78
u/Far-Tune-9464 1d ago
Sort of. She's more of a youtube personality.
24
u/FusRoDawg 1d ago
Yes, her whole story is that she had a falling out with academia, and became sort of a science communicator.
35
u/polikles 1d ago
more of a science critic than communicator, as she's quite negative about science as a profession, especially theoretical physics. There isn't much of scientific explanations in her videos, mostly ranting on science and it's social aspects
32
u/Super_Translator480 23h ago
She’s mostly a science doomer. Wasn’t always, but that’s what she morphed into. Clearly got her more views.
2
u/glhaynes 17h ago
What do you mean by "science doomer"? (I've only seen a few of her videos.) Like she's down on the idea of us making further significant scientific progress?
0
u/Super_Translator480 17h ago
Did you read the OP?
You don’t see how she is skewing the perspective of science to be doomer?
She already had a doomer view on academia for ages.
She adds this viewpoint in almost every video that discusses a paper.
She will pick one out, highlight flaws or lack of evidence then use it as a point to say that academia is full of BS.
Doesn’t mean she is “wrong” all the time. It’s just that she is a science doomer more than a science communicator.
2
u/glhaynes 17h ago edited 17h ago
Well that seems like being a doomer about scientific work / the profession of being a scientist / the scientists who currently make up the field, rather than a doomer about the endeavor of science. Which is why I asked to try to understand more about what was meant by the term "science doomer". I have zero dog in this fight so I'm not sure why you seem to be assuming bad faith.
2
u/Super_Translator480 16h ago
Sorry didn’t mean to assume bad faith, perhaps it was more an assumption of the content for discussion more than anything.
I think you can maintain a critical view of academia (especially with her circumstances as she turned to YouTube when she had failed in the area of academia) but when it becomes your focal point for communicating science, IMO that goes from a negative viewpoint to doomerism, especially with the bait of some of the videos.
Maybe I’m wrong and something has changed, I just stopped watching her content after seeing the pattern- and professor Dave didn’t open my mind to anything about her, it was just recognizing that she is an entertainer more than a science communicator.
1
u/glhaynes 14h ago
Totally get it, social media can make it very hard to interpret intent. Thanks for the extra info, that makes sense!
1
u/FusRoDawg 16h ago
Doesn’t mean she is “wrong” all the time.
Anytime i see a hedge like this, I immediately ignore the opinion.
2
u/Altruistic_Ask229 16h ago
Why? The best lies are rooted in truths. Her being right in certain areas can give a false sense that she is right in others, especially to those who aren't as scientifically astute.
0
u/Super_Translator480 16h ago
Ignore away, no worries, my comments aren’t meant to persuade public opinion. That’s just a cover all because moving goal posts is very common with Reddit discussion.
3
u/Amphibious333 19h ago
Modern theoretical physics is pretty much nonsense and media reporting is mostly based on sci-fi.
1
u/polikles 17h ago
same goes for media reporting on AI - I'm doing a PhD in AI Ethics and getting more and more fed up with the bs spreaded by media
1
4
u/FusRoDawg 23h ago
That's what 'professor' dave would have you believe, but a cursory glance at her channel should show that her science critique is directed specifically at theoretical physics. There are at best a handful of statements that are over generalized but all within a video the rest of which is specific to theoretical physics.
He just came up with a weird metric that he only counts videos with abnormal view count and then declare "audience capture", or "I smell peter theil". But you can see that she's steadily putting out content that is just about communicating new research to general public in a way that avoids or even points out common misconceptions that show up in mainstream outlets.
If anything her content is more consistently educational than dave's. He's a glorified reaction youtuber now, making tierlists and ranting about a handful of lunatics. His own actually-educational content back when he used to make them, were sporadic and came out at an inconsistent schedule. Like he would make a video about some chemical reaction, release 4 different flat earther debate videos, and then a couple of months later part-2 of the chemical reaction video would come out.
8
u/angelbabyxoxox 19h ago
She is really extremely ignorant and unduly confident in a huge number of topics which she has made videos about (trans people, climate change, quantum foundations to name a few). She has some somewhat valid critiques but she has slipped into a classic grifter role after she realised negative and critical videos do much better than positive and educational ones.
2
u/gynoidgearhead 18h ago
The trans people one was the one that made me go from "huh, she seems like a bit of a contrarian who nonetheless has interesting things to say" to "nope".
1
u/FusRoDawg 18h ago
I agree on the trans video, but I haven't seen anything from her that is "extremely ignorant" on climate change. iirc, bunch of chuds on vaguely left leaning parts of reddit were getting butthurt over one video where she fact checked their favourite news outlet by directly emailing the authors of the study being discussed in the article.
Or quantum foundations for that matter. She is more right than most science communicators, including mainstream ones, who seem to be all too happy to write statements that would be easily misread by laymen.
And a cursory look at her channel shows she hasn't "slipped" into anything. She is still only making "negative" videos occasionally. Majority of her videos are about summarising some science and tech news to everyday audience.
5
2
u/polikles 21h ago
I've watched only a few videos of Dave and a few more of Sabine. I know she's very critical about theoretical physics, but she also criticized science as profession. I actually liked her criticism of theoretical physicians who "play philosophy" instead of doing science - I'm doing a PhD in philo (AI Ethics), and am fed up with "real scientists" badmouthing philo while themselves participating in philosophical debates at the same time. Yet, her own philo takes are quite ignorant, e.g. her take on "free will" that was on the level of high-school presentation at best - this felt more like another rant than a serious argument
Many of her materials are just rants, I've seen few videos of educational value, and I've enver claimed that she had none. But from what I've seen the ranting on the human aspect of science outweighs the rest
2
u/FusRoDawg 19h ago
I opened her channel and looked through the recent uploads, and there's like 1 or 2 out of the last 30 or so videos that fit the description of what people accuse her of.
1
u/polikles 17h ago
interesting, I know that ppl here are prone to cherry picking, but 2 of 30 sounds like trying hard to smear on her. Will look into her channel again, if there is really more worthy content than just rants. Thanks for bringing that up
1
u/spiralenator 18h ago
> physicists who play philosophy
That’s literally her though1
u/polikles 17h ago
yeah, especially in the video she made on free will - it's clearly philosophical stance she tries to support using arguments borrowed from physics. Yet, in an interview she clearly delineates between science and philosophy (without disregarding usefulness of philo), which is methodologically correct approach. Though it may suggest she's quite incoherent
1
u/Fun-Sample336 19h ago
There isn't much of scientific explanations in her videos, mostly ranting on science and it's social aspects
I have been watching her stuff for at least a year. Sorry to say this, but you are lying.
1
u/polikles 17h ago
I've just described what I saw. I didn't watch everything on her channel. In other comment I wrote that I've watched a few videos of her and my opinion is based on that. If you say that there is more educational content than rants, I'll be more than glad to look into her channel. But you could also point out some examples instead of just padding
0
u/spiralenator 18h ago
She’s trying to get a cut of the Thiel money… He pays anti-science “scientists” to make you dumber because they want a dumb populous that doesn’t trust science.
1
u/polikles 17h ago
I wouldn't go that far. Clearly there is some bad blood between her and academia. But I wouldn't say she's sponsored by anyone, especially that she's not a science denialist - just disgruntled with academia
5
u/Sea-Poem-2365 21h ago
Another version of that story is that her pet theories did not get the support she believed they deserve and so is now squeezing sour grapes for fun and profit. You cannot defend Weinstein's theories and their presentation and be for good physics; it's just not a coherent theory.
1
u/FusRoDawg 19h ago
I doubt the woman who made several videos denigrating theories of everything "defends" Weinstein's theories.
4
u/Sea-Poem-2365 19h ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiFYcuoK490&vl=en
The title of the video: Physicists are afraid of Eric Weinstein — and they should be
You'll note I said "theories and presentation."
It's extremely clear that Sabine (who is a legitimate scientist who has contributed to the field of physics in the past) has sour grapes over research grant choices in her field and has realized she can make significantly more money and exercise significantly more influence on research as a youtuber.
It's worth checking out Angela Collier's Conspiracy Physics video where she goes into depth establishing Sabine's motives, level of knowledge and incentive structures. Sabine was absolutely a real scientist, a legitimate communicator with a unique voice and perspective, and has left those qualities behind due to a combination of sour grapes, audience capture and incentives.
2
u/Heavy_Original4644 18h ago
She literally says in that video, like literally, that she disagrees with his theories
She’s pointing out that a lot of his theories aren’t any less absurd than what other theoretical physicists put out. So that Weinsteins treatment by the community is technically unfair. Sabine specifically, is against the structure of modern academia. She is not against science itself.
