[onhn]

I think we need more clever people making more predictions (and especially from people quoted in the article like Gross, Witten, Rattazzi etc), and fewer blog articles like this designed to discourage them.

The last time a huge, costly, dedicated collider was built, it was in service of the Higgs prediction, and that worked out quite nicely.

[iainmerrick]

I think you’re setting up a bit of a straw man there. I agree that people coming up with creative ideas and making bold predictions is good in general. But surely we’re allowed to point out when a) predictions have not in fact worked out, and b) nothing particularly useful was learned from the failure. That’s not the same as trying to discourage new ideas.

For the LHC specifically, it was widely expected that it would find evidence of supersymmetry, and that pinning down the details would help identify which extensions to the Standard Model are worth pursuing. But in fact a) no evidence of supersymmetry has been found, and b) no new lines of inquiry have been suggested. Most theorists have simply adjusted their existing models, moving the goalposts to account for the lack of experimental support.

This is exactly what Hossenfelder is complaining about. Why double and triple down on the same strategy that hasn’t worked yet? Why not at least spread your bets across some different strategies?

[matthewdgreen]

This appears to value the negative findings of the LHC at zero. I’m no physicist, but my understanding is that some variants and parameters of the theory have been excluded as a result of LHC experiments.

More to the point, what is the alternative strategy that’s more likely to produce useful data? “Don’t do experiments to validate or invalidate theory” doesn’t obviously seem like it’s going to produce better results.

[iainmerrick]

I’m no physicist, but my understanding is that some variants and parameters of the theory have been excluded as a result of LHC experiments.

I'm no physicist either, so take my hot take with the appropriate pinch of salt. :) My understanding is that some variants and parameters should have been excluded, if you hold theorists to their ~2005 predictions, but in practice most theorists are essentially burying their heads in the sand, or ignoring their past predictions and just making new ones. Both Hossenfelder and Peter Woit (of the "Not Even Wrong" book and blog) have documented many such cases. Many theorists are still assuming supersymmetry as a basis for their work and essentially ignoring the fact that it didn't show up where expected.

More to the point, what is the alternative strategy that’s more likely to produce useful data?

I think it's "remove the focus from high-energy physics and particle colliders, bring more attention to less fashionable areas that might benefit more from huge big-budget experiments." I don't know of any specific proposals to do something completely different with the budget that might otherwise go to e.g. CERN's Future Circular Collider proposal. Hossenfelder has pointed to other big science projects that could produce more scientific bang-for-the-buck than the LHC, such as LIGO and the James Webb space telescope.