12 ms·

20 Years of "Not Even Wrong"

283 points by chmaynard 3y ago

joshuahaglund 3y ago
https://archive.ph/2P7Vc https://archive.ph/2P7Vc because it's timing out for me
ilamont 3y ago
Can someone familiar with this area of academic research break down the trends he’s alluding to?
- pavlov 3y ago
  I think he’s talking about string theory.
- luc4sdreyer 3y ago
  > He is critical of string theory on the grounds that it lacks testable predictions and is promoted with public money despite its failures so far,[1] and has authored both scientific papers and popular polemics on this topic. His writings claim that excessive media attention and funding of this one particular mainstream endeavour, which he considers speculative, risks undermining public faith in the freedom of scientific research. His moderated weblog on string theory and other topics is titled "Not Even Wrong", a derogatory term for scientifically useless arguments coined by Wolfgang Pauli. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Woit#Criticism_of_string_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Woit#Criticism_of_string...
  - verisimi 3y ago
    I'm sure he is expressing a valid principle. By funding one area excessively, you can soon build up reams of scientific literature and interest, but this area needs have nothing or little to do with genuine scientific interest. Funding determines the interest. It's all about money unfortunately, even science.
    - logtempo 3y ago
      I had the same feeling doing a phd two years ago. I think there is an unpopular opinion in science about the limits of what we can look at and what is required to achieve that. My conclusion was that the requirements are an economy of infinite growth and a society based on consumption. I did a parallel in my mind between the idea that "knowledge will always grow" and "economy will always grow". The limits are heavily related to social stability/agreement, and the tools we can have given the money(=social and environmental)/physical constraints. I have the opinion that the FCC is the example of such bias: we don't really know what to look for, but we (the scientific community) have to survive so we'll build a political argument to keep getting funds. I think the proposal was during a severe heatwave, and I also though "where is the social goal in that science? What does it will bring to society? Do we really need to know that far those things?". I think it's at this moment that I started loosing motivation too.
  - perihelions 3y ago
    - "...and is promoted with public money despite its failures..." The amusing thing for me* is this is just coffee budgets for pen-and-paper theorists. What they say about academic disputes: the lower the stakes, the more intense the politics. *(Observing from a safe distance!)
    - pbmonster 3y ago
      > The amusing thing for me* is this is just coffee budgets for pen-and-paper theorists Unfortunately not. From his website [0], the extent of the grant funding involved is much more than just coffee budget: > The Black Hole Initiative that features this on its website: $16 million from the Templeton Foundation, $3.6 million from the Moore Foundation. > The Simons Collaboration on Celestial Holography: $8 million from the Simons Foundation. > NSF Grant: $400,000 from the NSF. > DOE Grant: $3.5 million from the DOE. This kind of money could fund a whole lot of other theory. Hell, it even could fund a lot of experiments (albeit not in high energy physics). [0] https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13770 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13770
      - smokel 3y ago
        The funding mentioned does not go directly to string theory research. Investments in quantum computing research are orders of magnitude larger, even in Europe alone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Flagship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Flagship Edit: Removed snark, add reference.
      - perihelions 3y ago
        In my view, those are very trivial amounts, for an entire subfield of research. I can think of individual federal grants no one on HN has heard of or cares about that are are larger than all of those put together, which are outright fraudulent—those are dime-a-dozen. Also, note that your first three examples aren't public money, rather private philanthropy. No one can speak against where Jim Simons gifts his billions (and in point of fact Simons is an expert in quantum field theory himself—no one's scammed him, if he's decided string theorists are worth donating to. He reads and understands the papers they write). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician) - "(albeit not in high energy physics)" It's a fair anchoring point, isn't it? It's the theory and experiment side of the same field. We're just spending 0.01% of the experimental budget on some (possibly wrong and possibly dead-end) theory ideas, and the coffee that produced them.
  - tunesmith 3y ago
    What is he in favor of? He seems to be criticizing both further experiments in string theory due to being not even wrong, and further experiments with the standard model, since it's either expensive or not getting anywhere. (I'm not a physicist and understand very little.)
    - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
      > What is he in favor of? See the category "Euclidean Twistor Unification" in his blog: > https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?cat=31 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?cat=31
      - auntienomen 3y ago
        It's not necessary to be in favor of anything, in order to criticize what's already out there. You can point out fatal flaws in an idea without needing to have an alternative in mind. Woit himself is working (pretty casually to my eyes) on some mathematical reformulations of the Standard Model. He's not advocating aggressively for these ideas, and I'm pretty sure if you asked him, he'd say there's no evidence that any one idea should dominate the research landscape the way string theory did. None of what exists out there is particularly compelling. (This is one of the reasons people worked so much on strings. It's the best of a bad lot.)
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  TLDR: String theory solve no new problem. There were hypes on what string theory can do. When they were proven wrong, they just come up another unverifiable shit and start the hype again.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    Personally, I think it is always good to have some people working on weird, unverifiable ideas. Presenting them as the only one truth, however, is a problem.
    - seanhunter 3y ago
      Agree but very much with your caveat. If you study the mathematics of some sort of abstract structure you are doing research in pure maths. That is a worthy and completely legitimate pursuit and a ton of stuff started life as pure abstract mathematical research and ended up having real-world benefits way down the line that noone could have forseen.[1] If on the other hand you say that abstract structure is a fundamental building block of the universe and, say, unifies the standard model with gravity etc but actually your theory isn't explaining anything observable I would say that isn't theoretical physics[2] but is just "making shit up". So far string theory has failed to produce any sort of verifiable prediction[3], so I just don't see how it's physics (you could say "yet" perhaps). I enjoyed the video "String Theory Lied to Us and Now Science Communication is Hard"[4] by Angela Collier, who is a computational astrophysicist[5], because it gives a sense for how these things impact other physicists and the popular perception of science. [1] And Ed Witten for example is without doubt a very impressive mathematician - he won the Fields medal. [2] Which is the science of matter, energy, space, time etc all the stuff which makes up the natural world. [3] In particular, the one that has been tried is supersymmetry and the LHC, as I understand it as a non-physicist, brought about an experimental result that called supersymmetric extensions of the standard model into serious doubt https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3068 https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3068 [4] https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E?si=FTC0sbs2ubxGyydZ https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E?si=FTC0sbs2ubxGyydZ [5] https://jila.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/group-files/2021-09/cv_collier.pdf https://jila.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/group-files/20...
    - 3y ago
- pseudolus 3y ago
  A short overview of the controversy "String Theory - A Controversy in Ten Dimensions", including the history and major players, is available at https://web.mit.edu/demoscience/StringTheory/index.html https://web.mit.edu/demoscience/StringTheory/index.html .
