Here is Witten's response. Unzicker should have included it: czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html Witten's answer was good but it ignored the main problem: the pressure on young theoretical particle physicists to work on string theory since the mid eighties has resulted in an unhealthy monoculture.
Here was Witten's response: "So, the first point, by way of replying, is that sometimes things take time. The Higgs particle was just a hypothesis for 50 years and there were plenty of skeptics about it. Neutron stars were regarded as science fiction. And gravitational waves seemed hopelessly undetectable when Einstein first proposed/predicted them and the fact that eventually an incredible story involving the binary pulsar made it possible to discover them was totally unforeseeable. Quantum mechanics and gravity do exist yet they don't work together in the known framework of physics. It's inevitable for humans to try to understand how they can work together. And when a framework is discovered that makes it inevitable to have quantum mechanics and gravity together, rather than impossible as in the standard framework, it's inevitable that people take it seriously and explore it. And finally string theory has given us a lot of insight about better understanding physical theories we already know, suggesting that it knows an awful lot about the real world even if we don't know very much of what it knows. So I think in brief, those might be three facets of the story you might want to take into account."
THANK YOU!!! This is exactly what I love about science, the uncontrollable impulse to get to the bottom of things. You made my day with this link, I'm going to get some popcorn and listen to Edwards response.
@@veil6666 Witten's response, w/ all due respect, is a syntactically well formulated handwave away from the core issue here. He talks about the Higgs particle, but conveniently leaves out that when the particle was proposed we were given a general idea of what we were looking for and how to find it. There was a real theory that was falsifiable - unlike String Theory and its seemingly endless rationalizations that devolve into circular pleadings for billions of more dollars to build even higher energy particle colliders in the hopes that maybe, perhaps, God willing, they'll actually find something this time.
@Gus Erland Perhaps you can let each person be the judge of that claim. I also look at string theory and supersymmetry very much the same way as Unzicker mind you.
@Gus Erland I don't want Unzicker to do Witten a favour, I want him to do all of us one and show the response. This video amounts to nothing more than Unzicker patting himself on the back.
@Gus Erland I love they way Witten speaks. So many people think he talks the way he does "because he's intelligent". All I hear is a really slow guy that clearly hasn't got much going on upstairs.
@@TheMachian Most people here already assume that his response is a good one and that you're too afraid to show it. Plus, this is youtube, ain't no body got time to dig through the internet to find the answer. You've pretty much did yourself and the scientific community a disservice by impressing upon us the assumption that his response is a good one.
@@ObsoleteTutorials You don't have time to find his response, but you had time to type out that whole paragraph? The link to Witten's response was pinned to the top of the comments over a year ago.
@@TheMachian you are such an annoying person, you made your point but however you continued doing circles about the same and being disrespectful speaking when others are responding to you. Your main intention was more to pretend being smart, and some deep pain inside (probably due to string theory in some point of your life), rather than the progress of science. That doesn't care you as much as your ego. And of course you are never going to admit that, you has to say publicly that you asked that type of questions because of science, but clever people can see through bullshit and we know that isn't true. I repeat, you are a really annoying person.
Was the goal of the question simply to annoy? If that was the goal, you've succeeded, and I am not even a string theorist nor do i have a dog in the fight. If you are criticizing someone for wasting resources and time and collective intelligence, then at least follow the same principles. The proper video would have been - "Witten's answer to my question about his responsibility" - and would INCLUDE the ACTUAL ANSWER - after watching it on another channel, I now understand why you didn't include it. This is primitive trolling. Also, Are you referring to yourself in 3rd person on your own channel?
He actually makes a valid point. Too much of string is impossible to test or prove. So it truly could be 100% wrong and other better testable ideas are being ignored.
@@BabyCasper954 don’t get me wrong. There guys are geniuses. But my complaint is valid- theses theories are not testable. It’s not strictly science which by definition needs to be testable
he has a point,any theory that cannot be checked by experiment is not science it is phylosophy. Wolfgang Pauli referred to these kind of 'theories' as "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch" ("That is not only not right; it is not even wrong")
Strictly speaking it's speculation. Not all philosophy is speculation; although most of it is. Some philosophy rests on far more solid ground than speculative maths like String 'Theory'.
@@mark4asp The level of abstraction necessary to start to understand the problem of quantum gravity is far beyond any natural intuitions 99.99999% of us will ever hope to obtain. I think that operating on the assumption that because the theory has become so unreachable by our technical capabilities and engineering that it is useless to pursue is misguided. As Witten says, Higgs and gravitational waves were considered untestable, yet many decades later here we are. There are aspects which remain potentially testable with string theory. We may yet see an elementary string stretched out by the random luck and high energies of some cosmic event, and in fact there have been occurences where we thought we may have seen one (we didn't). Skepticism is great, but until more fruitful ideas emerge, this is where we are in physics. Also important to remember Feynmans words - nature is under no obligation to make sense to any of us.
@@iridium1911 It is not a theory. It's a conjecture. No one is saying you should abandon your conjectures and hypotheses. We're asking you to stop confusing the difference between scientific theory and untestable conjecture.
It's worse than a philosophy, it's a funded religion with anointed priests and bishops like Witten and NDT. Large grants are awarded to these institutions to push String Theory, so in order for the cash to keep coming in they have to keep stacking the bullshit higher. Literally zero proof of anything they are claiming but they are asking you to take a leap of faith. Every few years they come out with a "new conjecture" that is progressively more ridiculous and frivolous. Since it can't be proven, it doesn't matter. The more convoluted the better. String theory has set science and discovery back 45 years.
Though witten’s answer was not included here, I think Unzicker was rude and preachy but Witten clearly evade to answer and hid behind experimentally successful theories while string theory is not.
I agree. Isn’t it possible that we’ll never be able to comprehend thoroughly all the physical laws that govern our universe? Isn’t it possible that all the laws of physics governed by mathematics is an infinite amount? Wasn’t their a theory in mathematics that states that we will never be able to derive all the possible mathematical laws since our axioms are limited? If so, this could surely mean that I won’t never have a full grasp and understanding of all the laws of physics that governed our universe. Although I do have in high esteem for most scientists who try to comprehend all of this, but in the end I believe it will be a fruitless endeavor if one’s goal is to achieve a theory of everything.
I like his skepticism but the fact that he made that question into a speech means he definitely had an agenda in asking that question the way that he did. But he's got a valid point. He seems to think in the short term though. String theory is a long term problem and it's thinking into the future. At some point when we are advanced enough to test the theory we will already have a foundation for it. All he's saying is he wants funding for his shit instead. 😂
Did you have an agenda listening to his talk? Most likely - we all have agendas. It's the hidden nefarious agendas we should worry about. Is anyone suggesting Unzicker's agenda is nefarious?
String Theory is thinking into the future? How? We know why General Relativity was important. We wouldn't have GPS and the subsequent technologies that stemmed from it without it. We know what the purpose of electromagnestism was. Cell phones, TVs, speakers, microphones, etc. What is the purpose of String Theory? Even theoretically, what actual purpose would it serve?
@@ryanashfyre464 You are mistaking the purpose with the application. Engineering is not the purpose of science. Knowledge is. The purpose of string theory is to reconcile general relativity and quantum physics. That's the ultimate challenge of physics right now. It's not totally successful, granted, but it's amazingly predictive in some regards. Well enough to keep investigating. The problem with string theory is not the string theory part. It's the funding. And I bet that's the agenda of the question that wasn't a question. It wasn't a call for a debate, it was just a coup. And the fact that the intervention went for so long shows that they were buying time and piling up claims so that no comprehensive answer would be possible. And by doing so, they prevented other people from asking questions. It's a dick move, through and through.
