#006
All useless science is an empty boast.
- Gaius Julius Phaedrus
No
one
has
been
boasted
about
more
than
Edward
Witten.
"The Man
Who Led
the Second
Superstring
Revolution"
"Best
scientist
of
them
all"
"Physics Titan"
There
are
probably
thousands
of
other
examples.
But
Janice Williams
thinks Hawking
was smarter! lolololol
#007
Any theory is better than no theory.
- Fuller Albright
Nonsense.
Take String Theory.
Please.
#008
Any work of science, no matter what its point of departure,
cannot become fully convincing until it crosses the boundary
between the theoretical and the experimental.
- Gaston Bachelard
Twenty six word salad.
"Theories have to be testable" seems easier to say.
Oh, by the way, String Theory isn't.
#009
Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some
useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
- Alfonso X of Castile (1221-1284),
after having String Theory explained to him
#010
I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough, but I'm also at
the point where physics ends and chemistry begins, so I'll
have to drop the whole thing.
- cartoonist (or string theorist) Sidney Harris
#011
If an explanation is so vague in its inherent nature, or
so unskillfully molded in its formulation, that specific
deductions subject to empirical verification or refutation
can not be based upon it, then it can never serve as a
working hypothesis. A hypothesis with which one can not
work is not a working hypothesis.
- Douglas Wilson Johnson (1878-1944)
What does it say about String Theory when a 19th century
geographer can beat the crap out of it?
#012
Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.
- Edwin Land (1909-1991)
Perfectly illustrated in movies. When movies stink,
the marketing is ten times more frequent.
String Theory, by this measure, is the ultimate physics stinker.
Sadly, the very best things also require great marketing,
because they threaten the hegemony.
#013
Not all fields are fruitful.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Government subsidies have changed the playing field.
Today barren fields like String Theory provide a bountiful
harvest for shameless beggers and charlatans.
#StopScientificResearchSubsidies
#014
Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.
- Jean Rostand, 1939
Truth is never premature.
Replace 'truth' with 'impulse', 'urge', 'wish', 'hope',
'fantasy' or 'daydream'.
At which point this quote's present value drops to zero.
#015
Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting,
but hypotheses may not.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Good theories are always interesting.
Or they are wrong.
Because good things grow, whereas garbage like String Theory,
stink like rotten eggs.
#016
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
- Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)
Profitable politics consists in ignoring facts.
#017
Science is a great many things, but in the end they all
return to this: science is the acceptance of what works
and the rejection of what does not. That needs more
courage than we might think.
- Jacob Bronowski
No courage would be needed if research subsidies were stopped.
#018
Scientists dream up fantasies and then pursue a highly
selective hunt for new facts which fit these fantasies.
This process may be described as 'science creating its own
universe' (as long as one remembers that 'creating' here
is used in a provocative-idiosyncratic sense).
- Imre Lakatos
Imre
Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of
mathematics and science, known for his thesis
of the fallibility of mathematics and its
'methodology of proofs and refutations'."
On pseudoscience:
Lakatos's own key examples of pseudoscience were
Ptolemaic astronomy, Immanuel Velikovsky's planetary
cosmogony, Freudian psychoanalysis, Marxism,
Lysenko's biology, Niels Bohr's quantum mechanics,
astrology, psychiatry, and neoclassical economics.
For his thoughts on Niels Bohr alone, I'm springing for
an Imre Lakatos full back piece.
#019
Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question
is our best substitute for actually having the answer.
- Brian Greene, "The Elegant Universe"
The level of corruption in Brian String Theory's statement
is ...total.
#020
The best hope of science lies in its greatest minds
being often brilliantly and determinedly wrong.
- Edwin G. Boring
Getting things wrong is the easy part.
Feynman, Penrose, Bohr, Einstein and Witten leap to mind.
Getting anyone to call a wrong thing wrong?
That's the almost impossible part.
#021
The equations that really work in describing nature with
the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very
elegant and subtle.
- Edward Witten
But there is nothing elegant or subtle about String Theory
so, by your own metric, String Theory is useless.
#022
The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful
hypothesis by an ugly fact.
- Thomas Henry Huxley
Yet, like medusa, tEmP theories just grow more heads.
#StopScientificResearchSubsidies, or sharpen your battle axe.
