Comment by killerstorm 10 hours ago
Isn't that how equations get solved?
Pretty much anything known entered through such placeholder, it's just that equations could be connected more easily.
It's not like Higgs field is something you can directly observe
Maybe, (I don't know), but it's easy to accidentally come up with a theory of "mysterious stuff" that appears to explain something, but neither constrains your expectation nor provides predictions.
Phlogiston is the classic example. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RgkqLqkg8vLhsYpfh/fake-causa...
Its a process.
You find some un-identified variables.
Form some hypothesis, try to narrow it down.
Sometimes it is a discovery, new particle, and sometimes it is nothing.
But that is how science works.
At some point in time, everything was an unknown, and people had to work with unknowns.
This whole movement from the 'right' that all science has to know the answers ahead of time in order to justify spending money, is hindering progress. How can you know the results are worthwhile, in order to justify funding, before doing the research to know the results?
Right, but you can push unknowns into tmp vars only so much before you have to introduce constraints, otherwise it's all downright undetermined. You have to inject a structure into the placeholder soup or you're just pushing ambiguity around with no real net gain.. which is also fun to play around, question is will you get a paper out of it or even paid if you play like that to no end.