
String Theory’s Strange Second Life - jonbaer
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160915-string-theorys-strange-second-life/?href=
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subnaught
A rather skeptical perspective on this article:
[http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8778](http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8778)

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tinym
Woit's language is usually so measured it's actually shocking to see him
straight up call someone 'embarrassingly incompetent'

~~~
noobermin
As someone who goes against the tide, they have to be careful regardless. You
certainly don't see the same restraint from string theorists.

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blackholesRhot
A few comments as someone who works on the periphery of this field:

1\. I started my PhD doing quantum information. People in quantum information
spend a lot of time thinking about properties of entanglement. Someone below
mentioned "a lack of new ideas". There have been quite a few important ideas
in AdS/CFT (as a subset of string theory) over the past decade. One of the
most exciting is called the Ryu-Takayanagi conjecture and it relates the
amount of entanglement in a subsystem to the area of a minimal surface
bounding said subregion.

2\. Again, as someone who started purely as a QI person, it's shocking how
much of the _MATH_ of string theory has entered my research.

3\. In my opinion, it's true that string theory hasn't made much progress over
the past 20 years or so towards elucidating its potential role as a theory of
quantum gravity; but in parallel there are amazing connections being made
between string theory and quantum information. Look at the work being done by
the "It from Qubit" collaboration for a sampling. This latter point is
~equally related to the recent decoherence of string theory as a
subdiscipline. It's more like it tunneled to a state closer to QI.

4\. The Firewall paradox is fascinating and it was originated by a bunch of
string theorists (Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski and Sully.)

5\. Supersymmetry is in a corner; which is bad for string theory. But string
theory is proving to be a powerful lens through which to study quantum
entanglement. One step back, one step forward?

Anyways, saying that "string theory is our savior" or anything like that is
bad etiquette. But the community is doing interesting things today.

~~~
smaddox
I'm curious, do you have an opinion about Stephen Wolfram's idea of graph/knot
theory being the underlying principle of reality? To me, it seems much more
ontologically acceptable than string theory and many-worlds interpretations of
quantum mechanics. I remain unconvinced that pilot-wave-like non-local,
hidden-variables interpretations are flawed; they certainly seem the most
ontologically tractable. From that perspective, a graph/knot basis for the
explicitly non-local hidden-variables theories seems like a reasonable
solution to the ultimate basis of physics.

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kordless
We're running in a simulation that appears to provide compute/causality on one
hand and infinite knowledge on the other (albeit limited to short access
times). The most logical conclusion is that the software we're running on is
highly reliable, given things here are...highly reliable. It's a wonder we all
wake up Us in the morning, which is sorta the point. What does it take to
write software like that?

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dilemma
What if it's not a simulation?

~~~
kordless
What if it's both?

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arcanus
Several big warning signs, if you read between the lines:

1) All the string people are saying they are applying strings to different
fields. That means funding is drying up.

2) No new blood: they are quoting all the same people as 10 years ago. No
breakthroughs since Maldacena, it sounds like.

~~~
ISL
In the case of 1), the string theoretic tools, including AdS/CFT appear to be
more effective in condensed matter physics than in their originally-intended
use.

I've been glad to see the emergence of the Grassmannian/'amplituhedron' ideas,
as they're different, and different would appear to be good.

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M_Grey
Keep this in mind when you read the article:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20061002142756/http://www.ncswa....](https://web.archive.org/web/20061002142756/http://www.ncswa.org/archive/workshops/2004/3cole.html)

 _" Really good science writers need to lie, cheat, and steal, said K. C. Cole
in the first plenary of the workshop. She outlined 15 rules for writing in her
talk, but focused most on the value of lying."_

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danbruc
As a layman I got the impression the issue was essentially settled with the
AdS/CFT correspondence - string theory is equivalent to quantum field theory.
Just in the same way one can convert a boolean satisfiable problem into a
graph coloring problem or a Sudoku puzzle or any other NP-complete problem.
Different representations and ways of looking at the same thing.

