Natalie Jeremijenko Fan Club
Published by admin December 26th, 2006 in Science, Religion, Authority, Doctors, String TheoryClosed information realms
I watched Natalie Jeremijenko’s video on Seed. This is a great video. I was so impressed with her projects and ideas that I looked for more information and found another video in the same place. This was great too. Some concepts that she mentions were more eloquent versions of what I have been writing about in this blog.
Natalie talks about manufacturing to be a “closed information realm.” In a project called How Stuff is Made she sent her students to take pictures of various manufacturing processes. She noticed that 9 out of 10 manufacturers simply refused to have someone come to their place and take pictures. The industry is protected by the patent system, trademarks, trade secrets and so on.
I believe that this is true for scholasticism as well. Today academic physics is also a closed information realm. Physics is about manufacture too. Doctors of Philosophy manufacture cosmogonic speculations and sell them to Big Media. Since physics is unregulated there are no patent or trademark systems. Instead there is a system of self-regulatory rules invented by physicists to protect their product. These self regulatory rules are both internal and external. Physics is a brotherhood as closed as Masonic Temple and it has its roots in that system.
Handing science as fact
Natalie says that in our society science is handed to people as fact. Scholastic Doctors hand public what they define as science and say arrogantly “take it or leave it.” Handing science as fact makes it dogma or faith, not science.
Natalie Jeremijenko also mentions citizen science. I am using that concept here.
What I also want to mention is this. After watching Natalie’s video I saw that there was a lecture by Lisa Randall who is a minor celebrity invented by the Big Media to prep the market which is opening up because of recent increase of women entering physics. These women will buy stringy books written by stringy female role models.
The video was from the same series. Out of curiosity I watched that too.
The Standard of Evidence
What a difference. Natalie exudes genius. Every project she describes is brilliant, fun, joyful, new, forward looking and contributes something nice to humanity.
Lisa Randall on the other hand has nothing new to offer. Zero. She is still talking about professional mythologies she read as history in her undergraduate physics textbooks describing negotiations among European Scholastic Doctors trying to assert their authority on each other about things like atomic structure. These Doctors are arguing about whose name to use in some unit they are defining. Why is Randall still repeating such nonsensical academic polemics from a century ago? This is so trite. Not only trite, it is ugly. It is old. Not only old news but it is old scholasticism. Not only Randall has no new research to report but she is more interested in low brow culture than research. Lisa Randall is a commentator on evening news. We now have news aggregators and we don’t really need fools genius such as Lisa Randall to aggregate news for us.
Two of her favorite subjects are Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Superficially neither Darwinism nor Intelligent Design has anything to do with particle physics and should not be included in her lecture. In fact there is a deep connection. Brian Greene also always talks about creationists and Christian fundamentalists and Darwinism. The reason is simple. Both Randall and Greene are cousins of the Christian charismatic preachers. They compete for the same audience. People who buy their books and people who come to their lectures are people who want to move up from the low brow religion to the high brow modern religion called String Theory. Both Randall and Greene cater to this group of younger people who are looking for an alternative to their parents’ religion. Doctors of Philosophy and Doctors of Theology have been competing for the same audience for centuries.
Lisa Randall peddles something she calls 11 dimensions. Again compare with Natalie Jeremijenko. Lisa Randall has no joy in what she is doing. She repeats centuries old cliches. All she can think of talking about is Darwinism and Intelligent Design. She has nothing specific to offer. She compares nebulous mediamatic theories and pushes her opinions about them. She tells us that what she is doing is science and what intelligent designers are doing is not science. And what is she doing as science? She is speculating about 11 dimensions and marketing trite cosmogonic scenarios.
I think a few years from now both Brian Greene and Lisa Randall will be seen as shamans hired by Big Media to push this snake oil called string theory as science. They are doing real damage to real science.
What is interesting is that both Columbia University and Harvard University are diluting their prestigious brands for letting these shamans use the authority of these old institutions to sell more books. If Lisa Randall were merely a physicist in a state university she would get no recognition for peddling the same run of the mill stringy stuff.
