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=== 2018 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012709483032612873
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Disagree....but I recognize these are solid points! It’s great to know where we will pick up when next we meet. I’m always happy to boost your fearless independent voice just as you boost ours! It’s a great read. Thanks @skdh.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012431939083517952
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=In "Lost in Math", @skdh has written a necessary book that I've always hoped someone would never write. It lays out the argument that "Beauty" is a dangerous Siren for physics, which is almost always true. Except, unfairly, for a tiny top tier.
Beauty, it seems, loathes equity.
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=grahamfarmelo-profile-GF_Jan_08_I_sm.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/grahamfarmelo/status/1010318798967263233
|name=Graham Farmelo
|usernameurl=https://x.com/grahamfarmelo
|username=grahamfarmelo
|content=‘Lost in Math’ by Sabine Hassenfelder reviewed in the WSJ by yours truly:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lost-in-math-review-the-beauty-myth-1529703982
|timestamp=12:29 AM · Jun 23, 2018
}}
|timestamp=8:25 PM · Jun 28, 2018
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{{Tweet
|image=riemannzeta-profile-A4T6l3wd.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/riemannzeta/status/1012502530192883712
|name=Michael Frank Martin
|usernameurl=https://x.com/riemannzeta
|username=riemannzeta
|content=Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder and almost nobody has the ability and determination to develop a truly independent aesthetic sensibility, I am confident that the elite you have in mind are just the winners who got to determine the standard of beauty
|timestamp=1:06 AM · Jun 23, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1012539108080672773
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=They haven't so much determined it as grandfathered the ideals of beauty that were successful in the last century.
|timestamp=3:31 AM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012548906335461376
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Sabine. Is that close to how you see it? Spinors and Curvature tensors and Symplectic forms as time dependent beauty norms? I don’t buy it.
Sum over histories, perhaps. SUSY, maybe. Higgs sector, okay. But the Dirac or Maxwell or Newton theories? I think not.
|timestamp=4:10 AM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1012593336463626243
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=A sufficiently advanced being would probably consider these too simplistic to be beautiful. Like, say, we now consider Newton's laws too simplistic to be beautiful. So, yes, I do think it's time-dependent and brain-dependent and context-dependent.
|timestamp=7:07 AM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012604477201760256
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Interesting. May I make the counter argument? There are only 5 Platonic solids. Only 4 normed division algebras. 5 exceptional Lie algebras.  Etc. All of those are like Spinors & the Dirac operator in that they are provably best possible structures. Advanced beings do no better.
|timestamp=7:51 AM · Jun 29, 2018
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{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012605705335889920
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Advanced beings know that there is no simpler Lagrangians made from curvature tensors alone than the Hilbert (Riemannian) and Yang Mills Maxwell (Ehresmannian)  lagrangians. They may see more, but in this essential effective layer, this is the maximally beautiful thing to find.
|timestamp=7:56 AM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1012608310003019776
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=I seem to remember that once upon a time an astronomer was fascinated by there only being 5 Platonic solids. Beautiful idea to calculate planetary orbits from them. Works badly though. Why do you think a correct Lagrangian must be simple? And why is simplicity beautiful?
|timestamp=8:06 AM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012693216221544448
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=That wasn’t my point. Icosahedrons aren’t seemingly relevant to astrophysics. But the genius of selection does choose them for T4 phage capsids. [[Erwin Chargaff|Chargaff]] thought DNA would be a beautiful Möbius band. He was lead astray by beauty. But [[Jim Watson|Watson]]&[[Francis Crick|Crick]] found the correct Helical beauty.
|timestamp=1:44 PM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012695010565709825
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=My point was that in math we can exclude the idea of higher beings finding more of many beautiful structures that we know. And Clifford algebras, curvature tensors & quantization structures are now permanently part of this mathematical canon of provably best “stacked” objects.
|timestamp=1:51 PM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012695873212461057
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I agree with you that beauty can and does lead people astray. I also agree that nature doesn’t have to be simple: @garrettlisi’s program is likely a complicated attempt at explaining the world without leaving beauty as a North Star. And I fear it won’t work for him.
|timestamp=1:54 PM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1012697427978010628
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=My two respectful disagreements:
A) Higher beings are likely stuck with the same beauty we are.  Even if they have a deeper stack than we do, it likely subsumes our beauty in theirs.
