Ed Witten
2009
Ed Witten has no Nobel Prize.
Now tell me again how this era's physics just feels different because we are too close to it.
So @orzelc the Quetion is: "Is this likely the first era of fundamental physics that could produce a 55+ Witten nonlaureate?"
My friend @orzelc asks: "do you consider Wheeler to be in Witten's class?" Short answer is no. But I never went 1-1 with a young Wheeler.
The nonphysicist disagrees w/ @orzelc. Wheeler lived through the whole build up of the Standard Model. Ed would have pounced repeatedly.
To @orzelc: in your life you'll see Paris and the Taj Mahal. Make sure you meet all the great minds. Go see Ed. He's part human.
And what about Jim Simons? Other than Chern Simons he did amazing stuff. Wu-Yang ...and that holonomy theorem of Berger was first rate.
Anyone else appreciate that Jim Simons redoing Berger's list of holonomy groups to prove intrinsic sphere transitivity? An artist's theorem.
Someone else I admire: Dan Freed at Austin. Dan never gets all the credit he deserves. Every paper nails some loose end for the community.
In Econ. Krugman is the master chef who can start with deadly pufferfish and dependably prepare elegant fugu thats safe to eat.
2010
Telomeres, Scientist Shortages, Seiberg Witten, Inflation (CPI), E8 TOE, Immigration, Neoclassical tastes all now have fictional narratives.
Open science, non-castrated science journalism, gonzo science, twitter, etc. are our best hedge about having science destroyed by narrative.
2011
Q: When will Ed Witten tell us what the M in M-Theory stands for? A: Mañana, amigo. Mañana....
Ed Witten turned 60 today. I closed my eyes & remembered him in his mid 30s with the excitement of string unification around the next bend.
Greenspan failed. Witten failed. Obama failed. McGwire failed. Goldman failed. Spitzer failed. AIG failed. Assange Failed. You? Lookin good!
2016
Ed Witten sums up his extraordinary career in physics. Ed is the most terrifying intellect I have ever encountered.
https://www.ias.edu/sns/ckfinder/userfiles/files/ComemorativeLecturePopular(1).pdf
2017
If I had but one paragraph to recommend as the most important in all of literature, it might well be this one. However, as you might imagine, unpacking it, could take up your entire life.
[There is a 'flaw' in the paragraph. The word 'gauge' should be replaced by 'structure'.]
1/ Interesting esoteric features:
i) refers to Einstein Field Equation for the gravitational force. (only implicitly).
ii) refers to the Yang-Mills-Maxwell Equation for the other forces (only implicitly).
iii) refers to the Dirac Equation for matter (yet again, only implicitly).
2/ The Quantum (e.g. quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, quantum measurement, etc...) is relegated to a *secondary* status below the key geometric insights. This was likely done very subtly when the paper was given in the 1980s, as it was, and remains, a revolutionary idea.
End/ An interpretation is that Witten, the greatest living mathematical physicist, was indicating to us that it was only these *abstractions* that were likely to survive, while the instantiations (i.e. the exact equations we still use) would likely perish.
A msg never recieived.
2018
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.
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.
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
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) ).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2019
One of the worldâs greatest men has died. Most of you will have no idea who this is. I just donât know how to bridge that gap yet to tell you what he did.
I was very close with his top collaborator. They were the Watson and Crick of mathematics to me. They rewrote my whole life.
Michael Atiyah OM FRS, President of the Royal Society 1990 -1995, died today. He was "a wonderful person who was a true internationalist and a fervent supporter for investing in talent â themes which resonate very clearly today." Read the full tribute https://royalsociety.org/news/2019/01/tribute-to-former-president-of-the-royal-society-sir-michael-atiyah/
There is a little known stone wall on Long Island. While flawed, it is a gift to all mankind that should be a pilgrimage site, as an understanding of the contents is nesessary to understand our world. Think of it as transcendent graffiti. Atiyahâs spray-paint is everywhere here.
Imagine watery planets with holes and twists. Knotted donut planets called base spaces. Crazy oceans called âVector bundlesâ and âPrincipal bundlesâ.
He told us about how the twists and holes determine what waves must live on them and which cannot.
He helped direct Ed Witten and Graeme Segal to truly tell us what Quantum Field Theory really was beyond being a physical theory. These men took a grab bag of techniques developed for calculation and showed us that they were a mellifluous whole of geometry, topology and physics.
If you want to know why I am so passionate about resisting the reign of terror against true scholarship it is this. Universities housed REAL scholarship beyond your wildest dreams. This kind of scholarship is not socially constructed. Almost no one can even do this level of work.
Very sad news indeed - I knew Michael from when I was at @TrinCollCam he was brilliant, warm & amazing. Was at a conference where he was supposed to speak on thursday #higgscentre - he cancelled at the last minute....
