“In the absence of any positive experimental evidence for supersymmetry,” Gross said, “it’s a good time to scare the hell out of the young people in the audience and tell them: ‘Don’t follow your elders. … Go out and look for something new and crazy and powerful and different. Different, especially.’ That’s definitely a good lesson. But I’m too old for that.”
Personally, I see quite self-aware comment on conceding defeat and contemplating on not having enough time for second take on the problem. I don't think it's really possible to become a top ranking physicist while being "grossly unscientific".
Especially since a lack of evidence can't be taken as a proof of anything. It's not like they discovered irrefutable proof that supersymmetry was nonsense.
That reminds me, because of the various negatives, of Hempel's paradox [1].
Suppose you wish to test the theory that all ravens are black.
The conventional approach would be to examine ravens. If you ever find a non-black raven, the theory is busted. If you keep finding only black ravens, that doesn't prove the theory but it does make it seem more likely.
But the conventional approach is inconvenient and annoying. You have to go out and find ravens, which are often in place that are hard to reach and you have to deal with the weather.
There is an easier approach. "all ravens are black" is logically equivalent to "all non-black things are not ravens". Proof of one proves the other. So why not test the second, equivalent formulation instead?
That is much more convenient. I can do that without even going outside. The keyboard I am typing this on is non-black, and it is not a raven, so without even finishing this post I've already found evidence to support the "all ravens are black theory"!
> There is an easier approach. "all ravens are black" is logically equivalent to "all non-black things are not ravens". Proof of one proves the other. So why not test the second, equivalent formulation instead?
This equivalence only holds in a logic in which the law of excluded middle is assumed. For example in intuitionistic logic this is not true.
There are no good reasons to believe in the flying spaghetti monster. OTOH, there are some good reasons to believe in supersymmetry, just not enough for us to be persuaded yet.
The same can be said for God. Belief in God can provide people with a sense of meaning and purpose they might otherwise lack. The Flying Spaghetti Monster, at least in its current - most noodly - form, does not. As always, a useful truth is better than a useless fact.
> that's the whole point of the flying spaghetti monster
and a point illustrating empirical science: If we don't have strong evidence that something holds, by Occam's razor we should not assume that is holds.
As long as you talking about objects in structural sciences. When you read "scientists prove ..." and it is ... is a statement about some topic in empirical science, you clearly are not operating in the domain of logic (in the sense of logic as structural science).
“In the absence of any positive experimental evidence for supersymmetry,” Gross said, “it’s a good time to scare the hell out of the young people in the audience and tell them: ‘Don’t follow your elders. … Go out and look for something new and crazy and powerful and different. Different, especially.’ That’s definitely a good lesson. But I’m too old for that.”
Personally, I see quite self-aware comment on conceding defeat and contemplating on not having enough time for second take on the problem. I don't think it's really possible to become a top ranking physicist while being "grossly unscientific".