/sci/ - Science & Math

>>5998855
300k starting
ANY.
JOB.
I WANT.

If string theory makes predictions, it can be tested. Granted, from what I understand, we can't test much of it at accessible energy levels, but it's a far cry from unfalsifiable religious woo.

>>5998855
>just like everything
I think you answered your own question.

He's just made that his shit is falsifiable, unlike the word of God.

Math is the most important thing. I will never get a dime unless I solve a problem with a reward, and then I will only get the reward if I share the solution.

If I had money I'd just use it rent out super computers

>>5998868

Sorry, we're not retards so we're not falling for your BULLSHIT. Making predictions that can't be tested in any reasonable way, even unreasonable way, is the same thing as not making predictions and in just believing something is true.

Science is getting out of control. They're up against a Progress Wall and the system runs on GROWTH. It's much the same problem we're encountering with our economy: It must grow, or collapse. That's intrinsically flawed.

String Theory isn't a theory. The physicists need to STOP proposing stuff that just can't be tested. That's RELIGION. They need to work on stuff that *can* be probed using our technology and energy supplies.

>>5998889
String theory has explanatory power. It isn't our fault that you don't understand the math. Stay mad, high school dropout.

>>5998894 String theory has explanatory power.

Really? Such as what? There's 10^600 or whatever possible universe configurations, and if you pick the right one, you can use it to model something in ours, with basically every result slightly modifying which possible configuration is actually our universe.

Yah.... That's basically the definition of 0 predictive power

If String Theory can not be empirically tested with experiment, then why waste effort on it ?

>>5999026
Tbh, I don't know much about String Theory, but Physicists 'waste' effort on it, because at the moment it seems to be the only game in town when it comes to proposing a Quantum theory of Gravity.

There are 2 major issues with it though - untestable in most cases, and depending on the parameters used in making predictions, you could predict completely different

Even with those 2 big flaws, a lot of Physicists are interested in String Theory, so I think they must believe it can offer something eventually

Wow, you guys really don't know what science is about, do you? Even though string theory isn't directly testable, none of science is ever concrete. If assuming string theory leads us to things that CAN be tested and show things that CONTRADICT string theory, then the theory gets revised. That's how science works, everything's a theory and we keep moving forward.

String theory is just one possible interpretation, and hasn't led to any major brekathroughs. On it's own, it probably never will, even if it does happen to be correct

It's also not a terribly clever concept in itself, I'm surprised people make such a big fucking deal about it

>>5999042
The existence of God isn't directly testable either. Your argument is invalid, move along

>>5999048
No, but the existence of a god can't be contradicted yet by other testable evidence. So until that happens, belief in a god is entirely plausible. However, some shit like saying evolution doesn't exist should prompt smashing their face into the fossil record.

>>5999056
Onus Probandi
Hitchens' Razor
Russell's Teapot
Ad hoc hypothesis

Do I need to continue you fucking failure? The idea of a god is exactly the opposite of falsifiable or testable hypothesis and it contradicts principles of logic.

Unless YOU provide evidence for its existance, there is NO REASON TO BELIEVE IN ITS EXISTANCE.

>>5999035
Most major physicists strongly dislike string theory actually. College students and low level professors are rather fond of it for certain reasons, but it falls flat on it's face once you reach a level where you have a solid perspective. It's probably little more than a nice teaching tool, perhaps a good mental exercise... There isn't much evidence to suggest that it might someday answer any of the modern mysteries in science though, and probably isn't even remotely close to the actual underlying mechanisms, whether or not it's predictions coincide with current experimental data. It offers no real explanation itself, and will likely fall apart within the next century. It's a nice try, but it's probably wrong.

>>5999072
Hello VSG. Did you drop the namefag tag after being told epically in the other thread?

>>5999072
Yes, now tell me about how you've tested string theory again?

You haven't? You can't? Same difference. String theory is more religion than science, get over yourself

>>5999079
I am not him, please provide a link for that thread so I can understand the context of your weird accusation.

Also, u mad religiousfag?

>>5999082
I am not any of the anons defending stirng theory, i am actually not a scientist at all, I just wanted to make sure to end this "HURRR YOU CANT DISSPROFF GOD" idiocy.

And I understand a little of string theory (I come here to educate myself), and I agree with you.

>>5999072
Yeah, yeah, whatever, it's just pointing fingers but in a fancy way. I'm actually atheist myself, but I can see why people would believe in a god at this point because we have nothing to disprove the existence of a god. However, they can't prove the existence of a god either which makes the concept that either side is THE ABSOULTE RIGHT ONE is absolute fallacy.

its like people on sci have never actually read any real textbook on string theory and think it only consists of the things they see on kakus documentaries.

