Dublin GR17: Penrose on physics Fashion, Faith, Fantasy

[Martin]

Every three years there is a big-time world conference on General Relativty and this year it is in Dublin 18-23 July

 

three years ago it was in [edit:correction] South Africa

and back in 1998 it was in India

so anybody in UK, now is your chance

 

this conference is about every facet of gravity theory and research

 

the gravity wave detectors

what observing binary pulsars and other neutron stars tells about gravity

all kind of gravity experiments, in space and on ground

theories of quantum gravity (john Baez will talk on Loop Quantum Gravity, quantum geometry, and spin foams)

 

here is the website, it has the program of talks, with brief summaries, on the lefthand sidebar----click on "recent additions to the program"

 

http://www.dcu.ie/~nolanb/gr17.htm

 

Stephen hawking made a surprise announcement that he had a solution of the BH information paradox and would be coming to GR17 to talk that up

 

----

 

There is also a public lecture by Roger Penrose that I believe will have a lot to do with String Theory and related fancy mathematical doodads.

Penrose talk is called

 

FASHION, FAITH AND FANTASY IN THEORETICAL PHYSICS

 

and it is at the Dublin concert hall at 8PM on Friday 23 July

 

String theory has had a kind of tulip-mania fad or craze and now seems to be in decline. But it is also a kind of religious faith for some of those who have invested a lot of effort in understanding it.

 

so there are some diehard believers who will give you elaborate specious arguments why it is impossible that any of the newer approaches to quantizing gravity can work

 

and it lives in a kind of fantasy realm, making no testable predictions and ungoverned by experimental evidence, so the researchers indulge in untrammelled mathematical inventiveness

 

finally such an embarrassing richness of possibilities has emerged that the distinct variations of the theory have been estimated by its insiders (Susskind, Douglas) at ten-to-the-100 different base states and things like the Anthropic Principle, a latterday Hand of God, are being invoked in a desperate effort to find the right one.

So it has gotten bogged down in its own fecundity.

 

Well people are beginning to point this out

and i guess Penrose's title "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in Theoretical Physics" will call attention to plight of string theory, whatever he turns out to say.

 

he could have made the title shorter if he had just said "Pseudo-science"

 

a good place to follow the Decline of String melodrama is at Peter Woit's website---a mathematician at Columbia with a specialty in (non-string) mathematical physics----he as a fairly regular web-log and lots of academics drop in to comment and respond---and a certain amount of the latest gossip and conference news

 

here's the link to Peter's blog

http://math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/

[jana]

Every three years there is a big-time world conference on General Relativty and this year it is in Dublin 18-23 July

 

three years ago it was in Rio' date=' Brazil

and back in 1998 it was in India

so anybody in UK, now is your chance

 

this conference is about every facet of gravity theory and research

 

the gravity wave detectors

what observing binary pulsars and other neutron stars tells about gravity

all kind of gravity experiments, in space and on ground

theories of quantum gravity (john Baez will talk on Loop Quantum Gravity, quantum geometry, and spin foams)

 

here is the website, it has the program of talks, with brief summaries, on the lefthand sidebar----click on "recent additions to the program"

 

http://www.dcu.ie/~nolanb/gr17.htm

 

Stephen hawking made a surprise announcement that he had a solution of the BH information paradox and would be coming to GR17 to talk that up

 

----

 

There is also a public lecture by Roger Penrose that I believe will have a lot to do with String Theory and related fancy mathematical doodads.

Penrose talk is called

 

FASHION, FAITH AND FANTASY IN THEORETICAL PHYSICS

 

and it is at the Dublin concert hall at 8PM on Friday 23 July

 

String theory has had a kind of tulip-mania fad or craze and now seems to be in decline. But it is also a kind of religious faith for some of those who have invested a lot of effort in understanding it.

