Susskind Turns Down Templeton Prize

OK, maybe they haven’t offered it to him yet, but over at the Edge web-site, in a comment about John Horgan’s recent piece about the Templeton Foundation, Susskind writes:

I don’t understand the idea that a convergence between science and religion is taking place. I don’t believe in any such convergence. Throwing huge amounts of money at scientists who claim to see such a convergence can only lead to a dangerous blurring of boundaries.

I hereby pledge to refuse any prize for advancing the so called convergence between science and religion.

I missed Susskind’s recent public talk here in New York, about his book which the New York Academy of Sciences describes as “revolutionizing the field of physics”. There is a podcast recorded just before his talk. He makes his usual points including claiming that the situation of the string theory anthropic landscape is similar to that of Darwin and the theory of evolution. He also claims that anyone who thinks it doesn’t have experimental implications is wrong, pointing to Weinberg’s “prediction” of the cosmological constant.

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64 Responses to Susskind Turns Down Templeton Prize

  1. anon says:

    Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be like you, the ultimate superhero: a physicist who collects payola from both from the Templeton and the Jason programs at the same time.

  2. Chris Oakley says:

    Following Susskind’s noble example, I hereby relinquish any claim to the Olympic Gold Medal in Toboganning for 2005, any claim to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1902, for the Turner Prize in 1986, the Best Dressed IBM Employee for 2000 (mind you, I don’t think I had much of a claim on that one anyway, and not just because I never worked for IBM), the Tour de France for 1980 and Miss Trinidad for 1972. All I ask in return is that Lubos Motl should give up any aspirations towards the Nobel Prize for Climate Change, if ever one is instituted.

  3. lmot says:

    I’ve always admired the Jasletons for advancing the convergence between religion and anti-submarine warfare.

  4. Kea says:

    Chris, I’m curious: why the date qualifications?

  5. Chris Oakley says:

    Chris, I’m curious: why the date qualifications?

    I knew that someone was going to read more into this comment than was intended. I suppose that that is the problem of this being a “scientific” forum (although Lubie might disagree about the fact).

  6. Jimbo says:

    Listening to Lenny’s talk, he sez that Weinberg predicted the CC within an order of magnitude, via anthropic reasoning. Is that indeed the case ? Also, does anyone know if there exists a published derivation of the following relation (and by whom ?)

    Log (Mcc/Mn) = – 1/(alpha)^1/2 , where Mn = nucleon mass

    Thanx,
    Jimbo

  7. woit says:

    Jimbo,

    For extensive comments about Weinberg’s “prediction” (which is the same “prediction” you get when you say you have no idea what causes the cosmological constant), see my recent posting about Polchinski’s paper.

    Never seen the relation you give (and it’s off-topic…)

  8. Jimbo, as Mcc was thought to be 0, there are not a lot of logarithmic “predictions” yet. There is a good bunch of such kind (log and then fine structure constant) using M_planck against M_nucleon, at least as early as the 1960 and probably even more. It is offtopic here, but you can get a whole 11 pages thread at http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=46055

  9. which is the same “prediction” you get when you say you have no idea …

    But of course! Note that the anthropic principle is to ask for the existence of someone able to say “I have no idea”.

  10. Unlike you high-principled types, I intend to campaign vigorously for the Templeton Prize, based on my string theoretic proof of the existence of God, or, as I like to call him, The Great Landscaper.

  11. Sakura-chan says:

    The Susskind talking on that podcast is not the normal Susskind we know and love. I was stricken by his skepticism.

  12. Hech Baan says:

    1. I’m 100% behind Susskind’s message. There is no boundary between science and theology. And religion shouldn’t play any role in science. You are either a scientist or a theologist.

    2. At the same time I don’t think his book is revolutionising the field of physics.

    3. When people make comments on the Anthropic principle my assumption is that they understand the topic they are talking about. To test my theory I ask the following question.

    What would be your reaction if string/M-theory predicts only universes without live forms?

  13. Not a Nobel Laureate says:

    I developed a quantum mechanical “proof” of the existence the Holy Trinity years ago thereby inferring the existence of God.