More recently we talked about dark matter and black holes (2 yrs ago now) he was very excited about astro... b4 when i was a student he was just very encouraging and warm
Haha, does anyone other than Ed Witten make you feel stupid?
Ed doesnât make me feel stupid. But he still terrifies me. There is smart and there is Witten-smart. Iâve only me one of his kind.
Edward Witten.
@EricRWeinstein who are you intellectually in awe of?
Iâm impressed by many many people. But I feel Iâm now getting too old to be in awe of anyone. I think Ed is the only remaining one I still just canât get rid of no matter how hard I try.
One of my less popular theories is that the Nobel Prize serves to rewrite the history of science to make it palatable to institutions.
Einstein gets it for the wrong thing.
Dirac & Schodinger split one.
Glashow/Weinberg/Salaam share.
Mdme Wu passed over
Vera Rubin -> nothing
Dyson Gets nothing.
Stuckelberg Gets nothing.
Sudarshan gets nothing
Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonaga diluted
No rules broken for Witten
Etc
So the Nobel prize just completely rewrites physics history for outsiders. Similarly in Peace, Physiology and Medicine, and economics (cough).
In reality:
Dirac was Einsteinâs true peer.
Gel-man is a genius but one who attracts credit from others.
Yang deserves more than one.
Mdme Wu and Dyson are inexplicable omissions.
Sudarshan should have more than one and not zero.
Etc..
The prize dilutes or buries our best.
In this theory we beat up our absolute top people to make it easier for the next group to live with the difference in impact & contribution. We have many constraints we can point to for how it is awarded. But it ends up telling a less interesting less terrifying story for us all.
FWIW, Iâd be interested in reading a longer post on this subject, and I suspect Iâm not alone.
It would upset (living) people to fill this out. Have to think about the ultimate goal helping this community.
Haskell Programmers.
Topos theorists.
King Crimson aficionados.
1980s String Theorists.
Pediatric Heart Surgeons.
BJJ practioners.
Oboe/Bassoon players.
Fans of Eva Cassidy, Shackleton, Coltrane and Witten.
And all for understandable reasons. Like the amazing French. đ«đ· https://x.com/PardesSeleh/st/PardesSeleh/status/1117430684476485640
As a language of signs and symbols, math is constructed. Its physical referents are not.
Am I missing something?
Today I learned mathematical truth is âsocially constructedâ from @mattyglesias at @voxdotcom.
Sad? This is great news actually! It just means that these confusing types simply mean âtimeless, universal & trueâ whenever they say anything is culturally constructed. #ProblemSolved
Yes Sean. There are problems of language here. But thereâs a bigger issue. Most of the important parts of mathematics are neither physical nor âsocially constructedâ. No one could dream them up. The conversation today is however made impossible by language & politics. To sum up:
2/ First there is a careful philosophical tradition that means something precise by âsocially constructedâ as well as an activist community that means something dismissive and sloppy by the same phrase. Genrerally, the math community has not been overly interested in either.
3/ Most research mathematicians traditionally (but not always) oversold the objective nature of the professionâs norms. This causes historians and philosophers of science agitation. I think thatâs fair, but I claim they have also oversold their contributions to pure mathematics.
4/ The feeling most solid research mathematicians have is that theyâre studying an abstract reality that is independent of the way in which we study it. They can find being called Platonists, intuitionists, mystics etc, kind of weird if labeled by outsiders. Then come activists..
5/ The activists can try to emphasize the part of mathematical culture, language and practice that are not fully objective in order to cast doubt on claims of universal knowable objective shared reality and primacy that scientists advance over, say, claims of âlived experienceâ.
6/ The biggest problem comes from people who go back and forth talking about say âdecolonizing STEMâ because âscience is socially constructedâ but who then retreat to âoh we just mean that philosophicallyâ and it is this move with which many of us have lost patience. A âdeepityâ.
End/ So to sum up. There is a mildly interesting issue w/ the cultural practice of math. There is a major issue with activists trying to emphasize a marginal issue to attack a functioning system of universal truth. And there is an acultural aspect to pure mathematical structures.
I understand what you are saying but this doesnât capture the issue.
Imagine you are pretty sure you know the worldâs smartest people well. And you know their work and yours. The problem is that it isnât constructable by any of you because it is well beyond all your abilities.
Imagine youâre in a desert and you start dusting off a sand dune to find something that looks like Petra. You are pretty sure that you didnât construct it. Only nobody else did either. Thatâs the feel of great mathematics. We just donât worry too much about philosophical labels.
Are gears culturally constructed? Are Platonic solids? Wheels? You might think so. But no. They are selected for Long before humans found them. Now please donât lecture me on the exact nature of âgearâ. Itâs not as interesting as the point: These are canonical acultural forms.
