As Adam Scherlis implies, the standard model turns out to be very effective at all the scales we can reach. There are a handful of phenomena that go beyond it—neutrino masses, “dark matter”, “dark energy”—but they are weak effects that offer scanty clues as to what exactly is behind them.
On the theoretical side, we actually have more models of possible new physics than ever before in history, the result of 50 years of work since the standard model came together. A lot of that is part of a synthesis that includes the string theory paradigm, but there are also very large numbers of theoretical ideas that are alternatives to string theory or independent of string theory. So if a decisive new phenomenon shows up, or if someone has a radical insight on how to interpret the scanty empirical clues we do have, we actually have more theories and models than ever before, that might be capable of explaining it.
The idea that progress is stalled because everyone is hypnotized by string theory, I think is simply false, and I say that despite having studied alternative theories of physics, much much more than the typical person who knows some string theory. I think this complaint mostly comes from people who don’t like string theory (Peter Woit) or who have an alternative theory they think has been neglected (Eric Weinstein). String theory did achieve a kind of hegemony within elite academia, but this was well-deserved, and meanwhile many competing research programs have had a foothold in academia too, to say nothing of the hundreds of physicists worldwide who have a personal theory that they write about, when they aren’t doing other things like teaching.
Most likely there are lost opportunities during that 50 years (like everyone else, I have my own ideas about neglected directions of research), but “do less string theory” is no guarantee that they would have been picked up. There are even those who would argue that there should have been more string theory of a certain kind (Lubos Motl used to say that field-theoretic phenomenologists should pay more attention to string theory, as a constraint and a guide in their model-building, and “stringking42069″ says that the senior figures of string theory are holding the subject back by favoring work on their own little bandwagons, rather than bold and creative work on new directions and big unsolved problems).
The idea that progress is stalled because everyone is hypnotized by string theory, I think is simply false, and I say that despite having studied alternative theories of physics, much much more than the typical person who knows some string theory.
Are you saying that progress in physics hasn’t stalled or that string theory isn’t to blame?
I’m not Mitchell, but I think I agree with him here enough to guess: He probably means to say that production of new plausible theories has increased, production of experimentally verified theories has stalled, and the latter is not string theory’s fault.
(And of course this whole discussion, including your question, is interpreting “physics” to means “fundamental physics”, since theoretical and empirical work on e.g. condensed matter physics has been doing just fine.)
As Adam Scherlis implies, the standard model turns out to be very effective at all the scales we can reach. There are a handful of phenomena that go beyond it—neutrino masses, “dark matter”, “dark energy”—but they are weak effects that offer scanty clues as to what exactly is behind them.
On the theoretical side, we actually have more models of possible new physics than ever before in history, the result of 50 years of work since the standard model came together. A lot of that is part of a synthesis that includes the string theory paradigm, but there are also very large numbers of theoretical ideas that are alternatives to string theory or independent of string theory. So if a decisive new phenomenon shows up, or if someone has a radical insight on how to interpret the scanty empirical clues we do have, we actually have more theories and models than ever before, that might be capable of explaining it.
The idea that progress is stalled because everyone is hypnotized by string theory, I think is simply false, and I say that despite having studied alternative theories of physics, much much more than the typical person who knows some string theory. I think this complaint mostly comes from people who don’t like string theory (Peter Woit) or who have an alternative theory they think has been neglected (Eric Weinstein). String theory did achieve a kind of hegemony within elite academia, but this was well-deserved, and meanwhile many competing research programs have had a foothold in academia too, to say nothing of the hundreds of physicists worldwide who have a personal theory that they write about, when they aren’t doing other things like teaching.
Most likely there are lost opportunities during that 50 years (like everyone else, I have my own ideas about neglected directions of research), but “do less string theory” is no guarantee that they would have been picked up. There are even those who would argue that there should have been more string theory of a certain kind (Lubos Motl used to say that field-theoretic phenomenologists should pay more attention to string theory, as a constraint and a guide in their model-building, and “stringking42069″ says that the senior figures of string theory are holding the subject back by favoring work on their own little bandwagons, rather than bold and creative work on new directions and big unsolved problems).
Are you saying that progress in physics hasn’t stalled or that string theory isn’t to blame?
I’m not Mitchell, but I think I agree with him here enough to guess: He probably means to say that production of new plausible theories has increased, production of experimentally verified theories has stalled, and the latter is not string theory’s fault.
(And of course this whole discussion, including your question, is interpreting “physics” to means “fundamental physics”, since theoretical and empirical work on e.g. condensed matter physics has been doing just fine.)