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  This paper (2012) seems to sum it up, though it assumes familiarity with trends in physics up to the origins of the standard model c. 1970: Reflections and Impressionistic Portrait at the Conference Frontiers Beyond the Standard Model, M. Shifman, FTPI, Oct. 2012 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.0004v1.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.0004v1.pdf It points to string theory having no predictive capabilities due to multiple-universe issues, we just happened to have evolved in a universe where the (randomly selected) parameters allow for element formation and life: > "Thus, there is no point in trying to understand the world order: the mass hierarchies, the smallness of the cosmological constant, the absence of the fourth generation, you name it. Nor such attempts will be meaningful in the future. All this is an environmental coincidence. Just take it as is and live happily ever after. This is nothing else than the anthropic principle in its extreme realization, with a religious (or philosophical, if you put it milder) flavor." > "Indeed, even if this is true, we will never know. All “extra” universes are causally disconnected from our, so there is no physical way to confirm their existence of non-existence in experiment. So, this part of the landscape paradigm is the act of belief in today’s string theory, not supported by any evidence, and not to be supported by evidence in the future."
fermigier 3y ago
(I'm not a theoretical physicist). 20 years ago, I read "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, as an introduction to string theory. I was initially impressed by the brilliance of the theories it presented. What really threw me for a loop, though, was realizing (as far as I understood or remember) that string theory isn't one neatly packaged theory. Instead, it's this colossal family of theories, with so many parameters that it's hard to make predictions, and to justify "why this one and not the other ones?". Then, over the last 20 years, I read the 3 following books, which confirmed my initial impression. - "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit, a deep-dive critique of string theory for the mathematically inclined. Woit's basically saying, "If we can't test it, can we even call it science?" - "The Trouble With Physics" by Lee Smolin, which zooms out a bit. Smolin's beef with string theory isn't just about the science; it's about how this obsession is hogging resources and blocking other potentially groundbreaking ideas (including, but not limited to, his own). Think of it as a mix of a science critique and an insider's look at the politics and sociology of physics. - "Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder, which asks if physicists' quest for beauty in equations and theories is leading them astray. This one's the most accessible, mixing in history, interviews, personal stories, and a bit of philosophy. All three books are good, so if you have to chose one: - Woit's book is for the math geeks. - Smolin's is for those who like a side of sociology with their science. - Hossenfelder's is for folks intrigued by the blend of science, philosophy, and human bias. Also worthwhile, IMHO, is Sabine's most recent take on string theory, as a youtube video: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/03/whatever-happened-to-string-theory.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/03/whatever-happened-t... / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRzQDyw5C3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRzQDyw5C3M
- irjustin 3y ago
  Thanks for above. As Woit mentioned, the video format is great and for guys like me. PBS Spacetime is where I go for a lot of "layman-with-the-lightest-touch-of-math"[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime [EDIT] Phewww reading those 2004 comments on those posts. Professors getting really heated for sure.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
octonion137 3y ago
On the flip side I always enjoyed seeing all these ideas get successfully applied in condensed matter such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_insulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_insulator
- noobermin 3y ago
  I think the response to this is then to just study condensed matter then.
  - octonion137 3y ago
    indubitably
  - StringHool 3y ago
    [flagged]
- radioactivist 3y ago
  While there certainly are ideas from string theory that have filtered down to CMP, topological insulators are not one of them.
  - octonion137 3y ago
    That's probably true and my association of the two is probably subjective since at the time I was learning about Chern-Simons and saw it used in both contexts https://www.math.purdue.edu/~ebkaufma/RMP.pdf https://www.math.purdue.edu/~ebkaufma/RMP.pdf
  - StringHool 3y ago
    Chern-Simons theory is a string theory.
cjfd 3y ago
When I was young I studied physics. The initial idea of string theory is kind of cute. It kind of answers the question what the quantum version is of a rubber band. But that does not really work out as a fundamental theory because it has to live in 24 dimensions, contains tachyons, and there are no fermions. To fix this people invented the fermionic string. Already at that point this seems a somewhat artificial thing to do. The thing is that ever since the question was posed it is still quite unclear how to bring general relativity and quantum field theory together. String theory was interesting for so long, I think, because it complicated enough to contains lots of interesting mathematics but not complicated enough to be completely intractable.
- bluGill 3y ago
  String theory had great marketing and so was able to convince politicians they would get answers in ten years if they just got money, which in turn meant those marketers had jobs. I call it marketing because regardless of the truth, a lot of money went into it for years with no useful results. Maybe a few more years of string theory research will discover it is right and makes some useful predictions - but so far it hasn't and most people outside have given up on it. (and it appears most in physics today expect it will never amount to anything - but since I'm not deep into physics that might be wrong)
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    None of the people involved in scientific funding decisions are politicians in the sense of being elected or caring primarily about public opinion. The pejorative you're looking for is "bureaucrat." :-) Although in most cases the ground-level decisions are made by peers (which means "professors.")
  - cjfd 3y ago
    Meh, I am not buying this. String theory is not very expensive. Picture a guy writing down formulas on a large piece of paper. How much does that cost? Not very much, really. And, at the same time, you also get teaching out of the same person. Experimental high energy physics is orders of magnitude more expensive.
jug 3y ago
One of those articles I'll upvote here but not reshare, because it's too niche in my social media presences and people won't read it. But damn, this stung because I think it reads true not only for a 66 year old but for a 40 year old as well. The mountains ahead both politically and scientifically seem insurmountable right now! There is a bittersweet beauty in this article though, in the spark that drives people to greatness all the way into old age, just out of a pure reason as childish curiosity.
beltsazar 3y ago
Edward Frenkel made a great analogy: > So first of all, correct, the beautiful ideas came out of string theory. But that was not the original promise of string theory. The original promise was to describe the physics of this universe, unify all forces of nature, the three forces, electromagnetic, strong and weak described by the standard model and quantum theory of gravity. This has not happened. And now we hear that actually was not such a big deal. It's actually such a big thing. We've learned so much more. > It's like, you know, I tried to think of a good analogy. It's like, remember Moses? He took Israelites out of Egypt. Mm hmm. And he told them that he will lead them to the promised land. Yes. So imagine Moses after 40 years of wandering in the desert, you would say, you know, guys, you know, this idea of a promised land is not such a big thing. Look how much we've learned. We've learned about the desert. We've learned so much about the sand. > [Interviewer: That's a great analogy.] > Who cares about the promised land? What do you think would people say to him? And yet here we are. This is called, by the way, you mentioned this expression, moving the goalposts. This is not moving goalposts. This is going to a different stadium. It's starting to play a different game. Like you used to play soccer at one stadium. Then you go to another stadium. You start playing baseball and you say, no, we are playing soccer. We're still playing soccer. Yes, yes, yes. Stating that your original goal is not meaningful. > It did not work out. It did not work out. How about just starting with that? It did not work out unequivocally, not by saying the next 10 years [it will]. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_oPMcvHbAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_oPMcvHbAc PS: It's probably one of the best podcasts I've ever watched. It made me realize the obvious thing: that scientists are also psychological humans, each of who has subjective personal preferences, even if they don't realize or admit them. Case study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_oPMcvHbAc&t=8712 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_oPMcvHbAc&t=8712
- xwowsersx 3y ago
  That is such a great analogy. Thanks for sharing.
- StringHool 3y ago
  You misunderstand. String theorie does all that. The problem is finding a vacuum of the 10^500 that reproduces the Standard model. No more no less.
noobermin 3y ago
