General Relativity: Difference between revisions

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== On X ==
=== 2009 ===
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/5967955224
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
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|content=Me: Grampa, do you realize you're older than '''General Relativity'''?
GF: Oh, please! I knew him when he was a Lieutenant.
H.Rubin (1913-2008)
|timestamp=4:49 AM · Nov 23, 2009
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=== 2010 ===
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/9812631650
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=That Quantum Field Theory is now far more geometric than '''General Relativity''' ever was, seems a needlessly well kept secret from the layman.
|timestamp=5:43 AM · Mar 1, 2010
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=== 2011 ===
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/86207881019523072
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Calling '''General Relativity''' a brand/meme/mashup/remix communicates a deep confusion about the relationship of tech's tail to nature's dog.
|timestamp=11:02 PM · Jun 29, 2011
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=== 2018 ===
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/958045232150425600
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=END/ My bet is on Type III for a reason:
Type I is not unified.</br>
Type II is possible, but appears to be unworkable in details.</br>
Type IV appears to lack sufficient guidance from Quantum theory to actually 'ship' despite consuming resources for yrs.</br>
Types V &amp; VI lack any progress.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/958021546718633984
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|content=1/ "Theories of Everything": A Taxonomy.
It is often said that "Theories-of-Everything are a dime a dozen" or that "All theoretical physicists worth their salt have several in a drawer." So far as I can tell, this is simply untrue. We've barely ever, if at all, seen candidates.
|timestamp=4:58 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/958022612390563842
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=2/ The Escher Lithograph used in the first tweet points to the core of why TOEs are rare. A candidate TOE has to have some quality of "a fire that lights itself", which is difficult to think about beyond the equations that would instantiate it. Hence very few such theories exist.
|timestamp=5:02 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/958026235736567808
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=3/ I'm going to lean on the following dictionary of analogies:
Physical Paper = Void
Pictured Canvas = Manifold and/or Einsteinian Spacetime
Ink=Matter &amp; non-gravitational force fields
Pencils = Pre-Conscious Lego (e.g. amino acids)
Hands = Consciousness
Paradox = Self-awareness
|timestamp=5:17 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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{{Tweet
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/958028114180714496
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
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|content=4/ In my taxonomy, Type I TOEs are our least ambitious but they best match our state of the world.  They are distinguished by two *separate* sources of origin: one for the Canvas ([[General Relativity]] or [[Ed Witten|Witten's]] point i) ) &amp; one for the Ink ([[Standard Model]] or [[Ed Witten|Witten's]] point ii) ).
|timestamp=5:24 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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{{Tweet
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/958032334346862592
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=5 Type II TOE's are more ambitious &amp; seek to derive the Ink from the choice of a mathematically distinguished Canvas that is anything but blank. My arch-nemesis @garrettlisi's theory is Type II. E8 is his 248 dimensional canvas. The intricacy is there, but doesn't quite match up.
|timestamp=5:41 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/958034414167982080
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=6/ In Type III TOEs the ink is to be derived from canvas, but the canvas is essentially blank; it simply permits mathematics to happen (e.g. calculus and linear algebra). In such theories the ink has to be bootstrapped into existence. My lectures on [[Theory of Geometric Unity|Geometric Unity]] were Type III.
|timestamp=5:49 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|name=Eric Weinstein
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|content=7/ Type IV TOE's try to change the question from Einstein's "Unified Field Theory." In [[String Theory|String Thy]], [[Quantum Gravity|"Quantizing Gravity"]] became substituted for "Unified Field." For this crowd, many are now betting that the canvas &amp; ink are both *emergent* from some deeper fundamental quantum thy.
|timestamp=6:00 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=8/ Type V TOEs are of a type I've never been able to fully contemplate; they are without boundaries or origins. There is no "Why is there something rather than nothing" within them. That which is not forbidden is compelled into existence. Void creates canvas &amp; canvas begets void.
|timestamp=6:08 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|content=9/ Type VI TOEs begin with the hands. Religions are of this type. I pass over this in silence as they aren't scientific.
I will leave open higher types, but I've really only seen attempts at I-IV &amp; I wouldn't call [[String Theory|String-Thy/M-Thy]] a full TOE try since events of the last 15 yrs.
|timestamp=6:19 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/958043587349901312
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|content=10/ I believe fundamental physics is stalled out because we are finally at the doorstep of a TOE and we haven't really bothered to think about what that would actually mean because we've never been here before. A final step need not look like any previous one. In fact, it cannot.
|timestamp=6:26 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|timestamp=6:32 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980687868648566784
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=END/ I am sorry that this was a bit technical for lay folks and not technical enough for experts, but it's twitter. I may begin to say more in the weeks and months ahead that may be clarifying.
If you are interested, do stay tuned. Until then, I thank you for your time.
|thread=
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980669687313850368
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=1/ APRIL FOOLS' SCIENCE: Theory into Practice.
I was challenged by someone as to why I wasn't taking my own medicine referenced in the sub-tweet below this April 1st.  Ok. Here goes.
What I believe about the universe that is quite different and why I don't talk about it much...
|quote=
{{Tweet
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/979379894978150400
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=1/ APRIL FOOL'S SCIENCE: A proposal.
Already bored of the coming "April Fools' Day!" pranks? Same here. And it's still March!
Consider how we might re-purpose this resource for science. What if 1 day a year, we explored big ideas that'd normally result in professional shunning?
|timestamp=3:28 PM · Mar 29, 2018
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|timestamp=4:54 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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{{Tweet
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980671434153275393
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=2/ When I was around 16-17, I learned of a story that fascinated me much more than it seemed to captivate any other mathematician or physicist. It was the story of the discovery of the [[Wu-Yang Dictionary|"Wu-Yang" dictionary]] around 1975-6, involving 3 super-minds: [[Jim Simons]], [[CN Yang]] &amp; [[Isadore Singer|Is Singer]].
|timestamp=5:01 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980673146398244865
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=3/ What was learned was that the Quantum of Planck, Bohr
&amp; Dirac was built on an internal Geometry, just as surely as [[General Relativity]] was built on an external geometry of space-time. Only the two geometries weren't the same! One was due to B Riemann; the other to C Ehresmann.
|timestamp=5:07 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980674834215481344
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|content=4/ Further the 2 geometries had different advantages. Riemann's geometry allowed you to compress the curvature &amp; measure the 'torsion' while Ehresmann's encouraged "Gauge Rotation"... as long as you didn't do either of those two things. So I asked could the geometries be unified?
|timestamp=5:14 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980677084094783489
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|content=5/ This would be a change in physics' main question. Instead of asking if Einstein's gravity could fit within Bohr's quantum, we could ask "Could Einstein's structures peculiar to Riemann's geometry be unified &amp; rotated within Ehresmann's?" The answer was almost a 'No!'
Almost.
|timestamp=5:23 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980680721353199618
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=6/ While physicists said the Universe was known to be chiral, I came to believe it was fundamentally symmetric. While we seemed to observe there being 3 or more generations of matter, I came to believe that there were but 2 true generations, plus an improbable "imposter." etc...
|timestamp=5:37 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980682507107602432
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|content=7/ In short a great many things had to be slightly off in our picture of the world in the 1980s to get the two geometric theories into a "Geometric Unity." Then in 1998, it was found that neutrinos weren't massless! This started to tip the scales towards the alterations I needed.
|timestamp=5:45 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980683552487440384
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
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|content=8/ In short the April 1st "trick" that is being played on me is that I see a *natural* theory where chirality would be emergent (not fundamental), the number of true generations would be 2 not 3, there would be 2^4 and not 15 Fermions in a generation, and the geometries unify.
|timestamp=5:49 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/980686736375164928