 

so there are some diehard believers who will give you elaborate specious arguments why it is impossible that any of the newer approaches to quantizing gravity can work

 

and it lives in a kind of fantasy realm, making no testable predictions and ungoverned by experimental evidence, so the researchers indulge in untrammelled mathematical inventiveness

 

finally such an embarrassing richness of possibilities has emerged that the distinct variations of the theory have been estimated by its insiders (Susskind, Douglas) at ten-to-the-100 different base states and things like the Anthropic Principle, a latterday Hand of God, are being invoked in a desperate effort to find the right one.

So it has gotten bogged down in its own fecundity.

 

Well people are beginning to point this out

and i guess Penrose's title "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in Theoretical Physics" will call attention to plight of string theory, whatever he turns out to say.

 

he could have made the title shorter if he had just said "Pseudo-science"

 

a good place to follow the Decline of String melodrama is at Peter Woit's website---a mathematician at Columbia with a specialty in (non-string) mathematical physics----he as a fairly regular web-log and lots of academics drop in to comment and respond---and a certain amount of the latest gossip and conference news

 

here's the link to Peter's blog

http://math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/[/quote']

 

These are awfully strong remarks. I hope you'll go beyond these very nonspecific statements and provide us with some details. For example, I know that only string theory gives the correct all important hawking-bekenstein black hole entropy-area relation. Can you say something about this in connection with other theories?

 

Btw, did you not notice that there are three stringy lectures at GR17? Baez gives the only LQG lecture and the only other non-stringy quantum gravity related lecture is hawkings.

[Martin]

... I know that only string theory gives the correct all important hawking-bekenstein black hole entropy-area relation.

 

Hi jana, wouldn't you please give a reference to the basic paper on that

so a casual passerby has a chance to look up what you mean?

IIRC it is in arxiv. We should get into the habit of citing sources.

 

In balanced (not biased) comparisons of the various approaches what I usually hear is that it is six of one versus half a dozen, because one approach gets the right number four, but is restricted in applicability, while the other applies very generally for all kinds of holes, but has an undetermined coefficient in the formula.

 

But if you want to present it that "only" string theory succeeds in that department then maybe you should give a bit of a lecture on this. I would love to hear your exposition. I am not worried about anyone here getting deluded---just come out boldly and deliver your pro-string message if you have one.

 

I have to point out that your slant on it differs considerably from what an authoritative professional survey article would say, like by Enrique Alvarez recently---he is primarily a string theorist but knows something about non-string approaches and he has been invited several times to give a loop/string comparison at various conferences because he seems able to give a balanced view.

Or perhaps Steve Carlip or Gary Horowitz, or Lee Smolin (for whom i will say that he gives a less one-sided picture than you) or whoever might have fairly recent (2003-2004) survey articles that compare progress in the different approaches.

 

You have indicated you are an undergraduate at Toronto U and will be taking a course for seniors in the Fall. You also say your main familiarity is with loop and simplicial quantum gravity and you are psyching yourself up to learn string theory.

 

but sometimes you sound to me oddly like a much older person---the string cheerleader who got religion in the 1990s, or the type of diehard string booster i've had plenty of experience with---they talk with a verneer of authority but give a real lopsided view.

 

So I would urge you to talk more like a student at Toronto U and give some references to papers in arxiv---back up what you want to say with some arxiv links.

 

(even Urs Schreiber the moderator of sci.physics.string does that, even jacques distler at string coffee table does that----you can do it too)

 

just assume I wont believe anything you say unless you give a link to the paper

 

like. for the area-entropy relation for extremely fast-spinning or highly electrically charged black holes IIRC there is Vafa 1996 so say

http://arxiv.org/hep-th/9600000

but please fill in the number so I dont have to do a search for your references

and if the result has been extended to any type that is more like an ordinary black hole such as astronomers witness then please give the arxiv number for that. I would be delighted to see the paper!

 

If you give sources it will be more fun,

and I will learn a lot more,

AND who knows you might even succeed in educating me

[Martin]

If we are going to cite references I will start

with what i think is a kind of model unbiased survey of

quantum gravity by someone whose research is mostly string

 

Enrique Alvarez

"Quantum Gravity"

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0405107

 

 

I dont particularly like Alvarez or his survey papers, but

he has never done any Loop Gravity or Simplicial gravity

he has done a bunch of String and he has a balanced perspective.

