A Particle Theorist’s Perspective on String Theory

There’s a new posting over at Cosmic Variance by JoAnne Hewett of SLAC about string theory, entitled A Particle Physicist’s Perspective. It gives a good idea of what I believe most non-string-theorist particle physicists think about string theory.

She does express some very controversial views, ones that are widely held in the physics community, but rarely publicly expressed:

I find the arrogance of some string theorists astounding, even by physicist’s standards. Some truly believe that all non-stringy theorists are inferior scientists. It’s all over their letters of recommendation for each other, and I’ve actually had some of them tell me this to my face.

and she describes string theorists as holding the arrogant belief that

String theory is so important that it must be practised at the expense of all other theory. There are two manifestations of this: string theorists have been hired into faculty positions at a disproportionally high level not necessarily commensurate with ability in all cases, and the younger string theorists are usually not well educated in particle physics. Some literally have a hard time naming the fundamental particles of nature. Both of these manifestations are worrying for the long-term future of our field.

I suspect that some of Hewett’s strong feelings about this come from being at Stanford, where the theoretical physics group is made up mostly of members of the looniest wing of the string theory enterprise. The logo of the new web-site of the Institute for Theoretical Physics there is a representation of the multiverse, and Stanford is probably the major center for landscapeology in the world (and perhaps in the multiverse).

My alma mater, Princeton, is rather different in that landscapeology is not popular, but the particle theory groups both at the university and at the Institute have only hired string theorists for the last twenty years, displaying the kind of attitude that Hewett finds disturbing.

While most string theorists demonstrate no more than the usual theoretical physicist’s helping of arrogance, it has certainly been my experience that some of them display a degree of arrogance that is pretty astounding. This includes some of the earliest and most prominent string theory bloggers, where the phenomenon is pretty much off-scale. When it comes to purely intellectual arrogance and confidence in one’s own beliefs, I’m no paragon of humility, but I don’t take the attitude that people who disagree with me are idiots who don’t know what they are talking about, an attitude I’ve encountered amazingly often from more than one string theorist.

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56 Responses to A Particle Theorist’s Perspective on String Theory

  1. Bryan says:

    I think it is very sad that people like JoAnne Hewett are queuing up to put kick string theorists’ because of their arrogance.

    There have already been abuses of string theorists leak into the media, like http://www.theonion.com/content/node/41454

    It’s a good thing the media think this is just a storm in a teacup.

  2. Plato says:

    I’m no paragon of humility, but I don’t take the attitude that people who disagree with me are idiots

    Thanks Peter 🙂

  3. JoAnne says:

    Bryan,

    Hmmm….I’m not quite sure what a `put kick’ is, but am going to assume it is similar to a punt kick in American football. So, no, if you read my post, you will see that I am most certainly not lining up to punt kick string theory. I most emphatically said that I believe the enterprise is worth pursuing. It’s all a matter of balance.

  4. Bryan says:

    Hi JoAnne,

    Do you just think Lubos Motl should be kicked, then? 😉

  5. D R Lunsford says:

    How’s this for irony – the server that hosts the HETG at Harvard, loaded with stringers, is named “democritus” 🙂

    -drl

  6. Aaron says:

    Princeton has made many offers to non-string theorists.

  7. Bryan says:

    D. R. Lunsford, mind your step! Motl will probably investigate you and find you’re major paper http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search.py?recid=688763&ln=en stems to NASA astronaut training, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/DRLunsford.html so you are just a nerd with a chip on your shoulder about string theory!

  8. Eli Rabett says:

    Any field such as sting theory starts from a few places. How much of the arrogance is a reflection of those who founded the field, which was picked up by their students?

    BTW, I think there was a confusion betweeen the American term punt (something) as in be ready to abandon or leave, and the English term “put the boot in”, ie kick someone when they are lying on the ground, as in rugby. Both may be appropriate

  9. Nigel says:

    Bryan, in replying to Lunsford, should write ‘your major paper’ not ‘you’re’. It’s a shame that there’s no automatic grammar check/correction on blogs.

