Quantum Gravity: Difference between revisions

Admit [[String Theory|String Thy]] failure.

|content=E) Focus shifted to mathematical structure of abstract field/String/M theory. Not our particular world’s choice of thy.

|content=String Theory isn’t the problem. String culture is poisonous to science.

String theory, like love, means never having to say your sorry. Or mistaken.

|content=It is time to hold conferences dedicated to the issues of groupthink in physics. Why wont our leading voices admit failure? We don't know. Previous generations wanted their students to succeed. But String Theory is dominated by boomers who seem oblivious to danger.

|content=If we're going to truly wrestle w/ dark matter, or dark energy, or [[UAP]] that supposedly violate our laws of physics (e.g. General Relativity) we can't afford a leaders projecting their fears that THEY have wasted their lives, credibility and students careers on "Quantum Gravity".

|content=The IAI asked me to clarify some arguments in an interchange over theoretical physics I had earlier with String Theorist @bgreene of @Columbia, just as Brian was asked about the same discussion on @TOEwithCurt.

|content=I think what was new to @IAI_TV was someone who was not against string theory as a framework, but adamant that String culture and Quantum Gravity had been catastrophically enervating for 40-70 years.

|content=@skdh I acknowledge my desires as you see from what I wrote. But a stagnant community always wants outcomes. It wants SUSY. Or Strings. Or some g-2 muon anomaly. Etc.

I believe this is how String Theorists stopped being scientists.

|content=It is time to face up to the disaster of string theory. But we need to be fair about what failed and why. The equations of string theory can’t hurt anyone. It’s 40 years of the anti-scientific destruction of scientific standards and norms of collegiality to promote one failed theory over all other attempts that is behind this destruction of what was previously the worlds most accomplished scientific community.

|content=The good folks at @IAI_TV put together a reel of String Theorist, Prof. @bgreene and I debating [[String Theory]] in Wales in May at @HTLGIFestival.  

|content=So, now in the current post-string era, it is perfectly acceptable for people to work on [[Quantum Gravity|“Quantum Gravity”]] without having to understand essentially anything about the mysterious 3 generations of chiral particles that actually populate our world. In short, they changed the field.

|content=Oddly, even though Roger Penrose and I were on the same side on this stage, I couldn’t subscribe to much of Penrose’s critique of strings and found myself agreeing more with Brian Greene on the technical points.

|content=To sum it up: when string theorist are no longer in a position to keep changing the goal posts set by the physical world, isn’t it the case that from A-Z maybe string theory is not being honest?

Again. Not personal to you. At all. But it is not a fair move to say “It’s the best yet-to-succeed approach to quantum gravity.” in front of the public. No?  

But, in case of doubt or misunderstanding, string theory is absolutely the deepest, most consequential and most likely to be true set of ideas about what sits at the intersection of the Standard Model and quantum gravity.

As the book quote indicates, I try not to overclaim. But: that string theory and the complex  of ideas are around it are more serious than any competitors, IMO objectively true.

As with so many of these String Theoretic claims I have no idea what that means.

Does that mean that all who disagree with you and your String community are “not serious” as per the above?

String theorists like Friedan have written harshly of the Failures.

What you seem to be saying is the usual trope: “The more you understand about the difficulty of quantizing a spin 2 gravitational field the more you appreciate how string theory has taught us so much about how it is to be done eventually, and that there is no remotely comparable framework for doing so!”

Waited a few days. I don’t think you are making sense about your *opinion* that it is *objectively* and *absolutely* dominant. And that is the problem. String theorist deliberately leave others with the impression that they are following something scientific, objective and absolute. But it is really just a shared subjective hunch. And this does science and physics a terrible disservice.

|content=I don’t think that is the relevant argument anymore. So you are framing it in such a way that “String Theory” is the answer to a question you formulated: “Of all the approaches to quantizing  gravity which haven’t worked, which is the best?”

|content=The problem I have is with string theorists framing of the field and its issues and questions. I think [[String Theory]] is dangerous for this reason.  

In the midst of a thread with Prof. @JosephPConlon, author of “Why String Theory?” I set out the dangers of allowing string theorists to be the arbiters judges and juries of what is important in physics.

Simply put, they mis-framed almost everything to explain the last 40 inexplicable years of string induced monoculture and stagnation in moving beyond the [[Standard Model]] and [[General Relativity]]. The question is now: “Can more healthy physics research culture survive and come back from the String Failure?”

|content=The problem I have is with string theorists framing of the field and its issues and questions. I think [[String Theory]] is dangerous for this reason.  

Everyone who said “Wait: why are we changing the core mission to ‘Quantizing Gravity’?? Weren’t we supposed to explain the observed particle spectrum? And the weirdness of the Higgs sector as Deus Ex Machina? And the origin of chirality? Etc etc.”

|content=Sorry. By whom? Do I expect to be taken seriously by the many String Theorists who called their colleagues morons, frauds and “not serious” behind their backs? No. I don’t.  

I expect them to leave the field. Then we can get back to doing physics. The subset of reasonable string theorists who know this problem well and are still doing science? Well….They know ST/QG has a problem and they hate it too. And I do care about them.  

|content=“String theory approaches experimental verification.”

I generally view your public outreach work very favorably, communicating the beauty of the Standard Model, and to a lesser extent GR. Within research, you  mostly seem to be trying to connect String Theory and other speculative frameworks to things like experimental accelerator signatures. Despite my distaste for 4-decades of anti-scientfic String Triumphalism and dissembling from the Susskinds, Wittens, Motls, Grosses and others, I have never associated that with you.

My point was that he could do something *vastly* less expensive. And the fact that Susskind, Witten, Greene, etc won’t do even that tells us that this isn’t about string theory. It’s about no other theories or theorist being worth considering. It’s 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.

Sabine: Theoretical physics isn’t this dumb or anti-scientific. It’s impossible. [[The Only Game in Town|“The only game in town”]] campaign is not a string theoretic idea. It is totally foreign to 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: