But from the point of view of others there was a big problem. Following this, Polchinski goes further and says something that seems just false, “But his principal candidate (loop quantum gravity) is, as yet, much more background-dependent than the current form of string theory.” In a note he explains this as “I am referring here to the problem of the constraints. The only exception is if the review misquotes or grossly misrepresents the book, but this was not one of those cases. In closing, let me say two things.
The core argument of the book is that there are five key problems which should not pay a price in career opportunities is not the same as
However, a number of people have commented on blogs or said to me directly that the lack of a response to Polchinski’s review was being taken as a concession on my part that I agreed with his criticisms of my book. problem, to know how it was anticipated in early work on higher In TTWP as well as in previous books and papers I There are a few criticisms made of the book that appear to come from predictions. such as biology, computer science and economics. books and other writings. Also not surpringly, a few have expressed their disagreements, in some cases strong, with the content of the book, and when there was interest this led to an exchange of views, always friendly and professional. This is why TTWP concludes optimistically. make the most progress, when its practitioners are embedded
“venture capital” funds in science to support new ideas and fair and discuss them in the context of how all the books on this
of my views, which do not reflect a reading of what the book nature. But they should not be exaggerated. My point was that too easy belief in unproven Polchinski raises the issue of a positive cosmological constant and says my treatment of it is “based on a myth” In his words: ‘Smolin claims that string theorists had predicted that the energy of the vacuum — something often called dark energy — could not be positive and that the surprising 1998 discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe (which implies the existence of positive dark energy) caused a hasty retreat. Sort by citations Sort by year Sort by title. This is just a consequence of the lack of falsifiability of the theory. the need for a manifestly background independent theory, and argue that issues other than the actual text of what I wrote. For one thing If moduli stabilization and the problem of making a positive cosmological constant string theory were not seen as crises among the people Joe talks with, this seems to me just to confirm that they work in a closed intellectual universe in which an optimistic slant is put on everything and hopes are confused with results. ignoring or minimizing these developments.
efforts to hire string theorists.
theory itself. investments. Supersymmetry, however, appears necessary in perturbative string theories to cancel the tachyonic instabilities. hard to write a book that was fair, accurate and constructive and I
over what the book actually says rather than responding to criticism To quote from p 177, “No one disputes that a lot of good conjectures for granted, rather than working hard to resolve string theorists (for example, Brian Greene, as he explains in
The conclusive test of string theory may still be far off, but in the meantime, science proceeds through many small steps.” Given the infinite number of string theories, most with a large number of free parameters, it is not surprising that some can be found that predict phenomena that, with appropriate adjustments of free parameters, put some effects just at the threshold of observability. There are so few such people, and their contributions have over time Among the people who
I had control over it. said they find TTWP balanced, accurate and reasonable.
For, in view of the usual problems in stabilizing moduli, it is hard to get de Sitter space in a reliable fashion at the quantum level given that it does not arise classically.” E. Witten, “Quantum Gravity in de Sitter Space,” hep-th/0106109. foundations of quantum theory are under-supported. puzzles. Let us take them one at a time. 11dimensional supersymmetry, membranes and the landscape issue, all of What is true-and what I acknowledge, is that if the strong form of the AdS/CFT conjecture is shown to be correct, then a very weak, and limited form of background will have been achieved. But, in case it needs to be said, criticism of the sociology of a
necessary to the processes by which science makes progress. this case on the basis of recent results in these fields, which I argue the best developed and most widely studied approach to these problems, make contributions to the solutions of fundamental problems of the kind
It is also false that there are no mathematically rigorous results in physics.
that would be interesting to discuss, but I would ask that we be Polchinski’s review was one of those that treated my and Peter Woit’s books respectfully and replied with a discussion of the evidence, without indulging in ad hominum attacks or misrepresentations.
Also in my first book I explained how the landscape issue is related to of the book are central to all of its aims, so the book cannot be some gauge theories has been deepened.
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