Causes of loss of interest in String program

[negru]

Ok, then for example how do you make the difference between people losing interest and problems getting harder via your method?

 

[marcus]

Ok, then for example how do you make the difference between people losing interest and problems getting harder via your method?

I'm hoping to hear other people's ideas about causes--hopefully underlying physics reasons--for a decline in activity or a loss of focus/direction. I suppose "problems getting harder" could be one possible explanation of what we see.

I hope you understand I have no particular "method"---I just start from a recognition of the obvious: the program is in trouble. This is widely realized and there are probably a dozen signs of it. (citations drop, conference attendance, what central figures say when not doing PR for the public, publication stats by top people, focus and direction, topics at conference, faculty hiring at univ. phys. dept., defensiveness, taboos against talking about the situation, oversensitivity, and so on...).

This is not "method", it is just acknowledging the elephant. To solve a problem you first have to recognize it. You mentioned "problems getting harder". Someone else brought that up earlier. He suggested people aren't working on what they need to be working on because those problems are hard and institutionally you need to write papers.
So you doodle around. That might be a factor, but it is not something that appeals to me as an explanation. I'm looking for something more specific.

In my view the most interesting reasons were indicated by a senior expert who doesn't enjoy being quoted. He got emotional and angry when I mentioned leadership, which I think indicates that deficient leadership may be contributing to the trouble. Leadership helps people focus on the hardest roadblocks and break them in a directed way bit by bit. Leadership can also recruit and build active participation even while the problems are getting harder. He also seemed to be saying not to depend on SUSY so much and not to think in terms of compactified XD.

He also said not to consider the Landscape a disaster, which I think is an appeal for calm and a reference to the damage caused by Susskind's panicky rush into Multiverse in 2003.
Now this is my interpretation: I think that some developments in 2003 did considerable harm to the program and that has not been completely repaired yet.

These are not "positions" I necessarily want to defend. Arguing is often a waste of time. These are some sample ideas I am laying out to show you the kind of thing I am looking for. I want to understand better the loss of focus or whatever you want to call it, and hear discussion causes and ways out of the doldrums.

 

[suprised]

One thing you have suggested is that it is wrong to think of string in terms of compactified extra spatial dimensions.

...
You have said that many in the program have gotten away from thinking in terms of extra spatial dimensions.

This is not what I said. I said that the concept of extra dimensions is highly ambiguous (for example completely different classical geometries can describe the same physics), so one should not attribute an unambiguous physical reality to them. Focusing too much on a particular geometry may lead to a misleading intuition.

For example someone may strictly believe that a "brane world" describes our world, whereas this may be just one of many dual formulations of the theory, and other formulations do not have branes at all. So in this sense there is no unambiguous physical reality to these branes.

Similarly, AdC/CFT duality furnishes a higher dimensional interpretation of simple (N=4 susy) gauge theory. When viewed in the appropriate limit of the parameter space, indeed the theory looks as if it would come from a type II string compactified one some AdS_5 x S_5 space. But in the more familiar limit of small number of colors, no trace of those extra dimensions is seen. So are these higher dimensions real or not?

My point was to emphasize that whereas the higher dimensional viewpoint plays a very important role, it is in general an ambiguous concept and one should be careful not to be too biased towards this picture; it applies literally only to a fraction of the string parameter space.

marcus, you give these statements a spin and now claim that "program have gotten away from thinking in terms of extra spatial dimensions" . This is totally wrong and misleading.

Similar your claims that the string program lost interest... just have a look in the daily hep-th listing and you see that there is no decline of string papers at all. The few selected names you cite do not "prove" that the field is in decline, you miss certain important points. One is that also these people get older, and older people write less papers, for various different reasons. Why not focus on other people who have their productivity peak today? Moreover, the situation today is different than during the "duality revolution" 10-15 years ago, when it was easier to write many papers. Currently it is hard to write short important papers, rather papers are typically longer and more technical (and thus take considerably more time to produce).

So with your statements you do neither justice to many hard working people nor any favor to science.

 

[marcus]

I'm delighted that you have given us additional explanation, suprised. Thanks!

