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."
Re:the universe (Score:3, Interesting)
String Theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
either string theory is flawed and unproveable and is wasting time and holding back advancement from lack of studies in other directions.
OR
because string theory is beyond us right now and should net be focused on YET, if less of the brilliant people in science wasted time on string theory we might learn more! and become more enlightened by our new knowledge allowing for the possibility to product string theory.
Re:Before the consensus ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:String Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
The God Equation (Score:3, Interesting)
It is almost like a Turing-Complete programming language where anything definable can be executed (ran) by giving it the right programming code. With 11 dimensions to play with, one has a lot of wiggle room to shape imaginary little sub-atomic string machines that can be just about anything you want, bending it to fit new observations.
Perhaps an equation for God is nearly as hard to test as an actual god.
Re:Sounds like it's time.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's open-source it this time. Bullshit should be shared, free, and open; not just for and by oil tycoons anymore.
It's math, not physics. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not physics because physics ultimately deals with the real world around us, with things we can measure or at least hope to measure. However, since this is a beautyful theory, this is math.
IMHO, any beautyful math will someday find its application and even if it doesn't, it should be done solely for its beauty. In any case, if string theorists would start calling themselves mathematicians, all the problems with string theory would disappear. Just don't expect it to have any obvious applications.
Carver Mead (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The most important part of new theories is the verification of predicted results - that's it, things that should happen theoretically but we haven't seen (yet). I don't know about ST, to be honest, but, for example, Heim theory [wikipedia.org] (which aims to be a "theory of everything") made some interesting predictions that haven't been put to test yet; one involved localized antigravity created by rotating electromagnetic fields and another predicted a couple of unseen new particles, if i'm not mistaken. I'd love to see someone try to verify them.
Re:String Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's very premature to say String Theory will never make any predictions.
Well, it's been more than 20 years, and still no testable predictions. When will ST be mature and it's clear it's time to throw in the towel and abandon ST? It seems to me if ST is so hard that we haven't made any headway to even theorize a way to prove/disprove it in 20+ years time, it's really time to treat it like a red herring and find a theory that's easier for us humans to deal with. This is really the main point of the article. It kind of reminds me of alchemy. 400 years ago there were a lot of people working on turning lead into gold, and no one was making any progress. Perhaps it's best to pursue other interests because it's just too hard. Actually in many ways it's worse than alchemy, since alchemists actually learned things about chemistry. I've yet to hear anything that ST has produced of scientific value. Long after alchemy was abandoned we discovered atomic theory, and the structure of the atom. In 1980 someone actually succeeded in turning lead into gold through atomic decay, though it was microscopic quantities and I believe the radioactive gold turned back into lead.
I suppose at some point someone will come up with a better way to unite quantum mechanics and general relativity, and ST will go the way of luminiferous aether
statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
However, my impression -- and I speak as someone who works inside a particle theory group, and who has served on faculty-level particle physics search committees -- is that string theory is far from having a "lock" on theoretical particle physics today. In the article, Woit is quoted as follows: "By his count, of 22 recently tenured professors in particle theory at the six top U.S. departments, 20 are string theorists." Looking at the Particle Physics Rumor Mill (http://physics.wm.edu/~calvin/) which assembles the short lists for faculty jobs in particle theory many of (and perhaps most) the people getting offers are not "hard core" string theorists. Many of them will have written papers with some string content, but have wider interests in cosmology, particle phenomenology, and/or physics "beyond the standard model".
This statistic differs from Woit's, in that it is not just counting "top" physics departments, and looks at Assistant Prof hires, and not tenured faculty (although *outside* the top six, most Assistant Profs can expect to be promoted to tenue). However, I suspect that the "twenty out of twenty two" statistic is either over a very carefully chosen interval, or reflect a very broad definition of who counts as a "string theorist".
My feeling is that string theorists have a *hard* time getting jobs. In general, many places outside the top ten (ande most of the jobs are outside the top ten) do not have string theorists on their faculty, and string theorists have a hard time differentiating themselves from other people in their field, which makes it hard for them to get hired -- especially as they are competing against other, very smart people.