@@lexmachina8961 "The purpose of string theory is to reconcile general relativity and quantum physics. That's the ultimate challenge of physics right now. It's not totally successful, granted, but it's amazingly predictive in some regards. Well enough to keep investigating." Reconciling GR and QP is all well and good as an intellectual exercise, but I maintain that that's all it is. That aside, String Theory is *not* predictive. That, w/ all due respect, is pure falsehood. Physicists haven't even proved that these strings actually exist, let alone making predictive models off of them. "The problem with string theory is not the string theory part. It's the funding. And I bet that's the agenda of the question that wasn't a question. It wasn't a call for a debate, it was just a coup." Pardon my French, but what the frack are you trying to pull here? Funding's the problem? Are you kidding me? String Theory has been *the* game in theoretical physics for decades. The LHC was built in part to try and prove ST, and now there's additional pleading already in the works to build an even more exhorbitantly expensive collider since the current one obvsly isn't doing the job. The money, talent, and brain power isn't the issue. That's been there in spades for a long time now. It's String Theory itself that's the problem.
@@ryanashfyre464 LMFAO, I swear, the things people think! Do you think theoretical physicists are shuffled into a dark room, blindfolded, and forced at gunpoint to sign a commitment to String Theory? Do you even know anything about String Theory? This idea that "billions are being wasted" sounds like an ignorant politician telling the sheeple why his opponent shouldn't be elected. It's literally just math and theory. Really smart people who know a hell of a lot more than you do choose to do it because they find it interesting.
I lost interest in physics back in the '90s, with these ever enlargening grand schemes of everything, that seemed monotonically increasingly both boring and wrong. I don't know who any of the people are (having only just discovered this lively character Unzicker in the last 10 minutes) except that they're all interested in theoretical physics. But that Witten, fielding the question/observation, sheesh... he puts me in mind of a line from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: _"A few toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he was of respectable stemming"_ Should I seek psychiatric help? (Please, form an orderly queue.)
Why did you not provide the response from Witten? Seems disingenuous to only include your 2 minute monologue (where you talk over attempts to answer it). Indeed the answer is provided on another youtube channel. czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html [2 minutes 36 seconds] seems like a very patient response with someone who has shown poor manners while asking the "question".
On top of being excessively long-winded and self-indulgent, this is really rude and arrogant. Taking time away from other people who have questions/comments pertaining directly to the talk. And since you do not give Witten's response, it has as well the odor of (cheap point)-scoring. Go ahead, give yourself a high five.
Before my physics study I could not imagine either why so many people put their lives in to a theory, where proof is so far out of site. But since I learned about Yang-Mills theory and the problems of quantum field theory I understand it a alot better. The thing is that math and physics where more and more devided because of the very abstract mathematical concepts discovered in the 19th/20th century (bundel theory). String theory and Yang-Mills theory is the point where those fields came back together, so that from string theory many things about higher dimensional manifolds where derived unknown to mathematicians. I see now that string theory is the logical step in the history of science but I do not think that I could explain the "why" to a person who never was interested in math, without using mathematical language. It is rly hard believe me. It is easy to repeat mindlessly that string theory is wrong not understanding the mathematical steps that led us there. I am not quite sure if Unzicker is aware of the concepts behind quantum field theory because then he had to explain why the value of the Lande factor is predicted exactly up to a trillionth by QED.
Evidence for QED is not evidence for strings, even if this kind of straw-man argument is often heard. Then, there is quite an ambiguity how to count Feynman graphs, see B. T. Aoyama et al., arxiv.org/abs/0706.3496 and arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0210322. QFT is flawed. It just provides excuses for not being able to deliver accurate predictions. See Dyson's proof that the series does not converge.
@@TheMachian Hey, there's a very clear way to count feynman graphs. The papers you cite seem to only refer to code used to calculate QFT results, not QFT's formalism. Every body who studied QFT knows that the perturbative series that show up in perturbative QFT are asymptotic series. Asymptotic series are not convergent. But finite partial sums upto a quantifiable number of terms approaches the the exact result. So again, this is well understood, and does not mean QFT is flawed. I would agree with the OP. If one wants to be a critic, then they should understand what they criticise.
@@TheMachian then give us the correct theory, rather whining. You just want to draw attention. You were not letting Witten speak. Your question was understood at the very beginning. But you didn't let him answer and went on. You were not interested in the answer. Otherwise you would have uploaded the full answer. You want to project to the world that look how great I am! I gave trouble to the math genius by my question. You action speaks for your intentions.
@@sb3987 The answer is available, if you search a little. Witten's answer is uninteresting (only wishful thinking) and anyway we already hear and read him enough.
When you have people interrupting someone from giving a response to defend his position, in there lies the problem. One of the greatest tools in science is scrutiny.
@@TheMachian I had no idea this was your personal channel. You hit the nail on the head by saying: "The real evolution of physics (and science in general for that matter) has always been pushed forward by skeptical individuals, never by the euphoria of the meeting and this is where your problem lies." First, it ticked me off that the speaker came in and interrupted the situation defending Edwards's position as though he were his pappy. The hubris of Edward standing there as some overlord who's willing to let the guy jump in to defend him was disappointing, to say the least. Second, it was clear to see on Ed Witten's face that he's never been confronted by any skeptics. He even took the low road and completely discounted your position, not by arguing what he believed to be a fallacy in your argument, but to childishly say "you've made your point".
For those of you who are interested in Witten's response to this "skeptic", it can be found here: czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html If this guy Unzicker had lived in Einstein's time, he would certainly be one of those guys screaming out loud that Einstein's theory was a fraud.
Well said Juan. I wish I had seen this “question” and the lack of inclusion of the response (!!) much sooner. I’m obviously unsubscribing to this Unzicker guy’s pseudoscience propaganda channel now. As should anyone with serious interest in science on CZcams
You don't seem to know much about the history of early 20th century physics, let alone the body of work of Einstein and the way his early publications were received by the scientific community. Why would you make up your own stories when there is this thing called 'libraries' where you can find real facts about Einstein and his time?
@@j.vonhogen9650 'Real' facts. The addition of 'real' to anything in these times means that the word following it, is definitely not real. Moreover, Babak is absolutely right, that Herr Unsicher (Mr Unsure) is purposely skipping over all the elephants in the room. You are welcome to be red-pilled now.
Newton was also blamed by his envious contemporaries for not providing a physical description of gravity. In fact he himself doubted “action at a distance,” as the right explanation to it. Yet, that’s all we had for almost 400 years. This is a shameful act of rabble rousing, more like a putsch attempt, than a question by a scientist in a conference.
The universal law of gravitation was highly predictive. Together with the dynamics, it explained all the motions of the planets and their satellites. That was a tremendous breakthrough that answered many questions.
Alex, your bitter emotional attacks only get in the way of your point. You can help us best by patiently explaining your point which we would like to understand. Assuming that is what you are trying to accomplish.
Picturing '7 billion people on a planet' (and their 'collective intelligence'... as if such claptrap could really be a thing...) misguided by Edward Witten was hilarious 😂😂😂. At least for those like me who think that 99,99999% people leaving on this planet would rather die than follow a Lecture on Differential Geometry or Knot Theory ...
criticism of string theory is completely valid. eric weinstein explained this well. theres been a 70 year stagnantion in this field, and theyve gotten nowhere.
Bravo! This remined of a similar confrontation I witnessed in 1988 at University of New Soutth Wales in Sydeny: when a condensed matter physicist from USA openly challenged a Keynote speaker, a particle-physics researcher.
1:06 "that might to lead to nowhere". Maybe, maybe not, it might lead to somewhere. In any case. Knowing a "no" is far better than not knowing anything.
Unzicker sounds like Sheldon Cooper. Basically threw in every possible condescending comment to say just how intelligent he is compared to other physicists.
I think it is highly likely that most physicists who are active researchers want to believe that what they're doing on a daily basis, investing their time and energies in, is actually useful to the advancement of physics. The second point is, I don't think that if they were "misled" into working on String Theory, we can blame it all on Witten or any other small group of people... the physics community is supposed to be one of the smartest scientific communities out there. I am all for constructive criticism, but we need to make sure we deliver our criticism to the right address. After all, Einstein spent the last decades of his life chasing, more or less on his own, a unified field theory and didn't amount to much. If a lot of other physicists happened to join this apparently vain effort of Einstein, would we need to criticize him or them?
