You may ask "Which Universe Am I In?"

[Sherlock Holmes]

The ultimate judge of any physical theory should be comparison with experiment, and Woit duly underlines string theory’s miserable score on this count: “Not a single experimental prediction has been made, nor are there any prospects for this to change soon.” He adds a pithy remark by Feynman: “String theorists don’t make predictions, they make excuses.” While most string theorists are honest, Woit uncovers cases of dishonesty and outright fraud, such as the episode in 2002 involving the brothers Bogdanov, a string-theory version of the infamous Sokal hoax.

Source: Physics World

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

He has his opinions. Others many others have theirs. You insist his is the last word.

"Because he has lived a lifetime of complicated calculations, though, Penrose has quite a bit more perspective than the average starting scientist. To get to the bottom of it all, he insists, physicists must force themselves to grapple with the greatest riddle of them all: the relationship between the rules that govern fundamental particles and the rules that govern the big things—like us—that those particles make up. In his powwow with Discover contributing editor Susan Kruglinksi, Penrose did not flinch from questioning the central tenets of modern physics, including string theory and quantum mechanics. Physicists will never come to grips with the grand theories of the universe, Penrose holds, until they see past the blinding distractions of today’s half-baked theories to the deepest layer of the reality in which we live."

Peter Woit

For the last eighteen years particle theory has been dominated by a single approach to the unification of the Standard Model interactions and quantum gravity. This line of thought has hardened into a new orthodoxy that postulates an unknown fundamental supersymmetric theory involving strings and other degrees of freedom with characteristic scale around the Planck length. […] It is a striking fact that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this complex and unattractive conjectural theory.

 

[Dante]

Peter Woit

"conjectural theory?"

Why is everyone but you referring to it as a theory?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

"conjectural theory?"

Why is everyone but you referring to it as a theory?

Well they're not obsessing over that, that's why. You can call it a "theory" if you want, but I don't think that's appropriate for an untestable hypothesis, I regard it as inappropriately implying it is testable, and it isn't so why call it a "theory" other than to mislead?

Look:

Scientific Theory

Scientific theories are testable and make verifiable predictions.[9] They describe the causes of a particular natural phenomenon and are used to explain and predict aspects of the physical universe or specific areas of inquiry (for example, electricity, chemistry, and astronomy). As with other forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are both deductive and inductive,[10] aiming for predictive and explanatory power. Scientists use theories to further scientific knowledge, as well as to facilitate advances in technology or medicine.

What does that say theories are? so if a model is not testable then it doesn't qualify for the grandiose title "theory",

So stop it, say something interesting for a change.

 

[ding]

But the net energy of our universe may be (and looks as if it probably is) zero. So what you are saying may be nonsensical.

I'm not seeing the issue. Walk me through what you think the issue is.

 

[Dante]

Is string theory still worth exploring? | Roger Penrose and Eric Weinstein battle Brian Greene​

 

[Dante]

Well they're not obsessing over that, that's why. You can call it a "theory" if you want, but I don't think that's appropriate for an untestable hypothesis, I regard it as inappropriately implying it is testable, and it isn't so why call it a "theory" other than to mislead?

Look:

Scientific Theory


What does that say theories are? so if a model is not testable then it doesn't qualify for the grandiose title "theory",

So stop it, say something interesting for a change.

Everybody calls it a theory. Some just attack -- the theory.

next

 

[Dante]

Well they're not obsessing over that, that's why. You can call it a "theory" if you want, but I don't think that's appropriate for an untestable hypothesis, I regard it as inappropriately implying it is testable, and it isn't so why call it a "theory" other than to mislead?

Look:

Scientific Theory


What does that say theories are? so if a model is not testable then it doesn't qualify for the grandiose title "theory",

So stop it, say something interesting for a change.

Your problem is what runs rampant here.

I mention what people call a theory and you set up an argument as if I am supporting string theory. Now, to step over your inane imbecilities here: What people are actually saying about "string theory"


02:08
"So String Theory does not at the moment answer the question of the quantum measurement problem and, I agree with Roger that that's a critical question that has faced quantum mechanics really since its Inception. So I agree that there are open questions that even String Theory, as it's currently formulated doesn't doesn't address. Has Roger addressed it with his approach that aspects of general relativity will be vital to the collapse of the wave function -- it's a powerful and interesting idea.

I've studied it. I'm not yet convinced of it, but it is among many ideas that people working in this Arena have put forward. I'm glad that people are working on this key question of quantum mechanics, but in terms of the importance of quantizing gravity, I would take a somewhat different perspective than Rogers. Quantum mechanics is an established part of the way the world Works. General relativity is an established part of the way the world works. If they can't play together if when you combine them you get nonsensical results, which was the state of play before String Theory gave us potential solution. Then your physical description of the world is fundamentally inconsistent and I don't think the universe is inconsistent and..."

 

[Wuwei]

Well they're not obsessing over that, that's why. You can call it a "theory" if you want, but I don't think that's appropriate for an untestable hypothesis, I regard it as inappropriately implying it is testable, and it isn't so why call it a "theory" other than to mislead?

Look:

Scientific Theory


What does that say theories are? so if a model is not testable then it doesn't qualify for the grandiose title "theory",

So stop it, say something interesting for a change.

I don't think it is known if string theory is testable. One hope is that it will unify gravity. If it does, then that seems to make it pass the "testable" requirement.

 

[Wuwei]

#quantummechanics



Probabilities. Sean Carroll's '"Many World's Theory" We have "The Quantum Measurement Problem"
We also have "The GRW Theory" touched on.
GRW Theory and Quantum Entanglement touched on.

