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Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

math.columbia.edu

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Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#51

Post by Levitating »

raverbashing wrote: post #42
athrowaway3z wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of Hossenfelder, especially for casting quacks like Weinstein, but AFAICT she isn't about "suppressing the real physics" but more of a "establishment physics is wasting money and time, and a lot is equally bad/good as some alternative physics."

Yeah I think most of what (negative) people attribute to her is mostly her being hopelessly German. Most, but not all

Don't agree, she spreads misinformation, she's disrespectful to other scientists and basically has resorted to just claiming that everything in academics is wrong. YouTube fame has completely radicalized her.

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#52

Post by pfdietz »

gnfargbl wrote: post #50

People often say that the problem with string theory is that it doesn't make any prediction, but that's not quite right: the problem is that it can make almost any prediction you want it to make. It is really less of a "theory" in its own right and more of a mathematical framework for constructing theories. One day some unusual observation will come along from somewhere, and that will be the loose end that allows som…

Or, that day will never come, because string theory isn't reflective of the actual world, or because there are so many theories possible under the string theory rubric that we can never find the right one, or because the energies involved to see any effect are far beyond what could be reached in experiment.

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#53

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #20
michaelcampbell wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting that; as soon as I saw the title here I was going to look that up if no one else had already. Sabine Hossenfelder too, though there's far too much content from her on this to put a list, but anyone interested might like some of her takes. A few debates between Brian and other notables; Hossenfelder, Eric Weinstein, and Roger Penrose to name a few; have popped up in my youtube feed lately which are…

Hossenfelder is not really comparable to Collier. Collier's video is critical of string theory as a testable framework but she ultimately still supports people who do research in string theory. Most of her criticism is with media coverage of string theory, not the research or the researchers. Hossenfelder has gone off the "the physics establishment is all idiots and they are suppressing the real physics" deep end and…

> Most of her criticism is with media coverage of string theory, not the research or the researchers.

I pretty strongly disagree with that categorization of Collier's video, as it makes it sound like string theorists were innocent bystanders and "the big bad media" just ran overboard.

I think she puts the blame squarely on string theorists (e.g. "celebrity string theorists who wrote all these books") as constantly hyping up the field with promises of "in a decade it will be amazing" - a phrase she uses to great dramatic effect throughout the video - despite never acknowledging the fact that it fails miserably at making testable predictions.

When she says "they lied to us", the "they" she's clearly talking about are specific researchers in the field (which she names), and the string research community more broadly, who are hyping up their field, not just "the media".

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#54

Post by jshaqaw »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #43
jshaqaw wrote: post #29

[flagged]

i dont think it has anything to do with threats to way of life. It has everything to do with public subsidy of physics that has pushed peripherary mathematics forward without much to show for actual physics advancements. New observations cause changes to string theory not validation of string theory. String theorists can keep do*ng their string theory but its time to subsidize something(so else and see if that leads…

Theoretical physics is subsidizing a handful of people sitting at white boards.

Even accepting the premise that string theory is wrong I can list hundreds of ways the US budget spews money down black holes orders of magnitude bigger. The spending on string theory isn’t even a rounding error compared to the way my tax dollars are allocated to special interest pork.

But only string theory impinges on a generation of cranks who are convinced they alone have the insight into the true ToE and would be recognized as the new Einstein were it not for some entrenched cabal. Maybe I shouldn’t reflexively trust “big science” or something but it’s also not great to evaluate science by who is more charismatically narcissistic on a podcast.

Again, I don’t have a big axe to grind on the merits here. But it’s hilarious that folks with zero science background past middle school hear some of these cranks on YouTube and feel worthy to decry Witten as an enemy of the people. Between the podcast bro who was just told his ToE was right by ChatGPT and Witten I’ll take Witten.

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#55

Post by Elextric »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #48
ecosystem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-Euclidean geometry (geometric axioms in which one postulate is rejected such that the 3 angles of a triangle are not exactly 180 degrees) was considered a meaningless word game and fundamental mistruth. Later, non-Euclidean geometry was actually essential to modern physics. It's intellectually sketchy to judge future value by the present.

Might as well fund someone researching whether quantum theory run on little gnomes, if there is no serious path to verification after 50 years, why not quantum gnomes?

Ideally, one should explore all possibilities. It is remarkable how far "merely" predicting the next word has taken us.

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#56

Post by gnfargbl »

pfdietz wrote: post #52
gnfargbl wrote: post #50

People often say that the problem with string theory is that it doesn't make any prediction, but that's not quite right: the problem is that it can make almost any prediction you want it to make. It is really less of a "theory" in its own right and more of a mathematical framework for constructing theories. One day some unusual observation will come along from somewhere, and that will be the loose end that allows som…

Or, that day will never come, because string theory isn't reflective of the actual world, or because there are so many theories possible under the string theory rubric that we can never find the right one, or because the energies involved to see any effect are far beyond what could be reached in experiment.

It isn't completely implausible that a future civilisation could perform the experiments to gather that data, somehow; but it is hard to envisage how we do it here on Earth.

Your implicit point is a good one. Is it sensible to have a huge chunk of the entire theoretical physics community working endlessly on a theory that could well end up being basically useless? Probably not.

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#57

Post by snapplebobapple »

jshaqaw wrote: post #54
snapplebobapple wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i dont think it has anything to do with threats to way of life. It has everything to do with public subsidy of physics that has pushed peripherary mathematics forward without much to show for actual physics advancements. New observations cause changes to string theory not validation of string theory. String theorists can keep do*ng their string theory but its time to subsidize something(so else and see if that leads…

Theoretical physics is subsidizing a handful of people sitting at white boards. Even accepting the premise that string theory is wrong I can list hundreds of ways the US budget spews money down black holes orders of magnitude bigger. The spending on string theory isn’t even a rounding error compared to the way my tax dollars are allocated to special interest pork. But only string theory impinges on a generation of cr…

No, its subsidizing a handful of people sitting at whiteboards at the expense of different camps of people sitting at whiteboards and the result is nefarious because you dont see what could have been if we minimized string theory funding after a decade or two of poor performance instead of going all in on it for five decades. We gave up decades of potentially actually figuring something new out by going harder on string theory instead of diversifying physics spend as performance failed to show up.

how the government wastes money elsewhere is irrelevant to the conversation. Its about proper management of research funding and how string theorists managed tp trick us into funding failure for whole academic careers.

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#60

Post by snapplebobapple »

ecosystem wrote: post #30
PunchyHamster wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the grift can continue

Non-Euclidean geometry (geometric axioms in which one postulate is rejected such that the 3 angles of a triangle are not exactly 180 degrees) was considered a meaningless word game and fundamental mistruth. Later, non-Euclidean geometry was actually essential to modern physics. It's intellectually sketchy to judge future value by the present.

you are mixing up gambling spend vs whole industry spend. If string theory was a small handful of people making up a small m*nority of physics departments like non-euclidea geometry research was that would be fine. Its huge swaths of most physics departments and a huge suck on research funding. For that kind of spend you better show results because you are in production phase at that point not lotto ticket moonshit phase. If we are buying lotto tickets with the money bey lots of different lotto tickets not a whole bunch of one lotto ticket
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