astro
11-19-2007, 03:38 PM
"Being poor sucks. It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month." Says Garrett Lisi, the poor physicist who surfs Hawaii and snowboards in Lake Tahoe--the two most expensive spots for "cool dude" sports.
For over thirty years Ed witten et al have justified String Theory's utter and complete failure with "it's a young theory." Well, Smolin/Woit/Baez/Lisi know that their funding is ultimately dependent on young non-theories, so they need a new one.
Meet Garrett Lisi who for the next thirty years will be working for the Smolin/Woit blogging machine, saying: "The theory is very young, and still in development." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Garrett_Lisi
Once upon a time, Theories had to make sense before they were published and promoted. But who has the time for that these days, with millions of dollars to spend on hype?
"According to Lisi (Witten/Greene/Kaku/Waoit/Smolin), the mathematics of the universe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe) should be beautiful and a successful description of nature should be a concise, elegant, unified mathematical (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical) structure consistent with experience." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything
It is time for Woit/Smolin/Lisi/Baez to stop their "hidden variables" games--their anonymous, behind-the-scenes machinations--and disclose to the public all the calculations and considerations that went into launching the overhyped media festival centered around "surfer dude" Lisi, and his supposed "theory of everything" which only predicts that it might someday predict something, as long as someone else makes the calculations, and those calculations happen to be calcuable. A well-funded campaign is behind the Smolin-supported headlines: Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything, and it is only fair that Woit/Lisi/Bee/Smolin disclose the amounting of funding that is going into this. Down with anonymity.
Overhyped headlines such as Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything have replaced actual equations, predictions, and reasoned, erudite debate represented by the convivial Einstein/Bohr dialogues--check out the dozens of pages of hype resulting from the well-funded/endowed Smolin/Woit/Baez/Lisi team:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Surfer+dude+stuns+physicists+with+theory+of+ever ything&btnG=Google+Search
Was Bee funded for the following pre-hype starting in August, 2007, as Woit/Lisi/Smolin mapped out their media assault? By whom? How much? Down with anonymity.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/08/garrett-lisis-inspiration.html"Garrett Lisi (http://interstice.com/~aglisi/Physics/CV.html) is a wandering surfer-physicist, working on nomothetic unification while searching for the perfect wave.
B: Complete these sentences: When I was 15 I thought I could ...
... get a girl to like me by showing off."
--http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/08/garrett-lisis-inspiration.html
Awesome--Lee Smolin & the Perimeter Institute's new direction:
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Surfer_dude_stuns_physicists_with_theory_of _everything
More perspective not found in Woit's Blog & all the anonymous PI commenters/NEW supporters who Woit never deletes:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/770002407831/m/542006568831
"I have discovered a truly remarkable Theory of Everything using H8 Groups. Alas, my proof too large and this comment box too small to contain." -- http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/770002407831/m/542006568831
Lisi's theory is not testable. If it is, what does it predict? What particles? What masses? How come Woit doesn't ask these questions--the same questions he asks of String Thoery? Lisi's "theory" only predicts that it might someday predict something. Sound familiar? LQG? String Theory? Peter Woit, who has your IP address and is not afraid to use it, writes, "Anyway, I’m glad to see someone pursuing these ideas, even if they haven’t come up with solutions to the underlying problems. Garrett is a serious and competent researcher who has pursued a non-traditional career path, and was recently awarded a grant to by the FQXI organization." http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617 (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617)
So it is that "the theory of everything" offers no solutions. So it is that offering no solutions makes one "a serious and competent researcher." That is Woit logic for you, and that probably explains Woit's opinions on Moving Dimensions Theory, which favors logic, reason, and physics over mysticism, bully blogging, and tyranny.
"Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph. --http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml
Awesome--Smolin leads not with the physics of the physicist, but with the "surfer-dude" image the surfer cultivates.
Imagine if Wheeler had highlighted Feynamn's bongo-playing ability over his physics. Or if Einstein had promoted DeBroglie's surfing image that he had cultivated, instead of his generalization of wave-particle duality to matter.