B) Beauty has always rewarded the few and punished the many. As it appears to be doing now.
|timestamp=2:00 PM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1012706974310338562
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=A) Maybe, or maybe not. Where is the evidence? And even if, quite possibly our not-so-deep stack of beautiful ideas is the reason we're stuck in physics.</br>
B) Beauty is a perception that most people find rewarding; that's exactly why it's a cognitive bias.
|timestamp=2:38 AM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
|timestamp=2:48 PM · Jun 29, 2018
}}
=== 2019 ===
=== 2019 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1091743276565069826
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=This is why we need to rescue our experts &amp; institutions. We need to stop asking them to lie to us about their needs for growth. If even high energy physics can’t escape its inability to meet growth expectations, then all expert communities are suspect.
These are our very best.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1091743271875895297
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I’ve been talking about unmeetable  [[Embedded Growth Obligations|“Embedded Growth Obligations” or E.G.O.s]] as the reason why all our expert communities are under unbearable pressure to distort across our institutions. The physics community is *very* trustworthy on the experiment-theory level. Yet even here:
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1091582806021623808
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=Particle physicists surprised to find I am not their cheer-leader
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02/particle-physicists-surprised-to-find-i.html?spref=tw
|media1=skdh-X-post-1091582806021623808-DyYUwdaWwAEHRbx.jpg
|timestamp=6:23 AM · Feb 1, 2019
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|timestamp=5:00 PM · Feb 2, 2019
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{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1091743274526683136
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=This allows us to use Fundamental Physics as a reference for deception.
These folks are our BEST. They aren’t lying about their experiments. They aren’t lying about agreement w theory. They aren’t wrong about expecting another accelerator imho.
Yet the [[Embedded Growth Obligations|EGOs]] make even them fib.
|timestamp=5:00 PM · Feb 2, 2019
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1091743275533266944
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I may disagree with @skdh on whether we should build another multi-billion dollar accelerator. But she is exactly correct that there is no longer any new physics beyond the [[Standard Model]] expected to be found. She is telling truths above her pay-grade in the eyes of our leaders.
|timestamp=5:00 PM · Feb 2, 2019
}}
|timestamp=5:00 PM · Feb 2, 2019
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1100429733139894272
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=What we need is a multi-decade  [[Labor Shortages|“labor shortage”]] in STEM that brings technical employers howling in pain about employee wage demands. Family demands. Maternal demands.
The answer is simple: in STEM the wrong people are in pain. It should be our beloved administrators &amp; employers.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1100427792083111936
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=This is the elephant in the lab.
A secret reason (which we collected anonymously multiple times at NBER/ASCB) for delaying tenure decisions beyond healthy fertility is departmental fear of committing to top women in research for fear they will find motherhood more fulfilling.
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1100358133434761221
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=Nearly half of US female scientists leave full-time science after first child
|media1=skdh-X-post-1100358133434761221.jpg
|timestamp=11:33 AM · Feb 26, 2019
}}
|timestamp=4:10 PM · Feb 26, 2019
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{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1100427794461253639
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=You can blame the Principal Investigators who told us this (both male &amp; female). You can blame the universities. You can blame the messenger. But we need to talk about getting STEM moms a LOT more money for help in the house &amp; make more allowances for staying home for 5-10 years.
|timestamp=4:10 PM · Feb 26, 2019
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1100427795551813633
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=And yes, Dads can be more present. But before you go too far down that road, consider that some of the STEM women we spoke to said that they would have WANTED to be at home, particularly with little children (&lt;7) and what they really wanted was a way back to research afterwards.
|timestamp=4:10 PM · Feb 26, 2019
}}
|timestamp=4:17 PM · Feb 26, 2019
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|timestamp=1:50 AM · Mar 28, 2019
|timestamp=1:50 AM · Mar 28, 2019
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{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1177580655460241408
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=That said, I think she’s much harder to beat as she gains confidence in her ability to stand for science. It’s an impressive act of conscience &amp; bravery to go it alone like this, and I wish the physics community saw it for what it is.  I may disagree at times, but my hat is off.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1177580652293570561
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=We oddly now live in a Hossenfelder era of Theoretical physics. Sabine is almost distinguished by a near total unwillingness/inability to sit quietly through the hype machines in Theoretical physics that feed the demands of lay people, journalists &amp; physicists. But is she right?
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1177459169168773121
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=In my new video, I explain why I am not a fan of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics
{{#widget:YouTube|id=kF6USB2I1iU}}
|timestamp=1:48 PM · Sep 27, 2019
}}
|timestamp=1:48 PM · Sep 27, 2019
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{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1177580654495617025
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=My take is that she is usually right. Not only that, many in the community rail against her when *they* know she is making sense.