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=9/ I spoke on this nearly 5 years ago; I have been slow to get back to it as I found the physics response bewildering. I have now decided to return to this work &amp; to disposition it. So over the coming year, I'll begin pushing out [[Theory of Geometric Unity|"Geometric Unity"]] (as a non-physicist) to experts.
|timestamp=6:01 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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|timestamp=6:06 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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=== 2021 ===
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1347978886089379840
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Also: Get off my lawn. Apparently.
|thread=
{{Tweet
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1347978881005879297
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=The way we speak now may ensure nothing transcendent can ever happen again:
“Bruh, Leonardo was da GOAT among cross platform creators. If he’d crowdfunded or pivoted to a freemium model coupled to a revenue share, meme distribution could have scaled his content. lol! Self-own.”
|timestamp=6:49 PM · Jan 9, 2021
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|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=War and Peace? “TL;DR”
[[General Relativity]]? “That’s cool [[Albert Einstein|Albert]], but like, That’s just your opinion and my friend Sarah is like wicked smart on spiral dynamics and has been waiting patiently while you mansplained her.”
Shackleton? “Total Narcissist. Didn’t do his shadow work.”
|timestamp=6:49 PM · Jan 9, 2021
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|timestamp=6:49 PM · Jan 9, 2021
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{{Tweet
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1355932434655707136
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=You will see that [[General Relativity]] actually has Grossman as a coauthor at the level of ideas. The main mind blowing insight is in a co-authored 1913 paper seldom discussed. All that changes after that is the instantiation. Science fetishizes instance over insight. So bizarre...
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1355932430503317505
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|content=Notice this style of article. It confuses the *instantiation* of an idea which experiment *can* probe w/ the idea *itself* which experiment *cannot* probe. This is one of the most basic errors in science, philosophy of science &amp; science reporting.
Read [[The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature - Paul Dirac|Dirac’s 1963 SciAm essay]].
|timestamp=5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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|content=I’m sorry but what’s being addressed is closer to Naive Mildly Broken Spacetime SuperSymmetry models based on SUSY extensions of the symmetries of flat spacetime. Which many, if not most, sane theorists didn’t believe. But that seems to be a mouthful to say. Hence this silliness.
|timestamp=5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1355932433217069059
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=The bottomline is that the scientific method doesn’t work on ideas. It only works on instantiations of ideas &amp; executions of experiments. [[The Scientific Method is the Radio Edit of Great Science|That is why I call the Scientific Method the “Radio Edit of Great Science”.]] It’s science’s Golden Calf. It isn’t how top science works at all.
|timestamp=5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1355932433913266177
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=So why do we keep making this error. Because the real issue is keeping out bad ideas and keeping order. The Scientific Method can be invoked selectively against loons and heretics and suspended selectively for those we believe in. Read Dirac on Schrodinger. Or Einstein&amp;Grossman.
|timestamp=5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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|timestamp=5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433137542358966274
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@jetpen No one sane wants to have to lean on time dilation for the reason you state.
But I *formally* agree.
|thread=
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135218932609024
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Let’s be clear about this weird sounding issue.
@elonmusk is one of the only minds properly focused in public on the issue of the current danger to human consciousness from having all known intelligent life in the universe on a single terrestrial surface. His top idea: rockets.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135221205979139
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|content=I think that’s great. Where we differ is that I don’t think Earth, our Moon &amp; Mars plus space stations connected by rockets give us much real diversity. It’s barely doable. But assume you could make it work. I would want to run 1000s of uncorrelated experiments as most will fail.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135222795563010
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|content=And if we are stuck in this solar system with the physics we know there is only one good surface and two marginal ones.
Faster than light spacetime travel is bullshit. But going beyond Einstein is not.
It’s unbelievably hard, but everything Elon does is hard. Like hope.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135225559650305
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=But yes, he believes. In fun. In hope. In ending the epidemic of learned helplessness that has infected everyone else. So I’m a pretty die hard Elon supporter. Not because I agree w/ everything. But he gets **the** big issue right. We need to end the single correlated experiment.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135232442519557
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=So on the main issue we agree. The second issue is where we differ. A
multi multi billionaire (12 digits!) as smart as Elon w a physics background could diversify &amp; place a small 2nd bet on rendering [[General Relativity]] a mere effective theory by single handedly fixing physics.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135233616932865
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Now he may have a reason. But I have never heard him address this so it just makes no sense to me. No one is taking the need to go beyond Einstein seriously so we are pretty much trapped here in this solar system with the physics we know. That means three terrestrial surfaces.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135234803912707
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=But because Elon is so smart, I don’t discount the idea that he isn’t interested in finding out if post-Einsteinian physics for some reason. I just doesn’t add up to me, but maybe he knows something I don’t. But north of $100B w/ his knowledge of physics, he could change it all.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135236817162243
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I just want to know why no one asks this question. Lex could do it. Joe could do it. But he doesn’t seem to address it so I have no idea what is going on. It’s not some special insight of mine. Our best hope for his stated dream is new physics. And making physics rich is cheap.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135239501467652
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Imagine you wanted to pay 2m salary to all the top 50 theorists in the world for 10 years to get them all to move to a couple of centers to free them from careerist temptations so they could at last swing for the fences. The salaries would be about 0.005 of current net worth.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135240889843718
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Now that doesn’t strike me as a small ask. It’s a big bill. But it is also our best hope. Imagine COVID was radioactive fallout from a serious nuclear exchange and compute half lives. Or imagine a climate disaster.
Elon shouldn’t have to do this. But government can’t anymore.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135242081013760
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=And the two multi billionaires I believe have the best technical chops to do this are Jim Simons and Elon Musk. But no one wants to build institutions that can do this because our institutions haven’t worked well enough since the Apollo program. So, I’m hopeful he gets asked.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135243528073216
|name=Eric Weinstein
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|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Either way I want to encourage him. But I want to know why rockets over physics. Why not both? Why is a physics guy w a HUGE risk appetite not trying to do for Einstein &amp; his speed limit what Einstein did for Newton’s Gravity? If you know the answer, I’d love to know it as well.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135245100912642
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=There isn’t much left that works in this area. I’m still betting on Elon making sense. It’s one of our last really good hopes. And returning fun and mischief to public spirited scientific attempts to “preserve the light of human consciousness” is something I’m 100% behind.
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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{{Tweet
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|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433135246459871235
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=<nowiki>#</nowiki>OccupyMars is good, but #FreeThePhysicists isn’t even as popular as #FreeTheNipple or #FreeBeer
Take a look around you. Much as I love it, this place is likely going to blow.
Elon is right: time to diversify. And we need to have fun if we are going to be saving ourselves. 🙏
|timestamp=6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1433136710683004929
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@finaltoe Physics is subject to survivor bias in a system of perverse incentives. We induce physicists to work within failed paradigms if they want to eat or house their families. It’s an insane thing to do. We shoot ourselves in the foot when we take away their independence.
|timestamp=6:36 PM · Sep 1, 2021
}}
|timestamp=6:39 PM · Sep 1, 2021
}}
=== 2022 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1479257036567109636
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Huh. Let’s see