    1. The Holy Trinity can be understood as a superposition of QM eigenstates.

    |Holy Trinity>

    = alpha|Father>
    + beta|Son>
    + omega|Holy Ghost>

    The Unitarians have previously shown that the inner product of the |Holy Trinity> state
    with itself gives

    alpha^2 + beta^2 + omega^2 = 1

    where the eigenstates satisfy the usual orthonormality requirements.

    2. The values of alpha, beta and omega in the above normalization may be empirically determined by checking the religious – historical records for the number of appearances of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, respectively.

    We will probably have to await further developments in understanding the Celestial Firmament of Holy String Theory a.k.a. Harp Theory or H-Theory to account for these values of alpha, beta and omega. However, leading quantum theological and quantum rabbinical researchers currently believe that the key lies in enumerating the
    10^500 possible names of God.

    3. When acted up by the Holy Roller Hamiltonian,
    H_hro, a.k.a. the God Playing Dice with the Universe Operator, O_gpdu, the QM holy superposition state collapses / is projected into one of the
    |Father>, |Son> or |Holy Ghost> eigenstates.
    Ie.,

    H_hro |Holy Trinity> = alpha|Father>

    H_hro |Holy Trinity> = beta|Son>

    H_hro |Holy Trinity> = omega|Holy Ghost>

    QED

    4. An outstanding quantum theological question is whether the H_rho is in fact Hermitian as has been postulated and are the eigenvalues thus positive definate, ie., without original negativity a.k.a. original sin, or not.

    5. Many of the Faithful eagerly await the coming of the Second Quantization.

    Now can I have my Templeton Prize . . . please.

  14. Jimbo says:

    Dear Not a Nobel Laureate,

    Cracked me up…I would love to see Alan Alda do his best `Feynman’, deliver that lecture w/a straight face & try not to split a gut laughing. I don’t think it can be done ! Thanx for making my day.

    Jim

  15. Thomas Larsson says:

    What would be your reaction if string/M-theory predicts only universes without live forms?

    I would be most surprised if string/M-theory made any falsifiable prediction whatsoever, e.g. that sparticles will (not may) be detected at the LHC.

    I would also be most surprised if Lubos Motl did not find yet another excuse to extend the deadline of his infamous experimental-discovery-of-susy-by-2006 bet, when sparticles have not been detected by the end of 2008. After all, the ultimate goal of string theory is to find ever more elaborate excuses why every string theory prediction disagrees with experiment.

  16. Hech Baan says:

    Dear Thomas Larsson,

    Everyone knows that string/M-theory makes many predictions. The challenge is that we don’t have enough data points to check them. So what do we do? Throw away the theory and try another one. We’ve decided to continue working on the theory to get more results. We assume that our theory is much more clever than we are therefore we will take its predictions very seriously regardless of our expectations and/or non-experts’ opinion.

    Now back to my question. You haven’t answered it. I agree you will be surprised. But what would you do next? What would be your logical conclusion? Will it be?
    A. String/M-theory is not even wrong so let’s ignore anything it says.
    B. String/M-theory therefore I don’t exist.
    C. String/M-theory says I don’t exist, but I do therefore the theory is wrong.
    D. Something else.

    Hint: The question is linked to the Weinberg’s prediction.

  17. Chris Oakley says:

    Hech Baan,

    I would choose “A” and just hope that you were not the one marking the paper.

    Not a Nobel Laureate,

    I remember as a child being told that the Three were One and the One were Three and that that was a Mystery, but I could never see anything particularly mysterious about it. In fact, I would say that your explanation ties up the loose ends rather nicely, and would be happy to support your entry for the Templeton Prize if you want me to. As for my credentials, you will find my CV on my web site; to that I need only add that I was an altar boy at the local Catholic church from about 1967-1974 and a Governor of the local Catholic school (John F Kennedy – named after a famous Catholic philanderer) for about a year around 1986.

  18. Arun says:

    What energy scale does M/String Theory predict for supersymmetry to be effective?

  19. Thomas Larsson says:

    Everyone knows that string/M-theory makes many predictions.

    This is of course a plain lie. Unless, of course, you take the predictions of supersymmetry, extra dimensions, and 496 gauge bosons seriously, in which case string theory has been disproven by experiments.

