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== On X ==
=== 2009 ===
=== 2009 ===


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I have recently heard commentators like  @michiokaku and @seanmcarroll opine that our Standard Model is “Ugly as Sin” or “It looks ugly. It’s both ugly and beautiful
It’s ungainly.” respectively.
I have recently heard commentators like  @michiokaku and @seanmcarroll opine that our Standard Model is “Ugly as Sin” or “It looks ugly. It’s both ugly and beautiful
It’s ungainly.” respectively.


I think that such physicists are *quite* wrong in that, but that is not the point here as I can guess how they see this. And in large measure they aren’t talking about lines 1 and 2 as “ugly”, which pretty much everyone agrees are beautiful as they come directly from Dirac, Maxwell and Einstein, and are present in the original Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (RQFT) called Quantum Electro-dynamics (or QED).  
I think that such physicists are *quite* wrong in that, but that is not the point here as I can guess how they see this. And in large measure they aren’t talking about lines 1 and 2 as “ugly”, which pretty much everyone agrees are beautiful as they come directly from Dirac, Maxwell and Einstein, and are present in the original [[Quantum Field Theory|Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (RQFT)]] called Quantum Electro-dynamics (or QED).  


So to simplify matters, lines 1 and 2 are sort of canonically beautiful and appear so to essentially everyone. Lines 3 and 4 governing the Higgs field (with their expansion to 3 forces across 3 generations of matter) are what divide us. The only thing that forces them on us is the weak force and it’s bizarre decision to act only on “Left handed matter and right handed anti-matter.”
So to simplify matters, lines 1 and 2 are sort of canonically beautiful and appear so to essentially everyone. Lines 3 and 4 governing the Higgs field (with their expansion to 3 forces across 3 generations of matter) are what divide us. The only thing that forces them on us is the weak force and it’s bizarre decision to act only on “Left handed matter and right handed anti-matter.”
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|timestamp=9:14 PM · Sep 13, 2024
|timestamp=9:14 PM · Sep 13, 2024
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{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1849982838264988060
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I want to end on a personal note despite the dangers of being 'real' on X.
When a mathematics or physics PhD leaves academic research departments behind to work on research on their own, it is very difficult to function. It is almost impossible.
For the last 10-15 years, [[Edward Frenkel|Ed Frenkel]] has been like a one man research department for me to talk about [[Differential Geometry]], Representation Theory, Algebraic Topology/Homotopy Theory, Particle Theory of the [[Standard Model]], [[General Relativity]], Geometric and [[Quantum Field Theory]], Lie Theory, Differential Topology, Elliptic Operators, Category theory, Spinorial Algebra, etc.
Whatever I have needed to discuss across a very broad range of topics, [[Edward Frenkel|Ed]] has been able to meet me. I speak from experience: other than another man named David Kazhdan (a coauthor of Ed's), I have not seen this easy ability to switch contexts at a personal level. [[Edward Frenkel|Edward]] is not just a remarkable mind, but an extraodinary individual, and friend at multiple different levels.
[[Edward Frenkel|Ed]]: Congratulations. I couldn't be more excited for you brother. Looking forward.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1849977335858254241
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=[[Edward Frenkel|UC Berkeley Prof. Edward Frenkel @edfrenkel]] is one of the world's great mathematical minds.  He has just decided to launch a video-podcast called AfterMath.
This is just beginning today and should mature and be amazing.
{{#widget:YouTube|id=7eejAeqYFCg}}
|timestamp=12:52 AM · Oct 26, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1849978643189203212
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=In my opinion, knowing [[Edward Frenkel|Ed]] as I do, It certainly has the potential to change everything in the space of high level science communication around both Mathematics and Physics (Particularly [[Quantum Field Theory]]).
Within mathematics [[Edward Frenkel|Ed]] is unusually approachable, with collaborative work across film, art, literature, philosophy and psychology. He and I have known each other since Harvard snatched him from the Soviet Union at its bitter end to come to our math department. Years later we reconnected and started going on various adventures in the US and abroad. I believe I even had a breakthrough in my own work when we even spent an entire surreal week completely covered in alkaline dust arguing about cinema and particle theory in a tiny two man tent, with most details mercifully lost to history, vodka and the Burning Man playa.
In any event, it is very uncommon for research mathematicians to use words like 'Genius', but that is probably how [[Edward Frenkel|Ed]] struck us American graduate students in the department at the time; an always smiling Russian immigrant of few English words, who seemed to understand everything across the hardest fields almost instantly.  My recollection was that it took him around one year to get a PhD. Something like that.
[[Edward Frenkel|Ed]] has since matured into a fine author and public speaker with fantastic command of American English. While he is just getting started on his chanel, he already brings up a great point in his first video that I don't think I ever fully considered and just discussed with him last night: mathematics is not communicated or learned through sensory input. We can build visual models or use symbols, but the actual structures we discover are not sensory in nature. And that this leads to disorientation because in some sense they are built inside the mind without any experience of them having come in (via our senses) from the outside world.
Subscribe to [[Edward Frenkel|@edfrenkel]] on @X and on his YouTube channel. This is likely to eventually wend its way up to the most beautiful but otherwise inaccessible science content that we almost never get in the public sphere, presented by a top researcher (rather than a popularizer) at the height of his powers.
|timestamp=12:57 AM · Oct 26, 2024
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|timestamp=1:14 AM · Oct 26, 2024
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== Related Pages ==
=== 2026 ===