The real issue here is that particle physicists have received no "surprises" in many years -- perhaps the only genuinely unexpected recent data point being the non-zero value of the cosmological constant. And this did not create a new problem, since the challenge for the theoretical community was always to explain why the CC was around 10^120 times smaller than its "natural" value, which is not much easier than explaining why it is actually slightly different from zero. In this enviroment, we have no good way to "prune" theoretical ideas, and the hope of many is that the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will yield results that cannot be explained within the context of the so-called "standard model" of particle physics. In this sense *any* theoretical framework that had been worked on since the mid 1970s would risk falling into the same trap as string theory, since there is no data we can't explain with existing models -- if it was incompatible with the standard model it would have been dead on arrival, but any model which yields the standard model in some limit is not falsifiable with current data.
On the other hand, string theory does provide a rich mathematical structure with some very surprising results. The so-called "AdS/CFT" correspondence sets up a completely unexpected relationship between gravity and a particular class of field theories, and some calculations in QCD (the theory of the "strong" nuclear interaction) can be "organized" and performed using string theoretic ideas. This does not "test" string theory, but it does show that there are deep and unexpected consequences to what is ultimately a very simple idea and, in the absence of data, this motivates theoriests to keep working in this area.
Can't say I didn't come prepared (Score:3, Interesting)
Chapter 6 counters your arguments in a way that I think is quite clear (for a string theory paper, at least).
And while I won't try and claim there's some particle that we can discover at the LHC that string theory can't explain, by not finding light supersymmetric partners of existing particles, the LHC has the possibility to disprove string theory.
Re:It's math, not physics. (Score:3, Interesting)
String theory is here precisely because our understanding of "the world around us" was obviously flawed and needed fixing. It was comprised of two theories that have been experimentally verified almost to the last degree, and yet are in irreconcileable conflict with each other.
Missing the Point (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of it this way. Many theorists predict that our universe may be one of many (e.g., in a much larger "multiverse"), and these universes are not all expected to be identical. Therefore, the variations between them represent quantities that are not exactly "predictable" by any theory, and the best we can hope for is a meta-theory that describes all possible universes, and says that ours is one of them. The earth is not the center of the universe; the prediction of string theory may simply be that our universe is not the center of the universe, so to speak.
Hard to imagine that string theory is wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)
String theorists have yet to provide any empirical proof of their theory. This is not, however, sufficient reason to dismiss their theory outright. Testing some of the fundamental predictions of string theory may not currently be possible, but that does not mean that it will never be possible. What demands a plausible explanation, however, is why general relativity and quantum mechanics are not compatible with one another despite the failure to demonstrate an experiment which shows either theory to be wrong.
Yet, both theories cannot be entirely correct as general relativity "breaks-down" at the quantum scale, and quantum mechanics at larger scales. There must therefore be an underlying theory which combines the two, and the best we have today is string theory (or M-Theory for that matter).
Re:Maybe this is boon to I.D. (Score:3, Interesting)
An intelligent designer can do whatever the hell he wants.
While it is true that not every activity is testable, one does not test for every activity. SETI, for example, tests for stuff that we know how to test. If an intelligent designer/fiddler is somewhat similar to humans in actions and motives, then it is very possible that they left logos, graffiti, coat-of-arms, messages, etc. in DNA just like human chip designers who sneak a Dilbert cartoon into a Pentium.
An extreme form of ID, such as a Biblical-style God, is indeed perhaps not testable. But we don't have to test for all types of potential ID'ers to test for some the same way that SETI does not (or cannot) test for all possible broadcast techniques but merely radio (at this point).
Re:Hard to imagine that string theory is wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no clue if this is true, but that's the gist of the article, and many other criticisms I've heard of string theory.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hard to imagine that string theory is wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)
The author's reliance on these notions of Kuhn and Popper is the weakness in his argument.