But where she‘s wrong could be very significant. I would love to *try* to defend the role of beauty in physics (tarnished by [[String Theory|string theory]]) from her.
|timestamp=1:48 PM · Sep 27, 2019
}}
|timestamp=1:48 PM · Sep 27, 2019
}}
=== 2021 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1474262756308119555
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Said differently I’ve been bullish on positive externalities of mathematical physics. But a lot of great math that got done isn’t string theory. It’s claimed to be stringy but it is really mostly mathematical physics or geometric field theory that is claimed by string theorists.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1473817405809778689
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Things got hard. They didn’t get hopeless.
Yes we spent almost 40 years lying about string theory. But we could stop today. We could have the leaders in the field admit they made a *colossal* bad bet &amp; ask “What did we dispose of while we were wildly over-hyping string theory?”
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=TradeTexasBig-profile-7puYx-nQ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/TradeTexasBig/status/1473809988535697408
|name=đŸ‡șđŸ‡ČTradeTexasBig🇼🇳
|usernameurl=https://x.com/TradeTexasBig
|username=TradeTexasBig
|content=Its increasingly apparent to me that the next physics breakthrough is gonna be from #ai . Its humanly not possible anymore for theoretical physicists ..i was feeling it even around 2010
|timestamp=12:17 AM · Dec 23, 2021
}}
|timestamp=12:47 AM · Dec 23, 2021
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{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1473872481735827459
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=They can't stop, Eric. They're making a living from writing papers about things no one will ever see. It's a systemic problem that requires a systemic response. And the first step would be to admit they have a problem (which they don't).
|timestamp=4:25 AM · Dec 23, 2021
}}
{{Tweet
|image=WeLivetoServe-profile-wfx-Iowe.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/WeLivetoServe/status/1473873663166451714
|name=WeLivetoServe
|usernameurl=https://x.com/WeLivetoServe
|username=WeLivetoServe
|content=Seems likely a lot of the math they developed will wind up handy, but it's a long time to wait for dessert.
|timestamp=4:30 AM · Dec 23, 2021
}}
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1473874437523005443
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=Most of what physicists call math is totally uninteresting even for mathematicians. It's just advanced calculus. Look here is my qft and when I crunch it cross-sections fall out.
|timestamp=4:33 AM · Dec 23, 2021
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1474213317568651264
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=We may disagree intellectually more than I thought. This is Jackiw’s point: the era of physics thinking of mathematics as advanced calculus (analysis) wasn’t fruitful.
That changed around 1975 when the quantum began to discover geometry.
I’m honestly confused. What do you mean?
|timestamp=3:00 AM · Dec 24, 2021
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{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1474247291687088134
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=We are talking past each other. I am referring to particle physicists/astrophysicists/cosmologists who crunch out shallow and useless papers in the thousands. There's no interesting math in those. You're talking about something else entirely.
|timestamp=5:15 AM · Dec 23, 2021
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{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1474261469462073344
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=[[Quantum Field Theory|QFT]] &amp; cross-sections sound more like particle theory than Astrophysics, Cosmology or even [[General Relativity|GR]].
Would we agree that the collision of [[Ed Witten|Witten]]/[[Isadore Singer|Singer]]/Quillen/[[Nathan “Nati” Seiberg|Seiberg]]/Freed/Bismut/Maldacena/Penrose/[[Michael Atiyah|Atiyah]]/
Hitchin/Dijgraff/[[Cumrun Vafa|Vafa]]/Segal/Jackiw/Kontseivich/Alvarez-Gaume/etc has been magic?
|timestamp=6:11 AM · Dec 24, 2021
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1474261875328098308
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=There are a lot of string theorists who have done things that really matter to geometry, topology, analysis on manifolds, representation theory. And I don’t want to misunderstand your point.
|timestamp=6:13 AM · Dec 24, 2021
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|timestamp=6:16 AM · Dec 24, 2021
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=== 2024 ===
=== 2024 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1828104395000819753
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|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.
🙏
|thread=
{{Tweet
|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.
|media1=ERW-X-post-1828098295492915708-GV61tXbWAAAlkXp.jpg
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|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
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1828098300928823611
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|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/1912162744863961364
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I took your point. For some reason my point doesn’t seem to get through.
I agree with you. He *could* make a strong statement to admit defeat. There are clear reasons not to do this from the ST perspective. It is thus unlikely.