Itâs not all Feels. Look at E8 and tell me how you âfeelâ. Who came up with that? Killing? Freudenthal? Lie? No way. Not even Grothedieck and Witten with Feynman and Von Neumannâs help. None of us know what it is. Is hemoglobin socially constructed? Who asks this? No one I know.
@johncarlosbaez @skdh @brkthroughprize Hey John,
Why do you think the SUSY/SUGRA math was there to be found if the physical world isnât using it? Does it connect deeply elsewhere? The physics argument has always been that it must get used physically because it would be too weird to exist and not to be made use of.
E
@johncarlosbaez @skdh @brkthroughprize Iâm reading your & @skdhâs responses and donât think Tweets are the right place to argue this. But Iâm still impressed how neither math nor physics has fully naturally accommodated fractional spin to my thinking. We find it everywhere but we still give a semi-âmagicalâ treatment.
@johncarlosbaez @skdh @brkthroughprize As for Super-Gravity, I donât think you can make the argument that it is fully natural mathematics without a physical application. You can make that argument for SUSY after Kac/Witten/Etc..., but even that is not totally clear to me.
My personal & overly condensed view of mathematics and physics in the 20th century would be summarized like this.
Mathematics began as a stool on the three legs of Algebra, Calculus, and Geometry where the last appeared to many to be the weakest leg. It turned out otherwise.
Repeatedly we find that any important problem from math or physics which we consider to be outside geometry/topology has a hidden geometrical nature to it. And there are only so many times you fall for that before you start to see geometry absolutely everywhere.
As for Weinberg, he is one of three people I can make the case for as our âGreatest Living Physicistâ. Iâve met him. But he still has big bets which are undecided (e.g. asymptotic safety). Witten is somehow even smarter but less accomplished in standard predictive theory. But...
One of the greatest minds of our time, Michael Atiyah, eulogized by his true still-active peers including Witten & Donaldson. With all the confusion/hype of this moment in time, it's worth reminding ourselves of what achievement sounds like w/o inflation:
2020
The Portal Podcast just passed 4000 reviews! We have had amazing guests!
Yet, if you want to see an off-beat contender for the worldâs smartest guest list, it may be a podcast with only 6 reviews!!?! @grahamfarmelo is pushing the envelope pretty darn hard. Give him some love!
Itâs hard to imagine a more impressive line up of true heavy hitters. This is the best of what we humans are capable of at our peak.
If you want to be early on a discovery that shows markets are not efficient, hereâs your proof. Get in on the ground floor. These guests are tops.
Which episode would you say is most accessible, or just best?
@Mkouri @grahamfarmelo I donât want to approach it that way. I would say that Edward Witten and Michael Atiyah are the most impressive minds on this list. Like just shockingly impressive.
If I ever have Edward Witten on the program I will ask him how he manages this horrible aphorism.
Itâs like the ultimate Sisyphean troll of Ed: expecting him to instantly exit every room he encounters simply for the high crime of entering it....
"If you're the smartest person in the room you're in the wrong room." @EricRWeinstein's the portal podcast feels like the right room for me.
My colleague @RHDijkgraaf (who heads @the_IAS with the world's top physics department) has written a provocative argument attempting to refute the narrative of an End of Fundamental Physics. It would be terrific to have him on The Portal to make the case: https://www.quantamagazine.org/contemplating-the-end-of-physics-20201124/
Is physics facing a nightmare scenario? A desert scenario? Worry not, writes @the_IAS director @RHDijkgraaf. "What we currently know is an absolutely negligible fraction of the physics thatâs out there, waiting to be investigated." https://quantamagazine.org/the-end-of-physics-20201124/ via @QuantaMagazine
There's a follow on discussion over at the @notevenwrong physics blog w/ John @Horganism, @johncarlosbaez, Scott Aaronson, @peterwoit & others. @RHDijkgraaf & I have disagreed about this before, but either he or Ed Witten may be the best to make this case: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=12053#comments
2021
Isadore Singer & Raoul Bott worked in almost exactly the same area. They collaborated with exactly the same people. They worked in adjacent zip codes (02138 vs 02139). They both had claims to the "greatest topological theorem" of the 20th century.
They never co-authored a paper.
I've known only three minds personally who I'm convinced will be discussed 1000 years from now if humans survive: James Watson, Raoul Bott and Isadore Singer (I met Atiyah & Witten but did not know them).
Is & Raoul however both collaborated on my rescue in Graduate school.
Perhaps with both of these giants now gone it is time to tell my story. I'm not sure. I have never told it publicly in full. But they both are heroic men beyond being great minds.
Had they surmounted their personal difficulties their collaborations could have changed the world.