    Eli, surely you mean ‘string’ not ‘sting’ theory, although in England a ‘sting’ is slang for a rip-off or overpriced commodity, so it is certainly right to call string theory a sting theory! 🙂

  10. Rafael says:

    I saw a talk given by Robert Laughlin which was very interesting. Mostly it was about emergent properties but he did talk a bit about his criticisms of string theory. Especially, not being able to make any predictions which can be measured. I think he was sad (or angry) that theoretical physics has gone off the rails. I guess that would be a condensed matter theorist’s perspective?

  11. Eli Rabett says:

    The best laid puns of mice and men, oft go awry. Thank you Nigel.

  12. D R Lunsford says:

    Wow, they actually credited me on the ALSJ? For revising a transcript? Hey! This is easy!

    -drl

  13. dan says:

    So what kind of non-stringy particle physics research directions are being pursued these days? By non-stringy I mean fundamental particle physics that (1) do not involve string theory, (2) do not invovle SUSY, (3) do not involve higher-dimensions?

    Incidentally, how do particle physics explain the transformation of kind of fundamental particle, the electron/position, into another, such as photons? Do they recourse to string theory or are there non-stringy ways of explaining this?

    curious
    Dan

  14. Thomas Larsson says:

    Incidentally, how do particle physics explain the transformation of kind of fundamental particle, the electron/position, into another, such as photons? Do they recourse to string theory or are there non-stringy ways of explaining this?

    Hopefully particle physicists don’t explain the transformation of a single electron into a photon at all, since it does not happen. The transformation of one electron + one positron into two photons is explained by a theory called QED. Believe it or not, but it does not involve string theory, and it makes some predictions in reasonable agreement with experiments (to ten decimal places or so).

  15. Aaron says:

    So what kind of non-stringy particle physics research directions are being pursued these days? By non-stringy I mean fundamental particle physics that (1) do not involve string theory, (2) do not invovle SUSY, (3) do not involve higher-dimensions?

    That’s a very odd definition of ‘stringy’. I’m sure the vast legions of phenomenologists who work on those subjects would be surprised that they’re doing ‘stringy’ stuff. Some might even object rather vociferously.

    Anyways, there’s stuff involving little higgs models, dark matter, baryogenesis, neutrino masses, some GUT stuff (although most of that is supersymmetric), lattice stuff and probably plenty more that’s not coming to mind.

    BTW — in case it wasn’t clear from context above, I meant that Princeton has made job offers in the past to high energy theorists who were not string theorists.

  16. D R Lunsford says:

    TL,

    I think his point was, does anyone work on something you can’t find in a Michio Kaku book..

    And as for his comment about matter/antimatter, I think he meant – is there a mechanism for this beyond just positing the interaction? And the answer is – not one that is generally accepted.

    -drl

  17. andy s. says:

    Dan: Loop Quantum Gravity addresses many of the same issues are String Theory. Google Lee Smolin or the Perimeter Institute.

  18. Aaron says:

    And as for his comment about matter/antimatter, I think he meant – is there a mechanism for this beyond just positing the interaction? And the answer is – not one that is generally accepted.

    It’s called gauge invariance.

  19. D R Lunsford says:

    Yep, that’s the old posit right there Aaron.

    -drl

  20. Aaron says:

    Positing gauge invariance is far from positing an interaction. I invite you to write down a quantum theory of a massless vector (we do want electromagnetism, right?) without gauge invariance.

  21. D R Lunsford says:

    This isn’t the place to discuss it. As it happens a post on SPR will soon address it, so go there (gauge invariance determines the interaction, and for 4d they are practically synonymous).

