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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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

#111

Post by philipov »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #49
Ma8ee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Im a physicist, and whilst Im an experimentalist, I work in the same departments as theorists and I don't know a single string theorist. I heard of one, once. A friend od a friend, but I never met them. Most high energy physicists seem to be working on supersymmetry.

I am not a physicist, but I listen to a lot of technical lectures from the institute of advanced study and other universities that post their colloquia on youtube, and the impression I've gotten is that string theory has pretty much fused with quantum field theory. A lot of the people in the string theory discussions identify themselves simply as field theorists, with string theories being just another set of concepts in their model-building tool box.

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

#113

Post by fsh »

sanxiyn wrote: post #103
namarie wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe his Japanese (distant) ancestry was a factor? Why would it be?

As the only nation attacked by nuclear weapons, Japan tends to be anti-nuclear.

Nonsense. Few countries rely more on nuclear energy than Japan. Even Fukushima didn't manage to change that.

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

#114

Post by kelnos »

undershirt wrote: post #75
kelnos wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that strongly-held myths can still cause a lot of harm to others. While it may be understandable for people to cling to some myths, we should still work to stamp them out, but compassionately.

Not sure if you got it, but it’s myths all the way down. It’s only by the values of one myth that another should be “stamped out.” The book Sapiens covers this well, that you cannot escape the prison of a myth without being contained by one larger.

That's a matter of philosophy and opinion, not established fact.

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

#115

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

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…

Well I’m not reading Feynman’s take because he is dead right now.

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

#117

Post by drdeca »

wuliwong wrote: post #54
im3w1l wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your perspective is a popular one, but a lot of people also think there is a "true" theory that will perfectly explain how the universe evolves.

>a lot of people also think there is a "true" theory that will perfectly explain how the universe evolves Doesn't Godel's incompleteness theorems make this doubtful? Logic was not my area of focus but I thought the basic idea was that there is always going to be some un-answerable question(s) or un-provable answers in any consistent theory[1]? I'm pretty sure there is not significant work using non-axiomatic math, I'…

Presburger arithmetic is a decidable theory. "This means it is possible to algorithmically determine, for any sentence in the language of Presburger arithmetic, whether that sentence is provable from the axioms of Presburger arithmetic."

If you don't understand what the incompleteness theorems say, be wary of citing them.

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

#118

Post by kashyapc »

Two weeks ago I heard a very interesting EconTalk podcast[1] by Sabine Hossenfelder on Physics, Reality, and Lost in Math.

Hossenfelder herself is a theoretical physicist, and researches quantum gravity. And a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. She has a refreshing tone and frankness, and I appreciated learning about her work.

Quoting the podcast's abstract:

"Hossenfelder argues that the latest theories in physics have failed to find empirical confirmation. Particles that were predicted to be discovered by the mathematics have failed to show up. Whether or not there is a multiverse has no observable consequences. Hossenfelder argues that physicists have become overly enamored with the elegance and aesthetics of their theories and that using beauty to evaluate a model is unscientific. The conversation includes a discussion of similar challenges in economics."

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/sabine-hossenfelder-on-physics-real...

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

#119

Post by QuesnayJr »

madhadron wrote: post #106
bjornsing wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as long as there is one physicist on the right side of the fence the “field” is somehow in the know...? Would you be willing to extend that kind of reasoning to the “pop scientists”? I often wish Feynman (or anyone of his kind really) was still here. Science nowadays seems more and more like one big appeal to authority...

Something that most people don't understand is that most physicists won't talk to the public. What you hear as a layman is usually the few people who have a public axe to grind and bears no resemblance to the majority of the field. When I was in physics in the early 2000's, the general feeling was that it's a probably nonsense, but having someone out at the far end of the mathematical spectrum like that in your theor…

Honestly, I think physicists can't win here. Tommaso Dorigo (an HEP experimentalist) likes to talk to the public, so he has a blog. If you look right now his Plot of the Week is about how ATLAS "produced an improved bound on the rate at which Higgs bosons may decay to electron-positron pairs". This is the kind of thing that inspires people to write about how academic writing is inaccessible. Alternatively, physicists can write something more exciting, which is almost certainly highly speculative, and then they get dinged when the speculation turns out to be wrong.

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

#120

Post by QuesnayJr »

catalogia wrote: post #89
namarie wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe his Japanese (distant) ancestry was a factor? Why would it be?

Both atomic bombings, the Daigo Fukuryū Maru, and the Fukushima disaster come to mind. Perhaps a better question is why wouldn't people with a personal connection to Japan be wary of nuclear contamination? Or 'why don't the rest of us?' Certainly there are some people in/from Japan who are enthusiastic about the future of nuclear energy. But I think it's fair and reasonable to say that cultural trends exist and a ran…

Cassini was launched more than a decade before the Fukushima disaster.
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