    Let me quote Sheldon Glashow:

    “It’s called superstring theory and it is, so far as I can see, totally divorced from experiment or observation. If not totally divorced, pretty well divorced. They will deny that, these string theorists. They will say, “We predicted the existence of gravity.” Well, I knew a lot about gravity before there were any string theorists, so I don’t take that as a prediction.”

    But it is of course up to anyone to decide for him- or herself who is most credible: a Nobel laureate like Glashow or a liar like Hech Baan.

  20. woit says:

    Arun and Hech Baan,

    M/String theory makes no prediction about the energy scale of supersymmetry breaking whatsover. It makes no predictions about anything, and anyone who starts going on about its predictions should be able to at least tell us what one of them is.

  21. Wolfgang says:

    Peter,

    so what about Lubos’ prediction that Lorentz invariance will hold at (arbitrarily) high energies ?

  22. woit says:

    Wolfgang,

    Lubos has a highly idiosyncratic idea of what the English word “prediction” means. As for the one you mention, recall that most string theorists like to go on about how really understanding string theory will require a new way of thinking about what space is (and time too, probably). Dumping Minkowski space at short distances would also dump Lorentz invariance, it would seem to me.

    Lorentz invariance at short distances is not exactly a distinctive prediction of string theory, and saying one’s theory “predicts” some general principle shared by virtually all other theories is kind of silly. For instance, I could claim that “string theory predicts unitarity”. Lorentz invariance at short distances is much more a distinctive feature of local QFT than of string theory, so it’s not exactly a distinguishing prediction of string theory.

  23. Chris Oakley says:

    A footnote to the Lorentz invariance question: just because you can’t deal with a scientific fact it doesn’t mean that it is not true. Our understanding of QFT is based on an idea we inherited from quantum mechanics, which in turn was inherited from classical mechanics. This idea is that physics consists primarily of deriving the equations of motion of a given system. The configuration of a system in a constant-time hyperplane (the t=0 state) then is a boundary condition to which the equations of motion are applied. In a relativistic system, the equations of motion need to be covariant, but in addition one must be sure that any choice of spacelike hyperplane would work for providing the “t=0” configuration.

    The notion of introducing an interaction into a quantum-mechanical system by an equation like

    H = H_0 + V

    seems so sweetly reasonable to most that they ignore the fact that H is the time component of a four-vector – a very non-relativistic construct. But something has to give when you try to make the theory relativistic, and sure enough, as Rudolf Haag showed in 1955, the only way in which this equation is applicable in this case is if V=0, in other words, when there are no interactions at all. This problem leads some to propose that Lorentz invariance is not correct, flying in the face of some of the most copious experimental evidence ever produced (bubble chamber data).

  24. Not a Nobel Laureate says:

    Chris Oakley wrote:

    ” . . . In fact, I would say that your explanation ties up the loose ends rather nicely, and would be happy to support your entry for the Templeton Prize if you want me to. . . ”

    You’ve just demonstrated why I’ve always been reluctant to put this “theory” into print – even in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Someone might actually take it seriously, but then again, there are people who take string “theory” seriously so I guess it should come as no surprise.

    When string theory can predict the spectrum of empirically observed particles and forces, as per the SM, then it will be worth paying attention to. Until then, it’s just an interesting (at least to some) mathematical toy.

  25. Joao Leao says:

    Peter

    As you well point out String Theorists have adopted the “novel” notion that, if they keep “predicting” what we already know, they may may somehow be exempted from having to predict something genuinely new and thus taking a risk on their exalted labors! It is one short step away from argueing that a universe fine-tuned enough to produce String Theorists must be highly contrained to exhibit the “physics” they portend to know!…

    Now I, for one, understand why Susskind “predicts” he is a good candidate for the Templeton prize and rightly anticipates that will mean his enthronement as the Pope of the Megaverse (and Weiberg is his Prophet?). This would put one last kabosh on his claims to be doing science rather than some new religion of “constant landscaping”.

  26. ksh95 says:

    Chris Oakley said:

    the only way in which this equation is applicable in this case is if V=0, in other words, when there are no interactions at all

    But nature almost always rearranges itself in such a way as to make V very small. Isn’t this what Bogoliubov is all about?

