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I find it difficult to believe that most theoretical physicists are wrong and one guy in the math department at Columbia + the comments section of a venture cap

I find it difficult to believe that most theoretical physicists are wrong and one guy in the math department at Columbia + the comments section of a venture capital link aggregator are right. It could be; it just doesn't seem very likely.

ncmncm 5y ago
Yet, it is true. It is theoretically possible that the "string theory landscape" explorers are onto something. But so long as they are not predicting results of experiments, they are not doing science. Nobody is obliged to be a scientist; they could move over to the philosophy department, if it would take them. Or the mathematics department. Likewise, nobody is morally obliged to pay people claiming to be scientists to do something that is not science. But our institutions don't have an "in case of emergency break glass" red button, so these scientists no longer doing science still get to teach classes, attend conferences, and publish vacuous papers, and appear to be doing their job. They also get to award (or not award) doctorates, gatekeep journals and conferences, and control tenure-track appointments. A similar process is going on among Alzheimer Syndrome researchers. They still publish papers on amyloids and taus and stuff to block making them, despite it having been demonstrated to anybody's satisfaction that this is a dead end. They still approve those papers, and still teach and award doctorates. They even, somehow, got the FDA to approve an extraordinarily expensive drug that does nothing, but that Medicare will be obliged to subsidize. (At worst it's harmless? Must we go there?) In academia we are disinclined to nip apparent dead ends in the bud, because so often what some thought unpromising lines of work turned out to lead somewhere important. But when nobody is even trying anymore to get to anywhere important, it eventually comes time to pull the plug. The alternative is to end up with a department writing commentaries on commentaries on the writings of figures who were close to the Prophet.
- pa7x1 5y ago
  Quantum Gravity is relevant at an energy scale that is completely out of our current technical capabilities. That's hardly the fault of string theory or any other theory of quantum gravity. It's just a consequence of the fundamental constants of our universe and our technical capabilities at this point in time. String theory makes testable predictions, it is falsifiable. It's just not something we can falsify with our current technical means. That doesn't make the theory unscientific. Would Quantum Field Theory be unscientific if it had fallen in the hands of the ancient Greeks? The theory falsifiability is an intrinsic property of the theory, irrespective of our technical ability.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    > Would Quantum Field Theory be unscientific if it had fallen in the hands of the ancient Greeks? Yes. Falsifiability is not an abstract property. Something not, today, might be tomorrow. Today, idle speculation; tomorrow, maybe science. Gravitational frame dragging and gravitational waves were both speculative until recently. Both are implied by General Relativity, which had been tested in many other ways already, so they were far less speculative than strings. That one does not, to my knowledge, predict literally anything at all, and cannot, because the mathematics is still wholly intractable. Warp fields are speculation, but could become science or even engineering someday. I won't be holding my breath.
    - pa7x1 5y ago
      String theory predicts the existence of supersymmetric particles, predicts the exact number of dimensions of our universe (something that by the way no other previous theory is able to do). Correctly predicts the Black Hole thermodynamics (Hawking radiation, BH temperature and BH entropy) from microstate counting and gives quantum corrections to the semi-classical formula. Predicts a bunch of higher and higher energy particles in a tower whose mass ratios are well defined. They are essentially higher energy excitations of the fundamental modes of the string. So on and so forth. All this is testable and falsifiable, if we had the technical means to access the energies that are relevant for Quantum Gravity. In the meanwhile, scientists can keep trying to derive lower-energy consequences of the theory or devise smarter experiments that can allow us to test the consequences of the theory at the energy scales that are applicable to us.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        If, every time we look where the theory says and don't find any supersymmetric particles there, you say, oh well they must be somewhere else, that is no sort of prediction at all. It cannot be said to predict black hole numbers if those were known, and dictated which subset of the 1e500 possible string theories are still under consideration. Predicting a number of dimensions is no good if there is no slight indication of any extras at all, and no conceivable way to discover any. There is no circumstance in which no doubletalk can be conjured to prop up the empty tent. Deliver actually measurable consequences, or GTFO.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  > But so long as they are not predicting results of experiments, they are not doing science. I don't think we denizens of the mentioned link aggregator get to decide what is not science. And calculating that QED has a Landau pole at 10**286 eV is perfectly good science, even though no experiment will ever observe it. Also, Penrose just got a physics Nobel for theories about the interiors of black holes, which by definition can never be observed. If the Nobel committee says it's physics and you say it isn't, I'm going to have to believe the Nobel committee, I'm afraid.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Your Landau pole could be implied by a current QED, but if it has no discernable consequences, it is idle speculation. The committee that awards Nobels in Physics are identically the same individuals who are failing to do science anymore. If the Alzheimer's researchers get together and make up an award to give to Alzheimer's researchers, of course it will go to an amyloid chaser. In other words, you are using a circular argument: begging the question.
    - throwaway81523 5y ago
      Sounds good, we will have to put you in charge of everything. Besides Landau poles not being science, maybe you can also arrange that set theory isn't mathematics, that free verse isn't poetry, and that hip-hop isn't music. Let those cosmologists with no chance of actually observing the big bang go into hiding! We will show them a thing or two. Heh.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Physics, uniquely in your list, is about something outside itself, but you would prefer for it to be just like the others. Noted. The Alzheimer's amyloid plaques crowd is with you 100%.
aeternum 5y ago
Your logical fallacy is appeal to authority
raincom 5y ago
If one studies the history and philosophy of sciences, Woit's criticism is on the mark. Make predictions, and test them out. Or explain novel phenomena.
perl4ever 5y ago
I'd still rather read something called "not even wrong" than something called "less wrong".