They worked down the same street. I was at times a ping pong ball they sent back & forth between Building 2 at MIT & Harvard Science Center rm 508 (I think) along a 45 minute walk. I very much respected that they chose not to air any difficulties. They had respect for each other.
One reason I largely kept quiet about my story is respect for both men. They both defended and believed in the system. But, in part they believed in it BECAUSE they were so powerful that they could act as an underground railroad when that system failed:
So, in part, I'm their collaboration. Raoul was not my advisor. He had no real idea what I was doing. But he was far more than that. Is was my shtarker. My ace in the hole. They worked as a team to help me; their failure to talk directly was the main clue I had of anything amiss.
Lastly, there is the matter of my wedding. Is came to our event but I didn't invite Raoul. I did not understand what he had done for me. It is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. When the internet tries to insist to me that I am his student, I want to tell them what happend.
The truth is that I would have been proud to be the student of Raoul Bott. I would have a storied lineage to claim.
The truth is Raoul gave me his name for a self-advised thesis. And like a fool I resented it. Yet how much greater is the man who lends his last name to a Bastard.
In any event. I miss Is very much, but never expected to see him again. And I'm wrestling w the idea that I'm now free to tell my own story after 25yrs of saying very little in public. One of the reasons I don't take kindly to internet warfare is that I have large debts to pay.
The more I subject myself to mindless politics, catfighting, shadowbanning & trolling, the harder it is to fight for others/myself and to pay the debts to the giants who rescued me along my way. I don't know how I'd have done w/o them.
But I needed to grow this voice to do it.
Lastly, I used to have a relationship to a very different @nytimes. Thus when I read Is' obituarty I was shocked to see @julierehmeyer's beautiful tribute including my own quotes on Is. It made me sad to think about how much has been lost. Sadly, those quotes came from long ago.
If you haven't read her piece, I think it is quite moving even though it is no more than a sketch. End.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/science/isadore-singer-dead.html
[Not to be crass: but I can usually tell within the 1st minute what is happening to the throttling of my tweets: this is not being widely seen. I'm trying to say something meaningful about a departed friend @jack. Could you please take a personal interest & stop the throttling?!]
Dear @michaelshermer,
Thanks for this. Very sober. I myself also donât find the authenticated videos so far released compelling. But I do find your challenge of âno isolated discontinuous innovationâ quite interesting!
Might I propose a friendly debate among friendly skeptics?
Dear @EricRWeinstein Please see my argument for why UAPs cannot be foreign assets capable of physics & aerodynamics attributed to UAPs that if true would be decades or centuries ahead of us. History shows no nations/companies of comp development so lag. https://quillette.com/2021/06/03/understanding-the-unidentified/
First of all, I am concerned that the paradigm of being scientifically or technologically âcenturies aheadâ is all wrong. This came up in a phone call with our buddy @SamHarrisOrg.
Q: How many centuries ahead is 1952-3 from 1900? Iâd have guessed âmanyâ (not .5) and been wrong.
Next challenge: doesnât your line of reasoning prove that âRenaissance Technologiesâ is either a fraud or a front? Their Medallion Fund is otherwise a long term unbreached secret, discontinuous from any other know investment fund seemingly thousands of years ahead of competitors.
Now Iâve had the odd question about Renaissance (front not fraud) for just this reason. But either way, itâs either a counter example to your claims on discontinuous innovation if it is merely a fund or a counter-example to your secrecy claims if it is our secret physics program.
Next: there are really two metrics on innovations.
Metric I: How big the incremental jump in difficulty.
Metric II: How big the jump in what is unlocked.
The great fear is that a small jump measured by 1 leading to an ENORMOUS jump in as measured by II.
You are, to me, arguing powerfully that certain people canât exist: Rodney Mullen, Edward Van Halen, Bob Beamon, Dick Fosbury, Hiroji Satoh, Satoshi Nakamoto, etc.
They all exhibited the âa little unlocks a lotâ paradigm with Zero-Day exploits that were each decisive.
And that brings us to theoretical physics. Beginning around 1982 , the son of the worldâs top employed anti-gravity researcher(?!) of the 1950s turned in what may be the most impressive 15yr output in the history of the subject by my estimation. How can I begin to explain this?
Itâs not physics exactly. But Edward Witten w support from a small number of folks rewrote Quantum Field Theory as geometry. If Einstein geometrized gravity, then Witten geometrized Quantum Field theory (everything else).
Now, all that change has so far unlocked exactly nothing.
But itâs not that nothing happened in physics. While we were pretending that string theory was working, Witten & Co revolutionized our mathematical framework. Think of it as an enormous amount of unrealized gains. Pent up genius & power looking for its 1st application to the đ.
Now let me show you how I could get discontinuous innovation if I were China or Russia. I donât know those systems as well so Iâll use the US example.