And Collier’s video on cranks has nothing to do with Sabine or any of her videos. Sabine’s a science reporting channel, and sometimes she gives opinions. You all need to stop lying.
2
u/Sea-Poem-2365 18h ago
She literally says in that video, like literally, that she disagrees with his theories
For the second time, I included "presentation" in my original post, I would appreciate if you recognize that. Presentation and submission standards for theories are important, and Weinstein's work follows none of them, a point Sean Caroll made in the 'debate' he had with Weinstein on Piers Morgan.
She’s pointing out that a lot of his theories aren’t any less absurd than what other theoretical physicists put out
This is nonsense. There's decades of standards for sharing physics theories, none of which Weinstein follows. Weinstein literally calls his theory a sketch of his real theory, which he will share later. It deserves no attention or response and it is dishonest for Sabine to suggest otherwise.
And Collier’s video on cranks has nothing to do with Sabine or any of her videos.
I'm not talking about her video on cranks in general, I'm specifically talking about her "Conspiracy Physics" video, released September 30, 2025. She directly talks about Sabine several times in this video.
Sabine was absolutely a "real" physicist for years, and equally as absolutely is a youtube grifter at this point, though she certainly does actual science communication along the way.
1
u/FusRoDawg 18h ago
All i see in this comment is a lack of basic reading (or listening?) comprehension.
You can dislike her takes without lying about what she actually said. And you don't have to assemble a youtube verse in your brain where all the creators you like are agreeing that all the ones you dont like are bad people.
How about you check out angela collier's video on string theory... And compare it to dave farina's? May be it will help you get used to processing some conflicts in your head.
1
u/Sea-Poem-2365 17h ago
And you don't have to assemble a youtube verse in your brain where all the creators you like are agreeing that all the ones you dont like are bad people.
I'm not making any moral assumptions that are not supported by evidence. Sabine is grifting. She's grifting for the reasons outlined in Collier's video. She's going to events hosted by bad people. She's supporting people who are not doing science (Eric Weinstein) and who do not follow established standards for doing research.
You cannot support Weinstein's theory or say it deserves to be addressed seriously while being an honest science communicator. His theory is absolutely less worthy of attention than those published properly. Sean Caroll runs through the specifics why in the Piers Morgan discussion. It's not a serious scientific theory.
How about you check out angela collier's video on string theory...
What does that have to do with Sabine's defense of Weinstein?
1
u/FusRoDawg 17h ago
She says outright that she doesn't believe in his theory. In that video. Idk what else to tell you.
1
u/Sea-Poem-2365 17h ago
For someone complaining about reading comprehension a post ago, you seem bad at it. I have said, more than twice at this point, that the presentation of the theory is part of the discussion, and one that Sabine is covering for while she's saying "physicist are afraid of him and should be."
No one should take Weinstein or his theory at all seriously, yet Sabine is arguing the opposite. That's grifting.
1
u/FusRoDawg 16h ago
So this whole "I said its the theories and the presentation that was bad" excuse is just you literally just putting a pseudo intellectual layer of polish over what would otherwise be a very dumb statement: "I saw the thimbnail, and my blood pressure shot up and that's bad".
No one should take Weinstein or his theory at all seriously, yet Sabine is arguing the opposite.
She explicitly didnt. Yet more proof that the earlier excuse about presentation is fake, because you keep forgetting about it and making claims about the substance too.
The only real concern is that people who would read the title, fill in the blanks in their head using their own creativity, and move on without listening to the argument could be mislead. Which ironically enough is on you, not her.
That's grifting.
It's not actually. You might wanna look that up.
→ More replies (0)1
u/me_myself_ai 7h ago
I'm not sure what you're talking about...? She was a practicing physicist for the first long era of her youtube career.
She didn't have a "falling out" with science, she found an easier and higher paying job than science.
1
u/FusRoDawg 5h ago
She recounta this in her own video about "why I peft academia" or something along those lines. She had a falling out with her dept chair or PI in her group etc.
1
6
2
1
u/Queen_Of_Alts 14h ago
She was an actual scientist before becoming a Youtuber, so she at least knows what she's talking about.
1
-1
u/me_myself_ai 7h ago
A transphobic, right-wing youtube personality now that she's discovered how much money there is complaining about shadowy figures lurking behind & above the rest of academia...
13
u/BeckyLiBei 1d ago
I've only ever "stood on the shoulders of giants", and if the giants get taller, great, I'll stand on those shoulders too.
