[SEQ RERUN] Faster Than Science

MinibearRex

Today's post, Faster Than Science was originally published on 20 May 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Is it really possible to arrive at the truth faster than Science does? Not only is it possible, but the social process of science relies on scientists doing so - when they choose which hypotheses to test. In many answer spaces it's not possible to find the true hypothesis by accident. Science leaves it up to experiment to socially declare who was right, but if there weren't some people who could get it right in the absence of overwhelming experimental proof, science would be stuck.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Changing the Definition of Science, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, Faster Than Science was originally published on 20 May 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Is it really possible to arrive at the truth faster than Science does? Not only is it possible, but the social process of science relies on scientists doing so - when they choose which hypotheses to test. In many answer spaces it's not possible to find the true hypothesis by accident. Science leaves it up to experiment to socially declare who was right, but if there weren't some people who could get it right in the absence of overwhelming experimental proof, science would be stuck.

The problem with wanting to know more in this case is that it wastes everyone's time trying to fill a gap that doesn't exist.

You get very serious articles - in the popular press at SciAm's level, at least - talking about how Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity are totally incompatible, which is farcical. You get serious physicists devising new and ever stupider interpretations of quantum mechanics because the orthodoxy is so obviously wrong.

This search is one we could do without.

And if it doesn't dissolve all questions, it certainly does dissolve some. If all the components continue to exist, then we've got the dynamics nailed down. We're not losing any interesting questions - QM is certainly worth continuing to validate every which way, just like all the other well-accepted theories we keep obsessively checking. We don't need to intentionally confuse ourselves as to what it means to keep doing that.

We're not losing any interesting questions

The projection step is still a mystery. Even if we can trace the density matrix down to the diagonal state (not sure if it has been done experimentally or numerically), it's not clear when the real or perceived eigenstate selection/world splitting happens. Seems like an "interesting question" to me.