I tried out for a group after the end of the first year of grad school that worked on the CMS detector at the LHC looking for SUSY signatures. The group was a well established group but felt super toxic: I attended a weekly meeting where the advisor demanded some analysis from a grad student and she literally froze up and started talking faster promising to finish it by the end of the week. As a part of the trying out period, they allowed us to skim one of their technical reports and they had I believe ~10+/-5 potential events matching their search for SUSY particles, this over the petabytes of data for a two or three years of the LHC runs at the time. At the time I really liked particle physics but I also liked essentially coding and thought I'd miss it, so I was conflicted. It didn't help this esteemed professor felt like such an jerk AND their search, despite all the sophistication of their search and the related physics chops, basically had a large "no" for an answer. I ended up chosing a smaller group doing computational laser-plasma physics. The CMS professor at the time retorted something along the lines of "someone shouldn't want to do particle physics and then do plasma physics, it's evidence that person isn't serious." Fast forward 10 years or so and I haven't regretted that decision. Not only is my pay much better doing this sort of thing but I really did nope out at the right time. I mean, I felt so smug about the noble prize being won by the attosecond researchers, one of whom had an office down the hall from our group. The same grad student who decided to bear the brunt of the CMS prof at the time justified the dearth of working in the group (although perhaps not the abuse, I don't know) as it would be potential "noble prize winning research." I feel I made the right bet at the time and don't regret it.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  I mean, good for you not choosing a toxic group but that's tied to the professor not the subject. Not sure why you brag about how smug you felt over the further misfortune of someone you know is suffering abuse...
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    GP is not responsible for the life decisions of other people. I read this as "I also saw a microcosm of this larger toxicity, and I'm glad I got out of it".
2-718-281-828 3y ago
eric weinstein said that edward witten is the dark lord of string theory choking off any progress in theoretical physics.
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  @downvoter: don't shoot the messenger ... i'm just telling you how it is \o/
- dav_Oz 3y ago
  Well, it's not that he is the dark lord but rather that he is so far ahead of the curve in the craft of mathematical modeling in physics (he won the Fields Medal) that he can easily solve a lot of actual mundane problems but he chooses not to. Incidentally this seems to be the legacy of String Theory after 50 years, a powerful tool for mathematical modeling in physics and not a direct road to the ToE. So, when you come up to him as a fellow theoretical physicist and criticize his "platonic" stance his reply would be - if he is bothered at all to answer: "Ah, so the thing you are working on, did you try ... gives essentially an elegant mathematical solution to your theoretical problem that you were trying to solve for months." Of course this is embedded in an institutional failing - namely funding throughout the 50 years. But as Planck - who found himself reluctantly in the middle of a turning point - remarked on how insurmountable institutions and the persons associated with it can become: Science progresses funeral by funeral. On this note: Ed Witten's dad a theoretical physicist himself, still lives at the ripe age of 102.
  - 2-718-281-828 3y ago
    Well, look who the cat dragged in ;)
r721 3y ago
Abstruse Goose webcomic on M-theory: https://web.archive.org/web/20110106032138/http://www.abstrusegoose.com/332 https://web.archive.org/web/20110106032138/http://www.abstru... (related Not Even Wrong post: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3365 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3365)
- raverbashing 3y ago
  Interesting, the Three Body problem series has a similar subplot
readingnews 3y ago
Reading between the lines, I see the great institutions are doing the same things the small universities that I worked at also do... do not admit failure. It is amazing that proverbially across campus in the psych or history or sociology departments, I bet they can tell the uni a thing or two about admitting failure and moving on, making you (or the institution) better. Truly I tell you, this makes me feel sad.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- VHRanger 3y ago
  Welcome to Planck's Principle![1] The view is that progress isn't because the established old guard changes opinion, it's because the next generation has better values. More soberly, we see this in other aspects of the economy. The famous China Shock study [2] looked at the effects from ramping up trade with China on rural factory towns in the US. The finding is dark: People who lost their living from "economic displacement" didn't move to a new city: they simply settled into their misery. However, the research shows their children do move to greener pastures. Last one: home technology and feminism [3]. In the first half of the 20th century, many technologies drastically lessened the household workload - refrigerator, indoor plumbing, washing machine, etc. The biggest effect was on the 2nd generation of women after WW2 - the women's children saw that they had more time, and started working en masse rather than aspiring to being homemakers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle 2. https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906 https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906
bondarchuk 3y ago
"the program discussed here" links to https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13770 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13770, where by far the biggest of the listed grants is "$16 million from the Templeton Foundation". Templeton Foundation is basically a religious organization, or well, they promote "the intersection of religion and science"... Unsurprising that intellectual honesty went out the window in that funding drive.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
PaulHoule 3y ago
I would disagree about "no frontiers" and where the frontiers are. The standard model is not complete in that we don't know what the mass term of the neutrino is, if it is Dirac or Majorana or some combination. There's the mysterious absence of the right-handed neutrino which is a good candidate for the "dark matter" particle. This is not "physics beyond the standard model" but "a missing piece of the standard model". There is at least one major secret inside the neutrino and Occam's razor makes that a good candidate for explaining the missing mass and maybe even the matter-antimatter asymmetry.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > I would disagree about "no frontiers" I don't see Woit saying that there are no frontiers. I see him saying that pushing the energy scale of our experiments higher, which is a frontier, is getting harder and harder, and leads to fewer and fewer discoveries--all the LHC has really done is confirm the Higgs and show zero evidence of supersymmetry. > The standard model is not complete I don't see Woit saying that the Standard Model is complete. He says it's "extremely successful", which is perfectly true. He also says there are "no hints from experiment about how to improve it", which is also perfectly true. Your statements about missing pieces of the Standard Model are also perfectly true, but the question is, what experiments do we do to figure them out? The LHC is not going to help us do that. Where else do we look? That's what Woit is talking about with "no hints from experiment".
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    If you assume neutrinos are interesting but the Higgs is boring you want a muon accelerator https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1572287 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1572287
  - tedajax 3y ago
    The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at Fermilab
- lumost 3y ago
  Newton could not have made testable predictions about quantum mechanics. There is a good argument to be made that we’ve explored terrestrially accessible energy scales for the time being. It’s hard to make theoretical progress around such a backdrop.
igtztorrero 3y ago
D. Gross, Nobel Prize winner in physics for his work on the standard model, became a formidable fighter for string theory, but recently said: "We don't know what we are talking about."
prof-dr-ir 3y ago
What Woit could never explain properly was why some of the very best theoretical physicists, who were entirely free to work on whatever they wanted, continued working on string theory for so long. I am pretty sure that all these people simply kept thinking that string theory was the most promising way to understand quantum gravity and even (to some extent) 'just' quantum field theory. So why do people decide to trust the opinions of Peter Woit over those of, say, Edward Witten?
- 11101010001100 3y ago
  Science doesn't care who does the science at the end of the day.
  - thereddaikon 3y ago
    The scientific method doesn't. But Academia certainly does and its foolish to think otherwise.
- SerpentJoe 3y ago
  Without getting into what it means to "trust" Woit or anyone else, whether we're talking about specialists or domain outsiders like myself: if experts disagree, it's up to them to explain why. I can't guess why their superior knowledge has led them to reject the line of argument unless they tell me.
  - prof-dr-ir 3y ago
