The Pacific Institute for Theoretical Physics, based at UBC in Vancouver, held a Showcase Conference a couple weeks ago, which was supposed to “celebrate the exciting new developments taking place in theoretical physics”. According to the organizers there are lots of exciting new developments in string theory, since six of the invited speakers (Myers, Ooguri, Randall, Schwarz, Shenker, Susskind) spoke on that topic, but no one at all spoke about elementary particle physics. There were also quite a few talks on condensed matter physics.
The talk of John Schwarz consisted mainly of the standard recounting of the history and basics of string theory that anyone who has been to conferences like this has heard a hundred times. This part stopped with Maldacena’s work more than 7 years ago. On more recent topics, about the anthropic explanation of the cosmological constant, Schwarz says: “Is there another explanation? I hope so.” He ends by putting up a long list of questions about string theory, more or less the same list everyone has had for twenty years now.
Steve Shenker spoke on Emergent Quantum Gravity, with “emergent” the new buzzword of the field. There was a separate workshop on emergence overlapping with the Showcase conference, organized by Phil Anderson and others, with Susskind the only string theorist allowed to speak there. Shenker introduced a new terminology to justify string theory: it is “An algorithmically complete, consistent description of quantum gravity”, although he does add the caveat “In certain simple situations (like flat space)”. By this I guess he is trying to get around the problem of how to claim that your theory is complete and consistent when you don’t know what it is. The idea is that at least you have an algorithm for doing computations. Perhaps he means perturbative string theory, although that is neither consistent nor complete (the expansion in the number of loops diverges). Perhaps he means a non-perturbative formulation like a matrix model, which works in 11 flat dimensions, but then he really should note that he’s not talking about quantum gravity in four dimensions, which is what most people care about.
There was an interesting panel discussion on The Theory of Everything?, which was moderated by Steve Shenker. He seemed mainly interested in making the obvious point that string theorists weren’t actually claiming that their theory explained anything about, say, biochemistry. The panel was actually balanced between string theory enthusiasts (Shenker, Schwarz, Randall), and skeptics (‘t Hooft, Unruh, Wald). Some of Shenker’s introductory remarks are inaudible, but he did repeat his claim about the “algorithmically complete” nature of string theory. “t Hooft had some quite interesting comments. He recalled that at a conference back in 1985 he had been the only one who didn’t think that twenty years later string theory would have solved all the problems of particle physics, noting that it was now 20 years later, he had been right, everyone else at the conference wrong. He was making the point that string theory now is extremely far from solving any problems in particle theory, and one can’t tell if this situation will change in 20, 200 or 2000 years. He tried to say some positive things about string theory, but they were pretty half-hearted. For instance he noted that dualities were very interesting, but they linked one ill-defined theory to another ill-defined theory. He also noted that in its present formulation string theory is only defined on-shell, which he takes as meaning that it doesn’t give a true local description of what is going on. He has reasons for being suspicious of people who claim that all one needs is an on-shell theory.
Schwarz attributed the TOE terminology to John Ellis. He said that he feels string theory is very far from explaining anything about elementary particle physics, that it was “almost hopeless to find the right vacuum”. He described what landscapeologists are doing in a skeptical tone, but didn’t actually criticize this. Answering ‘t Hooft, he claimed that back in 1985 he and Mike Green were actually more pessimistic than most other people about the prospects for getting quick results out of string theory.
Bill Unruh made the standard criticism that what is wrong with string theory is that string theorists are motivated by beautiful math, not physics. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that few string theorists are now doing math, since unfortunately most of them have taken to heart the criticisms of people like him. The failure of string theory has unfortunately reinforced the skepticism of many people like Unruh about the use of math in theoretical physics.
Wald quoted what sounded like a recent description of what string theorists think they are doing, then revealed that his quotes were from the 19th century, and referred not to string theory, but to the popular theory of the time that atoms were vortices in the ether. He deftly made the point that it is quite possible, if not likely, that string theory is just as wrong an idea as the vortex one.
Lisa Randall made some defensive comments about string theory as a guide for future research, even if it turns out not to work. These included the bizarre political analogy that it was wrong to worry about string theory ruining the credibility of physics, because, after all, the bogus WMD business didn’t seem to have hurt Bush’s credibility.
There were then some questions and comments from the audience. Susskind was in the first row, looking very peevish and defensive. He kept repeating that the field of theoretical physics had “no real choice but to track this down”, meaning to investigate the infinite landscape, and that this would take the efforts of many physicists. He explicity worried that funding agencies would not give any grants to anyone working on the landscape, to which Unruh responded that the shoe was really on the other foot, with some NSF panelists refusing to fund anyone who wasn’t doing string theory.
The conference web-site also includes an explanation of string theory which claims that in recent years string theory has “evolved very rapidly”, that the reason it can’t be tested is because of the small distance scales involved, and that it may be testable by observing a “5th force”, all of which is a load of nonsense.
Lubos Motl has an interesting post going over all the possible ideas he can think of that might lead to the next superstring revolution. Needless to say, they all sound extremely unpromising to me. Judge for yourself. He also quotes the promotional material for Susskind’s book due out late this year. It seems that “the Laws of Physics as we know them today are determined by the requirement that intelligent life is possible”.
A Rivero:
Surely there ARE crackpots who claim something that has long been proven wrong, like perpertual motion machine kind of thing. But more often there are alternative theories that were thought to be crackpots because they do not seem to be adhere to the main stream, but they actually adhere to all known and proven physics theories, and they only contradict the unknown and unproven of physics.
