Category Archives: Multiverse Mania

The Last Refuge of Cowards

The talks and panel discussions from the 2018 Breakthrough Prize symposium are available via Facebook video. They ended with the following, from prize winner David Spergel: Well, alright, I’m going to say something that I probably shouldn’t say in Palo … Continue reading

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 37 Comments

Theorists Without a Theory

I had been intending to write something here on the blog about this essay by George Ellis, so when I was contacted by someone at Inference about writing a letter in response, I did so for publication there. It has … Continue reading

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Multiverse Mania | 10 Comments

Shut Up and Calculate!?

I noticed recently that Nima Arkani-Hamed was giving a talk at Cornell, with the title Three Cheers For “Shut Up And Calculate!” In Fundamental Physics. No idea whether or not video is now or will become available. From the abstract … Continue reading

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 61 Comments

Cosmology for the Curious

There’s a new college-level textbook out, Cosmology for the Curious, targeted at physics courses designed to explain basics of cosmology to non-physics majors. The authors are Delia Perlov and Alex Vilenkin. Back in 2006 Vilenkin published a popular book promoting … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, Multiverse Mania | 26 Comments

Multiverse Politics

The political campaign for the multiverse continues today with a piece by Amanda Gefter at Nautilus. It’s a full-throated salvo from the Linde-Guth side of the multiverse propaganda war they are now waging, with Linde dismissing Steinhardt’s criticism as based … Continue reading

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 37 Comments

A Few Quick Items

I’ve had little time for blogging, and coincidentally, there seems to be little to blog about recently. Here though are a few quick items: Several people had asked me about this paper about the CC, and I had to tell … Continue reading

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

This Month’s Hype

It seems that a couple of the authors of the recent Cosmic Controversy letter (discussed here) are going on a campaign to embarrass the 29 physicists who were convinced to sign their letter. Andrei Linde has gone to Lubos Motl’s … Continue reading

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 49 Comments

A Cosmic Controversy

A couple months ago Scientific American published an article by Ijjas, Steinhardt and Loeb (also available here), which I discussed a bit here. One aspect of the article was its strong challenge to multiverse mania, calling it the “multimess” and … Continue reading

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Multiverse Mania | 53 Comments

Why String Theory is Still Not Even Wrong

John Horgan recently sent me some questions, and has put them and my answers up at his Scientific American site, under the title Why String Theory is Still Not Even Wrong. My thanks to him for the questions and for … Continue reading

Posted in Fake Physics, Multiverse Mania | 37 Comments

Can the Laws of Physics be Unified?

There’s a new book out this week from Princeton University Press, Paul Langacker’s Can the Laws of Physics Be Unified? (surely this is a mistake, but there’s also an ISBN number for a 2020 volume with the same name by … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, Multiverse Mania | 25 Comments