 

[negru]

Even if your numbers do work out (i'm not convinced), one other reason might be that these days string theory needs less justification than it did back in the day. With string theory so firmly established in various contexts, people can afford to take it easier, since they don't have to prove anything anymore.

When I was visiting grad schools talking to various people, there was no special distinction being made by anyone between string theory, lattice qcd, observational astronomy, or what have you. Perhaps the only thing I found surprising was how many CMT people were getting interested in ads/cft stuff.

Your attempts to have discussions on the current state of the ST program are completely decent, and I think that most people here cooperated fully giving their honest impressions and assessments. However, most if not all of your posts are completely biased towards portraying string theory in some kind of deep and terrible crisis. Your motivation is clearly not to understand the cause of this stringy apocalypse, but simply to repeat the words "crisis", "loss of interest", etc. If you want non-defensive, honest and objective discussions, you should stop making threads like:

Causes of Imminent and Indisputable Doom of String Theory
Number of papers Witten wrote:
1990: 100
2000: 10
2010 (estimate): -80

Why is string theory dying. Discuss

 

[suprised]

PS: I can't really understant why people who are not working in the field, believe that they have enough judgement to go out in the open and teach the public about their "insights". Especially if they are not even working scientists, but rather blog or book authors, etc.

 

[Haelfix]

PS: I can't really understant why people who are not working in the field, believe that they have enough judgement to go out in the open and teach the public about their "insights". Especially if they are not even working scientists, but rather blog or book authors, etc.

You would think that if someone asks a sociology question, and then 4 or 5 professionals working in the field show up and answer the sociology question, that it would give some amount of pause before disputing them.

Quite honestly it is rather surreal reading pages upon pages about the motivations of people that are friends, colleagues, advisors, mentors, coauthors and so forth.

Not like any of this matters one way or the other!

 

[MTd2]

Strings 2004 477
Strings 2008 400
Strings 2010 193

Strings 2003 396
Strings 2005 415
Strings 2006 186
Strings 2007 (site broken)
Strings 2009 450

 

[marcus]

Strings 2003 396
Strings 2005 415
Strings 2006 186
Strings 2007 (site broken)
Strings 2009 450

http://www-conference.slu.se/strings2011/links.html

Thanks MTd2. I recall Strings 2006 was in Beijing. Where did you get the number 186?
==quote http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=415 ==
Update: There’s an article in Tuesday’s New York Times about Hawking and the Beijing conference by Dennis Overbye. According to Overbye there are 800 physicists there and 6000 people turned out to hear Hawking. Anyone know if this is right?

Update: There’s a detailed report on the first day of the conference from Jonathan Shock.

Update: Victor Rivelles reports on day 2 of the conference. He describes Yau as taking credit for proving the Poincare Conjecture, which, if true, would be seriously misleading. ChinaDaily describes the number of physicists at the conference as 600. I’m guessing that 400 is the number of participants from outside China, 6-800 the total number. If so, this would be the largest string theory conference ever held.
==endquote==

Let me know if there is any reason we should not take the lower figure of 600? With this correction I'll merge our two lists:

Strings 2003 396
Strings 2004 477
Strings 2005 415
Strings 2006 ~600
Strings 2007 (site broken)
Strings 2008 400
Strings 2009 450
Strings 2010 193

If I had to summarize what has surfaced so far about "causes of loss of interest in String program" I would have to say that the most meaningful listing so far was given in Tom's thread. At this point I will simply quote without trying to interpret, as I did earlier. I'd like to get some other ideas to add to this. And of course someone could also start a thread about "causes of gain of interest in String program"---the program could be simultaneously gaining energy from some direction (CMT?) and losing it in another and there might be interesting reasons for both

I think this exchange is fairly profound, and deserves careful study:

Last but not least my feeling is that at a rather early stage there was a wrong turn (I cannot tell exactly which one) which prevents us from asking the right questions. This is our blind spot.

Think about condensed matter physics and classical electrodynamics. You can do a lot based on continuous approximations like electrodynamics in media using polarizability, susceptibility, ...; you can use effective theories like navier-stokes equations; you can study London equations, Ginzburg–Landau theory, ... I would say that collecting those effective theories one can study a huge amount of condensed matter physics. Perhaps one can even use a kind of construction principle, I would say this could be Maxwell plus Schroedinger equations.

