Freedom of Science

Has physics made a quantum leap from the 18th century to the 21st? Are we witnessing physicists finally dropping distribution and evaluation methods invented by people wearing authority wigs in favor of online discussion? It appears so.

Consider this paper called An exceptionally simple theory of everything. Rather than going through traditional channels of slow moving peer review process the paper set an online chain reaction after it appeared in the blog Backreaction run by Sabine Hossenfelder or Bee.

The author of the paper also submitted his new theory of everything to the traditional print media and was successful in creating a buzz in that sector as well. Over all the media campaign was a success and the paper and its author have become popular topics of discussion in Reddit and Slashdot. As a result more people now know more about E8 than any time in history after exceptionally simple Lie groups were invented.

The author himself was called anything from New Einstein to crackpot and showed that outside contributions to physics without a university affiliation is possible if the media is used wisely.

What does this new development mean for the future of physics?

Younger generation of physicists such as Bee, Flip tomato and Lubos Motl have been discussing physics passionately in their blogs for a long time. And John Baez has been a prolific online contributor to physics discussions as long as the Internet existed. But it seems that physics is now entering a new phase. One of the suggestions for a better communication in physics has been to add a Digg-like rating and commenting functionality to the arxiv.org where physicists deposit their new papers.

Authority is shifting but from where to where? Is it shifting from professional physicists to the people? Are professional physicists relinquishing their authority over physics to become scientists? Or is this the younger generation’s way of asserting their authority over the older generation to take control of the industry?
 
Probably the latter. This generational shift of authority happens in the hierarchical bureaucracy called physics every quarter century or so. General Relativity was hip in the 1950s the way string theory was hip a few years back. Now string theory has peaked and it’s old news and the new generation is looking to replace it with their own specialty.

A hipper version of the Loop Quantum Gravity with a better marketing name may be the next big thing in physics. Bee who works for the Perimeter Institute where Loop Quantum Gravity is the house theory has been using her blog and her affiliation with the Perimeter Institute to establish herself as a player. We may hope that she does to Loop Quantum Gravity what she did to An exceptionally simple theory of everything.

Looking at the physics industry from outside I see that physics is a part of the entertainment industry. In the fringes of it but still entertainment. Why is it that speculations about a theory of everything is entertainment?

It has always been like this. Since the antiquity theories of everything were presented to consumers of such mythologies as entertainment. Now the consumers talk back to mythmakers in Reddit and Slashdot and make cynical remarks about them. Other than this new type of interaction between mythmakers and their constituency not much changed.

Professional mythmakers still have authority over their constituency because the original language these myths were written remains incomprehensible to the consumers. Mythmakers always protect their authority by keeping their language proprietary and hidden. So, this may be only a shift in the distribution of myths. Professionals are moving to the new media to reach their traditional audience directly.

What we are witnessing may be more a power struggle among professionals than a shift toward a physics with more scientific content. In the new world order of physics, older generations who do not make use of interactive online tools are facing early redundancy. Authority of the new players will be judged by the number of readers their blogs generate, not by citations they collect in arxiv.org. Notice how Bee proudly displayed the big spike in Backreaction traffic after the publication of An exceptionally simple theory of everything.

We are also witnessing a power struggle between professionals and the big publishers who control them. Remember that professional mythmakers monetize by popularizing. Professionals realize that in the online era they can popularize directly to their audience and bypass the big publishers. Only if they could find a way to monetize their blogs! Cosmic Variance uses Google ads but I doubt that even with their huge traffic any meaningful income is generated.

Physicists as content producers understandably want a bigger cut for their mythmaking efforts but they do not seem to have much leverage in negotiations. They cannot even stage a strike since they are not an organized labor.

I think that in a year or two this new generation of professional mythmakers will complete their doctoring of the Internet and negotiate an online authority distribution method that will be satisfactory to all practitioners. The days of the old peer review is numbered. This new method will favor the web natives who will keep distributing their cosmogonic myths online without any scientific constraints.

The consumers of myths will talk back to mythmakers in online forums and blogs, not merely buy books. These forums are advertising platforms owned by big publishers. Reddit, for instance, is owned by the media conglomerate CondeNast. When Backreaction will reach a critical readership worthy of their attention CondeNast will buy Backreaction as well. Bee can be a good marketable property as a thinking girl’s Lisa Randall. And she doesn’t need to be as heavily photoshopped as Doctor Randall.

At the end of the day, the structure of the physics industry will remain the same. Professional doctors will keep packaging mythology for the consumers and serve them to the big publishers for a small cut and the big publishers will add a huge markup and merchandise these myths to consumers as science in their online properties, magazines and books. All those Reddit users who spent few seconds of their short attention spans making cynical comments about exceptionally simple theory of everything will rush to buy when it when the book is out.

This process of programming humans through entertainment has been a constant of history since the antiquity. That’s why the biggest structure in any antique city has always been the theater.

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