String Theory a Disaster for Physics? 737
BlueCup writes "Mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory in his book Not Even Wrong,. He calls the theory 'a disaster for physics.' Which would have been a fringe opinion a few years ago, but now, after years of string theory books reaching the best sellers list, he has company."
I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Mod parent up... (Score:1, Insightful)
ed
Call me when (Score:5, Insightful)
Till then, it's a bunch of fancy gobbedly gook as far as I'm concerned.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes me wonder if we are near the edge of what humans can know. Growing up, I took it on fiath that it was just a matter of time before we knew it all. Now, I am not so sure. Perhaps our monkey brains simply can't conceive of the true nature of reality.
String "theory" (Score:5, Insightful)
A Powerful Theory (Score:2, Insightful)
He blames string theory for this "crisis in particle physics," the branch of physics that tries to explain the most fundamental forces and building blocks of the world.
String theory, which took off in 1984....
Does string theory explain how its own effects are able to reach back in time a decade before its creation?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes, because that's not how science works. Theories have to be put forward which make predictions which can be meaningfully tested. If there is no way to actually test it, then it is, in effect, impossible to develop - by definition it cannot be wrong, and therefore is effectively complete, and science is 'finished', more or less. If such an idea ends up being the dominant trend, then yes, it would be something of a disaster.
I suppose we should stop looking for what started the universe, since we can't disprove the existance of God or anything. What a load of BS.
Would you class the statement "Everything happens because God says so" as scientific? I would hope not - such a statement is inherently impossible to scrutinise or critique, as "God did it" is, in this theory, a perfectly valid response. Science does not advance by pursuing ideas of that sort, but rather putting forward testable theories, and working out ways to stress them and see if their predictions hold, and refining them as a result.
That some ideas cannot be disproven is not a problem for science - instead we content ourselves with studying those that can be.
Re:String Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the article says it best. If we keep letting people use the term "theory" too loosely it just gives more ammunition to the intelligent design idi... proponents.
In truth neither intelligent design or string "theory" is really a scientific theory as neither makes testable predictions yet. Maybe string theory will in the future but until then it is just an idea.
I don't get it, a disaster for physics, or what?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Watching the detective.... (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA is right in one thing-- it's lead to physicist bigotry.... an increasingly inbred idea that string theory rules and all else drools, but in dimension 9. So many things are unsolved.... and Hawking has helped but the mathematicians that used to rule physicists are finding themselves in a reverse role, where expostulations must be found to match equations which were pimped for expostulation.
It's like curve-fitting, but with unprovable geometry, not Euclidian and not non-Euclidian.
Re:String Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe this is boon to I.D. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it can't be disproven, it's not really scientific. And thus claims a lot of focus that should be given elsewhere. Thus, since it's not scientific it should be disregarded.
>>I suppose we should stop looking for what started the universe, since we can't disprove the existance of God or anything. What a load of BS.
No. This claim is the opposite claim. If we were to accept the existance of God it would also be a disaster for modern science. It's not science. It allows for every answer and is not testible. In your example String Theory is Existence of God. The point is that we should properly disregard both as non-science and focus on other things. They don't make any testible claims. They aren't science. And if you sit around thinking about them, you are just wasting your time.
Re:Sounds like it's time.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gravitons (Score:3, Insightful)
Some Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, I should point out to those that aren't familiar with the world of physics that Lee Smolin is one of the principal advocates, at least in the public discourse, of Loop Quantum Gravity, a competitor to String Theory. That is certainly not to say he's bashing string theory for his own benefit, though. His arguements are all quite sound.
Secondly, in my own experience, speaking to physics professors about string theory, we're starting to see some saturation in the number of students willing to work on topics in string theory for their PhDs, and as jobs become more scarce for those who enter into the field (after all if they don't advance with predictions, there's less and less to do), we'll see more people entering into other areas, ro examining other theories.
And finally, I should point out that the last line, That string theory abandoned testable predictions may be its ultimate betrayal of science , is extremely insulting. I'm sure there's nothing string theorists would like more than to come up with a testable hypothesis that could be tested immediately, but the fact is that it's a difficult subject. Just because we can't test it now is no reason to start crying "pseudo-science".
