu

>>14833941
Universities became tickets to ride the gravy train rather than institutes of learning
+
Retarded and archaic nomenclature made every discipline incomprehensible to every other. No one has the time to master the terminology of every field.
+
No child left behind attitudes pervading education systems from junior to senior

>>14833955
No? Apart from computer science that was acknowledged. Name a significant change in either in the last 100 years.

Now compare how physics and mathematics developed in the 16-19 century. Keeping in mind how much more 'progressed' we are.

>>14833941
The people who excelled in math and physics and produced the genius of yesteryear are being disenfranchised in their own nations. Until they re-establish self-rule there will be no breakthroughs or genius like there were when society was in a more gilded age.

>>14833983
>Name a significant change in either in the last 100 years.
poincare conjecture solved
Higgs boson found
The fields are progressing. A lot of science is being pumped out.

>>14834002
Fair enough.
But do you really think that the discovery of a particle that was theorized, like the first detection of gravitational waves, is more a consequence of the field progressing, rather than the computers getting better?

The gravitational wave was detected almost a century after it's existence was theorized by einstein. That is experimental development, i.e not really the field.

>>14833999
>The people who excelled in math and physics
The jews?

>>14833999
Did physicists really ever have self-rule? Funding they had was dependent by monarchs (like with gallileo), or governments like in the manhattan project, or nazi germany.

>>14834028
Germanics, Anglos, and Meds had home rule yes.

>>14834030
In that way. Yes I completely agree.
Going further than that, societal rule. In that we don't pretend women are generally as competent as men in physics or mathematics or engineering.

>>14834023
Lack of scientific revolution is not the same as stagnation. I don't think we will see something like the quantum revolution for awhile. However, that doesn't mean interesting science isn't being discovered. Nanoparticles and their interesting properties come to mind. Its an important discovery but its not upending all theories of matter like the quantum revolution.

>>14833941
Here is the thing anon, science gets exponentially more complicated as you develop it. The entry barrier for finding something new is way higher than in the past and it will keep getting higher.
I guess we can expect a huge influx of development in physics if we can solve the holes in quantum physics, or universe models, and I think we might live to see that. But until then we won't have much.
Also, think, for example, the whole field of exoplanet science that was born very recently.

>>14833941
-- "shut up and calculate". My impression is that Gödel, Heisenberg, Dirac, Hilbert, etc. wanted to really know things, today it seems mostly "activate autopilot and play a symbol manipulation game".

-- low hanging fruits.

-- confusing science with technology.

-- Inflation in academia. I'm not sure if I would have been able to study at university around 1900 (for example no latin any more). I saw a lot of people in math (at ETHZ), who were not _that_ good at the topic itself, but at learning / preparing for specific tests.
It's not about the subject, about curiosity, it's mostly about optimizing credit points

-- conformism, the well known problems like "purish-or-perish" and stupid politically-motivated narratives like "diversity" and "international teams". Lots of the important/big stuff were done by single people at a large time range: Kant (over 10 years), Gettier, Wiles (almost 10 years), Einstein GR (also about 10 years), Perelman

etc. etc.

Look at Leonard Susskind. I'm a fan, watched more than one of his "physics for old people" lectures on youtube. But look at his papers, you find stuff like definitions of things like "tomperature", not even sure if he is trolling or serious. Let the man thing, for 10, for 20 years if necessary and don't force people like him to publish garbish.

>>14833941
>We're all aware that both fields are progressing at an embarrassingly low rate compared to the centuries past
Low-hanging fruit theory.
Also, I don't know about physics (which apparently has been stagnating as string theory and other bullshit has yet to deliver the long sought-after theory of everything), but in mathematics there seems to have been a lot of progress but most of it seems pretty useless to the man in the street.
At any rate, there is already so much math to learn about that one life won't be enough, so it's not like I will run out of things to read. They say Poincare was the last man who was familiar with all the math of his time. Being a universalist mathematician is no longer humanly possible considering how much math there it to learn.

>>14833941
All the intellectual capital of the world is being seduced by fat packages offered by big corpos. Only the low iqs are doing research now because if you had high iq, you'd have taken the cheque that was offered to you. All the intelligent people are now busy coding algorithms furthering the interest of large capitalist structures. It is not a coincidence that Science started stagnating the moment Cold War ended. There is no USSR to force intellectuals of their own country to devote their intelligence to meaningful research, nor to threaten US so that they also encourage their intellectuals to do the same.
>TLDR: Capitalism

>>14834096
>Lots of the important/big stuff were done by single people at a large time range.
For good reason too. Feynman gives a great monologue that gives insight. In the vid linked, he talks about what he had discovered about the difference in the processes of think between people when performing the same task, or imagining the same thing. In that if you try explaining something abstract, the other person will likely have a very different picture in their head about what you're explaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYg6jzotiAc&ab_channel=ChristopherSykes

At t = 1:00:34 = 60m 34s. He describes the relevant conclusion. If you want to listen to the entire part it start at 55:01.

>>14834059
I agree, it does become exponentially more difficult. But given the positive changes listed, the disparity is too large to attribute to that alone.

Don't you think calculus should at least be used in highschool physics by now? Or that due to low-effort-entertainment, individuals who would have pursued a hobby otherwise, now brain drain with youtube or video games. They could have become the next einstein (metaphorically), but instead spend their best years for neural development on those things.


You're right about sub-fields progressing a ton including exoplanet science. As well as pharmaceuticals, GMOs, dna/genetic.

The reason I didn't specify them is because they don't intrinsically expand the limits of what we can describe/understand in the same way mathematics or physics does.

Sure, early on it was a banker who discovered euler's constant e. But now it's almost exclusively theoretic physics and mathematics in dance.

>>14833941
The smartest people now work at google trying to make ads for shit you don't need. No wonder science and math are not progressing. No one is going to leave 200k out of university and grovel for stipends
Also funding might be a issue, do any of you have data on it?

>>14834098
Long hanging fruit theory?

>one life won't be enough
They're trying to make it more accessible with things like category theory right? I'm not too familiar, but generalizing structures like that could reduce the time it takes to be familiar with everything. But that largely depends on if you want to include computer science or not.