We had a book club last Thursday. I was really looking forward to it. And It was fun. We read a new Malcolm Gladwell’s book titled “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants”. He is a good writer and story teller. But, I personally am not really into him. It is because he uses his simplified theories and writes stories to support the theories. But, for me, since I can not agree with his theory at first, I cannot be into the stories.
The reason why I cannot believe his theory is “Big Data”. Malcolm Gladwell described “natural experiment” in this book though, ‘Big data’, which is the largest natural experiments human race has been doing, does not support his theories. For example, Paul Adam who wrote “Grouped” proved that the tipping point has not been observed when he analyzed data on Facebook. Google can anticipate the distribution of flu, because they can analyze when and where, and maybe who searched “flu” from his computer. I believe that “Big data, people just started analyze the “Big Data” though, will give us great impact. In this case, his hypotheses should be tested by Big data at first. The data should have been already taken, the problem is we need appropriate “Why?” to sort huge data.
I had a discussion about Science and Philosophy with my friend on Saturday. I used to read a lot about Philosophy but I am not into lately. Since I am working as a physicist full time. It seemed I became strong believer of scientific method. I need to think about this relation carefully, I need time to pounding though, I write some pre-discussion here,
When I am thinking about Philosophy, I always think about the consideration of Heisenberg on “What is minimum unit in the world?” Plato’s conclusion was world consists of polyhedrons. Heisenberg knew Plato was wrong, but his question is why Plato could have been wrong even Plato could think very critically almost anyone else.
My answer is because he thought too much.
Physics is evident based science. The hypothesis should be tested. If the hypothesis is right, we should observe the evidences by experiments. We expand our knowledge step by step. We have spent, spend, and will spend a lot of time for this “step” to confirm. Higgs boson might have been philosophy until it had been observed. I am proud of being an experimental physicist.
This is end of pre-discussion.
In addition to these, I think I have a problem speaking English. I can read and listen, but I can not explain my idea very well. I have been so frustrated lately. Because I clearly understood what I wanted to say, but I could not express my thinking well in speaking. That happens also writing. Only I can do may be practicing speaking, presentation, discussion with native speakers. I would love to have the chance for that as many as possible.
This weekend was O.K. I am looking forward to Monday. Let’s do science. Anyway.