The mass media, like The Register, is loyally following Smolin's/Woit's lead/command:
Garrett Lisi, a theoretical physicist who is also a surfer and snowboarder Ed], has used the proof to help him develop his attempt to unify the mutually contradictory theories of quantum mechanics and gravity. --http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/19/maths_universe_everything/
"How all occaisons do inform against me." --Hamlet
Ignore smug, snarky hypesters like Woit/Smolin/Lisi/Baez.
Read Einstein/Bohr/Planck/Maxwell/Feynman/Dirac/Schrodenger/Newton/Boltzman/Faraday.
Read the real men who came up with real equations and real postulates while contemplating reality.
Read up on Moving Dimensions Theory: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. d(x4)/dt = ic
Peter Woit: Hypester Extraordinaire @ Lee Smolin's Command Peter Hypes Garrett "Surfer Dude" Lisi's False Claim to a Theory of Everything.
Peter Woit finally admits "I have put a “modest amount” of effort into understanding what is going on, enough to see several problems with what Garrett is trying to do." --http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comments
Awesome--even an expert in Group Theory and Particle Physics like Peter Woit doesn't really understand Lisi's "fabulous" paper, which nonetheless is being hyped all over the world, at the behest of Smolin et al.
Check out what professional hypesters Woit & Smolin have created "
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=surfer+dude+lisi
Note how the lead article leads with pictures of Lisi surfing:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/surfer-dude-comes-fabulous-unified-theory-everything-14793.html
Surfer dude comes up with 'fabulous' unified theory of everything
Garrett Lisi makes a false claim to a theory of everything.
Garrett Lisi's pomo-hipster theory makes no predictions, other than that it might someday predict something, just as long as someone else does the calculations, which might or might not be calculable.
Garrett Lisi's theory makes no calculations, other than that Lee Smolin and PI are hungry for something new to hype, now that LQG has proven to be not even wrong. So Garrett does the math and he engineers a PR crusade to position himself for book, movie, and TV deals, and action figures with surfboards, based on nothing but hype; as he presents yet another meaningless, incomplete, nonsensical mathematical diatribe with pretty pictures.
Garrett Lisi states that his theory might someday be able to calculate something, and Lee Smolin hypes him as the next Einstein.
Einstein always did his own calculations. Einstein didn't say he had a theory of everything, and then call on other people to complete it for him. Einstein was Einstein, before he got credited with being Einstein.
But Smolin has money to raise and investors to please, and he's getting impatient. And that's where Lisi comes in.
The Lisi/Smolin/Woit machine writes positive blogs and send PR packages with pictures of Lisi surfing to major media outlets and groupthinking fanboys, along with stories about Lisi living in the jungle and snowboarding as a destitute, homeless physicist in Lake Tahoe (where the homeless tend to congregate when they are not surfing in Hawaii), and suddenly they have the opportunity to raise millions of dollars for a theory of everything that predicts that the theory might someday predict something.
Imagine the possibilities. Thirty more years of string-a-ling hype, hundreds of millions of dollars, and Garett Lisi conferences in Lake Tahoe and on Hawaii.
Finally Peter Woit gets called out after hyping Lisi's paper after putting a "modest amount" of effort into undertsanding it:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comments
<LI class=alt id=comment-30693>H-I-G-G-S Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 9:42 am (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comment-30693)
One does not have to examine the full E_8 structure to see the
“non-unification” unification aspects of the construction. Consider his
“unification” of the quarks and gluons of QCD using G_2. It is true that the 14-dimensional adjoint rep of G_2 decomposes as the 8 + 3 + \bar 3 of SU(3) under G_2 -> SU(3). And it is true that the gluons are in the 8 and the quarks and anti-quarks in the 3 + \bar 3. So what? What action does Dr. Lisi propose? I am very sure that if you wade through the obscure notation one will discover that either
1) It is the same action as that of QCD in which case G_2 plays absolutely no role in the contruction.