String theorists may in fact argue that the elegance in their theory is unmatched by anything we currently have, and the fact that general relativity emerges naturally is profound even if we have yet to fully understand the implications.
These author's ought to therefore take their own advice and attempt to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics instead of bashing a theory which doesn't conform to their notions of what a theory ought to be.
Re:Hard to imagine that string theory is wrong! (Score:4, Interesting)
As I understand it, critics suggest that string theory itself says it will never be testable. A scientist worth their salt should not deride a theory simply because testing it is infeasable or inconvenient. If I have a theory, and the only way I can come up with to test it requires an aparatus the size of the milky way galaxy, then we may hope somone comes up with a better way to test it, and it is still a perfectly fine theory. On the other hand, if I have a "theory" that it is logically impossible to test in any universe where the milky way galaxy exists, I've got nothing; and my "theory" should rightly be bashed for not being science.
The suggestion is that string theory, by it's nature, cannot make testable predicitons about our universe. If that is so, it is not science, and should be done away with. Whether that's so, I have no idea.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's apply this to the Monkey/Shakespeare problem. Was the page produced by a very large number of monkeys over a long period of time via a highly improbable set of circumstances or was it produced by an intelligent (human, machine) agent? How do you falsify improbability? Chance or God. Are there any other choices?
The problem with science is that it doesn't yet know how to quantify intelligence.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
--
Essentially, using god as an answer to a "How" question is a complete and total cop-out and non-sequitor. Using him as an answer to a "why" question is perfectly acceptable. That is the distinction that scientists make between science and non-science.
If I were to say that the universe was created by God's having willed it so, you would look at me strangely, and rightly so. We cannot duplicate God's will, so any answer to the "how" question produced by that theoretical framework is meaningless.
The entirety of science is explaining how something works so that we can either repeat or predict what will happen. If something is proven non-repeatable even once, then the theory is proven flawed. There is nothing wrong with this, and in fact it keeps scientists intellectually vigilant.
String theory cannot explain how anything should work in any meaningful fashion, and so is not a useful theory. Essentially what it does is say "There is effectively an infinite number of possible ways for the world to work. Ta-da! We've got a theory!" This is meta-physics and does not belong in a serious technical discussion. I believe one of the above posters said it best when he said that string theory is a gigantic academic wank-fest.
I'm really sorry to say this about something that originally got me interested in Physics, but String Theory is complete and utter bunk unless it can make predictions that are proveable, applicable, and are not covered by any other theoretical framework.
The problem is... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with string theory is that some equations came along that fit the data in an intriguing way and so physicists pursued and continue to pursue the math. The problem is, it's not based on some sort of idea that someone had. The idea is the thing that's missing. Math is great at expressing ideas, but it's not particularly good at creating them.
It could be that at some point, someone will come up with an underlying conceptual idea that the math can then be used to express, but until that happens, I don't think string theory is really going to become a practical theory.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It depends on whay you mean by knowing everything. Knowledge can be somewhat compressed in comparison to raw reality. I can describe the chemical characteristics of a grain of salt in much less space than it would take to map the precise location of every single atom that makes it up. If I'm discussing the solubilty of salt in water, that level of detail is potentially superfluous. For the vast majority of purposes, much of the information in the universe is trivial and of no deep meaning except in aggregate. Atmospheric physics is complicated (Navier-Stokes equations, Rossby number, adiabatic lapse rate and the like), but the gross principles can become reasonably well understood. Applying this knowlege to global weather prediction is something else entirely, and is in that theatre in which the prohibitively comprehensive level of detail can become a problem if you desire extreme levels of precision. The same situation may well be applicable to the fundamental laws of the universe. We may be able to comprehend them without having to know the entire, exhausive state of everything.
Re:Man... (Score:2, Interesting)
The nice thing about the world I make my living in is that so far, within my lifetime, not one law of physics has changed in any way shape or form. Extended the number of digits to the right of the decimal point to the point of being ridiculous maybe, but no REAL changes.
