may you please elaborate on why it is important, why hasn't been solved before and what new applications may you imagine with it, please?
dawnofdusk 6 hours ago [-]
The short answers:
1. It answers how macroscopic equations of e.g., fluid dynamics are compatible with Newton's law, when they single out an arrow of time while Newton's laws do not.
2. It was solved in the 1800s if you made an unjustified technical assumption called molecular chaos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_chaos). This work is about whether you can rigorously prove that molecular chaos actually does happen.
3. There are no applications outside of potentially other pure math research. For a physics/engineering perspective the whole theory was fine by assuming molecular chaos.
pizza 1 hours ago [-]
> 3. There are no applications outside of potentially other pure math research.
I would feel remiss not to say: such statements rarely hold
killjoywashere 6 hours ago [-]
David Hilbert was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Many of the leaders of the Manhattan Project learned the mathematics of physics from him. But he was famous long before then. In 1900 he gave an invited lecture where he listed several outstanding problems in mathematics the solution of any one of which would change not only the career of the person who solved the problem, but possibly life on Earth. Many have stood like mountains in the distance, rising above the clouds, for generations. The sixth problem was an axiomatic derivation of the laws of physics. While the standard model of physics describes the quantum realm and gravity, in theory, the messy soup one step up, fluid dynamics, is far from a solved problem. High resolution simulations of fluid dynamics consume vast amounts of supercomputer time and are critical for problems ranging from turbulence, to weather, nuclear explosions, and the origins of the universe.
This team seems a bit like Shelby and Miles trying to build a Ford that would win the 24 hours of LeMans. The race isn’t over, but Ken Miles has beat his own lap record in the same race, twice. Might want to tune in for the rest.
bawolff 4 hours ago [-]
This kind of misses the point. The problem isn't interesting because its on hilbert's list; its on hilbert's list because it is interesting.
This is not my field, but i also don't think this would help with computational resources needed for high resolution modelling as you are implying. At least not by itself.
That video s very light and doesn't explains at what point (or intuitively) where the arrow of time comes in.
LudwigNagasena 6 hours ago [-]
So where and how does a jump from nice symmetric reversible equations to turbulent irreversibility happen?
MathMonkeyMan 3 hours ago [-]
Even three bodies under newtonian gravity can lead to chaotic behavior.
The neat part (assuming that the result is valid) is that precisely the equations of fluid dynamics result from their billiard ball models in the limit of many balls and frequent collisions.
LudwigNagasena 2 hours ago [-]
But even millions of bodies under Newtonian gravity lead to reversible behaviour unlike Navier-Stokes.
MathMonkeyMan 58 minutes ago [-]
The Navier-Stokes equations are a set of differential equations. The functions that the equations act upon are functions of time (and space), so the system is perfectly reversible.
It's just hard to figure out what the functions are for a set of boundary conditions.
edwardbernays 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
IdealeZahlen 6 hours ago [-]
She certainly fell into the rage bait trap, and I don't really like her these days, but this video seems fine - no ranting, just a nice piece of science communication.
maegul 5 hours ago [-]
Rings true for my impression too. In the end, she’s a YouTuber now, for better or worse, but still puts out what look like thoughtful and informative enough videos, whatever personal vendettas she holds grudges over.
I suspect for many who’ve touched the academic system, a popular voice that isn’t anti-intellectual or anti-expertise (or out to trumpet their personal theory), but critical of the status quo, would be viewed as a net positive.
andyfilms1 6 hours ago [-]
Interesting, her videos have never struck me as contrarian for the sake of it, she seems genuinely frustrated at a lack of substantial progress in physics and the plethora of garbage papers. Though I imagine it must be annoying to be a physicist and have someone constantly telling you you're not good enough, but that itself is kind of part of the scientific process too.
bawolff 5 hours ago [-]
My biggest complaint is sometimes it seems like she will take some low quality paper and just dunk on it. This feels a bit click-baity/strawman-y if nobody was being convinced by the paper in the first place
[I am not a physicist so probably can't really evaluate the whole thing neutrally]
JBits 6 hours ago [-]
The issue is that many of her videos argue that funding for particle physics should instead go into foundations and interpretations of quantum mechanics, specifically research completely identical to what she works on.
This is not helped by the fact that she pushes an interpretation of quantum mechanics viewed as fringe at best. Her takes on modern physics seem typically disingenuous or biased.
Mtinie 6 hours ago [-]
Could she be correct in her assertion? Are we spending more on areas of physics which don’t require it?
IDK why I'd want to listen to physicists about this result, which is mathematical rather than physical or scientific. John Baez, sure, he's in the intersection between math and physics. But physics in the broader sense is an empirical science where truth comes from experiments. This result is the opposite of that.
bawolff 5 hours ago [-]
> Professor Dave's videos on how Sabine Hossenfelder is actively contributing to an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism
I feel like the core of intellectualism is accepting criticism, including criticism you disagree with. I find some of Sabine's videos to be a bit click-baity, but they are usually logically coherent, even the ones that aren't convincing. She's not just a crazy person yelling at the sky.