    What I meant by "trust" is evidenced by this entire comment section, which is full of laypeople who appear convinced by Woit's arguments but seemingly do not wonder why the physicists in question were never swayed. Witten has given quite a lot of interviews over the years, but his more mainstream views are unlikely to make it to the front page.
    - SerpentJoe 3y ago
      I think mainstream views would deserve attention if they're directly answering these criticisms. If such point by point responses exist, and if they're compelling, then that's what we should be talking about right now.
oglop 3y ago
This blog changed my life. I was on a path of going into research in physics, and I remember somehow finding this blog as an undergrad. It was like I was a soviet reading western news. After another year of courses where I began to notice exactly what the author mentioned, string theorists controlling purse strings and research directions, I gave up and left. Finished in applied math and went into programming. Everything I've seen has made me happy I made the switch. I'm boggled that string theory is still as big in the public's mind as it was in the 90s. I'm boggled that instead of listening to Ed Witten himself, now I'm hearing a lot of requests for AI driven applications to help researchers "make sense" of things. I help build tools for them to do these things, but I'm nervous. It reminds me of maps from the not-so-great-ages. No new real detail or information added, no new territories or topographical data, but they certainly became more elaborate and difficult to actually use and understand...but boy did they _look_ impressive. Anyway that's awful and bad analogy is something I wonder about when i look at some modern physics...and math actually but i'm just some dumb guy. Maybe Grothendieck's ideas will save us, maybe we need another, either way it sure feels like we are in a dead zone intellecually and has for about 15-20 years to me. All that's to say, I loved this blog and it had a bigger influence on me and my mind than about 90% of the classes I paid a bunch of money for which I now think were a waste of time, capital, intellectual effort, and overall energy.
tim333 3y ago
I'm someone who once aspired to be a physicist but who dropped out when I couldn't figure it out. Most string theory always seemed kind of dumb. It started out fairly sensibly modeling the nuclear forces that keep protons from fly apart as them being connected by something string like. We now think gluons basically do that job. But having not got anywhere there it took on a life of it's own trying to be a theory of everything or something like that. Say you try to explain everything as strings and your bit of universe contains two electrons a mile apart. We know they repel. How does that work with strings? Do they ping billions of strings at each other trying to hit each other. It just doesn't seem to really work for anything other than grant applications. Maybe I'm too dumb to get it but I kind of suspect the theory is just wrong.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Those are unrelated uses of the word string. The first (nuclear physics) is still used today as a classical model of a quantum force. The latter (particles) ultimately grew out of the late work of Einstein.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Sometimes your youthful common sense appraisal of something in the face of overwhelming consensus with orthodoxy was always the right one, but it takes your whole life to be proven out. I try to think like, It's not that I think I know better. I know I don't have the facts. But I do have the ability to reason, and so you can explain a thing to me in a way that holds water, or fail to.
idlewords 3y ago
Woit's blog is a real treasure, and that extends to the comments section. Much of the technical material he writes about is far past my understanding, but he writes so cogently that it's still a pleasure to read when I'm far over my head. Like others here I also highly recommend his book of the same title.
SkyMarshal 3y ago
> I remain mystified why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to discuss complex issues of theoretical physics in the Twitter format, flooded with all sorts of random stupidity. Communicating science to the general public on public forums is extremely important, and probably should be considered a job requirement for all scientists. Several reasons: 1. Obviously it may affect how the public perceives science and its social and economic value, and thus how we vote, which can affect public funding for basic research necessary for advancing science. 2. More importantly, the antidote to chaos is reason and knowledge. We live in an era of increasing emotionalism, irrationality, and a flood of sophisticated disinformation strategically exploiting and amplifying those two to sew general chaos. Science communication on public forums gives the public an alternate perspective to consider. Without that alternative perspective, the battle is already lost. These things are necessary even if it requires suffering being flooded with all sorts of random stupidity.
wwarner 3y ago
There is more to Not Even Wrong than criticizing string theory, there are great posts about theoretical developments, and great great discussion in the comments. Woit’s own interests of twistors and spinors are very interesting to me and seem very promising.
- auntienomen 3y ago
  It's the best place I know of for math gossip.
Isle_of_View 3y ago
"Physicists are like lemons, you squeeze them dry then toss them away." --- Carlo Rubbia Started my Ph.D. in particle physics about the same year as the "first superstring revolution". Left the field post-PhD not due to any great foresight, but due to boredom. With the benefit of hindsight, I was lucky to have done so. As it turned out I was on the tail end of the "Golden Age" of particle physics. Woit is spot on. Find it remarkable that "string theory" and its various mutations still dominates the field after 4 decades of not being able to make testable predictions. One almost feels sorry for the current generation of "the best and the brightest" theorists who have devoted most, if not all, of their careers to supersymmetry and string theory. Their predecessors built the Standard Model [SM], whereas their work has not lead to anything. There are still open questions in the SM: neutrino mass, CP violation [a parametrization], QCD confinement [a Millennium Prize awaits], nature of the Higgs boson phase transition, why three generations, etc. Someone one asked me, surprised, why I would leave the field that "investigates the fundament forces of nature". My reply, "It reads better than it lives."
StringHool 3y ago
[flagged]
StringHool 3y ago
[flagged]
mitchellporter 3y ago
Someone needs to defend string theory here. For one thing, it really is the only step beyond quantum field theory (the theoretical framework of the standard model) that actually works mathematically. And it contains gravity, along with all other types of force and particle observed. So it is still the best candidate for a theory of everything. Part of what derailed string theory was actually an event in experimental particle physics - the discovery of the Higgs boson without any accompanying particles. Up until that point, theoretical physics had built up a certain paradigm for how to think about physics beyond the standard model. The nongravitational interactions would be unified in a "grand unified theory", and (slightly broken) supersymmetry would protect the Higgs boson mass from being massively increased by virtual particles. This paradigm is logically independent of string theory, but it was integrated into how string theorists think about reality, and in particular how "string phenomenologists" (the kind of people trying to identify which Calabi-Yau provides the shape of the extra dimensions) approach the task of applying string theory to reality. The experimental evidence now tells us that this paradigm is almost certainly wrong. But there is no consensus on what should replace it, and there is very little attempt to identify new paradigms that would naturally find a home in string theory. String phenomenologists are still mostly looking at supersymmetric grand unification, and the string theory elders are pursuing topics in quantum gravity which are unlikely to yield empirical payoffs any time soon. This comment section indicates that skeptics of string theory have won the battle for Internet public opinion. But smart money should bet on a revival of string theory once fruitful new paradigms are found.
masternuke 3y ago
20 years of wasted time. Woit's alternative to string is to try to approach unification from looking at some of the open questions in the Standard Model, particularly why weak charge is only possessed by left-handed spinors. But I just don't think he's serious enough about it, and there is the risk that - yes - superstring has dominated the scene for 40 years, yet the "chief defender of objectivity" for half that time has been Woit, who is too elitist to host any blue-skies open debates on short-cuts, anomalies and epicycles in the standard model (yes, its full of them), and how to simplify the mathematical framework to allow physical intuition to grasp new physical approaches. Instead, Woit seems - as a math instructor - to assume the standard model is 100% kosher (apart maybe from chiral electroweak symmetry breaking details). That's precisely where superstring goes wrong. If the correct theory is simply a logical superset which includes the standard model, then progress and unification would have been rapidly achieved 40 years ago. It's clearly more subtle than existing efforts have assumed. It's time to go back to basics and question everything.