For example super string theory is crackpot, because it clearly contradict some known and proven physics, e.g. that spacetime is proven to be 4-D. And anything that does not agree with super string is probably NOT crackpot, as long as they have no inconsistency to classical and quantum mechanics and other known physics laws. As in quantum gravity, since it is totally unknwon, anything is allowe so far.
I hereby boudly claim that I find trisection angles is possible for some angles. Reading that most must think that such a claim is a crackpot because it’s long proven trisection of angle is impossible. But it is actually possible for SOME angles. This is exactly what happens when a paper making some unusual, out of the main stream claims, is submitted. You would probably throw it away the first instance upon seeing the offending keyword trisection angle, but if you spend some time and taking it apart you find the claim actually does not violate any thing that is known so far.
Matti Pitkanen is an interesting guy. I do not think I can agree with his theory. But if a guy spend 27 years to insist on something, unless he is totally nuts he must have thought about something that no one has thought about.
My point is that if any one spend a little bit time study what his stuff is, and picking out just one claim he made which clearly violates one of the known physics law, then he can be called a crackpot. But if no one has done such a study, and no one has picked apart even just one wrong claim of Matti Pitkanen’s, then he deserved no hat called “crackpot”, regardless how weird his theory seems to be to the rest of us.
For civilized discussions can we all agree on that? That the word “crackpot” should not be abused as a four letter word used for personal attacks, but rather should be used together with facts and evidences. If you claim Joe is a crackpot, then show one case where Joe makes a claim which contradicts known physics? If you are unable to cite examples, then you should be refrain from using that word.
Quantoken
Every so often, Peter W has to drive all the crackpots out of his comment section, and clearly this thread is ripe for another such cleanup. But maybe PW should ask himself why his blog is so popular with nuts.
You are from outside academia, are you? Physics departments everywhere in the world constantly receive reports of squares of the circle and trisections of angles, so to say. With the advent of the internet, they also come via email or web; check any other forum on physics, from physicsforums to the forums of the official string-theory website. Bet the MIT librarian could name a complete collection of free books and preprints from nuts. Sci.phys… newsgroups are in the same situation. The internet is working as a publishing media, but it fails to be a research & learning media, and the nuts are always a good excuse for this failure.
at June 4, 2005 10:08 AM said
“Interesting article here on history of peer review by F. Tipler, including metion of Einstein’s 1905 papers,and how we came to the present system we have today. ‘Peer Review. Does it ensure quality or enforce orthodoxy?’”
I have studied a bit the current scientific publication system, and could offer you dozens of convincing answer. Below two of them:
At least 18 of the articles next identified between the most cited of the history of science (according to the Science Citation Index) were initially rejected by editors and referees of scientific journals.
Nature rejected a Nobel class manuscript from Hideki Yukawa. The Physical Review also rejected similar manuscript in 1937
One of the referees of Physical Review found three “errors” in Yukawa paper and recommend the reject. Yukawa won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces with that same paper.
This does not ensure quality
Thomas Larsson
Locality fails when one works in far from equilibrium situations. This is standard for anyone with a slight knowledge of that field (of course, outside the trivial applications of local QFT).
It is unnecessary the appeal to QG then.
Scott said
Personally I am not aware that biochemists were having any trouble understanding DNA structure so I see no reason why the laws of physics would need to be changed to accommodate DNA.
This contrast broadly with more recent chemical thinking.
“Most chemists react with complete incredulity to the
view that structure is nothing but a metaphor, pointing out the
seemingly overwhelming evidence for structure that comes from spectroscopic and other structural studies. They suggest that if a deep quantum mechanical analysis reveals molecular structure to be a mathematical artifact, then the fault must lie with present-day quantum mechanics and not with the deeply entrenched chemical notion of structure.”
I cannot post more data here because Peter would erase but the point is that QM is not sufficient for explaining mind (one even cannot explain DNA). In some restricted sense, Penrose is correct.
Every so often, Peter W has to drive all the crackpots out of his comment section, and clearly this thread is ripe for another such cleanup. But maybe PW should ask himself why his blog is so popular with nuts.
In that connection I note that the name of Shamit Kachru regularly gets mentioned contemptuously here. I don’t see what SK has done to deserve such abuse. The truth, of course, is that anyone here, including me, would be delighted to have a publication list one-fifth as impressive as SK’s.
DRL – local frame rotations generate a different group, isomorphic to gauge transformations with gauge group SO(3,1). This has nothing to do with diffeomorphisms, except that the vielbein transforms under both.
A rep is projective if it only holds up to a phase, eg. spinor reps of SO(3), which are in fact proper reps of SU(2). For infinite-dimensional groups, projective reps modify already the Lie algebra, e.g. in 1D the diffeo algebra becomes the Virasoro algebra (which is well known), and in several dimensions we get the multi-dimensional generalization thereof (which is new).
A key insight from CFT is that there are two qualitatively different types of reps; classical reps which act on primary fields (scalar densities), and quantum reps where L_0 is bounded from below. The higher-dimensional generalization of the classical reps act on things like tensor fields, connections, closed forms, etc. In fact, any concept in differential geometry can be formulated in terms of reps of the diffeo group, which is obvious once you think a little bit about it.
Another lesson from CFT is that it is the quantum reps that appear in quantum physics. The only proper (no Virasoro extension) quantum rep is the trivial one, which implies lack of locality. So if we want local general-covariant QFT, we have no choice but to consider projective reps. Considering that ‘t Hooft allows himself to think about hidden variables to achieve locality, I think that it is a rather big deal.