 

some HEP people---particle theorists---stringy folk--invited

Alvarez to give a survey last year at a conference July 2003 and it was

 

Enrique Alvarez

"Loops versus Strings"

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0307090

 

those are offered as benchmarks for a fair balanced perspective

 

and also (you may not like this as much if you are strongly pro-string) Lee Smolin has done research both in String and Loop and several related areas as well

and he did a survey last year where I think he bent over backwards to be fairminded and to compare progress (and prospects for experimental testing) point by point in a bunch of categories

 

So what do you say to this survey?

 

Lee Smolin

"How far are we from the quantum theory of gravity?"

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0303185

 

I also really like a 1998 survey by Rovelli of ALL the different approaches to quantizing gravity then being pursued

 

Carlo Rovelli

"Strings, loops, and others"

(plenary lecture on quantum gravity at the GR15 conference)

http://arxiv.org/gr-qc/9803024

 

Now I am hoping to get a selective bunch of links from you to back up some of your claims. so I have started by tossing out some general surveys by reputable people that kind of scope out the whole quantum gravity area.

 

Im eager to see what sources you come up with!

 

regards,

[jana]

Hi jana, wouldn't you please give a reference to the basic paper on that so a casual passerby has a chance to look up what you mean? IIRC it is in arxiv. We should get into the habit of citing sources.

 

I’ll try, but we should also get into the habit of giving more than just citations. I’m sure you’ll agree that these forums are meant more for conversation than bibliographies.

 

 

what I usually hear is that it is six of one versus half a dozen, because one approach gets the right number four, but is restricted in applicability, while the other applies very generally for all kinds of holes, but has an undetermined coefficient in the formula

 

What we’re after is a microscopic picture of black holes that macroscopically reproduces the black hole area-entropy relation. The crucial question is; does the entropy in this formula arise from the contribution of all degrees of freedom of black holes (I inferred from this paper that this is the majority view), or only those associated with their event horizons?

 

Let’s look at LQG first. It’s easy to make a guess about how things must work in LQG. Since according to hawking-bekenstein, black hole entropy is area-extensive, only area-extensive degrees of freedom can contribute, and these of course are given by spin-network links puncturing surfaces. It is also obvious that this surface must be the event horizon since what other surface could possibly give the hawking-bekenstein relation? Given these two assumptions, we don’t even have to perform any calculation to see that the resulting entropy will be in the macroscopic limit proportional to the event horizon area. Unfortunately it is also clear that this calculation can’t on it’s own determine the constant of proportionality, which gives cause to be dubious about LQG since a correct non—perturbative QG theory should be able to provide us with this without the need to resort to external arguments.

 

Thus LQG must take the (less popular) view that black hole entropy arises only from degrees of freedom associated with event horizons.

 

So far this is just mathematical handwaving in the form of dimensional analysis. What we need is the kind of aforementioned additional physical argument to justify this mathematical one. The sorts of arguments used to do this are actually statistical-thermodynamical. For example, carlo rovelli considers in this paper the thermodynamical behavior of a system containing a schwartzshild black holes and simply notes that their behavior cannot be affected by their interior degrees of freedom.

 

Naively, this intuitive argument makes the majority view seem absurd. Yet not only does the string argument in this paper yield this view, it gives precisely the hawking-bekenstein relation, correct coefficient and all! I don’t understand the details of the argument, but I’ll say what I do know.

 

The hard part of the argument, which I don’t understand, is the construction of black holes from D-branes. The entropy is obtained using the representations theory of D-branes which allow one to determine the total number of states of the black hole by explicitly counting them. On the other hand, completely independent of this, we can compute the hawking-bekenstein entropy from the mass and charge of the hole vis a vis the masses and charges of the individual constituent D-branes. On comparing these two very different calculations we find, seemingly miraculously, that they agree. Note that unlike with LQG, it appears that there is no need for appeal to independent arguments to produce the correct result. I must say that I’ve found it quite difficult to remain unmoved by all of this.