The response should have been included, but this is a short-form video. What were Unzicker's time constraints in this format? Anyway, it's not like Witten's response was hidden.
The gentleman has a valid point but the way he makes it borders on offensive. Prof Witten could well be the smartest man on Earth - he doesn't need the point explained in a rambling monologue by this relative nobody. One cannot help but admire Witten's calm and polite demeanor. The man is pure class
I agree that the question was posed in a way that borders on offensive but I do think some form of it should be said out loud for the scientific community as a whole and Dr. Witten in particular, to reflect on, especially because of the way that research funding has become so politicized so that it discourages diversified research into alternative research paradigms.
As mathematician I can say that Edward Witten brought beautiful ideas for mathematics: he showed that deep contemporary results in mathematics have its roots in theoretical physics. For example he proved the Atiyah-Singer theorem by using Quantum Mechanics and for me this shows how deep was the thoughts of Edward Witten ! After Grothendieck, Edward Witten is the best mathematician for the 20th century and probably for the next century as well ... For physics itself, I cannot say nothing, but perhaps that strings are good mathematical models for the unification of some theory in physics, but if strings have a real experimental signification, this is another complex story, because it seems that the technology is not enough developed to prove that such tiny strings exist in the "real world".
@@TheMachian : No, no, but Dirac said somewhere that if you are blocked by a problem in Physics, try to read what mathematics could teach you about physics. Also the proposal by Edward Witten of "Strings" (or "Membranes") as geometrical models for unification of theoretical physics seems to be theoretically good (The book of Manoukian: Quantum Field Theory II: Introductions to Quantum Gravity, Supersymmetry and String Theory, showed that we recover some deep results of GR by using limits of theories based on String formalism ! Electrifying !). Also it seems that for knowledge of Nature the only things way human can truly think is by using geometry (formalization of intuition of how we see the physics world...), and even a single particle, we actually doesn't know its geometry, we can only proposed geometrical or mathematical approximation of it ! Let me about naive: is there exist a real euclidian triangle in the Nature ? Absolutely not, but we can thanks to experimentation, find only approximation, very good approximation of it ! And when such or such mathematical object gives a very very good approximation of such phenomenas of Nature, then this is what we expect to be the"theory of this thing of Nature". We, human, use logic to detect approximation of Nature. And if such logic is find for a good approximation of Nature, two hundreds years later, new experimentations destroyed this old logic, which is then replaced by a new logic (new mathematics, new equations, etc.), etc. I am sorry if I have difficulties to explain such deep questions of Sciences which is the interaction between: logic (maths), experimentation (observations, physics, engineering...)...
@@camellkachour4112 Your thinking of mathematics will be the origin of physics is in vain. Mathematics itself is an approximation or a kind of artificial simulation of the nature by the human effort. The incompleteness theorem won't be the only indicator. The heart of the problem is that it’s impossible for us to find the origin, if there is one, and it's impossible for us to extrapolate far beyond our existence. All we can do is to make the best of the experience of our limited existence and expand it as far as we can. (And amuse ourself in the proess.)
Thanks to Eric Weinstein for bringing this to the rest of the world ! Seems alot of talent and time has been wasted on string theory edit: just heard Wittens response makes sense !
This is a good video but a bit awkward in that it's a touchy personal question. It's a question that really should be asked, however, by all scientists to themselves and to each other. Research scientists are working in a dark labyrinth and don't know what the correct path to their goal is or how much it will cost to find the right path. One can levy similar criticisms against the funding of fundamental research in general and even against Dr. Albert Einstein in his seemingly fruitless search for a Unified Field Theory (although he was not funded to as great an extent by a government but he did feel responsible for his part in encouraging the construction of nuclear weapons) and as well as against scientific research around the globe for work for agencies like the the U.S. DARPA. Mr. Witten admirably listened to the question without interruption and I would have liked to have heard his answer.
Let's analize this video properly with 3 important points that i note: 1 - Unzicker took the 2 minutes of this edited clip (maybe is more in the complete one, i don't know) to ask something that actually could be a few words in no more than 10 seconds, so the 2 minutes of adding words was not because he was interest to receive a clear answer, instead he just go in a rampage of something that felt more personal than an honest question. 2 - We never heard the answer of Witten, the clip is cut... ergo we don't have a complete picture of this, is intentional?... most probably being the interviewer that we see in the vídeo the same person that uploaded this clip, i just know that if something is cut off from a complete video clip that should included the question and the answer... is because the answer was actually too good for wanting to hide it from people and let them judge by themselves. 3 - Issac Newton citation is a falacy of authority Mr. Unzicker, the fact that Issac Newton say those words (in case is true that he said them) is not general rule for everyone else to follow as unquestionable universal truth... besides the fact that is not relevant to a physics question, even if hasn't been made actually.
No it didn't. It was very general and no specifics of how string theory supposedly helped in other fields. It boiled down to "give us more time, other theories took time to confirm" But I agree, Unzicker should have shown the response and also should have shortened his question with less of a speech.
It's a German guy accusing the Jewish guy of not bearing his cross enough for human benefit. Right. The problem with Ed Witten is that no one else can fully understand Witten, and yet some can understand enough to know he is right.
Let's see past the format of the question which some commenters here have a problem with and get to the content ... where is Witten's response to this all important question ???
The answer should have been given. This is not good practice. The answer, in essence, was, "Predictions have been made, the experimentalists have had problems developing the numbers. This does not make the predictions wrong -- and we expect them to be found as other things have been found in the past".
Crothers, ypu mention that physics ought not to become mere calculation. But Unziker is demanding calculation here! He wants the NUMBERS that SUSY and ST do not predict, according to him. With reference to the video, I wpuld pretty much love to know what Witten answered, if someone could point me in that direction.
The numbers Unziker wants are data which the calculations should resolve to. Without data - AKA experiment - theoreticians can make their calculations say anying.
you cut off the clip with no response????... though i do completely agree with someone being the one person to disagree in a room of people agreeing, for that i commend you, but to not disclose his response is weak in character.
He has taken brilliant responsibility for physics, quantum computation, and String theory for energy problems. Mr, Unzicker you did not contribute to math and physics, either.
I disagree with this characterization. I'm very skeptical of ST myself, but manners dictate that a question not become a filibuster. Once the essence of the question is stated it's time to step aside and listen to the answer.
I agree with Unzicker. To me Witten and a lot of string theoreticians want to be like Newton or Einstein but hopelessly fail. The emperor wears no clothes.
That's going a bit too far for me. Both Mr. Witten and Mr. Unzicker are trying to find answers. The problem is that String Theory, according to the testimony of many physicists over the course of the last 30-40 years, has been given a research status and funding priority within the modern organized research system that is not commensurate with its experimental verification.
It might be not relevant to physics (there are still many candidates out there which might be - entropic gravity for example). But string theory had so many contributions to mathematics (geometric analysis for example) which in turn had applications to physics. This alone is more than an average scientists can archive. And such an ad hominem attack and unnecessary rant (when you can ask this question in one sentence) is simply indecent.
@@146maxpain Then say this. No need for personal attacks "want to be like ... but fails miserably". Have at least a bit of decency. Witten has archived more than you, me and Unzicker together. The same problem has Unzicker. He is partially right. But there is then this absolutely inexcusable behaviour. He has no neurological disorder as far as I know. And he seems not to count this as a mistake and learned from it. Quite the contrary. Therefore he doesn't get a pass from me.
imagine having the microphone and time to speak with and ask questions of one of the most brilliant minds of all time. Then imagine having the hubris to give a speech on how said scientist's breakthroughs require your constraints to be valid instead of asking how he overcomes them. I think maybe Unzicker's lack of any sort of breakthrough or achievement pains him so much that being cynical of others is all he has. Which is fine. But here is how Science works. If you think his theory is BS you can try to disprove it. Witten will be known in history along with Hawking, Einstein, Newton etc Unzicker not so much.
