Comment by kerkeslager | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kerkeslager | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> I think all experiments are began with some premonition of what to expect. For example Michaelson and Morley very much expected to measure the speed through which earth would pass through aether ... except they couldn't. An the results pushed physics toward theory of relativity.

> I disagree that's it's an entirely bad process to bankroll experiments based on unproven promises. This is exactly how the Manhattan Project happened. The physicists promised that it was very likely they could create a very large explosion, but they did not know if it would bang or fizzle. So, the US government began a huge industrial scale operation to enrich uranium and to assemble the bomb. The first atomic bomb explosion was very much empirical science that was bankrolled by "unsound" promises.

What you're describing is the "hypothesis" step in the scientific process. Properly done, a hypothesis isn't a promise--it's simply a statement of the possibility you're testing, without any commitment to the possibility being the reality or not.

A good hypothesis results in the same experiment as its negative: "There are more supersymmetric particles at higher energies" is the same hypothesis as "There are not more supersymmetric particles at higher energies" because you test both hypotheses in the same way. Contrast this with a promise: you can't promise something and its opposite.

> In this sense going beyond LHC would be kinda ground breaking - big budget science with absolutely no clue on what to expect. It's how discoveries are made, yes, but I'm not sure if any large scale scientific project has been funded without at least some clue on what to expect.

I don't think we have absolutely no clue what to expect--the article goes into some of the possibilities.

> A good hypothesis results in the same experiment as its negative: "There are more supersymmetric particles at higher energies" is the same hypothesis as "There are not more supersymmetric particles at higher energies" because you test both hypotheses in the same way.

Actually, no, they are not the same. You are excluding the middle, as it is necessary for an experiment to disprove the null hypothesis before any conclusion can be made. Just because you don't prove your hypothesis doesn't mean you prove its negation. Typically, an experiment will find no result at all.

The negative of we "will see X via some experiment." Is not "X does not exist," but rather, "we will not see X via some experiment."

Agreed--thanks for the correction.

I think you're splitting hairs now. Once you have a hypothesis, you can come up with a promise. IF there are (or are not) more supersymmetric particles at higher energies, THEN we can leverage X plus this to move towards possibly curing cancer [or whatever, I have no idea].

The word "promise" doesn't just mean that something will definitely happen, it has a secondary meaning of something being promising, having "the quality of potential excellence".

It's about articulating where this experiment slots into the context, articulating why it's interesting to look at this thing, and not the fifteen other things that won't be funded if your thing does.

That's simply not true. Once you have a hypothesis, you do not come up with a promise. You come up with a test.

Promise and Promising do not have the same meaning.

promise = statement that something will happen

promising = showing signs of future success

You do both. You come up with a test, yes, and you come up with an idea of what it will mean if the test either confirms or rejects the hypothesis.

And no, promise can mean exactly what I said it can mean. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/promise

From the article:

> To justify substantial investments, I am told, an experiment needs a clear goal and at least a promise of breakthrough discoveries

That sentence is meaningless if "promise" means "A declaration or assurance that one will do something or that a particular thing will happen" -- the "at least" is totally redundant in that interpretation. If it means "the quality of potential excellence", then "at least" makes perfect sense.

If it was "promise" in the sense of "showing promise", then it's a mass noun and they wouldn't have said "a promise". That's like saying "a money" or "a knowledge".

I think you maybe can make that sort of conditional promise sometimes, but in context, that's not the kind of promise described in the article. It's specifically saying, "a promise of breakthrough discoveries" (this is the quote from the article). A scientist can't promise breakthrough discoveries. A lot of discoveries are just, "this thing we thought might happen didn't happen, I guess that's a dead end".

> A good hypothesis results in the same experiment as its negative: "There are more supersymmetric particles at higher energies" is the same hypothesis as "There are not more supersymmetric particles at higher energies" because you test both hypotheses in the same way. Contrast this with a promise: you can't promise something and its opposite.

Again, use the word promise here with its other meaning and it makes perfect sense. Both framed questions have the promise of revealing something big. They are not a guarantee of a big result but there is the possibility of a big result.

> What you're describing is the "hypothesis" step in the scientific process. Properly done, a hypothesis isn't a promise--it's simply a statement of the possibility you're testing, without any commitment to the possibility being the reality or not.

Once there is money on the line, the concept of "without any commitment" goes out the window. You are committing money to testing that hypothesis and there is an opportunity cost for other more promising hypotheses you could instead test with that same money.

Saying, "I think the particle collider X will demonstrate the existence of the Higgs boson" (or whatever) is a simple hypothesis.

Saying, "I think you should give me $9 billion to build particle collider X that will demonstrate the existence of the Higgs boson" is a much different statement that requires more sophisticated analysis before smart action can be taken.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com