 

As you alluded to, the D-brane calculation only works for extremal and near-extremal holes. The latter category is important because it means that there is every reason to believe that the result will survive the breaking of supersymmetry, if we ever find a way to do so. But unlike string theory, all of the degrees of freedom of LQG have been identified so one cannot expect some new constant to suddenly appear within it. So if you believe, as I suppose most probably do, that the correct QG theory should be able to produce the hawking-bekenstein relation in toto, and that the majority view that hawking-beckenstein entropy accounts for all degrees of freedom is true, you should be worried about LQG.

 

 

sometimes you sound to me oddly like a much older person---the string cheerleader who got religion in the 1990s, or the type of diehard string booster i've had plenty of experience with---they talk with a verneer of authority but give a real lopsided view.

 

This sounds almost like an insult.

 

 

just assume I wont believe anything you say unless you give a link to the paper

 

Just assume I won't believe you understand anything you say unless you explain things in your own words.

[Martin]

Well let's see what we have!

 

Jana bless your heart! You have provided links!!!!

 

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9908031

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9603063

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/9601029

 

I see you have left it to me to fish up the authors and titles, so I will do that presently. Off hand from the numbering I am puzzled. You are a Toronto U undergrad taking a senior class in the fall, so you are, like 20 years old in 2004---born around 1984

 

You are referring back to 1996 papers, stuff written when you were 12 years old!!!!!

 

Maybe not much has happened in some lines of research since the 1990s but a lot has happend in the various approaches to quantum gravity (not string) that I follow. I will get back to that.

 

but anyway you are a sweetheart for getting links to sources.

 

there is such a lot of intellectually dishonest hype in the world and such misconceptions that sources are a virtual necessity----dont take anything on faith!---here I am giving the young college student my sage advice but I am sure you know this already.

 

I’ll try, but we should also get into the habit of giving more than just citations. I’m sure you’ll agree that these forums are meant more for conversation than bibliographies.

 

No I dont actually. the sources for claims made about scholarly research are as important as the conversational claims

 

i have been exposed to string propagandists who were so dishonest that when they say something you could practically take it that the opposite was true. So I dont trust anyone I suspect might have an ax to grind unless they regularly cite references.

 

...

This sounds almost like an insult.

 

Yes it does doesnt it? No offense intended to jana the Toronto U undergrad student!

You can probably understand where I'm coming from, I'm bored with string propagandists constantly hyping string theory---like it is some sacred crusade---and using phony arguments to badmouth more recent alternative approaches to quantizing gravity!

 

As an undergraduate-age person you are presumably more open-minded and I would hope you dont suffer from a neurotic need to believe in something.

 

Personally I have no commitment to any one approach---I believe in nothing and have no interest in promoting or persuading anybody.

 

I see nothing interesting has happend in string since around 2001 so i look on it as (at least temporarily) a dead field----so I watch other areas where a lot HAS been happening since 2001 or so and developments are hopeful:

 

barrett-crane

spinfoam

Hawking path integral (recently some signs of action, tho almost disappeared off the map for a while)

Loop gravity

Simplex gravity

 

If you, as a Toronto U undergrad, are interested only in making up arguments why none of these approaches can possibly work---which is something we cant know ahead of time---all I can do is smile and listen politely.

If you know something about any of them and can discuss it I would love that.

 

Cant stress this enough. I am looking for other people who have an interest in discussing recent advances in quantum gravity and can supply links to recent research papers to substantiate what they say.

 

You seem like the ideal person since IIRC you say your background is in Loop and Simplex gravity----what recent papers have you read in simplicial?

Have you looked at the Ambjorn, Jurkiewicz, Loll paper?

hep-th/0404156

I think it is dynamite. Very exciting

[jana]

Well let's see what we have!

 

Jana bless your heart! You have provided links!!!!

 

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9908031

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9603063

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/9601029

 

I see you have left it to me to fish up the authors and titles' date=' so I will do that presently. Off hand from the numbering I am puzzled. You are a Toronto U undergrad taking a senior class in the fall, so you are, like 20 years old in 2004---born around 1984

 

You are referring back to 1996 papers, stuff written when you were 12 years old!!!!![/quote']

 

Huh?. Why can't I read papers now that were originally written at a time before I was able to understand them?

