192. Video of the day: Michio Kaku on Multiverse

4 Comments

1. Lubos Motl says:

   January 21, 2009 at 2:05 pm

   I found this video thought-provoking, despite the highly speculative main topic, and Kaku is, of course, an excellent speaker.

   And I think he is even honest about all kinds of things. For example, he tells them that talking about extraterrestrial life etc. effectively gets you out of the scientific community and that this attitude even has a rational basis – which he however considers incompatible with long-term thinking and he may have a point.

   And his numbers (about the galaxy etc.) seem to be OK. All these things are way above the knowledge of average people interested in this stuff and I think it’s desirable for someone to talk about these things sensibly or semi-sensibly. He’s just studying questions that are unpopular among average scientists.

   You know, Kaku hasn’t made well-known technical work in things like string field theory for 30 years, with the exception of two 1988 50+ cits articles – even though he has arguably shown talent to do technical stuff. But he’s just unusually good and very efficient at other things, too.

   There’s the genuine scientist’s pleasure of finding things out but there are other pleasures and different people obviously find different paths. It’s also about the pleasure of making real progress and going up, and as you mention, some people simply find more social-oriented ways to feel that they’re going up.

   Besides the pleasure of finding things out, there can also be an unpleasure of meeting people who are just lethally unable even to start to understand things that have been found out by others. All these things influence the behavior of humans.

   I personally find the gap between the experts and the “public” – and even the “scientific public” – to be dangerous and counterproductive, and it is simply important for the system to have some people who are crossing the gap.

   I believe that the dream of scientists should naturally be to have as honest and accurate messengers as possible. Of course, people who are still active, like Greene, Weinberg, or Hawking, would likely get an A because they’re communicating the real science as representing the research. But even Kaku doesn’t seem to be an F to me.

   I find some of his approaches to the “other life” and similar speculative questions much more sensible than e.g. what some anthropic “experts” try to do.

   Finally, I don’t think that you’re quite on your path of doing E.T.s that are hot for the public, especially because things like the Hall effect are not that hot for the public, and correspondingly, the composition of your readership is remaining very technical and I don’t see this thing changing.

   Reply
   • Dmitry says:

     January 21, 2009 at 4:17 pm

     You know, Kaku hasn’t made well-known technical work in things like string field theory for 30 years,

     That’s exactly why I got a bit depressed listening his talk – one can hardly consider him actively working scientist, and I still would bet that he loves his subject (string theory) very much. But if he loves it, why doesn’t he work on it? Probably because he does not have enough time to spend it to research. Or he can’t (??) Well, anyway, I don’t want to discuss his personality – and yes, he is doing terrific job popularizing science (I’m not exaggerating a single bit).

     I personally find the gap between the experts and the “public” – and even the “scientific public” – to be dangerous and counterproductive, and it is simply important for the system to have some people who are crossing the gap.

     Yep, especially taking into account the fact that our funding is inversely proportional to the value of the gap.

     Cheers,
     Dmitry.

     Reply
2. Lubos Motl says:

   January 21, 2009 at 5:04 pm

   OK, I believe that he must like thinking about the contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations more than string field theory.

   And if you accept that this might be the case, it would be good not to view this thing too negatively. E.T.’s are just a different, less industrial branch of thought.

   You know, SFT is hard. It is not unusual to switch from the most technical segments of science to the lightest ones – in order to relax. One can find examples even outside the “public faces” of science.

   Well, I feel that the funding is one of the smaller negative consequences of the gap. But it is cleary important, too.

   Reply
3. Arjen Dijksman says:

   January 21, 2009 at 11:42 pm

   Very smart presentation. I find this much more convincing than the BBC documentary of today.

   Regards,
   Arjen

   Reply

Leave a Comment