One of the most important concepts mentioned by Natalie Jeremijenko was raising the standard of evidence. The standard of evidence in academic physics is zero. There is no standard of evidence in academic physics. This is because academic physics industry is not regulated. Both Randall and Greene can offer their own fame as authority for their absurd claims and can get away with it.
Citizen Science
Another observation: Look how Natalie reaches out to people. She promotes citizen science. She is a scientist not a scholastic doctor and what she is doing is not hidden. She is for sharing. Lisa Randall on the other hand is a true scholastic doctor and she hoards knowledge wholesale and sells it retail. Randall operates in two distinct realms. In the academic realm her work is hidden. Her academic papers are not “publicly legible” even if they are publicly available. In the public realm she makes absurd claims in the name of science and proves her claims by her own authority based on hidden information she tells us exists archived somewhere in peer reviewed journals owned by the Big Media. She has no standard of evidence at all. Furthermore, she is imbibed in conflict of interest. All of her professional output is owned by the global publishers and the Big Media. Lisa Randall’s allegiance is not with science but it is with the Big Media.
I congratulate Natalie Jeremijenko for her great projects.
9 Responses to “Natalie Jeremijenko Fan Club”
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As a long-time friend of Natalie, and colleague and friend of Lisa as well, I read your blog with interest. I agree with your admiration of Natalie and her work; I’m also a fan. But I don’t agree that the standard of evidence in academic physics is zero. Some of us even do experiments! I think your brush is too wide here. I have no idea if string theory is right or wrong, or it’s its redefining physics, but we are not all string theorists, and we shouldn’t be too impatient or practical about what we ask of academics. String theorists prove (at least) that academia still supports dreamers, and not just people who make better mousetraps (like me). The dreamers of the world should be happy about that. Just ask Joe Davis (http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w01/gc_w01.htm) who gave the Harvard Physics Colloquium a few years back.
Thank you for your comment. I read my post again. I think you are right. It is unjustified to generalize Lisa Randall’s work to the entire academic physics. But Lisa Randall and string theorists are presenting their work as the hard science of physics practiced in the academia. This is confusing for the general public. I apologize for bundling a criticism of Lisa Randall with the entire academic physics. I would appreciate more comments on this.
Maybe something that I wrote in an earlier post can be useful here. I proposed to divide physics into two distinct academic divisions: physics and fine physics. In fine physics, as in fine art, there will not be a requirement to conform to a standard of evidence. Already string theorists use fine art concepts such as elegance and beauty as fundamental concepts of string theory.
Also, just like art, string theory can only be defined by way of its practitioners: String theory is what string theorists do. There is no independent definition of string theory and this is how string theorists like it. (By the way, thanks for the link that you included. There are similar discussions there about art and science which are very interesting to me.)
I believe that the kind of physics done in technology labs and in industry is fundamentally different than the kind of physics done by string theorists. If fine physics is officially independent of applied physics most of the confusion in public mind will disappear. This way dreamers will dream in their own department unburdened by any standard of evidence. This would be good for both parties.
Consequently, now I understand that standard of evidence in academic physics is not zero. How do we measure standard of evidence? Do you have any numbers in mind? I will post some more on this topic.
Thanks again for your comments.
I don’t think standards of evidence are quantifiable. Experimentalists don’t publish everything they measure, because some of it seems — I emphasize: “seems” — to our eye not to be right, or fishy, or not repeatable enough, or not the right story somehow. The process of extracting evidence from massive data sets is an art, like all good science.
I understand that all good science is art. Thanks for saying this.
But I am not sure now I understand what is meant by “standard of evidence.” Reading my previous comment, I agree with you that standard of evidence is not quantifiable. The reason, I believe, is that standard of evidence is a definition. It is not a quantity we measure, it is the unit against which we measure other quantities.
In this sense, without losing the art part of data analysis, there may still be standards for the profession. I have in mind for instance a definition of experiment. What is an experiment? I believe there is no such definition in physics. Is duplication a requirement of physics experiments? Is it required that experimenters publish all data? Or if, as you say, they don’t have to, is this a professional standard?
I think you are also talking about the evidence in the data. I have not been thinking in that sense.
I appreciate your comments. Thank you.