2) It is not the same action as that of QCD in which case the theory is ruled out by experiment.
It is a lazy author that can’t be bothered to work out the simple consequences of his theory and explain them simply. And it is a lazy blogger (who is supposed to be an expert in representation theory after all) who blogs about a paper and adds to the hype without putting in a modest amount of effort to understand what is going on.
<LI id=comment-30696>Garrett (http://deferentialgeometry.org/) Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 10:29 am (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comment-30696)amused:
This is a great improvement. It appears you are now understanding (if not actually liking) the paper, as your factual statements are mostly correct. Now please consider that matching the standard model fields and dynamics to parts of the E8 connection and its curvature, with only a handful of exotic fields, is non-trivial.
(You have passed through the first, second, and are now to the third stage of acceptance (described on Bee’s blog).)
H-I-G-G-S:
I chose (1). And I’ve tried to make the paper as succinct as possible. On your last comment, I’ll let Peter speak for himself.
woit (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog) Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 10:46 am (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comment-30697)H-I-G-G-S,
This posting in no way purports to contain a technical examination of the paper and its problems. I have put a “modest amount” of effort into understanding what is going on, enough to see several problems with what Garrett is trying to do. The sort of general unification/non-unification problem you bring up is specifically addressed in the posting. I don’t think there’s anything at all in what I wrote that hypes the paper, quite the contrary. The links I provided to places where it is hyped were given in the context of noting that I don’t think this kind of thing is a good idea at all.
I’ll provide you with another link, to the discussion and my comments at Sabine’s blog, about how unprofessional it is to attack people from behind the cover of anonymity, evading any responsibility for one’s actions:
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/anonymity.html (http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/anonymity.html)
Since Woit is against anonimity, I think it is only fair for him to offer full disclosure. How much funding does his blog, which hypes meaningless theories, receive from Columbia? Who are the donors/supporters? How much of the Columbia endowment goes to support his blog and views? What are the names/emails of the people who run the Hedge Funds that support Columbia's endowment and Woit's blog? How much funding does Lee Smolin receive from which sources run my what persons to fund PI's hyping of spurious theories? Columbia has a multi-billion dollar endowment, and PI has millions upon millions of dollars to fund PR releases, to intimidate and confound independent thinkers, and to replace logic and reason with mysictism and tyranny, and to directly and indirectly support "Surfer dude comes up with 'fabulous' unified theory of everything."
As Woit's email address and webserver are supported by an institution that is federally funded in part, should there not be more transparency? What exactly is he emailing to Lisi/Smolin et al? Indeed, anonimity and secrecy need to be done away with wherever the taxpayer is footing part of the bill to promote suprious theories.
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/surfer-dude-comes-fabulous-unified-theory-everything-14793.html
How much time do Lee and Peter and Baez spend conspiring to promote the Lisis of the world, while castigating and impugning true physics and physicists? Should there not be some form of anti-trust movement against those who seek to monopolize discourse in physics, using bully blogs funded by tax and tuition dollars (which stem from spurious tax-payer-funded student loan programs); replacing beauty and simplicity with hyped "theories of everything" which are patently unsound, false, and ultimately meaningless, sans equations, sans postulates, sans predictions, sans physics?
Indeed--let us get rid of the anonimity and secrecy that dominates Woit's operation. Woit can be far more transparent about his communications and sources of funding.
I think that in the interest of full disclosure Woit/Smolin/Baez should disclose all sources of funding, and all channeling and distribution of said funding. For instance, how much has PI paid Lisi? Lisi is good PR for the moment, and PR is of vast value to institutional fundraising at institutions such as PI.
Woit would have called the authors of the Federalist Papers, who published under the name of Publius, unprofessional. That would be Madison, Jay, and Hamilton--all of whom honored logic, reason, and Truth over pomo-hipster-hypester handwaving.
I look forward to seeing the balance sheets on how much tax, tuition, and government funds are invested into hyping non-theories; so as to bolster fundraising efforts.