Kea’s comment:
“I don’t like the term ‘consciousness’ myself, but have a great sympathy for the direction of your work, as a category theorist. I prefer to talk about the Comprehension Scheme, following the work of Lawvere and others on the topos theoretic foundations of mathematics.”
Thank your for an interesting and encouraging comment. My own strong conviction is that a real unified theory cannot contain logical contradictions in its basic structure, therefore consciousness. Instead of consciousness one could of course speak about the necessity of constructing theory of quantum measurement by making conscious observer part of the physical universe. Here von Neumann would probably agree.
I do not have any deep understanding about the technicalities of category theory and know only the basic concepts. It is however obvious to me that a systematic “structuralist” thinking is necessary if one really wants to construct anything resembling TOE. In M-theory this aspect seems to be absent. To me category theory seems to be tailor made to say something about consciousness (“Comprehension Scheme”). After all, the contents of consciousness remain hidden somewhat like the “real” structure of objects of category if only morphisms are known. Amazingly non-trivial things can be said about consciousness using only minimal starting assumptions consistent with quantum measurement theory. I have discussed possible applications to TGD in Category Theory, Quantum TGD, and TGD Inspired Theory of Consciousness and Equivalence of Loop Diagrams with Tree Diagrams and Cancellation of Infinities in Quantum TGD.
There were comments about locality somewhere in the thread. Space-time locality is the source of infinities in quantum field theories. If one identifies physical states of the Universe as modes of classical spinor fields in the world of classical worlds (briefly CH), situation changes. Physics is local and classical in CH but non-local at the level of 3-surface since Kähler function as “absolute minimum of Kahler action” is a non-local functional of the three-surface. As a consequence, the standard local divergences of path- and functional integral formalisms do not appear in TGD. This view about physics is almost unavoidable in “structuralist” mind set and I see the result as a demonstration about the problem solving power of this approach.
Matti Pitkanen
the Laws of Physics as we know them today are determined by the requirement that things we observe are possible.
If this is what you mean when you say you agree with Suskind’s statement then yes of course. But this is not what Susskind is implying.
however you say “As a pragmatist I simply recognise that the structure of DNA appears with tortile tensor categories, and hence must play a role in the new physics”
Personally I am not aware that biochemists were having any trouble understanding DNA structure so I see no reason why the laws of physics would need to be changed to accomodate DNA.
Susskind: “the Laws of Physics as we know them today are determined by the requirement that intelligent life is possible”
The great irony in this quote is that the likes of Penrose, Matti and myself actually like the quote! Only, right out of context. My interpretation of it is completely different from anything resembling the Anthropic Principle. As a pragmatist I simply recognise that the structure of DNA appears with tortile tensor categories, and hence must play a role in the new physics. This is not to say that it is possible to say anything meaningful about the highly derived construct of intelligent life in the foreseeable future. I think that’s stupid.
I have a 2005-is-not-1905 experience to tell :
Our HOD copes well in the corporate culture of today. Every 6 months all PhD students have a meeting with the HOD and their supervisors. In one of my meetings it was carefully explained to me that, even if my work was as good as Maxwells no one would take the slightest notice if I did not have a PhD – so I had better put my head down and do what I was told.
Matti
I don’t like the term ‘consciousness’ myself, but have a great sympathy for the direction of your work, as a category theorist. I prefer to talk about the Comprehension Scheme, following the work of Lawvere and others on the topos theoretic foundations of mathematics.
All the best…
I am constantly amazed by the number of physicists that seem to think an advance in QG will be made using mathematics with which they are familiar.
“Although not wishing to defend the custodians of arXiv in any way, it is hard, looking at your web pages, to see why your work is deserving of the term physics. I would see it more as a mathematical tangent that originated in physics…”
Quote: “What is a matrix?” – Heisenberg
So TL, are projective reps of the diffeo group just local bein rotations?
-drl
Gerard t’hooft: … What seems to be missing presently, however, is a clear description of the local nature of its underlying physical laws. …
It is interesting that both ‘t Hooft and Unruh emphasized locality. ‘t Hooft himself even seems ready to dismiss quantum mechanics to obtain that goal (Planck-scale determinism). In this connection, it might be worth to recall item 9 in Baez’ crackpot list:
9. 10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
Actually, IMO the caveat applies, since locality is a very good reason for anything, so ‘t Hooft misses his 10 points.
He makes his point perhaps even clearer in the video from the same site, where he quotes David Gross saying “There are no local observables in quantum gravity, so forget it”. Which of course is true, unless you allow for projective representations of the diffeomorphism group…
F. Tipler loses me when he suggests that Intelligent Design is a scientific theory and indulges in quote-mining Lynn Margulis against Darwinism (problems in the Darwinism do not open the door for Intelligent design). That suggests to me that he may be quote-mining all the other problems that various scientists have stated they have had in having radical new ideas accepted.
Anyway, in my opinion, let a million flowers bloom, and let there be a good search engine, and let people pick for themselves which ideas they find valuable, worth pursuing, and so on. Scientific respectability is like brand value, it is earned and maintained by providing high quality.
Thanks for link. It is important to have evidence of what t’ hooft was thinking, contrary to other peoples thoughts.