The truth is that... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: String "theory" (Score:3, Insightful)
What if the universe is so complex that there's no explanation that's both simple and correct?
Come on, jump on the bandwagon! (Score:3, Insightful)
According to string “theory”, the universe is a safe where you have combination but the lock is on the inside.
Re:Maybe this is boon to I.D. (Score:4, Insightful)
Doubt it. Both string theory and Intelligent Design may be unfalsifiable, but then they are also unfalsifiable for different reasons. A major goal of string theory was to make the theory falsifiable, by looking for low energy phenomena that could be predicted by it. The string theorists failed, because their theory takes place in what turns out to be an unobservable realm with no observable predictions, but at least they were trying. Intelligent Design's unfalsifiablity was built into it by design.
String theory could still surprise you. They might make unexpected progress and come up with some string-theory derived explanation for some low energy phenomenon, like the mass of the proton. But Intelligent design will never successfully predict a thing since by nature it is not a predictive theory.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does this follow? "God did it" and "how did God do it?" are two different things. I find it really interesting that the former excludes the latter. Some historians of science have argued that it was because of the idea of a rational God that the idea arose that nature was ordered and could be fathomed, particularly through observation and testing. Wasn't it Kepler who studied the heavens in order to "think God's thoughts after Him"? So the idea that God and science are incompatible is, to borrow a phrase, "not even wrong". It's simply a by product of the anti-intellectual, anti-historical, "don't offend me" nonsense that passes for thinking these days.
Science flourished within a theistic worldview in Europe and elsewhere, so I don't see how you can support the idea that God is a disaster when it comes to science. But maybe by "modern" you mean "completely materialistic". And of course that's true. It's the age old dilemma: which came first? The naturalist says, "In the beginning were the particles...". The Christian says, "In the beginning was the Word..." And never the 'twain shall meet.
Oh, what the hell, let's go for troll moderation. I'll go so far as to argue that denying the existence of God is actually hindering science. Why? Because atheism a priori denies the existence of an intelligence far greater than man's and therefore denies the possibility of design in nature. Therefore, the notion of using science to identify and measure design isn't considered (except, perhaps, with SETI. But aliens are metaphysically less scary than God. There's no evidence for them yet the search goes on.) Nor are information theory, computer science, and complexity theory being applied to natural, especially living, systems. Why not? Who knows what we'll find?
The "landscape" and falsifiability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of "theory" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a huge problem. Of course there is the possibility that finding the ultimate theory of everything is impossible and this would be the physics dual to Godel's incompleteness result. Which I'm sure sure scares the shit out of many physicists.
Re:String Theory (Score:3, Insightful)
ichin4's comment further down the page was rather insightful.
Re:Maybe this is boon to I.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll admit that Intelligent design is not an inherently terrible idea. It's not impossible that we might find "fingerprints" of intelligent design, and that this might lead to trying to investigate the idea more closely. Furthermore, investigating how human "intelligent design" has effected the evolution of other species is certainly a worthy subject for research, and something which people do research. But as it is currently formulated, Intelligent Design is not testable enough to be anywhere near the realm of "science." At least String Theory tries.
Re:What we should look at (Score:3, Insightful)
And you read them all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, that's an oversimplification of what they were claiming...but it's got the essence. And with those restricitions on "God did it!", scientific research became feasible. Without it... sorry. Can't do it.
Re:a counter argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the problem, though... I don't NEED TO UNDERSTAND IT! I don't NEED to understand UFO theories or ghost stories either. In THIRTY YEARS string theory has not produced a single testable prediction. That isn't physics, and it sure as hell isn't a theory. String theory might be a fascinating topic. It might be mathematically beautiful. And it might be out of my reach due to my complete lack of desire to understand its nuances. However, until it starts to predict something, it isn't physics. If people want to study that garbage, they should move to the mathematics department. I'd respect string theorists a whole lot more if they weren't misrepresenting what it is they do.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me? You should try keeping up with experiment if you're going to make broad statements like this. Minos, up here at fermilab, recently discovered that neutrinos do in fact have mass. This was suspected a year or few ago, which was why Minos was built, but is nonetheless quite surprising. It is surprising because it is really the first definitive measurement which is nearly unquestionably outside the standard model. (I don't need to tell you this, I suppose, but others will read this too: The standard model assumes explicitly that neutrinos have no mass at all.)