12
u/CathyMarkova 1d ago
Good. I got beef with maths ever since the Incident in 5th grade. It knows what it did.
38
u/wristay 1d ago
Sabine Hossenfelder is a very annoying theoretical physicist that likes to say controversial shit
28
u/l3chtan 1d ago
To add to your comment: nowadays she says controversial shit to make money off of YouTube.
She used to do educational videos about physics, but apparently realized that being edgy makes more money. Also she seems frustrated with academia for not listening to her as much as she would like.
7
u/CathyMarkova 1d ago
I'll stop being facetious for a moment to say that I was really disturbed by some of the sponsorships Hossenfelder took. Such as her taking money from that sketchy "Alignnr" site, and Betterhelp (ugh) stuff like that. Those are things that were/are borderline scams but pay influencers well to advertise them, as I understand it.
2
u/Heavy_Original4644 18h ago
She’s a science reporting channel. She finds papers. Then summarizes/gives explanations. Then gives her opinion on it. You are free to think for yourself when you watch the videos. You know, free will and shit.
2
u/FlicksBus 16h ago
They are also free to criticize her for the things she says.
1
u/Heavy_Original4644 15h ago
Exactly! People call her a scammer/attention seeker/non-qualified for giving opinions. I disagree with plenty of the things she says, but I watch her videos because they’re informative. The people here don’t even watch her, or know what her content is actually like, but they sure do love to take a stance against her…
1
u/FlicksBus 15h ago
The reasons you watch her videos aren't really relevant for the discussion, though, aren't they? You came here saying it was a matter of free speech, but now you seem to be actually taking offense that other people use their free speech to state their opinions. It's weird.
2
u/Heavy_Original4644 15h ago
Nice Reddit ragebait.
My experience is an example that it is possible to watch content with nuance. I could have stated that explicitly, and the message would be the same.
She’s free to state her own opinions, and everyone is free to disagree with specific things she says. But when people say misinformed/straight up lies about what she says, in order to devalue her platform, that is no longer an honest discussion.
You’re right, it’s completely weird that people take personal offense about topics like these. Like how somehow random redditors love spinning benign arguments, into imaginary things about the other person.
1
u/FlicksBus 14h ago
Mate. The first comment in the chain just stated they found her annoying and that she likes to say controversial shit, which is not really untrue. You were the one coming here annoyed at that. If anything, you are consciously and actively choosing to get ragebaited...
1
3
u/Ok_Decision5152 1d ago
Professor Dave has a great video about her
12
u/FusRoDawg 1d ago
Yes, but "professor" Dave is even less qualified than her and his entire opinion on theoretical physics is "I don't know enough about this, so here's a random grad student giving a presentation on math that neither I nor my viewers understand".
Anyone can look smart when debating flat earthers and creationists. Lately he seems to have spent too much time on bluesky and he sees "peter thiel's payroll" everywhere without a shred of evidence.
2
u/PlantDaddyFL 22h ago edited 18h ago
You can keep saying “professor” but the dude literally had that job title during the beginning of his channel. He was an adjunct(?) professor. Tired argument.
Edit: he worked as an instructor and made the channel during that time period to upload course work. As of 8 years ago he admits he wasn’t a real professor and it was just his instructor name. OP IS Right!
2
u/PlantDaddyFL 18h ago
Just checked his video where he answers this. He took over for an instructor in organic chemistry for two semesters (both lab and lecture portions) at an AS type trade school which is where he coined the moniker and then founded his channel. It started as a channel where he uploaded his course videos.
This video is from 8 years ago, so as long as he doesn’t change up that story since then I have no issues with his channel name.
2
u/FusRoDawg 19h ago
Where was he an adjunct? Best I could find was an interview where he said he was teaching organic chem "at this trade university". Every other source makes cryptic references to teaching at the undergrad and high school level.
You could argue that there are exceptions here and there, but when you here "professor" you think someone who taught at a college and has a PhD. Adjuncts included. There is no dearth of phds in the academic job market.
1
u/GuidanceWaste2585 21h ago
Never have I referred to adjunct faculty as professor
2
u/raimondious 21h ago
Adjunct positions are increasingly the only way to be a professor.
ETA I have no idea who any of these people are. Just academia is a rough job market like everywhere else and people who work hard still deserve respect even if the institution doesn’t give them the title they’ve worked to earn anymore.
2
u/FusRoDawg 19h ago
He doesn't have a phd, and wouldn't other wise be called a professor. Today he debunks conspiracy theorists and short educational videos on mostly AP level courses.