    -drl

  22. Who says:

    Dan asked
    “dan Says:
    November 19th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
    So what kind of non-stringy particle physics research directions are being pursued these days?”

    to expand on an earlier comment
    “andy.s says
    November 20th, 2005 at 1:50 am
    Dan: Loop Quantum Gravity addresses many of the same issues are String Theory. Google Lee Smolin or the Perimeter Institute.”

    you might like to watch this 40 minute video of a recent Smolin talk, and download the set of slides that goes with it.
    http://loops05.aei.mpg.de/index_files/abstract_smolin.html

    in this talk Smolin tries out a certain a particle physics scheme in the context of Loop QG. the quantum state of the gravitational field is given by a kind of graph called a “spin network” and families of particles (electrons, quarks, etc. ) are are built into the gravitational field as kinds of links in the graph. the “preon” model which he uses is due to Bilson-Thompson and it reproduces some features of the standard model.

    there must be several cases of non-string QG research which strives to unify particle physics with quantum gravity, by a variety of authors, but I can’t think of a survey paper specifically about this. andy.s suggestion to use search engines is a good one. This talk, that smolin gave last month (10 October) is at least something like what you were asking about, to start you off.

    the effort is bound to look preliminary and insubstantial compared with string

  23. http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=56

    Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

    ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy.

    “As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks,” Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, “The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy.”

    Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David “the truth is out there” Duchovney, explained the plot: “String theory’s muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for.”

    Greene continues: “At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he’s doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory’s hoax and save Jessica Alba.”

    But it’s not that easy, as standing in Greene’s way is Michio “king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything-or-anything-made-
    you-read-this” Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the “ironic” pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. “WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!” Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, “There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory’s GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!”

    But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. “Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket),” Greene shouts. “It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!”

    “Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there’s a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We’re laughing at the public! We’re the insider pomo hipsters! Get with the gangsta-wanksta-pranksta CRANKSTER bling-bling program!!”

    How does it all end? Does physics go bankrupt funding theories that have expanded our ignorance from four dimensions into ten, twenty, and thirty dimensions? Do tax payers revolt? Do young physicists overthrow the hand-waving, contortionist bullies and revive physics with a classical renaissance favoring logic, reason, and Truth over meaningless mathematical abstractions? Does Moving Dimensions Theory (MDT) prevail with its simple postulate? We’ll all just have to wait!

    But in the meantime, how do you think it will play out?

    Will theories with postulates ever be allowed in physics again? Or will the well-funded, tenured pomo String Theory / M-Theory (Maffia-Theory) Priests send their armies of desperate, snarky postdocs and starving graduate students forth to displace and destroy all common sense, logic, reason, and physics in the academy? It must be so–for the greater good of physics, the individual physicist, and thus physics, must be sacrificed.

    http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=56

  24. WL says:

    As usual, things are turned upside down. The supreme form of arrogance is not the one of experts, but of fools who claim to know better than the experts.

  25. secret milkshake says:

    I know lumo a bit. It’s not the Strings – he is like this on any subject. He cannot help it.

  26. Quantum_Ranger says:

    Peter, the interesting thing is that the ‘new’ webpages here:
    http://www.stanford.edu/group/sitp/
    specifically the bottom copyrighted macromedia image at the bottom,
    have been extracted from the website of here:
    http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/activities/scientific/seminarseries/index.php

    look closer at the bottom starcluster image, there are Aztec and Toltec “gods” embedded into the image?

    !!..the Perimiter webpages had the inca/toltec statues embedded into the starcluster picture sometime ago, this was tackled here:
    http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=48248

    reply#3

    The institutes appear to be having a “bat-ball” exchange, the Cosmic-String theorists at Stanford are obviously having fun with the symbolic inclusion of theory of the “Gods”?

    I twould be interesting to find out when the ‘new’ stanford webpages became active, as the smae Aztec/Toltec images from perimiter were present Oct04?..they are no longer there today, but the reason for their removal must have a significance at Stanford webpages?

  27. Juan R. says:

    Arrogance could be supported if string theorists really were smart people, but unfortunately only one or two of them are really good. The rest is a group of…

    This is the reason that people working in other areas -biophysics, quantum measurements theory, arrow of time, quantum gravity, complexity and chaos, etc.- often do jokes (even denigrating) with string theorists.

    One of lasts, i know was a joke from F. Dyson (the Nobel winner) who argued against Brian Greene (that ‘SMART’ string theorist 🙂 regarding several conceptual issues on the quantum measurement problem the last year.