Gerard t’hooft:String theory clearly appears to be strikingly coherent. What seems to be missing presently, however, is a clear description of the local nature of its underlying physical laws. In all circumstances encountered until now, it has been imperative that external fields, in- and outgoing strings and D-branes are required to obey their respective field equations, or lie on their respective mass shells. Thus, only effects due to external perturbations can be computed when these external perturbations obey equations of motion. To me, this implies that we do not understand what the independent degrees of freedom are, and there seems to be no indication that these can be identified. String theoreticians are right in not allowing themselves to be disturbed by this drawback. Pg. 79
Concerning ArXiv:
Note that in many countries researchers do not have access to journals, because they are too expensive. The ArXiv is then the only connection to the scientific world. (Well, sometimes we sent them the published version of the paper by e-mail, when asked.) I personally know one researcher who is regularly publishing in PRL and PRD but his university does not have funds to allow him to print the papers on the printer. He is thus reading papers only on the computer for years. This is what I call a real lack of funding.
Interesting article here on history of peer review by F. Tipler, including metion of Einstein’s 1905 papers,and how we came to the present system we have today. “Peer Review. Does it ensure quality or enforce orthodoxy?”
http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-10-t-000059.html
“Also if you start using terms like “theory of consciousness”, then AFAIC you are entering Crackpotsville (that favourite resort of disgruntled academics).”
Well, Matti can speak, study, research, etc. all that want do. There are not prohibited fields. Or perhaps there are? Past Pope recommended to Hawking do not study about Big bang and origin of universe!!
Gell-Mann is also interested in theories of consciousness. He offers talks and is collaborating with biologists, etc. Also Nobel laureate Watson (or was Crick?) did a “theory of consciousness”, based in “memory delay”.
Are Matti, Gell-Mann, Watson, neurobiologists, biochemists, quantum chemists working in anesthesia effects, etc. crackpots?
Sorry – I meant to qualify that. The connection with physics is the thing I think is tenuous.
In my experience, mathematicians are much more open to ideas from outsiders than are theoretical physicists. Once one young string theorist independently made the same key observation that I did, namely that infinite-dimensional constraint algebras generically have quantum anomalies. Alas, he was only interested in this observation as a means to discredit LQG. When he realized that I agreed with him, he became so embarrassed that he declared that canonical quantization is invalid. Not only is this one of the weirdest claims I have even seen, but it is also completely irrelevant, since conformal anomalies also manifest themselves in the path-integral quantization of the Polyakov action.
How open-minded are people if they dismiss their own ideas just because I happen to agree?
mortain said
“Only if you are ‘endorsed’ by those already able to post on the arXiv.”
That is not true. From my personal correspondence with a physicist that know ArXiv very well
“If administrators at ArXiv.org sent you a list of endorsers, most likely they would have been people who are strong supporters of string theory. It is probably not advisable to use the names they sent you. As an alternative you can go to the arxiv.org section where you are interested in posting and find papers by scientists which show that they do not necessarily support string theory and look on their abstract to see if they are qualified to endorse papers. If so, you could try sending to them. Perhaps you would have a better chance.”
and he continues with
“However, even if they endorse you, this does not guarantee that arxiv.org will allow you to post your paper, since they have a history of disobeying their own rules and have blocked people who have been legitimately endorsed (my own personal experience).”
Aaron Bergman said
“I’m just a guy doing fairly mathematical string theory. It’s not a surprise I don’t know something in phenomenology… But, it’s out of my area so I can’t really comment much more.”
Reading your comments on ArXiv and Swiss patent clerk. You appear to be “out of my area” also here. Brian Josephson has studied the topic a bit (see also his letter in Nature). You simply are doing “speculation” favoring your own views.
Probably you know that many administrators of ArXiv are oriented-string researchers. Perhaps would be more easy obtain endorsement and permanency on ArXiv for you 🙂
Please, write a short paper claiming that string theory is completely wrong and a waste of time and attempt again for endorsement and posting :-))
Your comments on that Einstein published his paper in usual journal may be understood in a pure 1905 perspective. He, today, would be rejected for peer-review publication, I am practically sure, I know a bit about editorial guidelines and publication policies.
“If Newton had published his theory today, it would be rejected for peer-review publication because was too ambitious one.”
From previous editor-in-chief of Nature journal.
D R Lunsford said
“Unaffiliated Individuals – Scientists, engineers or educators in the US and US citizens may be eligible for support, provided that the individual is not employed by, or affiliated with, an organization…”
Also for outside of US? Have you read about rigidity of Spanish science administration system? Probably one of most rigid of the world!
In Spain it’s not “impossible” but more practical to play to Lotto 🙂
Chris Oakley said
“Also if you start using terms like “theory of consciousness”, then AFAIC you are entering Crackpotsville (that favourite resort of disgruntled academics).”
Well, Matti can speak, study, research, etc. all that want do. There are not prohibited fields. Or perhaps there are? Past Pope recommended to Hawking do not study about Big bang and origin of universe!!
Gell-Mann is also interested in theories of consciousness. He offers talks and is collaborating with biologists, etc. Also Nobel laureate Watson (or was Crick?) did a “theory of consciousness”, based in “memory delay”.
Are Matti, Gell-Mann, Watson, neurobiologists, biochemists, quantum chemists working in anesthesia effects, etc. crackpots?
We are mixing two different problems: a) if/how foreigners to academy get a fair hearing. b) if/how foreigners to strings -or to the next mainstream- get a fair hearing.
1. The arxiv is certainly very useful but also overrated. It is a double-edged sword. This year I needed detailed information on two topics and what I found on the arxiv in each case was pretty much utterly hopeless. Having consulted text books and various paper journals, going back a few years, I found the information I needed in detailed and substantial form. The arxiv is also now chock full of papers that have serious errors or are just superficial waffling and hand waving. I only read arxiv papers that were or are subsequently peer reviewed and published in a real journal. The Wittens and Weinbergs don’t need peer review–everyone else does. Incidently, how many Landscape papers for example, would actually make it into Nucl. Phys. B or Phys. Rev. D? I read paper journals and will continue to do so. I would like to see a totally blind and unbiased system of peer review whereby there are no names or affiliations and the reviewers see only the physics content of “a manuscript”.
