Ken Wilson

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The number of new particles is a very bad indicator for how predictive a theory is

There‘re one-parameter models that predict infinitely many new particles (e.g. SU(N) and models with many, many parameters that predict no new particles (e.g mod gravity)

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6:58 AM · Mar 29, 2024

Martin Bauer

@martinmbauer

If anyone tells you a theory is more or less motivated by counting particles, they either don’t understand this argument or they hope you don’t

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6:58 AM · Mar 29, 2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So let’s talk about the best new theories with new particle predictions.

What are your favorite top 5 theories formulated over say the last 25 years ranked by well motivated particle predictions just as you see it Martin? Then as the community sees them? Thx.

4:03 PM · Mar 29, 2024

Martin Bauer

@martinmbauer

The SM withstood every experimental test apart from neutrino masses, dark matter & gravity. Explaining those needs new degrees of freedom

Besides this most effort has been put on treating the SM itself as a low energy EFT which implies new dof but is agnostic about which

8:44 AM · Mar 30, 2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I’m not truly understanding even though I think I follow everything you wrote. I sense the word “agnostic” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in not giving me 5 modern theories.

One way of making sense of what you just posted is that there isn’t enough information in the Wilsonian EFT framing to want to worry about any particles/fields/dof that aren’t strictly needed to close the observed physics off within the current energy regime. Is that what you mean??

If so…yikes.

12:39 PM · Mar 30, 2024

MetaLevelUp

@MetaLevelUp

This is basically EFT in a nutshell though

Many UV theories map to the same set of operators at low energy ("agnostic" but not info-free). The latter correspond (in principle) to observables which, if seen in experiment, could be used to limit the underlying space of UV theories

12:52 PM · Mar 30, 2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Nice to meet you.

I am not unaware of this…but I am shocked by the *change* in the interpretation of EFT during the String Era.

40 years ago, the Standard Model was considered geometrically beautiful but mysterious. “SO(10)” was an example of how to get a 3 factor reductive Lie group and a bizarre series of internal quantum numbers to become elegant. In short, the SM was an EFT, but not a random one. It was a coherent idea that pointed the way towards its own preferred completion/extension. Oddly, String phenomenology recognized this.

Then as the field spun off into mathematically informed medieval theology, the SM started to be seen as ugly. A random EFT without a preferred extrapolation towards its Planckian revelation. Seeing the SM as in anyway distinguished became seen as “not getting Wilson’s point” analogous to archaic views on strong reductionism.

This is such a disaster to think this is what Martin means. It’s the physics version of Seligman’s “Learned Helplessness”‘theory.

3:14 PM · Mar 30, 2024

MetaLevelUp

@MetaLevelUp

Great to meet you too! Been following your work for a very long time 🙂

I'm not old enough to have witnessed this change, but I *am* old enough to have seen similar dynamics around SUSY in the LHC era (and for many of the same reasons), so your story fits for me.

3:26 PM · Mar 30, 2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Longer discussion. But SUSY and GUTs both got associated with particular instantiations of general ideas by zealots.

The SU(5) and MSSM variants failed and then, oddly, the community moved to a dysfunctional interpretation. If no observed SU(5) proton decay then downgrade ALL GUTs. Similar for E-W scale super partners.

The community is just bizarrely intellectually dysfunctional now. Strings has an infinite leash and the other good ideas are ignored with this monstrous new EFT defeatism as the new sophistication. I still can’t believe this is our world.

3:40 PM · Mar 30, 2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The misinterpretation of Ken Wilson

A failure cult called “Quantum Gravity”

The ethics of said theory community

“Restricted Data”

Closed minds

Theft

Maverick abuse

Low compensation —> Low self-esteem

Senior physicists