Try, for example “On the other hand, I firmly believe that we have to practice science as if the anthropic principle were false, but that’s another story.”

The real problem is, I don’t think it’s possible to argue with these folks. They just don’t care. The watchword is, “Be the Wibble.”

-drl

Your point of view really makes no sense to me.

The anthropic principle can never be the right answer any more than it can be the wrong answer.

As far as I’m concerned the anthropic is equilivant to:
The reason Peter really started this blog, and the reason I replied to your post is because there is an acausal point in spacetime that effects all other points. That point is inside
Wibble the three-toed chicken’s head at time infinity + 7. Wibble determines the past by thinking in the future….Actually, this argument is slightly better than the anthropic principal since it may be possible to rule out
acausal influences on present events.

If, as you say, the anthropic principal is really the true state of the universe, then the answer produced by science must be that the true nature of the universe in unknowable. At this point physics reaches its end. Some go on to believe in the anthropic principal, others believe in Creation, while I believe in Wibble the three-toed chicken.

Susskind may cloud his ideas in prose about a cloud covered earth and such things, but what he really advocates is reformulating science such that it looks something like “…If we assume A (which can never be proven or disproven) then the rest of the universe follows…”

I say why make it hard on ourselves by letting A=multiverse. If we would have let A=Wibble the three-toed chicken we could all have avoided a lot of years of schooling.

During some time I wrote several comments regarding the impressive failure of stringy research. It is unnecessary a costly experiment for showing this.

The basic idea of stringy research is as follows: to take the hypothesis A and make one article, next neglect the hypothesis and make another article contradicting the first one. Even with this infinite malleability, string theory has shown to be a failure. Perhaps failure is a harsh strong word for sensible people, but I would remark that physics is just one of hard sciences, and “hard” signifies hard.

Dear “”, do you know that some people is working in more than 11D whereas others are claiming for a 4D string approach?

The history of dimensionality (I do not include Kaluza-Klein) is
4D -> 26D -> 10D -> 11D -> 12D? 13D? 4D?…

History shows us that if you write two columns and at one (left) write the past claims of stringys and the other (right) our current knowledge, you find a surprising feature.

the entire left column was completely wrong!

Of course, string theorists will say you that the topic is open. This is not an excuse! Decades ago, stringys claimed in public that the theory was the Last Formulation. What arrogance! Some of use already knew that the elementary stringy approach could not be applied to simple piece of hot water. Now, they are using the TFD approach for a generalization of the “old” brane theory based in the outdated Hilbert-Fock space mathematics and the standard vacuum. However, even using TFD, brane theory is still not sophisticated enough.

Therefore is not necessary experiment for understanding that string theorists are in the wrong way. I am not saying that are clever guys or no, just saying that are in the wrong way as Eisntein when ignored the rest of science and focuses on its own (wrong) idea about the world. Therefore, the recent words of Susskind are not surprising for some of us that studied string theory and pointed to its obvious flaws.
“Many physicists hoped that string theory would be the mathematical ‘silver bullet’ that would uniquely explain our world. But the more we learn about cosmology and the more we learn about string theory, the less likely this seems.”

Lisa Randall (from Harvard) says:

“Originally, string thoeirsts hoped string theory would dictate these parameters. But this is looking increasingly unlikely.”

On a this year comment, Witten states:

“One of the few things we do know is that, with string theory, theoretical physicists have stumbled upon a theory that looks like it might be the unified field theory.”

Humm… He now abandons his earlier grandiloquent evaluation of the theory and carefully uses the combination look like it might. Interesting!

‘In the words of Edward Witten [E. Witten, ‘Reflections on the Fate of Spacetime’, Phys. Today, April 1996]:

‘ “String theory has the remarkable property of predicting gravity,”

‘and Witten has further commented:

‘ “the fact that gravity is a consequence of string theory is one of the greatest theoretical insights ever.”

‘It should be emphasised, however, that in addition to the dimensionality issue, the string theory approach is (so far, in almost all respects) restricted to being merely a perturbation theory …’

More at http://members.lycos.co.uk/nigelbryancook/Penrose.htm

Thank you for explaining your position. You are right: the article was weak and should have been stronger.

I think you are however, exactly missing the point from my perspective. I hope you find this post informative; no one wants you to become yet another string theorist who never matured into a particle theorist.

Richard Feynman (a non-expert in string theory who might have been interviewed if he were alive) left us the following admonition:

“Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.”

Can you hear the music, or is your mind already thinking about retorts?

Those of us non-string theorists have been waiting for the informed self-critique of string theory to come FROM the string community. Some of us have been waiting for 20 years.

Because String theory is nearly opaque to an outsider, we are actually dependent on string theorists to be their own worst critics.

By all means Lubos, save us from the Woits, the Andersons, the Friedans, the Feynmans, the Glashows. Now is your moment. Tell us EVERYTHING you know to be seriously wrong with the theory, its practitioners and its history. When theories, mature, they become a bit more humble. Unfortunately, it appears from your posts that you do not yet enjoy that luxury.

Of course, maybe you just don’t know the history.

Do you know that people who used to work on 11D supergravity before strings were derided by early string theorists who thought it irrelevant? That for years 10 and 26 were proclaimed as the ONLY relevant dimensions? Are you aware that there were once a provably small finite number of string theories and that this fact was used relentlessly to sell string theories to a sceptical and largely disbelieving world? Are you aware that for years there were emphatic dismissive answers to the question of ‘why are strings the only extended objects with branes irrelevant’?

One could go on I suppose. Let me simply observe however that as string theory improves, it has been proving itself to be wrong in its earlier zeal and dogmatism for years. It just never stops to face its former incarnations.

Lubos, you are young and will be forgiven because of what I assume is your brilliance and contributions. But, like others before you, you will also run out of time if you don’t make contact with the world beyond string theory. We have been cheering for the String community for what is beginning to feel like an eternity. We hope like the Red Sox you will eventually get it together and win one for all of us.

Oh and one last thing. The theory community as a whole has built up a lot of good will over the years by achieving a great deal scientifically while teaching its non-experts critics rather than deriding them. Just make sure you put back scientifically far more than you withdraw.

That is quickly becoming a tall order.

These days, I’m mostly interested in the mathematics part of strings. And, I agree with you that the anthropic principle is nonpredictive. My only point is that it really could be the right answer.

Depressing, I know, but not impossible.

If they’re right, and the CC really is zero, that would be quite something. It would certainly put a big dent in the “Landscape” nonsense.