2. I published 4-5 papers in the late 90s, and in my spare time, that had no academic affiliation.
(My stuff is more mathematical physics and math though.) Having a Phd certainly does help however. If your work is good enough or has any substance and it professionally presented, it at least gets a fair hearing. Editors can tell right away whether a manuscript has merit and should be considered or is just crackpot, and whether the author has a formal professional background in the subject. A lot of trained mathematicians and physicists work at companies and their own businesses. They still have a right to publish any ideas they still might have. I’ve seen published physics papers where the affiliation was a financial institution so maybe the next ‘Albert’ (male or female) is working at a bank rather than a patent office. My concern with the arxiv and physics publishing in general is that censorship and political motivations replaces fair and unbiased peer review.
Chris,
your earlier postings have not shown even a slightest indication that you have understood the idea of scientific argument. You produce just arrogant rhetorics typical for people who have never thought a single original thought and for some reason call themselves skeptics. You can perhaps scare some first year student but cannot cheat professionals.
Since you have obviously not yet learned what is the point of scientific discussion, I am willing to give some helpful advice. First ask yourself: do I have really something interesting to say? If the answer is yes, formulate clearly what your claim is. But do not stop here! You must also carefully develop arguments that you believe to justify your claim.
It is never too late,
Matti Pitkanen
I’m going to have to agree with Aaron, if your paper has any merit if and you are determined enough you can find a proffesor who will give you a chance whether this be your old advisor or anyone else. I would suggest looking outside of string theory for this professor though.
The funding problem is not about affiliated vs unaffiliated, it is about mainstream vs exploratory research. As I said before (upstream in the thread), even having tenure does not imply funds, at least in the European universities I know. A professor only has a limited fund for education, and zero euros for research. So he must ascribe to a research group, and the research group must send a proposal for funding to different institutions. Individual proposals have not encouraged (ie, they are unlikely to be accepted by the granting institution). And of course a group proposal outside mainstream is also unlikely to be accepted, as it is a huge assignation. Nice catch-22 here.
The way out is that a research group “looks towards other place” when one of their members do exploratory research. This ability to look to other place depends of a lot of factors from seniority of the researcher to his willingness to support the mainstream papers too, and of course of the risk for the prestige of the group (remember that a failure in prestige can imply loss of funding for all the group).
Low profile, not risky, research, is usually supported at the level of local resources even for not affiliated people keeping relationship with the field (as Aaron describes correctly). It is a bit more problematic to support travel and meetings of unaffiliated, but it can be arranged occasionally from minor allowances in the group funding. But at the end there are a group responsible for the funding, remember, and they have a limit in the risk they can take.
Now, beyond travels, chalk and blackboards, imagine the nighmare in *experimental* physics. I know of a (actual, I am not referring to Cavendish) young tenured professor leaving the campus because he foresaw that it was impossible to get funding for a different experiment; one needs to convince all the collaboration to resign from the current research line.
Matti,
Although not wishing to defend the custodians of arXiv in any way, it is hard, looking at your web pages, to see why your work is deserving of the term “physics”. I would see it more as a “mathematical tangent that originated in physics”, a classification that also applies to String theory, LQG, Twistor theory and dozens more ideas that have not, and may never lead to testable predictions. Also if you start using terms like “theory of consciousness”, then AFAIC you are entering Crackpotsville (that favourite resort of disgruntled academics).
I have now worked almost 27 years with Topological GeometroDynamics. I have written four massive online books about TGD giving a detailed documentation of the theory and its applications(about 5000 pages). American Mathematical Society has in its subject classification table a link to my homepage. Penrose refers to my work relating to p-adic physics in US edition of his newest book.
Despite this it has been impossible to get material about TGD to arXiv.org during the last decade. Because TGD challenges the basic materialistic and reductionistic dogmas and is also a quantum theory of consciousness, I cannot expect invitations to physics conferences and the idea about getting some financiation is totally outlandish. I feel disgusting even the thought of forcing people in difficult position by begging for endorsement to arXiv.org. In practice this of course means professional death since no one takes seriously a person who cannot get eprints to arXiv.org.
This situation inspires a small thought experiment. Suppose for a moment that TGD indeed provides the bottle neck ideas necessary to unify the basic interactions. The physical interpretation of TGD was more or less established around 1982, 2 years before the first super string revolution, and collective effort to develop these ideas could have been launched then. On basis of this one can make rough estimates about the financial and human resources wasted during these 20 years as an outcome of my marginalization in physics community in the case that I am right. I am certainly not the only victim of censorhip and one of us might be right. Arrogance costs.
Matti Pitkanen
Aaron – getting funding is a challenge, regardless of publishing, if you’re not affliliated:
Unaffiliated Individuals – Scientists, engineers or educators in the US and US citizens may be eligible for support, provided that the individual is not employed by, or affiliated with, an organization, and:
* the proposed project is sufficiently meritorious and otherwise complies with the conditions of any applicable proposal-generating document;
* the proposer has demonstrated the capability and has access to any necessary facilities to carry out the project; and
* the proposer agrees to fiscal arrangements that, in the opinion of the NSF Division of Grants & Agreements, ensure responsible management of Federal funds.
Unaffiliated individuals should contact the appropriate program before preparing a proposal for submission.