[[Standard Model]]: [[Bundles|Fiber Bundle]]
[[General Relativity]]: [[Bundles|Fiber Bundle]]
Our universe: Derived from  SM+GR
So
uh
yeah. So far. Crazy right?
Weird flex, but it checked out.
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=joe_r_Odonnell-profile-q8PSQM7u.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/joe_r_Odonnell/status/1477836258906759171
|name=Joe — e/adgbe 🎾
|usernameurl=https://x.com/joe_r_Odonnell
|username=joe_r_Odonnell
|content=When all you’ve got is gauge theory, everything looks like a fiber bundle
|timestamp=2:56 AM · Jan 3, 2022
}}
|timestamp=1:02 AM · Jan 7, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1480576734235807746
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Who were Babson and Bahnson? Those stories don’t make much sense. Why Bryce and Cecile DeWitt and Peter Higgs in Chappell hill funded as part of a weird anti-gravity program?
Simple question: how did you tutor your priors last summer? Not at all? A tiny amount?
Skeptically,
E
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1480575298903044099
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Hi Michael,
Not updating my priors on all UFO sightings. I’m updating my priors on [[The Golden Age of General Relativity|“The Golden Age of General Relativity”]], B DeWitt, L Witten, RIAS, the Martin Company, etc.” And I’m doing it based on a government report inconsistent with the closing report of BlueBook. And you?
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=michaelshermer-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/michaelshermer/status/1480571442722922496
|name=Michael Shermer
|usernameurl=https://x.com/michaelshermer
|username=michaelshermer
|content=Dear @EricRWeinstein
According to UFOlogists 95% of all sightings for all time are explained by natural/terrestrial phenom (planes, blimps, geese, sun dogs, lens flares, etc.). 5% unexplained (≠ ET or Russian tech). X new sighting is made. Which bin is X most likely to be in?
|timestamp=4:05 PM · Jan 10, 2022
}}
|timestamp=4:20 PM · Jan 10, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1480576733178839041
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=We have been spun. And as skeptics we have to notice the inconsistencies.
We were likely either spun this last summer, or spun at the closure of Operation BlueBook.
The whole thing sounds like total bullshit. But we also have a lot of weird stuff from real 1950s science.
|timestamp=4:26 PM · Jan 10, 2022
}}
|timestamp=4:26 PM · Jan 10, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1483973927701409792
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Video source: @AlchemyAmerican
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1483972679199649792
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=A claim that you find repeatedly when you look into [[UAP|UFOs]] is that Aerospace Companies hold the most advanced knowledge of Physics. Not academe.
I do **not** believe this claim. Happy to be wrong. Can someone tell me what its origin is? Why do so many believe it?
Thx #UFOtwitter!
|timestamp=1:20 AM · Jan 20, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1483972680508325889
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Note: I’m agnostic on materials science or condensed matter claims. I was trying to engage in fundamental physics beyond the [[Standard Model]] or [[General Relativity]] here. Likely unsuccessfully.
|timestamp=1:20 AM · Jan 20, 2022
}}
|timestamp=1:25 AM · Jan 20, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1492589654243221512
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=And by the way, everything I put together I ran by experts like physics historian David Kaiser at MIT.
What do I make of the fact that most physicists know zip about this? We fictionalized this story to make it respectable. But it wasn’t. Our rigorous minds were getting jiggy.🙏
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1492585509071343619
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=You aren’t getting it.
For example: Feynman’s story about “The Alibi Room” is also about great math-physics minds of the 1940s-60s dipping into Aerospace companies (Curtiss-Wright in Buffalo). Same with Solomon Lefshetz. Likely Wheeler, Deser, DeWitt.
Y’all just never noticed.
|timestamp=7:44 PM · Feb 12, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1492586539053993985
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=That famous “G-mu-nu” story where Feynman can’t remember which North Carolina University is hosting the Gravity conference? Is about Bahnson and an *anti-gravity* initiative. Again, you just didn’t notice because of the way we tell the story. Higgs? UNC Physical Fields institute.
|timestamp=7:48 PM · Feb 12, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1492587248277241856
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=The entire [[The Golden Age of General Relativity|“Golden Age of General Relativity”]] is misportrayed. Feynman and Uri Geller? Pauling and Feynman at Esselen? The LSD stories? The story about nuclear powered airplane patents? It’s some super freaky pseudo-scientific seeming story about many of our greatest scientists.
|timestamp=7:51 PM · Feb 12, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1492588035787141137
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=The fact that many of you never noticed is on you. Do I know what it means? No. My leading theory is that scientists disappeared into the military industrial complex to take $$ for pseudo-science. But that’s only one theory. Shoot the messenger if you like, but you didn’t get it.
|timestamp=7:54 PM · Feb 12, 2022
}}
|timestamp=8:01 PM · Feb 12, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1503097922207948802
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I’d like to point out that we don’t know whether we are functionally trapped in this solar system.
We are with modern science &amp; technology. But we don’t know if it is easy or hard to escape this place. And we won’t know if we stagnate in [[General Relativity]] &amp; the [[Standard Model]].
|timestamp=7:57 PM · Mar 13, 2022
|media1=ERW-X-post-1503097922207948802-FNwTmDfVUAAJN46.jpg
|media2=ERW-X-post-1503097922207948802-FNwTmDgVsAIHalO.jpg
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1549620077884067840
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=This could include someone like Eric Davis, Bob Lazar, Travis Taylor, etc. maybe at blackboard talking over equations/Lagrangians, rather than merely speaking in prose
And if this doesn’t exist, why doesn’t it exist? Forgive me, but I don’t know the history here. Seems odd. Thx.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1549620076294586369
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Request for Help: have any of the technical folks claiming UAP knowledge been interviewed by technical folks w/ knowledge of General Relativity &amp; Particle physics?
I would like to watch such a conversation dealing with the dry science of how UAP are claimed/thought to work. 🙏
|timestamp=4:59 AM · Jul 20, 2022
}}
|timestamp=4:59 AM · Jul 20, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1580356325946499073
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=I got it immediately. Stay in touch? Thx.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1580319421330907136
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=1) [[General Relativity]]</br>
2) [[(Pseudo-)Riemannian Geometry]]</br>
3) [[Quantum Field Theory]]</br>
4) Material Science/Condensed Matter</br>
5) Nuclear Physics/Weaponry</br>
6) Disinformation Theory</br>
7) Cult Indoctrination/Deprogramming</br>
8) Propaganda</br>
9) [[Preference Falsification|Preference Falsification Theory]]</br>
10) [[Mansfield Amendment (1969)|Mansfield Amendment]]
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=OneFineDia_-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/OneFineDia_/status/1580313382666014720
|name=One Fine Day
|usernameurl=https://x.com/OneFineDia_
|username=OneFineDia_
|content=@LueElizondo recently gave a small list of topics he would recommend for study to begin to wrangle "the Phenomenon", if he "were king". What areas of intersectional learning do YOU think are needed and should be more deeply looked into? Your ufology curriculum. Thanks, Eric.
|timestamp=9:44 PM · Oct 12, 2022
}}
|timestamp=10:08 PM · Oct 12, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1580319424627691520
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=11) [[Science, The Endless Frontier (1945)|Science Policy Theory (V Bush)]]</br>
12) Selection (Abstracted)</br>
13) Comparative Eschatology</br>
14) Anti-Gravity Pseudo-science involving top physicists and mathematicians in the era of the So-Called [[The Golden Age of General Relativity|‘Golden age of General Relativity’]].</br>
15) [[Theory of Geometric Unity|GU]]</br>
16) Mind control.</br>
Remember: you asked! ;-)
|timestamp=10:08 PM · Oct 12, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=GambleDale-profile-X84yjUmN.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/GambleDale/status/1580333352426811393
|name=GambleDale
|usernameurl=https://x.com/GambleDale
|username=GambleDale
|content=PrimaoMansfield amendment of 1969
 or 1973?
|timestamp=11:03 PM · Oct 12, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1580338843026219008
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Wow! Thanks for asking Dale. 1969
but 1973 is closely related.
Nobody gets this anymore. It’s like talking to the wind. Thanks for spotting that entry. Truly.
|timestamp=11:25 PM · Oct 12, 2022
}}
{{Tweet
|image=GambleDale-profile-X84yjUmN.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/GambleDale/status/1580333352426811393
|name=GambleDale
|usernameurl=https://x.com/GambleDale
|username=GambleDale
|content=(Was supposed to read, “Primarily Mansfield Amendment
” but fat-fingered the iPhone word prompt)
Thanks for the reply!
|timestamp=11:39 PM · Oct 12, 2022
}}
|timestamp=12:34 AM · Oct 13, 2022
}}
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=== 2023 ===
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=== 2024 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1767902861025845708
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=You wrote: “In physics, theories are "fundamentally wrong" if they're mathematically inconsistent or contradict experimental evidence.”
That is simply untrue. I mean it sounds superficially reasonable in a kind of Wolfgang Pauli hard ass way
but it is clearly wrong. And I gave 3 examples which I could be sure we both knew. I could have given 10 more without too much effort. Feel free to challenge them.
Combatting this hardline belief and any simplistic reliance on the Scientific Method was the entire point of [[The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature - Paul Dirac|Dirac’s famous 1963 essay quote]] about mathematical beauty being more important than agreement with experiment. We don’t appreciate Dirac’s revolutionary point if all we repeat is the quote. Here is the context for the quote which makes the argument against the danger of letting experiment or consistency dictate that something is ‘fundamentally wrong’ as you say in your reponse to Elon:
