Tyler Durden Wrote: > Well, you're kind of missing my point. You said that 'M' was for Moron, and > I was pointing out that the Morons working on this theory are in some ways > some of the most mathematically proficient people on the planet (and some > are just plain old great physicsts).
Well, of course I meant that the theory is the wrong approach, not that the people working on it were unskilled craftsmen. Skilled craftsmen can, of course, build both outhouses and palaces. > I'd point out the geat lessons to be taken from Kuhn's "structure of > Scientific Revolutions (with which I largely disagree, however). Basically, > that those of us who sit on "this" side of a revolution not only often > disagree with the new approach, we often don't even believe its actually > science. That could be the case here. (Feynman didn't think Superstrings was > physics as he knew it, but he was also fully aware that some of his most > respected colleagues were working on it). I'd agree with Feynman on this one. > >Manifolds are second countable Hausdorf spaces in which every point has a > >neighborhood homeomorphic to the open ball in R^N. I see no evidence that > >the Universe may be infinitely magnified and still remain manifold-like. > >If the small scale structure of the universe isn't manifold-like, then a > >theory which says it is an 11-dimensional manifold is not a great leap > >over a theory which says it is a 4-dimensional manifold. > I don't fully get your argument here, but I never claimed to be a > mathematical physicist. One of the fundamental notions of a manifold, is that any two points possess disjoint neighborhoods, no matter how close together the two points are, said neighborhoods containing an infinity of other points. Spacetime does not possess this property, because its only points are the intersections of the world lines of real and virtual elementary particles. Space and time are a statistical aggregate of this interaction of particles, and the notion that there is something "between" its discrete points is an illusion we only percieve at large scales. > If you are familiar with Kaluza and Klein (aparently useless pud-pulling > when it was developed), Kaluza and Klein forshadowed the modern idea that the internal symmetries of gauge fields were in reality full-fledged dimensions, as three dimensions of space and one of time were for the gravitational field. They did this by showing that general relativity in five dimensions correctly explained both gravity and electromagnetism. They missed the important point that if the extra dimension were closed and microscopic in size, that observers would still see a 3+1 dimensional universe. > you'll understand that string > theory arises directly from the notion that the small scale topological > structure of space time is entirely different from the large scale one. > Those extra 7/8 dimensions (depnding on how you count) never "unfolded" and > are only "visible" at Planck scales. Yes, if one allows the SU(3) symmetry of the strong force, the U(1) symmetry of electromagnetism, and the SU(2) of the weak force, to be real dimensions, in addition to three dimensions of space and one of time, one gets a 10 dimensional theory. Throwing in one more dimension so that all variations on the theory can be abstracted into a single all-encompassing theory gives 11 dimensions. We assume all but 4 of them are compactified. But this is more of an "internal symmetries are real dimensions too" issue, than a string issue. There's really nothing that stops you from having these microscopic dimensions, and still working with particles instead of strings. This does nothing about the issue I discussed earlier, about the universe being non-manifold-like at Planck scale, and manifold properties being statistical aggregates of particles interacting in a frothy manner. > >Remember that Einstein, in the days when gravitation and electromagnetism > >were the only known forces, spent a lot of time trying to incorporate > >electromagnetism into general relativity by making it the skew-symmetric > >part of a non-symmetric metric tensor. Einstein found inventing the math > >to do this "friggin' hard." It was also "friggin' wrong." > Uh, but the fact that it was "wrong" doesn't make Einstein a "moron". (And > also, saying that a physical theory is wrong might arguably be like saying > that a Picasso painting is "wrong", if you are a Kuhn true believer!) Again, bad things happen to good people, and moronic theories happen to smart scientists. The theories scientists invent after the thing that makes them world-renowned are frequently worthless. Science, after all, generally tries lots of things that don't work before tripping over the thing that does. > >Make me a machine that does something of practical value, for which string > >theory predicts the machine will work, and general relativity and the > >standard model predict the opposite. > Well, you seem to have some odd ideas about the goals of Superstrings. Being > able to re-extract the standard model as a "low energy" simplification was > and is a main goal for superstrings, as far as physics is concerned. Some > headway is being made, too. If all superstrings can do is regurgitate general relativity and the standard model, they are an exercise in futility. Occam's Razor would indicate that just using general relativity and the standard model in the first place is the proper answer. Right now, string theory can't even do that. > As for predicting the outcome of experiment, give it time. A few measurable > predictions are now being made, but remember the main domain of superstrings > are energies that correspond to 10^(-43) sec after the universe began. A > brute-force accelerator approach would require a ring larger than the > galaxy, so some cleverness will be in order. Any theory which requires me to own a galaxy-sized accelerator in order to do something unpredicted by conventional physics, is a gross exercise in mathematical self-gratification. > >I generally discount greatly any math or physics argument which has to > >appeal to "nonhuman civilizations" in search of profundity. > You seemed to have missed the point. You seemed to be claiming that the > goals of superstrings included "proving" that General relativity is "wrong", > and my point here was to show that one of the main and most brilliant > proponents of Superstrings (Witten) considers precisely the opposite as > being true. I think the problem here is not my missing points, but rather you failing to make them. The notion that most extraterrestrials would invent string theory before general relativity is silly. > General > >relativity is a simple extension in which Lorentz invariance is a local > >instead of a global property, and gravity and accelerated frames are > >locally indistinguishable. > Yes, and Saint Peter's dome is a straightforward application of a > paintbrush. Saint Peter's dome did not result from global extrapolation of simple local rules. > >Just as non-linear physics is like non-elephant biology, > If I understand you correctly, this is a great phrase (I'll have to steal > it). Please credit the Fortune program. > But we're good at solving linear equations. Many nonlinear equations > may not have "solutions" that we can write down with pen or paper, (or > even simulate on a computer for that matter)...ah well. Yes, it is very hard to write down the "equation" for a bumblebee, a human-equivalent AI, or the factors of a 2048 bit public RSA key. Is this because these things don't have "solutions?" Or perhaps it's because we're only looking at them from the elephant biology point of view. Hmmmm. > >M-Theory is a distraction, like injecting opiates, or arguing on Usenet. > Yikes. I understand the concept of having an opinion, but somehow I think > your arguments on this issue would not be very quick to discourage the likes > of Witten, Bunji Sakita (who I used to bump into on a regular basis), Greene > (who I went to HS with) and others. I would never presume to tell anyone what they should do for a hobby. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