>>5999094
Should probably drop the whole religion thing now before the thread gets derailed

Probably too late though... meh

>>5999094
Let me express it in a logical way that is consistent with the onus probandi and the principles of science (or any empiricallly oriented view).

A -> B

There is no evidence of the existance of a god, therefore, there is no reason to belive in it.
This is an absolutely consistent conditional, the antecedent is true, hence the consequent has to be true. Hence I AM ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

>>5999100
see>>5998855
The whole thing was about religious belief vs scientific hypothesis in the first place

>>5998894

It's not about math, dude. It's about EXPERIMENTS to verify your 'theory'. If the theory can't be verified with experiments, then it's not a theory. It's RELIGION. Or something else similarly made up by scared academics who know they're run out of things to earn PhDs on.

>>5999102
There is no evidence of the non-existence of a god, therefore there is no reason not to believe in it. This is an absolutely consistent conditional, the antecedent is true, hence the consequent has to be true. Hence I AM ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

A lack of evidence does not support a hypothesis. EVER.

>>5999096
Kaku is the primary reason why I loathe string theory, actually. I've never heard a convincing case made for string theory, despite actively seeking one out, rather than passively being all "pics or it didn't happen"

If you can make a good case for it or recommend some books on the subject, I'd probably be interested in going over it again, assuming I don't run into propaganda / logical fallacies / blatant bullshit from the get go

>>5999113
NOBODY HAS TO PROVE NEGATIVE FACTS

CLAIMS MUST BE PROVEN BY THOSE WHO MAKE THEM

Do you even fucking understand what the onus probandi is and what falsifiabilty is?

Jesus fuck you are retarded. The onus probandi is there precisely to stop the ridiculous ad absurdum you are proposing.

If you dont like the onus probandi i suggest you visit
>>>/pol/
>>>/lit/
>>>/x/

And stay there

>>5999115
popsci or textbook?

>>5999026
> If String Theory can not be empirically tested with experiment, then why waste effort on it?

If you were a PhD or postdoc and you had nothing to contribute since this shit is HARD, then why not come up with a silly 'theory' about strings that are 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the electron? It's not a waste if you play around with math every day in your air-conditioned office for $60K+ per year while the plebes outside have to sweat balls while doing REAL WORK and getting paid a lot less to boot.

These absurd cosomological theories are just attempts by a worthless academic class to justify their own paychecks. Sadly, THAT'S WORKING, at least for now.

>>5999122
You realize that "god doesn't exist" is a claim as well, right? As a matter of fact, it's probably the more progressive claim which then means that YOU are the one with the burden of proof.

>>5999042
> That's how science works, everything's a theory and we keep moving forward.

NO... since once again:

1. It's not a theory if it can't be tested, otherwise verified or falsified.

2. We aren't moving forward if we let scientists as a class descend into 'theories' that are really religious beliefs that have no experimental basis to support them.

Science is getting out of control. We need to SPEAK UP before it becomes even more absurd, like paying Liberals to 'teach' Blacks who refuse to learn and will never learn.

>>5999129
THIS

>>5999132
Oh dear fucking jesus christ lord and savior of the heavens....

This is NOT a temporal issue, its NOT who actually CLAIMED something first.

Fronted with the claim that there is a god, you can ABSOLUTELY RIGHTLY SAY THAT THERE IS NO GOD AS LONG AS IT HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN (see above posts). And this is the relevant point, only those who assert have to prove, not in temporal terms of assertion, but in logical analysis of truth values of propositions.

I dont know why I waste my time teaching logic to children, you just cant even into basic argumentation and proposition models.

>>5999132
> You realize that "god doesn't exist" is a claim as well, right?

No, it's an OBSERVATION. The onus of proof for such an existence is upon the proposers. You said your 'god' existed, so where's are the observations for it? We rational people merely note there's no fucking evidence for your giant astral monster.

Stop believing in fucking FAIRY TALES. Grow up.

whats with all the people saying ST has no predictive power? the LHC alone has tested 3 different prediction already. please keep up to date with science news.

>>5999074
> Most major physicists strongly dislike string theory actually. College students and low level professors are rather fond of it for certain reasons, but it falls flat on it's face once you reach a level where you have a solid perspective. It's probably little more than a nice teaching tool, perhaps a good mental exercise[.]