“I think there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment. If Schrodinger had been more confident of his work, he could have published it some months earlier, and he could have published a more accurate equation. That equation is now known as the Klein-Gordon equation, although it was really discovered by Schrodinger, and in fact was discovered by Schrodinger before he discovered his nonrelativistic treatment of the hydrogen atom. It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.”
P.A.M. Dirac
I have no illusion that the point will ever die. But I was scratching my head when YOU made it, just as I was scratching my head watching you and @CburgesCliff hosted by some guy who seems to rely on strawmanning and personal invective as his schtick or act. I find you are usually pretty reasonable. That discussion was painfully biased and was pretty anti-collegial low level internet bullshit in my opinion. Yuck.
Anyway, here is the source:
https://scientificamerican.com/blog/guest-blog/the-evolution-of-the-physicists-picture-of-nature/
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1767763283270935027
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Ya know, I disagree with @elonmusk here because I don’t know how he got to such a strong conclusion. I wish he would say more. Seems unwarranted.
But @martinmbauer is clearly also not right here either! Examples:
1915: Einstein’s first explicit equation for General Relativity was mathematically wrong; it set a divergence free 2-tensor equal to a non-divergence free 2-tensor.  But it wasn’t fundamentally wrong. It needed a small fix reversing the trace component.
In the 1920s E. Schrödinger’s theory  didn’t agree with experiment. Why? Because the spin wasn’t properly incorporated. It wasn’t fundamentally wrong, and was patched. Same theory.
In 1928, P. Dirac’s Quantum Field Theory gave nonsense answers? Why? A small goof conflating bare and dressed masses. Harder to fix
but in no way a fundamental error. The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics or QED still stands.
Etc. Etc.
Not a big deal
but this point is just so wrong as to be unsalvageable. Very curious error to make.
Martin (with whom I usually deeply disagree) is normally pretty great. But sometimes I think pretending that all outsiders talking about the current physics disaster are cranks, causes insiders to say very simplistic unnuanced and wrong things. This feels like that. And I’m not even a physicist.
It’s like the insiders don’t realize that the outsiders have any validity. All outsiders don’t immediately become cranks by virtue of disagreeing at a profound level with the abjectly failing communities from which they came.
[Note: this is *NOT* a gotcha. I fully expect Martin to realize the error and just admit it. No big deal. We all say incautious things. And this is just obviously wrong. Not an indictment.]
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=martinmbauer-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/martinmbauer/status/1767495496157831284
|name=Martin Bauer
|usernameurl=https://x.com/martinmbauer
|username=martinmbauer
|content=In physics, theories are "fundamentally wrong" if they're mathematically inconsistent or contradict experimental evidence
Here it means *doesn't feel right to me*
And Nature absolutely doesn't care for personal feelings
|timestamp=10:18 AM · Mar 12, 2024
}}
|timestamp=4:03 AM · Mar 13, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1767763933807497314
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@lexfridman @elonmusk @PhysInHistory Can you explain? I keep hearing this. Thx.
|timestamp=4:05 AM · Mar 13, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1767766506870297031
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@elonmusk @PhysInHistory Huh. What are you seeing that others are not? I’m confused by the repeated references to an implied argument that I don’t think I know. Thanks.
|timestamp=4:15 AM · Mar 13, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1767768104690499763
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@codeslubber @elonmusk @martinmbauer Ken Wilson kinda did. He sorta created a new one. But that is different. I think he succeeded pretty well.
|timestamp=4:22 AM · Mar 13, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1767768881450320225
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=@codeslubber @elonmusk @martinmbauer 1984.
|timestamp=4:25 AM · Mar 13, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=martinmbauer-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/martinmbauer/status/1767823661107425660
|name=Martin Bauer
|usernameurl=https://x.com/martinmbauer
|username=martinmbauer
|content=Not sure what's the argument here. I didn't say every wrong theory must be fundamentally wrong ? 
My point is that personal feelings from 'outsiders' or 'insiders' (weird distinction) don't have any bearing on whether a theory is wrong or not
|timestamp=8:03 AM · Mar 13, 2024
}}
|timestamp=1:17 PM · Mar 13, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1773060797847208382
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=[Note for Curt: This is the whole point of [[Theory of Geometric Unity|Geometric Unity]]. They are three geometries. Which are all one geometry, and that is only possible in the rarest of circumstances. Which we are in oddly.
Metric Geometry: [[General Relativity|General Relativity GR]]
[[Bundles|Fiber Geometry]]:  [[Standard Model|Standard Model SM]]
Symplectic Geometry: Hamiltonian Quantization of the SM. ]
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=TOEwithCurt-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/TOEwithCurt/status/1773057150199238985
|name=Curt Jaimungal
|usernameurl=https://x.com/TOEwithCurt
|username=TOEwithCurt
|content=I'm confused. This lecture doesn't negate the geometric foundations of GR. Einstein differentiates between how gravity and electromagnetism relate to the structure of space, all the while pointing to his ultimate goal of unification. As for the rest of the original article linked, I'm unsure how the quotes from Einstein support the author's title. GR is indeed a geometric theory; however, Einstein's viewpoint was that its geometric nature doesn't singularly distinguish it from the broader domain of physics, where geometry has always played a fundamental role. If anything, Einstein is saying not to confuse the map with the territory.
|timestamp=6:39 PM · Mar 27, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1773060553411641673
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=He is correctly anticipating the Simons-Yang discovery of the [[Wu-Yang Dictionary|“Wu Yang dictionary”]].
Maxwell became Yang Mills</br>
Yang Mills became Simons Yang.</br>
Simons Yang became the Wu Yang Dictionary.</br>
[[Wu-Yang Dictionary|Wu Yang]] was (except for one entry) was [[Bundles|Ehressmann fiber bundle geometry]].
Think of metric geometry, fiber geometry and symplectic geometry as the geometry of symmetric metric 2-tensors, [[Bundles|fiber bundle connections]] and anti-symmetric 2 tensors respectively.
|timestamp=6:52 PM · Mar 27, 2024
}}
|timestamp=6:53 PM · Mar 27, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1827761781261103246
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=NOTE: I was addressing these questions directly to my friend @skdh as a reponse  to the OP when I posted. That said, many people are interpreting this as a general request and I am delighted to hear their takes as well.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1827740131799011345
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Interesting. If that’s what’s wrong, what would physics done right be?
Q1: What are the 3 most promising general lines of attack on fundamental physics?
Q2: Who are 5 theorists, in your opinion, closest to pursuing a breakthrough beyond the Standard Model/General Relativity?
🙏
|quote=
{{Tweet
|image=skdh-profile.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/skdh/status/1827724986427281497
|name=Sabine Hossenfelder
|usernameurl=https://x.com/skdh
|username=skdh
|content=all that's wrong with theoretical physics in one simple graph
|media1=skdh-X-post-1827724986427281497-GV1iMAkXwAAOBNM.jpg
|timestamp=4:09 PM · Aug 25, 2024
}}
|timestamp=4:09 PM · Aug 25, 2024
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1827741517571887579
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Yet another cut would be:
If the caption were instead reversed to read “All that is right with theoretical physics in one simple graph.”, what would that look like visually?
I’m genuinely super curious to learn about what you’re most excited, as I realized I don’t really know!
|timestamp=4:15 PM · Aug 25, 2024
}}
|timestamp=5:35 PM · Aug 25, 2024
}}
{{#widget:Tweet|id=1834698277356527999}}
=== 2025 ===
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1998625323928195091
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=So has physics failed you? No! Fundamental Physics is fine. But it got hijacked by a crew. That crew created a cult called [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|“The Only Game In Town”]]
or [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|TOGIT]]. Literally. That is what they called it. Pure hubris and murder.
[[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|TOGIT]] failed you. And [[The Only Game in Town (TOGIT)|TOGIT]] hijacked fundamental physics for 41 years. But science didn’t.
Fundamental physics is sitting right where it was overpowered, mugged, robbed, and tied up by [[String Theory]] and [[Quantum Gravity]] and left for dead in 1984.
It’s fine. The [[Standard Model]] is amazing. As is [[General Relativity|general relativity]]. In fact: it’s totally spectacular. We could get back to work tomorrow if we could get out from under the cult and get our own resources back.
But we can’t yet run De-Stringification schools, undo [[Quantum Gravity|Quantum Gravity Indoctrination]] and get back to actual science. We are still run by zombie ideologies refereeing fundamental physics. Or what is left of it. And that is why I post like this. It’s a fight to get you to grasp what happened.
Similarly for COVID Zoonotic origin theory. Or Economic Theory and Neo-Classical theory. Or Neo-Darwinism. Etc. Etc. You got hijacked. We all did.
One and all. And I am suggesting we take OUR cockpits back.
|thread=
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1998618647418622032
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Let’s try a science post to show you the problem with the hijacking of science:
CLAIM: [[Quantum Gravity]] has been a 41 year disaster for physics. EVERYONE knows the [[String Theory]] leadership told us exactly what they were about to do, and then FAILED physics.
A mitigated disaster:
|media1=ERW-X-post-1998618647418622032-G7yFENxaEAAJ94x.jpg
|timestamp=4:59 AM · Dec 10, 2025
}}
{{Tweet
|image=Eric profile picture.jpg
|nameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1998620026556002478
|name=Eric Weinstein
|usernameurl=https://x.com/EricRWeinstein
|username=EricRWeinstein
|content=Everyone who has followed fundamental physics closely since ‘84 knows this is true.
If science were healthy we would discuss that. But we can’t, because we have unwanted leaders. Those leaders are refereeing their OWN games. And, they win all games that they both play & referee.
|timestamp=4:59 AM · Dec 10, 2025
}}
|timestamp=5:26 AM · Dec 10, 2025
}}


