This can be read as a response to Einstein's Arrogance. There, Eliezer Yudkowsky has argued that usually, when you have enough evidence to even conceive of a theory, you have enough evidence to be pretty sure it's correct. Here, I argue that this state of affairs held only in theoretical physics roughly between the years 1915–1975, mostly because symmetry and renormalisability created strong mathematical constraints for possible theories, and hasn't been seen before or since.
It's also my own contribution to the mythos around Einstein -- I try to clarify what exactly he accomplished by surveying the attempts at solving the problems with the aether that came before him.
I think we can learn a lot from the dead ends of history that aren't much talked about, because a) the shape of success varies, but failure modes often repeat and b) they are closer to the real way science progresses than the presentation in textbooks, which can skip approaches known not to work.
This can be read as a response to Einstein's Arrogance. There, Eliezer Yudkowsky has argued that usually, when you have enough evidence to even conceive of a theory, you have enough evidence to be pretty sure it's correct. Here, I argue that this state of affairs held only in theoretical physics roughly between the years 1915–1975, mostly because symmetry and renormalisability created strong mathematical constraints for possible theories, and hasn't been seen before or since.
It's also my own contribution to the mythos around Einstein -- I try to clarify what exactly he accomplished by surveying the attempts at solving the problems with the aether that came before him.
I think we can learn a lot from the dead ends of history that aren't much talked about, because a) the shape of success varies, but failure modes often repeat and b) they are closer to the real way science progresses than the presentation in textbooks, which can skip approaches known not to work.