But, it’s not impossible.
If you have something worth saying it will worm its way to the surface.
-drl
Aaron, you mean your PhD “thesis adviser”, right?
Suppose you are a patent clerk (or any other occupation) in 2005, with no physics PhD, and a BSc or MSc in physics. Do you think your undergraduate tutor or mentor (or anyone else) would endorse you to allow you to post three preprints on the arXiv? You could submit your work to journals, but in this century, how likely are the editors and referees to take your research seriously, when you have no academic affiliation?
If they were good, yeah. Good meaning more than just ‘good physics’. They also need to be clear and well-written. If I were to try something like this, here is what I would do. I would pick a junior faculty member and send a polite e-mail noting your background, the problem you think you have solved and the techniques that figure in the solution. Note that you have a clear, publication quality exposition of the idea with lots of formulae and calculations. Say that you’re not sure that what you’ve done is right and that you’d appreciate any advice they could offer. Some people will ignore you, but if you have a short, clear exposition, I’ll bet someone will look at it. It might even end up being a graduate student. If they tell you it’s wrong, let it go. If they tell you they don’t understand it, ask how you can clean up the exposition. If they don’t want to say anything else, let it go. Be polite and be willing to accept that you might just be wrong.
Needless to say, this is not how most things of this sort go. The vast majority of people writing from outside of academia have things that are either completely incoherent or you can tell that they are completely nutty in about three lines. And very, very few of them are polite. Remember, capital letters, boldface and exclamation marks are not your friends.
Aaron, you mean your PhD “thesis adviser”, right?
Suppose you are a patent clerk (or any other occupation) in 2005, with no physics PhD, and a BSc or MSc in physics. Do you think your undergraduate tutor or mentor (or anyone else) would endorse you to allow you to post three preprints on the arXiv? You could submit your work to journals, but in this century, how likely are the editors and referees to take your research seriously, when you have no academic affiliation?
Quantoken: nice comment. It chimes with my own opinion on string theorist TV appearances. Walking on the street is a recurring theme in string theorist/theory documentaries, I believe. I recall Brian Greene sitting in a cafe and wandering around New York in his ‘Theory of Everything’ (U.K. title) series. That same series did repeat several sequences of CG imagery ad nauseum, especially those squiggly blobs on a grid. At least we weren’t treated to a middle-aged man taking a dip!
Then there was that old BBC ‘Horizon’ documentary which showed Witten walking around a rocky landscape and gazing at the sky. Beautiful scenery, but surely not representative of the common working environment for theoretical physicists, and now perhaps illustrative of the quest of string theorists as they confront a barren Landscape.
Do you really believe this? Wow. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? How many years of your postgraduate life have you spent working outside academia?
Yes. I believe this. You know why? Because Einstein got his doctorate while outside of academia. He submitted his thesis in 1905, while working as a patent clerk since 1901. Einstein’s papers were submitted to journals during that time, too and were accepted.
You know what else? There are people outside of academia publishing papers on the ArXiv (although the name of the person I’m thinking of escapes me right now.)
If you develop a good relationship with your thesis adviser and you write a good paper, you’ll get endorsed. That’s probably the easiest way to go. Really, being out of academia has nothing to do with anything. Not being a kook is the key.
Aaron: “This swiss patent clerk would have gotten endorsed by his old adviser and posted to his heart’s content.”
Do you really believe this? Wow. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? How many years of your postgraduate life have you spent working outside academia?
Berry said:
“”Even after 20 and more years, my feeling is that we do not understand string theory but that there is every indication that there is something there to understand.”
This is the key point, isn’t it? Is 20 years a long time or a short time? I would say that it is extremely short.”
The first paragraph is a nonsense. Of course if you don’t understand something then there is something to be figured out and understood. If you understand it all then there is nothing remaining to be figured out. But that says nothing about the thing you don’t understand or whether it is relevant at all to the nature.
It is OK with me that some string theoretists feel they need a couple more 20 years to figure things out. But looks to me many of them have changed their professions to scifi novelists. These days you can not turn on the TV without seeing fancy stringy terminologies flying around, like landscape, bubbles, parallel universe etc etc.
What is that grey-haired Japanese guy who always shows up on TV, talking vividly, with mistery written all over his face? I see him more often than Dubya these days. The other night I was watching the Science Channel. Half of the night was filled with a series string theory programs, from “parallel universe” to “bubble universe” and “unfolding universe” and to “extra dimentions”.
Can you believe it? They can talk the whole hours and show tons of colorful amazing computer animations, but at the end of day they have NOT talked about a single thing that actually had anything to do with nature. Not a single thing in string theory has been proven to be relevant to the nature in any way shape or form. Whole hours of TV program was filled with scenes of these famous guy writting something on the blackboard or on a piece of paper, typing on a computer keyboard, sitting, standing, sleeping, walking on the street, playing tennis, and swimming. There was a closeup of one of these guys swimming half naked, taken by an underwater camera.
What does it all has anything to do with science? It’s ourageous they could propagate to the public in such a misleading way when they really have absolutely nothing to talk about about their research results after 20 year.
Reminds me of politicians who could talk for half an hour none-stop, and when you pick it apart you find that actually not a single thing has been said!
Quantoken
Peter,
You had me going there for a second. I had to go back to find other posts of Barry’s in one of your other blogs, in order to figure out if you were joking or if you were actually complimenting him on a joke.
Hi Barry,
Thanks for the parody of what string theorists are thinking these days. It was very funny.