You pretend to ask a question, but deliver a harangue, then complain about being interrupted after more than a minute of us watching Whitten patiently listening to your sanctimonious speech. Can't blame the moderator, nor Whitten, for moving things along.
I like that Unzicker questions the fundamentals. However, he is way out of his league with Witten. Witten's so far ahead of anyone else. Witten's definitely onto something with String Theory, the fruits of which will not be revealed for another 1000 years perhaps.
But why did you feel the need to make a speech and give answers/conclusions for him, instead of asking concise question and let him respond? And why you removed his answer? Why make this video only as a promotion of yourself while exposing your inability to ask a simple question?
I agree. Isn’t it possible that we’ll never be able to comprehend thoroughly all the physical laws that govern our universe? Isn’t it possible that all the laws of physics governed by mathematics is an infinite amount? Wasn’t their a theory in mathematics that states that we will never be able to derive all the possible mathematical laws since our axioms are limited? If so, this could surely mean that I won’t never have a full grasp and understanding of all the laws of physics that governed our universe. Although I do have in high esteem for most scientists who try to comprehend all of this, but in the end I believe it will be a fruitless endeavor if one’s goal is to achieve a theory of everything.
I understand one can be butthurt by the ineffectiveness of contemporary scientific research in the area of fundamental physics but this is just lame honestly
The Greek found out abouit the atom by thinking about it...thinking is tha base of every theorie. Sometimes a theory is proofed hundreds of years later....
But string theory is just nonsense. This theory cant be falsified. It has more in common with mysticism rather than empirical science. I wish physics was empirical like in 19th century.
Without falsification experiments you may end up for millenia being stuck in wrong assumptions. Often assumptions are half bad half good and its like a troyan horse or a goebels lies poisoning everything built on top of it.
Smh modern-day physicsist are the most egotistical people alive . These men are highly intelligent much more than me so i wont doubt that but geez these guys are on a high horse
I think there is a way to scientifically determine who is right and who is wrong. It is called Bayesian Analysis. Experts should apply Bayesian Analysis to String theory and no-Strings theories and see which approach has more viability. As for the efficacy of the method, we all remember how many clues there were that on Mars there must had been some form of life, all those signs of water etc. Well, scientists on MIT applied Bayesian analysis on the whole thing and...nada. Nothing. I think all this debate is about allocating significant funds in lieu of strings and other prospective theories. Hence, it makes sense to establish Bayesian analysis committee that would make all funding decisions on the basis of Bayes. Bayes is all about decision making in uncertain dynamic situations.
The question is a valid one about theory being disconnected from experiment. It might be clever mathematics that Dr Witten has produced but if it has no connection to the real world it's mathematical metaphysics. The problem is that too many people are blindly following this project.
He's alone (thank God). Every argument against him is a fortiori ad hominem. On the topic which you have so carefully avoided ("crank or not"), I suggest to read the comments on Peter Woit's blog, the most notorious opponent of string theory on the media, to give an idea how his speech (not a "comment") was received on the anti-string camp.
The interviewer was right - You are all being lied to, whilst his peers are all working on anti-gravity, the rest play on mathematical games. Its a diversion folks
Yes, when Witten said "...your point is clear...", your point was clear. Mentioning seven billion people is a stretch. How can emotion mix up with logic? Don't ask what physicists can do for you, but ask what you can do for physics. Critics are always noted, but your pressuring someone not to think the way they like is nothing short of forbidden of free speech. By the way Newton is not God. Using his words to validate your points doesn't have much meaning.
Mr Unzicker, I have read your book and I liked it. You began to ask a reasonable question but the speech that followed was not necessary. You should have allowed Witten to respond.
I just saw this and the answer from Witten provided in the link. Basically Witten stated the obvious: other things were thought of as impossible or crazy in the past, yet they were true. What he didn't said is that many, many more things were thought of as impossible or crazy in the past, and they stayed as such. Of course he doesn't like this possibility for his work. Who does? It's only human. But its beneficial for him and others to be reminded of this possibility. And stay silent in front of such questions because nobody knows. Especially the scientist. Today we forgot something fundamental. Physical theories are not mathematics. A mathematical theorem is correct and it will stay correct even after the death of the universe. Special relativity is not "correct" in the same sense. One and only one experiment in enough to prove relativity wrong. Relativity and any other theory is correct until further notice. I thought that all the above notions were common place. I guess they are not.
If only the FIeld Medal winner listened to you, he could stop wasting his time. It's amazing how in the modern era all a theoretical physicist needs to do is read a comment on CZcams to improve their theory. It's such a great thing that we've given every person in the world a platform to say all the incredibly informed and relevant things they need to say.
GR was not testable for quite some time after the mathematical formalism (Forget about Eddingtons' tenuous confirmation). I agree that Physics is defined as a body of theory that correctly predicts observations. Should the worlds greatest minds be diverted down a potential dead end? That's a valid question, but an inappropriate one in this forum(video). Perhaps String theory will resolve to further models which CAN be tested. We need to continue to obey Feynmans' great advice of CONSTANTLY "Taking the world from a another point of view." In the meantime, String theory appears to be very promising (unfortunately), but other paths must be explored.
“It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.” - Einstein, 1933 I think if String 'Theory' could be tested it would've been done long ago.
GR also fails to explain the simplest case of gravity (an apple falling from a tree to Earth). A theory making some right predictions doesn't make it conceptually sound. And before you link the videos, I've seen the videos trying to explain the simplest case of gravity with GR. You will find such logical absurdities as "the Earth is falling upwards" and "it is a consequence of time dilation".
Half the commenters say "Unzicker owned Witten" & the other half say "Witten owned Unzicker". You should just say "I agree with Unzicker" or "I agree with Witten". My own humble opinion: maybe Unzicker is right, maybe not - who am I to judge - but it looks like String Theory will only disappear if and when another theory does better, i.e., makes testable predictions that are confirmed by experiment or observation. As for them getting the lion's share of the funding, that's a PR problem not a scientific one.
@Robert Hunt Nobody doubts Witten is a formidable mathematician. But that doesn't necessarily mean his physics are correct. Arguments from authority and arguments ad hominem do not work in physics (nor in any other science by the way). Until you can prove your theory by experiment, it's no use to anybody. Quantum mechanics gave us in succession: atom bombs, transistor radios, personal computers and smartphones, as well as explaining how stars work. String theory has given us nothing and nobody knows if it ever will.
@Robert Hunt OK, possibly Unzicker has a screw loose or two... I guess I was reacting to that word "upstart". You could call Einstein an upstart patent clerk, and it would be perfectly true - it doesn't tell you whether his theory was true or not, or even well-thought-out or not.
If 'better' means 'makes predictions confirmed by evidence', then string theory sets a low bar, for it makes no testable predictions at all. If any other theory makes _one_ confirmed prediction, then it will outdo string theory by a factor of 1/0 = infinity.
I came from the failures of String Theory and then to Lex Fridman interview with Peter Woit and now I stymbled upon your video. Wow, ST is just a theory? I agree with you. Like Peter Woit said, it has become a tribe in science community.
If - if - string theory, or some later offshoot, consistently includes both quantum theory and gravitation doesn't that by itself, without any more predictions, make it a better theory than either of them separately?
We are in a paradigm shift in Physics. Much as we greatly admire the very brilliant Einstein, we have HAD to acknowledge his errors. He was a human man. He did great things but made some errors too. His "followers" would not (and could not) check for errors in such a complex structure, so EGR was allowed to take hold as a "Standard Model" without ratification or scrutiny...until today. This is a clue as to why we have made no real progress from Theoretical Physics in a century. ESR is fine btw.