Unfortunately based on this construction principle one is not able to ask questions based on photons. They simply do not exist in this framework. So the framework allows us to construct a nearly exhaustive description of low-energy phenomena is therefore certainly "right". But at the same time it's incomplete as it is unable to ask the right questions about photons. Now in this case you have experiments at hand which force you to think about potons (photo-electric effect), but in string theory these experiments are missing. Therefore we must find the correct theory (theories) simply by matehmatics, logics and intuition. No experimental guideline! Even worse we are not even able to say which experiments are missing. We are not ableto ask these questions in the string theory framework.

String theory (as any other theory) limits our ability to ask questions. w/o further experimental input we are stuck. In the standad model we can ask questions regarding the Higgs boson. We can even ask questions regarding alternative mechanisms and we are not stuck once the LHC shows that there is no Higgs boson.

Now the problem is that I can only say that at a very early stage in string theory we may have chosen the wrong direction. From that point onwards we lost the ability to ask questions which would enable us to overcome the blind spot of string theory.

Now let's talk about other theories, like LQG. I don't want to promote LQG as the alternative theory to string theory in sthe sense that it has the ability to achieve unification of forces. I don't think so. I am simply saying that LQG is able to ask different questions. LQG is able to ask questions regarding an algebraic spacetime structure. This question is (afaik) not pronounceable in the language of string theory (maybe I am wrong; I am not an expert on matrix models).

So an alternative theory X may have some value because it enables us to ask different questions. If these questions seem to be "wrong" in the context of string theory this is not a problem of theory X, but a step forward for string theory - provided one accepts that this question could make sense in general and that one should try to find out what prevents string theory from asking this question.

Perhaps there are string theorists here able to tell us what could have been this wrong turn in the very beginning.

I guess there were many potentially wrong turns - at least in the sense of bias towards certain ways of thinking about string theory. Here a partial list of traditional ideas/beliefs/claims that have their merits but that potentially did great damage by providing misleading intuition:

- That geometric compactification of a higher dimensional theory is a good way to think about the string parameter space
- That perturbative quantum and supergravity approximations are a good way to understand string theory
- That strings predict susy, or have an intrinsic relation to it (in space-time)
- That strings need to compactify first on a CY space and then susy is further broken. That's basically a toy model but tends to be confused with the real thing
- That there should be a selection principle somehow favoring "our" vacuum
- That a landscape of vacua would be a disaster
- That there exists a unique underlying theory
- That things like electron mass should be computable from first principles

Most of these had been challenged/revised in the recent years, and many people think quite differently about them than say 15-20 years ago.

 

[suprised]

marcus, you should pay attention to the last sentence you cited. These issues are mostly ones of the past!

 

[marcus]

The last sentence:

Most of these had been challenged/revised in the recent years, and many people think quite differently about them than say 15-20 years ago.
​

marcus, you should pay attention to the last sentence you cited. These issues are mostly ones of the past!

Yes! I have been thinking about that last sentence a lot! And I tried to bring the "many people" idea forward a few posts back. But I thought you then contradicted me. I'm glad to see you bringing that point back up.

Subject of course to your correction, I would venture to apply that last sentence to this:

That geometric compactification of a higher dimensional theory is NO LONGER a good way to think about the string parameter space.
​

And I would tentatively venture to conclude that many people (I would guess more advanced people) have already gotten away from thinking in terms of compactified extra spatial dimensions.

If this is true (I hear some American string theorists objecting that it is not) then I see this as positive and hopeful for the program.

The blue statement is, of course, my own understanding of what you said, so please correct if mistaken.

 

[marcus]

Anyone who is at all interested in this discussion should read post #123
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3265766#post3265766
which has a clarification by Suprised spelling out in detail how he wants us to understand this point.

You should read the whole post, but here's an excerpt that give a taste of what he's saying:

the concept of extra dimensions is highly ambiguous (for example completely different classical geometries can describe the same physics), so one should not attribute an unambiguous physical reality to them. Focusing too much on a particular geometry may lead to a misleading intuition.