    Dyson had studied the problem with some deep, whereas Brian Greene only speculated (his true speciality) that string theory would revolutionate our current views…

    Dyson words were crystal clear:

    He rejects without any serious discussion

    This is the best (mean) definition of string theorists activity i know

    …Without any serious discussion…

    Juan R.

    Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)

  28. secret milkshake says:

    To Juan: Freeman Dyson was left out of Nobel for QED, actually. What he got was Templeton.

  29. dan says:

    Now that someone meontioned “preons”, are strings (D0 branes) are said to be “fundamental” and make up other fundamental particles, including gravitons, photons, etc cetera.

    according to string theory, do strings make up quarks, or do strings make up preons, which then make quarks?

    incidentally, if the project of spin networks giving rise to preons seems to work, then LQG would be relevant to particle physics, right?

  30. D R Lunsford says:

    Juan,

    This is the impression I get – that stringers are not very bright.

    -drl

  31. Adrian Heathcote says:

    Dr Ranger McCoy

    Someone’s got to say it. Bravo! Author!

    I might mention that a famous winner of the Templeton (whom you mention) once said that the way to understand mathematics was to stare at the page for a long time until it looked about right.

    (Forget about doing those pesky exercises!)

    I’m amazed that physics has fallen into this hole. It’s like the malaise in the humanities has spread like an ink-stain outwards.

    A.H.

  32. Who says:

    dan, I think you draw the right conclusion but put it a bit strongly
    “… if the project of spin networks giving rise to preons seems to work, then LQG would be relevant to particle physics, right?”

    In his talk that I gave the link for, Smolin was drawing on this Bilson-Thompson preon paper
    http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0503213
    A topological model of composite preons
    you might enjoy this paper and get something from it

    you must judge for yourself how far along is Smolin’s project of relating spin network to these twisted-ribbon preons of B-T.
    it strikes me as very tentative but in Smolin’s Loops ’05 talk
    http://loops05.aei.mpg.de/index_files/abstract_smolin.html
    he is saying that networks are a hospitable place to find these braided triplets of preons as links, and putting them in the picture could address several problems efficiently. Best if you listen to smolin’s talk and look over the slides yourself

    I see that both Bilson-Thompson and Renate Loll (CDT) are now at Perimeter. Also Xiao-Gang Wen. B-T just gave a talk on preons a few days ago and Loll and Wen were giving a workshop this weekend.

    the talks and/or slides of some of these are available on line at
    http://streamer.perimeterinstitute.ca:81/mediasite/viewer/

    select “Seminar Series” and go to page 14 to find the Bilson-Thompson preon talk, if you are interested.

    to find the Loll and Wen workshop scroll the menu down to
    “Emergence of Spacetime Workshop” and click that

    anyway it sounds too definite to say non-string QG relevant to particle physics but there certainly are connections being explored and it is not too hard to keep track of the various initiatives people are pursuing

    glad you are interested

  33. dan says:

    hi who,
    well i would love to see QG within my lifetime, as one of the final frontiers of science. his talk spoke of fermions, what about interger spin bosons, such as higgs, photons, and gravitons?

    as for string theory, does string theory predict preons? does string theorists predict an inner structor of quarks much in the same way as preons do?

    i am curious in lqg how is GR dynamics to be recorded, by gravitons, or by the large-scale behavior of spin foams?

  34. We Pretty says:

    Hi,

    scientists are in general more interested in facts than
    attitutes of other people. But as a representative of
    the public I think that the way string theorists trumpet
    their theory as a solution to everything is cheating. I
    suppose that if you ask a random person what is quantum
    theory, if he or she knows anything about it, he or she
    will usually say that it is something that explains the atoms
    and inderminancy and stuff. If you currently ask a random
    person what is string theory, if he or she knows anything
    about it, he or she will usually say that it is some new
    theory that explains everything.

    To help to change string theorists and especially young
    physicists but also the public attitude towards string theory,
    you should add section of string theory to the physics FAQ
    (though strictly speaking it does not belong there). In the
    beginning of the FAQ about physics in general Q: “What is a prediction” ? Q: “What is a nontrivial prediction” (A: “A
    prediction that differs from the currently accepted theories
    such that if the predicted thing does not happen then the
    theory that makes the prediction is false”). In string theory
    sections Q: “Does ST make non-trivial predictions ?” A: “No”.
    Q: “Does string theory make predictions ?” A: “No” (I suppose).
    Or make this information otherwise available.

    There are also other issues that would be of interest like
    how long string theory has predicted nothing, are there any
    other theories and stuff. I know also that there are positive
    side in string theory, cool mathematics and such.

    Whatever landscapes and multiverses and extra dimensions
    sound cool. It sounds also very cool that the universe is 2 or 4
    everything between dimensional.

    We Pretty

  35. Tony Smith says:

    The arrogant narrowmindedness of superstring theorists may not be unprecedented.

    According to an Opinion article by Gregory Benford (not only a scifi writer, but also a professor of physics at UC Irvine) in Physics Today (November 2005 at pages 48-49):
    “… In the late 1940s, George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, and Robert Herman worked out element formation and the entire scenario that led to the now-famous 3-K background radiation. Yet the steady-state model held sway, and their work had faded from view by the mid-1950s. …
    Rather than testing the Gamow-Alpher-Herman model, cosmologists spent more than a decade falsifying steady state’s predictions. No one followed on the nucleosynthesis path, let alone thought of observations. …
    To outsiders, such events might seem a scandal. … We didn’t treat both models fairly, and lost more than a decade before discovering the truth. … what were the scandal’s roots? …
    Alpher and Herman … said they suspected a cultural bias was at work: “It is possible, but regrettable, that Gamow’s fun-loving and irrepressible approach to physics led some scientists not to take seriously his work. …” … Gamov, Alpher, and Herman committed a minor social sin: They weren’t in the club. …
    Are there similar scandals in our own era? …
    Despite 30 years of their drum-beating, the string theorists never suspected that the dark energy could comprise the majority of the energy density of out universe. …
    When a bug of this size hits your conceptual windshield, it makes a big splash. The dark energy scandal is that the bug was the size of an eagle.
    String theory is an idea that functions as … no predictions, yet widespread acceptance.
    Theorists can fall in love with mathematical beauty. Philosophical elegance, which steady state had, is even more glamorous. Gamow, Alpher, and Herman had to fight steady state’s shiny splendor, which blinded our field.
    What causes such scandals?
    … An unspoken timidity lurks in the close-focus grant-approval process – small steps are rewarded as more reliable than conceptual leaps. Possibilities beyond our current conceptual horizons get little attention. In academia, we maximize publicaton numbers rather than originality. This approach also gets us through the incremental mindset of review committees, which are seldom noted for their leaps of insight. ….
    Do we suffer from anxiety over imagination?
    Rigor is reassuring, but it should come at the end of that powerful chain that starts with intuition and proceeds to experimental checks – not at the beginning. To set our work in motion, we reason mostly by analogy, not by rigorous deduction. Imagination is not incremental.
    Yet among reviewers, “speculation” is a work mostly deployed as a pejorative. We should
    not allow it to be. …”.

    I think that the lesson here is that there should be some sort of reasonable evaluaton mechanism for nonstandard physics models (not just mine). However, since I am more familiar with my work than with the work of others, I will state that I wrote a paper calculating the Dark Energy : Dark Matter : Ordinary Matter ratios and got results pretty close to the WMAP observations. When I submitted the paper to the Cornell arXiv in 2004, it was rejected (probably due to me being personally blacklisted by them). I then posted a similar paper to the CERN EXT preprint series as CERN CDS preprint EXT-2004-013, where it was accepted and is still available. However, later in 2004 (October 2004) the CERN Scientific Information Policy Board (SIPB) closed the CERN CDS EXT preprint series. A speculative opinion of mine is that EXT was closed due to pressure from the Cornell arXiv to prevent work blacklisted by them from seeing the light of day.