We know most of the top minds. We pretend that there is a lot of subjectivity about this for social reasons but China wouldnât.
If I thought like CCP, Iâd create a lavish secret theoretical physics program modeled on the Russian Sharashka system. The key would be to get it to look like something else. A boring Tech company or some weird Chinese fund to disguise the reason for the secretive lavish campus.
[Digression: If the US were smarter, weâd do it by setting up a mythic secret $B hedge fund that employs top differential geometers, theoretical physicists & ML experts by a national lab & an off brand university w/ inexplicably strong geometry & physics. But enough crazy talk..]
If CCP could today repeat what Witten (& friends) did building off Geometric Quantum Field Thy, the US would have Zero clue what it unlocks. Even by your own incrementalist theory. It might unlock absolutely nothing. Or passage to the stars via additional degrees of freedom. đ€·ââïž
One last point. I released such a theory. Could well be wrong.
But I can tell you I should have received a call from DOE. Because calls are cheap and relevant trained PhDs are *very* finite. The US should track every geometer, General Relativist, and Particle Theorist working.
You donât have to take a position on me or GU. You can ask Wolfram or Lisi or Barbour or Deutsche or anyone outside the system whether such calls are placed. They are not. No one *in* the system believes in wild discontinuous change from *outside* the system. As per your article.
Which is to say weâre not monitoring. Maybe we think thatâs a waste of taxpayer dollars. Maybe we think that a Grisha Perelman of physics is impossible.
How much does a phone call cost if a researcher is wrong vs not bothering if theyâre right? Price the Type I & II error. Nuts.
Discontinuous innovation is always unlikely. But never impossible.
We are both skeptics. But this UFO story is weird beyond belief Michael. I canât think of a single story to fit to these reports Iâm hearing about.
I welcome your thoughts. As always.
Warm regards,
Eric
There were three candidates for worldâs greatest living theoretical physicist as I saw it:
A) CN Yang
B) Steven Weinberg
C) Edward Witten
Weinberg was the favorite of many people I respect. I found his writing style to somehow be both clear and impenetrable at the same time.
But what we just lost is one of our few links back to fundamental physicists who didâŠ.words fail meâŠactual work on the physics of the đ we live within.
It is not much of an exaggeration to say that sometime in the last 20 years, we stopped even trying to do fundamental work.
I met Steven only once. It was an unremarkable interaction. My impression was that he was so smart that he knew to get out of High Energy Theory for the most part. He dutifully defended string theory at times but voted with his feet and his offbeat ideas like Asymptotic Safety.
I have a very strong emotional connection to Wittenâs work and Yangâs. Weinberg always struck me as immensely powerful, but I could never get the sense of âThatâs Weinbergianâ. That is stylistically rare.
A total genius. But one that I couldnât understand well enough. Alas. RIP
I get it. But can we *actually* build something that does post-relativistic physics? Asking for some friends.
fuck... we could do so much more... merch. gagh. Suspect Musk is being ironic. It's that time of the evening when he spits out bs. But ugh, i feel this frustration re meaningful pursuits like actual physics. Why does no one care?
No idea. But as brilliant & rich as he is, we canât afford to get sucked in.
Iâm actually up for the dick jokes. What Iâm not up for is the tease. He had the right idea (get off planet), the right resources, and the right background (physics). But it became just one more farce.
In what way has it become a farce?
The part of physics that might accomplish his stated dream is dying every month. Go to any physics department & attend a high energy physics or particle theory talk. Maybe 1/10 is still about physics. He is burning time like crazy when he could just endow the field. Donât ask me.
i blame witten and greene for making string sexy... And then the academia industrial complex for creating the gamification of publishing.
You know we all want to be loved. And we all want money. And we all want status.
But nothing compares to physics. And Iâll believe the best of him until we talk because that is a path of hope. And he may have a genius plan. I just donât happen to know it & itâs taking too long.
@Eluminat1 Witten? Dirac? Did they make the cut?
@skdh @WeLivetoServe QFT & cross-sections sound more like particle theory than Astrophysics, Cosmology or even GR.
Would we agree that the collision of Witten/Singer/Quillen/Seiberg/Freed/Bismut/Maldacena/Penrose/Atiyah/ Hitchin/Dijgraff/Vafa/Segal/Jackiw/Kontseivich/Alvarez-Gaume/etc has been magic?
There are a lot of string theorists who have done things that really matter to geometry, topology, analysis on manifolds, representation theory. And I donât want to misunderstand your point.
Said differently Iâve been bullish on positive externalities of mathematical physics. But a lot of great math that got done isnât string theory. Itâs claimed to be stringy but it is really mostly mathematical physics or geometric field theory that is claimed by string theorists.
2022
It really depends. Being totally honest:
âString Theoryâ has done a *tremendous* amount of good while âString Maximalismâ has done even more harm.