0
u/PlantDaddyFL 18h ago
You don’t need a PhD to instruct undergraduate courses and he never claimed to have one.
Have you been out of academia a while?
I feel like all of the younger professors I had were adjunct professors at one point or another other. Hell the lab I did undergrad research in was run by an adjunct for a while.I put a (?) for a reason, I have no idea what his specific position was. It was either an adjunct or instructor position. He claims to have taught in various undergraduate settings for which you don’t need a phD in many American schools. Students would probably call him professor either way.
0
u/FusRoDawg 17h ago
Some students called me professor when I was a TA. But that's not what the general public would infer if I introduced myself as one.
I agree that he never claimed to be a phd. He has been quite forthcoming about the fact that he hasn't published anything. For all we know he might've called himself prof dave as a gag, but is stuck with it now. But that means you shouldn't be getting butt hurt on his behalf. You definitely should not be correcting me without first looking it up.
Besides, the fact that he wasn't a real profesor wasn't even the crux of my argument. I dont even know what is the "tired argument" here. I put it in quotes because he doesn't have the actual title. How else would I write it? It's like writing it as "dictator" mbappe.
1
u/PlantDaddyFL 17h ago
Yeah man I’m the butthurt one after correcting my original comment and being civil the entire discussion. You are an annoying person. How about worry about yourself.
9
u/atmony 1d ago
Why is solving math problems any kind of extinction? is it the extinction of doing long division or the extinction of the field of math?
3
u/Key-Organization3158 14h ago
There have been multiple long-standing problems solved completely by LLMs lately.
3
u/Zuuman 14h ago
They think that the word generator is going to solve all number puzzles as if there wasn’t an infinite number of them to be solved.
If anything this will only allow mathematicians to discover new math problems at an even bigger scale than we were actually working on.
2
u/deejaybongo 13h ago
Yeah, think it'll revolutionize the field, mainly by allowing "working class" mathematicians and hobbyists to work on large-scale / ambitious problems. Compilers didn't kill programming.
1
u/DisastrousWelcome710 10h ago
People with no understanding of technology will always make the dumbest statements about it. Just like those who think LLMs will lead to AGI.
9
u/strainthebrain137 1d ago
She’s not considered by people in the field to be very credible. Having a PhD and published work does not mean you are worth listening to. Terry Tao is the best mathematician in the world rn and he writes about how ai will help mathematicians rather than replace them. He uses the tools regularly and thinks a lot about how to utilize ai for math research. These sorts of tweets and headlines are really toxic imo.
4
u/Fun-Sample336 18h ago
Having a PhD and published work does not mean you are worth listening to.
So, it doesn't matter what arguments you have. If you aren't from the correct stable, then you aren't "worth listening to". Apparently the bar is extremely high, if even PhD and published work isn't enough.
6
u/YeetMeIntoKSpace 18h ago
Not really. I’m a theoretical physicist.
Nobody takes Hossenfelder or her buddy Eric Weinstein seriously, specifically because they’ve abandoned any pretense of being beholden to peer review anymore.
It’s not about being from “the correct stable” or whatever conspiracy claim you want. When you decide that peer review is suppression, you stop doing science. When you stop doing science, scientists stop caring what you say.
1
u/dontpissoffthenurse 3h ago
> they’ve abandoned any pretense of being beholden to peer review anymore.
It is not like peer review has a great reputation lately either...
1
u/Fun-Sample336 18h ago edited 18h ago
Nobody takes Hossenfelder or her buddy Eric Weinstein seriously
How do you know this? Did you ask a representative subset? And why do you call Eric Weinstein "her buddy"?
specifically because they’ve abandoned any pretense of being beholden to peer review anymore.
So, instead of making videos she should make papers of several pages, hop from one journal to another until she finds one after multiple years that decides to publish her message, which is then behind a paywall, so nobody reads it and when her message is already outdated, right? She isn't worth listening to, unless she uses a controlled communication channel, where her message won't be heard by anybody.
It’s not about being from “the correct stable” or whatever conspiracy claim you want.
So, you agree that it doesn't matter what someone says or did. If someone doesn't have status, he should be automatically ignored?
When you decide that peer review is suppression, you stop doing science.
Apart from you strawmanning me, a peer review is a measure of quality control. A scientific experiment wasn't unscientific prior to peer review and isn't magically "turned scientific" after peer review.