That tends to make me think that we do in fact, have a pretty good grasp of the laws of physics. IMO, the only thing we're missing is the "gravity to the rest of it" connection, confounded by the inconvienient fact that gravity appears to be the only force in the universe which is apparently instantainious over galactic distances. Go work any celestial orbital mechanics problem, including the orbit of the earth around the sun, and try and make it work if the gravitational attraction vector is assumed to be toward where the sun appears to be now (as opposed to where it is right now instead where it was 8 minutes ago when that light left the suns position then). By adding any delay, the orbit falls apart, and our earth would have spiraled into the sun many billions of years ago.
I've made several attempts to get my head around this 'string' thing, all of which usually leaves me with not a hadron, but a headache. I can take a pill for that.
What I think we are seeing here is the first child, who not knowing any better, points out that the emperor's new clothes aren't just lightweight and airy, but wholly non-existant. Except, I suspect this 'child' would be considerably better off in taking a mensa application than I as my one IQ test (not a mensa test FWIW, but the Iowa test of 55 years ago) only indicating about 147.
Thanks for the grin, Bruce.
--
Cheers, Gene
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no idea why I felt the need to bring that up.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
So (as a scientist) there is very little point in thinking about either of them for very long because they simply don't get you any further in making workable personal jet packs, or any of the other fun stuff that science is generally so good at.
Falsifiability is a reasonable requirement. It says: "OK Mr. Proponent of God/StringTheory. tell me one experiment I could reasonably consider doing that (if it hypothetically failed) would prove that God/Strings definitely doesn't exist." But there IS no such test for either thing. String theory is just so very flexible that it can accomodate almost any failed experiment by picking another one of the ten-to-the-power-500 possible variations on how space is wrapped up, and experiments that might manage to disprove it appear to require more energy than the entire universe contains in order to perform them. Meanwhile, God is claimed to be utterly omnipotent - so any experiment we think up to prove that he's not there, could merely be written of as him "testing our faith".
Lack of falsifiability doesn't prove or disprove a theory - it just makes the theory worthless for science.
So it's fine to believe in God and be a scientist - so long as you realise that your theory of the universe isn't going to help you make personal jet packs (which you still owe me by the way!).
If somewhere in all the religious texts it said "God can do absolutely anything EXCEPT make purple stars" - then we could all get out our telescopes and go look for purple stars. If we ever found one then the case would be closed. If we never found one - then we still wouldn't know for SURE that there was a God - but ultimate proof isn't something science can ever really provide. But as it is, we are told by the proponents of the God theory that he can do absolutely anything he likes - and we know that if he does exist then he has no compunction in planting REALLY convincing bogus evidence for the big bang just to "test our faith". So we can't make ANY predictions about God whatever and any theory that includes him in any way whatever is useless for our progress. If we employ our belief in God, we can't make a computer that works reliably because God might decide he doesn't like us calculating PI to a bazillion places so the machine would be useless for all practical purposes. We can't find out whether there was life on Mars because he does stuff like burying really convincing solid stone dinosaur bones to try to cheat us into a belief in evolution when he knows full well that it's not true. A world with a God in it is simply not open to doing any kind of useful science - so if we'd like to have personal jet packs (sorry to keep harping on about those - but really, they are a bit overdue), we'd better put God theories to one side while we're designing them. If we used a God-based universe as our model, the only really plausible way to get jet packs is to sit on our backsides and pray for them to materialise out of thin air.
String theory has similar problems - and I could understand why people are beginning to think it's a waste of time for such a large proportion of Physicists to be working on it. The theory is at the point where it certainly COULD be true - but if it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know and there's no way for us to ever disprove it - then it's just not very useful.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Interesting)
God is not a distaster when it comes to science. Many influencial scientists and mathematicians were spiritual. Interestingly enough, many become spiritual when they get closer and closer to a 'oh shit I cant answer THIS' part of their contribution. I agree with you that science and faith are not mutually exclusive.
