
The Admiral of the String Theory Wars - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-admiral-of-the-string-theory-wars
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dang
Woit on this article:
[http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7705](http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7705).

(via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9506456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9506456))

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appleflaxen
Any "conventional" physicists here who can comment on this topic? The article
came across as being pretty favorable toward Woit, his arguments seem
compelling. I would love to hear the HN counterpoint, if there is one.

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auntienomen
Disclaimer. I'm not a string theorist. But I've worked in related fields and
know the basics of the subject.

Woit's arguing that the study of string theory should be abandoned because it
fails to make correct predictions about TeV scale particle physics.

He's wrong in two ways.

First, he's wrong to single out string theory for this particular failing. The
Standard Model has stood for 40 years. Many extensions have been proposed,
some string, some not. Not one has made a correct prediction. The stringy
extensions are more complicated than some other models, but they're also
better behaved in some important ways. Most Standard Model extensions are just
more of the same dysfunctional effective field theory nonsense. At least
strings is finite and couples to gravity.

Second, he's wrong that making these predictions is the correct metric for
judging the work of the string theorists. The people I know who study strings
study it because they see it as the best approach to learning new things about
quantum field theory and quantum gravity.

These are extremely hard subjects, and no approach has been very fruitful. But
string theory has been relatively successful as a source of new ideas. It's
given us new classes of standard model extensions, calculable examples of
confinement, new QFTs, calculable examples of holography and black hole
radiation. No other approach can say as much, which is why string theorists
are a large subpopulation of high energy theorists.

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dfc
I am probably missing something obvious, but why is he "the admiral"?

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exo762
"String theory wars" -> Star Wars. While talking about string theory Woit
exclaims: "It's a trap!".