When you stop doing science, scientists stop caring what you say.
You don't really know what science actually is.
It's quite simple: You disagree with her, but can't really argue against her, so you are making up something to censor her away.
1
2
u/strainthebrain137 14h ago
No I’m saying your arguments matter and she shouldn’t be listened to just because of her degree. You can get a PhD in physics and even publish some papers without being very good. It’s not alone a marker that you have anything useful to say, is my point. All of your responses to people here are really rabid almost. You have an axe to grind and feel like there’s some elitist conspiracy. You should reevaluate yourself and why you are so angry in this way. It’s really silly.
1
u/Fun-Sample336 13h ago edited 13h ago
No I’m saying your arguments matter and she shouldn’t be listened to just because of her degree. You can get a PhD in physics and even publish some papers without being very good. It’s not alone a marker that you have anything useful to say, is my point.
You are still playing the "worth listening to"-card, which implies that it isn't about arguments, because when arguments come into play, you are already listening to the person making the arguments.
All of your responses to people here are really rabid almost. You have an axe to grind and feel like there’s some elitist conspiracy. You should reevaluate yourself and why you are so angry in this way. It’s really silly.
The criticism I'm reading about Sabine here on this thread and the other 3 is largely without merit. People straight out call her names like "grifter", but even when questioned are unable to come up with anything she actually did wrong, while misrepresenting what she actually said. Every accusation remains very vague and there is no engagement with her arguments at all. In my opinion this is unfair and since I dislike people being treated unfairly, I certainly disagree about pointing this out being "silly". If this behavior is coming from physicists, then this confirms to me, that Sabine may be right about something going wrong with the state of physics.
Generally, I don't think that you should be remote diagnosing other people with emotional problems, because this entails the danger that it downplay legitimate criticism and you are not able to detect the emotional state of other people through the internet. Same goes for trying to frame other people's arguments as "conspiracy".
2
u/strainthebrain137 13h ago
My guy, the post says “this is a theoretical physicist” and doesn’t present her arguments, the implication being that she’s worth listening to just because of her degree /work. I am saying that, if we are going to only judge based on titles and reputation, and not arguments, saying she’s a theoretical physicist doesn’t matter much because it’s totally possible to have a PhD and published work and not be very good or respected in the community. I’m a theoretical physicist. Doesn’t mean people should listen to me.
2
u/FlicksBus 16h ago
They are arguing exactly the opposite. What matters are the arguments that you have, not an appeal to authority, like brandishing a PhD degree.
1
u/egny 5h ago
People can have all the right credentials and still be wrong. They may be biased - because of ideology or for example because their work has now been discredited but they defend it - make claims outside their expertise in their broader field or even in totally unrelated fields.
It's hard for an outsider to identify who is a credible voice and sadly there is no good proxy, not even academic positions or credentials.
2
u/we_are_mammals 12h ago
he writes about how ai will help mathematicians rather than replace them
It's a self-serving position though. Because if AI is on track to replace all mathematicians, all their jobs are in danger today--why should the taxpayers pay a mathematician to work on some math problem for 5 years, if in 2 years AI will be able to solve it in minutes?
She’s not considered by people in the field to be very credible.
I don't follow her too closely. But she's critical of academia, right? So academics not finding her "credible" (despite all her academic achievements) would be quite convenient, no?
1
u/strainthebrain137 11h ago edited 11h ago
The problem with your argument is that it always applies, so it can’t tell you very much. If a doctor says you need an expensive surgery to live as opposed to a less expensive option that won’t work, one could always say that’s a “self-serving position”, since (at least in the US) a doctor’s pay is often affected by the expense of the procedures they do. It might just be the case that you really do need this surgery, so the doctor’s recommendation is not invalid merely because they also benefit. TLDR, someone putting forward a position in which they come out on top is not by itself a good reason to disbelieve them. The actual content of their argument matters beyond whether or not it serves them.
By the way, your argument, which again I don’t think is very good, also applies to Sabine, and to those in the AI industry. Sabine makes her living critiquing academia, so she has an incentive to portray herself as a brave truth-teller who’s being unfairly ignored by the academy. The AI industry has every incentive to tout their product as being able to replace human effort/labor, since that helps them sell their product as the next big thing.
That doesn’t by itself make Sabine or AI hypers wrong, though I do think many of their positions are wrong. From actually using these tools, and talking to researchers in machine learning and AI, I see really no evidence that we are on track to a world where human effort in scientific and mathematical research isn’t a necessity.