Anyway, the problem that most experimentalists, such as myself, see with String Theory is that in some ways it is a step backwards from the standard model. It is purported to be "parameterless", which contrasts with the plethora of unconstrained parameters that the standard model contains. However, this is really only a bit of sleight of hand. Instead of numerical parameters, which are (relatively) easy to measure, and continuous, we now have the topology of space, which is discrete (no smooth change from one topology to the next) and quite difficult to measure, and embodies immensely more variation than the parameters of the standard model.
Re:Before the consensus ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Science, on the other hand, does not require one wait for the finished product. Working on string theory is working on science. It's just not complete, nor even all that useful currently. It's still in the early stages--a stage that is rarely so long and drawn out as it is in this case.
For example, when devising special relativity, Einstein's theory was, at some point, still in the state string theory is in currently--that is, significantly conceptual, with a lot of math and refining yet to be done, and early on was entirely untestable making no real predictions. He was still engaged in science during that stage. That doesn't mean that special relativity was useful yet, nor do I mean to imply that string theory is correct or will bear fruit, just that even at this early stage it is legitimate to call it science.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
How silly. (Score:3, Insightful)
Good way to sell books. Sloppy way to think.
Re:A Physicist's Thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)
This is shit- He doesn't even understand basics (Score:2, Insightful)
Something that is a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world is a LAW!
An idea or framework is a THEORY!
This guy has a PhD? Just because something is too small to see, too difficult to imagine, too abstract to think is possible- DOESN'T mean it should be dismissed because headway has been rough the past 30 years! Did Physics become invented in the past 10 years? 100 years? or thousands of years!?
Re:a counter argument (Score:3, Insightful)
It's much more likely that he believed he had a proof, scribbled a note to that effect, and later realized that his proof was flawed. This is quite plausible, as there are several ways to seemingly prove Fermat's Last Theorem, but which in fact contain subtle flaws.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I just threw up in my mouth. The purpose of the universe is to try and get as close to passing the Turing test as possible, but mathematically, nothing in the universe ever can. We're in a fishbowl
The point of science is not to quantify intelligence, the point of science is to predict things. You can't quantify intelligence, you can only ballpark it in the short-term in your neighbourhood, and change the definition of it as the universe changes around us.
> Chance or God. Are there any other choices?
That depends on whether or not you enjoy false dichotomies. Of course there are other choices. A fucking shitload of them. I love how people so incredibly dependant on believing that they are living at the apex of human knowledge, or believing that our species will even be around at some point to learn the answer. Who the fuck cares? Random chance? An all powerful being not created by anything else that was more powerful? Could you pick two even more unlikely edge-cases?
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of "theory" (Score:3, Insightful)
Forget falsifiability, simplicity is where it's at (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, don't completely forget falsifiability - but don't let it be the whole story. Falsifiability was already outdated philosophy of science 50 years ago. Its main problem is what's sometimes called the "Quine-Duhem Thesis" - roughly speaking, any treasured theory can be made to fit any evidence, as long as you're willing to adjust enough auxiliary hypotheses. Here's an ordinary example: when your high school science lab experiments didn't fit predictions, your results didn't get published in Science for falsifying the theory at hand. Instead, quite reasonably, you drew the conclusion that something wasn't quite right with the instruments, etc., and you kept the original theory. The tricky question is to figure out when it's reasonable to excuse recalcitrant data, and when you're unreasonably trying to rescue a theory that's just wrong. Intelligent design advocates can lay out all sorts of falsification criteria, and then make similar excuses should unhappy data come their way. So does that make ID a science? (If on the other hand you insist that only actual falsification makes something a science, then only theories we no longer believe can count as scientific!)