* [[General Relativity]]
{{Tweet
* [[Peer Injunction]]
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
* [[Peer Review]]
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007619430302564725
* [[Quantum Gravity]]
|name=Eric Weinstein
* [[Quantum Field Theory]]
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
* [[Right Freeway, Wrong Exit]]
|username=EricRWeinstein
* [[String Theory]]
|content=I agree with you. I think EFT is such an area. I think cosmology with variable dark energy is essential. I think discrete models disgust me (Wolfram) but should be funded. I think exceptional algebraic structures (Gunaydin, Gursey) are wrong headed but should be funded.
* [[Theory of Geometric Unity]]
 
I am for funding diverse approaches.
 
But again this isn’t the point.
 
The point isn’t that too few promised too much and got too many resources.
 
The problem is that those few destroyed their competition, peers, rivals and challengers. And I want those theories/programs/models/researchers/predictions destroyed by those people REEVALUATED. I think [[Lenny Susskind|Lenny]] and [[Ed Witten|Ed]] and Andy etc may have buried the answers with insinuation, shunning, ridicule.
 
I think we have had answers for 40 years. And I want *none* of the [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|TOGIT]] cult evaluating them.
 
My claim is that we don’t know if [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|TOGIT]] is holding back progress outside string theory until we stop listening to their anti-science claims.
 
I claim that [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|TOGIT]] is not our leading theory and has NEVER been for 40 years. It’s fake. It doesn’t work. There is no explanation in all of science that permits [[Ed Witten|Ed]] and [[Lenny Susskind|Lenny]] and Andy and company to exclude unexplored ideas and people that may well have succeed where they in particular have failed.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/2007289596498022879
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=This is such an absurd claim it's actually pretty funny.
 
A few years ago I went over 31 examples of breakthroughs from the past 40 years (excluding Nobel prizes)
 
https://x.com/nu_phases/status/1598331715340054528?s=20
 
But 50+ years really opens up some all time great results:
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/2007000327846060048
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=It's a fact that the foundations of physics have been stuck for 50+ years, everyone with half a brain can see that. The only "counterargument" against this are physicists who complain that writing a lot of papers is sorta progress.
|timestamp=8:05 AM · Jan 2, 2026
}}
|timestamp=3:15 AM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/2007331841381150742
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=If the rules for what is and is not a well defined theory (ie what Weinberg's "Phenomenological Lagrangians" paper change about our understanding of physics) is not "foundations", then I have no idea what we're talking about.
|timestamp=6:03 AM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007453809841254854
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Why 3 generations?


