There must be a term for this, but essentially theories have certain "spans". A theory describes reality using its parameters within a viable "range" for each parameter. Beyond that range, the theory breaks down. We appreciate most the theories with the largest spans, i.e. they cover vast ranges in observed phenomena, from micro to macro scales. When a theory has a constrained span (i.e. it only works in these narrow set of cases, but not in these other observed ones), we typically look elsewhere for a more "elegant" theory. Thus we want theories which are concise (few degrees of freedom) but also maximally generalizable, which perhaps in a word would make them highly "efficient" theories.
"Astrophysics doesn’t get called out because it doesn’t matter if there’s dark energy or modified Newtonian dynamics or aliens playing games with our telescopes. None of this will help us build better computers or launch more satellites."
I doubt that astrophysics doesn't matter. It seems unlikely that we will learn fundamental new stuff from super collider experiments in the foreseeable future (even so we did in the past). But gathering more astrophysical data, and better understand or evaluate the astrophysical data we already have gathered is well within reach of our current capabilities, and most probably able to teach us fundamental new stuff. Our computers are good enough anyway, and satellites get launched plenty too.
I remember studying physics in high school, and Ptolemy and his description of planetary orbits using epicycles was mentioned with a bit of derision. However, if you study Harald (brother of Niels) Bohr's theory of almost periodic functions you see that Ptolemy's epicycles exactly correspond to the first few terms of an almost periodic expansion. So, I think, that the derision was unfair.
There must be a term for this, but essentially theories have certain "spans". A theory describes reality using its parameters within a viable "range" for each parameter. Beyond that range, the theory breaks down. We appreciate most the theories with the largest spans, i.e. they cover vast ranges in observed phenomena, from micro to macro scales. When a theory has a constrained span (i.e. it only works in these narrow set of cases, but not in these other observed ones), we typically look elsewhere for a more "elegant" theory. Thus we want theories which are concise (few degrees of freedom) but also maximally generalizable, which perhaps in a word would make them highly "efficient" theories.
My curiosity was piqued re: dark matter
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/10genmw/why_has_dark_matter_been_widely_accepted_rather/
"Astrophysics doesn’t get called out because it doesn’t matter if there’s dark energy or modified Newtonian dynamics or aliens playing games with our telescopes. None of this will help us build better computers or launch more satellites."
I doubt that astrophysics doesn't matter. It seems unlikely that we will learn fundamental new stuff from super collider experiments in the foreseeable future (even so we did in the past). But gathering more astrophysical data, and better understand or evaluate the astrophysical data we already have gathered is well within reach of our current capabilities, and most probably able to teach us fundamental new stuff. Our computers are good enough anyway, and satellites get launched plenty too.
I remember studying physics in high school, and Ptolemy and his description of planetary orbits using epicycles was mentioned with a bit of derision. However, if you study Harald (brother of Niels) Bohr's theory of almost periodic functions you see that Ptolemy's epicycles exactly correspond to the first few terms of an almost periodic expansion. So, I think, that the derision was unfair.