I would go in the opposite direction and say that the Standard Model and the positivist, empirical methodology that led to it and QED, leads to a dead end because "there is no inductive method which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics". Dr. Albert Einstein was looking in the right direction by trying to find ways to incorporate particle physics (at least the electron with Electromagnetism but also in terms of the absence of singularities) within the General Theory of Relativity but he just didn't have the information available to him that is known today and has been the result of a century of chipping away at a difficult problem while most particle physicists drilled holes where it was easiest. The problem of "Quantum Gravity" remains to this day and physicists are returning to the problem. Dr. Albert Einstein flopped around like a fish out of water trying to find physical interpretations that would give correct experimental results for mathematical structures like Weyl's gauge theory and Kaluza-Klein 5D theory. In hindsight, Dr. Albert Einstein was so close to gauge theory and Geometric Calculus that it would make one bite one's nails to see a video of it as he passed them by in the darkness of conducting research. Group Theory Dr. Einstein! Majorana is onto it! Bivectors! Einstein-Rosen Bridge! EWKB! "Section 8, "It is remarkable..."!
Yes, Witten has misled a whole generation of physicists (Feynman too.) String theory has used up more men-hours in the history of science than any other topic, to no avail. The only concrete output is the multi universe, an awkward move to justify 10^500 possibilities, which corresponds to 10^-500 predictivity.
You don't get to spread your opinion. You think in QFT field operators at different positions act on different hilbert spaces. At least you tought that the last time I asked you. Did you since then educate yourself about QFT?
Here is Witten's response. Unzicker should have included it:
czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html
Witten's answer was good but it ignored the main problem: the pressure on young theoretical particle physicists to work on string theory since the mid eighties has resulted in an unhealthy monoculture.
Everyone should watch the video you posted. Hsi rebuttal is perfect actually.
Here was Witten's response: "So, the first point, by way of replying, is that sometimes things take time. The Higgs particle was just a hypothesis for 50 years and there were plenty of skeptics about it. Neutron stars were regarded as science fiction. And gravitational waves seemed hopelessly undetectable when Einstein first proposed/predicted them and the fact that eventually an incredible story involving the binary pulsar made it possible to discover them was totally unforeseeable.
Quantum mechanics and gravity do exist yet they don't work together in the known framework of physics. It's inevitable for humans to try to understand how they can work together. And when a framework is discovered that makes it inevitable to have quantum mechanics and gravity together, rather than impossible as in the standard framework, it's inevitable that people take it seriously and explore it.
And finally string theory has given us a lot of insight about better understanding physical theories we already know, suggesting that it knows an awful lot about the real world even if we don't know very much of what it knows. So I think in brief, those might be three facets of the story you might want to take into account."
THANK YOU!!! This is exactly what I love about science, the uncontrollable impulse to get to the bottom of things. You made my day with this link, I'm going to get some popcorn and listen to Edwards response.
@@veil6666 Witten's response, w/ all due respect, is a syntactically well formulated handwave away from the core issue here.
He talks about the Higgs particle, but conveniently leaves out that when the particle was proposed we were given a general idea of what we were looking for and how to find it. There was a real theory that was falsifiable - unlike String Theory and its seemingly endless rationalizations that devolve into circular pleadings for billions of more dollars to build even higher energy particle colliders in the hopes that maybe, perhaps, God willing, they'll actually find something this time.
Wittens response was excellent . Are you suggesting people be forced into fields they may not want to pursue?
Why not include Witten's response? Anyone know if his response is available, or how he responded?
No kidding!! What about Unzicker's responsibility to show not just the critique, but to show the response.
@Gus Erland Perhaps you can let each person be the judge of that claim. I also look at string theory and supersymmetry very much the same way as Unzicker mind you.
@Gus Erland I don't want Unzicker to do Witten a favour, I want him to do all of us one and show the response. This video amounts to nothing more than Unzicker patting himself on the back.
@Gus Erland I love they way Witten speaks. So many people think he talks the way he does "because he's intelligent".
All I hear is a really slow guy that clearly hasn't got much going on upstairs.
czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html
And you (the vid-provider) do not include Witten's response?! I feel so cheated by this ...
I've seen the response where Witten destroys him.
@@jakethemistakeRulez where?
@@jakethemistakeRulez could you provide the source?
@@standowner6979 no I can't.
@@Burevestnik9M730 who are you?
If you don't include the response then we are left to assume his answer was a good one.
You can find the answer and test your assumption.
@@TheMachian Most people here already assume that his response is a good one and that you're too afraid to show it. Plus, this is youtube, ain't no body got time to dig through the internet to find the answer. You've pretty much did yourself and the scientific community a disservice by impressing upon us the assumption that his response is a good one.
@@ObsoleteTutorials You don't have time to find his response, but you had time to type out that whole paragraph?
The link to Witten's response was pinned to the top of the comments over a year ago.
@@TheMachian you are such an annoying person, you made your point but however you continued doing circles about the same and being disrespectful speaking when others are responding to you. Your main intention was more to pretend being smart, and some deep pain inside (probably due to string theory in some point of your life), rather than the progress of science. That doesn't care you as much as your ego. And of course you are never going to admit that, you has to say publicly that you asked that type of questions because of science, but clever people can see through bullshit and we know that isn't true. I repeat, you are a really annoying person.
Physics is not applied mathematics. It is a natural science in which mathematics is applied.- Robert Heinlein
Was the goal of the question simply to annoy? If that was the goal, you've succeeded, and I am not even a string theorist nor do i have a dog in the fight. If you are criticizing someone for wasting resources and time and collective intelligence, then at least follow the same principles.
The proper video would have been - "Witten's answer to my question about his responsibility" - and would INCLUDE the ACTUAL ANSWER - after watching it on another channel, I now understand why you didn't include it. This is primitive trolling.
Also, Are you referring to yourself in 3rd person on your own channel?
Unzicker failed to annoy me. Does he annoy you?
You are apsolutely right. But if Unzicker is wrong it does not make Witten right.
The link of the answer please
You think the goal was to annoy? Wtf is wrong with you people
@taqifsharazen7195 $40B over 40 Years lol what a farce.... mathematics and sacred geometry is embarrassing all of physics currently
He actually makes a valid point. Too much of string is impossible to test or prove. So it truly could be 100% wrong and other better testable ideas are being ignored.
@@candidobertetti27 nope. I thought of it myself. It’s called the scientific method. Congrats
@@ariplatt8192 you ever thought that maybe ed witten is more intellectually capable of understanding what makes sense than you?
@@BabyCasper954 don’t get me wrong. There guys are geniuses. But my complaint is valid- theses theories are not testable. It’s not strictly science which by definition needs to be testable
@@ariplatt8192 ed wittens response to what this guy said makes more sense than that argument
Better testable ideas are ignored? Name four.
It's a shame to the publisher of this video for cutting out Edward's answer.
Witten's expressions are very funny. His strings were being pulled the wrong way.
😂You bastard!😂
HAHAHAHAHHAHA
bad vibrations haha
For answer look up Unzicker vs Witten.
Answer is as bad as the question. Maybe a little humour will knock this arrogant bastards off their high horses.
he has a point,any theory that cannot be checked by experiment is not science it is phylosophy. Wolfgang Pauli referred to these kind of 'theories' as "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch" ("That is not only not right; it is not even wrong")
Strictly speaking it's speculation. Not all philosophy is speculation; although most of it is. Some philosophy rests on far more solid ground than speculative maths like String 'Theory'.
@@mark4asp The level of abstraction necessary to start to understand the problem of quantum gravity is far beyond any natural intuitions 99.99999% of us will ever hope to obtain. I think that operating on the assumption that because the theory has become so unreachable by our technical capabilities and engineering that it is useless to pursue is misguided. As Witten says, Higgs and gravitational waves were considered untestable, yet many decades later here we are. There are aspects which remain potentially testable with string theory. We may yet see an elementary string stretched out by the random luck and high energies of some cosmic event, and in fact there have been occurences where we thought we may have seen one (we didn't). Skepticism is great, but until more fruitful ideas emerge, this is where we are in physics.
Also important to remember Feynmans words - nature is under no obligation to make sense to any of us.
@@iridium1911 It is not a theory. It's a conjecture. No one is saying you should abandon your conjectures and hypotheses. We're asking you to stop confusing the difference between scientific theory and untestable conjecture.