 

Maybe not much has happened in some lines of research since the 1990s but a lot has happend in the various approaches to quantum gravity (not string) that I follow. I will get back to that.

 

but anyway you are a sweetheart for getting links to sources.

 

there is such a lot of intellectually dishonest hype in the world and such misconceptions that sources are a virtual necessity----dont take anything on faith!---here I am giving the young college student my sage advice but I am sure you know this already.

 

 

 

No I dont actually. the sources for claims made about scholarly research are as important as the conversational claims

 

i have been exposed to string propagandists who were so dishonest that when they say something you could practically take it that the opposite was true. So I dont trust anyone I suspect might have an ax to grind unless they regularly cite references.

 

 

 

Yes it does doesnt it? No offense intended to jana the Toronto U undergrad student!

You can probably understand where I'm coming from' date=' I'm bored with string propagandists constantly hyping string theory---like it is some sacred crusade---and using phony arguments to badmouth more recent alternative approaches to quantizing gravity!

 

As an undergraduate-age person you are presumably more open-minded and I would hope you dont suffer from a neurotic need to believe in something.

 

Personally I have no commitment to any one approach---I believe in nothing and have no interest in promoting or persuading anybody.

 

I see nothing interesting has happend in string since around 2001 so i look on it as (at least temporarily) a dead field----so I watch other areas where a lot HAS been happening since 2001 or so and developments are hopeful:

 

barrett-crane

spinfoam

Hawking path integral (recently some signs of action, tho almost disappeared off the map for a while)

Loop gravity

Simplex gravity

 

If you, as a Toronto U undergrad, are interested only in making up arguments why none of these approaches can possibly work---which is something we cant know ahead of time---all I can do is smile and listen politely.

If you know something about any of them and can discuss it I would love that.

 

Cant stress this enough. I am looking for other people who have an interest in discussing recent advances in quantum gravity and can supply links to recent research papers to substantiate what they say.

 

You seem like the ideal person since IIRC you say your background is in Loop and Simplex gravity----what recent papers have you read in simplicial?

Have you looked at the Ambjorn, Jurkiewicz, Loll paper?

hep-th/0404156

I think it is dynamite. Very exciting[/quote']

 

Since so far I have failed to post material that interests you, maybe you should choose the topic or paper. I am happy to discuss anything since I need the practice. If I don't understand something that you do understand, would you mind helping me out a bit on that topic?

 

btw, what is it that I posted that made you think I may be some kind of string zealot?

[Martin]

oops I missed your latest reply before I posted,

to catch up, first I will find out the papers you cited:

 

Well let's see what we have!

 

Jana bless your heart! You have provided links!!!!

 

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9908031

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9603063

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/9601029

 

I see you have left it to me to fish up the authors and titles' date=' so I will do that presently. Off hand from the numbering I am puzzled. You are a Toronto U undergrad taking a senior class in the fall, so you are, like 20 years old in 2004---born around 1984...

[/quote']

 

On the nature of black hole entropy

Ted Jacobson (1999)

 

Black Hole Entropy from Loop Quantum Gravity

Carlo Rovelli (1996)

 

Microscopic Origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking Entropy

A. Strominger, C. Vafa (1996)

 

the Strominger Vafa is a classic!

unfortunately it just applies to extremal black holes----ones that are so electrically charged, or whirling so fast, that they can just barely hold together

 

it has seemed very difficult to extend the result beyond this limitation, to include holes more like those that astronomers observe and which are more like the Schwarzschild BH people normally consider

 

do you have a reference the would bring us up to date on that?

[Martin]

In your last post there was this interesting BTW question

 

"... I am happy to discuss anything since I need the practice. If I don't understand something that you do understand, would you mind helping me out a bit on that topic?

 

btw, what is it that I posted that made you think I may be some kind of string zealot?"

 

this will take some introspection. I take it you know the type of zealot I mean "Loop gravity cannot possibly be right. String/M theory is the language in which God wrote the World..." and so on.

