Big Think

Lisa Randall: It would be nice to have an answer to that. You know that’s . . . Obviously you know if we knew the answer to that I think a lot of people would pursue it. I think it’s always important when you’re doing science to know what’s come before, but not to . . . but to be able to really evaluate what you really know. For example it certainly seems obvious there are three dimensions. And even if you look at the test a little bit more deeply, you see that there’s the inverse square law that you might have learned about in high school that says that once gravity decreases, it’s _________. So if you go twice as far away, the force of gravity goes down by a factor of four. So you might think well, that implies those three dimensions. But then you could think a step further and think, “Well do we really know on all scales that it looks like that? What have we measured?” So to be able to really critically evaluate what does the experimental evidence imply – to really think, “Okay, I believe what these people have told me, but I’m not sure they thought about . . . fully about the implications.” And so to be not . . . So often there’s a lot of hidden assumptions that you’re not even aware of. And to be able to get outside that in order for innovation . . . I mean are you talking at a basic level, like how to get a more educated public? Or at a university level when you already have people who are doing this?So the work I do is theoretical, but the particle physics aren’t themselves; which certainly I want to have happen and are essential to us understanding what’s going on _________. I think it’s important to have an educated public so they understand why this is interesting, why it’s important. I think it’s important to have education so we have the best people doing science. Or at least everyone who wants to do science has the opportunity to do so. Is it . . . Beyond that, I think it’s not so easy to know how to solve it. You know I think everyone enters science being idealistic and thinking the truth always wins. But in the short term of course there is a bunch of sociology that gets mixed in. It is, after all, people. It’s only the long term that some ideas will win out. So I think to the extent that you can sort of get away from the subjective nature of evaluating things, it would be good. And I’m not sure how to do that. Recorded On: 11/2/08