Perhaps there are several “Einteins” in the world, but since they cannot post in ArXiv
ArXiV (and journal editors, generically) is not the problem, it just reflects the community (and note I have been myself censured/blocked some times in the past, sometimes due to content,
sometimes to -editor’s opinion- “spamming”). Do you remember these poor guys in each macroconference trying to attract people into their poster? People knows that, beyond the content, the probability of immediate use of any of these posters is very low, and they do not care.
This guy, rejected the invitation because would pay the travel, etc. from his own money.
A related problem is that in most countries even tenured teachers do not have direct allowance for research expenses, and they need to get this money not from the university they are, but from external sources.
Of course a single travel is a minor issue, and sometimes I have been lodged in spare rooms of the conference lot, or in family houses. But as years go by, it becomes a real nuissance. So for the dreams of independent research at tenure.
I’m just a guy doing fairly mathematical string theory. It’s not a surprise I don’t know something in phenomenology
I acknowledge I was abusing a bit of empirical data by generalising from one guy to the whole community.
Still, it is a pity how divided we have come. Part of the problem is that almost nobody in hep-th (or math-ph) can remember why such or such topic is worthy of study.
Myself I was just a guy studying non commutative geometry and then two years ago some accident launched me to read phenomenologist papers. In the world of hep-ph, closer to experiment, it becomes more evident that in the route to success is not enough “calculation + publication + prediction”; you really need to fit in the mainstream. Following the previous example, another semiempirical formulae as the last year Minakata-Smirnov, which is neutrino related, have got in a short time a higher level of awareness -measured as citations from different authors and countries- that Koide’s, which is for charged leptons.
Some one said:
“The arXiv is purportedly “a means for specific communities of scientists to exchange information.” One hundred years after 1905, a Swiss patent clerk without a PhD in physics would surely have been locked out of the arXiv.
This swiss patent clerk would have gotten endorsed by his old adviser and posted to his heart’s content.”
I say absolutely NO and there is absolutely not a single piece of evidence for it. Notice we are now talking about A swiss patent clerk in the year 2005, whose name is most probably not called Einstein, NOT the 1905 guy called Einstein.
Can you name just ONE recent ARXIV paper which is authored by an actual real swiss patent clerk with no fame, with no Ph.D. and no academy institution association? Can any one name even just one such paper?
Not a single one I would say!
There is no scientific evidence to suggest that any swiss patent clerks can publish on today’s ARXIV, and plenty of evidences to suggest otherwise.
Rememeber Einstein was NOT a famous swiss patent clerk in 1905, he was an average and no-name patent clerk back then, and needed to tutor high school students to supplement family income.
Quantoken
Well, I have already made have of my point 🙂 if nobody knows what papers are.
I’m just a guy doing fairly mathematical string theory. It’s not a surprise I don’t know something in phenomenology. I notice that the PRD paper has 104 cites, though, which makes it hard for me to believe that nobody knows what it is. But, it’s out of my area so I can’t really comment much more.
The arXiv is purportedly “a means for specific communities of scientists to exchange information.” One hundred years after 1905, a Swiss patent clerk without a PhD in physics would surely have been locked out of the arXiv.
This swiss patent clerk would have gotten endorsed by his old adviser and posted to his heart’s content.
For anyone who is interested here is a link to t’Hooft’s lectures which he used in his string theory class.
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectures/string.html
It’s a very nice introduction with many detailed computations that are usually skipped in most textbooks.
Peter, hasn’t the length of this thread of comments set a record for comments on your blog? I don’t recall seeing the number of comments on any of your other blog posts reaching 100. It seems notable and even remarkable.
Juan R., I too thought that the arXiv’s ‘endorsement system’ is a terrible development. Why did they have to change their ways after a decade or so without such a system? They even had more funding directed to them in recent years! “The growth in number of submissions to arXiv necessitates an automated endorsement system” – well, why not use the additional funding to create more personnel positions and not shut out people who take a courageous step into the domain of academic physics? I think their reasons for the endorsement system are utter crap. After all, I don’t recall the arXiv being swamped with crank ‘preprints’, and surely such ‘preprints’ only ever constituted a small fraction of the total content of the arXiv since its inception.
Yet they claim that “we can continue to offer free and open Web access to all.” Yeah, right. Only if you are ‘endorsed’ by those already able to post on the arXiv. Maybe it has naturally become a mirror of the off-line world of selectivity on the ‘it’s who you know’ basis in secular physics departments. Or a sad reflection on the state of the modern physics community.
The arXiv is purportedly “a means for specific communities of scientists to exchange information.” One hundred years after 1905, a Swiss patent clerk without a PhD in physics would surely have been locked out of the arXiv.
Someone said
“Good luck being the next Einstein. If you’re good enough to revolutionize the field while working outside of it, then you won’t need any of my advice. But, for those of us who aren’t as smart as Einstein, there are better paths to take.”
Simply stupid and arrogant!!
“And, in the time since Einstein, can you name one physicist who wasn’t at a research institution that made a revolutionary contribution?”
Perhaps there are several “Einteins” in the world, but since they cannot post in ArXiv, as emphasized this year
Covert censorship by the physics preprint archive
by Brian Josephson (Nobel laureate for physics) (has you read his February open letter to community?
nor pay expensive print requirements from their own money for publish in a JCP, etc.
Curiously I know to one guy from outside of official academy that did a paper on nanothermodynamics, and was formally invited by a organizer (who read him) of an international conference on the topic.
This guy, rejected the invitation because would pay the travel, etc. from his own money. No because he could not write a conference. In fact, that guy gave a conference (in marine sciences) being an undergraduate student because its previous institution payed it.