> Because atheism a priori denies the existence of an intelligence far greater than man's and therefore denies the possibility of design in nature.
This is flat out wrong. Atheism says things came about because who the fuck gives a shit. I think the biggest stumbling block in debates between religious people and athiests comes from bringing the matter of intelligence into the whole situation altogether. I am not religious because I am comfortable existing without believing in a higher power. The religious members of my family, and my religious friends, I absolutely support in their belief of a higher power. But I really do draw the line when somebody suggests that athiesm, in and of itself, is a faith which comes down to "Either we're the smartest, or aliens are." Me, I don't care
I will repeat; who the fuck cares.
> I'll go so far as to argue that denying the existence of God is actually hindering science.
You'd also go so far as to be dumb, because at that point, you cross the line in your argument. Many ultra-spiratual people 3000 years ago were advancing knowledge and science, and God was yet to be documented. I think, what you mean, is that denying the existence of spirituality is hindering science, and you might be right. I will make this very clear. These people, from 3000 years ago, and today, are smarter than me, and better than me, in my opinion. And some of them do favour a faith in a higher power in order to achieve their endevours of advancing human knowledge.
I really wish you realized that your argument is the easy way out, and I also wished that you understood that those who have achieved great things did so because they did not put their faith first. They put the science first, and balanced it out with some healthy faith.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Interesting)
A very important point you missed... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, some of these could do with an explanation. Quantum foam probably can't be observed directly (as yet) but it must radiate for the same reason black holes must radiate - the laws of thermodynamics don't provide for exceptions. In fact, it's the requirement for a non-absolute environment that produced the theory of quantum foam in the first place. We won't be able to see this radiation directly, but we should be able to observe the effects of it, as it should purturb high-energy atom-smashing experiments ever-so-slightly and apparently randomly.
Superstings are tough, as they're not assumed to be everywhere, but again we should be seeing some experimental evidence by now. They have negative gravity, for example, which makes them bloody obvious even if you can't see them. Particles should clearly be exposed to a force that is repulsive in nature. With 99% of the Universe in the form of clumps of dark matter, we should have much better luck at seeing that. Again, particles should behave oddly on occasion. We're not seeing it.
This lack of exciting observations may mean that upgrades to the standard model may not be necessary, useful or even vaguely correct. In which case, the observations and/or chains of thought that led to those ideas may need revisiting. Observation trumps speculation, and the observations we are seeing do NOT match up to more modern speculations.
The fuzzy continuum of good / evil (Score:3, Interesting)
What is evil for a stone? A stone has no interests to concern itself with.
"Evil" is that which is harmful to a living being, in other words that which threatens, harms, coerces, or destroys a living being.
Is killing always evil, and is it so for all involved? Perhaps a parent saves his child from a perceived thug by killing him. Perhaps the parent felt no particular ill-will, but acted rashly and with too much force. Has the person who was killed had evil perpetrated against him? Has the parent committed an evil deed or a good one, or both? How would you mix them in your metaphysical cauldron?
Likewise, perhaps a person acts out of malice, and then a moment later feels regret. Where has the evil gone? Poof! Maybe it never existed.
The continuum of good versus evil is broad and subjective. That evil which is done today may turn out to be beneficial in the long run. That good which is done today may turn out to foster future evil! Yet there is no such thing as "disembodied evil." It is a value judgment brought to a particular situation, and one which always exists with respect to Life.
Life gives rise to the whole continuum of good/evil. To wit, the concept of "resources" is meaningless without Beings: entities having needs. There is an intimate connection between all concepts which emanate from the existence of living beings. As to the relation of resources to the concept of good/evil, that which provides for the sustenance of life is generally Good, that which deprives is Evil. (Except of course in those instances where provision is detrimental and deprivation is beneficial, in which case provision is really deprivation and deprivation is actually provision.)