Science is not religion. Its ok for people to feel certain research programs are off track. That doesn't neccesarily mean they are right, but its ok to have opinions
edwardbernays 5 hours ago [-]
It's ok to have opinions. It's ok to have criticisms. Claiming that the whole of academia is failing is not a measured criticism. Claiming that the whole of physics academia is failing is not a measured criticism. Claiming that "all of science is bullshit" (which she does, in those exact words) is not a measured criticism.
adornKey 35 minutes ago [-]
Maybe it's not measured criticism, but that doesn't mean that something is true or false. Today there are serious problems with academia and criticism in general. Also Cancel-Culture nowadays is big.
I know enough good scientists that don't work in academia today. And I've seen a clan of religious nuts (like flat-earthers) working in bio-science academia. If people claim that academia nowadays is worth something I'd add a big "citation needed"...
For physics maybe there is some hope. I still know some good guys working there... But there is e.g. atmosphere physics... if you look deeply you'll find more failure there than non failure.. The rot for sure has already started...
bawolff 4 hours ago [-]
I haven't read everything Sabine has ever wrote, but "all of science is bullshit" seems much stronger than anything i've seen her say. Where is the original context she said that?
cyberax 6 hours ago [-]
Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder is a pretty clear-headed communicator. I've been following her for nearly 20 years, almost since she started writing the Backreaction blog.
Her criticisms boil down to:
1. Modern science spends perhaps too much time on frivolous research that doesn't lead to anything. This very much applies to the theoretical physics and the endless series of attempts at ToE. But it's not limited to theoretical physics.
2. Modern scientific communication is often misleading and exaggerated.
3. The internal workings of scientific institutions are broken.
rao-v 5 hours ago [-]
The challenge is that she’s right on all three of these major points … to some extent. Unfortunately at times she seems eager to fling babies without even encountering bathwater.
edwardbernays 5 hours ago [-]
You are making her arguments for her. We should not "boil down" the arguments she makes. This is some of the arguments she makes. She does not ground it in particular, measured criticisms, aimed at particular researchers or departments. She does not provide solutions. She uses this broadly sweeping argument as a way to cast judgment on fields of research she is not an expert in. We should evaluate the arguments that she makes, not the arguments we would like her to have made. This includes not just a dispassionate listing of the truth claims she makes, but the specific rhetoric she employs. Is modern science flawed? Absolutely. Should we be saying "scientists are not to be trusted" as a general, categorical statement? No, that's laughable, and dangerously anti-intellectual.
cyberax 4 hours ago [-]
> She does not provide solutions. She uses this broadly sweeping argument as a way to cast judgment on fields of research she is not an expert in.
> Should we be saying "scientists are not to be trusted" as a general, categorical statement?
Here's the thing. She's saying: "Scientists are not going to be trusted at this rate if the situation doesn't change".
Heck, this is literally happening right now with the NIH and the NSF.
moralestapia 6 hours ago [-]
I've never heard about that nobody before, but I've watched about 10 mins. of the first video you posted and it is a terrible critique to Sabine; it actually makes Sabine's points look reasonable.
He just doesn't get the arguments she's making, and "defeats" them with laughable strawmans. But anyway, it's YouTube science so one shouldn't expect much.
Btw, Sabine's video on the topic of this thread is a good one, the remark is unwarranted.
edwardbernays 5 hours ago [-]
You think she looks reasonable when she says "most research in the foundations of physics isn't based on sound scientific principles" with absolutely 0 meta-analyses presented as evidence? This is an extraordinary claim to make. It requires extraordinary evidence.
moralestapia 4 hours ago [-]
Missed that one. Timestamp?
edwardbernays 4 hours ago [-]
8m12s
5 hours ago [-]
refulgentis 5 hours ago [-]
Cheers, and thank you for your service.
quantadev 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tomhow 4 hours ago [-]
Please don't do this here. If a comment seems unfit for HN, please flag it and email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can have a look.
(Less jokingly, nothing strikes me as particularly AI about the comment, not to mention its author addressed the question perfectly adequately. Your comment comes off as a spurious dismissal.)
bawolff 5 hours ago [-]
To me, it looks like AI because it doesn't really answer the question but instead answers something adjacent, which is common in AI responses.
Giving a short summary of Hilbert's biography & his problem list, does not explain why this particular work is interesting, except in the most superficial sense that its a famous problem.
Twisol 5 hours ago [-]
Your second paragraph is a much more thoughtful critique, and posting that below the original answer would focus the subsequent conversation on those points. The issue here isn't whether the comment was AI-generated; it's how we carry the conversation forward even if we suspect that it is.
(For the record, if I had attempted to answer the earlier question, I probably would have laid out a similar narrative. The asker's questions were of a kind asking for the greater context, and the fact that Hilbert (mentioned in the submission title) posed the question is pretty important grounding. But, that's beside the point.)
bawolff 4 hours ago [-]
To be clear, im not the person who made the original ai accusation. I agree that just yelling its AI, and running away is super rude and not very constructive.