If the String Theorists who led the movement were to undo some of the damage by admitting what happened, itâd be a major positive.
Here is where I respectfully disagree with my colleague @skdh. You canât âget rid of string theoryâ. String-like objects are natural and have an unbelievably rich and beautiful interlocking mathematics. The beguiling beauty isnât the problem in my opinion. Beauty is the excuse.
The problem is that string theory on its own has taken the last 40years to PROVE it doesnât 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.
During that time String Theory diverted the entire field into a magical never-land of âtoy physicsâ. Models that arenât in any way real. You now have âparticle physicistsâ at the end of their careers who have never worked with anything like a particle and canât remember them.
So, hereâs 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, Iâd be up for having ST as a major theory. But without that Iâm unsure.
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.
So to sum up:
String Theory deserves to be a major branch. But it has already mostly given up on the â80s 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.
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.
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 wonât survive this suspension of collegiality, decency and self-critical behavior. We need to go back to real physics. đ
@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 Iâm willing to hire somebody to put together the data after 1984. Itâs not usually contested.
@DontsitDJ @martinmbauer I wasnât 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 havenât seen much interaction and he has written some things I liked.
@DontsitDJ @martinmbauer I love a good critique. Itâs hard to find. Most people out here develop a side hustle in interpersonal drama. I try not to.
@martinmbauer I donât know which version of âThe Fieldâ 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 wasnât small. Do you really dispute this??? Look at the IAS professors.
@martinmbauer Seiberg/Witten/Dijkgraaf/Maldacena
All string folks.
Maybe get a string theorist to admit this to you. Brian Greene likely wouldnât disagree with me.
2023
It is an interesting question as to who inspires us in physics. Here is a list of 20th century giants whose work inspired me that might work as protagonists with interesting stories that deserve to be considered along with the best known Einstein/Hawking/Oppenheimer/Etc.:
CN Yang (with Lee and Simons)
Paul Dirac
Ernst Stueckelberg
Madame Wu
David Bohm
Abdus Salam
Ken Wilson
Emmy Noether
Ettore Majorana
Carlo Rubio
Shin'ichirĆ Tomonaga
Lev Landau
Simon Van der Meer
Freeman Dyson
Julian Schwinger
Paul Ehrenfest
John VonNeumann
Feza Gursey
Wolfgang Pauli
Louis and Edward Witten
Hans Bethe
George Sudarshan
Vera Rubin
Gerard 't Hooft
Not all of those stories areâŠuhâŠsimple.
Would be curious to hear names from others.
2024
After seeing my friend @skdh say what is wrong with theoretical physics, I asked her what would theoretical physics done right look like. Specifically, which general approaches and which theorists she was most excited about.
Her answer is in the quote tweet.
The question was not a gotcha question so I will try to answer it myself below.
I will say that I find her answer at turns both expected and shocking. There is very little going on, but there is not nothing. And if she is not excited by anything, thatâs an amazing state of affairs.
Here is my response to the same question below. Which many may not expect or accept.
Eric, I am still saying the same thing I said in "Lost in Math" because the situation is still the same.
Q1: Not sure whether you are asking for strategies or topics. For what strategies are concerned: necessity, consistency, phenomenology. For what topics are concerned: Quantum measurements, quantum gravity, dark matter. So yes, dark matter... but don't invent unnecessary details, hence my misgiving about the figure. The entire figure is basically screaming that theorists are inventing loads of unnecessarily contrived and useless theories.
Q2: can't think of anyone, sorry
A) The three most promising lines of attack in fundamental physics. This is likely to confuse people who think in terms of âthe strong communityâ, âthe amplitudes programâ, âthe LQG communityâ. These are the âTeam Sportsâ branches of attack. And team players really only recognize other teams which is a MASSIVE bias. That is why String Theorists view Loop Quantum Gravity as their hand chosen rigal. It is a team that they believe doesnât challenge them; a partner to dunk on if you will.
For my money, the true rivals are not teams. They are NOT communities.
I). Spinorial/Clifford/Exceptional physics. This is almost never broken out.
The idea here is that many of us believe that there is way more information in Spinorial physics of the particle spectrum of the Standard Model than has been used. In particular the D5 Dynkin diagram GUT is the missed off-ramp.
In this generalized setting, Peter Woit of @notevenwrong, Roger Penrose, Myself, Garrett Lisi, and the exceptional algebra researchers focused on extending the octonionic tradition of the Turkish school are all clustered. In this school, almost everyone will be largely *wrong* in my opinion. But the right answer is most likely to come from this branch IMO.
II) Classical Differential Geometric Field Theory. It is amazing to me how over-focused we seem on the quantum. The star of the show is not now, and never was the quantum.