The original language of Genesis used to describe the Tree in the Garden is not "good and evil" in the general sense but rather "advantageous and disadvantageous," which specifically imply beings having interests. In other words, the allegory of Adam and Eve describes the emerging awareness of self/other, and knowledge of those fruits which benefit or harm self/other.
While there is are fairly well-defined objective standards as to what constitutes a resource, or a need, there is a much slipperier and more subjective notion of what constitutes good/evil (and if you ask me, these words have been so usurped by armchair ideologues they have lost all sense of rational meaning).
But it is clear that to provide resources for another is an act of good, and so we should seek to be giving. And to deprive another of what they need is an act of "evil" so we should resist our tendency to be stingy.
So, by this definition, are most of us "good" or "evil" or something in-between? Indeed, how does "God" fare in this test?
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Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually an interesting point. If "cats", by definition, always have tails, then the statement "all cats have tails" is simply an arbitrary definition of "cat", rather than a useful scientific theory.
Always good to hear! (Score:2, Interesting)
It always makes me smile when I hear this. The last time in history when similar thoughts were voiced by a reasonable number of people was at the end of the nineteenth century. At the time pretty much all the phenomena observed had been more-or-less explained by classical physics. There were a few inconsistencies, like the photo-electric effect, but it was expected that these would be mere trivialities to clear up or might just never be knowable.
Of course history tells us that this was not the case. Solving these "trivial" problems lead to the demise of classical physics and the birth of Relativity and Quantum physics. I personally believe that we are approaching a similar breakthrough point in physics. While it is possible that string theory may be the correct way to go it is also possible that things we learn at the LHC will completely change the tack of theorists and point them at something new. Now I could well be wrong but my guess (and hope) is the universe still has a few tricks up its sleeve yet!
Re:The "landscape" and falsifiability (Score:4, Interesting)
But I do find it rather amusing that you'd have to give up something like Lorentz invariance or unitarity to disprove string theory.
the problem started before string theory... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Einstein may have been responsible for that development: while relativity was a great insight and made useful, testable predictions, it falsely instilled the belief in physicists that Einstein's way of doing physics was the way they should all follow. The problem with that is that most physicists aren't as smart as Einstein, and even if they were, there is only a small number of self-styled visionary scientists any field can comfortably accommodate before becoming unscientfic.
Re:Man... (Score:4, Interesting)
Only when the gravitational field is not spherically symmetric, or if it is time-dependent, do complicated things start to occur.
Note that it doesn't matter if you're thinking in an Earth-centric way, or a Sun-centric way - they're equivalent, although the Earth-centric view is more complex.
Re:I'd call this a 'debate', but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
But as Dijkstra notes, that might not necessarily halt progress "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" [utexas.edu]:
<cut'n paste>
For instance, the vast majority of the mathematical community has never challenged its tacit assumption that doing mathematics will remain very much the same type of mental activity it has always been: new topics will come, flourish, and go as they have done in the past, but, the human brain being what it is, our ways of teaching, learning, and understanding mathematics, of problem solving, and of mathematical discovery will remain pretty much the same. Herbert Robbins clearly states why he rules out a quantum leap in mathematical ability:
"Nobody is going to run 100 meters in five seconds, no matter how much is invested in training and machines. The same can be said about using the brain. The human mind is no different now from what it was five thousand years ago. And when it comes to mathematics, you must realize that this is the human mind at an extreme limit of its capacity."
My comment in the margin was "so reduce the use of the brain and calculate!". Using Robbins's own analogy, one could remark that, for going from A to B fast, there could now exist alternatives to running that are orders of magnitude more effective. Robbins flatly refuses to honour any alternative to time-honoured brain usage with the name of "doing mathematics", thus exorcizing the danger of radical novelty by the simple device of adjusting his definitions to his needs: simply by definition, mathematics will continue to be what it used to be. So much for the mathematicians.
</cut'n paste>
making up a controversy (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The "landscape" and falsifiability (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why I qualified my statment with the word "credibly"
It's not just the money (Score:3, Interesting)
It's being able to live somewhere nice instead of facing possibly having to live in some bubblefuck town in Iowa that has the only university that was hiring in your area of research that year.
