Will String Theory Bite the Dust?
June 27, 2006 - 5:02pm — bexI consider myself a rational person, with very few negative emotions. But when something strikes me as just plain wrong, I hate it with a never ending white-hot furious passion... and frankly that amuses the hell out of my friends.
Near the top of Bex's hate list is, of course, String Theory.
I hate string theory sooooooo much. It sucks. Its crap. I simply can't believe any educated scientist buys into it. I hate it even more than social anthropologists and their incessant attempts to steal common-sense ideas and cram them into esoteric behavior models... I hate it even more than Alexander Hamilton and his sneaky Federalists... except Madison. Jamie's cool... but I digress.
Well, there's a new book out that hopefully vindicates my hatred: Not Even Wrong -- The Failure of String Theory & the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics.
The author calls String Theory a disaster for Physics. I couldn't agree more. Its a bunch of a-priori garbage. Allow me to sum up the ideas and motives behind string theory:
Hey! Lets all say the universe is made up of strings! I know we've never observed a string, and we'd need a particle accelerator the size of the galaxy to see one, but I just know in my heart I'm right!
Oh, and by the way, the universe now has 12 dimensions, and we don't know which of the 200 billion variants of string theory is correct... but at least the math is so hard that not even a supercomputer can calculate the path of a baseball!
Joy.
The phrase not even wrong was used by the brilliant Physicist Wolfgang Pauli. It was reserved for those situations where something was beyond wrong, even beyond completely wrong. Something that was not even wrong had absolutely no grain of truth to it whatsoever, and was even dangerously misleading.
I think it's correct to apply not even wrong to String Theory. I mean, its just not science. Its the brainchild of a bunch of starry-eyed dreamers who would feel better about themselves if they could cram the universe into some sort of cosmic order.
I'm sorry, this is Physics, not Philosophy. Science is dirty. And quite frankly, I'm surprised at the number of Physicists who fell for this crap. Sure, we probably have an innate desire to turn the universe into elegant formulas... but I have never once seen any evidence that says the universe should have some kind of elegant cosmic order. Why can't it be just a big ball of chaos that only occasionally makes sense?
This crap bugged me when I was getting my Physics degree in the mid 90s, and it bugs me even more today. That's the "never ending" part of my white-hot hatred.
Anyway, the harder we look at the universe the crazier it appears. Things like chaos theory, dark energy, quantum foam (great on a caffè latte), and the uncertainty principle lend plenty of evidence to this. The double-slit experiment to this day blows my mind.
My advice to Theoretical Physicists searching for a unified theory of life, the universe, and everything? Take a page from the slacker handbook: give up.
You are supposed to be scientists. You are supposed to be pragmatic. Here's what you should do:
- Observe the world until you see something askew.
- Poke at it with a stick until you can predict its behavior.
- Repeat.
Sure, there will always be value in having some specialized Theoretical Physicists. But unless you actually get your hands dirty in a lab, you're going to grow more and more out of touch with the real world... and then either come up with some more crap like String Theory, or warp into a mad scientist who obsesses about sharks with frigging laser beams on their heads.
The choice is yours.
Poor Tourtured Soul
I think that you and String Theroy need to have a good 'ol slug fest. Then you will become fast friends forever.
:)
no. way.
I bet Alexander Hamilton put you up to that.
Lack of Simplicity, Elegance, and Provability in M-Theory
I believe that all string theorists shoud go back to the Solvay Conference as a mental exercise and ask what Riemann, Minkowski, deSitter,
Einstein, Poincarre,...etc. thought of this arbitrary mathematics that has most of the Physics community in chaos. Let us restart
at the origins of space curvature geometry, topology, etc. and build upon that without losing sight of reality and falling into
an abyss of abstractness. The truth is that most aspiring physicists are AFRAID to challenge this stampede. I met P.A.M. Dirac, and
I can assure you that he would be appalled with this godlike worship of an untestable theory. D-Branes are nothing more than
the Boundary of Bulk space and physical phenomena does occur on the light cone boundary; but what is the building block of strings
and branes?? I say Space and its properties define matter. Geometry defines Space. Let us return to sanity!\
Professor Daniel Remy
Mathematical Physicist/Cosmologist
totally agree...
In the old days, the "elegance" of a theory was determined by how beautiful the math was, and how easy it was to make predictions. String theory has it totally backwards...
They start with the "elegant" idea that the universe is made up of vibrating strings, then attempt to work backwards to find ungodly complex math that makes such a concept remotely plausible.