    Moreover, any residual interactions can show up as mass.

    Change what you call a particle and change what you want to call that particle’s mass and SR is preserved.

  27. Bert Schroer says:

    Chris Oakley,
    as much as I usually agree with your points of view, I think what you said about relativistic QM and Haag is not correct as it stands. Relativistic QM by its very nature of lacking the vacuum polarization (which characterizes QFT) is a perfectly well-defined relativistic multiparticle theory, i.e. it fulfills all properties which you are able to formulate using the concept of Wigner particles (and not that of fields). It is called the theory of “direct particle interactions”. The original idea is due to Fritz Coester (a good friend of Haag) and I have reviewed it in hep-th/0405105 (published in AOP).

  28. biophysicist says:

    Actually not a Nobel laureate you missed out on the fact that you can get the amplitudes exactly in your formulation. Since beta = alpha = omega (“I am the Alpha and the Omega”, remember?), unitarity forces the amplitudes to all be 1/3.

    Cheers!

  29. biophysicist says:

    err 1/sqrt(3). Whatever.

  30. Lord says:

    I don’t understand the idea that a convergence between science and religion is taking place. I don’t believe in any such convergence.

    Religion informed by science would be a marked improvement over the current situation, and ethical considerations are certainly a valuable contribution to science.

  31. Bert Schroer wrote:

    “…Relativistic QM by its very nature of lacking the vacuum polarization (which characterizes QFT) is a perfectly well-defined relativistic multiparticle theory, i.e. it fulfills all properties which you are able to formulate using the concept of Wigner particles (and not that of fields). It is called the theory of “direct particle interactions”…”

    Exactly. Furthermore, using a unitary transformation (nucl-th/0102037) one can eliminate vacuum polarization terms from QFT and cast it into the form of “direct interaction” theory without losing its predictive power , i.e., the S-matrix remains the same. In this formulation, the Haag’s theorem does not apply anymore. See physics/0504062.

  32. Not a Nobel Laureate says:

    biophysicist wrote

    “Actually Not a Nobel laureate you missed out on the fact that you can get the amplitudes exactly in your formulation. Since beta = alpha = omega (”I am the Alpha and the Omega”, remember?),”

    Hint. Why do you think I choose the names of the variables I did 😉

    It’s a matter of some considerable debate amongst quantum theologists as to whether “Alpha and Omega” should be interpreted as alpha + omega. Also, the fact that Beta is not mentioned – is this a Divine Hint of a hidden variable theory or an extra dimension in the Celestial Firmament?

    “unitarity forces the amplitudes to all be 1/3.”

    That would be 1/sqrt(3) as you corrected later, but the above quantum theological question stills awaits a definative ruling by the quantum theologists and quantum talmudists.

  33. Bert Schroer says:

    Eugene Stefanovich,
    really very interesting. When I wrote my review I was not aware that this conceptionally correct phenomenological setting was known outside of nuclear physics. I do not know much about its practical usefulness, but its philosophical implication is quite interesting. Among other things it shows that Weinberg’s statement that a relativistic theory which obeys the cluster factorization property must be a QFT is not correct. It is the (up to now) only successful physically consistent (macrocausal) nonlocal relativistic quantum theory I know. All other attempts especially those based on noncommutative modifications of QFT have not (yet?) been shown to be physically consistent (wrecking micro-causality usually also destroys macro-causality).

  34. Lubos Motl says:

    Peter: Of course that the Lorentz symmetry at the string scale is a prediction of string theory, much like unitarity, and it is not shared by any “competing” theory. For example, loop quantum gravity is neither Lorentz-symmetric nor unitary. This is why its proponents offer you long essays explaining that we don’t really need unitarity, and they also offer you bizarre DSR (defective special relativity) predictions about the Lorentz symmetry violations etc. These predictions show how greatly predictive the theory is – this glory will last until the day when it’s shown that this prediction is, of course, silly.

