Susskind: String Theory Is Not the Theory of the Real World | Hacker News Reader

Susskind: String Theory Is Not the Theory of the Real World

math.columbia.edu

34 pointsjjgreen15 comments

I find it weird how much of this is about science popularization. I have an undergrad degree in physics and don't consider myself qualified to have an opinion.

Nor do I see the point in having one. If they came tomorrow and said "yep, we just proved string theory", all I could do is shrug and say "good to know".

It feels more like people cheering on their favorite sports team than actual science.

I think this is a weakness of theories that have easily accessible analogies. It’s easy to (as a layperson) mistake the analogy for the real thing and to overindex on the parsimony of said analogy. String theory suffers from this IMO.

There are some aspects of string theory that have never seemed to work to me from a very basic point of view. I mean from wikipedia

>the characteristic length scale of strings is assumed to be on the order of the Planck length, or 10^−35 meters

And in normal quantum electrodynamics, if you have two electrons a meter apart they repel by exchanging virtual photos which are presumably these 10^(-15)m long things. How on earth would they hit? There isn't an aiming mechanism I guess an if you sent them off all directions you would need like 10^100+ of them to hit etc. Which may sound silly like I don't understand it but I think beyond that it is silly because the theory is nonsense.

The way I see it it started as a real model of the binding between the components of the nucleus and then people thought the maths is cool, we can get grants to study that and then the grant getting community multiplied irrespective of it having any connection to reality.

Before anybody misinterprets Susskind opinion, String theory might not be, and probably isn't, the theory of the real world, but that doesn't mean it's not useful. The prevalent opinion amongst the physics community is that some parts of String theory are isomorphic to the theory of the real word whatever it might be (e.g. ADS/CFT correspondence).

String theory reminds me of the beta-amyloid theory for Alzheimer’s. Both have sucked up all of the research and funding into a likely dead end. Worse, they’ve both managed to exclude those trying to work on alternatives, partly because to go against these in-vogue approaches is to go against famous scientists with name recognition and funding control.

It’s a good comparison. Sad how faddish science can be.

Is the beta amyloid theory wrong? I read a review paper on this and the science was unclear. I think the point was that all AD patients had a pretty heavy amyloid burden, but not the converse. Feel free to send me some reading.

Nobody seems to be able to answer the key question whether it's a marker, or a driver.

String theory may have some undue mindshare, which is probably a bigger problem frankly, but it most definitely is not sucking up the research money.

I don't see much in common between the development of string theory and the development of beta-amyloid theory besides the fact that both are theories and both are currently seen as lacking experimental support.

> sucked up all of the research and funding

I find this rather hard to believe in the case of string theory. (To be a string theorist, you need funding for a pencil and some paper.)

Nowadays yes, but between the 80s and early 2010s, string theory captured a lot of funding.

It's not hard to see why beta amyloid (BA) build up is the cause. It's very easy to understand. You open Alzheimer's patients, you see BA everywhere.

As a teen in the mid-1990's, I wanted to be a physicist (hard science!), but after reading extensively about string theory, I decided to become a biologist. Squishy beats non-empirical.

Isn't this about a group of people who are way above their peers in brain capacity or just plain malignant, throwing some utter nonsense into the mix and watch in awe as their not so bright fellows jump on it like flies on rotten meat?

that seems to imply bad faith or malice. I'm out of my depth here, but it figuring out the true nature of reality does seem properly hard and it's not obvious what the next steps are.

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