Soundly put. I became militant against the string 'theorists' because you can't even CALL them another name. It's fucking Orwellian by now; they've infected our mental spaces with a clear falsehood.

Those who view string anti-theory as a tool for better understanding, probably can get further along than either the string fuckers and the militant rationalists like me. Do well, /sci/bro.

>>5999114
Experiments are for plebs who can't into theory. I've seen experimental physicists who don't even understand quantum theory.

This thread needs more politics and religion. There's way too much actual science here. I'm seeing way too much of the string theorists talking about the theory itself, and the critics are making too much of an effort to attack the theory itself rather than the people who subscribe to it. We need to get back to the real issues, like how gay people want to steal our guns because God doesn't exist

You do know that, even if string theory doesn't accurately portray quantum gravity or some such, we would still use it as a tool for research in QFT?
I mean you do know about the AdS/CFT correspondence, don't you?

>>5998942
>doesn't know the difference between explanation and prediction

Perhaps it doesn't model real Nature, but the little bit I read from Zwiebach's book was fun as hell.

>>5998942
>with basically every result slightly modifying which possible configuration is actually our universe.

General relativity only offers slight modification of Newtonian gravity, like the tiny procession of the perihelion of Mercury. QFT only offers a slight modification of QM - the Lamb shift for example.
The modifications might be tiny, but they are important. The anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron might be a tiny correction to the Dirac theory, but it is a massively accurate correction! Don't think of it as correction on the order of 0.1%, but instead see it as an agreement with nature to one part in one trillion.
I agree, however, that the difficulty of picking a vacuum that replicates the standard model is the downfall of string theory, but if such a vacuum could be found then real predictions could me made - ones that aren't generic to all string theory.

>>5999114
>>5999152
>>5999152
Every fucking day I read up something new about science, spend a week here, or a few classes more into my degree, every time, I see another of those comics proven true.

>>5999194
I know that feel,

Theres two things I love in this world, Science and Pro Wrasslin.

>>5999198
but pro wrasslin is about as fake as string theory

>>5998942
10^600? Nah, you're gonna need some Knuth's up-arrow notation at least. One does not simply use mere exponentiation to calculate the permutations of...

Ah, fuck it. It's a big number. Let's just leave it at that.

>>5999115
>Kaku is the primary reason why I loathe string theory
How can you hate something you know nothing about?
The only way to really understand is to take a course on general relativity, then one on quantum field theory, then finally do some actual string theory. It came about as a way of describing bosons in QCD.

>>5999129
>play around with math every day in your air-conditioned office for $60K+ per year

Let me guess: you have never been a scientist, right? I have. I never earned that kind of money. It is hard to get tenure and little money in the pure sciences. There is a bit more in the applied sciences, where I was.

>>5999194

LOL! I don't think the theos (which stands for theoreticals, not theologicals, although you see how a person can get confused) even listen to the expers anymore. Expers are such DOWNERS. Always telling the theos (sadly, the elite of the academics) what they can't do. Expers are natural pessimists. The theos have taken on the role of optimists. Guess who dominates the public's mind?

>>5999218
But that's because optimism sells. How many time have you seen cancer cured in the news?

>>5999221
times*

>>5999214

Your own graphic says $66K to $95K average or median for professors. I said $60K+. Looks like you're proving me right, retard.

>>5999138
>1. It's not a theory if it can't be tested, otherwise verified or falsified.
String theory can be tested and falsified. The current possibilities of testing it are limited, but a deeper understanding of M-theory and nonperturbative effects could open a whole range of possibilities. It is falsifiable as it is, now. If there was a field with a huge symmetry group - SU(1000), say - then ST would have to false. Another possibility would be discovering a small charge that the proton has but not the electron, as there is a relationship between charge and mass in ST. I don't mean an electric charge, but a conserved quantity, similar to electric charge, colour charge and weak isospin.
>2. We aren't moving forward if we let scientists as a class descend into 'theories' that are really religious beliefs that have no experimental basis to support them.
That is what theoretical physicists do, though. We don't ACCEPT these theories as fact until there is evidence for them. Even string theorists would admit failure if the above conditions for falsification were met. There is a huge difference between speculation and blind acceptance. Every theory was speculative at some point.
>Science is getting out of control. We need to SPEAK UP before it becomes even more absurd, like paying Liberals to 'teach' Blacks who refuse to learn and will never learn.
>>>/pol/

>>5999208
You can't hate something that you know nothing about. I am quite familiar with the techniques used by those who rely on propaganda and skillful manipulation of logical fallacies rather to compensate for their ineptitude, though.

