Lenny Susskind: Difference between revisions

https://x.com/JMarkMcEntire/status/1562089447189086209

It really depends. Being totally honest:

“String Theory” has done a *tremendous* amount of good while “String Maximalism” has done even more harm.

If the String Theorists who led the movement were to undo some of the damage by admitting what happened, it’d be a major positive.

4:22 PM · Aug 23, 2022

Here is where I respectfully disagree with my colleague @skdh. You can’t ‘get rid of string theory’. String-like objects are natural and have an unbelievably rich and beautiful interlocking mathematics. The beguiling beauty isn’t the problem in my opinion. Beauty is the excuse.

4:25 PM · Aug 23, 2022

The problem is that string theory on its own has taken the last 40years to PROVE it doesn’t work as a stand alone path by gobbling up mind share, students, resources and (to be fair) most of the most brilliant brains. So much that no one dares say the full extent of the disaster.

4:29 PM · Aug 23, 2022

During that time String Theory diverted the entire field into a magical never-land of “toy physics”. Models that aren’t in any way real. You now have “particle physicists” at the end of their careers who have never worked with anything like a particle and can’t remember them.

4:34 PM · Aug 23, 2022

So, here’s my analysis. In a world where David Gross, Ed Witten, Lenny Susskind, Cumrun Vafa, Michio Kaku had a public Come To Jesus moment where they admitted the disaster in front of the community faithful, I’d be up for having ST as a major theory. But without that I’m unsure.

4:43 PM · Aug 23, 2022

The damage to the culture of High Energy Physics is more severe than the damage done by Geoffery Chew in a different era. And here I support @skdh, Peter Woit, Lee Smolin etc. These are brave people who paid with abuse to communicate that physics was diverting into pure fantasy.

4:43 PM · Aug 23, 2022

So to sum up:

String Theory deserves to be a major branch. But it has already mostly given up on the ‘80s promises/lies it told us to gobble up all the resources of the community (brains, mind share, $$$). That was a crime which may prove fatal to our being able to do physics.

4:52 PM · Aug 23, 2022

But it is also so thoroughly investigated and badly behaved relative to scientific norms that it deserved to be shrunk. And that happened to a large extent already. The most important thing to realize is that physics is still about the physical world. Not Calabi Yau. Not AdS/CFT.

4:54 PM · Aug 23, 2022

And we need our brilliant failed string theorists to admit the disaster within a scientific paradigm.

Science is a culture. Perhaps the most fragile one. It won’t survive this suspension of collegiality, decency and self-critical behavior. We need to go back to real physics. 🙏

4:57 PM · Aug 23, 2022

@martinmbauer String theory was a giant percentage of a tiny priesthood. That was the same tiny priesthood that brought us Thermo Nuclear devices. And if you want to pay for me to research the numbers I’m willing to hire somebody to put together the data after 1984. It’s not usually contested.

5:06 PM · Aug 23, 2022

@DontsitDJ @martinmbauer I wasn’t aware of it like that. I think he disagrees with me and has a bit of an edge. But maybe I missed a tweet or two. I haven’t seen much interaction and he has written some things I liked.

5:10 PM · Aug 23, 2022

@DontsitDJ @martinmbauer I love a good critique. It’s hard to find. Most people out here develop a side hustle in interpersonal drama. I try not to.

5:12 PM · Aug 23, 2022

@martinmbauer I don’t know which version of “The Field” you mean.

Physics in total? Is a large field.

Beyond the standard model theory? Is a small field. Tiny. But hugely consequential. And the percentage and effect wasn’t small. Do you really dispute this??? Look at the IAS professors.

5:38 PM · Aug 23, 2022

@martinmbauer Seiberg/Witten/Dijkgraaf/Maldacena

All string folks.

Maybe get a string theorist to admit this to you. Brian Greene likely wouldn’t disagree with me.

5:40 PM · Aug 23, 2022

2025Edit

Unlike Paul Samuelson & Ken Arrow, Gary Becker was cut from different cloth. He reminded me of my dealings w/ Lenny Susskind, Larry Summers, Brad Delong, Jagdish Bhagwati, Ed Witten, Mildred Dresselhaus & others, so possessed by ideology that academic reason could just vanish.

11:49 PM · Dec 8, 2025

Robert P. Murphy

@BobMurphyEcon

In my recent interview of @EricRWeinstein, he referred to "stable preferences" as Achilles' heel of neoclassical econ. Exhibit A is this famous quote from Becker. At face value, Becker is saying a model w/dynamic preferences wouldn't even be economics anymore. Do others agree?

6:29 PM · Dec 8, 2025

Gary wasn’t stupid. He was just on a failed dead end mission of intellectual suicide. He was shrewd, creative and wildly wrong about human beings at levels that are difficult to convey.

And so it fell to him to tell the ultimate academic lie on behalf of his profession of economics: all humans have stable unchanging tastes.

So dumb. So unethical. Such an intellectually pathetic move. But then he was refereeing the same game within which he was flagrantly cheating.

He was easy to beat in any argument not judged by ideologues. But in Chicago and elsewhere they pretended this was genius rather than a flagrant attempt at patching the vulnerabilities that will sink Neo Classixal economic imperialism.

He lived, and died, in a protected world, not unlike an academic Hermit Kingdom. An intellectual North Korea where people were always bowing before him if they wanted to survive and needed his favor.

But the vulnerability is real. And believe me, he and I both knew it. It was tense as hell dealing with him for a reason:

The fiction of Stable Tastes is THE analog of rhe exhaust vent on the Death Star of NeoClassical Economjc Imperialism. His life’s work.

I look forward to showing you just how that little exhaust vent works.

11:49 PM · Dec 8, 2025

2026Edit

https://x.com/nu_phases/status/1598331715340054528?s=20

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)

But 50+ years really opens up some all time great results:

3:15 AM · Jan 3, 2026

Sabine Hossenfelder

@skdh

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.

8:05 AM · Jan 2, 2026

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.

6:03 AM · Jan 3, 2026

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.

2:07 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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 TOGIT crowd and its anti-scientific “The Only Game In Town” cult.

It feels like out of Fear for naming Witten, 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?

2:19 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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.

5:59 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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 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?

7:53 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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).

8:18 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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.

8:21 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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 SM plus GR Lagrangians no?

8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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).

8:39 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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 SM? C’mon. I covered that above 👆 no? PMNS was in the 1960s. Not even 1973. Older than the 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 SM and GR without derision, deliberate misinterpretation, theft, character assassination, inteuendo. This is “The Only Game In Town” or 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 Susskind and Witten and Gross just oversaw the most spectacular catastrophe in modern physics.

And everyone who dares to say this is scapegoated.

The 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.

9:11 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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

9:46 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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.

9:48 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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.

10:19 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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:

10:22 PM · Jan 3, 2026

Daniel: the problem is Witten/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.

10:26 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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’”

10:39 PM · Jan 3, 2026

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.

12:21 AM · Jan 4, 2026