[[Category:Portal Topics‏‎]]
[[Category:Portal Topics‏‎]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Physics]]

Latest revision as of 21:07, 12 December 2025

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On X[edit]

2009[edit]

Eric profile picture.jpg
Eric Weinstein

Me: Grampa, do you realize you're older than General Relativity? GF: Oh, please! I knew him when he was a Lieutenant.

H.Rubin (1913-2008)

4:49 AM · Nov 23, 2009

2010[edit]

Eric profile picture.jpg
Eric Weinstein

That Quantum Field Theory is now far more geometric than General Relativity ever was, seems a needlessly well kept secret from the layman.

5:43 AM · Mar 1, 2010

2011[edit]

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Eric Weinstein

Calling General Relativity a brand/meme/mashup/remix communicates a deep confusion about the relationship of tech's tail to nature's dog.

11:02 PM · Jun 29, 2011

2018[edit]

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Eric Weinstein

1/ "Theories of Everything": A Taxonomy.

It is often said that "Theories-of-Everything are a dime a dozen" or that "All theoretical physicists worth their salt have several in a drawer." So far as I can tell, this is simply untrue. We've barely ever, if at all, seen candidates.

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4:58 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

2/ The Escher Lithograph used in the first tweet points to the core of why TOEs are rare. A candidate TOE has to have some quality of "a fire that lights itself", which is difficult to think about beyond the equations that would instantiate it. Hence very few such theories exist.

5:02 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

3/ I'm going to lean on the following dictionary of analogies:

Physical Paper = Void Pictured Canvas = Manifold and/or Einsteinian Spacetime Ink=Matter & non-gravitational force fields Pencils = Pre-Conscious Lego (e.g. amino acids) Hands = Consciousness Paradox = Self-awareness

5:17 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

4/ In my taxonomy, Type I TOEs are our least ambitious but they best match our state of the world. They are distinguished by two *separate* sources of origin: one for the Canvas (General Relativity or Witten's point i) ) & one for the Ink (Standard Model or Witten's point ii) ).

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5:24 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

5 Type II TOE's are more ambitious & seek to derive the Ink from the choice of a mathematically distinguished Canvas that is anything but blank. My arch-nemesis @garrettlisi's theory is Type II. E8 is his 248 dimensional canvas. The intricacy is there, but doesn't quite match up.

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5:41 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

6/ In Type III TOEs the ink is to be derived from canvas, but the canvas is essentially blank; it simply permits mathematics to happen (e.g. calculus and linear algebra). In such theories the ink has to be bootstrapped into existence. My lectures on Geometric Unity were Type III.

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5:49 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

7/ Type IV TOE's try to change the question from Einstein's "Unified Field Theory." In String Thy, "Quantizing Gravity" became substituted for "Unified Field." For this crowd, many are now betting that the canvas & ink are both *emergent* from some deeper fundamental quantum thy.

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6:00 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

8/ Type V TOEs are of a type I've never been able to fully contemplate; they are without boundaries or origins. There is no "Why is there something rather than nothing" within them. That which is not forbidden is compelled into existence. Void creates canvas & canvas begets void.

6:08 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

9/ Type VI TOEs begin with the hands. Religions are of this type. I pass over this in silence as they aren't scientific.

I will leave open higher types, but I've really only seen attempts at I-IV & I wouldn't call String-Thy/M-Thy a full TOE try since events of the last 15 yrs.

6:19 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

10/ I believe fundamental physics is stalled out because we are finally at the doorstep of a TOE and we haven't really bothered to think about what that would actually mean because we've never been here before. A final step need not look like any previous one. In fact, it cannot.

6:26 PM · Jan 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

END/ My bet is on Type III for a reason:

Type I is not unified.
Type II is possible, but appears to be unworkable in details.
Type IV appears to lack sufficient guidance from Quantum theory to actually 'ship' despite consuming resources for yrs.
Types V & VI lack any progress.

6:32 PM · Jan 29, 2018


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Eric Weinstein

1/ APRIL FOOLS' SCIENCE: Theory into Practice.

I was challenged by someone as to why I wasn't taking my own medicine referenced in the sub-tweet below this April 1st. Ok. Here goes.

What I believe about the universe that is quite different and why I don't talk about it much...

4:54 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

1/ APRIL FOOL'S SCIENCE: A proposal.

Already bored of the coming "April Fools' Day!" pranks? Same here. And it's still March!

Consider how we might re-purpose this resource for science. What if 1 day a year, we explored big ideas that'd normally result in professional shunning?

