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Eric Weinstein Says He Solved the Universe’s Mysteries. Scientists Disagree
- orbifold 6y agoRegardless of the physics content, if the constructions he proposes turn out to be well defined they might be a basis for some nice mathematics.
- SkyMarshal 6y agoSounds like that's the main problem with it atm, it's not well defined.
- Google234 6y agoMore technical rebuttal is here http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/03/guest-post-problems-with-eric.html?m=1 http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/03/guest-post-problems...
- XorNot 6y agoNotably: > In these interviews, Weinstein laments that the scientific community is dismissive of GU because he has not released a technical paper, but insists that scientists should be able to understand the substantive content of GU from the lecture alone This is alarm bells territory. There's nothing there.
- mr_mitm 6y agohttps://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html Baez should update this list to include: 20 points for publishing your theory only on YouTube.
- Rochus 6y ago23 years old typo in point 8: "Einstien"
- rrobukef 6y agoThat's not a typo.
- Rochus 6y agoWhy not? The author demonstrated that he could write the name correctly otherwise in the text.
- semigroupoid 6y agoAll the names in point 8 are misspelled, that’s the point.
- Rochus 6y agoOk, I see; obviously not my kind of humor.
- mr_mitm 6y agoYou actually almost fit point 20 now: > 20 points for emailing me and complaining about the crackpot index. (E.g., saying that it "suppresses original thinkers" or saying that I misspelled "Einstein" in item 8.)
- Rochus 6y agoStill waiting for my 20 points.
- prvc 6y agoI was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until hearing this admission of his: https://youtu.be/l1jTUhwWJYA?t=802 https://youtu.be/l1jTUhwWJYA?t=802 In a technical field such as physics or mathematics, "the technical details" are at minimum of paramount importance, and perhaps even constitute everything of importance. You can't cry victimhood over your colleagues not filling in the gaps and taking care of the "technical" problems for you (presumably with the credit flowing to you anyway). Now that he is very wealthy, I don't see why he couldn't hire a few young physicists to do this work for him, if he had enough confidence in his idea, btw. Horrible attitude which puts him in crank territory, imho.
- mgamache 6y agoHorrible attitude? I don't see a horrible attitude, nor does one's attitude have any bearing on ones' truth claims. Newton was famously an asshat.
- prvc 6y ago>nor does one's attitude have any bearing on ones' truth claims. Newton was famously an asshat I never said that it would. I have nothing bad to say about Newton, either--- either personally or otherwise. I'm not sure about the exact meaning of the term, "asshat", and I don't care to research it, though.
- jariel 6y ago"Horrible attitude which puts him in crank territory, imho." You literally attributed his 'horrible attitude' to putting him in 'crank territory' i.e. 'Common synonyms for crank include crackpot and kook.' I'm in no position to comment on the nature of his work, but there's an unhealthy amount of ad-hominem here. Maybe it's fair to speculate a bit but I don't think we can just say 'bad attitude -> crap science' etc..
- prvc 6y agoTo clarify, regarding crankhood: it is the lack of details presented in the "theory", combined with his inaccurate view of how science is conducted ("others not doing all the work for me" == "it's being suppressed due a conspiracy"), not his attitude per sei (although that does comprehend the aforementioned facts in some sense), which does the trick.
- chrisco255 6y agoHow many scientists disagree? 2? 5? Did they poll every scientist on the planet? Does it matter? Is that how science works?
- tacitusarc 6y agoI give it well under 1% odds that he's right, but boy would I like to see him have a conversation about it with a critic that understands what he's talking about.
- nxpnsv 6y agoLike this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_aN8NnoeO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_aN8NnoeO0 (at about 1h in)
- akvadrako 6y agoThe rebuttal starts at 1h 9m. I don't think you can consider Sabine a critic that understands what [s]he's talking about. She is a popularizer of science but hasn't produced anything to suggest she's near the top of her field. And she has some really fringe ideas, like the support of super-determinism. I do think her guest poster Timothy Nguyen came across as knowing what he's talking about.
- nxpnsv 6y agoI completely agree.
- jfengel 6y agoI'm not Hossenfelder's biggest fan, but she is more than qualified. She's best known for her popularizations -- as is the case for practically every living physicist you've ever heard of -- but her work on quantum gravity is real. She's as qualified as pretty much anybody else who's going to appear in public to talk about such things. She's better known for her criticism of the process of physics, a thing which is both correct and somewhat irritating (because it's not really a secret and she's not offering useful solutions). But she is a genuine physicist as well as a popularizer.