Let me put it in provocative terms: Classical Physics is where the real action has always been. Pun intended.
The quantum is real. Itâs mysterious. Itâs mind blowing. And as a result it provides jobs and something to talk about when the classical theory is stagnant. But the dream of quantum theories that are born quantum never materialized. We still quantize classical theories, for all our posturing about needing to take classical limits of quantum theories.
Witten in particular popularized the notion that the incompatiblity between General Relativity and the Standard Model is a Classical vs Quantum problem. Heâs wrong.
The Classical GR theory is already incompatible with the Classical Standard Model. The incompatibility is already classical: NOT Quantum.
The G_{mu, nu} operator concept of Einstein (and Grossman) is NOT gauge compatible. But the Standard Model IS a gauge theory. We have wasted 40 years in my opinion pretending that the GR vs SM split is a call to quantize gravity. We got there by pretended that GR is a kind of gauge theory which it obviously isnât. And we pretend that you donât quantize classical theories but take classical limits of quantum theories. Who this is supposed to fool is beyond me. The weak? The insecure? The egoic?
Once you have the classical arena (the manifolds) the field content (the bundles, groups and representations) and the action, the game is largely already determined theoretically when you are quantizing a classical theory. The quantum theory is used to figure out what its real world consequences are. The world is quantum after all.
So why does the Classical theory get sent to a diminished role? This is going to be brutal: itâs the political economy of Physics. Itâs because the number of people who have contributed to the Lagrangians is tiny. Einstein/Grossman, Maxwell/Yang and Dirac tower over our theories. Thatâs spin 2, spin 1 and spin 1/2 right there. The Higgs sector pulls in Glashow, Englert, Weinberg, etc. But I believe this is temporary and will be absorbed back into the other sectors before too long. It is the ungainly sector after all that still feels contrived. Real, but contrived.
And I believe that a lot of the toy work in low dimensions will turn out to be closer to GR than people imagine. Right now it looks closer to the Standard Model due to history.
III) Non spacetime SUSY.
I believe the reason we can neither find Supersymmetry nor get rid of it is that we misinstantiated it. There are no Squarks or Gluinos. Right idea, wrong off-ramp. This goes back to Salam and Strathdee.
Many of you will be shocked by my IV. Which is perhaps why I asked for threeâŠ
IV) I would choose String Theory or the Amplitudes / Double Copy approach.
At least the String people are energized by the fact that the math is real even when the physics is fake. And at least the double copy people have a mystery connecting GR to the SM.
B) As to who I find interesting. Anyone going it alone to follow a hunch, but who knows what GR and the SM are. Mavericks, not cranks.
Woit, Lisi, Deutsche, Wolfram, myself and Barbour are all outside of purely traditional structures. Oppenheim and others are in such structures but still mavericks. I wish Sabine had a theory that I knew of. But I am not aware of one.
The observation I would make is that being a professor is a double edged sword. Outside the Professorate it is almost impossible to function from isolation and deprivation. Inside, you get captured by a constant set of pressures to conform to things you know are sapping your vitality. And you go into angry denial âI do whatever I want as a professor! I just happen to believe in this large program which is known not to work but gives me grants and summer stipend.â
Right now, I would bring those mavericks together with the most open of the professorate and steelman/catalog where those individual programs are in their trajectories. Duh.
There are really fewer than 10 of them. This is absolutely obvious. It is cheap and would take almost no resources. It does not happen simply for reasons of political economy. There is no other reason not to do it.
As for who excites me most (myself excluded):
Nima Arkani Hamed
Frank Wilczek
Peter Woit
John Baez
Ed Witten
Luis Alvarez Gaume
Dan Freed
Jose Figueroa OâFarril
And two others I will leave nameless for a top 10.
âââ
So that is my take. It wasnât a gotcha.
If all we can do is bemoan the state of physics, we need to change our focus.
Yes I expect to be savaged. For some reason, saying anything positive creates anger. Bring it.
Thanks for your time. As always. đ
Are you also watching the brain trust of tbe Democratic Party who lost this election, now trying to figure out HOW they could possibly have lost this election?
As a highly visible Democrat who never thought this was going to be close or a ânail biterâ, and who said publicly that the the polls were off and that there was reason to think that preference falsification could result in a *landslide*, do you think anyone would pick up the phone and call? There is zero interest. Not one intern. Not one consultant.
This is exactly like String Theory. For 40 years string theorists have hermetically sealed themselves in an imaginary universe where they are succeeding because they became the arbiters in a system called Peer Review. The Lords/Peers of String Theory do not talk with, and do not listen to commoners. As a result they enter into a curricular conversation.
Listening to what @maddow has to say about @KamalaHarrisâ part in @SpeakerPelosiâs brilliant strategy with @PeteButtigieg to help @SenSchumer after @donlemonâs insightful analysis mirroring Joy @thereidout brutal truths following the @NPR @cnn exposes of Trumps devious plans is exactly the String theory vibe.