Moderated by Brian Greene

I wonder what thee great minds think of Climate Change and human contributions?

Interesting video. An example of 9 outcomes on a dart board leaves me with a major question. To continue the analogy there are thousands of dart boards each creating another universe, but if dart board A has 9 outcomes and dart board B has nine, there are now 81 possible outcomes between them and 81 universes created. I'm sure you see where I'm going. An enormous continual exponential increase of the number of universes. I have not seen anyone address this apparent absurdity.

 

[Dante]

Interesting video. An example of 9 outcomes on a dart board leaves me with a major question. To continue the analogy there are thousands of dart boards each creating another universe, but if dart board A has 9 outcomes and dart board B has nine, there are now 81 possible outcomes between them and 81 universes created. I'm sure you see where I'm going. An enormous continual exponential increase of the number of universes. I have not seen anyone address this apparent absurdity.

They have ...

look for another video

 

[Wuwei]

They have ...

look for another video

I have been reading about cosmology since I was a kid, but I have not found anyone address the problem of countless superpositions collapsing and how the number of multiple states collapsing would have to expand exponentially. Do you have a reference?

 

[Dante]

I have been reading about cosmology since I was a kid, but I have not found anyone address the problem of countless superpositions collapsing and how the number of multiple states would have to expand exponentially. Do you have a reference?

I believe I heard people mention the possibility (not probabilities) of "An enormous continual exponential increase of the number of universes."

So I'm not sure I ever heard anyone take it beyond that. Maybe you could make a YouTube video on it

 

[Wuwei]

I have also wondered about the big ado on entanglement not being local. The photon does not experience space or time. Think of the Fitzgerald contraction seeing objects becoming thinner and thinner as you approach light speed. Space will shrink to zero at the speed of light, and the photon will be absorbed the instant it is created in it's own time frame.

That is well known physics. So entanglement over large distances is always local to the photon. But I have not seen that observation anywhere. It should give solace to those who think entanglement is "spooky."

 

[Wuwei]

I believe I heard people mention the possibility (not probabilities) of "An enormous continual exponential increase of the number of universes."

So I'm not sure I ever heard anyone take it beyond that. Maybe you could make a YouTube video on it

I'm up to my ears in youtube videos. Here is an example of the Mandelbrot set in a nine dimensional space:

 

[Dante]

I'm up to my ears in youtube videos. Here is an example of the Mandelbrot set in a nine dimensional space:

I used to (when I first went online early 2000s) I would visit a Japanese University where Mandelbrot stuff was wildly popular. That was before t became dangerous to surf websites of educational institutions (lots of pdf files dangerous)

 

[ShahdagMountains]

I'm not seeing the issue. Walk me through what you think the issue is.

Have you ever read Phillip Pullman - His Dark Materials? He deals with parallel universes.

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.​

 

[ding]

Have you ever read Phillip Pullman - His Dark Materials? He deals with parallel universes.

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.​

I have not. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Your problem is what runs rampant here.

I mention what people call a theory and you set up an argument as if I am supporting string theory. Now, to step over your inane imbecilities here: What people are actually saying about "string theory"


02:08
"So String Theory does not at the moment answer the question of the quantum measurement problem and, I agree with Roger that that's a critical question that has faced quantum mechanics really since its Inception. So I agree that there are open questions that even String Theory, as it's currently formulated doesn't doesn't address. Has Roger addressed it with his approach that aspects of general relativity will be vital to the collapse of the wave function -- it's a powerful and interesting idea.

I've studied it. I'm not yet convinced of it, but it is among many ideas that people working in this Arena have put forward. I'm glad that people are working on this key question of quantum mechanics, but in terms of the importance of quantizing gravity, I would take a somewhat different perspective than Rogers. Quantum mechanics is an established part of the way the world Works. General relativity is an established part of the way the world works. If they can't play together if when you combine them you get nonsensical results, which was the state of play before String Theory gave us potential solution. Then your physical description of the world is fundamentally inconsistent and I don't think the universe is inconsistent and..."

I was simply drawing the distinction between a formal testable theory and an elegant appealing but untestable model. If some model is not testable then that's relevant in science, that's all. Far too much pop-science is about models, interesting ideas and schemes and unfortunately this misleads the layman, misrepresents what a "proper" theory is, a true theory must survive brutal tests, rigor is essential.

Nothing wrong with discussing ideas and speculating so long as we understand that actual theories in physics can be used to make concrete predictions and we can compare those with real observations, I'm astonished that this is even seen as controversial, in a forum dedicated to science this should not even need to be said.

String theory is far beyond my mathematical skills, I first read about it in the late 70s as I was winding up my own studies of general relativity, I was impressed by the ideas, they do provide a mathematical framework that seems to encompass much of the world but require more spatial dimensions that we observe.

The reason Penrose and others take the view they do, is that the model does not predict anything new, anything more than the other theories we have predict. So spacetime might have more than four dimensions and be built from "strings" or there might be a completely different model too, because string theory does not predict anything new we cannot test it and so we will never know.

We can't say "If string theory is correct, then we should expect to see XXX when we do YYY" but we can't say that, we have no way of finding out - that's the basis of Penrose's position (and many others). Everything we can predict with string theory we can already predict with other theories.

After general relativity was formalized and completed, there were lots of efforts by Einstein and other theoreticians to expand it to cover stuff not covered in GR, lots of these models were created but they were testable and so could be rejected, you likely know of Einstein's efforts to devise a unified field theory.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Important to note:

Whether a hypothesis is empirically falsifiable or not, it can still be regarded as a plausible explanation.