Editing Ed Witten (section)

=== 2024 ===

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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1828104395000819753
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Many of you will be shocked by my IV. Which is perhaps why I asked for three…

IV) I would choose [[String Theory]] or the Amplitudes / Double Copy approach. 

At least the String people are energized by the fact that the math is real even when the physics is fake. And at least the double copy people have a mystery connecting [[General Relativity|GR]] to the [[Standard Model|SM]]. 

B) As to who I find interesting. Anyone going it alone to follow a hunch, but who knows what [[General Relativity|GR]] and the [[Standard Model|SM]] are. Mavericks, not cranks. 

Woit, Lisi, Deutsche, Wolfram, myself and Barbour are all outside of purely traditional structures. Oppenheim and others are in such structures but still mavericks. I wish Sabine had a theory that I knew of. But I am not aware of one. 

The observation I would make is that being a professor is a double edged sword. Outside the Professorate it is almost impossible to function from isolation and deprivation. Inside, you get captured by a constant set of pressures to conform to things you know are sapping your vitality. And you go into angry denial “I do whatever I want as a professor! I just happen to believe in this large program which is known not to work but gives me grants and summer stipend.”

Right now, I would bring those mavericks together with the most open of the professorate and steelman/catalog where those individual programs are in their trajectories. Duh. 

There are really fewer than 10 of them. This is absolutely obvious. It is cheap and would take almost no resources. It does not happen simply for reasons of political economy. There is no other reason not to do it.

As for who excites me most (myself excluded):

Nima Arkani Hamed</br>
Frank Wilczek</br>
Peter Woit</br>
John Baez</br>
[[Ed Witten]]</br>
Luis Alvarez Gaume</br>
[[Dan Freed]]</br>
Jose Figueroa O’Farril

And two others I will leave nameless for a top 10.

———

So that is my take. It wasn’t a gotcha. 

If all we can do is bemoan the state of physics, we need to change our focus. 

Yes I expect to be savaged. For some reason, saying anything positive creates anger. Bring it. 

Thanks for your time. As always.
🙏
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|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1828098295492915708
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=After seeing my friend @skdh say what is wrong with theoretical physics, I asked her what would theoretical physics done right look like. Specifically, which general approaches and which theorists she was most excited about. 

Her answer is in the quote tweet. 

The question was not a gotcha question so I will try to answer it myself below.

I will say that I find her answer at turns both expected and shocking. There is very little going on, but there is not nothing. And if she is not excited by anything, that’s an amazing state of affairs. 

Here is my response to the same question below. Which many may not expect or accept.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1828019281168109819
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=Eric, I am still saying the same thing I said in "Lost in Math" because the situation is still the same. 

Q1: Not sure whether you are asking for strategies or topics. For what strategies are concerned: necessity, consistency, phenomenology. For what topics are concerned: Quantum measurements, quantum gravity, dark matter. So yes, dark matter... but don't invent unnecessary details, hence my misgiving about the figure. The entire figure is basically screaming that theorists are inventing loads of unnecessarily contrived and useless theories.

Q2: can't think of anyone, sorry
|timestamp=10:38 AM · Aug 26, 2024
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|timestamp=3:52 PM · Aug 26, 2024
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{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
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|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=A) The three most promising lines of attack in fundamental physics. This is likely to confuse people who think in terms of “the strong community”, “the amplitudes program”, “the LQG community”. These are the “Team Sports” branches of attack. And team players really only recognize other teams which is a MASSIVE bias. That is why [[String Theory|String Theorists]] view [[Quantum Gravity|Loop Quantum Gravity]] as their hand chosen rigal. It is a team that they believe doesn’t challenge them; a partner to dunk on if you will.

For my money, the true rivals are not teams. They are NOT communities. 

I). Spinorial/Clifford/Exceptional physics. This is almost never broken out. 

The idea here is that many of us believe that there is way more information in Spinorial physics of the particle spectrum of the Standard Model than has been used. In particular the D5 Dynkin diagram GUT is the missed off-ramp.

In this generalized setting, Peter Woit of @notevenwrong, Roger Penrose, Myself, Garrett Lisi, and the exceptional algebra researchers focused on extending the octonionic tradition of the Turkish school are all clustered. In this school, almost everyone will be largely *wrong* in my opinion. But the right answer is most likely to come from this branch IMO.

II) Classical Differential Geometric Field Theory. It is amazing to me how over-focused we seem on the quantum. The star of the show is not now, and never was the quantum.

Let me put it in provocative terms: Classical Physics is where the real action has always been. Pun intended.

The quantum is real. It’s mysterious. It’s mind blowing. And as a result it provides jobs and something to talk about when the classical theory is stagnant. But the dream of quantum theories that are born quantum never materialized. We still quantize classical theories, for all our posturing about needing to take classical limits of quantum theories.

[[Ed Witten|Witten]] in particular popularized the notion that the incompatiblity between General Relativity and the Standard Model is a Classical vs Quantum problem. He’s wrong. 