Kaku seriously comes off very, very strongly as being someone who has no idea what the hell he's talking about, but knows how to come up with trippy nonsense that sounds slick and trendy enough to impress people who don't really understand science and hate the idea of learning but still want to appear intelligent to other people

Basically, I strongly suspect that Kaku is little more than an impressive conartist. He's good at manipulating others and working the system.

I'm not at all convinced that he's much of a physicist. He'd make a good politician, though.

>>5999229
Had you had any real academic experience you would know a professorship is a long way up.

You start as a grad student (or post graduate student, terminology depending), and prograss to research assistant where you earn peanuts. You have to work hard to gain reputation by publication which is the main metrics. Typically you need 2 - 5 RA-ships, each lasting 2 - 3 years before you get tenure. If you get it. Most likely you will have to do a few rounds as a visiting researcher.

The pyramid quickly gets narrow, there are far more PhD students than will ever get tenure. And in this period you hardly have the means to pay down your student loans.

Academic ladder is (where I was) lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and then you get (perhaps) a professorship.

Dear VSG,

please explain this equation.

<div class="math">S = -\frac{T}{2}\int\mathrm{d}\tau\mathrm{d}\sigma\sqrt{-h}\,h^{\alpha\beta}\frac{\partial X^\mu}{\partial\alpha}\frac{\partial X^\nu}{\partial\beta}g_{\mu\nu}</div>

Thanks in advance.

>>5999155
Condensed matter theorists use string theory to model massive numbers of entangled electrons in metals, as would occur in superconductors, for example. They use the ST dualities to turn impossible problems into tractable ones, then revert the process.
So you are correct, ST is useful even if it's wrong.

>>5999206
Finish your sentence. What do you think we're counting the permutations of?
Top Tip: You aren't permuting anything.
That number comes from counting Calabi–Yau manifolds.

>>5999254
That's exactly what I was getting at - though to be fair there's some criticism on the validity of the whole scheme (I think it's because there's preferred coordinate systems in condensed matter, but I'm neither string theorist nor condensed matter expert)

>>5999244
He knows what he's talking about. He worked on string field theory, which is much closer to the very well accepted quantum field theory than other methods of ST. Don't judge string theory based pop-sci. He's a professional physicists and you should judge him based on his science. The same goes for the rest of string theory - not just the bits he worked on.

>>5999271
Perturbative string theory is on a fixed background, so I don't see that being a problem.

>>5999303
http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v66/i4/p9_s1?bypassSSO=1
last paragraph - again, I don't know enough to judge the validity of this criticism, simply noting it for the curious

>>5999178

I didn't mean that the results refine string theory. I meant that you have 10^600 or whatever possible models to choose from. *ONE* of them is the current version of the universe we're living in. So you pick one, run with it. If there's a disparity between the one you picked and reality, you need to pick a new one. This isn't refining the theory at all.

It's basically saying, if you know the future, you can predict the past pretty accurately. Basically the exact definition of having 0 predictive power.

>>5999242
> String theory can be tested and falsified.

Nope. We have no means of testing things which are 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the electron.

Try again, dipshit. Wait, don't bother. We can't try again since there's nothing to try.

I'd ask you for a link to anything about an experiment that tries to prove string 'theory' is true, but it's pointless to ask: There is no such experiment. It's currently physically impossible to design such an experiment. Nobody knows how to detect something that's 20 orders of magnitude smaller than an electron.

Thanks for playing, troll. Now get lost. People like you are part of the systemic problem that we're complaining about here. I.e. bullshit isn't science.

>>5999596
>We have no means of testing things which are 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the electron.
That's to observe strings themselves but string theory can be used to make predictions at lower energies.

e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6575

Don't call people a dipshit if you have no idea what you're talking about.

You don't prove theories, ever. There isn't a damn thing in science that has been "proven true".

>>5999596
>We have no means of testing things which are 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the electron.
Also the Electron has no known finite size.

I don't really know

>>5999596
Letès not forget that we have no way of directly observing an isolated quark. Back when quark theories first came out they went under huge criticism for being 'untestable', but we eventually figured out ways of inferring their existence. We may never observe a string, but that hardly matters. Time and effort will reveal ways to test sting theory. If it flops, it flops. If it succeeds, it succeeds. Unfortunately, the theoretical side of string theory needs a hell of a lot of work before it becomes testable. Patience is key.

ITT: people who have never heard of a Bessel function discussing the most complex problem in physics.