- akvadrako 6y agoI didn't say she's a fake physicist, just that I don't think she's a very good one. > She's as qualified as pretty much anybody else who's going to appear in public to talk about such things. Not at all. There are thousands of people who clearly have a much deeper understanding of fundamental physics and some of them are popularizers too. Lenny Susskind is a good example. Peter Shor, who sometimes comments on her blog. There are plenty of bloggers who aren't famous.
- atq2119 6y agoA
- gm3dmo 6y ago“I don’t trust these people,” Weinstein said, referring to physicists at universities. “It’s an entire system that believes in peer review, it believes in forced citations, you have to be at a university, you have to get an endorsement to use a preprint server. It’s too few resources, too many sharp elbows.” It gives me the Crown Sterling sponsored talk at Black Hat feelz. Weinstein. Einstein. Now there was a paper writer he could write four papers in a year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers
- thinkingemote 6y agoWeinstein works for Thiel btw.
- raspasov 6y agoThe current draft of the paper: https://geometricunity.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Geometric_Unity-Draft-April-1st-2021.pdf https://geometricunity.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Geometric...
- SkyMarshal 6y agoAlso the website: https://geometricunity.org/ https://geometricunity.org/
- askl56 6y ago> The Author is not a physicist and is no longer an active academician, but is an Entertainer and host of The Portal podcast. This work of entertainment is a draft of work in progress which is the property of the author and thus may not be built upon, renamed, or profited from without express permission of the author. Yikes.
- raspasov 6y agoAre math equations copyrightable? (I am not a lawyer)
- majewsky 6y agoCopyright typically only applies to expressions of an idea, not the idea itself. You cannot copyright the observation that the sky is blue, but you can copyright a poem describing this circumstance in a certain language. In this particular instance, a scientific theory is not copyrightable, but a paper describing said theory definitely is. Sci-Hub is in hot water precisely because copyright on papers is a thing. If you wanted to exercise ownership rights on a theory itself, your best bet would be patent law. Patents apply to ideas, but only within the realm of making actual objects. Abstract ideas like scientific theories are usually not patentable, except for the realm of software. Software patents typically cover algorithms and thus mathematical concepts, and since software is a way for mathematical principles to enter commerce, it's probably your only way. (This is also why software patents are so controversial: It's the closest thing to "denying others access to an idea" that we have in our current system of law.) Disclaimer: IANAL either.
- kbelon94 6y agoI will give him the benefit of doubt for now till there is confirmation
- mgamache 6y agoThinking if it's not a TOE it's a failure is shortsighted. Maybe it's a dead end. Maybe there's some insight that a future physicist will use as part of a better theory. Maybe the shortcomings can be addressed. We'll see.
- ncmncm 6y agoThis is just the sort of thing that we say, "That's not right. It's not even wrong!" about. He is wasting our time. Garrett Lisi might be wrong, which would put him well ahead of Weinstein.
- jariel 6y ago"Download the GU Draft - Add your email address to our waitlist to get the latest version of Eric's Geometric Unity manuscript." At very minimum, this is a giant PR move. When was the last time you saw someone use the release of a paper to build up their email marketing list? Because of this man's side-story problems which may lead many to be cynical and laden his work with a kind of political or emotional criticism, it would be interesting just to hear the dispassionate on it, i.e. does it have any merit at all, is it at least interesting, does it have a little bit of value as a theory even if implausible etc.. It's so hard to get beyond the cacophony of people pushing pro or anti this or that these days, a dispassionate look at it by someone qualified, under the assumption of good faith acting on the Weinstein's part would be welcome.
- cryptResonator 6y agoI'm very surprised that Vice magazine which I would consider part of the alt-right dark web posted this article whining about Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Rogan. Aren't they all on the same team? I'm not worried. I think once Mr. Rogan has had a chance to fully digest the recently released paper, he will work with the editors of Vice magazine to provide the world's physics community with a compelling critique of these new ideas.
- aiioquip 6y ago“There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.”
- easywood 6y agoWould someone care to write an ELI5 about this? It sounds revolutionary but I just can't get my head around what he's actually saying.