this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Not sure if you are serious? If so, I think you probably didn't understand why she is angry. As she clearly states, studying string theory in itself is totally valid. But the way they presented their ideas or let their ideas be presented is the reason she is angry.
Yes, I’m serious.
They presented their ideas the way every excited scientist does. Being angry at them for that is kind of silly. Should I be angry that I was taught the “fact” that animals and plants migrated between stationary continents via land bridges? That scientists were excitedly drawing up complex bridges and timelines? That they told everyone about their fabulous revolutionary bridges? Nope. It’s just one funny step in a funny dance humanity does.
Angrily putting up a picture of herself as a child in the 90’s who was excited about string theory and saying she was betrayed by later work? I don’t get it.
I watched the video a couple of weeks ago, I think, so my recall might not be exact. However, my takeaway wasn't that the scientists expressed excitement about their ideas. Instead, I think her issue was that they continued to outwardly express excitement and hype their field even after it was obvious that it was an avenue of inquiry that could never be meaningfully tested. I think she found these later actions to be disingenuous and harmful to the larger field.
Whether her assessment is accurate, I can't really say since this isn't my field. However, I recall many of the discussions she cites in her summary and her characterization seems fair. My gut says that there is at least some validity to her criticisms.
Who is "they"? Every string theorist ever?
Her rant is dumb because she's mad at Brian Greene and is instead othering an entire group of physicists who simply worked hard on theory they thought might lead somewhere.
Well, I meant the field of string theory and the leadng scientists she mentioned. And calling her rant dumb seems like you are dismissing her argument without actually thinking about it. So you probably aren't interested in an open discussion either...
She only mentions Brian Greene and then lumps every single other string physicist in with him.
I'm calling it dumb because I listened to the whole thing, thought about it, and assessed it to be dumb.
You don't need half an hour to say "Brian Greene is a dingus who overrepresented his confidence in string theory to sell books", and that was the only legitimate point she actually made.
Yeah, people are distrustful of science in America, but to blame that all on string theory is absurd. Nothing about her argument is backed up by anything remotely resembling sociological research on trust in science, she just complains that people didn't want to spend 200B dollars on a particle accelerator and blames string theory cause she heard one crackpot mention it one time.