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May 26, 2004
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea(You can't make this stuff up!) Reminds me of being six. Must get a copy of Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense to read to the baby. [permalink | tb ]
While many of us have successfully moved past the learning challenges associated with biking and swimming, there remain concepts to master. Among them are phenomena that impact everything we think, do, and say—including biking and swimming. I speak of such beasts as the theories of Maxwell, Mach, Newton, Einstein, and others. Yet unless we are scientifically inclined, we avoid trying to understand them. If we accidentally happen upon one, we tend to pull up our collars, pull down our brims, and slink away. Few scientists have come along to make regular folks feel confident enough to try to comprehend such sophisticated concepts as general relativity, for example.The trouble I've found with Greene's explanations of string theory, like all explanations of string theory, is that they insist on being essentially nonmathematical, which seriously hampers the listener. Show us at least an approximation of the math, dammit! Wave your hands about how it degenerates into Feynmann diagrams if you blur your vision enough; compare and contrast for us the parts of the math that looks kind of like the equations governing real strings; anything other than these stupid CGI graphics and cute naming conventions. For example, this kind of thinking is bullshit: Because of the limitations of our senses, the reality that results from accepting string theory is wildly different from the one that we experience. In Greene's bold new world, for example, there are eleven dimensions and time moves not only forward, but in all directions.No! Physics seeks to describe precisely the very same world we live in right now, so if you find yourself writing sentences like that one then you've either misunderstood what physics is all about or descended into unhelpful poetry. This is a pretty fundamental point. New theories subsume the predictions of previous successful theories, rather than change them. For example, if string theory didn't demonstrably predict gravity or electromagnetism then it would be useless; in fact, failure to predict that human-sized observers would experience three space and one time dimension under conditions like those on Earth is a very good way to tell that your physics theory should be thrown away.
...In order to preserve their precious access to power, the Times, and papers like it, too often serve as stenographers to said power. Doing so this time has left them with serious blood on their hands, and I hope they are deeply ashamed. [permalink | tb ]
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