What does Cumrun say about Andyâs latest idea to build on Lennyâs insight to get around Evaâs paper showing that Ashokâs plan to use Juanâs discovery that Brian and Michio discussed recently on the 13th anniversary of Shamitâs paper tweaking Davidâs original epiphany, can only work if some speculations of Cumrun are true to begin with in Euclidean signature?
Oh and by the way, there are no other approaches beyond String Theory, because anyone not part of this circle is a self promoter saying âonly wordsâ. We will only need another 100 years before it gives fruitâŠ
Well, this is what a cult sounds like. Communists build such elaborate circular worlds of internal references. As do members of spiritual, academic and religious orders.
My claim is that the Democratic leadership is a lucrative cult. Itâs not a party. Itâs not trying to win. Itâs trying to serve its members and work towards winning as little as possible, consistent with first serving the personal needs of its senior leadership. Itâs trying to pay its leadership in riches, prestige and control. Itâs a payout system. What are all these people making financially? I donât know. Nancy does alright. So does Rachel. But not all payment is monetary.
That is why their conversation is so bizarre. They need to fire each other. But the entire point of our party as they see it is to serve as a trough.
Take it from a pre-Dick Morris Democrat also focused on physics: the 1992 election 32 years ago brought us this madness in just the way that Ed Witten, Michael Green and John Schwarz brought us The Holy Revelation of String Theory 40 years ago in 1984.
The most important part of these cults is sealing out the critics as âinterloping self promoting grifting charlatans.â
I wound love to come on MSNBC and discuss my pre-election claims that this was unlikely to be close and quite possibly a landslide. I would love to help the party fire its senior leadership. It is well past time to overthrow the partyâs brain trust that leads us away from focusing on the welfare of working families, free speech, individualistic greatness, common sense, consumer protection, fair play, and into the arms of evil and madness.
The Clinton-Morris era needs to end. We need a revolt to overthrow our Lords and Masters. There is now no reason these people should be at the helm.
None.
đ
2025
People ask me how you can tell whether scientific experts are leveling with them if the lay public doesnât understand deep science.
Here an interviewer asks a leading String Theorist how things are going after 25 years since popularizing String theory in a well received book:
If Brian Greene publicly said he doesn't believe in string theory anymore it'd be the end of the field. He'd ruin the lives of thousands of people. Even if it was what he thinks, I strongly doubt he'd ever admit it.
The issue isnât String Theory which has obviously failed in the terms it set for itself.
The issue is the âString Theory is the only game in townâ which appears designed to destroy fundamental physics itself. If you have spent 40 years bragging and failing, wouldnât you at least ask âDoesnât anyone have any other ideas?â before finally going over the edge of the cliff?
*Absolutely* not. And that tells you that string theory isnât a theory. Itâs some kind of a suicide pact. Better that the field die than we ask âWhat if the string theorists were always wrong including pronouncements about quantum gravity and against other theorists? What if âthe only game in townâ was always an obviously totally unethical anti-scientific move to destroy and poison the market place of ideas?â
cc: @bgreene.
Yes, but that wasn't my point. My point is that Brian is a highly visible string spokesperson, I'd say second after Witten, but Witten doesn't talk much. If Brian were to renounce string theory, he'd be responsible for killing the careers of thousands of people, and he must know that. I am just saying I think it's unlikely he would do it, even if he had stopped believing it makes sense, and you need to factor this in when evaluating what he says.
I took your point. For some reason my point doesnât seem to get through.
I agree with you. He *could* make a strong statement to admit defeat. There are clear reasons not to do this from the ST perspective. It is thus unlikely.
My point was that he could do something *vastly* less expensive. And the fact that Susskind, Witten, Greene, etc wonât do even that tells us that this isnât about string theory. Itâs about no other theories or theorist being worth considering. Itâs abuse of the referee role.
Somehow, the String Theorists set themselves up as a football team that is also the *sole* source of game referees.
So even when their team loses on the field, they still win by referees decision that they are the only real team competing. Everyone else focuses on whether they have background independence, particle predictions or a renormalizable spin 2 quantization. That is a total red herring.
Sabine: Theoretical physics isnât this dumb or anti-scientific. Itâs impossible. âThe only game in townâ campaign is not a string theoretic idea. It is totally foreign to science.
Something separate doesnât want rival theories side by side. In a science we would all be expected to listen to each other. This is what my first memories of physics looked like 1983-1988. There were different ideas. Nothing like this.
The defining feature of String Theory is that it would rather fundamental physics die than that String Theory face healthy adult rivals that were not maimed, crippled, stolen, or murdered in their cribs.