Notably, in the case of string theory, the fact that it predicts everything we currently observe plus new forces at the planck scale is currently better than all other theories of physics, because currently all other theories either predict something we have reason not to observe or limit themselves to a subset of predictions that other theories already predict, so the fact that string theory can predict everything we observe and predict (admittedly difficult to falsify) observations is enough to make it a leading theory.
No comment on whether the same applies to agent foundations.
in the case of string theory, the fact that it predicts
Hmm, my outsider impression is that there’s in fact a myriad “string theories”, all of them predicting everything we observe, but with no way to experimentally discern the correct one among them for the foreseeable future, which I have understood to be the main criticism. Is this broad-strokes picture fundamentally mistaken?
There are a large number of “string vacua” which contain particles and interactions with the quantum numbers and symmetries we call the standard model, but (1) they typically contain a lot of other stuff that we haven’t seen (2) the real test is whether the constants (e.g. masses and couplings) are the same as observed, and these are hard to calculate (but it’s improving).
Notably, in the case of string theory, the fact that it predicts everything we currently observe plus new forces at the planck scale is currently better than all other theories of physics, because currently all other theories either predict something we have reason not to observe or limit themselves to a subset of predictions that other theories already predict, so the fact that string theory can predict everything we observe and predict (admittedly difficult to falsify) observations is enough to make it a leading theory.
No comment on whether the same applies to agent foundations.
Hmm, my outsider impression is that there’s in fact a myriad “string theories”, all of them predicting everything we observe, but with no way to experimentally discern the correct one among them for the foreseeable future, which I have understood to be the main criticism. Is this broad-strokes picture fundamentally mistaken?
There are a large number of “string vacua” which contain particles and interactions with the quantum numbers and symmetries we call the standard model, but (1) they typically contain a lot of other stuff that we haven’t seen (2) the real test is whether the constants (e.g. masses and couplings) are the same as observed, and these are hard to calculate (but it’s improving).