{"id":542,"date":"2007-03-31T14:34:44","date_gmt":"2007-03-31T19:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=542"},"modified":"2007-05-28T05:56:39","modified_gmt":"2007-05-28T10:56:39","slug":"john-horgan-discussion-with-george-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=542","title":{"rendered":"John Horgan Discussion With George Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bloggingheads.tv now has <a href=\"http:\/\/bloggingheads.tv\/video.php?id=236\">some video<\/a> up with an interesting discussion between John Horgan and George Johnson on a range of topics.  One segment is entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/bloggingheads.tv\/video.php?id=236&#038;cid=1245\">String theory deemed load of crap!<\/a>, and discusses the controversy over string theory.  Both Horgan and Johnson agree that things are not look good for a physical theory when there start being public debates on the subject.  Johnson also discusses his time at the KITP and mentions this blog.  He seemed to be particularly struck by the behavior of the participants at the session he ran there which involved a lot of bashing of Lee Smolin, with Mark Srednicki raising his hand when Johnson said he didn&#8217;t think anyone would call Smolin a crackpot.  <\/p>\n<p>Johnson also described the &#8220;echo chamber&#8221; effect of blogs like this one.  I guess I better keep this going by blogging about his commentary about my blogging&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>:  Sean Carroll has a posting about this over at Cosmic Variance entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/cosmicvariance.com\/2007\/03\/31\/string-theory-is-losing-the-public-debate\/\">String Theory is Losing the Public Debate<\/a>.  Probably best if people join the discussion over there, which so far includes John Horgan and others.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nUpdate<\/strong>:  If you like this sort of thing, more blog discussions about string theory <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/04\/on_the_superiority_of_string_t.php\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/catdynamics\/2007\/04\/spinning_yarns.php\">here<\/a>,  and <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gnxp\/2007\/04\/string_theory_theology.php\">here<\/a>&#8230; and <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/04\/why_i_dont_write_more_about_st.php\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/transcript\/2007\/04\/string_theory_kerfuffle.php\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bloggingheads.tv now has some video up with an interesting discussion between John Horgan and George Johnson on a range of topics. One segment is entitled String theory deemed load of crap!, and discusses the controversy over string theory. Both Horgan &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=542\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}