@@mark4asp ah so you are an expert on dualities and have the mathematics background to backup your claim? Or just another armchair physicist
It's worse than a philosophy, it's a funded religion with anointed priests and bishops like Witten and NDT. Large grants are awarded to these institutions to push String Theory, so in order for the cash to keep coming in they have to keep stacking the bullshit higher. Literally zero proof of anything they are claiming but they are asking you to take a leap of faith. Every few years they come out with a "new conjecture" that is progressively more ridiculous and frivolous. Since it can't be proven, it doesn't matter. The more convoluted the better. String theory has set science and discovery back 45 years.
Though witten’s answer was not included here, I think Unzicker was rude and preachy but Witten clearly evade to answer and hid behind experimentally successful theories while string theory is not.
I agree. Isn’t it possible that we’ll never be able to comprehend thoroughly all the physical laws that govern our universe? Isn’t it possible that all the laws of physics governed by mathematics is an infinite amount? Wasn’t their a theory in mathematics that states that we will never be able to derive all the possible mathematical laws since our axioms are limited? If so, this could surely mean that I won’t never have a full grasp and understanding of all the laws of physics that governed our universe. Although I do have in high esteem for most scientists who try to comprehend all of this, but in the end I believe it will be a fruitless endeavor if one’s goal is to achieve a theory of everything.
Unzicker pretends to ask something, goes on a full 2:30 minutes discourse.
I like his skepticism but the fact that he made that question into a speech means he definitely had an agenda in asking that question the way that he did. But he's got a valid point. He seems to think in the short term though. String theory is a long term problem and it's thinking into the future. At some point when we are advanced enough to test the theory we will already have a foundation for it. All he's saying is he wants funding for his shit instead. 😂
Did you have an agenda listening to his talk? Most likely - we all have agendas. It's the hidden nefarious agendas we should worry about. Is anyone suggesting Unzicker's agenda is nefarious?
String Theory is thinking into the future? How?
We know why General Relativity was important. We wouldn't have GPS and the subsequent technologies that stemmed from it without it.
We know what the purpose of electromagnestism was. Cell phones, TVs, speakers, microphones, etc.
What is the purpose of String Theory? Even theoretically, what actual purpose would it serve?
@@ryanashfyre464 You are mistaking the purpose with the application. Engineering is not the purpose of science. Knowledge is.
The purpose of string theory is to reconcile general relativity and quantum physics. That's the ultimate challenge of physics right now. It's not totally successful, granted, but it's amazingly predictive in some regards. Well enough to keep investigating.
The problem with string theory is not the string theory part. It's the funding. And I bet that's the agenda of the question that wasn't a question.
It wasn't a call for a debate, it was just a coup. And the fact that the intervention went for so long shows that they were buying time and piling up claims so that no comprehensive answer would be possible. And by doing so, they prevented other people from asking questions.
It's a dick move, through and through.
@@lexmachina8961 "The purpose of string theory is to reconcile general relativity and quantum physics. That's the ultimate challenge of physics right now. It's not totally successful, granted, but it's amazingly predictive in some regards. Well enough to keep investigating."
Reconciling GR and QP is all well and good as an intellectual exercise, but I maintain that that's all it is.
That aside, String Theory is *not* predictive. That, w/ all due respect, is pure falsehood. Physicists haven't even proved that these strings actually exist, let alone making predictive models off of them.
"The problem with string theory is not the string theory part. It's the funding. And I bet that's the agenda of the question that wasn't a question.
It wasn't a call for a debate, it was just a coup."
Pardon my French, but what the frack are you trying to pull here? Funding's the problem? Are you kidding me?
String Theory has been *the* game in theoretical physics for decades. The LHC was built in part to try and prove ST, and now there's additional pleading already in the works to build an even more exhorbitantly expensive collider since the current one obvsly isn't doing the job.
The money, talent, and brain power isn't the issue. That's been there in spades for a long time now. It's String Theory itself that's the problem.
@@ryanashfyre464 LMFAO, I swear, the things people think! Do you think theoretical physicists are shuffled into a dark room, blindfolded, and forced at gunpoint to sign a commitment to String Theory? Do you even know anything about String Theory? This idea that "billions are being wasted" sounds like an ignorant politician telling the sheeple why his opponent shouldn't be elected.
It's literally just math and theory. Really smart people who know a hell of a lot more than you do choose to do it because they find it interesting.
Why the hell didn't you include his response?!
I lost interest in physics back in the '90s, with these ever enlargening grand schemes of everything, that seemed monotonically increasingly both boring and wrong.
I don't know who any of the people are (having only just discovered this lively character Unzicker in the last 10 minutes) except that they're all interested in theoretical physics. But that Witten, fielding the question/observation, sheesh... he puts me in mind of a line from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: _"A few
toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he was of respectable stemming"_
Should I seek psychiatric help? (Please, form an orderly queue.)
@@shintafukuda2274 No. _You_ are sane.
I think his response doesn't matter.
@@mark4asp I think it does: czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html.
it's called dishonesty
Why did you not provide the response from Witten? Seems disingenuous to only include your 2 minute monologue (where you talk over attempts to answer it).
Indeed the answer is provided on another youtube channel.
czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html [2 minutes 36 seconds]
seems like a very patient response with someone who has shown poor manners while asking the "question".
On top of being excessively long-winded and self-indulgent, this is really rude and arrogant. Taking time away from other people who have questions/comments pertaining directly to the talk. And since you do not give Witten's response, it has as well the odor of (cheap point)-scoring. Go ahead, give yourself a high five.
Before my physics study I could not imagine either why so many people put their lives in to a theory, where proof is so far out of site. But since I learned about Yang-Mills theory and the problems of quantum field theory I understand it a alot better. The thing is that math and physics where more and more devided because of the very abstract mathematical concepts discovered in the 19th/20th century (bundel theory). String theory and Yang-Mills theory is the point where those fields came back together, so that from string theory many things about higher dimensional manifolds where derived unknown to mathematicians. I see now that string theory is the logical step in the history of science but I do not think that I could explain the "why" to a person who never was interested in math, without using mathematical language. It is rly hard believe me. It is easy to repeat mindlessly that string theory is wrong not understanding the mathematical steps that led us there. I am not quite sure if Unzicker is aware of the concepts behind quantum field theory because then he had to explain why the value of the Lande factor is predicted exactly up to a trillionth by QED.
Evidence for QED is not evidence for strings, even if this kind of straw-man argument is often heard. Then, there is quite an ambiguity how to count Feynman graphs, see B. T. Aoyama et al., arxiv.org/abs/0706.3496 and arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0210322. QFT is flawed. It just provides excuses for not being able to deliver accurate predictions. See Dyson's proof that the series does not converge.
@@TheMachian Hey, there's a very clear way to count feynman graphs. The papers you cite seem to only refer to code used to calculate QFT results, not QFT's formalism.
Every body who studied QFT knows that the perturbative series that show up in perturbative QFT are asymptotic series. Asymptotic series are not convergent. But finite partial sums upto a quantifiable number of terms approaches the the exact result. So again, this is well understood, and does not mean QFT is flawed.
I would agree with the OP. If one wants to be a critic, then they should understand what they criticise.
@@TheMachian then give us the correct theory, rather whining. You just want to draw attention. You were not letting Witten speak. Your question was understood at the very beginning. But you didn't let him answer and went on. You were not interested in the answer. Otherwise you would have uploaded the full answer. You want to project to the world that look how great I am! I gave trouble to the math genius by my question. You action speaks for your intentions.
mathemathical concepts seperate from observable reality aren't "discovered", they are created
@@sb3987 The answer is available, if you search a little. Witten's answer is uninteresting (only wishful thinking) and anyway we already hear and read him enough.
No response from written means an unsubscribe and thumbs down from me.
When you have people interrupting someone from giving a response to defend his position, in there lies the problem. One of the greatest tools in science is scrutiny.
He delivered more than an hour uninterrupted speech. The first one to get interrupted was actually me.
@@TheMachian I had no idea this was your personal channel.