For example someone may strictly believe that a "brane world" describes our world, whereas this may be just one of many dual formulations of the theory, and other formulations do not have branes at all. So in this sense there is no unambiguous physical reality to these branes.

Similarly, AdC/CFT duality furnishes a higher dimensional interpretation of simple (N=4 susy) gauge theory. When viewed in the appropriate limit of the parameter space, indeed the theory looks as if it would come from a type II string compactified one some AdS_5 x S_5 space. But in the more familiar limit of small number of colors, no trace of those extra dimensions is seen. So are these higher dimensions real or not?

My point was to emphasize that whereas the higher dimensional viewpoint plays a very important role, it is in general an ambiguous concept and one should be careful not to be too biased towards this picture; it applies literally only to a fraction of the string parameter space.
​

 

[atyy]

Fundamentally, there is no loss of interest in the string programme. The subtle points about geometric/non-geometric interpretation of paramters in string theory should not be taken to support the untrue premise of the thread's title.

 

[marcus]

Fundamentally, there is no loss of interest in the string programme. The subtle points about geometric/non-geometric interpretation of paramters in string theory should not be taken to support the untrue premise of the thread's title.

I'm tired of arguing about that one, Atyy. "Subtle" or not, I'm very interested in the points that Suprised has made here. I'd like to understand better how the program is going to evolve---what direction it will take going forward. Maybe it's just me (I suspect not) but right now I don't see a clear direction/paradigm and in fact I think that is at the heart of the earlier discussion Tom and Suprised were having, which I quoted. Take another look at Tom's post.

Call it loss of focus or direction if you like. People mean too many different things by interest---it gets defined by how you decide to measure it.

 

[negru]

But I'm pretty sure most people already knew about these ambiguities. I distinctly remember talking about extra dimensions in a different thread. I'm not sure why you are still focusing on this point.

Just take a simple example. Suppose our real 4d world(whatever that is) is equivalent to some other 5d theory. How many dimensions are there then, and what is the 5th one? It's simply a bad question to pose. The way we interpret these things makes no difference. I could very well think of extra dimensions as real dimensions, or as some extra degrees of freedom. It's the same thing.

 

[atyy]

Fundamentally, there is no loss of interest in the string programme. The subtle points about geometric/non-geometric interpretation of paramters in string theory should not be taken to support the untrue premise of the thread's title.

I'm tired of arguing about that one, Atyy. I'm interested in the points that Suprised has made here.

Good. Let's make it clear that you do not take a discussion of suprised's points to indicate any loss of interest in string theory.

 

[marcus]

Good. Let's make it clear that you do not take a discussion of suprised's points to indicate any loss of interest in string theory.

As I say, "interest" is a tricky word. Discussion of Suprised's points does in fact represent my interest in the string program. I am quite interested in it, via discussion of these points.

How those points came out in the first place is past history. They came up in the "really disappointed" thread. Try to think about the situation realistically. There is an urgency about these points. All is not hotsy-totsy and hunky-dory in the program. But that's past history. Let's discuss Suprised's actual points, not the circumstances in which they arose.

You might think about the point "Do not consider the Landscape a disaster." Do you have some idea of what that implies?

 

[suprised]

Good. Let's make it clear that you do not take a discussion of suprised's points to indicate any loss of interest in string theory.

Actually the opposite is true. These subtleties made the whole business more interesting and fascinating to study. That's actually part of the reasons that keep us continuing this kind of research. marcus, you got it all patently wrong, again.

 

[fzero]

ck up.

Subject of course to your correction, I would venture to apply that last sentence to this:

That geometric compactification of a higher dimensional theory is NO LONGER a good way to think about the string parameter space.
​

And I would tentatively venture to conclude that many people (I would guess more advanced people) have already gotten away from thinking in terms of compactified extra spatial dimensions.

If this is true (I hear some American string theorists objecting that it is not) then I see this as positive and hopeful for the program.

The blue statement is, of course, my own understanding of what you said, so please correct if mistaken.