Sorry the duplicate. Peter has put a “blocking system” that confused me; I was attending to a student (ah, exams) and at the same time pressing the “Post” button
ðŸ™
There are 245 papers under ‘Koide’ on SPIRES. You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.
Well, I have already made have of my point 🙂 if nobody knows what papers are. But the two more recent show the formula and references, so one can start from the references, for instance, of hep-ph/0505028
The earlier references online are Phys.Lett.B120:161,1983 and Phys.Rev.D28:252,1983
There are 245 papers under ‘Koide’ on SPIRES. You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.
Well, I have already made have of my point 🙂 if nobody knows what papers are. But the two more recent show the formula and references, so one can start from the references, for instance, of hep-ph/0505028
The earlier references online are Phys.Lett.B120:161,1983 and Phys.Rev.D28:252,1983
I think it is worth echoing some of Aaron’s words:
“So, if you want to have fun speculating occasionally, that’s cool, but in the meantime you should also publish results that people can point at when they want to hire you. If you want to put in the time and energy that generating a new theory of quantum gravity will probably entail, it’s probably a good idea to wait… The point being is that, before you have tenure, and to a lesser extent even afterwards, you have to produce. I’m sorry you find this offensive, but it’s just the way things are.”
Those are hard words, but in my opinion probably on the mark. I am somewhat of an idealist myself; if it isn’t possible to look beyond the horizon, explore some ideas outside the mainstream and feel a passion about gaining understanding and (hopefully) making a real contribution to physics, then physics becomes “a job” and loses much of its appeal. As a grad student myself, I am sympathetic to Scott’s and others’ point of view. But, as Aaron indicates, you still have to live in a results-oriented society…
As in business, if you aren’t producing you are a lot less likely to remain employed, and if you aren’t succeeding at some level others are likely to ignore you and your ideas. If a research institution is looking to hire someone or a funding agency is looking at grant proposals, they will want to feel reassured that the people they choose will actually produce something. That is human; who wouldn’t think that way? If you had two acquaintances who wanted to borrow money from you, would you rather lend to the one who had a track record of being conscientious and trustworthy or the one whom you knew little or nothing about in terms of their trustworthiness? Institutions and funding agencies have plenty of choices; why not go with the “safest” people? Idealism is good for your (and my) own motivation, but other people would rather take a risk on someone with a track record.
It’s a harsh world out there for the seeker of knowledge and understanding for its own sake…
Barry,
Honestly if we aren’t intelegent enough to realize that not all landscapers are adament about the antropic principle or to think that string theorists in general agree with peter that the game is over why would you care what we think as that would obviously make us retarded. Obviously the people doing research in string theory have different oppinions on it then peter.
20 years not long? its only one less then i’ve been alive. 20 years and still no testable predictions? Maybe you should look back on 20th century physics and see how much things progressed(by which I of course mean more and more predictions being made and verified more experimental results being explained) every 20 years.
“This is what an ambitious student should be aiming to do”
Isn’t that what you guys have been trying to do for the last 20 years? Why should all ambitious students tie themselve down to one theory that has gone nowhere(aka made no verified predictions) in 20 years?
I’m very impressed by Aaron’s original contribution to this thread and I would like to underline some of his points, especially for the benefit of any students or prospective students who might be reading this.
Aaron said:
“So, hopefully without sounding horribly condescending, I just want to point out that Peter’s blog does not present a good idea about how things are.”
This is absolutely correct. I do not see any signs of despair among the string theorists I know, including the landscapers. Maybe they *should* be despairing, but they aren’t. So people reading this blog should not come away believing that the “game is over” as a result of Kachru’s latest.
“Flux stabilization seems to have, much to the disappointment of many, led to an overabundance of vacua. This has led to a number of different proposals on how to deal with this, including anthropic arguments.”
Actually very few landscapers are really convinced anthropoids. The anthropoids are just better at writing popular science books. Also note that not all landscapers are convinced that the landscape is really all that large.
“It is not correct, however, to say that the field is consumed with this. The number of papers that deal with anthropic arguments do not even approach one half or one quarter. Most of us are perfectly happy to go on with our own projects and leave the anthropic stuff to the occasional dinner table argument.”
This is true, but by the way it is not so clear that it is such a good thing. I would much rather see more people working on the landscape than on chern-simons theory, for instance….
“Even after 20 and more years, my feeling is that we do not understand string theory but that there is every indication that there is something there to understand.”
This is the key point, isn’t it? Is 20 years a long time or a short time? I would say that it is extremely short.
“Some argue, then, that there should be research alternatives. There are two answers to that. In terms of quantum gravity, there just aren’t that many games out there, and there’s not much market for the sort of speculation that could lead to a new direction — that sort of thing, much like the interpretation of quantum mechanics, should be left to the tenured.”
Another key point. Remember: *every* crackpot out there regards himself as an unjustly neglected iconoclast. By the time you get tenure, or indeed long before that, you should have grown up enough to realize that if you can make some tiny but real contribution to the mainstream you will be doing a lot better than most people.
“But, it’s also possible that, as we understand the theory better and better, maybe some of those vacua fall away, or maybe we find universal predictions of the theory that apply for all physically realistic vacua. We’ll never know if we don’t try.”
Exactly. This is what an ambitious student should be aiming to do, not to find a job as a patent clerk who will totally revolutionize physics by means of a simple application of the theory of left pseudo-heaps.
Back to the topic sort of,
This is a very good physicky lecture on Clifford algebraicana:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0506011
-drl