It's too easy in all sciences - not just string theory - to make theories "supported" by the data. Given this problem, the name of the science game is to find the simplest explanation that fits the data. It's very hard to say exactly what counts as a simpler theory, but some theories are clearly less simple. Compare the hypothesis that "the butler did it" to the hypothesis that "unknown sneaky aliens planted all that evidence to make it look like the butler did it." Both hypotheses fit the evidence equally well, but the latter is clearly less simple, and we normally never even consider it for a moment.
String theory explains all the data, from quantum physics to relativity, with a simplicity that's hard to beat. (Its elegance is so good, we're apparently willing to posit 11 dimensions for it!) That's what makes it a legitimate scientific theory. Of course it would be great to have more relevant data, to see if string theory can accommodate them simply too. But just because we can't get such data (now, or maybe ever) doesn't spoil the current scientific status of the theory.
God Theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyhow, before one decides whether to believe in "God" it's a good idea to have a definition of what He is so one knows what to look for.
In my case, I believe God would have to be utterly transcendent, and an immaterial non-composite entity. In other words, something nonexistent. Can something nonexistent exist?
On the other hand, I also believe that God is all there is, and there is nothing that is not God. If one could take a step back and look at *everything* one could observe the totality of God. However, the All is both eternal and infinite. One could not ever see the totality, nor indeed can "God" ever actually be realized, because the totality is in constant flux.
Since God is all that exists and also the utter transcendence of existence, the union of many paradoxes would be required to fully appreciate the nature of "God." Such a mind transcends - and encompasses - reason, and hence it is beyond knowledge, proof, and expressibility in language.
Language and reason are tools for sharing experience, but they are not the only means. I may not be able to describe God, but I can point you to the door beyond which you can experience God, and then you can know for yourself.
Science - String Theory especially - is something like that too. The value of science is that it gives us the means to test and manipulate reality. Within the macroscopic realm it is expressible via the conventions of common experience. But as we get into quantum physics and string theory the ideas become uncanny. When you try to explain the relation of a string to space-time, the common experience of cause preceding effect no longer applies. So we need new language to express these new experiences. At a certain point these "experiences" may well become utterly inexpressible.
But perhaps, just like the experience of union with the Ultimate, there is a conventional means to point the right direction.
.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Nonsense. All you have to do is examine all cats and see if they all have tails.
(Of course, from a certain philosophical standpoint nothing can be proven. I'm assuming "prove" actually means something outside of a high-flying philosophical discussion.)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forget falsifiability, simplicity is where it's (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Missing the Point (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if we were living in a successive sequence of multiple universes, then knowing the statistics (e.g., knowing the set of 10^500 possible universes that string theory predicts) would come in handy indeed. E.g., if we were to pop our heads in on a thousand random universes in a row, we would soon discover whether string theory is true or not. However, given that we can only observe one universe (our own), Occam's Razor states that the simplest theory that accurately describes it is likely the correct one. The sticking point is that such a simple theory may also describe other possible types of universes. For instance, if dealt 30 playing cards, you could extrapolate a reasonable assumption about the contents of the entire deck (even if you had never seen a deck of playing cards before), and thus form a reasonable theory about the other 10^15 possible hands, but your entire-deck theory may not make any predictions that are falsifiable by the particular 30-card hand you hold. That doesn't make the theory untrue or non-useful.
The criticism in the article is that string theory, lacking testable predictive power, has no practical payoff like that, so it's not science.
On the flip side, the problem with every other cosmological theory (starting with Newton's gravitation, then Relativity, then Quantum Mechanics) is that they make predictions that are actively wrong, when extended into each others' domain. The advantage of String Theory is that it bounds the problem from the other direction, the first time this has been achieved. String theory is the first scientific explanation of the universe that COULD be true (so far as we know), in the sense that relativity or quantum mechanics cannot be. Ironically, it is NOT true that string theory makes no falsifiable predictions; it's just that none of its predictions HAVE been falsified, because they are all in accord with what we already observe about our universe. (If gravity were to reverse itself tomorrow and objects start falling upward, this would undoubtedly falsify string theory.)
