Prior to reading Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, I was unfamiliar with the details, but under the assumption that the string theory is sound. Greene is one

Prior to reading Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, I was unfamiliar with the details, but under the assumption that the string theory is sound. Greene is one of its chief popularizers (as well as a minor researcher), and writes with great clarity on the topic. I enjoyed the book. Yet I ended up becoming agnostic on the string theory after reading it. There seem to be some genuine contributions to mathematics, but those are side products. The theory has yet to make any correct predictions regarding physics and our understanding of the universe, and it is likely completely unfalsifiable. To this layman, a lot of it seem like a bunch of extraordinarily smart people twisting their minds (and our conception of the universe) into a pretzel attempting to make post hoc explanations of existing phenomena.