ncmncm 5y ago

Yet, it is true. It is theoretically possible that the "string theory landscape" explorers are onto something. But so long as they are not predicting results of experiments, they are not doing science. Nobody is obliged to be a scientist; they could move over to the philosophy department, if it would take them. Or the mathematics department. Likewise, nobody is morally obliged to pay people claiming to be scientists to do something that is not science. But our institutions don't have an "in case of emergency break glass" red button, so these scientists no longer doing science still get to teach classes, attend conferences, and publish vacuous papers, and appear to be doing their job. They also get to award (or not award) doctorates, gatekeep journals and conferences, and control tenure-track appointments. A similar process is going on among Alzheimer Syndrome researchers. They still publish papers on amyloids and taus and stuff to block making them, despite it having been demonstrated to anybody's satisfaction that this is a dead end. They still approve those papers, and still teach and award doctorates. They even, somehow, got the FDA to approve an extraordinarily expensive drug that does nothing, but that Medicare will be obliged to subsidize. (At worst it's harmless? Must we go there?) In academia we are disinclined to nip apparent dead ends in the bud, because so often what some thought unpromising lines of work turned out to lead somewhere important. But when nobody is even trying anymore to get to anywhere important, it eventually comes time to pull the plug. The alternative is to end up with a department writing commentaries on commentaries on the writings of figures who were close to the Prophet.

pa7x1 5y ago
Quantum Gravity is relevant at an energy scale that is completely out of our current technical capabilities. That's hardly the fault of string theory or any other theory of quantum gravity. It's just a consequence of the fundamental constants of our universe and our technical capabilities at this point in time. String theory makes testable predictions, it is falsifiable. It's just not something we can falsify with our current technical means. That doesn't make the theory unscientific. Would Quantum Field Theory be unscientific if it had fallen in the hands of the ancient Greeks? The theory falsifiability is an intrinsic property of the theory, irrespective of our technical ability.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ncmncm 5y ago
  > Would Quantum Field Theory be unscientific if it had fallen in the hands of the ancient Greeks? Yes. Falsifiability is not an abstract property. Something not, today, might be tomorrow. Today, idle speculation; tomorrow, maybe science. Gravitational frame dragging and gravitational waves were both speculative until recently. Both are implied by General Relativity, which had been tested in many other ways already, so they were far less speculative than strings. That one does not, to my knowledge, predict literally anything at all, and cannot, because the mathematics is still wholly intractable. Warp fields are speculation, but could become science or even engineering someday. I won't be holding my breath.
  - pa7x1 5y ago
    String theory predicts the existence of supersymmetric particles, predicts the exact number of dimensions of our universe (something that by the way no other previous theory is able to do). Correctly predicts the Black Hole thermodynamics (Hawking radiation, BH temperature and BH entropy) from microstate counting and gives quantum corrections to the semi-classical formula. Predicts a bunch of higher and higher energy particles in a tower whose mass ratios are well defined. They are essentially higher energy excitations of the fundamental modes of the string. So on and so forth. All this is testable and falsifiable, if we had the technical means to access the energies that are relevant for Quantum Gravity. In the meanwhile, scientists can keep trying to derive lower-energy consequences of the theory or devise smarter experiments that can allow us to test the consequences of the theory at the energy scales that are applicable to us.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      If, every time we look where the theory says and don't find any supersymmetric particles there, you say, oh well they must be somewhere else, that is no sort of prediction at all. It cannot be said to predict black hole numbers if those were known, and dictated which subset of the 1e500 possible string theories are still under consideration. Predicting a number of dimensions is no good if there is no slight indication of any extras at all, and no conceivable way to discover any. There is no circumstance in which no doubletalk can be conjured to prop up the empty tent. Deliver actually measurable consequences, or GTFO.
throwaway81523 5y ago
> But so long as they are not predicting results of experiments, they are not doing science. I don't think we denizens of the mentioned link aggregator get to decide what is not science. And calculating that QED has a Landau pole at 10**286 eV is perfectly good science, even though no experiment will ever observe it. Also, Penrose just got a physics Nobel for theories about the interiors of black holes, which by definition can never be observed. If the Nobel committee says it's physics and you say it isn't, I'm going to have to believe the Nobel committee, I'm afraid.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Your Landau pole could be implied by a current QED, but if it has no discernable consequences, it is idle speculation. The committee that awards Nobels in Physics are identically the same individuals who are failing to do science anymore. If the Alzheimer's researchers get together and make up an award to give to Alzheimer's researchers, of course it will go to an amyloid chaser. In other words, you are using a circular argument: begging the question.
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    Sounds good, we will have to put you in charge of everything. Besides Landau poles not being science, maybe you can also arrange that set theory isn't mathematics, that free verse isn't poetry, and that hip-hop isn't music. Let those cosmologists with no chance of actually observing the big bang go into hiding! We will show them a thing or two. Heh.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Physics, uniquely in your list, is about something outside itself, but you would prefer for it to be just like the others. Noted. The Alzheimer's amyloid plaques crowd is with you 100%.

aeternum 5y ago

Your logical fallacy is appeal to authority

raincom 5y ago

If one studies the history and philosophy of sciences, Woit's criticism is on the mark. Make predictions, and test them out. Or explain novel phenomena.

perl4ever 5y ago

I'd still rather read something called "not even wrong" than something called "less wrong".