You hit the nail on the head by saying:
"The real evolution of physics (and science in general for that matter) has always been pushed forward by skeptical individuals, never by the euphoria of the meeting and this is where your problem lies."
First, it ticked me off that the speaker came in and interrupted the situation defending Edwards's position as though he were his pappy. The hubris of Edward standing there as some overlord who's willing to let the guy jump in to defend him was disappointing, to say the least. Second, it was clear to see on Ed Witten's face that he's never been confronted by any skeptics. He even took the low road and completely discounted your position, not by arguing what he believed to be a fallacy in your argument, but to childishly say "you've made your point".
@@TheMachian Yes, that's how it works when you are invited to give a speech. How dare he do that!
For those of you who are interested in Witten's response to this "skeptic", it can be found here: czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html
If this guy Unzicker had lived in Einstein's time, he would certainly be one of those guys screaming out loud that Einstein's theory was a fraud.
Well said Juan. I wish I had seen this “question” and the lack of inclusion of the response (!!) much sooner. I’m obviously unsubscribing to this Unzicker guy’s pseudoscience propaganda channel now. As should anyone with serious interest in science on CZcams
You don't seem to know much about the history of early 20th century physics, let alone the body of work of Einstein and the way his early publications were received by the scientific community.
Why would you make up your own stories when there is this thing called 'libraries' where you can find real facts about Einstein and his time?
@@babakrasolzadeh7854- Don't tell other people what channels they should or shouldn't subscribe to!
@@j.vonhogen9650 'Real' facts. The addition of 'real' to anything in these times means that the word following it, is definitely not real.
Moreover, Babak is absolutely right, that Herr Unsicher (Mr Unsure) is purposely skipping over all the elephants in the room.
You are welcome to be red-pilled now.
"If this guy Unzicker had lived in Einstein's time, he would certainly be one of those guys screaming out loud that Einstein's theory was a fraud."
Here's a video with Witten's reply for anybody interested:
Unzicker vs Witten
can you summarize, I am lazy?
Newton was also blamed by his envious contemporaries for not providing a physical description of gravity. In fact he himself doubted “action at a distance,” as the right explanation to it. Yet, that’s all we had for almost 400 years. This is a shameful act of rabble rousing, more like a putsch attempt, than a question by a scientist in a conference.
The universal law of gravitation was highly predictive. Together with the dynamics, it explained all the motions of the planets and their satellites. That was a tremendous breakthrough that answered many questions.
@don17525 Witten was awarded the Newton medal in 2010
Alex, your bitter emotional attacks only get in the way of your point. You can help us best by patiently explaining your point which we would like to understand. Assuming that is what you are trying to accomplish.
Where exactly do you see a "bitter emotion" ?
Picturing '7 billion people on a planet' (and their 'collective intelligence'... as if such claptrap could really be a thing...) misguided by Edward Witten was hilarious 😂😂😂. At least for those like me who think that 99,99999% people leaving on this planet would rather die than follow a Lecture on Differential Geometry or Knot Theory ...
criticism of string theory is completely valid. eric weinstein explained this well. theres been a 70 year stagnantion in this field, and theyve gotten nowhere.
Comparing these two guys is like comparing Einstein to a 5 year-old who has read his first book...
Bravo! This remined of a similar confrontation I witnessed in 1988 at University of New Soutth Wales in Sydeny: when a condensed matter physicist from USA openly challenged a Keynote speaker, a particle-physics researcher.
Would be interesting to know who were the debaters.
1:06 "that might to lead to nowhere".
Maybe, maybe not, it might lead to somewhere. In any case. Knowing a "no" is far better than not knowing anything.
Unzicker sounds like Sheldon Cooper. Basically threw in every possible condescending comment to say just how intelligent he is compared to other physicists.
I think it is highly likely that most physicists who are active researchers want to believe that what they're doing on a daily basis, investing their time and energies in, is actually useful to the advancement of physics. The second point is, I don't think that if they were "misled" into working on String Theory, we can blame it all on Witten or any other small group of people... the physics community is supposed to be one of the smartest scientific communities out there. I am all for constructive criticism, but we need to make sure we deliver our criticism to the right address. After all, Einstein spent the last decades of his life chasing, more or less on his own, a unified field theory and didn't amount to much. If a lot of other physicists happened to join this apparently vain effort of Einstein, would we need to criticize him or them?
Unzicker seems more intent of giving a tirade and a lecture rather than truly asking a question.
I recommend the book "not even wrong" by Peter Woit, specially chapter 12.
Very unpolite to change a question in a talk without leaving the possibility to answer to Witten.
czcams.com/video/k7EnQd-VGqU/video.html
@@jakethemistakeRulez He was almost forced to stop his predicament, otherwise he had monopolized all the question session. Indeed extremely unpolite.
The response should have been included, but this is a short-form video. What were Unzicker's time constraints in this format? Anyway, it's not like Witten's response was hidden.
Where is the "Science of Investment in Science?" Once you have that, let it ask Witten its questions.
The gentleman has a valid point but the way he makes it borders on offensive. Prof Witten could well be the smartest man on Earth - he doesn't need the point explained in a rambling monologue by this relative nobody. One cannot help but admire Witten's calm and polite demeanor. The man is pure class
I agree that the question was posed in a way that borders on offensive but I do think some form of it should be said out loud for the scientific community as a whole and Dr. Witten in particular, to reflect on, especially because of the way that research funding has become so politicized so that it discourages diversified research into alternative research paradigms.
What happened to the whole lecture of university of munich? Why there is no yiur question
This is not collegial. Ask a question, don't lecture. And we will respectfully do the same when you lecture
And ofcourse this is uploaded by Unzicker himself.
Why didn't this channel post his response?
What is Unzicker hidden agenta?
To challenge bs. Not hidden :-)
As mathematician I can say that Edward Witten brought beautiful ideas for mathematics: he showed that deep contemporary results in mathematics have its roots in theoretical physics. For example he proved the Atiyah-Singer theorem by using Quantum Mechanics and for me this shows how deep was the thoughts of Edward Witten ! After Grothendieck, Edward Witten is the best mathematician for the 20th century and probably for the next century as well ... For physics itself, I cannot say nothing, but perhaps that strings are good mathematical models for the unification of some theory in physics, but if strings have a real experimental signification, this is another complex story, because it seems that the technology is not enough developed to prove that such tiny strings exist in the "real world".
So you expect everyone to wait for the technology with patience? Falsifiability suspended ? :-)
@@TheMachian : No, no, but Dirac said somewhere that if you are blocked by a problem in Physics, try to read what mathematics could teach you about physics. Also the proposal by Edward Witten of "Strings" (or "Membranes") as geometrical models for unification of theoretical physics seems to be theoretically good (The book of Manoukian: Quantum Field Theory II: Introductions to Quantum Gravity, Supersymmetry and String Theory, showed that we recover some deep results of GR by using limits of theories based on String formalism ! Electrifying !). Also it seems that for knowledge of Nature the only things way human can truly think is by using geometry (formalization of intuition of how we see the physics world...), and even a single particle, we actually doesn't know its geometry, we can only proposed geometrical or mathematical approximation of it ! Let me about naive: is there exist a real euclidian triangle in the Nature ? Absolutely not, but we can thanks to experimentation, find only approximation, very good approximation of it ! And when such or such mathematical object gives a very very good approximation of such phenomenas of Nature, then this is what we expect to be the"theory of this thing of Nature". We, human, use logic to detect approximation of Nature. And if such logic is find for a good approximation of Nature, two hundreds years later, new experimentations destroyed this old logic, which is then replaced by a new logic (new mathematics, new equations, etc.), etc. I am sorry if I have difficulties to explain such deep questions of Sciences which is the interaction between: logic (maths), experimentation (observations, physics, engineering...)...
@@camellkachour4112 Your thinking of mathematics will be the origin of physics is in vain. Mathematics itself is an approximation or a kind of artificial simulation of the nature by the human effort. The incompleteness theorem won't be the only indicator. The heart of the problem is that it’s impossible for us to find the origin, if there is one, and it's impossible for us to extrapolate far beyond our existence. All we can do is to make the best of the experience of our limited existence and expand it as far as we can. (And amuse ourself in the proess.)