283 points by chmaynard 3y ago

joshuahaglund 3y ago

https://archive.ph/2P7Vc https://archive.ph/2P7Vc because it's timing out for me

ilamont 3y ago

Can someone familiar with this area of academic research break down the trends he’s alluding to?

pavlov 3y ago
I think he’s talking about string theory.
luc4sdreyer 3y ago
> He is critical of string theory on the grounds that it lacks testable predictions and is promoted with public money despite its failures so far,[1] and has authored both scientific papers and popular polemics on this topic. His writings claim that excessive media attention and funding of this one particular mainstream endeavour, which he considers speculative, risks undermining public faith in the freedom of scientific research. His moderated weblog on string theory and other topics is titled "Not Even Wrong", a derogatory term for scientifically useless arguments coined by Wolfgang Pauli. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Woit#Criticism_of_string_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Woit#Criticism_of_string...
- verisimi 3y ago
  I'm sure he is expressing a valid principle. By funding one area excessively, you can soon build up reams of scientific literature and interest, but this area needs have nothing or little to do with genuine scientific interest. Funding determines the interest. It's all about money unfortunately, even science.
  - logtempo 3y ago
    I had the same feeling doing a phd two years ago. I think there is an unpopular opinion in science about the limits of what we can look at and what is required to achieve that. My conclusion was that the requirements are an economy of infinite growth and a society based on consumption. I did a parallel in my mind between the idea that "knowledge will always grow" and "economy will always grow". The limits are heavily related to social stability/agreement, and the tools we can have given the money(=social and environmental)/physical constraints. I have the opinion that the FCC is the example of such bias: we don't really know what to look for, but we (the scientific community) have to survive so we'll build a political argument to keep getting funds. I think the proposal was during a severe heatwave, and I also though "where is the social goal in that science? What does it will bring to society? Do we really need to know that far those things?". I think it's at this moment that I started loosing motivation too.
- perihelions 3y ago
  - "...and is promoted with public money despite its failures..." The amusing thing for me* is this is just coffee budgets for pen-and-paper theorists. What they say about academic disputes: the lower the stakes, the more intense the politics. *(Observing from a safe distance!)
  - pbmonster 3y ago
    > The amusing thing for me* is this is just coffee budgets for pen-and-paper theorists Unfortunately not. From his website [0], the extent of the grant funding involved is much more than just coffee budget: > The Black Hole Initiative that features this on its website: $16 million from the Templeton Foundation, $3.6 million from the Moore Foundation. > The Simons Collaboration on Celestial Holography: $8 million from the Simons Foundation. > NSF Grant: $400,000 from the NSF. > DOE Grant: $3.5 million from the DOE. This kind of money could fund a whole lot of other theory. Hell, it even could fund a lot of experiments (albeit not in high energy physics). [0] https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13770 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13770
    - smokel 3y ago
      The funding mentioned does not go directly to string theory research. Investments in quantum computing research are orders of magnitude larger, even in Europe alone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Flagship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Flagship Edit: Removed snark, add reference.
    - perihelions 3y ago
      In my view, those are very trivial amounts, for an entire subfield of research. I can think of individual federal grants no one on HN has heard of or cares about that are are larger than all of those put together, which are outright fraudulent—those are dime-a-dozen. Also, note that your first three examples aren't public money, rather private philanthropy. No one can speak against where Jim Simons gifts his billions (and in point of fact Simons is an expert in quantum field theory himself—no one's scammed him, if he's decided string theorists are worth donating to. He reads and understands the papers they write). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician) - "(albeit not in high energy physics)" It's a fair anchoring point, isn't it? It's the theory and experiment side of the same field. We're just spending 0.01% of the experimental budget on some (possibly wrong and possibly dead-end) theory ideas, and the coffee that produced them.
- tunesmith 3y ago
  What is he in favor of? He seems to be criticizing both further experiments in string theory due to being not even wrong, and further experiments with the standard model, since it's either expensive or not getting anywhere. (I'm not a physicist and understand very little.)
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > What is he in favor of? See the category "Euclidean Twistor Unification" in his blog: > https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?cat=31 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?cat=31
    - auntienomen 3y ago
      It's not necessary to be in favor of anything, in order to criticize what's already out there. You can point out fatal flaws in an idea without needing to have an alternative in mind. Woit himself is working (pretty casually to my eyes) on some mathematical reformulations of the Standard Model. He's not advocating aggressively for these ideas, and I'm pretty sure if you asked him, he'd say there's no evidence that any one idea should dominate the research landscape the way string theory did. None of what exists out there is particularly compelling. (This is one of the reasons people worked so much on strings. It's the best of a bad lot.)
j16sdiz 3y ago
TLDR: String theory solve no new problem. There were hypes on what string theory can do. When they were proven wrong, they just come up another unverifiable shit and start the hype again.
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  Personally, I think it is always good to have some people working on weird, unverifiable ideas. Presenting them as the only one truth, however, is a problem.
  - seanhunter 3y ago
    Agree but very much with your caveat. If you study the mathematics of some sort of abstract structure you are doing research in pure maths. That is a worthy and completely legitimate pursuit and a ton of stuff started life as pure abstract mathematical research and ended up having real-world benefits way down the line that noone could have forseen.[1] If on the other hand you say that abstract structure is a fundamental building block of the universe and, say, unifies the standard model with gravity etc but actually your theory isn't explaining anything observable I would say that isn't theoretical physics[2] but is just "making shit up". So far string theory has failed to produce any sort of verifiable prediction[3], so I just don't see how it's physics (you could say "yet" perhaps). I enjoyed the video "String Theory Lied to Us and Now Science Communication is Hard"[4] by Angela Collier, who is a computational astrophysicist[5], because it gives a sense for how these things impact other physicists and the popular perception of science. [1] And Ed Witten for example is without doubt a very impressive mathematician - he won the Fields medal. [2] Which is the science of matter, energy, space, time etc all the stuff which makes up the natural world. [3] In particular, the one that has been tried is supersymmetry and the LHC, as I understand it as a non-physicist, brought about an experimental result that called supersymmetric extensions of the standard model into serious doubt https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3068 https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3068 [4] https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E?si=FTC0sbs2ubxGyydZ https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E?si=FTC0sbs2ubxGyydZ [5] https://jila.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/group-files/2021-09/cv_collier.pdf https://jila.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/group-files/20...
  - 3y ago
pseudolus 3y ago
A short overview of the controversy "String Theory - A Controversy in Ten Dimensions", including the history and major players, is available at https://web.mit.edu/demoscience/StringTheory/index.html https://web.mit.edu/demoscience/StringTheory/index.html .
photochemsyn 3y ago
This paper (2012) seems to sum it up, though it assumes familiarity with trends in physics up to the origins of the standard model c. 1970: Reflections and Impressionistic Portrait at the Conference Frontiers Beyond the Standard Model, M. Shifman, FTPI, Oct. 2012 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.0004v1.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.0004v1.pdf It points to string theory having no predictive capabilities due to multiple-universe issues, we just happened to have evolved in a universe where the (randomly selected) parameters allow for element formation and life: > "Thus, there is no point in trying to understand the world order: the mass hierarchies, the smallness of the cosmological constant, the absence of the fourth generation, you name it. Nor such attempts will be meaningful in the future. All this is an environmental coincidence. Just take it as is and live happily ever after. This is nothing else than the anthropic principle in its extreme realization, with a religious (or philosophical, if you put it milder) flavor." > "Indeed, even if this is true, we will never know. All “extra” universes are causally disconnected from our, so there is no physical way to confirm their existence of non-existence in experiment. So, this part of the landscape paradigm is the act of belief in today’s string theory, not supported by any evidence, and not to be supported by evidence in the future."

