Re:Has Physics Lost Its Way?
by andrewflnr on Thursday March 19, 2020 @03:18PM
(#22630669)
It might apply if P=NP or the Riemann hypothesis were remotely the same thing. An open mathematical conjecture has uncertainty about whether effort into cracking it will produce fruit. That's entirely different from a physical theory where it certainly cannot be tested.
Any physical theory that cannot be tested is a mathematical theory that can produce results useful in other places.
In general all of theoretical physics is mathematics that takes inspiration from experiments, and takes shortcuts when proving theorems:).
Would the same apply to people who further explore questions like P = NP and what happens if it is true or false or what happens if the Riemann hypothesis is true? Sometimes digging more into something that doesn't seem testable results in a finding that is testable or into knowledge that helps advance a related field.
I think the deeper question is, how do we make sure that public money is spent in a justifiable fashion. And when it comes to science that is a hard question to answer, especially if one considers that science works a bit differently than the way the average voter thinks about things when it comes to notion such as proven or disproven.