I remember reading the Three Body Problem, and thinking to myself: this is implausible. If scientists started getting weird results, they'd be thrilled, not suicidal!

▲ Diogenesian an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I believe the alien scientists were depressed by the guaranteed collapse of their civilization, not the difficulty of certain differential equations. So it's more like a doctor getting weird results while working on a cure for a pandemic.

Edit: oops, see the reply below... and my grumpy response. I seriously forgot about that entire plot point.

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glenstein 34 minutes ago | parent [-]

I'm pretty sure they're referring to scientists on Earth.

Edit: Though I agree that alien scientists of Tri-Solaris probably lead more depressing lives than their counterparts on earth

I don't know if this series is yet considered far enough in the past that we don't have to worry about spoiler warnings (I feel like the house rules about this apply differently to books than to movies), but I will just say that one of the most fascinating and mind-bending considerations in the book is the idea that some civilizations progress linearly and some progress exponentially, and how mind bending it is to have to plan ahead for exponential advances.

	▲	Diogenesian 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Hmm, fair enough - I checked Wikipedia. My mind completely erased the "sophon" bit or whatever it was called, it just got erased again. Not a fan of that particular fairy dust. I thought they were referring to the inability of the aliens to make an accurate calendar.

▲ an0malous an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The history of scientific revolutions does not support this view

▲ pavel_lishin an hour ago | parent | next [-]

How do you mean? I cannot remember any particular scientific revolution where scientists were suicidal, or even particularly crestfallen.

Quantum Mechanics is the closest thing I can think of, where Einstein famously refused to accept some of the implications, and where scientists had great disagreements about things like the Copenhagen interpretation and what it means for the actual nature of reality - but I don't think any of them were sad about it.

▲ ben_w 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

One of the boldest chapter one introductions I've ever seen comes to mind:

  Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

- "States of Matter", David L. Goodstein, https://archive.org/details/statesofmatter0000good_e2n5/page...

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traes 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

A very interesting story that's worth reading up on. "Natural philosophers" of the day refused to accept the idea of a particle too small to directly observe on purely philosophical grounds. They essentially bullied him out of the field for championing the idea of the atom, despite his math yielding numerous correct results. They fruitlessly pursued the idea of energetics instead. (One of the many instances of die hard philosophers playing the villain in physics history. See also why Emmy Noether wasn't given a professorship despite a letter of recommendation from Albert Einstein.)

This makes it perhaps not a particularly good example of the phenomena being discussed, as he was suicidal not because of what he had discovered, but because no one believed what he had discovered.

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ben_w 7 minutes ago | parent [-]

> See also why Emmy Noether wasn't given a professorship despite a letter of recommendation from Albert Einstein

I thought that was sexism rather than philosophers? This was the same era and place that mostly ignored Bertha Benz.

(Or did you mean after moving to the USA?)

	▲	traes 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It was indeed sexism, but it was not sexism from the math department, who very much wanted to hire her. In fact, the Chair of Mathematics David Hilbert (of Hilbert space fame) personally recruited her.

▲ ceejayoz an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall had to drink a beaker of Helicobacter pylori because no one would believe it caused ulcers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis wound up in an insane asylum for suggesting surgeons should wash their hands.

Scientists get hidebound just like the rest of us, at times.

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glenstein 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Those are definitely unfortunate examples and I can see how those environments pushed them to their limits. But if we're talking large-scale systematic thinking about what kind of data would be necessary to show that there's such a thing as a typical, characteristic civilization scale negative reaction to scientific revolutions, these don't demonstrate that this is the usual case. Obviously they're important in their own right.

But also the book doesn't suggest that scientists going missing was just a function of humanity's customary response to scientific progress. In the book, it's a very intentional sabotage campaign.

	▲	ceejayoz 21 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> In the book, it's a very intentional sabotage campaign. Active malice seems more likely to succeed, doesn't it? They can gaslight people in their own heads, after all.
	▲	applfanboysbgon 23 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The point being made is about the general reaction to weird results. The original supposition was that it would be implausible for scientists at large to have an adverse reaction to results that defied their current worldview. Given that we have seen this play out, there is in fact nothing implausible about it at all. The specifics (proton-scale supercomputers sabotaging scientific experiments by altering the outcomes into incoherent results, the adverse reaction being suicide) aren't important here, because that's obviously the realm of fiction -- we don't need an actual instance of scientists committing suicide to suggest that it's plausible, because we don't have an actual instance of proton-scale supercomputers sabotaging results[1]. We just need to acknowledge that adverse reactions to unexpected results do happen, so plausibly in a fictional story if you have very unexpected results then your scientists could have very adverse reactions as well. [1] That we know of.

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onraglanroad 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Both examples from medicine rather than physics. Can you give an example from physics? Preferably from the last century or two?

	▲	ceejayoz 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The parent post said scientists; medicine is something I've more knowledge of. You can carry the goalposts yourself, if you wanna move them around! (The parent post also already mentions Einstein on quantum physics.)

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pton_xd an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> wound up in an insane asylum for suggesting surgeons should wash their hands.

Was rejected and mocked by the medical community for his idea, developed a drinking problem and eventually committed to an asylum by his colleagues after having a nervous breakdown. While in the asylum he was beaten by the guards and died from a wound infection ... yikes!!

▲ tgarrett 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm a plasma physicist, and personally I love weird results - new mysteries to solve! That said, there are a wide range of personality types out there. And I would also be extremely surprised if the correct solution to some particular weird result was, for instance, that the Maxwell equations are broken for that regime (other than expected quantum corrections, e.g. the Schwinger limit).

▲ jpk an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah. In principal, scientists should be excited by weird results. In practice, though, humans are complex creatures with intellectual and emotional inertia. There's an understandable element of dread when you realize your life's work finds itself on shaky ground.

▲ black6 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They were getting inconsistent results, not just weird ones. However I agree that suicide probably wouldn't be where they would end up.

	▲	dguest 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I seem to remember something about the scientist being distraught because physics didn't make sense, not because she was having trouble getting clean data. That also stuck with me as weird: there are any number of places you could sabotage a precision physics experiment by injecting tiny amounts of noise, which would drive the scientists to think they were bad scientists. Instead they thought science was broken. As someone who has looked for inconsistencies with the Standard Model for a while now, and seen every measurement land bang-on the prediction, I can say that I would love any deviation that said our existing theories are broken. And sure, crank up the detector noise and we'd be sad, but ask any grad student: having your apparatus suddenly spit out garbage data is just an average day. I've known plenty of scientists with psychological problems but it's never coming from their data.

▲ ck2 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

well maybe depends how fundamental

if objects you put on a table started falling through the floor it would be a bit stressful

lol

but Dr. Becky gets really excited about all the various "crisis in cosmology" because she knows new science/knowledge will emerge from solving those questions

and you remind me there's another season coming up in that series, can't wait

"Is he still in the grandmother’s house? We would like to speak to him."