Make no mistake, Woit doesn't like ideas, logic, truth and reason from anomimous sources that don't support his "theories of everything" created by surfer dudes, because then he can't attack the person with Baez's mean-spirited, snarky crackpot index, using his bully blog backed by Columbia's billion-dollar endowment. His favored modus operandi is subtle ad hominem attacks. Woit is a political animal--a modern-day gossip columnist. Where is his physics? We don't know. What is the Woit equation? The Woit postulate? The Woit conjecture? He and his snarky-snark friends prefer to create Baez crackpot indexes to attack people, instead of debating ideas in a civil manner.
What is needed is more humility. Does Woit's collecting of IP addresses really advance physics? Does his threats to "use them" against detractors of spurious new theories by surfer dudes really advance truth and knowledge? Or just the bottom line of his publisher? By the way, his editor is anonymous I believe, as well as the PR person who hypes/promotes his book. Should not their names and IP addresses be printed on teh fornt cover of his book, along with all those who have any say in funding Woit's blog? If we are to rid ourselves of opaqueness and anonimity, Woit can lead the way to a brand new day of disclosure. How many emails did he share with Lisi before hyping Lisi to the world? What did they contain? Who funded them?
Here's some perspective that Woit's blog lacks:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071117-upon-further-review-surfers-new-theory-of-everything-severely-deficient.htmlThis paper is actually a very impressive piece of work, though it is thoroughly overhyped and completely un-understandable to anyone who doesn't regularly do particle physics and group theory.
More perspective not found in Woit's Blog & all the PI commenters who Woit never deletes:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/770002407831/m/542006568831
"I have discovered a truly remarkable Theory of Everything using H8 Groups.
Alas, my proof too large and this comment box too small to contain."
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html
Ignore snarky hypesters like Woit/Smolin/Lisi/Baez.
Read Einstein/Bohr/Feynman/Dirac/Schrodenger/Newton/Boltzman/Faraday.
Read the real men who came up with real equations and real postulates while contemplating reality.
Read up on Moving Dimensions Theory: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. d(x4)/dt = ic
For over thirty years Ed witten et al have justified String Theory's utter and complete failure with "it's a young theory." Well, Smolin/Woit/Baez/Lisi know that their funding is ultimately dependent on young non-theories, so they need a new one.
Meet Garrett Lisi who for the next thirty years will be working for the Smolin/Woit blogging machine, saying: "The theory is very young, and still in development." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Garrett_Lisi
Once upon a time, Theories had to make sense before they were published and promoted. But who has the time for that these days, with millions of dollars to spend on hype?
"According to Lisi (Witten/Greene/Kaku/Waoit/Smolin), the mathematics of the universe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe) should be beautiful and a successful description of nature should be a concise, elegant, unified mathematical (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical) structure consistent with experience." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything
It is time for Woit/Smolin/Lisi/Baez to stop their "hidden variables" games--their anonymous, behind-the-scenes machinations--and disclose to the public all the calculations and considerations that went into launching the overhyped media festival centered around "surfer dude" Lisi, and his supposed "theory of everything" which only predicts that it might someday predict something, as long as someone else makes the calculations, and those calculations happen to be calcuable. A well-funded campaign is behind the Smolin-supported headlines: Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything, and it is only fair that Woit/Lisi/Bee/Smolin disclose the amounting of funding that is going into this. Down with anonymity.
Overhyped headlines such as Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything have replaced actual equations, predictions, and reasoned, erudite debate represented by the convivial Einstein/Bohr dialogues--check out the dozens of pages of hype resulting from the well-funded/endowed Smolin/Woit/Baez/Lisi team:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Surfer+dude+stuns+physicists+with+theory+of+ever ything&btnG=Google+Search
Was Bee funded for the following pre-hype starting in August, 2007, as Woit/Lisi/Smolin mapped out their media assault? By whom? How much? Down with anonymity.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/08/garrett-lisis-inspiration.html"Garrett Lisi (http://interstice.com/~aglisi/Physics/CV.html) is a wandering surfer-physicist, working on nomothetic unification while searching for the perfect wave.