Not to mention that the entire idea is woefully unscientific: start with the conclusion, then work backwards to find evidence to prove it. Socrates and Francis Bacon must be spinning in their graves...
Loved it. But you knocked
Loved it.
But you knocked sharks with laser beams on your head. Don't underestimate my Lasersharks!
9/10
Cosmic Order
I suppose the universe does not have to have a cosmic order, but why give up looking for one? What if you're wrong? What if Isaac Newton gave up? Would we even occasionally find order? The only mistake the dreamers are making is the lack of testing before adding more to the house of cards they are building on quicksand. They should be criticised for this, but telling them to give up lacks the spirit of scientific inquiry.
Re: Cosmic Order
I have no problem with a handful of geniuses toiling in obscurity looking for "cosmic order." That was both Newton and Einstein. I also have no problem if a small handful come up with theories that cannot be immediately proven.
What I hate is how string theory infected the entire field of Physics! Multiple, multiple, so many years wasted on something that might not even be true... so many people floating theories that sound grand, but have zero effect on everyday life.
If Brian Greene and his ilk chose to spend their lives on this, good for them. The work they do will be useful, if for nothing else than their ability to solve unbelievably difficult mathematical equations... but please, please, please don't claim that String Theory is the grand and ultimate theory of everything. It is merely one possibility, and a remote one at that.
An Engineer's commentary...
Just watched this show called "the universe" on History channel, where they were pumping the wonders of string theory. Then came across your blog. I couldn't agree more with your comments, these string theorists to me border on religious zealots with their empirically unproven ideas.
You guys in the science world are purists, brainiacs to us engineers. I switched to engineering because I could cheat approximating solutions with computers while you guys did the closed form solution. But there's one thing I do believe first: people usually call it your own eyes, observation, tests, common sense. It seems that string theory hasn't been able to live up to this (yet). Yet they pump it like it's reality, uh, with 12 dimensions, uh, strings and branes, uh, parallel universes where anything can happen. Yeah I know, I can't see it. Whenever I designed a car structure, I didn't get extra credit or Nobels for imagining a car that was safe in crashes -- I had to PROVE it by old fashioned testing, wrecking stuff. They still didn't pay me much.
I also find it hubris that these guys tell me I don't (and shouldn't) understand the math. Well, I did my share of relativity and quantum classes too, and I could understand the basics of the math and how it tied to reality, logic, and common sense. Sounds suspiciously as well as if you want me to take your ideas on FAITH... I will refer you then to the wonderful religious times of the Middle ages in European history where untold numbers of wars were fought and people executed in the name of FAITH.
Also, please stop with the patronizing demeanor -- most of these guys, like Greene, seem to think that metaphorical imagery is the bomb, like parallel universes are similar to being in an elevator with a bunch of floors as universes, or extra dimensions unseen are like the underside of the sea you can't see being on the surface. Stop. The fact is you can't prove it (yet). I am a 3D being and I just dove underwater to see the other universe. I'm now feeling the 12D shark that's about to bite my leg off and the jellyfish stinging me in the face. I still don't understand what the heck you're talking about or how this helps your case.
I'll give the string guys a crutch -- the media fell in love with this, probably because it seems artsy and not bland, they love these colorful metaphors, and also because self selection dictates that the guys in media are even more math incompetent and clueless about reality than even a dumb engineer like myself, and they were the guys in english lit, aka fiction, not reality. But don't pump string theory along with them -- for chrissakes you guys are scientists.
Finally, I leave you with one example of elegant math gone horribly wrong. In our reality, the financial markets crashed starting in 2008, primarily due to derivatives and collateralized securities based primarily on math and formulas created by "quants". Strange, that the elegance and theoretics of the behavioral copula functions couldn't explain us silly people? But then again, the copulas didn't account for a common sense factor -- supply and demand.
But I guess before these physicists turned finance quants got fired, they should have told their bosses that in string theory there would have been a parallel universe where there was no financial crisis and they made billions.
MSE Mech Eng
MBA Wharton
Theory: MSE+MBA<
Re: An Engineer's commentary...
I agree with you 100%... Physics didn't used to be like this: it used to be an empirical science that had to create theories to prove real-world things. String Theory is what happens when you put too many smart people in a room, and don't give them a hard enough problem to solve.
WOW
wow right now im not even sure what to say to you... the simple fact that you hate something i hope they are the ones who are right so you have to live the rest of your life knowing you were wrong... I can think something is right and you think its wrong but the collaborative effort to find the answer is where the truth lies... by the way im not a beleiver in the bible or strings... So dont use either to commet on why you might hate me now aswell...
STIC
String theory is crap!!!!
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