I recently watched the following two videos by Sabine Hossenfelder.
I am a big fan of Sabine but I have to take issues with some of the things she said in the above videos.
More than physics itself her videos were more of commentary of the sociology of physics community and were somewhat of inside baseball. For that reason, I will also first make some sociological comments ;)
First, the titles were a little too clickbaity. Saying "what's wrong with physics?" is like saying "what's wrong with modern medicine?" because some types of cancers have not been cured yet. Yes, sure, there are some unsolved problems with our theories of physics, but those are at the very cutting edges of physics research. Physics is not a finished project and people are working on those cutting edges. Like Sabine, I am impatient about the lack of fast enough progress in theoretical physics, especially in the area of understanding quantum physics. And even more annoyingly, it was because it was an intentional "shut up can calculate" methodology that was practiced for the last 90 years or so. IMO this was self-inflicted would. Fortunately, that is changing, and at least some physicists and philosophers are working on a fundamental understanding of quantum physics.
Before I address the issues related to Physics, I want to comment on an important sociological aspect of this. And I do so because I think of the current situation in the world, especially the anti-science strain of thinking that is more and more prevalent makes it very important. And BTW I am pretty sure Sabine and other scientists are aware of this very well. When a general public sees a title like "what is wrong with physics?", some anti-science or pseudoscientific people jump on it. And they even revel in the fact that a reputable scientist like Sabine is uttering these words and in fact use them to advance their anti-scientific agenda. They will play ignorant and/or sometimes intentionally misunderstand what Sabine means when she asks "what is wrong with physics?". Scientists should not underestimate the mischief that the anti-science crowd is up to. Science does not defend itself. So it is up to Scientists and science-minded people to defend it and their own discipline/profession. This has always been true but it is of utmost importance because the anti-science attitudes are actually causing damage, which may end up being really dangerous and even fatal.
Third, I want to point out the fact that science (unlike know-it-all religions) is a discipline which does not shy away from talking about its methodologies and drawbacks. The above video is an excellent example of this. And many times I have heard science being called arrogant. To me, science and the scientific method is great example of humbleness. It says, our current theories are to the best of our knowledge, we will tweak, update or even discard them if contrary data and reasoning is provided. To me that is humility. Some people confuse the confidence of science as its arrogance. The confidence of science is justified by its success. Our modern societies are based on technology that is derived from science. Religions do not seem to be ready to self-examine and many times are brought kicking and screaming into the modern world.
Now on to the sociology of the Physics community itself. Let me first address Sabine's objection to the use of the word "beauty" as the principle in Physics. I think the meaning of the word "beauty" as it is used by the general public is very different than the way scientists first started to use it to describe their theories. I think the talk was meant for the general public. In that context, the meaning of the word "beauty" is very different than the context in which scientists originally started using the word to talk about their theories in their own circle. The underlying meaning of the way that word was used was understood in those circles. IMO what was meant by that word was things like:
generality i.e. no special cases unless justified
not overturning established science unless a very good reason can be provided. For example, even though Einstein's theory taught us to think of gravity in a very different way (curvature of spacetime), it still did not overthrow Newton's theory of gravity. I think any new whacko theories that are proposed every day, scientists are justified to be highly skeptical when those theories try to completely overturn established science. Of course, I am not saying that such a theory that overturns our well-established scientific theories should never be accepted, but we should demand a lot more backing for such a theory.
consistency- symmetry when applicable
All of these were mentioned by Sabine as her recommendations, but IMO those are more or less already implied in the scientific use of the word beauty. So to some extent, this is too much ado about little.
Also, let us remember that Scientists are people and like all of us they are seduced by the notion of beauty or association with beauty. The whole world of modern marketing and advertising is based on the selling of association with beauty and beautiful people.
Sabine also excoriates scientists for not making progress fast enough. Some of her impatience is justified and I share it with her. However, she tries to compare the productivity of earlier scientists with modern scientists in terms of hours spent, which is to me too simplistic. First, in the early days of Physics, there were a lot of low-hanging fruits - easy pickings like they say. Of course, some of these were not so low and pretty heavy fruits. Secondly, the progress in the past was not linear. There were breakthroughs. It may be true that breakthroughs came more frequently in the early days compared to now which are few and far between. To be fair to Sabine's point of view though, modern scientists can avoid all the mistakes that were made (if they are paying attention). Modern scientists also have a lot of tools that were developed over time - and to not miss the most important tool of modern computing, big data, and neural networks. It turns out a lot of research is being done using assistance from computers (simulation and big-data sifting).
Having said all that I think Sabine is doing a lot of good work by holding the scientific community's feet to the fire.
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