B: Complete these sentences: When I was 15 I thought I could ...
... get a girl to like me by showing off."
--http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/08/garrett-lisis-inspiration.html
Awesome--Lee Smolin & the Perimeter Institute's new direction:
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Surfer_dude_stuns_physicists_with_theory_of _everything
More perspective not found in Woit's Blog & all the anonymous PI commenters/NEW supporters who Woit never deletes:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/770002407831/m/542006568831
"I have discovered a truly remarkable Theory of Everything using H8 Groups. Alas, my proof too large and this comment box too small to contain." -- http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/770002407831/m/542006568831
Lisi's theory is not testable. If it is, what does it predict? What particles? What masses? How come Woit doesn't ask these questions--the same questions he asks of String Thoery? Lisi's "theory" only predicts that it might someday predict something. Sound familiar? LQG? String Theory? Peter Woit, who has your IP address and is not afraid to use it, writes, "Anyway, I’m glad to see someone pursuing these ideas, even if they haven’t come up with solutions to the underlying problems. Garrett is a serious and competent researcher who has pursued a non-traditional career path, and was recently awarded a grant to by the FQXI organization." http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617 (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617)
So it is that "the theory of everything" offers no solutions. So it is that offering no solutions makes one "a serious and competent researcher." That is Woit logic for you, and that probably explains Woit's opinions on Moving Dimensions Theory, which favors logic, reason, and physics over mysticism, bully blogging, and tyranny.
"Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph. --http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml
Awesome--Smolin leads not with the physics of the physicist, but with the "surfer-dude" image the surfer cultivates.
Imagine if Wheeler had highlighted Feynamn's bongo-playing ability over his physics. Or if Einstein had promoted DeBroglie's surfing image that he had cultivated, instead of his generalization of wave-particle duality to matter.
The mass media, like The Register, is loyally following Smolin's/Woit's lead/command:
Garrett Lisi, a theoretical physicist who is also a surfer and snowboarder Ed], has used the proof to help him develop his attempt to unify the mutually contradictory theories of quantum mechanics and gravity. --http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/19/maths_universe_everything/
"How all occaisons do inform against me." --Hamlet
Ignore smug, snarky hypesters like Woit/Smolin/Lisi/Baez.
Read Einstein/Bohr/Planck/Maxwell/Feynman/Dirac/Schrodenger/Newton/Boltzman/Faraday.
Read the real men who came up with real equations and real postulates while contemplating reality.
Read up on Moving Dimensions Theory: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. d(x4)/dt = ic
Peter Woit: Hypester Extraordinaire @ Lee Smolin's Command Peter Hypes Garrett "Surfer Dude" Lisi's False Claim to a Theory of Everything.
Peter Woit finally admits "I have put a “modest amount” of effort into understanding what is going on, enough to see several problems with what Garrett is trying to do." --http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comments
Awesome--even an expert in Group Theory and Particle Physics like Peter Woit doesn't really understand Lisi's "fabulous" paper, which nonetheless is being hyped all over the world, at the behest of Smolin et al.
Check out what professional hypesters Woit & Smolin have created "
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=surfer+dude+lisi
Note how the lead article leads with pictures of Lisi surfing:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/surfer-dude-comes-fabulous-unified-theory-everything-14793.html
Surfer dude comes up with 'fabulous' unified theory of everything
Garrett Lisi makes a false claim to a theory of everything.
Garrett Lisi's pomo-hipster theory makes no predictions, other than that it might someday predict something, just as long as someone else does the calculations, which might or might not be calculable.
Garrett Lisi's theory makes no calculations, other than that Lee Smolin and PI are hungry for something new to hype, now that LQG has proven to be not even wrong. So Garrett does the math and he engineers a PR crusade to position himself for book, movie, and TV deals, and action figures with surfboards, based on nothing but hype; as he presents yet another meaningless, incomplete, nonsensical mathematical diatribe with pretty pictures.