3:28 PM · Mar 29, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

2/ When I was around 16-17, I learned of a story that fascinated me much more than it seemed to captivate any other mathematician or physicist. It was the story of the discovery of the "Wu-Yang" dictionary around 1975-6, involving 3 super-minds: Jim Simons, CN Yang & Is Singer.

5:01 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

3/ What was learned was that the Quantum of Planck, Bohr & Dirac was built on an internal Geometry, just as surely as General Relativity was built on an external geometry of space-time. Only the two geometries weren't the same! One was due to B Riemann; the other to C Ehresmann.

5:07 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

4/ Further the 2 geometries had different advantages. Riemann's geometry allowed you to compress the curvature & measure the 'torsion' while Ehresmann's encouraged "Gauge Rotation"... as long as you didn't do either of those two things. So I asked could the geometries be unified?

5:14 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

5/ This would be a change in physics' main question. Instead of asking if Einstein's gravity could fit within Bohr's quantum, we could ask "Could Einstein's structures peculiar to Riemann's geometry be unified & rotated within Ehresmann's?" The answer was almost a 'No!'

Almost.

5:23 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

6/ While physicists said the Universe was known to be chiral, I came to believe it was fundamentally symmetric. While we seemed to observe there being 3 or more generations of matter, I came to believe that there were but 2 true generations, plus an improbable "imposter." etc...

5:37 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

7/ In short a great many things had to be slightly off in our picture of the world in the 1980s to get the two geometric theories into a "Geometric Unity." Then in 1998, it was found that neutrinos weren't massless! This started to tip the scales towards the alterations I needed.

5:45 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

8/ In short the April 1st "trick" that is being played on me is that I see a *natural* theory where chirality would be emergent (not fundamental), the number of true generations would be 2 not 3, there would be 2^4 and not 15 Fermions in a generation, and the geometries unify.

5:49 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

9/ I spoke on this nearly 5 years ago; I have been slow to get back to it as I found the physics response bewildering. I have now decided to return to this work & to disposition it. So over the coming year, I'll begin pushing out "Geometric Unity" (as a non-physicist) to experts.

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6:01 AM · Apr 2, 2018
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Eric Weinstein

END/ I am sorry that this was a bit technical for lay folks and not technical enough for experts, but it's twitter. I may begin to say more in the weeks and months ahead that may be clarifying.

If you are interested, do stay tuned. Until then, I thank you for your time.

6:06 AM · Apr 2, 2018

2021[edit]

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Eric Weinstein

The way we speak now may ensure nothing transcendent can ever happen again:

“Bruh, Leonardo was da GOAT among cross platform creators. If he’d crowdfunded or pivoted to a freemium model coupled to a revenue share, meme distribution could have scaled his content. lol! Self-own.”

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6:49 PM · Jan 9, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

War and Peace? “TL;DR”

General Relativity? “That’s cool Albert, but like, That’s just your opinion and my friend Sarah is like wicked smart on spiral dynamics and has been waiting patiently while you mansplained her.”

Shackleton? “Total Narcissist. Didn’t do his shadow work.”

6:49 PM · Jan 9, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

Also: Get off my lawn. Apparently.

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6:49 PM · Jan 9, 2021


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Eric Weinstein

Notice this style of article. It confuses the *instantiation* of an idea which experiment *can* probe w/ the idea *itself* which experiment *cannot* probe. This is one of the most basic errors in science, philosophy of science & science reporting.

Read Dirac’s 1963 SciAm essay.

5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

I’m sorry but what’s being addressed is closer to Naive Mildly Broken Spacetime SuperSymmetry models based on SUSY extensions of the symmetries of flat spacetime. Which many, if not most, sane theorists didn’t believe. But that seems to be a mouthful to say. Hence this silliness.

5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

The bottomline is that the scientific method doesn’t work on ideas. It only works on instantiations of ideas & executions of experiments. That is why I call the Scientific Method the “Radio Edit of Great Science”. It’s science’s Golden Calf. It isn’t how top science works at all.

5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

So why do we keep making this error. Because the real issue is keeping out bad ideas and keeping order. The Scientific Method can be invoked selectively against loons and heretics and suspended selectively for those we believe in. Read Dirac on Schrodinger. Or Einstein&Grossman.

5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

You will see that General Relativity actually has Grossman as a coauthor at the level of ideas. The main mind blowing insight is in a co-authored 1913 paper seldom discussed. All that changes after that is the instantiation. Science fetishizes instance over insight. So bizarre...

5:34 PM · Jan 31, 2021


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Eric Weinstein

Let’s be clear about this weird sounding issue.

@elonmusk is one of the only minds properly focused in public on the issue of the current danger to human consciousness from having all known intelligent life in the universe on a single terrestrial surface. His top idea: rockets.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

I think that’s great. Where we differ is that I don’t think Earth, our Moon & Mars plus space stations connected by rockets give us much real diversity. It’s barely doable. But assume you could make it work. I would want to run 1000s of uncorrelated experiments as most will fail.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

And if we are stuck in this solar system with the physics we know there is only one good surface and two marginal ones.

Faster than light spacetime travel is bullshit. But going beyond Einstein is not.

It’s unbelievably hard, but everything Elon does is hard. Like hope.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

But yes, he believes. In fun. In hope. In ending the epidemic of learned helplessness that has infected everyone else. So I’m a pretty die hard Elon supporter. Not because I agree w/ everything. But he gets **the** big issue right. We need to end the single correlated experiment.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

So on the main issue we agree. The second issue is where we differ. A multi multi billionaire (12 digits!) as smart as Elon w a physics background could diversify & place a small 2nd bet on rendering General Relativity a mere effective theory by single handedly fixing physics.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

Now he may have a reason. But I have never heard him address this so it just makes no sense to me. No one is taking the need to go beyond Einstein seriously so we are pretty much trapped here in this solar system with the physics we know. That means three terrestrial surfaces.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

But because Elon is so smart, I don’t discount the idea that he isn’t interested in finding out if post-Einsteinian physics for some reason. I just doesn’t add up to me, but maybe he knows something I don’t. But north of $100B w/ his knowledge of physics, he could change it all.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

I just want to know why no one asks this question. Lex could do it. Joe could do it. But he doesn’t seem to address it so I have no idea what is going on. It’s not some special insight of mine. Our best hope for his stated dream is new physics. And making physics rich is cheap.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

Imagine you wanted to pay 2m salary to all the top 50 theorists in the world for 10 years to get them all to move to a couple of centers to free them from careerist temptations so they could at last swing for the fences. The salaries would be about 0.005 of current net worth.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

Now that doesn’t strike me as a small ask. It’s a big bill. But it is also our best hope. Imagine COVID was radioactive fallout from a serious nuclear exchange and compute half lives. Or imagine a climate disaster.

Elon shouldn’t have to do this. But government can’t anymore.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

And the two multi billionaires I believe have the best technical chops to do this are Jim Simons and Elon Musk. But no one wants to build institutions that can do this because our institutions haven’t worked well enough since the Apollo program. So, I’m hopeful he gets asked.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

Either way I want to encourage him. But I want to know why rockets over physics. Why not both? Why is a physics guy w a HUGE risk appetite not trying to do for Einstein & his speed limit what Einstein did for Newton’s Gravity? If you know the answer, I’d love to know it as well.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

There isn’t much left that works in this area. I’m still betting on Elon making sense. It’s one of our last really good hopes. And returning fun and mischief to public spirited scientific attempts to “preserve the light of human consciousness” is something I’m 100% behind.

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

#OccupyMars is good, but #FreeThePhysicists isn’t even as popular as #FreeTheNipple or #FreeBeer

Take a look around you. Much as I love it, this place is likely going to blow.