fermigier 3y ago

(I'm not a theoretical physicist). 20 years ago, I read "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, as an introduction to string theory. I was initially impressed by the brilliance of the theories it presented. What really threw me for a loop, though, was realizing (as far as I understood or remember) that string theory isn't one neatly packaged theory. Instead, it's this colossal family of theories, with so many parameters that it's hard to make predictions, and to justify "why this one and not the other ones?". Then, over the last 20 years, I read the 3 following books, which confirmed my initial impression. - "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit, a deep-dive critique of string theory for the mathematically inclined. Woit's basically saying, "If we can't test it, can we even call it science?" - "The Trouble With Physics" by Lee Smolin, which zooms out a bit. Smolin's beef with string theory isn't just about the science; it's about how this obsession is hogging resources and blocking other potentially groundbreaking ideas (including, but not limited to, his own). Think of it as a mix of a science critique and an insider's look at the politics and sociology of physics. - "Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder, which asks if physicists' quest for beauty in equations and theories is leading them astray. This one's the most accessible, mixing in history, interviews, personal stories, and a bit of philosophy. All three books are good, so if you have to chose one: - Woit's book is for the math geeks. - Smolin's is for those who like a side of sociology with their science. - Hossenfelder's is for folks intrigued by the blend of science, philosophy, and human bias. Also worthwhile, IMHO, is Sabine's most recent take on string theory, as a youtube video: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/03/whatever-happened-to-string-theory.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/03/whatever-happened-t... / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRzQDyw5C3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRzQDyw5C3M

irjustin 3y ago
Thanks for above. As Woit mentioned, the video format is great and for guys like me. PBS Spacetime is where I go for a lot of "layman-with-the-lightest-touch-of-math"[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime [EDIT] Phewww reading those 2004 comments on those posts. Professors getting really heated for sure.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago

octonion137 3y ago

On the flip side I always enjoyed seeing all these ideas get successfully applied in condensed matter such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_insulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_insulator

noobermin 3y ago
I think the response to this is then to just study condensed matter then.
- octonion137 3y ago
  indubitably
- StringHool 3y ago
  [flagged]
radioactivist 3y ago
While there certainly are ideas from string theory that have filtered down to CMP, topological insulators are not one of them.
- octonion137 3y ago
  That's probably true and my association of the two is probably subjective since at the time I was learning about Chern-Simons and saw it used in both contexts https://www.math.purdue.edu/~ebkaufma/RMP.pdf https://www.math.purdue.edu/~ebkaufma/RMP.pdf
- StringHool 3y ago
  Chern-Simons theory is a string theory.

cjfd 3y ago

When I was young I studied physics. The initial idea of string theory is kind of cute. It kind of answers the question what the quantum version is of a rubber band. But that does not really work out as a fundamental theory because it has to live in 24 dimensions, contains tachyons, and there are no fermions. To fix this people invented the fermionic string. Already at that point this seems a somewhat artificial thing to do. The thing is that ever since the question was posed it is still quite unclear how to bring general relativity and quantum field theory together. String theory was interesting for so long, I think, because it complicated enough to contains lots of interesting mathematics but not complicated enough to be completely intractable.

bluGill 3y ago
String theory had great marketing and so was able to convince politicians they would get answers in ten years if they just got money, which in turn meant those marketers had jobs. I call it marketing because regardless of the truth, a lot of money went into it for years with no useful results. Maybe a few more years of string theory research will discover it is right and makes some useful predictions - but so far it hasn't and most people outside have given up on it. (and it appears most in physics today expect it will never amount to anything - but since I'm not deep into physics that might be wrong)
- whatshisface 3y ago
  None of the people involved in scientific funding decisions are politicians in the sense of being elected or caring primarily about public opinion. The pejorative you're looking for is "bureaucrat." :-) Although in most cases the ground-level decisions are made by peers (which means "professors.")
- cjfd 3y ago
  Meh, I am not buying this. String theory is not very expensive. Picture a guy writing down formulas on a large piece of paper. How much does that cost? Not very much, really. And, at the same time, you also get teaching out of the same person. Experimental high energy physics is orders of magnitude more expensive.

jug 3y ago

One of those articles I'll upvote here but not reshare, because it's too niche in my social media presences and people won't read it. But damn, this stung because I think it reads true not only for a 66 year old but for a 40 year old as well. The mountains ahead both politically and scientifically seem insurmountable right now! There is a bittersweet beauty in this article though, in the spark that drives people to greatness all the way into old age, just out of a pure reason as childish curiosity.

beltsazar 3y ago

Edward Frenkel made a great analogy: > So first of all, correct, the beautiful ideas came out of string theory. But that was not the original promise of string theory. The original promise was to describe the physics of this universe, unify all forces of nature, the three forces, electromagnetic, strong and weak described by the standard model and quantum theory of gravity. This has not happened. And now we hear that actually was not such a big deal. It's actually such a big thing. We've learned so much more. > It's like, you know, I tried to think of a good analogy. It's like, remember Moses? He took Israelites out of Egypt. Mm hmm. And he told them that he will lead them to the promised land. Yes. So imagine Moses after 40 years of wandering in the desert, you would say, you know, guys, you know, this idea of a promised land is not such a big thing. Look how much we've learned. We've learned about the desert. We've learned so much about the sand. > [Interviewer: That's a great analogy.] > Who cares about the promised land? What do you think would people say to him? And yet here we are. This is called, by the way, you mentioned this expression, moving the goalposts. This is not moving goalposts. This is going to a different stadium. It's starting to play a different game. Like you used to play soccer at one stadium. Then you go to another stadium. You start playing baseball and you say, no, we are playing soccer. We're still playing soccer. Yes, yes, yes. Stating that your original goal is not meaningful. > It did not work out. It did not work out. How about just starting with that? It did not work out unequivocally, not by saying the next 10 years [it will]. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_oPMcvHbAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_oPMcvHbAc PS: It's probably one of the best podcasts I've ever watched. It made me realize the obvious thing: that scientists are also psychological humans, each of who has subjective personal preferences, even if they don't realize or admit them. Case study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_oPMcvHbAc&t=8712 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_oPMcvHbAc&t=8712

xwowsersx 3y ago
That is such a great analogy. Thanks for sharing.
StringHool 3y ago
You misunderstand. String theorie does all that. The problem is finding a vacuum of the 10^500 that reproduces the Standard model. No more no less.

noobermin 3y ago

I tried out for a group after the end of the first year of grad school that worked on the CMS detector at the LHC looking for SUSY signatures. The group was a well established group but felt super toxic: I attended a weekly meeting where the advisor demanded some analysis from a grad student and she literally froze up and started talking faster promising to finish it by the end of the week. As a part of the trying out period, they allowed us to skim one of their technical reports and they had I believe ~10+/-5 potential events matching their search for SUSY particles, this over the petabytes of data for a two or three years of the LHC runs at the time. At the time I really liked particle physics but I also liked essentially coding and thought I'd miss it, so I was conflicted. It didn't help this esteemed professor felt like such an jerk AND their search, despite all the sophistication of their search and the related physics chops, basically had a large "no" for an answer. I ended up chosing a smaller group doing computational laser-plasma physics. The CMS professor at the time retorted something along the lines of "someone shouldn't want to do particle physics and then do plasma physics, it's evidence that person isn't serious." Fast forward 10 years or so and I haven't regretted that decision. Not only is my pay much better doing this sort of thing but I really did nope out at the right time. I mean, I felt so smug about the noble prize being won by the attosecond researchers, one of whom had an office down the hall from our group. The same grad student who decided to bear the brunt of the CMS prof at the time justified the dearth of working in the group (although perhaps not the abuse, I don't know) as it would be potential "noble prize winning research." I feel I made the right bet at the time and don't regret it.

