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I find it hard to believe that there are wealthy people backing an organized propaganda campaign to promote the multiverse idea, in order to cover up the failur

I find it hard to believe that there are wealthy people backing an organized propaganda campaign to promote the multiverse idea, in order to cover up the failure of string theory. Or for any other reason, really.

zwkrt 8y ago
Agreed. However I would totally believe there is a disorganized campaign lead by people who seem to have run out of track in the current model.
andrepd 8y ago
I find it very hard to believe too, and yet: >I don’t think there’s anything subtle about $10 million targeted at producing this particular journalism, see: > >https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/nautilus https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/... > >$15 million in grant money to physicists isn’t subtle either: > >https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/fqxi https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/... Author in the comments.
JKCalhoun 8y ago
Toss String Theory onto the garbage heap already. Maybe what is worst than having steered your career in the wrong direction for decades is that there is nothing better than String Theory to instead invest in. I'm an armchair physicist, never bought into String Theory due to the growing mathematical kludginess of the thing. But what else is there?
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Rejecting strings on aesthetic grounds is no better than accepting it on aesthetic grounds.
  - Retric 8y ago
    The problem is not asthetics the problem is overfitting the data. Add enough knobs and you can approximate anything, but your simply encoding data not finding anything new.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      There is an infinite amount of complexity in a randomly selected real number. A famous example of packing lots of behavior in to a small number of parameters is [0]. A physical constant that will change everything drastically if it is changed even a little bit carries just as much information as one hundred constants to which the universe is less sensitive. That's the argument behind why the fine-tuning in the standard model is an indication that it is not sufficient. [0]https://fermatslibrary.com/s/drawing-an-elephant-with-four-complex-parameters https://fermatslibrary.com/s/drawing-an-elephant-with-four-c...
      - Retric 8y ago
        That argument falls flat in two ways, first we are dealing with 12-13 digits so taking about infinity is silly. Second, the standard model is simply the most ifnomation dense way of describing ~all known observations. Nobody thinks it’s truth just accurate. So, saying it overfits the data is fine, that’s how it’s constructed. Supplanting it needs to reduce the amount of information required to describe the model or similar amounts while being more elegant to call it progress.
  - JKCalhoun 8y ago
    Not aesthetics, more like Occam's Razor.
grigjd3 8y ago
I think the conspiratorial tone the author takes to this is a bit over the top but there are definitely organizations that have glommed onto some pseudoscience or another because a naive person may find it supporting some unscientific narrative they are interested in. Misguided efforts happen all the time.

zwkrt 8y ago

Agreed. However I would totally believe there is a disorganized campaign lead by people who seem to have run out of track in the current model.

andrepd 8y ago

I find it very hard to believe too, and yet: >I don’t think there’s anything subtle about $10 million targeted at producing this particular journalism, see: > >https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/nautilus https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/... > >$15 million in grant money to physicists isn’t subtle either: > >https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/fqxi https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/... Author in the comments.

JKCalhoun 8y ago

Toss String Theory onto the garbage heap already. Maybe what is worst than having steered your career in the wrong direction for decades is that there is nothing better than String Theory to instead invest in. I'm an armchair physicist, never bought into String Theory due to the growing mathematical kludginess of the thing. But what else is there?

whatshisface 8y ago
Rejecting strings on aesthetic grounds is no better than accepting it on aesthetic grounds.
- Retric 8y ago
  The problem is not asthetics the problem is overfitting the data. Add enough knobs and you can approximate anything, but your simply encoding data not finding anything new.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    There is an infinite amount of complexity in a randomly selected real number. A famous example of packing lots of behavior in to a small number of parameters is [0]. A physical constant that will change everything drastically if it is changed even a little bit carries just as much information as one hundred constants to which the universe is less sensitive. That's the argument behind why the fine-tuning in the standard model is an indication that it is not sufficient. [0]https://fermatslibrary.com/s/drawing-an-elephant-with-four-complex-parameters https://fermatslibrary.com/s/drawing-an-elephant-with-four-c...
    - Retric 8y ago
      That argument falls flat in two ways, first we are dealing with 12-13 digits so taking about infinity is silly. Second, the standard model is simply the most ifnomation dense way of describing ~all known observations. Nobody thinks it’s truth just accurate. So, saying it overfits the data is fine, that’s how it’s constructed. Supplanting it needs to reduce the amount of information required to describe the model or similar amounts while being more elegant to call it progress.
- JKCalhoun 8y ago
  Not aesthetics, more like Occam's Razor.

grigjd3 8y ago

I think the conspiratorial tone the author takes to this is a bit over the top but there are definitely organizations that have glommed onto some pseudoscience or another because a naive person may find it supporting some unscientific narrative they are interested in. Misguided efforts happen all the time.