#023
The laws of Nature give a fundamental role to certain entities.
We are not really sure what they are, but at the present level
of understanding they seem to be the elementary quantum fields.
- Steven Weinberg
It's shocking how useless this quote is.
What a truly useless "scientist".
Needless to say he was awarded a Nobel prize...for QCD,
the stenchiest mound of dark matter in physics.
#POS
#024
There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture
out of such a trifling investment of fact.
- Mark Twain
#StopScientificResearchSubsidies
#025
The infamous "1+2+3+4+5+..." = -1/12 (exhaustively covered by
Mathologer here)
appeared in a String Theory textbook by J. Pauljinsky!
When weird math mumbo jumbo appears in your physics textbook,
it's time to drop your String Theory courses.
You're welcome!
#026
These mathematicians make me tired! When you ask them to
work out a sum they take a piece of paper, cover it with
rows of A's, B's, and X's and Y's, scatter a mess of
flyspecks over them, and then give you an answer that's
all wrong!
- Thomas Edison
These String Theorists make me tired! When you
ask them to explain the universe they take a piece
of paper, cover it with rows of A's, B's, and
X's and Y's, scatter a mess of flyspecks over
them, and then give you an answer that's all wrong!
#027
What of the scientists who assumed that continents were
stable, that the hereditary material was protein, or that
all other galaxies lay within the Milky Way?
These false and abandoned efforts were pursued with passion
by brilliant and honourable scientists.
- Stephen Jay Gould
Ever tried to predict the next good movie? It's almost
impossible. Your favorite director is no guaranty. Same
with your favorite actor, or writer.
This is why payment should only come after the value
of a thought has been realized.
In other words, wait for the buzz to die down and then pick
up your movies for free at your local library. Do this one
hundred times and, with a bit of luck, you'll find one good
movie.
Same with theories...
#028
When we understand String Theory, we will know how the
universe began. It won't have much effect on how we live,
but it is important to understand where we come from and
what we can expect to find as we explore.
- Stephen Hawking
Few physicists were more useless than Hawking.
Shows how effective the sympathy ploy is.
#029
M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find.
- Stephen Hawking
Not a chance.
Idiot.
#030
A man may imagine things that are false,
but he can only understand things that are true.
- Isaac Newton
Excellent.
Which is why zero people understand String Theory.
#031
The birth of an idea is that happy moment when everything
appears possible and reality has not yet entered into the
problem.
- Rudolph Diesel
Just keep government money away from researchers.
That approach will never disappoint.
Never ever.
#032
I often say when you can measure what you are speaking about,
and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but
when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in
numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfying kind.
- Lord Kelvin (William Thomson)
Though useful for making String Theory look bad, this is
a pretty idiotic quote.
But then Thomson thought the Sun was powered by gravitation
energy.
#LightInTheLoafers
#033
Fantasy can open a way out of the prison-house
of our mundane habits of seeing and being.
A way that leads to an otherworld more real
and resplendent that the one out the window.
- Erik Davis
A lot of druggies
think this way.
Fact is, pursuing fantasies doesn't work in a real field
like physics.
Unless garbage theories are subsidized with government money.
#034
If there is a God, He has done such a bad job
that he isn't worth discussing.
- Isaac Asimov
Even if String Theory is valid, physicists
have done such a bad job explaining it
that it isn't worth discussing.
#035
p. 83 - The Moving Goalpost -- String Theory
- Steven Novell's "The Skeptic's Guide To The Universe"
Introduction
The Speed Of Light
Black Holes
Einstein's Equation
The Ether
Gravity
222 Answers
The Atom
Quantum World
Neutrino
Black Holes Revisited
The Comedy Of Science
et=mc3
Comparing Physics Theories
Diffuse Interstellar Bands
Einstein's Ether Talk
No Strong Force
The Electron
Relativity
Unification
Assumptions
Modeling
The Greatest Story
My Theory
Big Bang
Dark Matter/Dark Energy
Dogma
Forget The Fields
Math Sucks
Particle Physics
Peer Review
Standard Model
Star Gazing
String Theory
tEmP Theories/Theorists
The Control System
Trolls
Spring-And-Loop Theory by Floyd Maxwell is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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