    Just as the steady state model, in Benford’s words, “… could not explain helium formation …”, (afaik) superstring theorists have yet to explain the Dark Energy : Dark Matter : Ordinary Matter ratios observed by WMAP.

    Tony Smith
    http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/

  36. woit says:

    I just accidentally deleted this entry, and had to restore the whole blog database from a version of early this morning. This happened partly due to my own carelessness, partly due to the bad user interface of WordPress, and partly due to the fact that I’ve had to spend a lot of time deleting repeated attempts by people to post long discussions of their own completely off-topic ideas about physics.

    Please stop doing this, it is getting really, really, annoying, wasting my time, and now causing damage. This is not a forum for you to go on about your favorite ideas about physics that have nothing to do with the topic of the posting. Do that elsewhere. From now on, I’ll be taking steps to shut off access to this weblog from anyone who repeatedly tries to post such material.

  37. Dear Peter,

    you definitely cannot argue that my comment relating to Tony’s posting was a long discussion about off topic idea. It was precisely about the immense arrogance of super string theorists and about its tragic consequences: I am not talking about myself here but about the development of the theoretical physics as a whole.

    It seems that superstring theorists are not the only ones to be blamed of extraordinary arrogance and willingness to censorship. This is a disease plaguing the entire comunity. This blog could be much more than it is by allowing open discussion of new ideas (in my own case not only new ideas but extensive life work) rather only allowing boring repetition of the well-known failures of string theory.

    With Best Regards,
    Matti Pitkanen

  38. woit says:

    Matti,

    Your comment was not deleted by me intentionally, it was accidentally deleted when I accidentally deleted the whole posting. The latest backup of the blog database was made automatically early in the morning after Tony’s comment and before yours. I had to restore from that backup and your comment was lost.

    I was not about to delete your posting, but the problem is when you, Tony and others start discussing your own ideas, many others then want to join in with their own pet theories, and the comment section rapidly degenerates into a long string of comments by people promoting their own ideas (many of which make no sense). This leaves me with the job of trying to moderate such a forum. I don’t have the time or energy for it and I resent having to do it, especially when it causes me to accidentally damage things here (e.g. by irretrievably deleting your comment). If you have a copy of your comment, you’re welcome to resubmit it.

  39. D R Lunsford says:

    I’m personally a little sick of your whining about the status of your damn blog. Your own work in this field is pretty thin, but you’ve carved out a niche for yourself by calling a spade a spade. If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the damn kitchen. And if you need some computer help, drop me a line, I’m pretty damn good at it after 20 odd years without a career in physics, that I worked very hard to secure from an early age. I don’t “lose things”.

    -drl

  40. Who says:

    The topic is Joanne’s forthright expression of a perception that is shared by others—–about string hubris.

    I think the arrogance or pretention she speaks of is based on a (questionable) fundamental premise which Joanne herself repeats.
    In other words, Joanne’s own assumption is part of the problem.

    In her original blog, Joanne pays tribute to a dubious cliché (which is at the root of string complacency). I don’t object to her conclusion that string is worth studying. i object to her premise, which people seem to repeate unquestioningly:

    “…string theory worth studying? I would answer yes, for two reasons. One has already been given, namely, that string theory is currently our best idea about how to quantize gravity.

    Why can’t people say yes string theory is worth developing even though it is not necessarily the best idea for quantizing gravity that has been proposed?
    And why not say yes we should support string research, among other approaches even though it is not necessarily the most promising avenue being explored?

    I think the claim that it is the “best” or most promising is not to be taken for granted but is, in fact, controversial. There is legitimate difference of expert opinion. The only string theorist I recall acknowledging this is Andy Strominger. I hear people like Steve Shenker and David Gross use phrases like “our one best hope” like an article of faith or a party line—but the Strominger attitude i heard is that it aint so clear: String is worth studying but it’s not clear that it is the best and there may be other avenues worth exploring as well.