Marcus, what surprised and many others have tried to explain to you is that the "good" description of physics in a quantum theory often depends on where we are in the parameter space of couplings. This is the lesson have learned over the past 2 decades in QFT and string theory. If we are studying a point in coupling constant space where the string coupling is small and certain other volume parameters are big, then the picture of perturbative strings on a CY background will be an excellent description of the physics. In other regions of coupling constant space this description will be a bad one. In those other regions we need nonperturbative, nongeometric degrees of freedom to describe the physics. In most cases, we do not know what the correct degrees of freedom and equations of motion are.

The "wrong turn" (which is probably too strong a language) can be explained as the statement that from around 1984-1994, most efforts focused on studying perturbative string theory and there was an expectation that good models of nature might come out of studying perturbative, geometric compactifications. So the lamp-post problem was that people had a reasonable grasp of perturbative string theory and explored that regime much more than any other. Of course, not everyone did this, and a gradual picture began to emerge from 1990-1995 about topology-changing transitions and nonperturbative degrees of freedom. By 2000, many models of strong coupling points in string backgrounds were discovered. During the same time, the role of nonperturbative physics in low-energy phenomena was also explored, suggesting that good models of nature would require a deeper understanding of nonperturbative physics in general.

So you are failing to understand many things when you try to grasp onto a few statements that surprised has made. The first is your apparent belief that string theorists have somehow only recently understood that some ideas that arose circa 1984 were probably naive. In fact, these subtleties have been known for the past 15 years and progress has continually been made toward understanding the pertinent issues. Would string theorists be happier if far more progress had been made in the interim? Of course, but these are known to be hard problems. Lattice QCD has been known for far longer and there are still many fundamental obstacles that have not been overcome. I don't think anyone expects the full theory of QG to be any simpler.

Second, you are still having problems grasping the concept of a duality in QFT or string theory. The different descriptions in different regions of coupling constant space are all describing the same theory, but each has its own appropriate regime where it is a useful description. When we use the word nongeometric, we might mean two different things. The first would be simply a usual CY model in some small volume limit. In this case the CFT corresponding to the CY degrees of freedom is not a good (perturbative) description. In many examples, dualities connect these points to some other dual model that is a good description. This could be another CY model or it could be one the other types of nongeometric models, namely a Gepner or free-fermion/boson model. These are the critical models we form from putting together arbitrary CFTs on the worldsheet. Whenever we have dualities like this, we do not say the geometric description is not good. Rather, we understand that there is a region in coupling constant space where the geometric description is good, and there are other regions where it is bad. If nature exists as some nongeometric phase of a string theory, the chance is almost 100% that dualities connect that point to a geometric phase. That much we do understand about string theory.

Now, it may be unnecessary to attach real significance to the geometric interpretation. But there is almost no way in which you can argue that using geometric insights to study appropriate corners of moduli space is a wrong turn. You can only say that you should not restrict your attention entirely to perturbative, geometric points. There is virtually no string theorist that has not been aware of this for the last 15 years.

 

[marcus]

... marcus, you got it all patently wrong, again.

Read my post #134, Suprised. You got it wrong that I got it wrong. What Atyy called "subtleties" are what gets my attention and enlivens my interest. And, as you say, they also do that for you.

Of course "interest" has many different meanings depending on how one decides to measure. I guess for the purposes of this thread if I was pressed to choose a simple definition/measure I would say that at the bulk or community level the best indicators are citations to current work and attendance at the main annual conference.

Those are fairly common ways used, in academic circles, to gauge the vitality of a field. They come up over and over again in many contexts (not just theoretical physics). So for the purposes of this thread, that is what "interest" will mean. Until you hear from me otherwise

 

[yoda jedi]

just throw away string theory (and the froot loop theory too)...



.

 

[marcus]

just throw away string theory (and the froot loop theory too)...

Come on, Yoda, these things are quite fascinating and you know it.

 

[Sardano]

I'm tired of arguing about that one, Atyy. "Subtle" or not, I'm very interested in the points that Suprised has made here. I'd like to understand better how the program is going to evolve---what direction it will take going forward.

