String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet • Hacker News Board

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#31

Post by smueller1234 » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #26

whatshisface wrote: post #3

> Gaining access to the infinitesimal microscales where superstrings supposedly wriggle would require an accelerator 1,000 light years around. Has anyone ever proven that there aren't any better accelerator technologies left to be discovered? What about natural accelerators like the charges that build up and produce cosmic rays?

> What about natural accelerators like the charges that build up and produce cosmic rays? As mentioned the benefit of artificial accelerators are that you can make the collisions happen right in the middle of the detectors, which is quite nice. You can also generate a lot of collisions, which is good because statistics require it. That said, there are projects, such as this[1], utilizing natural accelerators. There's…

Thanks for posting that reference to the (Pierre) Auger Observatory with links and all. We loved to point out that at current accelerator tech, our high energy events would need a ring with about the same radius as the Earth's distance from the sun. What also blows my mind is that there aren't really credible/supported theories about what process or effect may be able to put as much energy into a single particle. Whatever it is, my money is on that is a process that happens at large scales (just like Fermi acceleration), so the "giant accelerator" bit remains somewhat true, except we don't have to build it. :)

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#32

Post by the-pigeon » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

I can't wait until String Theory dies. As a couch scientist it seems to very clearly be a dead end.

They keep massaging it to make it fit any new objective discoveries but an accurate theory matches new data, it doesn't need to be forced to fit with it constantly.

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#33

Post by anon1m0us » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

undershirt wrote: post #28

anon1m0us wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, I wonder if this is fitting with my current obsession with truth and lies. Not only are we increasing the number of lies in the world, using lies to get what we want has become more and more acceptable through social media, politics, capitalism, etc... But we are increasing the number of things you can't prove are lies. You can't falsify me, therefore I am right. OMG , this is very religious . This is all because…

I wonder if you might try the subtler word myths instead of lies. Reality is formless, and we reason about it through what Foucault called grids I think, where every structure that we impose on it to bring something new into view necessarily obscures something else. This is a bit like what Alan Watts talks about when saying that stories are like music, in which it wouldn’t have any form unless there were notes left o…

When you say, "... it's bigger than what you may be suggesting."

What is ... "it"? My despair?

I understand your point about lies vs myths. If I substitute the two words in my mind according to your explanation of myths and their purpose, then everything actually does seem to make more sense and is more acceptable in my mind.

If someone tells a lie the connotation is that it's meant to harm others to their own benefit. If it's a myth, then they need that ... not accurate portrayal of the world in order to keep going... to survive, perhaps as an individual or group.

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#34

Post by Ma8ee » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #22

scottlocklin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands of grad student careers, faculty appointments, glowing documentaries and ruined lives later and "oh, we knew that all along." They sure didn't act like they knew it at the time. Horgan deserves credit for making the right call. Even more credit because he wasn't even a physicist. Credit to Glashow, and apologies for forgetting him, but Horgan deserves his victory lap.

I mean, do you think literally everybody was doing string theory? There have always been plenty of theorists focused on more concrete things -- string theorists are not and have not been the majority. Grad students entering even in the 90s knew they had to make a choice between concrete, more easily testable physics and a long-shot approach to quantum gravity. String theorists have stories of faculty going out of the…

They weren't discouraged to do string theory in particular, they were discouraged from getting into the whole "trying to find something better than the standard model." If they anyway went into th hep, they would have slim chances of having any career if they didn't do string theory.

They were encouraged to do things like condensed matter physics, not trying to find some alternative to string theory.

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#35

Post by secraetomani » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #2

FWIIW, Horgan is a well known science writer and author of a 1996 book called "the end of science" which pointed out that science in general and physics in particular has reached a point where there is no appreciable forward progress and is obsessed with non falsifiable woo like string theory. It's a provocative book; and people have raised the issue that Kelvin said something similar 120 years ago, but it's really w…

> noodle theorists

Lovely name

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#36

Post by Animats » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

This can happen in academia. I went through Stanford CS, finishing in 1985. That was about when it was clear that "expert systems" were not going to lead to Strong AI Real Soon Now, or, indeed, much of anywhere. But many faculty were in deep denial about that. The "AI Winter" followed. There was little progress until machine learning finally took off about two decades later.

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#37

Post by eth0up » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #25

AprilArcus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when he literally sued to block the launch of the Cassini probe?

For others reading, this appears to be because he believed that in an accident the radio-thermal isotope generator on board Cassini would spread radioactive material all over the place.

...all over the place

A small, but possible chance of Pu-238 spreading over Florida. I just read that 238 (half-life 87 years) emits mostly alpha, which is said to be easily blocked, even by paper. In FL, many go about half naked, so I'm not sure if this matters. I wonder how thoroughly Kaku considered everything.

Seems his concern was based partially on NASA's (small but not null) history of failures. I don't know, but doubt he was being deliberately unreasonable. Maybe his Japanese (distant) ancestry was a factor? Publicity would be a surprising motive. So would general ignorance.

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#38

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #19

knzhou wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a super unpopular position at the time (1996); pretty much the only prominent person in agreement with him was Nobel Prize Winner Phil Warren Anderson, who disagrees with him in many other respects. Ultimately many other writers came out in agreement on this issue at least; Woit and Smolin most notably, though others agreed. Ugh, almost everything about this narrative is wrong; see my other comment. Science writers…

Thousands of grad student careers, faculty appointments, glowing documentaries and ruined lives later and "oh, we knew that all along." They sure didn't act like they knew it at the time. Horgan deserves credit for making the right call. Even more credit because he wasn't even a physicist. Credit to Glashow, and apologies for forgetting him, but Horgan deserves his victory lap.

It’s difficult to know what kind of politicking led to this though.

It preposterous to think that all the physicists were on board with string theory. Do you really think the experts in the field didn’t have doubts and it took an non physicist to work it out?

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#39

Post by knzhou » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

Ma8ee wrote: post #30

knzhou wrote: post #10

It's important to avoid conflating string theorists with all theoretical physicists. Plenty of people in particle physics either don't believe in string theory or don't think it can make useful predictions any time soon, even if it were assumed true. Furthermore, the vast majority of people called "string theorists" don't even work on traditional string theory day to day, but on more concrete ideas that have been par…

String theory has completely dominated the field of theoretical high energy physics for decades. There have been some notable contrarians, e.g., Smolin and Woit with their books. But those haven't changed the fact that it has been very hard to get a faculty position in theoretical hep for decades without being a string theorist. It is only the last few years that has changed. In other words, it's not a biased view th…

That's just not true. Look at the statistics for hiring faculty in theoretical high energy physics [1]. String theory was never more than half, and usually much less than that. (It is true, though, that for a while they had a near monopoly on pop physics. But that's totally different from physics.)

[1] http://www.particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php?id=st...

Re: String Theory Does Not Win a Nobel, and I Win a Long Bet

#40

Post by fabiosussetto » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

"It would culminate the ancient human quest for knowledge, which began when the first of our ancestors asked, "Why?""

I'm always baffled when I read these kind of quotes, especially coming from such smart people. Do they just forget that our theories are models of reality? I personally believe that there are no wave functions or vibrating membranes out there, as there are no "triangles". These are just names for our mental models on which we map reality the best we can. Fitting models are very useful, but they certainly don't answer the big "Why?" and are doomed to be superseded by more accurate ones, when progress is made. Is it just me thinking this?