The Classical GR theory is already incompatible with the Classical Standard Model. The incompatibility is already classical: NOT Quantum.

The G_{mu, nu} operator concept of Einstein (and Grossman) is NOT gauge compatible. But the Standard Model IS a gauge theory. We have wasted 40 years in my opinion pretending that the GR vs SM split is a call to quantize gravity. We got there by pretended that GR is a kind of gauge theory which it obviously isn’t. And we pretend that you don’t quantize classical theories but take classical limits of quantum theories. Who this is supposed to fool is beyond me. The weak? The insecure? The egoic?

Once you have the classical arena (the manifolds) the field content (the bundles, groups and representations) and the action, the game is largely already determined theoretically when you are quantizing a classical theory. The quantum theory is used to figure out what its real world consequences are. The world is quantum after all. 

So why does the Classical theory get sent to a diminished role? This is going to be brutal: it’s the political economy of Physics. It’s because the number of people who have contributed to the Lagrangians is tiny. Einstein/Grossman, Maxwell/Yang and Dirac tower over our theories. That’s spin 2, spin 1 and spin 1/2 right there. The Higgs sector pulls in Glashow, Englert, Weinberg, etc. But I believe this is temporary and will be absorbed back into the other sectors before too long. It is the ungainly sector after all that still feels contrived. Real, but contrived.

And I believe that a lot of the toy work in low dimensions will turn out to be closer to GR than people imagine. Right now it looks closer to the Standard Model due to history. 

III) Non spacetime SUSY. 

I believe the reason we can neither find Supersymmetry nor get rid of it is that we misinstantiated it. There are no Squarks or Gluinos. Right idea, wrong off-ramp. This goes back to Salam and Strathdee.
|timestamp=3:52 PM · Aug 26, 2024
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|timestamp=4:17 PM · Aug 26, 2024
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1855292957630595421
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Are you also watching the brain trust of tbe Democratic Party who lost this election, now trying to figure out HOW they could possibly have lost this election?

As a highly visible Democrat who never thought this was going to be close or a “nail biter”, and who said publicly that the the polls were off and that there was reason to think that preference falsification could result in a *landslide*, do you think anyone would pick up the phone and call? There is zero interest. Not one intern. Not one consultant.

This is exactly like String Theory. For 40 years string theorists have hermetically sealed themselves in an imaginary universe where they are succeeding because they became the arbiters in a system called Peer Review. The Lords/Peers of String Theory do not talk with, and do not listen to commoners. As a result they enter into a curricular conversation. 

Listening to what @maddow has to say about @KamalaHarris’ part in  @SpeakerPelosi’s brilliant strategy with @PeteButtigieg to help @SenSchumer after @donlemon’s insightful analysis mirroring Joy @thereidout brutal truths following the @NPR @cnn exposes of Trumps devious plans is exactly the String theory vibe. 

What does Cumrun say about Andy’s latest idea to build on Lenny’s insight to get around Eva’s paper showing that Ashok’s plan to use Juan’s discovery that Brian and Michio discussed recently  on the 13th anniversary of Shamit’s paper tweaking David’s original epiphany, can only work if some speculations of Cumrun are true to begin with in Euclidean signature?

Oh and by the way, there are no other approaches beyond [[String Theory]], because anyone not part of this circle is a self promoter saying “only words”. We will only need another 100 years before it gives fruit…

Well, this is what a cult sounds like. Communists build such elaborate circular worlds of internal references. As do members of spiritual, academic and religious orders.

My claim is that the Democratic leadership is a lucrative cult. It’s not a party. It’s not trying to win. It’s trying to serve its members and work towards winning as little as possible, consistent with first serving the personal needs of its senior leadership. It’s trying to pay its leadership in riches, prestige and control. It’s a payout system. What are all these people making financially? I don’t know. Nancy does alright. So does Rachel. But not all payment is monetary. 

That is why their conversation is so bizarre. They need to fire each other. But the entire point of our party as they see it is to serve as a trough. 

Take it from a pre-Dick Morris Democrat also focused on physics: the 1992 election 32 years ago brought us this madness in just the way that [[Ed Witten]], Michael Green and John Schwarz brought us The Holy Revelation of [[String Theory]] 40 years ago in 1984.

The most important part of these cults is sealing out the critics as “interloping self promoting grifting charlatans.”

I wound love to come on MSNBC and discuss my pre-election claims that this was unlikely to be close and quite possibly a landslide. I would love to help the party fire its senior leadership. It is well past time to overthrow the party’s brain trust that leads us away from focusing on the welfare of working families, free speech, individualistic  greatness, common sense, consumer protection, fair play, and into the arms of evil and madness. 

The Clinton-Morris era needs to end. We need a revolt to overthrow our Lords and Masters. There is now no reason these people should be at the helm. 

None. 

🙏
|timestamp=4:54 PM · Nov 9, 2024
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