 

Most of the time you dont sound like one of the Faithful, the fervent believers etc.

 

But I was worried by your series of rather lengthy essays in the other thread which gave logical arguments, it seemed to me, that the Lorentzian dynamical triangulations approach of the new Ambjorn et al paper could not possibly succeed.

 

You may have noticed that a some experienced people were excited by that paper and/or hopeful about the approach----Matt Visser, Thomas Larsson, John Baez.

 

With a breakthrough that is obviously just getting started and has a lot more room to grow it is premature to try to argue from purely logical grounds that it must necessarily fail.

 

This is a reaction not appropriate to a young college student (as you introduced yourself) but to someone with a substantial investment in string theory who feels threatened.

 

there is a tendency, which you may have noticed, for those heavily invested to abhor any competition for the limelight, and vigorously deny that alternatives are making progress, and even to argue that they cannot possibly succeed!

 

What would it cost you, as a 20 year old entering senior at Toronto, to share my hopes that the Ambjorn paper, with its computer simulation of the geometry of the universe, opens up a real avenue to quantum gravity?

 

but to a zealot, such thoughts would be anathema. you see my point I think

[Martin]

Here is a illustrative sample of what you wrote in that other thread:

 

"In fact the argument I studied says that there can be no background-independent QG theories since the (conjectural) domination in quantum gravity of transplanckian scattering processes by the production of correspondingly extremely massive and hence very large black holes (tom banks calls this conjecture “asymptotic darkness”) ruins universality. The idea is simply that asymptotic darkness means that transplanckian scattering instead of probing short distances, instead probes distances of order the size of these very large black holes. The resulting entwining of large scale geometry with the high energy spectrum means that the fundamental degrees of freedom depend on vacuum dynamics thus preventing background-independence. This is an example of the celebrated but still mysterious “UV/IR connection” which is yet another idea intimately related to holography."

 

here's the link to your post (I hope, otherwise its to one of mine right after it so back up to find yours)

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?p=60966#post60966

 

jana this is such tortured reasoning! background independence is something very simple that 1915 gen relativity has in a simple

extremely obvious way---its a fundamental characteristic of GR:

 

there is a basic continuum set of points (a manifold) and you start with no metric on it---so there is no prior commitment to a geometry

 

the metric, which determines the shape by giving distances between points, IS the graviational field---and the point of the theory is that the field (the metric, the geometry) emerges dynamically as a solution to the main equation

 

any theory that wants to be free of a prior commitment to geometry, and let the geometry emerge, can be background indep

 

but string theory isnt background independent so it does not have the fundamental characteristic of General Relativity

 

You know all this

 

So what I have heard over and over from string-boosters is ways to obfuscate and duck this issue

 

One says "background indendence is impossible, any theory that tries to get it will fail"

 

Another says "background independence is really not background idependence but something else entirely" lost in a fog of arcane acronyms.

 

Another says "background independence is really something else and furthermore it is impossible to achieve this something else"

 

And then "furthermore it is impossible that a quantum version of General Relativity can have true background independence".

 

But the Loop gravity and Foam gravity and Simplex gravity people dont seem to make it so obscure. They just go ahead and build their theories to agree with Gen Rel and not have prior fixed geometry for the spacetime.

 

And these are smart people so if there is some reason this is impossible that you, the undergrad, can think of (like in that quote) then they might well have thought of it themselves, I reckon, and decided it was impossible and not be trying.

 

It is always possible that Tom Banks "asymptotic darkness" scenario does not apply----that scenario was in a paper he wrote with a very glum prognosis for string theory in it----IIRC it was his "A Critique of Pure String Theory"----or maybe it was his "Is there a string theory Landscape".

He is an internal critic of string who is worth listening to.

 

But that black holish scenario argument of his may just apply the purposes he made it for and not mean much about the progress of other approaches to quantizing GR.

 

I think you get my point---there are background independent approaches to quantum gravity going ahead, quite a lot of current progress.