    It is fair to say that string theory does predict that these effects are absent and unitarity is exact – and string theory is also the only theory of quantum gravity that makes this prediction. Concerning the word “prediction”, Peter, I would also like to tell you and your crackpot fans (plus Wolfgang who is an extra higher category) that I not only know what it is in English, but I can also write it in the normal language: předpověď. 🙂

  35. To Bert Schroer:

    Weinberg’s statement is definitely not correct. In addition to the works of Coester and Polyzou mentioned in your review, there are other counterexamples worth mentioning:

    1. non-local QFT: M. I. Shirokov, “On relativistic nonlocal quantum field theory”, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 41 (2002), 1027

    2. A beautiful series of papers by H. Kita in 1966-1973. The last paper in this series is “A realistic model of convergent quantum mechanics of interacting particles” Prog. Theor. Phys. 49 (1973), 1704 where you can pick up the other references if interested.

  36. Hech Baan says:

    Chris Oakley,

    Wrong answer and I’m glad you are not contributing to science any more.

    Thomas Larsson,

    Any mathematically consistent theory makes many predictions. Sheldon Glashow is just saying that we don’t have enough data points to verify the predictions. This is exactly the point I made.

    Peter Woit,

    String/M-theory predicts that we all consist of strings, including people who don’t appreciate the theory.

  37. Simon says:

    Hech Baan: That last statement brings to mind a bumper sticker I saw once…
    “Jesus loves you, even if you don’t want him to”

    At the moment string theory can only believed on faith… it is beautiful, has a lot of desired properties, but is not scientifically confirmed.

    I found the bumper sticker offensive… I’m trying not to take your comment the same way!

  38. Hech Baan says:

    Simon,

    I’m not saying that string/M-theory is confirmed. The theory could be correct or wrong. However, it’s more than believe on faith and it does make predictions. But unfortunately we are not in a position to verify them yet.

    The last statement is in line with what Nils Bohr said about his horseshoe on the wall: “Of course, I don´t believe in it! But I have been told it would help even if you don´t believe in it!”

    There is no intention to offend anyone.

  39. woit says:

    Hech Baan,

    I notice that you love to keep repeating that string theory makes predictions, but you can’t actually come up with one. Either give us a legitimate scientific prediction that comes from string theory, or stop attacking others and repeating nonsense.

  40. Hech Baan says:

    Peter Woit,

    The following are some legitimate scientific predictions: graviton, supersymmetry, extra dimensions, changes in the topology of spacetime.

  41. Not a Nobel Laureate says:

    Lubos Motl Says:

    April 19th, 2006 at 6:33 pm

    “Concerning the word “prediction”, Peter, I would also like to tell you and your crackpot fans (plus Wolfgang who is an extra higher category) that I not only know what it is in English, but I can also write it in the normal language: předpověď.”

    From your postings, it strikes me that in an earlier time you probably would have been an equally vicious proponent of “Scientific Communism”.

    It’s no accident. Both theories have equal merit in their claims of being scientific and “Scientific Communism” at least made predictions about the development of society which turned out to be wrong over time.

    Previous fads such as hadronic string theory, Regge poles, S matrix and bootstrap models were blown away by experiment which in turn lead to better theories and predictions. String theory is apparently in no such danger, thus it’s proponents can continue to hold strong opinions and mis-represent them as facts.

    Unless 1) the LHC discovers something new; and 2) more economical means of particle acceleration are developed, the field will sink into obscurity or form the basis of a new religion.

  42. Not a Nobel Laureate says:

    On the other hand, every other field of physics that I can think of apprears to be enjoying remarkable experimental and theoretical progress.

  43. Chris Oakley says:

    Hech Baan’s predictions of String Theory

    Graviton: never observed
    Supersymmetry: wrong
    Extra dimensions: no evidence
    Changes in the topology of spacetime: no reason to believe this

  44. where? says:

    about Baan’s string predictions: how heavy are supersymmetric particles? How large are extra dimensions?

    As far as I know, string ‘predictions’ have an uncertainty of about 16 orders of magnitude. A planet is about 16 orders of magnitude bigger than an atom. How can you do atomic physics if you cannot distinuigh an atom from a planet?

  45. knotted string says:

    I love string theory. It has enough branes behind it to cover all possibilities, so it’s a safe bet. It’s can’t be disproved!

