{"id":9821,"date":"2017-12-06T14:04:34","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T19:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9821"},"modified":"2017-12-06T14:41:38","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T19:41:38","slug":"the-last-refuge-of-cowards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9821","title":{"rendered":"The Last Refuge of Cowards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BreakthroughPrize\/videos\/1970184943006852\/\">talks<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BreakthroughPrize\/videos\/1970302492995097\/\">panel discussions<\/a> from the 2018 Breakthrough Prize symposium are available via Facebook video.  They ended with the following, from prize winner David Spergel:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Well, alright, I&#8217;m going to say something that I probably shouldn&#8217;t say in Palo Alto.  I don&#8217;t think the multiverse is a testable and interesting scientific hypothesis. I think it doesn&#8217;t explain anything. <\/p>\n<p>The way the multiverse tends to be used is together with the anthropic principle.  The idea is that the universe is the way it is because that&#8217;s the way we get to live in it.  I find the multiverse solutions to these problems, it&#8217;s a lot like if you ask me &#8220;why am I wearing a black shirt today&#8221;.  My answer would be: &#8220;you wouldn&#8217;t have asked the question if I wasn&#8217;t wearing a black shirt&#8221;. That&#8217;s not a satisfactory answer.  <\/p>\n<p>The way we have advanced in science is by falsifiability.  By developing hypotheses, testing them (that&#8217;s why we do experiments) and ruling things out.<\/p>\n<p>Ideas that are not testable, it&#8217;s interesting metaphysics, perhaps interesting for philosophers. What has driven four hundred years of scientific progress is the fact that ideas can be wrong. And, the multiverse, I think is kind of the last refuge of cowards&#8230; [<em>nervous laughter from the audience<\/em>] That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s great to have tenure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The talks and panel discussions from the 2018 Breakthrough Prize symposium are available via Facebook video. They ended with the following, from prize winner David Spergel: Well, alright, I&#8217;m going to say something that I probably shouldn&#8217;t say in Palo &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9821\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-multiverse-mania"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9821"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9825,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9821\/revisions\/9825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}