Twisol 5 minutes ago [-]
I know it wasn't you :) Sorry if I came across that way.
quantadev 5 hours ago [-]
I think the last sentence, about Shelby and Miles, was written by a human, because it doesn't fit with the rest at all. Different style and a complete awkward shift of gears non sequitur. He probably recently saw the Amazon movie Ford V Ferrari, and so he threw that in to feel like he was doing more than cut-n-paste from an AI.
quantadev 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Mtinie 6 hours ago [-]
But you cannot prove it. So what value did your comment bring? The readership of this site should always question if a comment is in good faith, legitimate, and accurate.
Your commentary may only be one of those.
quantadev 5 hours ago [-]
> But you cannot...
Prove it. Prove I cannot.
Mtinie 5 hours ago [-]
That’s your responsibility. I did not state that it was 100% created by AI. You did, so back it up since you obviously know things the rest of us don’t.
Without proof I can only assume you 100% made up your argument.
quantadev 4 hours ago [-]
100% refers to my level of certainty, as a probability. You can think of it purely as a Quantum Mechanical Wave if that helps any.
6 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 08:24:45 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/114618637031193532
He references a posted comment by Shan Gao[^1] and writes that the problem still seems open, even if this is some good work.
[^1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06297
https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.07818
1. It answers how macroscopic equations of e.g., fluid dynamics are compatible with Newton's law, when they single out an arrow of time while Newton's laws do not.
2. It was solved in the 1800s if you made an unjustified technical assumption called molecular chaos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_chaos). This work is about whether you can rigorously prove that molecular chaos actually does happen.
3. There are no applications outside of potentially other pure math research. For a physics/engineering perspective the whole theory was fine by assuming molecular chaos.
I would feel remiss not to say: such statements rarely hold
This team seems a bit like Shelby and Miles trying to build a Ford that would win the 24 hours of LeMans. The race isn’t over, but Ken Miles has beat his own lap record in the same race, twice. Might want to tune in for the rest.
This is not my field, but i also don't think this would help with computational resources needed for high resolution modelling as you are implying. At least not by itself.
The neat part (assuming that the result is valid) is that precisely the equations of fluid dynamics result from their billiard ball models in the limit of many balls and frequent collisions.
It's just hard to figure out what the functions are for a set of boundary conditions.
I suspect for many who’ve touched the academic system, a popular voice that isn’t anti-intellectual or anti-expertise (or out to trumpet their personal theory), but critical of the status quo, would be viewed as a net positive.
[I am not a physicist so probably can't really evaluate the whole thing neutrally]
This is not helped by the fact that she pushes an interpretation of quantum mechanics viewed as fringe at best. Her takes on modern physics seem typically disingenuous or biased.
I feel like the core of intellectualism is accepting criticism, including criticism you disagree with. I find some of Sabine's videos to be a bit click-baity, but they are usually logically coherent, even the ones that aren't convincing. She's not just a crazy person yelling at the sky.
Science is not religion. Its ok for people to feel certain research programs are off track. That doesn't neccesarily mean they are right, but its ok to have opinions
I know enough good scientists that don't work in academia today. And I've seen a clan of religious nuts (like flat-earthers) working in bio-science academia. If people claim that academia nowadays is worth something I'd add a big "citation needed"...
For physics maybe there is some hope. I still know some good guys working there... But there is e.g. atmosphere physics... if you look deeply you'll find more failure there than non failure.. The rot for sure has already started...
Her criticisms boil down to:
1. Modern science spends perhaps too much time on frivolous research that doesn't lead to anything. This very much applies to the theoretical physics and the endless series of attempts at ToE. But it's not limited to theoretical physics.
2. Modern scientific communication is often misleading and exaggerated.
3. The internal workings of scientific institutions are broken.
Can you provide examples? I guess the most glaring one is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htb_n7ok9AU
And I actually can't disagree with it entirely.
> Should we be saying "scientists are not to be trusted" as a general, categorical statement?
Here's the thing. She's saying: "Scientists are not going to be trusted at this rate if the situation doesn't change".
Heck, this is literally happening right now with the NIH and the NSF.
He just doesn't get the arguments she's making, and "defeats" them with laughable strawmans. But anyway, it's YouTube science so one shouldn't expect much.
Btw, Sabine's video on the topic of this thread is a good one, the remark is unwarranted.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id= 44439647 and marked it off topic.
(Less jokingly, nothing strikes me as particularly AI about the comment, not to mention its author addressed the question perfectly adequately. Your comment comes off as a spurious dismissal.)
Giving a short summary of Hilbert's biography & his problem list, does not explain why this particular work is interesting, except in the most superficial sense that its a famous problem.
(For the record, if I had attempted to answer the earlier question, I probably would have laid out a similar narrative. The asker's questions were of a kind asking for the greater context, and the fact that Hilbert (mentioned in the submission title) posed the question is pretty important grounding. But, that's beside the point.)
Your commentary may only be one of those.
Prove it. Prove I cannot.
Without proof I can only assume you 100% made up your argument.