  46. Thomas Larsson says:

    Let me quote from subsection 1.6 of hep-th/0204131:

    “The long-standing crisis of string theory is its complete failure to explain or predict any large distance physics. String theory cannot say anything definite about large distance physics. String theory is incapable of determining the dimension, geometry, particle spectrum and coupling constants of macroscopic spacetime. String theory cannot give any definite explanations of existing knowledge of the real world and cannot make any definite predictions. The reliability of string theory cannot be evaluated, much less established. String theory has no credibility as a candidate theory of physics.”

    It might be worth pointing out that Dan Friedan was one of the leading string theorists during the 1980s, founder of the string theory group at Rutgers and winner of the MacArthur “genius” grant. But then again, why would anyone care about his opinion, when the great authority Hech Baan proclaims that string theory makes many predictions? After all, Baan has succeeded (probably) in getting into grad school, and has published exactly zero papers in hep-th. (I found a W.A. Baan with ten e-prints in astro-ph, but that is probably another person).

    Let me emphasize that it is nothing wrong if a speculative science makes no predictions in early stages. However, with 20,000+ man-years invested in string theory, it is hardly in an early stage, and the antropic nonsense shows that nobody seriously thinks that it is possible to change this situation. What I do loathe, however, is the ridiculous lie that string theory is predictive. This is a gross misrepresentation, verging on scientific fraud.

    Incidentally, I met Friedan in a summer school on Iceland in 1990 (Friedan’s wife is Icelandic, although she did her Ph.D. in Lars Brink’s group in Göteborg). I travelled with a mathematician friend, who was very enthusiastic about Friedan’s recent work, with Steve Shenker, on CFT on a Riemann surface. Friedan himself was quite subdued, however. He refered to his work as “very abstract”, and it was clear that he didn’t mean it in a positive sense. Soon after that Friedan disappeared from the literature for ten years, and we all know how that ended.

  47. woit says:

    Hech Baan,

    None of those are legitimate scientific predictions that can be used to test string theory (even in principle).

    Gravitons are what you generically expect in any quantized version of gravity, even if you could observe them, this wouldn’t be any evidence for string theory.

    Unbroken supersymmetry is experimentally ruled out, broken supersymmetry depends on an energy scale, and string theory tells you nothing about this, so it makes no predictions about supersymmetry at all.

    String theory may or may not require 10 (or is it 11?) dimensions, depending on how you feel about non-critical strings. But it tells you virtually nothing about any of these dimensions, their sizes, shapes, etc. Their is no experimentally testable (even in principle) prediction about extra dimensions from string theory.

    String theory does not tell you what the topology of space time is, much less how it will change.

    Please stop repeating things you clearly don’t understand, you’re just adding to the noise level here.

  48. Peter Woit wrote:

    [String theory] makes no predictions about anything, and anyone who starts going on about its predictions should be able to at least tell us what one of them is.

    I think I have quoted this here before, perhaps it would be frutifull to quote it again (gr-qc/0501053):

    String theory schemes in any dimensions always predict new fields which couple in different ways to the various matter sectors. As a result a large variety of effects are allowed by string theory, including effects leading to violation of Lorentz invariance, violation of the UFF and violation of the Universality of the Gravitational Redshift (UGR) is encountered. From the viewpoint of the phenomenologist a disappointing aspect of string theory is that it appears that it cannot be falsified on the basis of these effects. String theory may predict many new low-energy effects, but it can also be easily tuned to avoid all of them.

  49. I did it again. I should be more careful to avoid typos. Sorry for the “frutifull” (–> fruitful).

  50. Zelah says:

    Let’s get real guys. Everybody here agrees that QFT is the best theory of high energy physics we have!

    And frankly nobody has any idea of how to unify QM and Gravity such that low energy physics could test the results.

    Now regarding your question Hech Baan, I would reply D. The reason is that String Theory is clearly valid in some sense as a QFT!

    Unfortunately, your linking Weinberg prediction of cc scale to your question depends apon your assumptions regarding how science works! Put it this way, there are many papers which predict various values for the CC!

    An amateur mathematician.

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