Roll over Einstein: meet Weinstein (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Roll over Einstein: meet Weinstein (2013)

theguardian.com

32 pointsmpweiher23 comments

>He says his theory does not have the asymmetry associated with the Standard Model. The reason we cannot easily detect the dark matter is that, in the observerse, when space is relatively flat, the left-handed and right-handed spaces would become disconnected and the two sides would not be aware of each other.

With this tiny drip of information about the theory, I might speculate why it might turn out to not be experimentally supported. Dark matter is known to not interact with itself very much (it doesn't clump up like regular matter but rather forms halos) which would tend to indicate that it's not a mirror universe with symmetric laws of physics.

Edit: If we still haven't seen a preprint (the title was edited to say that the article was from 2013), then it may have not faired well after someone that knew a lot about experiments reviewed it. I'm curious to see what happened.

Just to add a detail that might be relevant to this audience. Eric Weinstein is currently the managing director of Thiel Capital.

I wonder how many bright minds like him are lost to the financial industry.

A lot. According to Steven Pinker, when many get their first taste of the politics rife in academia, they conclude: I think I prefer to make some money! And thereafter dedicate their big brains to finding ways to shave off a fraction of a second in placing trades for hedge funds!

+1 It's not the lure of wealth, but the infighting (relational politics) within academia that push people out.

David Kaplan, a particle theorist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has seen and discussed some of Weinstein's ideas with him. On the plus side, Kaplan says it is "phenomenal" that someone coming from outside academia could put together something so coherent. "There are many people who come from the outside with crazy theories, but they are not serious. Eric is serious."

How is having a PHD in math from Harvard 'not academia'?

Because he's no longer a working scientist, but an economist.

A PhD does not make you an academic, working in the field does. Not to say that academic == talented.

Of note, the position held by Marcus du Sautoy as "Simonyi professor of the public understanding of science" was created by donation from an ex-Microsoft programmer Charles Simonyi. Du Sautoy is responsible from helping get this exposure via Weinstein's presentation at Oxford. This role at Oxford is great idea...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonyi_Professor_for_the_Publ...

Highly recommend Eric's episode on the Tim Ferriss podcast https://tim.blog/2016/01/13/eric-weinstein/

Related, here is a simple 10 minute video by Weinstein where he gives a nice framework of his approach and its significance on how we approach science: http://bigthink.com/videos/eric-weinstein-after-einstein-we-...

Interesting but please add the 2013 tag. I wonder what happened of this theory?

The article says that "Weinstein plans to put a manuscript on the Arxiv preprint server", but as far as I can tell, he hasn't done so yet. Hard for anyone to really evaluate it unless he takes that step.

probably because when he began it write it down fully, he realized it wouldn't work or was incomplete. All he had was a hunch

It makes more sense to share it with colleagues and work out the bugs, before releasing it to a wider audience.

He was on JRE podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMzjEaNFbAk

Is this like a Wario to Mario situation going on here?

Isn't the idiom "Move over", not "Roll over"?

Agreed, I thought that was a strange choice of words as well. I just assumed it was some sort of popular British-ism. "Roll over" implies some sort of subjugation, as an animal rolling over in a submissive stance. Rather than "moving over" being something taking new precedence in ranking, as a progression to the next step.

It’s an alarming headline when Weinstein is a name that’s been in the news a lot lately.

It was written in 2013, so that couldn't have been a (useful) motivation by the author...

Perhaps the title is in reference to "Roll Over Beethoven"?

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