Elon is right: time to diversify. And we need to have fun if we are going to be saving ourselves. 🙏

6:30 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

@finaltoe Physics is subject to survivor bias in a system of perverse incentives. We induce physicists to work within failed paradigms if they want to eat or house their families. It’s an insane thing to do. We shoot ourselves in the foot when we take away their independence.

6:36 PM · Sep 1, 2021
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Eric Weinstein

@jetpen No one sane wants to have to lean on time dilation for the reason you state.

But I *formally* agree.

6:39 PM · Sep 1, 2021

2022[edit]

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Eric Weinstein

Huh. Let’s see


Standard Model: Fiber Bundle

General Relativity: Fiber Bundle

Our universe: Derived from SM+GR

So
uh
yeah. So far. Crazy right?

Weird flex, but it checked out.

1:02 AM · Jan 7, 2022
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Joe — e/adgbe 🎾

When all you’ve got is gauge theory, everything looks like a fiber bundle

2:56 AM · Jan 3, 2022


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Eric Weinstein

Hi Michael,

Not updating my priors on all UFO sightings. I’m updating my priors on “The Golden Age of General Relativity”, B DeWitt, L Witten, RIAS, the Martin Company, etc.” And I’m doing it based on a government report inconsistent with the closing report of BlueBook. And you?

4:20 PM · Jan 10, 2022
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Michael Shermer

Dear @EricRWeinstein

According to UFOlogists 95% of all sightings for all time are explained by natural/terrestrial phenom (planes, blimps, geese, sun dogs, lens flares, etc.). 5% unexplained (≠ ET or Russian tech). X new sighting is made. Which bin is X most likely to be in?

4:05 PM · Jan 10, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

We have been spun. And as skeptics we have to notice the inconsistencies.

We were likely either spun this last summer, or spun at the closure of Operation BlueBook.

The whole thing sounds like total bullshit. But we also have a lot of weird stuff from real 1950s science.

4:26 PM · Jan 10, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

Who were Babson and Bahnson? Those stories don’t make much sense. Why Bryce and Cecile DeWitt and Peter Higgs in Chappell hill funded as part of a weird anti-gravity program?

Simple question: how did you tutor your priors last summer? Not at all? A tiny amount?

Skeptically, E

4:26 PM · Jan 10, 2022


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Eric Weinstein

A claim that you find repeatedly when you look into UFOs is that Aerospace Companies hold the most advanced knowledge of Physics. Not academe.

I do **not** believe this claim. Happy to be wrong. Can someone tell me what its origin is? Why do so many believe it?

Thx #UFOtwitter!

1:20 AM · Jan 20, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

Note: I’m agnostic on materials science or condensed matter claims. I was trying to engage in fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model or General Relativity here. Likely unsuccessfully.

1:20 AM · Jan 20, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

Video source: @AlchemyAmerican

1:25 AM · Jan 20, 2022


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Eric Weinstein

You aren’t getting it.

For example: Feynman’s story about “The Alibi Room” is also about great math-physics minds of the 1940s-60s dipping into Aerospace companies (Curtiss-Wright in Buffalo). Same with Solomon Lefshetz. Likely Wheeler, Deser, DeWitt.

Y’all just never noticed.

7:44 PM · Feb 12, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

That famous “G-mu-nu” story where Feynman can’t remember which North Carolina University is hosting the Gravity conference? Is about Bahnson and an *anti-gravity* initiative. Again, you just didn’t notice because of the way we tell the story. Higgs? UNC Physical Fields institute.

7:48 PM · Feb 12, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

The entire “Golden Age of General Relativity” is misportrayed. Feynman and Uri Geller? Pauling and Feynman at Esselen? The LSD stories? The story about nuclear powered airplane patents? It’s some super freaky pseudo-scientific seeming story about many of our greatest scientists.

7:51 PM · Feb 12, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

The fact that many of you never noticed is on you. Do I know what it means? No. My leading theory is that scientists disappeared into the military industrial complex to take $$ for pseudo-science. But that’s only one theory. Shoot the messenger if you like, but you didn’t get it.

7:54 PM · Feb 12, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

And by the way, everything I put together I ran by experts like physics historian David Kaiser at MIT.

What do I make of the fact that most physicists know zip about this? We fictionalized this story to make it respectable. But it wasn’t. Our rigorous minds were getting jiggy.🙏

8:01 PM · Feb 12, 2022


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Eric Weinstein

I’d like to point out that we don’t know whether we are functionally trapped in this solar system.

We are with modern science & technology. But we don’t know if it is easy or hard to escape this place. And we won’t know if we stagnate in General Relativity & the Standard Model.

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7:57 PM · Mar 13, 2022


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Eric Weinstein

Request for Help: have any of the technical folks claiming UAP knowledge been interviewed by technical folks w/ knowledge of General Relativity & Particle physics?

I would like to watch such a conversation dealing with the dry science of how UAP are claimed/thought to work. 🙏

4:59 AM · Jul 20, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

This could include someone like Eric Davis, Bob Lazar, Travis Taylor, etc. maybe at blackboard talking over equations/Lagrangians, rather than merely speaking in prose

And if this doesn’t exist, why doesn’t it exist? Forgive me, but I don’t know the history here. Seems odd. Thx.

4:59 AM · Jul 20, 2022


Eric profile picture.jpg
Eric Weinstein

1) General Relativity
2) (Pseudo-)Riemannian Geometry
3) Quantum Field Theory
4) Material Science/Condensed Matter
5) Nuclear Physics/Weaponry
6) Disinformation Theory
7) Cult Indoctrination/Deprogramming
8) Propaganda
9) Preference Falsification Theory
10) Mansfield Amendment

10:08 PM · Oct 12, 2022
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One Fine Day

@LueElizondo recently gave a small list of topics he would recommend for study to begin to wrangle "the Phenomenon", if he "were king". What areas of intersectional learning do YOU think are needed and should be more deeply looked into? Your ufology curriculum. Thanks, Eric.

9:44 PM · Oct 12, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

11) Science Policy Theory (V Bush)
12) Selection (Abstracted)
13) Comparative Eschatology
14) Anti-Gravity Pseudo-science involving top physicists and mathematicians in the era of the So-Called ‘Golden age of General Relativity’.
15) GU
16) Mind control.

Remember: you asked! ;-)

10:08 PM · Oct 12, 2022
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GambleDale

PrimaoMansfield amendment of 1969
 or 1973?

11:03 PM · Oct 12, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

Wow! Thanks for asking Dale. 1969
but 1973 is closely related.

Nobody gets this anymore. It’s like talking to the wind. Thanks for spotting that entry. Truly.

11:25 PM · Oct 12, 2022
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GambleDale

(Was supposed to read, “Primarily Mansfield Amendment
” but fat-fingered the iPhone word prompt)

Thanks for the reply!

11:39 PM · Oct 12, 2022
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Eric Weinstein

I got it immediately. Stay in touch? Thx.

12:34 AM · Oct 13, 2022


2023[edit]

2024[edit]

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Eric Weinstein

Ya know, I disagree with @elonmusk here because I don’t know how he got to such a strong conclusion. I wish he would say more. Seems unwarranted.

But @martinmbauer is clearly also not right here either! Examples:

1915: Einstein’s first explicit equation for General Relativity was mathematically wrong; it set a divergence free 2-tensor equal to a non-divergence free 2-tensor. But it wasn’t fundamentally wrong. It needed a small fix reversing the trace component.

In the 1920s E. Schrödinger’s theory didn’t agree with experiment. Why? Because the spin wasn’t properly incorporated. It wasn’t fundamentally wrong, and was patched. Same theory.

In 1928, P. Dirac’s Quantum Field Theory gave nonsense answers? Why? A small goof conflating bare and dressed masses. Harder to fix
but in no way a fundamental error. The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics or QED still stands.

Etc. Etc.