  41. Who says:

    I think complaining about Peter losing some comments is off topic.
    It is fine for him to occasionally lose stuff, most of what we write is not for the ages—-and it keeps the threads shorter and easier to read.

    for better or worse, in this thread the topic is Joanne Hewett having the guts to say “arrogant”—-and she is a nice person too. so we better talk about that while we have the chance and not get off quarreling about minor blog mishaps

  42. plato says:

    I think complaining about Peter losing some comments is off topic.

    I second that. I keep getting my posts deleted repeatly you think I am going to whine about?:) Non!

    I just wonder though about the fervor with which a group view on anti- can become, could be affected by a lone person who might disagree, with what you people go on about string/M theory.

    Peter you took a stand.

    While it is not totally comprehensible to me, I do try to understand the models that are being adopted? And see them, as models.

    Do you think Lee’s comments arise just in cosmic varaince?

    http://cosmicvariance.com/2005/11/14/our-first-guest-blogger-lawrence-krauss/#comment-7514

  43. Aaron says:

    Why can’t people say yes string theory is worth developing even though it is not necessarily the best idea for quantizing gravity that has been proposed?

    Maybe people have actually looked at what’s out there and actually think that string theory is the best game in town?

    Just a thought.

  44. Peter,

    I am glad to hear that this was an accident. And I want to emphasize that we were not going to discuss about details of our theories. Unfortunately I do not have the copy of posting. The ingenious definition of Who for what is off topic allows unlimited censorship without complaints. Congratulations!

    Matti

  45. Nigel says:

    ‘…others then want to join in with their own pet theories, and the comment section rapidly degenerates into a long string of comments by people promoting their own ideas (many of which make no sense). …’

    Sorry for causing problems by being arrogant. My arrogance is just copied from the string theorists who lead physics, which JoAnne Hewitt writes about. If they’re arrogant, others follow.

    BTW, some people want to have a go at stringing other people’s stuff together, to sort out what makes sense.

  46. Juan R. says:

    Well, i will ‘repeat’ my post (since i think that was on-topic and, moreover, i do not speak on my own theories here)

    secret milkshake

    YES!! What great mistake!! Thanks by correction. Since Dyson unified the ‘different’ QED of the époque (and even people as Feynman was initially unable to see that Tomonaga or Schwinger, were just other ‘pictures’), do you know why do not received the Nobel? Perhaps the lack of PhD?

    dan

    Since there is not still formulation for M-theory, nobody can reply you now. However, some brane theorists as Banks claim that D0-branes (which are NOT strings; a string is a 1-brane) are “fundamental” blocks of nature. It has been already proven, for example, that supersimmetric gravitons can be derived from ‘excitations’ of D0-branes.

    For me, the most ‘beatiful’ result from M(atrix) theory is that fundamental building blocks are again pointlike particles. Probably the four decades ‘stringy’ excursion around extended object (and the popularization of how ’stupid’ poinlike particle were) will finalize again in that the pointlike behaviour of particle physics was sufficient, when divergences and some other mistakes are corrected.

    D R Lunsford

    I personally think that one can find clever people in any field (scientific or not). Due to my multidisciplinary interest, I found genial papers on math, particle physics, quantum gravity, ecology, irreversible thermodynamics, electromagnetism, chemical dynamics, philosophy, etc.

    However, I agree with you that current ‘hidden’ law saying that the most brilliant guys of the planet are string theorists, is a pure assumption without sound basis. Simply by reading published literature on string theory and comparing it, one already detects that. In my opinion, there is not a single Feynman on the current string theory community and this is the reason that physics has not advanced.

    Moreover i think that the comparative of Witten with Einstein (or even with Newton!!) is, I believe, one of multiple distorted outcomes of the heavy stringy marketing.

    We Pretty

    But as a representative of the public I think that the way string theorists trumpet their theory as a solution to everything is cheating. I suppose that if you ask a random person what is quantum theory, if he or she knows anything about it, he or she will usually say that it is something that explains the atoms and inderminancy and stuff. If you currently ask a random person what is string theory, if he or she knows anything about it, he or she will usually say that it is some new theory that explains everything.