>>5999724
>implying it's needed

>>5999728
They're not. The point he was making was that nobody here is actually educated enough in math or physics to talk about string theory

>>5999724

I've heard of bessel functions and I don't even know what any of this shit is.

>>5999724
I know what Bessel functions are.
I just really hate string theory
Come at me brah.

Actually String theory is exactly like a religion, it causes people with no idea what the fuck they are talking about to think their opinions matter.

>>5999927
What's your problem? Is string theory 2hard4u?

>>5999962

Your opinions don't matter, bitchlord.

i love jesus christ

>>5999962
>implying you have ever read anything about string theory other than youtube comments

SCIENCE IS FAKE

MAGIC IS REAL

love /x/

holla holla get dolla

>>5999596
>Nope. We have no means of testing things which are 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the electron.
I never said they were practical. The falsifications are still valid.

>>5999140
>>5999143
This is some incredibly autistic shit.

>I dont know why I waste my time teaching logic to children

This is the most blatant posturing I've ever seen on this board. I can only imagine you guys are being insufferable on purpose

String theory can be tested, just not with the current technology. You would have never heard of string theory if it wasn't testable.

But I don't know why this is such a hot topic on the internet. For most people, their only exposure to string theory is from that documentary with Brian Greene, and maybe even Wikipedia. Even for me, I've only read half of Zwieback's book on string theory.

I guess it's easy to pretend that you're a leading theoretical physicist when you're on the internet.

To everyone who complains about string theory not being testable yet, here's Murray Gell-Mann talking about how he published the quark model even though it disagreed with 7 different experiments because he thought the model was too beautiful to be false. The quark model ended up being right. Experiment is not the be all and end all of physics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuRxRGR3VpM

>>6000196
>I can only imagine you guys are being insufferable on purpose
It could be they were strung up by theories as small children.

>>6000288
>he thought the model was too beautiful to be false
It worked (or strictly speaking, it worked better than previous theories) this time. It does not work always. Remember epicycles.

On a more philosophical note I must admit that when things are right (for an improved value of "right") it even looks right. This seems to be true in mathematics (tidy equations), physics (often a lot of symmetry), constructions (elegance in the structures like a gothic cathedral or the simple elegance of a hardy light house) or even aircrafts (even pedestrians can see that SR-71 is awesome)

>>6000288
>Experiment is not the be all and end all of physics.

No, it's actually the only thing that matters in physics.

>published the quark model even though it disagreed with 7 different experiments
>The quark model ended up being right

This isn't possible, you're misinterpreting something. If a model disagrees with experimentation, the model is wrong, always.

Some early draft version of the model might have disagreed with experimentation, and he published it anyway, but there were definitely final adjustments made to the final form to make it fit experimental data.

>>6001164
Well in an ideal world you would of course be right, but afaik there's so much shit that people throw out as papers (not even 10% of all experiments in physics are reproducible) - it's possible that the experimenters made mistakes themselves

>>6001164
The experiments were flawed. This is comparable to experiments saying that electrons are point-particles; they could be found to be stringy in more accurate experiments.
Also, it was the weak force he was talking about, not QCD. The quark model is actually much harder to test, as the strong force is strongly coupled (coupling constant is greater than 1) at the energy levels of, say, the bound quarks in a proton. This means that making predictions about the masses of bound states cannot be calculated perturbatively. The weak force is weakly coupled at the relevant energies and is thus easier to work with. As such the disagreement with experiment was a huge threat; there is no way the theory could survive because of unseen complexity and nonperturbative effects. It DID survive, though, because the experimenters were wrong.

>>6001404
>This means that making predictions about the masses of bound states cannot be calculated perturbatively.

hue

>>5998855
String theory is mathematically sound.

>>6001545
Oh that's alright then, so it is automatically correct.

>>6001545
>String theory is mathematically sound.
Given suffucuent assumtions.

It reminds me of the story that 2 plus 2 is 5 for sufficiently large values of 2.

>>6001545
Nope, you don't know shit about string theory. Stop talking out o your ass.

>>6001545

Early models of the solar system with the earth at the center were also mathematically sound. They actually predicted orbits better than Copernicus' solar centered model, and that was the true reason it was initially rejected, not due to bullshit people tell you about religious dogma among astronomers, his model simply produced worse results.

>>6001545

like many tautologies

It's just straight up bullshit, and a lot of people just making banking off shit they know is bullshit when they could be usefully advancing humanity

>>5998889
>believing in gravity