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Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

math.columbia.edu

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Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the grift can continue

Planck energy: ~10^19 GeV is approx 2 GJ per collision Energy to vaporize Earth's oceans: ~4 x 10^27 J For a Planck-scale linear collider at LHC-like collision rates (~10^8/sec): Beam power requirement: ~2 x 10^17 W With realistic wall-plug efficiency of ~1%: ~2 x 10^19 W Annual energy consumption: ~6 x 10^26 J At 1% efficiency, one year of operation would: Vaporize about 15% of Earth's oceans Or vaporize the Mediter…

Or about 50,000 Suns running continuously

I seriously read that and first thought it was a dig at SPARC chips running hot ...

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your paragraphs two, three and four are exactly what Sabine is communicating. So much so that it almost sounds like you pulled a transcript from one of her videos. I don't think you're describing "the" problem with Sabine. She's not what you want her to be but that's a you problem. You're describing your particular problem with Sabine. I appreciate that she's doing a lot to bring attention to the real issue despite y…

> I checked to see if she has come out in support of Jeffrey Epstein or something crazy like that, but no. Bro she blurbed "The War on Science," a book stuffed with racists and sex pests complaining that they lost their jobs for falling in love with their graduate students, writing them love poetry on tumblr, and then kicking them out of their research group because they could stand to be near them. Or for saying tha…

Yep, this exactly. Its completely unacceptable

And its not something that's just a 'you' problem - if you want the actual underlying issues in physics to be fixed, its a massive issue that the spokesperson for fixing those problem currently may be a bigot, or at the very least endorses bigots and sex pests. Beyond just being generally completely unacceptable, it allows everyone to completely dismiss whatever is being said very easily

For the other poster, ben goldacre is someone that's become very well known for making effectively the same points as sabine, but within the pharmaceutical industry. They sat down and basically wrote for decades about how the testing was absolutely broken, multiple books, a column, and producing lots of work on how broken studies were in medicine and talking to anyone that would listen - and as a result, they were actual able to enact effective change. It was a huge win for evidence based science!

Sabine is not someone who can achieve that in physics - her videos would be much more effective if they contained actionable content and concrete analyses of the issues. I'd have a tonne of respect for her if what she did was publish papers or videos showing the degree to which the literature was broken, analysing funding, conducting interviews (even if anonymous) with researchers, looking through examples of bad papers and explaining the problems to a lay audience. Producing a mixture of for-scientist and for-lay person material to break the figures down, in a way that produces a compelling argument

Instead we at best get specific examples plucked out of the air. I know she isn't massively overgeneralising the issue from my own personal experience, but she presents a terribly uncompelling argument as to why there are problems. Where's the data? Why are you writing book blurbs for sex offenders instead of writing papers?

That's why I've come around increasingly to the idea that she's a grifter, even though I used to enjoy her content (before it went out of the window) and think that she does likely genuinely care about the underlying problem to some degree. Its closer to ragebait than anything that feels productive now unfortunately. I don't think its even necessarily on purpose on her end - the right wing has a way of sucking in anyone on the fringes and giving them a home even without them knowing, but also why give her the benefit of the doubt?

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#133
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not like Angela Collier's video on string theory[1]. [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kya_LXa_y1E

Interesting, thanks for sharing! I definitely don't walk away from any of Brian Greene's content thinking that String Theory is anything close to a confirmed fact at all. It's been some times since I read his earlier books, possibly his tone has changed? I'll also say, I'm far from a professional physicist. I'm reading and watching for fun and intellectual curiosity, not to learn physics with the goal of doing my own…

> It's been some times since I read his earlier books, possibly his tone has changed?

I think her point is more that his tone hasn't changed. If you're curious I would just watch the video. Angela comes with the perspective of also having read his earlier books and having liked them.

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#134
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A meaningless statement if you aren't going to introduce any points of comparison. But I would hardly call 735 conference participants a huge conference. Like, that's big but there are lot more then 735 theoretical physicists.

Claude tells me that there are about ~5000 theoretical high energy physicists actively publishing as tracked by INSPIRE-HEP (the de facto search engine in that field). If we estimate that about a third or half of string theorists take part in Strings in a given year -- because there are other big conferences like String Pheno that will be more relevant for many -- then we have something like 30-50% of high energy the…

Are all the attendees of a Linux conference Linux developers? Are all the people who attend CCC penetration testers?

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#135

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…

A bit like LISP then ...

Re: Approaching 50 Years of String Theory

#136
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not like Angela Collier's video on string theory[1]. [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kya_LXa_y1E

_totally_ off topic, but what sort of brain must Ms Collier have that she can play a game at the same time as giving a cogent lecture on String Theory with very few hesitations? I could hardly concentrate on the lecture because of the game being shown in an inset window. Truly impressive

Yesss! I had an ex complain/advise that, if I could just stop thinking for a moment, I'd enjoy life more. In my mind, that's what Ms. Collier is doing: distracting her hyperresponsive brain parts so she can present a longer speech on the topic.
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