Sorry Physicists, Your Simulations are Not “Inventions”

Sabine Hossenfelder asked me recently why a new type of laser recently theorized by physicists should not be considered an invention.

to which I replied…

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Something should need to actually work in reality, not merely satisfy some reduced set of assumed principles.

The number of variables in reality is astronomical compared to some paltry model baked into an algorithm.

This is a proposal, not an invention.

Have we already invented the wrap drive thanks to the simulations on Miguel Alcubierre’s theories?

This proposal may be sound, but one does not bring a thing into reality by running math through an algorithm. That’s a good way to dilute the term “invention” into meaninglessness.

I am very aware that physicists like to think they “have tools” for this kind of thing, but these tools do not map to reality anywhere near as well as they purport. Much of their modeling fits neatly into their existing, and highly reductionist, paradigm.

The only test of worth is reality, not some conjured ideation that sits within a culture of reductive thinking and math-addicted scientism.

Not to mention, no group owns the culture of invention.

That is not a flaw in logic, that is *reality*.

Something either survives genuine stressors or it does not. That is true rationality, not the faux rationality promulgated within the walls of academia.

Those who invent and innovate build things. Period.

Academics appropriating the language of actual doers to appear more relevant does not, in *reality*, make them so.

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P.S. Don’t comment on the legitimacy theater known as the patent industry as a defense.