SiempreViernes 3y ago
I mean, good for you not choosing a toxic group but that's tied to the professor not the subject. Not sure why you brag about how smug you felt over the further misfortune of someone you know is suffering abuse...
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  GP is not responsible for the life decisions of other people. I read this as "I also saw a microcosm of this larger toxicity, and I'm glad I got out of it".

2-718-281-828 3y ago

eric weinstein said that edward witten is the dark lord of string theory choking off any progress in theoretical physics.

2-718-281-828 3y ago
@downvoter: don't shoot the messenger ... i'm just telling you how it is \o/
dav_Oz 3y ago
Well, it's not that he is the dark lord but rather that he is so far ahead of the curve in the craft of mathematical modeling in physics (he won the Fields Medal) that he can easily solve a lot of actual mundane problems but he chooses not to. Incidentally this seems to be the legacy of String Theory after 50 years, a powerful tool for mathematical modeling in physics and not a direct road to the ToE. So, when you come up to him as a fellow theoretical physicist and criticize his "platonic" stance his reply would be - if he is bothered at all to answer: "Ah, so the thing you are working on, did you try ... gives essentially an elegant mathematical solution to your theoretical problem that you were trying to solve for months." Of course this is embedded in an institutional failing - namely funding throughout the 50 years. But as Planck - who found himself reluctantly in the middle of a turning point - remarked on how insurmountable institutions and the persons associated with it can become: Science progresses funeral by funeral. On this note: Ed Witten's dad a theoretical physicist himself, still lives at the ripe age of 102.
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  Well, look who the cat dragged in ;)

r721 3y ago

Abstruse Goose webcomic on M-theory: https://web.archive.org/web/20110106032138/http://www.abstrusegoose.com/332 https://web.archive.org/web/20110106032138/http://www.abstru... (related Not Even Wrong post: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3365 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3365)

raverbashing 3y ago
Interesting, the Three Body problem series has a similar subplot

readingnews 3y ago

Reading between the lines, I see the great institutions are doing the same things the small universities that I worked at also do... do not admit failure. It is amazing that proverbially across campus in the psych or history or sociology departments, I bet they can tell the uni a thing or two about admitting failure and moving on, making you (or the institution) better. Truly I tell you, this makes me feel sad.

deleted 3y ago
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VHRanger 3y ago
Welcome to Planck's Principle![1] The view is that progress isn't because the established old guard changes opinion, it's because the next generation has better values. More soberly, we see this in other aspects of the economy. The famous China Shock study [2] looked at the effects from ramping up trade with China on rural factory towns in the US. The finding is dark: People who lost their living from "economic displacement" didn't move to a new city: they simply settled into their misery. However, the research shows their children do move to greener pastures. Last one: home technology and feminism [3]. In the first half of the 20th century, many technologies drastically lessened the household workload - refrigerator, indoor plumbing, washing machine, etc. The biggest effect was on the 2nd generation of women after WW2 - the women's children saw that they had more time, and started working en masse rather than aspiring to being homemakers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle 2. https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906 https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906

bondarchuk 3y ago

"the program discussed here" links to https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13770 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13770, where by far the biggest of the listed grants is "$16 million from the Templeton Foundation". Templeton Foundation is basically a religious organization, or well, they promote "the intersection of religion and science"... Unsurprising that intellectual honesty went out the window in that funding drive.

deleted 3y ago
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PaulHoule 3y ago

I would disagree about "no frontiers" and where the frontiers are. The standard model is not complete in that we don't know what the mass term of the neutrino is, if it is Dirac or Majorana or some combination. There's the mysterious absence of the right-handed neutrino which is a good candidate for the "dark matter" particle. This is not "physics beyond the standard model" but "a missing piece of the standard model". There is at least one major secret inside the neutrino and Occam's razor makes that a good candidate for explaining the missing mass and maybe even the matter-antimatter asymmetry.

pdonis 3y ago
> I would disagree about "no frontiers" I don't see Woit saying that there are no frontiers. I see him saying that pushing the energy scale of our experiments higher, which is a frontier, is getting harder and harder, and leads to fewer and fewer discoveries--all the LHC has really done is confirm the Higgs and show zero evidence of supersymmetry. > The standard model is not complete I don't see Woit saying that the Standard Model is complete. He says it's "extremely successful", which is perfectly true. He also says there are "no hints from experiment about how to improve it", which is also perfectly true. Your statements about missing pieces of the Standard Model are also perfectly true, but the question is, what experiments do we do to figure them out? The LHC is not going to help us do that. Where else do we look? That's what Woit is talking about with "no hints from experiment".
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  If you assume neutrinos are interesting but the Higgs is boring you want a muon accelerator https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1572287 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1572287
- tedajax 3y ago
  The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at Fermilab
lumost 3y ago
Newton could not have made testable predictions about quantum mechanics. There is a good argument to be made that we’ve explored terrestrially accessible energy scales for the time being. It’s hard to make theoretical progress around such a backdrop.

igtztorrero 3y ago

D. Gross, Nobel Prize winner in physics for his work on the standard model, became a formidable fighter for string theory, but recently said: "We don't know what we are talking about."

prof-dr-ir 3y ago

What Woit could never explain properly was why some of the very best theoretical physicists, who were entirely free to work on whatever they wanted, continued working on string theory for so long. I am pretty sure that all these people simply kept thinking that string theory was the most promising way to understand quantum gravity and even (to some extent) 'just' quantum field theory. So why do people decide to trust the opinions of Peter Woit over those of, say, Edward Witten?

