
Eric Weinstein may have found the answer to physics' biggest problems (2013) - allenleein
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/23/eric-weinstein-answer-physics-problems
======
cygx
And 5 ½ years later, I'm still waiting for a paper or at least a video
recording of the talk[1].

Maybe he did manage to "unify the twin geometries (Riemannian and
Ehresmannian) thought to ground the two most fundamental physical theories
(General Relativity and the so-called Standard Model of particle theory
respectively)" [2] - he does have the necessary mathematical background; but
making grand claims while keeping silent about the actual content makes you
look like a fraud or an ass...

[1]
[https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/339742655296716800](https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/339742655296716800)

[2]
[https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/eweinstein](https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/eweinstein)

------
pietroglyph
This is a good starting point on all of this (with links to criticism):
[https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=5927](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=5927)

Has this gone anywhere since 2013?

------
pgt
Link to lecture? The only video I can find is
[https://youtu.be/h5gnATQMtPg](https://youtu.be/h5gnATQMtPg)

It’s strange how much meta-content has been written about how wrong Weinstein
is, but none of the publications articulate his position or refute it. Show us
the math, and we’ll decide for ourselves. If anything, denials without
formulas strengthen the perceived novelty of his ideas - whatever they are!

~~~
cygx
_but none of the publications articulate his position or refute it_

Because as long as he doesn't publish, all we can do is speculate what his
position actually is...

------
rurban
Some of the predicted particles should have already been found by the LHC, but
they weren't observed. So it just remains a nice aesthetic theory, as many
others. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23632-how-to-test-
wei...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23632-how-to-test-weinsteins-
provocative-theory-of-everything)

------
hprotagonist
From wikipedia,

 _Eric Ross Weinstein (born October 1965) is an American mathematician,
economist, writer, and managing director of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel 's
investment firm.[1] He writes on investments, capitalism, science, and
mathematics. ... In May, 2013, Weinstein delivered a lecture, Geometric Unity.
It was promoted by Marcus du Sautoy as being a possible answer to some of the
problems in modern physics.[5] Few physicists attended the original lecture,
and no paper or preprint was published._

Sounds like he may not have found the answer, after all. He is certainly not a
practicing physicist, anyway.

~~~
gricardo99
Sounds like something that could have been said to dismiss Einstein, the
patent office clerk.

~~~
hprotagonist
Einstein published papers. To date, Weinstein has not.

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-
physics/...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/dear-
guardian-youve-been-played/)

 _I haven 't seen anybody claim Weinstein shouldn't have been invited to give
a colloquium at Oxford, and had his claims been less extraordinary, I'm sure
nobody would have minded if he gave some preliminary details without a paper.
They're more informal affairs, these colloquia; they should be about exciting
new ideas. But given his grandiose claims, it would have been wise to have
provided physicists with the gory details beforehand so they could better
assess the merits and target their questions accordingly. That's how science
advances. Combine that with an ill-advised major media splash -- well, that's
a recipe for a PR trainwreck, which is precisely what happened.

For my part, I've been especially struck by how careful every single physicist
I've seen comment on this publicly has been to correct this misperception that
the physics community is unwilling to listen to radical new ideas from outside
some kind of elistist "Inner Circle." Again, it's an appealing narrative;
that's why this particular framing was used, to cut off any immediate
objections at the knees. No doubt there are some hidebound traditionalists
lurking in the Ivory Tower, but there are far more dynamic, passionately
engaged physicists excited about any new revolutionary ideas that could set
physics on an exciting new course -- regardless of where they come from._