Not a big deal
but this point is just so wrong as to be unsalvageable. Very curious error to make.

Martin (with whom I usually deeply disagree) is normally pretty great. But sometimes I think pretending that all outsiders talking about the current physics disaster are cranks, causes insiders to say very simplistic unnuanced and wrong things. This feels like that. And I’m not even a physicist.

It’s like the insiders don’t realize that the outsiders have any validity. All outsiders don’t immediately become cranks by virtue of disagreeing at a profound level with the abjectly failing communities from which they came.

[Note: this is *NOT* a gotcha. I fully expect Martin to realize the error and just admit it. No big deal. We all say incautious things. And this is just obviously wrong. Not an indictment.]

4:03 AM · Mar 13, 2024
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Martin Bauer

In physics, theories are "fundamentally wrong" if they're mathematically inconsistent or contradict experimental evidence

Here it means *doesn't feel right to me*

And Nature absolutely doesn't care for personal feelings

10:18 AM · Mar 12, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

@lexfridman @elonmusk @PhysInHistory Can you explain? I keep hearing this. Thx.

4:05 AM · Mar 13, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

@elonmusk @PhysInHistory Huh. What are you seeing that others are not? I’m confused by the repeated references to an implied argument that I don’t think I know. Thanks.

4:15 AM · Mar 13, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

@codeslubber @elonmusk @martinmbauer Ken Wilson kinda did. He sorta created a new one. But that is different. I think he succeeded pretty well.

4:22 AM · Mar 13, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

@codeslubber @elonmusk @martinmbauer 1984.

4:25 AM · Mar 13, 2024
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Martin Bauer

Not sure what's the argument here. I didn't say every wrong theory must be fundamentally wrong ?

My point is that personal feelings from 'outsiders' or 'insiders' (weird distinction) don't have any bearing on whether a theory is wrong or not

8:03 AM · Mar 13, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

You wrote: “In physics, theories are "fundamentally wrong" if they're mathematically inconsistent or contradict experimental evidence.”

That is simply untrue. I mean it sounds superficially reasonable in a kind of Wolfgang Pauli hard ass way
but it is clearly wrong. And I gave 3 examples which I could be sure we both knew. I could have given 10 more without too much effort. Feel free to challenge them.

Combatting this hardline belief and any simplistic reliance on the Scientific Method was the entire point of Dirac’s famous 1963 essay quote about mathematical beauty being more important than agreement with experiment. We don’t appreciate Dirac’s revolutionary point if all we repeat is the quote. Here is the context for the quote which makes the argument against the danger of letting experiment or consistency dictate that something is ‘fundamentally wrong’ as you say in your reponse to Elon:

“I think there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment. If Schrodinger had been more confident of his work, he could have published it some months earlier, and he could have published a more accurate equation. That equation is now known as the Klein-Gordon equation, although it was really discovered by Schrodinger, and in fact was discovered by Schrodinger before he discovered his nonrelativistic treatment of the hydrogen atom. It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.”

P.A.M. Dirac

I have no illusion that the point will ever die. But I was scratching my head when YOU made it, just as I was scratching my head watching you and @CburgesCliff hosted by some guy who seems to rely on strawmanning and personal invective as his schtick or act. I find you are usually pretty reasonable. That discussion was painfully biased and was pretty anti-collegial low level internet bullshit in my opinion. Yuck.

Anyway, here is the source:

https://scientificamerican.com/blog/guest-blog/the-evolution-of-the-physicists-picture-of-nature/

1:17 PM · Mar 13, 2024


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Curt Jaimungal

I'm confused. This lecture doesn't negate the geometric foundations of GR. Einstein differentiates between how gravity and electromagnetism relate to the structure of space, all the while pointing to his ultimate goal of unification. As for the rest of the original article linked, I'm unsure how the quotes from Einstein support the author's title. GR is indeed a geometric theory; however, Einstein's viewpoint was that its geometric nature doesn't singularly distinguish it from the broader domain of physics, where geometry has always played a fundamental role. If anything, Einstein is saying not to confuse the map with the territory.

6:39 PM · Mar 27, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

He is correctly anticipating the Simons-Yang discovery of the “Wu Yang dictionary”.

Maxwell became Yang Mills
Yang Mills became Simons Yang.
Simons Yang became the Wu Yang Dictionary.
Wu Yang was (except for one entry) was Ehressmann fiber bundle geometry.

Think of metric geometry, fiber geometry and symplectic geometry as the geometry of symmetric metric 2-tensors, fiber bundle connections and anti-symmetric 2 tensors respectively.

6:52 PM · Mar 27, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

[Note for Curt: This is the whole point of Geometric Unity. They are three geometries. Which are all one geometry, and that is only possible in the rarest of circumstances. Which we are in oddly.

Metric Geometry: General Relativity GR Fiber Geometry: Standard Model SM Symplectic Geometry: Hamiltonian Quantization of the SM. ]

6:53 PM · Mar 27, 2024


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Eric Weinstein

Interesting. If that’s what’s wrong, what would physics done right be?

Q1: What are the 3 most promising general lines of attack on fundamental physics?

Q2: Who are 5 theorists, in your opinion, closest to pursuing a breakthrough beyond the Standard Model/General Relativity? 🙏

4:09 PM · Aug 25, 2024
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Sabine Hossenfelder

all that's wrong with theoretical physics in one simple graph

Skdh-X-post-1827724986427281497-GV1iMAkXwAAOBNM.jpg
4:09 PM · Aug 25, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

Yet another cut would be:

If the caption were instead reversed to read “All that is right with theoretical physics in one simple graph.”, what would that look like visually?

I’m genuinely super curious to learn about what you’re most excited, as I realized I don’t really know!

4:15 PM · Aug 25, 2024
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Eric Weinstein

NOTE: I was addressing these questions directly to my friend @skdh as a reponse to the OP when I posted. That said, many people are interpreting this as a general request and I am delighted to hear their takes as well.

5:35 PM · Aug 25, 2024


2025[edit]

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Eric Weinstein

Let’s try a science post to show you the problem with the hijacking of science:

CLAIM: Quantum Gravity has been a 41 year disaster for physics. EVERYONE knows the String Theory leadership told us exactly what they were about to do, and then FAILED physics.

A mitigated disaster:

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4:59 AM · Dec 10, 2025
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Eric Weinstein

Everyone who has followed fundamental physics closely since ‘84 knows this is true.

If science were healthy we would discuss that. But we can’t, because we have unwanted leaders. Those leaders are refereeing their OWN games. And, they win all games that they both play & referee.

4:59 AM · Dec 10, 2025
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Eric Weinstein

So has physics failed you? No! Fundamental Physics is fine. But it got hijacked by a crew. That crew created a cult called “The Only Game In Town” or TOGIT. Literally. That is what they called it. Pure hubris and murder.

TOGIT failed you. And TOGIT hijacked fundamental physics for 41 years. But science didn’t.

Fundamental physics is sitting right where it was overpowered, mugged, robbed, and tied up by String Theory and Quantum Gravity and left for dead in 1984.

It’s fine. The Standard Model is amazing. As is general relativity. In fact: it’s totally spectacular. We could get back to work tomorrow if we could get out from under the cult and get our own resources back.

But we can’t yet run De-Stringification schools, undo Quantum Gravity Indoctrination and get back to actual science. We are still run by zombie ideologies refereeing fundamental physics. Or what is left of it. And that is why I post like this. It’s a fight to get you to grasp what happened.

Similarly for COVID Zoonotic origin theory. Or Economic Theory and Neo-Classical theory. Or Neo-Darwinism. Etc. Etc. You got hijacked. We all did.

One and all. And I am suggesting we take OUR cockpits back.

5:26 AM · Dec 10, 2025
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