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You could say the same things about string theory. One could envision an alternate timeline where cellular automata is the darling of academia, and Dr. Steven R

You could say the same things about string theory. One could envision an alternate timeline where cellular automata is the darling of academia, and Dr. Steven Ramwolf is the lone iconoclast raving about D-branes.

leephillips 5y ago
People do say the exact same thing about string theory. They challenge it to show that it’s science. There may be some experiments in the not too distant future; we’ll see what happens. At least string theory makes some predictions and is relativistically correct.
- posix_me_less 5y ago
  > makes some predictions and is relativistically correct. Many of which are obviously wrong. We do not observe 11-dimensional world.
- dudeinjapan 5y ago
  String theory has been around since the late 1960s. To date, has it made a single prediction which was later experimentally found to true? (i.e. aside from "predicting" the existence of particles which were already known to physics)
  - dudeinjapan 5y ago
    (Edit: given the large umbrella it encompasses, I suppose you could consider things like AdS/CFT correspondence, where a direct "domain transform" with quantum field theory is proven, to be a useful tool that in some instances furthered QFT. But such results are scant given the enormous amount of brainpower allocated to string theory as a whole.)
  - leephillips 5y ago
    No. That’s why I said that people “challenge it to show that it’s science.” Why are you bringing up string theory as if I’m defending it?
    - dudeinjapan 5y ago
      I'm just suggesting that Wolfram's "theory" belongs in the same category as string theory. On some level it is probably a useful tool to understand something about science, say, beyond Deepak Chopra-esque woo-woo ("We are all energy, we are all vibrations", etc.) But it's not currently obvious that there's a there there.
      - leephillips 5y ago
        I think it’s worse in the sense that I alluded to when I mentioned “relativistically correct.”

leephillips 5y ago

People do say the exact same thing about string theory. They challenge it to show that it’s science. There may be some experiments in the not too distant future; we’ll see what happens. At least string theory makes some predictions and is relativistically correct.

posix_me_less 5y ago
> makes some predictions and is relativistically correct. Many of which are obviously wrong. We do not observe 11-dimensional world.
dudeinjapan 5y ago
String theory has been around since the late 1960s. To date, has it made a single prediction which was later experimentally found to true? (i.e. aside from "predicting" the existence of particles which were already known to physics)
- dudeinjapan 5y ago
  (Edit: given the large umbrella it encompasses, I suppose you could consider things like AdS/CFT correspondence, where a direct "domain transform" with quantum field theory is proven, to be a useful tool that in some instances furthered QFT. But such results are scant given the enormous amount of brainpower allocated to string theory as a whole.)
- leephillips 5y ago
  No. That’s why I said that people “challenge it to show that it’s science.” Why are you bringing up string theory as if I’m defending it?
  - dudeinjapan 5y ago
    I'm just suggesting that Wolfram's "theory" belongs in the same category as string theory. On some level it is probably a useful tool to understand something about science, say, beyond Deepak Chopra-esque woo-woo ("We are all energy, we are all vibrations", etc.) But it's not currently obvious that there's a there there.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      I think it’s worse in the sense that I alluded to when I mentioned “relativistically correct.”