Maybe you should understand String Theory first, and then you could speak about the ST research program with some knowdlege at least... What would you say if you were a ST physicist and if someone who has never studied ST, who has never made any research in ST, who quote ST papers that does not understand enters in your office and starts making claims about the "ST research program" and the "evolution of ST".

I mean, were you a part of the ST research and the ST program? Do you know the ST program from the inside, or just from the ST abstracts you hardly read in the arxiv?

No ofense but all this together with your obscure intentions of showing fake satistics make everything you write non reliable.

 

[marcus]

Thanks for sharing your views.

 

[marcus]

Atyy has been prodding me to define what I mean by "interest" in this thread. What I have been concerned with all along is the quality which many of us remember characterized the string program in the early part of the last decade. Vitality, excitement, clear sense of direction, large volume of highly-cited papers,...etc.

I'm not talking about the interest that an individual person might have for this or that topic, but rather a bulk collective quality that infuses the program itself.

In academic circles it's fairly usual to gauge that by (1) citations to current work, and (2) attendance at the main annual conference. Neither measure is perfect, of course, but that's often how you get a rough idea of how active a field is----outside of physics as well.

So that's basically how we define "interest" in this thread---by how it is measured. Operational definition

=============

It is not necessarily bad for a program to lose steam in this sense. There may be good reasons for it. And it may be temporary.

Nobody needs to get defensive, go into denial, think they are being attacked and so forth. The program may or may not have lost steam since say 2004. It may even have lost momentum/direction and then regained some. We don't know. In any case whatever has happened the reasons might be interesting.

================

I recently went back to the Strings 2004 conference website and it was like being in a different world (from say Rome 2009 or College Station 2010). You might try that.
Or contrast David Gross closing talk (overview of the program) at Madrid 2007 with his opening talk (also overview, where we are) at Rome 2009. He is talking concrete physics in both cases.
================

Anyway I claim that this kind of change can occur in a research program and is a legitimate thing to try to understand especially when it rests on physics reasons.
And it can go either way, a program can lose energy and gain energy and may even do so in different sectors, I imagine, at the same time. We'll see what are brought up as reasons.
================

btw several people (PAllen? Suprised?) have mentioned difficulty. Citations may have gone down because it's harder to write a paper nowadays that will have significant impact on the field. Harder to write and longer. Short papers no longer have as much impact---I think it was one or the other of them who said that. Doesn't matter who, could have been someone else.
================

I was also thinking that some things Suprised and Fzero said could represent reasons for a loss in program direction/energy/interest (as gauged by current citations and conference participation). The dispersion of the paradigm into an abstract flock of alternatives no one of which is to be considered real. It may make the field intellectually intriguing but at the same time interfere with a coherent sense of direction.

Just a tentative thought. Maybe someone else will come up with better reasons.
=====================

Then there is Bohr's Truth: it's not about what nature IS. Physics is about how Nature responds to measurement. Where are the measurements in the various string theories or proto-theories? How are measurements represented mathematically? It might be interesting if someone would discuss that a bit.

 

[atyy]

In academic circles it's fairly usual to gauge that by (1) citations to current work, and (2) attendance at the main annual conference. Neither measure is perfect, of course, but that's often how you get a rough idea of how active a field is----outside of physics as well.

I'm a biologist. Whenever anyone does that for my field, I conclude they are not willing to think for themselves.

 

[marcus]

I'm a biologist. Whenever anyone does that for my field, I conclude they are not willing to think for themselves.

Then since judging by citations is so common there must be a great many people whom you deem unwilling to think for themselves. Academics have a love-hate relation with cite-counts.

I sympathize since I also tend to evaluate stuff independently on my own. But hiring committees and deans are aware of citations and such. Funding agencies would pay attention to this kind of measure. You may have applied for grants or been up for tenure--and have first hand experience of this.

We devoutly believe that nothing beats an intelligent person's subjective assessment. But even so we are always getting rated on the basis of objectifiable external circumstances. Especially if it is by a committee, because the various subjective judgments may not coincide.

 

[suprised]

marcus, you state always as actual fact what you believe and/or want to make others believe. It is simply not true that there is lack of steam, motivation, and progress, etc. The new things and the people behind this may perhaps not be visible to you, but this doesn't mean they they don't exist.