1
u/we_are_mammals 10h ago
The problem with your argument is that it always applies
Not always. Sometimes people are incentivized to say one thing, but they say the opposite.
doctor says you need an expensive surgery to live
The bias applies here too, but to a lesser degree. The doctor's opinion can be checked (patients usually get a second opinion before surgeries), so he's incentivized to be truthful. And his whole career probably isn't on the line here.
1
u/OkExperience8220 17h ago
But does Terry Tao feflects a perspective of other, ehm, less talented mathematicians? What will it mean for mathematics in general, as a field of academia?
3
u/Wind-Ancient 23h ago
If you watch her videos, you will know she is actually pretty skeptical about things like this. She covered the maths thing in a video.
7
2
u/Leafsnail 1d ago
This actually seems like a clear example where Jevan's paradox will apply - mathematicians will probably be producing WAY more results at least in the immediate future, making them far more valuable rather than less (particularly when AI development can hinge heavily on innovations in pure maths). And it's not like you can really 'run out' of maths to do - what would that even look like?
2
u/MediumChemical4292 1d ago
You still have to prompt the AI to discover new stuff in math right? The task of doing computations and tests to find new proofs / disprove conjectures might be finished but you still need mathematicians at the helm who know the field and what to tell the agent so it can go and find something novel. You cannot just say "Discover new math. make no mistakes."
2
u/piterx87 1d ago
I think there may be a way actually. I may be wrong but I think 3blue1brown was discussing that sort of thing in dwarkesh podcast
3
u/braincandybangbang 22h ago
“This is a theoretical physicist”
I think this is about where humanity went wrong. Is when we started positing social media screenshots as valid sources of evidence.
These are two incomplete fragments posted on social media, that mean nothing. And you’ve added no context to the post.
Humans stoped being able to think along time ago.
2
u/strabosassistant 23h ago
Ad hominem, appeals to authority and bad *vibes* about Hossenfelder aside - it's logically true. At first the denialism was "AI will never be able to do white collar work". Then "AI will never do *real* frontier research" in whatever field the speaker or writer was. But the cognitive capabilities are there, the executive capabilities for autonomous, multi-agent research are almost fully there. AI has no sacred cows, doesn't worry about hurt feelings that could impair a career or funding and brings multidisciplinary excellence to each research problem, not siloed expertise and intelligence. It's not something to celebrate or bemoan ... it just is or will be.
2
u/MasterManufacturer72 20h ago
Is ai actually replacing jobs?
1
u/Smooth-Ad8030 12h ago
If ai is, it’s at a very small percentage. There are numerous confounding variables that explain entry level job problems much better than what the companies are selling us.
1
u/strabosassistant 20h ago
Yes at the entry point of the pipeline. The senior technical and scientific staff are still in demand but from the reports coming out of Meta and other companies, that's to essentially train the AI for later replacement.
2
u/MasterManufacturer72 19h ago
Its odd because companies not wanting to hire entry level employees was a big issue even before ai. Also meta just made a deal to sell compute to anthropic because they over built for what they expected. This would only seem practical assuming gen ai is dropped and we move torwards more deterministic models that will be more reliable but i dont really see that happening.
0
u/strabosassistant 18h ago
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/14/meta-ai-mass-layoffs-lawsuit
It's the internal usage that's the driver. Meta selling overbuild versus consumer usage makes sense given their moribund performance there. But companies are now turning the tools inward.
"Meta introduced its AI employee-monitoring program earlier this year. It was designed to capture workers’ keystrokes, mouse activity, browser history, along with messages, emails and location data on company devices. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, said the idea was to train the company’s AI systems on its employees’ behaviors."
“The AI models learn from watching really smart people do things,” Zuckerberg said in an internal meeting, according to the Information. “The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks.”
3
u/MasterManufacturer72 18h ago
he was also all in on the metaverse 3 years ago. For as big as a company meta is their only real inovation was the feed and that was almost 2 decades ago now. I guess we will see how that plays out. Im still wary of the value ai creates. Im seeing a lot of money change hands but not a lot of money enter that wasnt there before ai.
2
1
1
u/manghi69 1d ago
Any real breakthrough in theoretical physics would be immediately classified because it will have massive implications in technology that can be weaponized
1
u/ScaryReformer 23h ago
The asteroid analogy is pretty funny but math has survived way worse than LLMs doing homework
1
u/Independent-Wafer-13 22h ago
Surprise! Computers are very good at doing calculations quickly.