My point was that he could do something *vastly* less expensive. And the fact that Susskind, Witten, Greene, etc won’t do even that tells us that this isn’t about string theory. It’s about no other theories or theorist being worth considering. It’s abuse of the referee role.
Somehow, the String Theorists set themselves up as a football team that is also the *sole* source of game referees.
So even when their team loses on the field,  they still win by referees decision that they are the only real team competing. Everyone else focuses on whether they have background independence, particle predictions or a renormalizable spin 2 quantization. That is a total red herring.
Sabine: Theoretical physics isn’t this dumb or anti-scientific. It’s impossible. [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|“The only game in town”]] campaign is not a string theoretic idea. It is totally foreign to science.
Something separate doesn’t want rival theories side by side. In a science we would all be expected to listen to each other. This is what my first memories of physics looked like 1983-1988. There were different ideas. Nothing like this.
The defining feature of [[String Theory]] is that it would rather fundamental physics die than that [[String Theory]] face healthy adult rivals that were not maimed, crippled, stolen, or murdered in their cribs.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1911991840204898751
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=People ask me how you can tell whether scientific experts are leveling with them if the lay public doesn’t understand deep science.
Here an interviewer asks a leading String Theorist how things are going after 25 years since popularizing String theory in a well received book:
|timestamp=3:55 AM · Apr 15, 2025
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|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1912022194395467852
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=If Brian Greene publicly said he doesn't believe in string theory anymore it'd be the end of the field. He'd ruin the lives of thousands of people. Even if it was what he thinks, I strongly doubt he'd ever admit it.
|timestamp=5:46 AM · Apr 15, 2025
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1912032953896673603
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=The issue isn’t [[String Theory]] which has obviously failed in the terms it set for itself.
The issue is the [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|“String Theory is the only game in town”]] which appears designed to destroy fundamental physics itself. If you have spent 40 years bragging and failing, wouldn’t you at least ask “Doesn’t anyone have any other ideas?” before finally going over the edge of the cliff?
<nowiki>*</nowiki>Absolutely* not. And that tells you that string theory isn’t a theory. It’s some kind of a suicide pact. Better that the field die than we ask “What if the string theorists were always wrong including pronouncements about [[Quantum Gravity|quantum gravity]] and against other theorists? What if [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|‘the only game in town’]] was always an obviously totally unethical anti-scientific move to destroy and poison the market place of ideas?”
cc: @bgreene.
|timestamp=6:39 AM · Apr 15, 2025
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|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1912102850513023326
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
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|username=skdh
|content=Yes, but that wasn't my point. My point is that Brian is a highly visible string spokesperson, I'd say second after Witten, but Witten doesn't talk much. If Brian were to renounce string theory, he'd be responsible for killing the careers of thousands of people, and he must know that. I am just saying I think it's unlikely he would do it, even if he had stopped believing it makes sense, and you need to factor this in when evaluating what he says.
|timestamp=11:16 AM · Apr 15, 2025
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|timestamp=3:14 PM · Apr 15, 2025
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1930118548015460876
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@skdh I assume we are both familiar with how some of our mutual Physics/Math PhD colleagues have been treated at '''arXiv''' for being deeply off the [[Quantum Gravity]] narrative? I think they could stop treating those people differently from everyone else.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1929999147287097645
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I'm going to explain how profound levels of dissent in physics are driven out of the community.
Q: "Why avoid the '''arXiv'''? That isn't peer reviewed or even moderated! Anyone can put anything on it!"
A: "Unmoderated?? The old P. Ginsparg Los Alamos National Labs server? Who knew!"
|timestamp=8:30 PM · Jun 3, 2025
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1930004307732247023
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=No researcher can afford to lose access to the arXiv. And no one talking openly about the actual [[Quantum Gravity]] mass delusion can have access to the journals &amp; '''arXIv'''.
You cannot challenge the [[Quantum Gravity|QG]] narrative from the inside; its achievement is that it finally made physics *safe*.
|timestamp=8:50 PM · Jun 3, 2025
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|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1930006829737881887
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=[The field of fundamental physics stagnates in ‘73 when our Lagrangians stop changing.]
|timestamp=9:01 PM · Jun 3, 2025
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|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1930117536617517217
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=I understand your frustration, but I think it's somewhat misdirected. The arXiv needs some sort of screening. But they have little money and not enough people. I think they're trying to do the best they can.
|timestamp=4:20 PM · Jun 3, 2025
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|timestamp=4:24 AM · Jun 4, 2025
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