    A scientist is one who solves problems via generating scientific knowledge (i.e. acquiring knowledge via scientific method). String theory would be fantastic and string theorists become heroes if string theory was a scientific solution to only a 10% of the claimed in media. Unfortunately, it is all pure marketing. String theory is not a theory of physics, it is not a theory of science, it is an excellent piece of marketing, just that. I completely agree with Woit here. The only success of string theory has been on mass media.

    Many people think that string theory does not predictions about nature. I partially agree. However, string theory claims that universe IS 10-D AND supersymmetric. Our observed universe is 4D and non-supersimmetric, therefore there is ‘some’ that string theorists are ignoring… just the scientific method!

    Juan R.

    Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)

  47. Juan R. says:

    Who

    Could you explain why you think

    that string theory is currently our best idea about how to quantize gravity

    ?

    During my travel on ‘quantum gravity lands’ i have known many people who believe ‘that’ because other people also believe ‘that’.

    I have even heard that the ‘best’ argument for studying string theory is because Witten believes on it!!!

    If you really sustain you are writting here, could you write your real name too?

    Is not part of the typical arrogance of string theorists to begin their talks on string ‘theory’ (so say) claiming that string theory is the ONLY possibility for quantizing gravity?

    Where is the paper, book, talk, etc. where this was supposedly proven? Or is just another piece of the propaganda?

    Juan R.

    Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)

  48. Who says:

    Juan R you totally misunderstand me. Please carefully read JoAnne Hewett orig. blog
    http://cosmicvariance.com/2005/11/18/a-particle-physicists-perspective/

    Notice where she says

    string theory worth studying? I would answer yes, for two reasons. One has already been given, namely, that string theory is currently our best idea about how to quantize gravity. We obviously need to explore that link further, no matter how tenuous.

    I am pointing to where she says “best idea” as if it were taken for granted and not controversial. Well-informed people can differ, but she does not not indicate this. It is something that even nice intelligent sensible people like JoAnne PARROT. This item of unquestioned dogma is a large part of the problem.

    Suppose JoAnne had said this:

    string theory worth studying? I would answer yes, for two reasons. String theory is one of several promising ideas about how to quantize gravity. We obviously need to explore that link further, no matter how tenuous.

    then the conclusion (worth further support) would remain the same but the grounds for what she objects to—the privileged sense of entitlement—would be removed.

    If people could make that simple substitution, I think it would be a real step towards solving the problem she is talking about.

    BTW think we should acknowledge who JoAnne is and what she puts on the line. correct me if I am mistaken but i think she is a type of nice levelheaded young scientist that people in the research establishment pick to be on advisory boards and to organize panels and committees and workshops. She is someone you trust to be constructive and have a sense of humor and be normal according to the highest standards. I’ve worked with people in an NASE/NRC study and I respect them and their careers are partly political and based on people-skills that some of the rest of us lack. And I have to say that I think JoAnne has something to RISK

  49. Aaron says:

    It is something that even nice intelligent sensible people like JoAnne PARROT.

    Not to speak for JoAnne or anything, but I hope you realize that you’re being rather insulting here. How do you know that anybody is ‘parrot’ing anything?

    And this idea you have that there is this string mafia who seek out to destroy the careers of those who oppose string theory is just silly. Lots and lots and lots of people criticize string theory.

  50. Bee says:

    Folks, today there is probably no particle physicist more tired by stringers than I am. If I have to listen to one more heterotic twisted whatever type string talk with compactification on manifolds that I don’t know how to pronounce w/ or w/o flux or any connection to the real world, I am sure my head is going to implode.

    However, I don’t think string theory is such a stupid thing to do. It’s just not plausible to me what it should have to do with nature and I find it is time that stringers admit they are mathematicians.

    String theory has some beauty on its own, there are for sure many points worth investigating and the properties of the theory are amazing. Just why that is physics, I can’t see. Maybe it would help, if any of the guys giving these headache-causing talks would at least TRY to explain why the physics community should be interested in that topic.

    Also, string theory in the US is definitly completely over-funded, whereas there is lack of funding in equally or more important fields – that’s for sure.

    How come the NSF hasn’t yet noted that?

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