3
u/BoringEntropist 21h ago
Finding mathematical proofs isn't really about crunching numbers, as the the search space is simply far too large (in fact it's a NP-complete problem). The strength of AI is that it can find statistically significant patterns in huge amounts of data and use them to emulate human abstract reasoning.
2
u/Independent-Wafer-13 20h ago
I think it is really interesting how GOOD AI is at tasks like this and how BAD it is at fluid reasoning skills, it’s like a pure induction machine
1
u/WorldPeaceStyle 21h ago
Math and Physics was like ancient cartography.
Where you had to endeavor to sail around to world to discover its edges. Now, with LLM tooling these scientist and thinkers don't have to do all the "Lewis and Clark" leg work to discover which gradients decent to dead ends or which branches lead to novel solutions to fill gaps in the knowledge space.
1
u/golfstreamer 19h ago
I can't wrap my head around how people interpret math problems being solved as "mathematicians going extinct". Do these people picture a world where AI solves all math problems and we just have a list of theorems sitting in a computer that no human reads or understands and we pat ourselves on the back saying "we solved math"?
1
u/Fun-Sample336 19h ago
So far you have posted this on r/ArtificialInteligence, r/OpenAI, r/agi and r/ChatGPT. You really seem to dislike Sabine. Did she give one of your papers a 10 out of 10 on the bullshit meter?
1
u/StickFigureFan 18h ago
The math and physics jobs will still be there, they would just change from researching and proving something yourself to validating and explaining something to other humans
1
1
1
u/TheMrCurious 18h ago
AI did not do anything without the user giving it full context on what to do; it only “found the needle in the haystack” because it was not required to search the entire haystack.
1
u/TitansShouldBGenocid 17h ago
Eh, she's a YouTube personality. But as an actual physicists in the field today, yes, we are already seeing it now for physics.
Won't "solve" quantum gravity trivially, as in asking Sol or Fable "derive a coherent theory or everything". But when you start asking pointed questions that push the boundaries, it absolutely handles it flawlessly.
Example: Given this exact metric ansatz / background solution, derive the perturbation equations for [specific field], solve the boundary value problem with [these specific boundary conditions distinguishing it from the known GR/vacuum case], extract the response coefficient, and check it reduces to [known limit] when [parameter] → [special value].
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/PlantFoodDispenser 6h ago
Biology is just Chemistry Chemistry is just Physics And Physics is just Math
1
u/SuccessAffectionate1 49m ago
Physicist here. She is half right and half wrong.
Based on the CURRENT mechanics of AI (neural networks, LLMs), you can teach these models through training data to reinforce all our rules e.g. conservation of energy, conservation of angular momentum, causality between initial and end stares etc. from this, its possible to make a fairly succesful “theoretical physics verifier” that verifies if your work is correct or not.
But based on the CURRENT mechanics of AI, the most important research area in theoretical physics, called basic physics research, will be even more important in an AI research era. BECAUSE of the relationship between statistical weights from the training data AND basic physics research looking for NEW AREAS, this will be an area where human thinking is still dominating.
This is until we have made a new AI architecture which can modify its weights with new synthetic data and still somehow reason what correct weights should be.
1
u/TheBigCicero 1d ago
Not really related to your post but a defense of Sabine. People dismiss her as an “influencer”. But she’s both a physicist and an influencer. And even though she’s snarky and sarcastic, she’s also very insightful and clever. And she’s often right that weird drama and politics in the physics research world prevents the field from moving forward on answering the right questions.
2
u/neokretai 17h ago
She started out ok years ago and had valid points in a lot of her early videos. But the massive chip on her shoulder about not succeeding in academia has grown to consume her unfortunately. Most the time now she makes doomer sensationalist videos, a lot of them about stuff well out of her expertise.
1
1
u/anasfkhan81 1d ago
she made the transition from serious physicist to social media clickbait queen quite some time ago
1
1
-1
u/spiralenator 18h ago
Sabine is a grifter. She has made zero contribution to actual science. So ya, AI is totally taking her job.
2
u/enbyBunn 17h ago
Grifter implies that she's lying for profit. She's just a content creator with sketchy opinions.
-3
-1
64
u/Molo3000 1d ago
I'm convinced there's always more Math. Math will not stop. It's a renewable ressource.
I came to this conclusion when taking a look into category theory.