To think about it another way, if string theory had been developed (in a comprehensible form) 100 years ago, it would have had great success in terms of its predictive power. (For example, it may predict that "something like quantum mechanics" would soon be observed.) It's just that the current class of "cosmological observations that have not been measured yet, but will be soon" is fairly small, and there's no guarantee that the "true" theory of the universe (or any reasonably general physical theory, for that matter) will actually make falsifiable predictions regarding this limited set of observations. That shouldn't stop us from searching of course, and it does remain to find theories that tighten the bound between relativity/QM (nearly true but demonstrably imperfect theories) and string theory (possibly correct but overly general theories), but string theory's accomplishment of bounding the cosmological problem from the other side shouldn't be underestimated.
Re:a counter argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is shit- He doesn't even understand basics (Score:4, Insightful)
But if enough people can prove it wrong, it goes. Even Sir Issac Newton's most basic equations are discarded in the scientific canon, replaced by Einstein's more complete set. Scientific LAW tends to get amended rather than scrapped, and that's what seperates it from theory.
The SCIENTIFIC METHOD, what science is *supposed* to be based upon, relies upon repeatable results based upon a given set of assumptions: the theory. If you can't test it, what's the point?
The writer of the article doesn't claim that string theorists are WRONG, he claims that they are WASTING THEIR TIME. Why? Because he feels they are more interested in "elegance" and "beauty" than they are in finding a relevant way to describe the universe that is useful and TESTABLE.
Whether that is right is a matter of some debate, but get the premise right.
--
Torodung
Re:Forget falsifiability, simplicity is where it's (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually a reasonable and sound position. It's more or less impossible to prove something correct in science - we've discovered many times that if a theory looks right on one level, when you go deeper it's just a good approximation. So you can never really be sure whether you've found the right answer, or just something close to it. And from our experience of science the odds are in favour of the 'good approximation' side.
On the other hand, when you've proven something wrong, you're pretty damned sure that it's wrong. It's then a scientific fact. You can't do that for something that appears right - it's more like a scientific guess.
It's important to keep this in mind - remember that something you believe to be correct is almost certainly not correct in every particlar. And follow up on those "Hmm, that's odd" moments, because those are how progress is made.
Re:a counter argument (Score:5, Insightful)
I have only one thing to say about all of this. Everytime I sit in a talk on strings or branes all I can think is one thing.
Extra dimensions are the epicycles of Modern Physics
That's all I have to say. If you understand this, it is profound.
Re:Call me when (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The simple answer is... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are an infinite number of numbers between 3.0 and 4.0 (3.1, 3.11, 3.111 etc), but none of them is 5.
Why American's shun science careers (Score:5, Insightful)
4 years undergrad ($40-$120k in cost)
5-7 years grad school (making $15k per year)
2-6 years postdoc (making $40k per year)
7 years pre-tenure (making $60-80k per year)
tenure (making $80-$100k per year)
Oh, and if you fail at any point along the line, you have no career. Since you are looking at 18-24 years to get to tenure, that's a HUGE
investmet to make. You are basically looking at not knowing whether you have a career or not until you are 36-42 years old.
Compare this with the career track of an equally bright student going into CS, and getting a job in tech.
4 years undergrad ($40k-$120k in cost)
starting job ($60k-80k)
5 years experience ($80k-$120k)
move into management ($100k-$150k)
etc... notice how the CS grad going into IT hits the $60-$80k range 7-13 *years* before the scientist?
Plus, while there is less risk of being laid off as a tenured professor, the risk of having your career evaporate as an IT person (please note, IT person who could have hacked being an academic scientist) is MUCH lower. Sure, you may loose your job, but there are plenty of other jobs.
Few American's go into science because the economics of science is so bad. I don't know how to fix that, but the cause is pretty clear.
