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STRUNG_ALONG

                                             December 25, 2015
                                             December 02, 2020

  At slashdot, the UnknownSoldier,           Based on material
  objecting to falsification                 posted to slashdot.
  fanaticism wrote:

  "By that logic: The Big Bang Theory is not Science,
   hell, most of Astrophysics is not science either...
   If we tossed out every scientific philosophy
   simply because we didn't have a way to (yet) test
   it, Science would remain an incredible narrow
   domain.  Science is supposed to be about Truth.
   Once we start artificially limiting how the Truth is
   arrived at you have a cult / dogma."
                  
   I concurred:   
                  
   Yeah, you've got it: there is no Definition of Science that
   doesn't exclude a bunch of stuff that certainly seems like
   science.       
                  
   And no, Virginia, Popper's falsification is not accepted
   by actual scientists as the fundamental principle of science:
                  
        http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
                  
                  
   In the case of String Theory we've got a bunch of
   smart folks working very hard at making
   inferences pushing the limits of what's known and
   what's knowable. If it was easy to do experiments
   to settle these issues, then they'd have been
   done already and the frontier would be somewhere
   else. It doesn't follow that no one is ever going
   to come up with relevent experimental data, and
   scientific theories don't actually come with
   expiration dates, like, "must be verified by
   Christmas".    
                  
                  
   These guys were working on a quickie
   experiment to settle an aspect of string theory
   (though I expect someone to jump in with a
   dogmatic definition of string theory that
   excludes the theory that the universe has a
   distributed information character to it in the
   same manner as a hologram).
                  
     http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/12/controversial-experiment-sees-no-evidence-universe-hologram
                  
                  
  mbone wrote:    
                  
  "Also, there is the pesky fact that predictions
  have been made about the foundations of string
  theory (that, for example, the LHC would detect
  the supersymmetric partners of existing
  particles), and they have not been born out by
  experiment"     
                  
  I don't claim to be an expert on String Theory,
  but that doesn't reflect my understanding of it at
  all.  String theorists do a lot of calculations
  assuming supersymmetry, but it's essentially just
  a mathematical simplification: it's understood
  that the actual universe we're living in is not
  supersymmetric.  They're exploring the "landscape"
  of possible universes, and hoping that
  understanding the supersymmetric case will help
  with the non-supersymmetic ones.


  An anonymous comment:

  "Testable in principle means jack shit. Testable
  in physics is not some kind of eternal property.
  It is contextual to a specific time and place."

  But I want my proof and I want it now. It makes me
  all squiggy and uncomfortable to live with
  uncertainty. Science is supposed to be the font of
  absolute knowledge, if they can't give it to me,
  then what business do they have calling themselves
  Scientists! What a bunch of con-artists. I may
  have to go back to EST or AKB48 or something.

  radarskiy wrote:
  "If string theory is untestable in principle, 
  how do you explain the existence of tests?"

  "Expanded solar-system limits on violations of the equivalence principle"
   James Overduin, Jack Mitcham and Zoey Warecki,
   Classical and Quantum Gravity, Volume 31, Number 1. IOP:
   http://m.iopscience.iop.org/ar...
   arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.1202

   "Four-Qubit Entanglement Classification from String Theory",
   L. Borsten, D. Dahanayake, M. J. Duff, A. Marrani, and W. Rubens
   Physical Review Letters 105, 100507.
   APS: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab...
   arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.4915

   "Permutation orbifolds and holography",
   Felix M. Haehl, Mukund Rangamani
   Journal of High Energy Physics 2015:163
   Springer: http://link.springer.com/artic...
   arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2759

   "Quest for the Perfect Liquid: Connecting Heavy Ions,
   String Theory, and Cold Atoms"
   Barbara Jacak, John E. Thomas, Clifford Johnson,
   Symposium at tahe AAAS Amual Meeting 2009
   https://www.bnl.gov/aaas09/per...


   losfromla wrote:

   "The real goal is to keep getting money from
   starry eyed governmental agencies. It is another
   way to continue the flow of that awesome white
   collar welfare ..."

   So, you know a bunch of string theorists, and that's
   you're impression of their character?  You've got
   some sociological studies on hand that proves this?

   Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.  And being
   sloppy about evidence when making accusations about
   people being sloppy about evidence lays one open to
   inane meta jokes.


   If you want to know something about the promise
   (and embarassments) of string theory, I suggest
   you start with Leonard Susskind.
                                                          LEONARD_SUSSKIND
   He's one of the original string theorists, and he's
   still around and kicking the ideas back and forth.
   Boning up on Leonard Susskind is genuinely easy to
   do, he's written a bunch of really good popular
   books like "The Cosmic Landscape", and his physics
   classes at Stanford have been made available via
   youtube.  He's a physicist in the mold of someone
   like Richard Fenyman...  He does not come off like
   he's interested in bullshitting anybody.




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