Why 15/16 Particles?
Why tbese groups?
Why these Internal Quantum Numbers
Why the Higgs Quartic?
Why the Yukawa Couplings?
Etc. Etc.
Without recourse to
“Shut up and Regulate” EFT
Anti-de-Sitter Space
SUSY intuition that was disproved
Toy Models
Black Hole substitution
Etc etc
———
As I have said before: It’s a mitigated disaster. Not an unmitigated disaster.
The biggest problem isn’t even the theory. It’s the violation of scientific norms needed to keep from facing what just happened over 4 decades because the violation of scientific norms and academic collegiality came from the leaders. Who need to admit what they did to their legitimate critics and rivals. It is an abuse issue.
Hope this helps.
|timestamp=2:07 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007456907347538300
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Out of curiousity, @grok, can you explain why we are having a non-serious discussion?
Obviously everyone here knows exactly what this is about. It’s about one group taking over as the arbiters of physics beyond the standard model and failing to do what they promised while insulting everyone else who said this was crazy and/or had other ideas.
This is about the [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|TOGIT]] crowd and its anti-scientific [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|“The Only Game In Town”]] cult.
It feels like out of Fear for naming [[Ed Witten|Witten]], [[Lenny Susskind|Susskind]], Motl, Gross, Stominger etc. We have endless proxy discussions over nothing.
Why can’t we just say “They Failed Theoretical Physics as Scientific Leaders” and have new voices picked from their critics? They failed. Can’t we just admit this?
|timestamp=2:19 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/2007512215872811177
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=Neutrino mass is beyond the Standard Model, predicted by a breakthrough in our structural understanding theoretical physics, and later verified experimentally. If you don't think this is an example of what theoretical physic should be about, then I can't accept your definition.
|timestamp=5:59 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007540816693342542
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Hi Daniel,
As you and I both know, that is correct but only relevant here in a very technical way.
Neutrino masses are of course fascinating, but not really conceptually new at all. In fact the PMNS mechanism update, completely PREDATES the [[Standard Model|SM]]. Further, it is just a leptonic version of CKM.
So
What are we really even discussing? We both know the same stuff. This seems to be a red herring. A proxy.
What is this really about?
Thoughts?
|timestamp=7:53 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/2007547226055422419
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=We are talking about apparently "nothing" conceptually important happening for 50+ years. Yet, until 1973 (52 years ago), it was a widely held believe that nuclear physics was not describable by QFT (Gross was trying to prove this when they found the opposite).
|timestamp=8:18 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/2007547854479368602
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=So yes, I disagree that realization that (a) QFT describes the world and (b) QFT is a larger and more powerful framework than "renormalizability" is a conceptual change from prior to the 1970s and was not fully appreciated until the 1980s and beyond.
|timestamp=8:21 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007549501188505965
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Many things have happened in general physics in 50 years:
Experimental
Mathematical
Topological
Condensed Matter
Astrophysical
Cosmological
QFT as a toolkit framework
Etc.
That’s not what we are discussing, is it?
We are discussing the [[Standard Model|SM]] plus [[General Relativity|GR]] Lagrangians no?
|timestamp=8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/1621355254880272384
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=We are discussing what are the "foundations" of physics. I don't think even you and Sabine agree on this. Neutrino mass is zero in the "Standard Model". Dark matter is definitely not (and we can argue about the CC). The origin of structure is also no in the SM (inflation).
|timestamp=8:39 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007560556207869967
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I don’t usually agree with @skdh on funding. Or about math. Or a great many other things including her manifestly incorrect characterization of my work. She is wrong about a number of things in my opinion. But she isn’t “all wrong” in some weird way. She is usually pretty insightful.
Neutrinos being massless in the [[Standard Model|SM]]? C’mon. I covered that above 👆 no? PMNS was in the 1960s. Not even 1973. Older than the [[Standard Model|SM]].
That is not the issue. Unlike @skdh, I think many physicists need more money to do their job.
The problem isn’t any of this.