11101010001100 3y ago
Science doesn't care who does the science at the end of the day.
- thereddaikon 3y ago
  The scientific method doesn't. But Academia certainly does and its foolish to think otherwise.
SerpentJoe 3y ago
Without getting into what it means to "trust" Woit or anyone else, whether we're talking about specialists or domain outsiders like myself: if experts disagree, it's up to them to explain why. I can't guess why their superior knowledge has led them to reject the line of argument unless they tell me.
- prof-dr-ir 3y ago
  What I meant by "trust" is evidenced by this entire comment section, which is full of laypeople who appear convinced by Woit's arguments but seemingly do not wonder why the physicists in question were never swayed. Witten has given quite a lot of interviews over the years, but his more mainstream views are unlikely to make it to the front page.
  - SerpentJoe 3y ago
    I think mainstream views would deserve attention if they're directly answering these criticisms. If such point by point responses exist, and if they're compelling, then that's what we should be talking about right now.

oglop 3y ago

This blog changed my life. I was on a path of going into research in physics, and I remember somehow finding this blog as an undergrad. It was like I was a soviet reading western news. After another year of courses where I began to notice exactly what the author mentioned, string theorists controlling purse strings and research directions, I gave up and left. Finished in applied math and went into programming. Everything I've seen has made me happy I made the switch. I'm boggled that string theory is still as big in the public's mind as it was in the 90s. I'm boggled that instead of listening to Ed Witten himself, now I'm hearing a lot of requests for AI driven applications to help researchers "make sense" of things. I help build tools for them to do these things, but I'm nervous. It reminds me of maps from the not-so-great-ages. No new real detail or information added, no new territories or topographical data, but they certainly became more elaborate and difficult to actually use and understand...but boy did they _look_ impressive. Anyway that's awful and bad analogy is something I wonder about when i look at some modern physics...and math actually but i'm just some dumb guy. Maybe Grothendieck's ideas will save us, maybe we need another, either way it sure feels like we are in a dead zone intellecually and has for about 15-20 years to me. All that's to say, I loved this blog and it had a bigger influence on me and my mind than about 90% of the classes I paid a bunch of money for which I now think were a waste of time, capital, intellectual effort, and overall energy.

tim333 3y ago

I'm someone who once aspired to be a physicist but who dropped out when I couldn't figure it out. Most string theory always seemed kind of dumb. It started out fairly sensibly modeling the nuclear forces that keep protons from fly apart as them being connected by something string like. We now think gluons basically do that job. But having not got anywhere there it took on a life of it's own trying to be a theory of everything or something like that. Say you try to explain everything as strings and your bit of universe contains two electrons a mile apart. We know they repel. How does that work with strings? Do they ping billions of strings at each other trying to hit each other. It just doesn't seem to really work for anything other than grant applications. Maybe I'm too dumb to get it but I kind of suspect the theory is just wrong.

whatshisface 3y ago
Those are unrelated uses of the word string. The first (nuclear physics) is still used today as a classical model of a quantum force. The latter (particles) ultimately grew out of the late work of Einstein.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
Sometimes your youthful common sense appraisal of something in the face of overwhelming consensus with orthodoxy was always the right one, but it takes your whole life to be proven out. I try to think like, It's not that I think I know better. I know I don't have the facts. But I do have the ability to reason, and so you can explain a thing to me in a way that holds water, or fail to.

idlewords 3y ago

Woit's blog is a real treasure, and that extends to the comments section. Much of the technical material he writes about is far past my understanding, but he writes so cogently that it's still a pleasure to read when I'm far over my head. Like others here I also highly recommend his book of the same title.

SkyMarshal 3y ago

> I remain mystified why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to discuss complex issues of theoretical physics in the Twitter format, flooded with all sorts of random stupidity. Communicating science to the general public on public forums is extremely important, and probably should be considered a job requirement for all scientists. Several reasons: 1. Obviously it may affect how the public perceives science and its social and economic value, and thus how we vote, which can affect public funding for basic research necessary for advancing science. 2. More importantly, the antidote to chaos is reason and knowledge. We live in an era of increasing emotionalism, irrationality, and a flood of sophisticated disinformation strategically exploiting and amplifying those two to sew general chaos. Science communication on public forums gives the public an alternate perspective to consider. Without that alternative perspective, the battle is already lost. These things are necessary even if it requires suffering being flooded with all sorts of random stupidity.

wwarner 3y ago

There is more to Not Even Wrong than criticizing string theory, there are great posts about theoretical developments, and great great discussion in the comments. Woit’s own interests of twistors and spinors are very interesting to me and seem very promising.

auntienomen 3y ago
It's the best place I know of for math gossip.

Isle_of_View 3y ago

"Physicists are like lemons, you squeeze them dry then toss them away." --- Carlo Rubbia Started my Ph.D. in particle physics about the same year as the "first superstring revolution". Left the field post-PhD not due to any great foresight, but due to boredom. With the benefit of hindsight, I was lucky to have done so. As it turned out I was on the tail end of the "Golden Age" of particle physics. Woit is spot on. Find it remarkable that "string theory" and its various mutations still dominates the field after 4 decades of not being able to make testable predictions. One almost feels sorry for the current generation of "the best and the brightest" theorists who have devoted most, if not all, of their careers to supersymmetry and string theory. Their predecessors built the Standard Model [SM], whereas their work has not lead to anything. There are still open questions in the SM: neutrino mass, CP violation [a parametrization], QCD confinement [a Millennium Prize awaits], nature of the Higgs boson phase transition, why three generations, etc. Someone one asked me, surprised, why I would leave the field that "investigates the fundament forces of nature". My reply, "It reads better than it lives."

StringHool 3y ago

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StringHool 3y ago

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mitchellporter 3y ago

Someone needs to defend string theory here. For one thing, it really is the only step beyond quantum field theory (the theoretical framework of the standard model) that actually works mathematically. And it contains gravity, along with all other types of force and particle observed. So it is still the best candidate for a theory of everything. Part of what derailed string theory was actually an event in experimental particle physics - the discovery of the Higgs boson without any accompanying particles. Up until that point, theoretical physics had built up a certain paradigm for how to think about physics beyond the standard model. The nongravitational interactions would be unified in a "grand unified theory", and (slightly broken) supersymmetry would protect the Higgs boson mass from being massively increased by virtual particles. This paradigm is logically independent of string theory, but it was integrated into how string theorists think about reality, and in particular how "string phenomenologists" (the kind of people trying to identify which Calabi-Yau provides the shape of the extra dimensions) approach the task of applying string theory to reality. The experimental evidence now tells us that this paradigm is almost certainly wrong. But there is no consensus on what should replace it, and there is very little attempt to identify new paradigms that would naturally find a home in string theory. String phenomenologists are still mostly looking at supersymmetric grand unification, and the string theory elders are pursuing topics in quantum gravity which are unlikely to yield empirical payoffs any time soon. This comment section indicates that skeptics of string theory have won the battle for Internet public opinion. But smart money should bet on a revival of string theory once fruitful new paradigms are found.

masternuke 3y ago

20 years of wasted time. Woit's alternative to string is to try to approach unification from looking at some of the open questions in the Standard Model, particularly why weak charge is only possessed by left-handed spinors. But I just don't think he's serious enough about it, and there is the risk that - yes - superstring has dominated the scene for 40 years, yet the "chief defender of objectivity" for half that time has been Woit, who is too elitist to host any blue-skies open debates on short-cuts, anomalies and epicycles in the standard model (yes, its full of them), and how to simplify the mathematical framework to allow physical intuition to grasp new physical approaches. Instead, Woit seems - as a math instructor - to assume the standard model is 100% kosher (apart maybe from chiral electroweak symmetry breaking details). That's precisely where superstring goes wrong. If the correct theory is simply a logical superset which includes the standard model, then progress and unification would have been rapidly achieved 40 years ago. It's clearly more subtle than existing efforts have assumed. It's time to go back to basics and question everything.