It's actually being capitalized. Compare what it takes to get a grant to buy the computing and other equipment you need to what it takes me in the commercial world to get equipment. I am fantastically better capitalized than anyone I know in academia. I've known physics profs who built racks in the machine shop, and soddered their own serial cables to save money... I'd rather not waste my time.
It's respect for my time and personaly life. My commercial job is much more respectful of my time and personal life than academia is. If you aren't working 80 hours a week and sacrificing everything in the sciences, people start to question whether you are 'committed' or not. That perception can make a big difference in whether you get to have a career. By way of contrast, nobody questions the commitment of my manager who knocks off every Thursday at 4pm to go to his sons baseball game.
As for my daily job... I rather enjoy the work I do. I have a tremendous amount of control over my own projects. I get to work with cool cutting edge tech. I can see how my work leverages out to make the lives of hundreds of millions of people better. There's a lot more fulfillment for me there than I would get still chasing String Theory.
As to the dream of going into management, I can sort of agree with you there. I am currently dodging the management bullet myself
Re:Wait, what? (Score:2, Interesting)
nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
Does he promise and not fulfill?" - Numbers 23:19 (NIV)
"Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath." - Hebrews 6:17 (NIV)
I can't find any better quotes at the moment, but yeah, God is constant and unchanging, and the laws of the universe (both physical and spiritual) reflect that.
Re:a counter argument (Score:2, Interesting)
Why?
As an undergraduate physics major I've selected string theory as my field of speciality because it seems to offer a lot of surprises and sophisticated elegance in how it maps natural phenomena to complex permutations of its model(s). Perhaps the sophistication involved it grotesque and wrong on the side of complexity. To be a little explicit in extending the ramifications of your implied syllogism, physics is needing a spark of original thinking and inspiration much like Copernicus' thinking outside the epicycle translated and simplified the model of the solar system.
I understand what you mean by saying so, but by what knowledge have you chosen this conclusion?
The Problem Isn't String Theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, the vast majority of string theory is probably crap. But what people don't seem to realize is that 99% of what all theorists say is crap. That 1% that actually manages to get something right gets all the fame and tends to be the only ones the general public hears about, but the sad truth is that most theorists take the shotgun approach: They try to come up with as many different theories as possible in the hope that one of them might actually turn out to be right.
The article seems to imply that the existence of string theorists is preventing advancement in particle physics. That's BS. The reason why there haven't been any new dramatic discoveries in particle physicists in the past few years is because there haven't been any new experiments! Science is experimental in nature. Progress is made with new experiments. The theorists can speculate all they want but no consensus will be reached until somebody tests it. Unfortunately experiments in particle physics have become so massive and expensive that progress has slowed significantly.
Actually, there have been many discoveries in less traditional aspects of particle physics...neutrino mass for instance. So I'm not even entirely sure what the article is complaining about. Yeah, traditional accelerator experiments haven't done much since the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab, but again it's because there haven't been any new experiments since then. Other than RHIC, which focuses on a very different kind of physics (and RHIC has also been producing many interesting new results).
When the LHC finally comes online expect a flurry of new discoveries. Until then the theorists can speculate all they want. If they weren't wasting their time on string theory they would be wasting their time on something else.
Re:Kaku is a self-promoting hack. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: The simple answer is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I am more at ease accepting inherent unpredictability in a single universe and don't feel there's benefit in creating these extra universes. Schroedinger's Cat, the EPR paradox, and other paradigm-shattering thought experiments all seemed interesting to me when I learned about them, but none seemed particularly unacceptable. I think this is a result of growing up and being educated after these ideas had been released into the wild. Had I originally been trained in the deterministic ways that preceded QM, I imagine it would have been more troubling.
Re:New Hollywood Movie: All Tied Up & Strung A (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't that just an interpretation of special relativity?