The details of the correspondence are currently only known for (toy) theories
not describing the actual physics of our universe and it is a matter of debate
whether it is possible to extend the correspondence to realistic models but
nonetheless those are just two different ways of describing the same thing.

I am not sure whether the correspondence has anything to say about what point
of view is more fundamental - are both really equivalent or just in some
limit, i.e. does string theory for example survive for very high energies
while quantum field theory breaks down implying that there are really tiny
strings while fields and particles are just a very good approximation?

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Koshkin
This latest book by R. Penrose might be of interest to those looking for a
serious analysis of what is happening to the theoretical physics research
today:
[http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10664.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10664.html).

~~~
alanlit
Just got my copy from Amazon.

Cannot recommend Penrose highly enough ... a truly brilliant mathematical
physicist who is not afraid to call out Emperor's new clothes as it were
(which of course is an indirect reference to another of his books about AI and
consciousness). "Road to Reality" also gets my vote as "here's the utility
belt you need to really get a handle on modern physics".

Good stuff.

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sfrailsdev
I feel like we need Second Life's Strange String Theory to balance this
headline out.

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ymerej
. MNM.

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poelzi
For those who do not care about paradigms and use the Solomonoff induction
(Occam's razor) and falsification as a guiding principle:

After carefully checking basic assumptions made long ago against newer
research, als well as using a different interpretation of the measured effect
- you can build up a fully deterministic and logical model compatible with GR,
SR while also explaining quantum mechanical effects and cosmology.

I take falsification very seriously - if there are multiple unexplainable
phenomena or different measurements contradicting a theory, it's of the table
for me and I don't care if the rest of the world still believes in it. History
has shown that theories die slowly despite contradictory evidence. Secondly,
nature does not care about the artificial borders in science we humans create
- there is exactly zero difference between quantum mechanical world,
chemistry, classical physical objects and cosmology - there is only physics.
Every proposed theory must also be paradox free - paradoxes should make your
internal alarm ring that something is wrong and should never be ignored.

Now the fun fact: We already have a unified theory that only requires the most
minimal and logical assumptions you can possible do. But as it breaks many
beloved paradigms and is obviously not a weekend read as every complete
physical model is at least very complex - it is not even discussed in
contemporary physics. The name of the model is: "Basic Structures of Matter -
Supergravitation Unified Theory" by Dr. Stoyan Sarg.

[https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Structures-Matter-
Supergravitat...](https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Structures-Matter-
Supergravitation-Unified/dp/1412083877)

There are some papers about this theory, but I have to say, when I started
with them, I did not really understand it well from them. I got some raw
picture, but no real understand of the model - the large book is the only
source for this model - unfortunately.

When I explain this model these days, I usually take a different order and
explain many parts of Chapter 12 right at the beginning. How those fundamental
particles crystallize into higher structures that later build up
protons/neutrons/electrons/... is one of the most beautiful processes I have
ever understood and actually so simple once understood. So I usually start
there now and then explain the CL space, electrons, protons/neutrons and then
some chemical topics.

My perspective changed quite dramatically while understanding this model. The
world is now so much more complex and much much deeper then the standard
model. In fact, the standard model and even quantum electrodynamics now look
like very rough approximations. To give you a perspective, a electron has
easily 2.44e+19 fundamental particles with very complex arrangement (the very
exact number unknown due some missing facts not yet determinable. There is a
partially finite recursive process involved those depth is not clear yet, only
the minimum depth is clear.

I asked many scientists about this theory, my old physics professors, famous
ones, local ones - also those who clearly state that something in our current
understand must be wrong. Sad truth is, they either don't know the model or
simply don't care.

So far, I have not found anything wrong with this model. Apart from the many
typos and sometimes a index error that you can easily spot, I only stumbled
upon one equation so far that I don't understand or is wrong - can't say yet.
But this would in the worst case, only change the distances between two
neutrons in tritium and that can't cause larger problems with the model
itself.

For those open minded people that have a deep interest in a true revolutionary
model, read this book. If I could only have one book, that's the one I will
pick ;)

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anders098
isn't Sheldon working on this topic too?