Many of the interesting an important things that happen right now or recently have to do with the interplay of string theory and gauge theory; not only in the sense of AdS/CFT, but also in the sense of amplitudes, and in the sense of TFT. Why don't you check names like (random order) Gaiotto, Nekrasov, Neitzke, Alday, Drummond, etc? These are people that may be too young for you to appear on your radar screen. But they are among the driving forces of what ppl are excited about these days.

With regards to string conference attendance: there was only one dip, and this was last year. Ppl have attributed this to the grossly unattractive conference site in the middle of nowhere, in contrast to previous ones. As far as I can tell, the collegues around me incl myself didn't go largely for this reason.

In order to make claims as you do, you should make out a longer term trend. What you do is to stir in a coffe pot and try to make general conclusions about the pattern you choose to see. You are warmly invited to do this for yourself, but you also attempt to influence other people with this. As I said, you don't do any favor to science by that, on the contrary.

 

[marcus]

...
With regards to string conference attendance: there was only one dip, and this was last year. Ppl have attributed this to the grossly unattractive conference site in the middle of nowhere, in contrast to previous ones. As far as I can tell, the collegues around me incl myself didn't go largely for this reason.

In order to make claims as you do, you should make out a longer term trend. What you do is to stir in a coffe pot and try to make general conclusions about the pattern you choose to see...

Suprised, I very much appreciate this comment. First of all you are quite right! The conference attendance measure of interest/activity in the field appears FLAT! It shows no decline of interest at all.

What you say about the dip in 2010 has a completely adequate explanation, I would say, that obviously has nothing to do with physics. It has to do with TEXAS.

I really appreciate your taking my effort here seriously enough to point this out in a calm polite manner.
======================
People quibble so frantically about the word "interest" that I have to be careful to stick to the measures that I have set out and committed to.
I have chosen two conventional academic measures of the level of interest/activity in a field:
(1) citations to current work
(2) main conference attendance.
At least in this thread, I have to stick to those two and see what they show, if anything.
============================

On the other hand, I also hear what you say about tracking output of younger people. One difficulty with just looking at top people is their output may be declining anyway due to age. You made that point several posts ago and I noted it but did not get around to replying.

Why don't you check names like (random order) Gaiotto, Nekrasov, Neitzke, Alday, Drummond, etc? These are people that may be too young for you to appear on your radar screen. But they are among the driving forces of what ppl are excited about these days.

Since I decided to concentrate on those two measures (1) and (2), I would not ordinarily be tracking research output of anybody young or old. But since you mention some excellent young people (I have a high opinion e.g. of Andy Neitzke and have seen a lot of references to papers where Allday has at least been co-author) I think I may try giving them the same treatment. Gaiotto and Nekrasov are also familiar names.

We can have an explicit clear understanding that tracking research output is NOT to be considered a measure of interest as I have defined it, but is just a sideline auxiliary measure, which might or might not correlate.

You understimate my openmindedness I shall be interested to see what shows up.

 

[oldman]

I’m provoked into posting in this thread by your remarks in post 145, Marcus. You quote
Bohr's Truth as:

...it's not about what nature IS. Physics is about how Nature responds to measurement.

And then
add:

Where are the measurements in the various string theories or proto-theories? How are measurements represented mathematically? It might be interesting if someone would discuss that a bit.

I agree.

A quibble: did Bohr talk of measurement in this quote? Or did he just say:

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature?

Which is not quite the same thing. Talk is cheap. Measurement is probably impossible in the
realm of string theory and loop quantum gravity, etc. Both are (mathematical) talk that so far has failed to meet the long-established gold standard that distinguishes physics from say, literary criticism; namely of being able to make verifiable predictions.

Secondly, it seems to me that this thread exemplifies a Truth expressed by John Horgan in
June 1996: that some folk ...

...pursue science in a speculative, non-empirical mode that (Horgan calls) ironic science. Ironic science resembles literature or philosophy or theology in that it offers points of view, opinions, which are, at best, "interesting," which provoke further comment.

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