Garrett Lisi states that his theory might someday be able to calculate something, and Lee Smolin hypes him as the next Einstein.
Einstein always did his own calculations. Einstein didn't say he had a theory of everything, and then call on other people to complete it for him. Einstein was Einstein, before he got credited with being Einstein.
But Smolin has money to raise and investors to please, and he's getting impatient. And that's where Lisi comes in.
The Lisi/Smolin/Woit machine writes positive blogs and send PR packages with pictures of Lisi surfing to major media outlets and groupthinking fanboys, along with stories about Lisi living in the jungle and snowboarding as a destitute, homeless physicist in Lake Tahoe (where the homeless tend to congregate when they are not surfing in Hawaii), and suddenly they have the opportunity to raise millions of dollars for a theory of everything that predicts that the theory might someday predict something.
Imagine the possibilities. Thirty more years of string-a-ling hype, hundreds of millions of dollars, and Garett Lisi conferences in Lake Tahoe and on Hawaii.
Finally Peter Woit gets called out after hyping Lisi's paper after putting a "modest amount" of effort into undertsanding it:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comments
<LI class=alt id=comment-30693>H-I-G-G-S Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 9:42 am (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comment-30693)
One does not have to examine the full E_8 structure to see the
“non-unification” unification aspects of the construction. Consider his
“unification” of the quarks and gluons of QCD using G_2. It is true that the 14-dimensional adjoint rep of G_2 decomposes as the 8 + 3 + \bar 3 of SU(3) under G_2 -> SU(3). And it is true that the gluons are in the 8 and the quarks and anti-quarks in the 3 + \bar 3. So what? What action does Dr. Lisi propose? I am very sure that if you wade through the obscure notation one will discover that either
1) It is the same action as that of QCD in which case G_2 plays absolutely no role in the contruction.
2) It is not the same action as that of QCD in which case the theory is ruled out by experiment.
It is a lazy author that can’t be bothered to work out the simple consequences of his theory and explain them simply. And it is a lazy blogger (who is supposed to be an expert in representation theory after all) who blogs about a paper and adds to the hype without putting in a modest amount of effort to understand what is going on.
<LI id=comment-30696>Garrett (http://deferentialgeometry.org/) Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 10:29 am (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comment-30696)amused:
This is a great improvement. It appears you are now understanding (if not actually liking) the paper, as your factual statements are mostly correct. Now please consider that matching the standard model fields and dynamics to parts of the E8 connection and its curvature, with only a handful of exotic fields, is non-trivial.
(You have passed through the first, second, and are now to the third stage of acceptance (described on Bee’s blog).)
H-I-G-G-S:
I chose (1). And I’ve tried to make the paper as succinct as possible. On your last comment, I’ll let Peter speak for himself.
woit (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog) Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 10:46 am (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617#comment-30697)H-I-G-G-S,
This posting in no way purports to contain a technical examination of the paper and its problems. I have put a “modest amount” of effort into understanding what is going on, enough to see several problems with what Garrett is trying to do. The sort of general unification/non-unification problem you bring up is specifically addressed in the posting. I don’t think there’s anything at all in what I wrote that hypes the paper, quite the contrary. The links I provided to places where it is hyped were given in the context of noting that I don’t think this kind of thing is a good idea at all.
I’ll provide you with another link, to the discussion and my comments at Sabine’s blog, about how unprofessional it is to attack people from behind the cover of anonymity, evading any responsibility for one’s actions:
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/anonymity.html (http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/anonymity.html)
Since Woit is against anonimity, I think it is only fair for him to offer full disclosure. How much funding does his blog, which hypes meaningless theories, receive from Columbia? Who are the donors/supporters? How much of the Columbia endowment goes to support his blog and views? What are the names/emails of the people who run the Hedge Funds that support Columbia's endowment and Woit's blog? How much funding does Lee Smolin receive from which sources run my what persons to fund PI's hyping of spurious theories? Columbia has a multi-billion dollar endowment, and PI has millions upon millions of dollars to fund PR releases, to intimidate and confound independent thinkers, and to replace logic and reason with mysictism and tyranny, and to directly and indirectly support "Surfer dude comes up with 'fabulous' unified theory of everything."
