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Comment by cyber_kinetist | Hacker News Reader

Over a couple of decades VCs have invested in vanity startups that cost billions of dollars like it's nothing, countless times.

I think half a billion isn't that expensive for a program that searches for a potential "theory of everything" that can profoundly change our understanding of the universe (even if it brings no results!)

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Then just call it maths, not physics?

you can still call it whatever you like!

Last time I called it ‘a haven for folks afraid to have testable theories’ I almost got banned!

Didn't string theory create the concept of supersymmetry, which had testable theories? They were proven wrong, but that's a good thing.

We're long past the point where people can claim string theory has contributed nothing. AdS/CFT correspondence helped us understand what happens to information in black holes, and brought us the holographic principle which now is looking like it might potentially be the next big conceptual revolution in physics. Holography is making meaningful predictions in nuclear and plasma physics right now

Holography desperately needs it's own Brian Greene style ambassador to share the good news. In terms of momentum and taking center stage, it's now in the place where String Theory used to be like 10-15 years ago as the frontier idea with all the excitement ever momentum behind it, and it has been borne from the fruit of string theory. It's quite amazing times we're living in but I think there's been no energy in the post covid world to take a breath and appreciate it.

Last i’d heard, ‘they provided an interesting alternative way of thinking of the problem’ but provided no unique insights or additional testable behaviors. The folks using the alternative theories ended up being able to formulate them more directly using other (‘normal’) physics later. Do you have a cite for anything contrary to that?

It doesn’t help that when something does finally seem experimentally provable (Craig Hogan noise for example), but then gets tested and seems disproven, then it gets ‘removed from Canon’ as it were and ‘is not string theory’.

It got retconned to ‘not string theory’ after that, if i remember correctly.

I'd like to express my doubts about your ability to understand their theories more colourfully, but I'm afraid I'm also under close scrutiny around here.

This exact long running issue with string theory is surely my imagination, and I’m the only one who has commented on it. luckily it’s easy to prove me wrong.

Right?

Is it though? The simplest fool can ask questions that stump the wisest of men.

Still waiting for an actual argument instead of passive aggressive ad hominem.

oh have you not seen the rest of the thread?

Where someone else gave an actual concrete info that I could respond to, and I did?

Have you?

Yes?

Then care to actually add some value to the conversation?

No?

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