The problem is only one group is allowed to present ideas about the origins of the [[Standard Model|SM]] and [[General Relativity|GR]] without derision, deliberate misinterpretation, theft, character assassination, inteuendo. This is [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|“The Only Game In Town”]] or [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|TOGIT]] cult. Some of us have tried to challenge this group scientifically for more than 40 years.
The trouble is when you say “Let’s hear from all the people with ideas that directly *contradict* the String Theory leaders.”
The problem is that this is what holds back progress. What is holding back progress is senior physicists who wont allow dissidents in good standing who think [[Lenny Susskind|Susskind]] and [[Ed Witten|Witten]] and Gross just oversaw the most spectacular catastrophe in modern physics.
And everyone who dares to say this is scapegoated.
The [[Quantum Gravity|QG]] leaders all failed us Daniel. They will never break the logjam that they created and cannot acknowledge.
Their critics would. But they cannot get close as they are STILL not allowed to question the failed program as members in good standing inside the system.
That is the problem. With all respect to you Daniel.
Let’s be honest about what this is about in 2026. It’s about failure. Not neutrino masses.
|timestamp=9:11 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/2007569311955861891
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=You cannot write the PMNS matrix in the SM (its not renormalizable). Yes, the idea existed in some before there was an electroweak theory. This is like saying there was no conceptual change to chemistry with the discovery of the atom because it was already invented by Democritus
|timestamp=9:46 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/2007569885325668679
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=If you want to complain about QG, please go ahead. It's nowhere on my list. However, even the reframing that QG is well-defined as an effective theory is a novel development (also not clear in the 60s-70s). But part of the problem is your reframing QG = all fundamental physics.
|timestamp=9:48 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007577463497601336
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Something is not right in your picture:
“But part of the problem is your reframing QG = all fundamental physics.”
I’m saying the opposite. I’m saying that the QG people made all of fundamental physics about their view of quantizing gravity. I’m saying that was the catastrophe.
|timestamp=10:19 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007578265893114346
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Further it’s not about complaining.
No one smart wants to complain. They want to do work, have it evaluated and get credit for their ideas so they can do more work and have a good life.
The complainers are those trying to say “No one gets to give seminars about the origin of chirality or 3 generations unless it comes out of The Only Game In Town:
|timestamp=10:22 PM · Jan 3, 2026
|media1=ERW-X-post-2007578265893114346-fgp2b8pfmMeBy2Y1.jpg
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007579362913054897
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Daniel: the problem is [[Ed Witten|Witten]]/[[Lenny Susskind|Susskind]]/Motl totalizing sociology of only letting the failed group monopolize legitimacy.
They failed. That’s the issue. Deal with that.
You can’t hide this behind neutrino masses. There were other BETTER ideas that *they* pushed out of physics.
|timestamp=10:26 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/2007582523728245073
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Daniel: try to steelman my point.
“Fundamental Physics Theory largely stagnated and lost touch with reality due to anti-scientific gatekeeping by leaders of the failed [[String Theory]] community playing stupid and attempting to monopolize legitimacy under [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|‘The Only Game In Town’]]”
|timestamp=10:39 PM · Jan 3, 2026
}}
{{Tweet
|image=nu_phases-profile-N2mdKUuJ.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases/status/2007608251924549922
|name=Daniel Green
|usernameurl=https://x.com/nu_phases
|username=nu_phases
|content=I agree that too many resources went to a small group that has over-promised and under-achieved. I also agree that has slowed progress in other areas where real progress is happening.
Where we disagree is that I think there is real progress that needs to be highlighted instead.
|timestamp=12:21 AM · Jan 4, 2026
}}
|timestamp=1:05 AM · Jan 4, 2026
}}
== Related Pages ==
* [[General Relativity]]
* [[Peer Injunction]]
* [[Peer Review]]
* [[Quantum Gravity]]
* [[Quantum Field Theory]]
* [[Right Freeway, Wrong Exit]]
* [[String Theory]]
* [[Theory of Geometric Unity]]
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[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Portal Topics]]
[[Category:Portal Topics]]
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