Oh... by the way, I am an American who was on the academic track in String Theory and got off the merry-go-round. Everytime I talk to my friends who stuck it out I am overjoyed I left. My friends are at the mid-potsdoc stage right now. They are trying to scrape by living on $40k a year in ultra expensive locals like Boston, and live in terror that the only jobs they will be available will be in middle of no-where universities in unpleasant places. By way of contrast there are tech jobs to be had in a variety of nice locals to meet most peoples tastes. It's particularly hard on the women, who are starting to hear their biological clocks tick VERY loudly, and who are still years away from being settled in enough to take a break to have children. It's also very hard for both genders to find a long term mate, as they face the aforementioned prospect of having to move a lot to unpleasant places (like Norma, OK, middle of nowhere PA, middle of nowhere plains states, etc) if they want to continue their careers. And let's not even start talking about the two body problem (two romantically entwined academics).
So basically, if you want more Americans to go into science, make it suck less.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
So long as you view God as unable to do anything science works out fine. You simply find your result and credit God with the discovery. "Why did that happen?" is the same questions as "Why did God make that happen?" -- with the noted a priori assumption that "God did it" tossed in for sport.
Re:a counter argument (Score:4, Insightful)
It really is saying something that the best thing we've got has survived 30 years of scrutiny. I think it does say it's better than nothing, and when you've got something good, simply abandoning it to try and find something else that better fits your equipment isn't a good idea. Not to mention that it is very difficult to simply generate a new theory of quantum gravity. There are a few other contenders, but they suffer from much bigger flaws than string theory.
Also, a lot of people (many thousands, roughly) do understand string theory. It's just that they all coincidentally have Ph.D.s in the subject.
Re:statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this shows things are working the way they should. At least the theorists in your field are trying to find an answer to the experiments showing the existing theories are incorrect. A big surprise would show that someone's not doing their job.
Re:a counter argument (Score:4, Insightful)
Q "Look, the orbits aren't exactly circular"
A "Try adding more circles"
Q "..."
A "Try adding more dimensions"
I don't mean to say that the true answer is simpler in a sense. I honestly have no idea.
I came to this conclusion after sitting through dozens of talks and realizing that so many physicists were using extra dimensions like a tool in their toolbox (like renormalization or something), but that tool has never actually fixed anything yet. It's their hammer and everything looks like a nail. Only no nails are proven to exist.
Happiness is a choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you can live more simply, and be perfectlly happy with much less in the way of material wealth. I agree. There are trade-offs. I actually left physics for reasons that had nothing to do with the arguments above: it wasn't fun for me anymore. If you enjoy it so much more than the alternatives, then perhaps an academic career will be worthwhile to you, in spite of the sacrifices compared to other career paths you could have chosen.
The problem is that these days the sacrifices to go into science compared to your other options are getting very steep. At the same time many of the things that made science a nice job are available elsewhere. Flextime for example. One of the nice things about being an academic scientist was that to a large extent you had great flexibility in when you worked. That's now true in the private sector as well. Another was that science presented some very interesting problems, and certain kinds of people really *enjoy* working on such problems. But there are now interesting problems to work on in the private sector as well.
Basically, the relative benefits of being a scientist are shrinking, and the relative costs are increasing.
Re:a counter argument (Score:4, Insightful)
It really is saying something that the best thing we've got has survived 30 years of scrutiny.
Well, it's pretty easy to survive 30 years of scrutiny when ST hasn't come up with one single testable prediction not accounted for by other theories. If you don't make any testable predictions it's pretty hard to knock it off the chopping block. From what I've read, ST isn't even a full theory, but merely a framework for other theories. When you've got 10^500 possible theories it makes it a bit harder to knock them all down.
when you've got something good, simply abandoning it to try and find something else that better fits your equipment isn't a good idea.
Why not? The energies ST is testable at are far far far above anything we can even conceive of, much less build. ST seems to be based on the great white hope that someone will come up with testable predictions.
Re:Man... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of theories that are elegant, powerful, and wrong.
Re:Man... (Score:2, Insightful)