Postulating that it must be there somewhere, and physics doesn’t need to make it easy, isn’t properly updating against the theory as each successive most likely but still falsifiable guess has been falsified.
Most physicists actually have updated—if you listen to Sean Carroll’s podcast, he just this week talked about how when the LHC started up he thought there was about a 60% chance of finding a dark matter candidate, and that he’s updated his views in light of our failure to find it. But he also explained that he still thinks dark matter is overwhelmingly likely (because of evidence like that explained in the post).
That’s good to hear. But if “he started at 60%,” that seems to mean if he “still thinks dark matter is overwhelmingly likely” he is updating in the wrong direction. (Perhaps he thought it was 60% likely that the LHC found dark matter? In which case I still think that he should update away from “overwhelmingly likely”—it’s weak evidence against the hypothesis, but unless he started out almost certain, “overwhelmingly” seems to go a bit too far.)
Yes, 60% that the LHC would find a dark matter candidate. Anyhow, maybe you should take away that this emphasizes that he does (and cosmologists in general do) have lots of evidence.
Most physicists actually have updated—if you listen to Sean Carroll’s podcast, he just this week talked about how when the LHC started up he thought there was about a 60% chance of finding a dark matter candidate, and that he’s updated his views in light of our failure to find it. But he also explained that he still thinks dark matter is overwhelmingly likely (because of evidence like that explained in the post).
That’s good to hear. But if “he started at 60%,” that seems to mean if he “still thinks dark matter is overwhelmingly likely” he is updating in the wrong direction. (Perhaps he thought it was 60% likely that the LHC found dark matter? In which case I still think that he should update away from “overwhelmingly likely”—it’s weak evidence against the hypothesis, but unless he started out almost certain, “overwhelmingly” seems to go a bit too far.)
Yes, 60% that the LHC would find a dark matter candidate. Anyhow, maybe you should take away that this emphasizes that he does (and cosmologists in general do) have lots of evidence.