As Woit's email address and webserver are supported by an institution that is federally funded in part, should there not be more transparency? What exactly is he emailing to Lisi/Smolin et al? Indeed, anonimity and secrecy need to be done away with wherever the taxpayer is footing part of the bill to promote suprious theories.
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/surfer-dude-comes-fabulous-unified-theory-everything-14793.html
How much time do Lee and Peter and Baez spend conspiring to promote the Lisis of the world, while castigating and impugning true physics and physicists? Should there not be some form of anti-trust movement against those who seek to monopolize discourse in physics, using bully blogs funded by tax and tuition dollars (which stem from spurious tax-payer-funded student loan programs); replacing beauty and simplicity with hyped "theories of everything" which are patently unsound, false, and ultimately meaningless, sans equations, sans postulates, sans predictions, sans physics?
Indeed--let us get rid of the anonimity and secrecy that dominates Woit's operation. Woit can be far more transparent about his communications and sources of funding.
I think that in the interest of full disclosure Woit/Smolin/Baez should disclose all sources of funding, and all channeling and distribution of said funding. For instance, how much has PI paid Lisi? Lisi is good PR for the moment, and PR is of vast value to institutional fundraising at institutions such as PI.
Woit would have called the authors of the Federalist Papers, who published under the name of Publius, unprofessional. That would be Madison, Jay, and Hamilton--all of whom honored logic, reason, and Truth over pomo-hipster-hypester handwaving.
I look forward to seeing the balance sheets on how much tax, tuition, and government funds are invested into hyping non-theories; so as to bolster fundraising efforts.
Make no mistake, Woit doesn't like ideas, logic, truth and reason from anomimous sources that don't support his "theories of everything" created by surfer dudes, because then he can't attack the person with Baez's mean-spirited, snarky crackpot index, using his bully blog backed by Columbia's billion-dollar endowment. His favored modus operandi is subtle ad hominem attacks. Woit is a political animal--a modern-day gossip columnist. Where is his physics? We don't know. What is the Woit equation? The Woit postulate? The Woit conjecture? He and his snarky-snark friends prefer to create Baez crackpot indexes to attack people, instead of debating ideas in a civil manner.
What is needed is more humility. Does Woit's collecting of IP addresses really advance physics? Does his threats to "use them" against detractors of spurious new theories by surfer dudes really advance truth and knowledge? Or just the bottom line of his publisher? By the way, his editor is anonymous I believe, as well as the PR person who hypes/promotes his book. Should not their names and IP addresses be printed on teh fornt cover of his book, along with all those who have any say in funding Woit's blog? If we are to rid ourselves of opaqueness and anonimity, Woit can lead the way to a brand new day of disclosure. How many emails did he share with Lisi before hyping Lisi to the world? What did they contain? Who funded them?
Here's some perspective that Woit's blog lacks:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071117-upon-further-review-surfers-new-theory-of-everything-severely-deficient.htmlThis paper is actually a very impressive piece of work, though it is thoroughly overhyped and completely un-understandable to anyone who doesn't regularly do particle physics and group theory.
More perspective not found in Woit's Blog & all the PI commenters who Woit never deletes:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/770002407831/m/542006568831
"I have discovered a truly remarkable Theory of Everything using H8 Groups.
Alas, my proof too large and this comment box too small to contain."
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html
Ignore snarky hypesters like Woit/Smolin/Lisi/Baez.
Read Einstein/Bohr/Feynman/Dirac/Schrodenger/Newton/Boltzman/Faraday.
Read the real men who came up with real equations and real postulates while contemplating reality.
Read up on Moving Dimensions Theory: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. d(x4)/dt = ic