Adversarial Collaborations for Physics


Now, imagine writing a paper with those people.






5 thoughts on “Adversarial Collaborations for Physics

  1. itaibn

    Another difficulty with adversarial collaboration is that no person can fully represent either side. Even if both collaborators manage to write up something that is mutually satisfactory amongst themselves, if many people take a particular side for a different reason they can accuse that their preferred line of argument has not been addressed. I expect a bias in successfully completed adversarial collaborations that most collaborators would start off with more similar opinions than is typical among the two side, and this can help the accusation that one collaborator or another does not faithfully represent the side they’re taking.


    1. 4gravitonsandagradstudent Post author

      That’s true. I think that for the more high-profile debates, there is often at least one person on each side who is trusted enough that most people wouldn’t object to them being their “representative”. But it’s definitely something to watch out for, especially when there are actually more than two “sides”.


  2. ohwilleke

    In law, there is something similar to an adversarial collaboration. Many kinds of documents must be submitted jointedly by both sides for approval, but usually, they involve either a summary of what someone else has said, or have breakouts for ‘one side says, but the other sides says” in addition to consensus portions. Probably the closest thing in my world to an adversarial collaboration is a settlement agreement, but that only works once you’ve actually reached a settlement.

    I think your common on string theory captures a lot of the issue. The string theory-de sitter papers are works in progress and strong conjectures, not definitive results or proofs, for the most part, and that requires some benefit of that doubt that it is hard to achieve with adversaries involved.


    1. 4gravitonsandagradstudent Post author

      Interesting regarding legal documents. In one sense, “what evidence do we have?” is the most important question to agree on with an adversarial collaboration, resolving the dispute as a whole is often too much to hope for. It sounds like the legal system already has that part (somewhat) figured out. I suppose inquisitorial judicial systems are more “science-like” in that the judge is ostensibly just trying to figure out the truth, but that does away with adversaries altogether.



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