Adam Brown: uncertainty

Transcript context

…How much do you ascribe the slowness of physics to these kinds of things that are just intrinsic to any field that is as specialized and as mature versus to any particular dysfunctions of physics as a field? Yeah, we look back on the golden era of physics from the 1900 through 1970s or something as a period when things happened. I do think there is a low-hanging fruit aspect to it. We already talked about how the Standard Model is so successful in terms of particle colliders that it's just hard to make rapid progress thereafter. So I don't really see it as a dysfunction of the field so much as being a victim of our own success. Having said that, does physics have fads? Does physics have fashions? Does physics have any of these other things? Absolutely, it does. But quite how much counterfactual progress we'd make if that weren't true, I don't know. How well-calibrated are the best physicists?…

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