String theory and (braided) real life

I spent some time in the academia. I was involved in some theoretical physics stuff that had to do with quantum gravity. It was a lot of fun, but given the lack of job positions together with my laziness, I choose to quit and to find a much more stable work in the IT.

I have to admit that my idea of the academia was too generous: considering that it is still a prolongation of human society it was easily foreseeable that it could suffer from the same problems that any other socially closed human group could suffer.

But I have to acknowledge that the extreme specialization led to a form of madness very specific to this field of human experience: overcomplexification (ok, it is not even an English word, but this is just a curl of wind with respect to the violent hurricane that every day storms this and many other languages on the web).

What do I mean? As the word suggests, it is the trend in the scientific community to produce over-formalized baroque papers with a supposed principle of elegance. In my miserable opinion, it is functional just to cover up the lack of physical understanding and of new concepts. It is perceived by the rookie physicist as a way to impress the community (again with this alleged elegance) and by the tenured professor or researcher as a road to immortality.

I write this words with a deep understanding at least of the “rookie physicists” psychology, as far as I was affected by this syndrome in my early attempts. I was lucky to be driven out from this madness by the environment and by the research group I was in.

A great manifestation of such a madness,  and also of the much more earthly need for funds, is String Theory. I try to speak with all the needed respect for such a great effort in finding nothing¹. It is all about building something very complicated, all on paper or on a computer. Then to make it the most elegant and beautiful as possible. Then to say around that it is a (possible²) description of the way Universe works.

Well, I have been just a rookie, and I have no interest in become a super star physicist, therefore i don’t give a fuck in demonstrate how righteous I am. I just want to contribute to this mess with an unsolicited advice. Recently I had to make my house’s electrical system, and I found it a very useful exercise. It was very tricky to me to understand from the bottom how to minimize the number of cables in the pipes and still it is something that has to come to an end. The possible outcome is quite narrow: either it works or not.

Dear theoretical physicist, if you are going to prepare something very complex and full of baroque notation, just stop for a moment and ask yourself: will it help me understand better my house’s electrical system? And also, will it work?

 


¹ “Not Even Wrong” is a way of characterizing a logical model that is not falsifiable. In particular it is not only practically falsifiable, because of the lack of a sufficient high energy particle source to probe directly the quantum gravity realm. It is a fairy tale told by advocates of this theories. It is also theoretically impossible to distinguish between many (infinite) string theory models.

² Recently the approach of the communities (because, like religions, also science is split in many factions) is to be more conciliatory between each other and to admit that there is the remote possibility not to be on the right side of the quarrel.