 

the arguments you came up that this progress is impossible

seem rather strained and far-fetched (depending on Tom Banks asymptotic darkness business etc) and likely to be contradicted in a straightforward way by events.

 

they sound like denial of what you wish were not happening

(this is in reply to your BTW question as to why I suspected you

might be a True Believer type instead of a student)

[jana]

In your last post there was this interesting BTW question

 

"... I am happy to discuss anything since I need the practice. If I don't understand something that you do understand' date=' would you mind helping me out a bit on that topic?

 

btw, what is it that I posted that made you think I may be some kind of string zealot?"

 

this will take some introspection. I take it you know the type of zealot I mean "Loop gravity cannot possibly be right. String/M theory is the language in which God wrote the World..." and so on.

 

Most of the time you dont sound like one of the Faithful, the fervent believers etc.

 

But I was worried by your series of rather lengthy essays in the other thread which gave logical arguments, it seemed to me, that the Lorentzian dynamical triangulations approach of the new Ambjorn et al paper could not possibly succeed.[/quote']

 

It’s very important to understand how any given theory can be wrong. This is as true of string theory as it is of any other theory.

 

LQG etc was fun to learn, but I’m now at a later stage where I am ready to deepen my understanding of these approaches by trying to understand better what their problems are.

 

However I’m not at that later stage with string theory yet and must first learn about it in more detail. Later on I’ll be in a better position to appreciate the problems with string theory. But this much I do know: Your sermons about string theory being in the toilet are not true and all you have to be is part of the physics community to know this is so.

[Martin]

Your sermons about string theory being in the toilet are not true and all you have to be is part of the physics community to know this is so.

 

Few people could combine "toilet" and "physics community" in the same sentence with such verve.

 

Tell us what it's like being "part of the physics community" up there in Toronto

[jana]

Few people could combine "toilet" and "physics community" in the same sentence with such verve.

 

Tell us what it's like being "part of the physics community" up there in Toronto

 

Whatever.

[Martin]

Whatever.

 

 

OK I guess it is time to take the mask off. You said rather

sweetly in another thread "I'm an undergraduate, so I could be wrong"

 

but you are not an undergraduate at Toronto

for present purposes you are isomorphic with Jeffery Winkler

a diehard string loyalist who used to post a lot

on sci.physics.research

 

nobody has for-sure identities on the internet but isomorphic

you sure are because you talk and act the same

 

IIRC Jeffery was born around 1970 and didnt finish a physics major

at Longbeach but taught himself a lot of string theory. So every once

in a while he gets hung up with basic undergraduate level mistakes

(like sets of measure zero, and gravitational mass of binary systems

and stuff) but he sounds brilliant when he is flinging around the

highlevel QFT acronyms. I reckon he's very smart. You could

re-register here as Jeffery Winkler and I wouldnt know the difference

except it would be more staightforward than your coming here

pretending to be someone you are not----like a 20 year old woman.

 

Anyway, in whatever future life or persona, good luck Jeff!

[jana]

 

OK I guess it is time to take the mask off. You said rather

sweetly in another thread "I'm an undergraduate' date=' so I could be wrong"

 

but you are not an undergraduate at Toronto

for present purposes you are isomorphic with Jeffery Winkler

a diehard string loyalist who used to post a lot

on sci.physics.research

 

nobody has for-sure identities on the internet but isomorphic

you sure are because you talk and act the same

 

IIRC Jeffery was born around 1970 and didnt finish a physics major

at Longbeach but taught himself a lot of string theory. So every once

in a while he gets hung up with basic undergraduate level mistakes

(like sets of measure zero, and gravitational mass of binary systems

and stuff) but he sounds brilliant when he is flinging around the

highlevel QFT acronyms. I reckon he's very smart. You could

re-register here as Jeffery Winkler and I wouldnt know the difference

except it would be more staightforward than your coming here

pretending to be someone you are not----like a 20 year old woman.

 

Anyway, in whatever future life or persona, good luck Jeff! [/quote']

 

.......................

[[Tycho?]]

.......................

 

 

If he's right or wrong its hilarious either way.

[jana]

its hilarious

 

And pathetic.