Sabine Hossenfelder on Physics, Reality, and Lost in Math

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2019

⏱️ 66 minutes

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Summary

Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder talks about her book Lost in Math with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Hossenfelder argues that the latest theories in physics have failed to find empirical confirmation. Particles that were predicted to be discovered by the mathematics have failed to show up. Whether or not there is a multiverse has no observable consequences. Hossenfelder argues that physicists have become overly enamored with the elegance and aesthetics of their theories and that using beauty to evaluate a model is unscientific. The conversation includes a discussion of similar challenges in economics.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.6	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find
0:17.6	links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:20.5	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:24.8	back to 2006.
0:27.0	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:29.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:34.0	Today is August 26, 2019.
0:35.8	My guest is physicist and author, Sabina Hassenfelder.
0:39.0	A research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.
0:42.8	She is more than 70 research articles, mostly dedicated to quantum gravity and physics
0:47.7	beyond the standard model.
0:49.5	And she is the author of the book, Lost in Math, How Beauty Leads Physics Estray.
0:53.9	Sabina, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:56.0	Hello.
0:57.0	I want listeners to know that this book is in many ways a tour of the state of our knowledge
1:01.4	about the physical world.
1:04.1	But it's a lot more than that.
1:05.1	Along the way, you raise many philosophical and methodological questions that I think
1:08.7	are deeply related to problems in economics and science generally and social science.
1:14.1	So at times, we're going to be talking about physics and we're also going to be talking
	...

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