Dine: SUSY, Naturalness, and Landscape

[marcus]

just out
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0410201

the tone is fresh, frank, one could even say it has charm

Michael Dine
Supersymmetry, Naturalness, and the Landscape

I don't happen to be a fan of the Landscape and this doesn't make me become one, but I appreciate what Dine has to say and get from it a better understanding of his viewpoint. Hope others also like the paper.

 

[selfAdjoint]

It's important that he thinks the statistics of the landscape may make predictions that can bear experimental verification or falsification. Thus the research programs at the forthcoming LHC will likely concern low energy supersymmetry breaking, and that is one of the predictions he offers (that is, he says in a little while the questions about the distribution of parameters over the landscape will be in a sufficient state to allow such predictions). May that day roll on!

 

[marcus]

More response to the Michael Dine paper

Peter Woit commented today on the Dine paper:

---quote from "Not Even Wrong" blog 21 October---
On the anthropic front, Michael Dine is claiming that maybe the statistical analysis of the landscape will "predict" that supersymmetry breaking is at a low energy scale. The arguments he gives sound to me like a complete joke, and from what I remember Michael Douglas was recently claiming that the same kind of analysis indicated that supersymmetry was broken at a high energy scale. One other funny thing about Dine: he doesn't say that the landscape makes predictions, but that it is "the first predictive framework we have encountered". This is a guy who for nearly twenty years has been giving talks on "superstring phenomenology" and claiming that any day now string theory would make predictions. I wonder why in all of those previous talks he neglected to mention that not only were there no predictions from string theory, there wasn't even a "predictive framework".

Posted by woit at 10:57 PM
---end quote---
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000097.html

This earlier Woit blog provides a link to the Mike Douglas paper
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000082.html

Both Douglas and Dine are eminent string theorists and both are making an effort to forecast what will or will not be seen at LHC when it starts up in 2007. Unfortunately their expectations disagree so it seems a bit difficult to sort out at the moment.

Woit's blog for today also reports on a talk by Edward Witten. The part about Dine's paper is at the end.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Peter Woit commented today on the Dine paper:

---quote from "Not Even Wrong" blog 21 October---
On the anthropic front, Michael Dine is claiming that maybe the statistical analysis of the landscape will "predict" that supersymmetry breaking is at a low energy scale. The arguments he gives sound to me like a complete joke, and from what I remember Michael Douglas was recently claiming that the same kind of analysis indicated that supersymmetry was broken at a high energy scale. One other funny thing about Dine: he doesn't say that the landscape makes predictions, but that it is "the first predictive framework we have encountered". This is a guy who for nearly twenty years has been giving talks on "superstring phenomenology" and claiming that any day now string theory would make predictions. I wonder why in all of those previous talks he neglected to mention that not only were there no predictions from string theory, there wasn't even a "predictive framework".

Posted by woit at 10:57 PM
---end quote---
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000097.html

This earlier Woit blog provides a link to the Mike Douglas paper
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000082.html

Both Douglas and Dine are eminent string theorists and both are making an effort to forecast what will or will not be seen at LHC when it starts up in 2007. Unfortunately their expectations disagree so it seems a bit difficult to sort out at the moment.

Woit's blog for today also reports on a talk by Edward Witten. The part about Dine's paper is at the end.

Lubos has a comment on this post, in which he excercises his new toy^*: calling opponents of string physics "monkey level" thinkers. So nice to see important scientists discussing their differences in such an adult manner.


^*He has done this on s.p.r. too.

 

[marcus]

... So nice to see important scientists discussing their differences in such an adult manner.

but actually i don't see any important scientists getting down to Lubos level of vituperation, do you?

I am trying to think. Baez is courteous. Lee Smolin is courteous. He has a serious criticism of Landscape-thinking and offers an immediately predictive and falsifiable alternative to Anthropics---but he does so in a civil and reasoned way. Both string Mikes--Douglas and Dine--impress me as affable and forthright. David Gross came across very sympathetically at Kitp25.

Please flag any instances---specific quotes---of scientists of real stature whose behavior is down at the smear tactics level---or the court jester and gadflies level. If i have an unrealistic impression about this, I want to correct it!

My impression is that there is a bunch of unjustified criticism----particularly of loop QG by people who don't know the recent papers and are barking up the wrong trees---but that it is not coming from established, senior scientists. My impression (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the important scientists of whatever stripe are behaving handsomely.

(and Mike Dine's recent paper I thought had real grace----would like to quote some passages---tho personally i may not agree with him)

 

[selfAdjoint]

I think of Lubos as an established scientist, one with stature. He is excellent on theory. I think it's sad to see him stoop to vituperation.