Thanks to Eric Weinstein for bringing this to the rest of the world ! Seems alot of talent and time has been wasted on string theory edit: just heard Wittens response makes sense !
This is a good video but a bit awkward in that it's a touchy personal question. It's a question that really should be asked, however, by all scientists to themselves and to each other. Research scientists are working in a dark labyrinth and don't know what the correct path to their goal is or how much it will cost to find the right path. One can levy similar criticisms against the funding of fundamental research in general and even against Dr. Albert Einstein in his seemingly fruitless search for a Unified Field Theory (although he was not funded to as great an extent by a government but he did feel responsible for his part in encouraging the construction of nuclear weapons) and as well as against scientific research around the globe for work for agencies like the the U.S. DARPA. Mr. Witten admirably listened to the question without interruption and I would have liked to have heard his answer.
Let's analize this video properly with 3 important points that i note:
1 - Unzicker took the 2 minutes of this edited clip (maybe is more in the complete one, i don't know) to ask something that actually could be a few words in no more than 10 seconds, so the 2 minutes of adding words was not because he was interest to receive a clear answer, instead he just go in a rampage of something that felt more personal than an honest question.
2 - We never heard the answer of Witten, the clip is cut... ergo we don't have a complete picture of this, is intentional?... most probably being the interviewer that we see in the vídeo the same person that uploaded this clip, i just know that if something is cut off from a complete video clip that should included the question and the answer... is because the answer was actually too good for wanting to hide it from people and let them judge by themselves.
3 - Issac Newton citation is a falacy of authority Mr. Unzicker, the fact that Issac Newton say those words (in case is true that he said them) is not general rule for everyone else to follow as unquestionable universal truth... besides the fact that is not relevant to a physics question, even if hasn't been made actually.
The question was perfectly succinct an do the point - not too long at all
Dont u have some homework to be doing? If so, why not?
Why did you cut out Witten's response?
You easily find it elsewhere.
@@TheMachianI did. He sufficiently answered your questions.
Science needs more of this.
No wonder Unzicker uploads only his part of this dialog, spoiler alart: Wittens answer made his points obsolete.
No it didn't. It was very general and no specifics of how string theory supposedly helped in other fields. It boiled down to "give us more time, other theories took time to confirm"
But I agree, Unzicker should have shown the response and also should have shortened his question with less of a speech.
It's a German guy accusing the Jewish guy of not bearing his cross enough for human benefit. Right. The problem with Ed Witten is that no one else can fully understand Witten, and yet some can understand enough to know he is right.
Let's see past the format of the question which some commenters here have a problem with and get to the content ... where is Witten's response to this all important question ???
Brah
witten is the utter most everything, what is the guy speaking wants to tell him for haves sake?
The answer should have been given. This is not good practice.
The answer, in essence, was, "Predictions have been made, the experimentalists have had problems developing the numbers. This does not make the predictions wrong -- and we expect them to be found as other things have been found in the past".
Well said, they are playing mathematical games.
Yes and these games are necessary to discover new truths; yes it will take time and resources
It never looks good to edit out the persons response
Crothers, ypu mention that physics ought not to become mere calculation. But Unziker is demanding calculation here! He wants the NUMBERS that SUSY and ST do not predict, according to him. With reference to the video, I wpuld pretty much love to know what Witten answered, if someone could point me in that direction.
The numbers Unziker wants are data which the calculations should resolve to. Without data - AKA experiment - theoreticians can make their calculations say anying.
you cut off the clip with no response????... though i do completely agree with someone being the one person to disagree in a room of people agreeing, for that i commend you, but to not disclose his response is weak in character.
He has taken brilliant responsibility for physics, quantum computation, and String theory for energy problems. Mr, Unzicker you did not contribute to math and physics, either.
Very interesting question, which was the Witten's answer?
Maybe Mr. Unzicker should learn to keep it short.
... and perhaps relevant to the question at hand.
@Saturnian Purple No, I just mean that he can learn to be more efficient at communication.
Any scientist that requires handlers to step in and defend him is not a scientist but a cult leader.
I disagree with this characterization. I'm very skeptical of ST myself, but manners dictate that a question not become a filibuster.
Once the essence of the question is stated it's time to step aside and listen to the answer.
If u ask a question u wait for answer .
I agree with Unzicker. To me Witten and a lot of string theoreticians want to be like Newton or Einstein but hopelessly fail. The emperor wears no clothes.
That's going a bit too far for me. Both Mr. Witten and Mr. Unzicker are trying to find answers. The problem is that String Theory, according to the testimony of many physicists over the course of the last 30-40 years, has been given a research status and funding priority within the modern organized research system that is not commensurate with its experimental verification.
BlueGiant69202 You summed it up perfectly
It might be not relevant to physics (there are still many candidates out there which might be - entropic gravity for example).
But string theory had so many contributions to mathematics (geometric analysis for example) which in turn had applications to physics. This alone is more than an average scientists can archive.
And such an ad hominem attack and unnecessary rant (when you can ask this question in one sentence) is simply indecent.
@@tofu-munchingCoalition.ofChaos the problem is that its being sold as physics.
@@146maxpain Then say this.
No need for personal attacks "want to be like ... but fails miserably". Have at least a bit of decency. Witten has archived more than you, me and Unzicker together.
The same problem has Unzicker. He is partially right. But there is then this absolutely inexcusable behaviour.
He has no neurological disorder as far as I know. And he seems not to count this as a mistake and learned from it. Quite the contrary.
Therefore he doesn't get a pass from me.
imagine having the microphone and time to speak with and ask questions of one of the most brilliant minds of all time. Then imagine having the hubris to give a speech on how said scientist's breakthroughs require your constraints to be valid instead of asking how he overcomes them.
I think maybe Unzicker's lack of any sort of breakthrough or achievement pains him so much that being cynical of others is all he has. Which is fine. But here is how Science works. If you think his theory is BS you can try to disprove it.
Witten will be known in history along with Hawking, Einstein, Newton etc Unzicker not so much.
Edwards so right he shouldn't be questioned or so righteous he can't be questioned.
You pretend to ask a question, but deliver a harangue, then complain about being interrupted after more than a minute of us watching Whitten patiently listening to your sanctimonious speech. Can't blame the moderator, nor Whitten, for moving things along.
You assume that it is impossible to ever prove that strings exist, so demand that Prof. Witten abandon his research??
He can do what he likes to do, but relating it to physics is, to be nice, misleading.
I like that Unzicker questions the fundamentals. However, he is way out of his league with Witten. Witten's so far ahead of anyone else. Witten's definitely onto something with String Theory, the fruits of which will not be revealed for another 1000 years perhaps.
We Germans are particularly sceptical of promises that last for 1000 years.
But why did you feel the need to make a speech and give answers/conclusions for him, instead of asking concise question and let him respond? And why you removed his answer? Why make this video only as a promotion of yourself while exposing your inability to ask a simple question?
people worrying about the response from the guy promoting the paradoxes is beyond absurd.
Or people just enjoy listening to both sides of an argument, as what happens in a true intellectual debate.
I agree. Isn’t it possible that we’ll never be able to comprehend thoroughly all the physical laws that govern our universe? Isn’t it possible that all the laws of physics governed by mathematics is an infinite amount? Wasn’t their a theory in mathematics that states that we will never be able to derive all the possible mathematical laws since our axioms are limited? If so, this could surely mean that I won’t never have a full grasp and understanding of all the laws of physics that governed our universe. Although I do have in high esteem for most scientists who try to comprehend all of this, but in the end I believe it will be a fruitless endeavor if one’s goal is to achieve a theory of everything.
Why you cut the reply of your Father ! 💀
Not including Wittens response is not civil and respectful.
The question is greater than any probable response.
I think thats a reasonable question to ask, wot i am interested in his response. Where do i find that
I understand one can be butthurt by the ineffectiveness of contemporary scientific research in the area of fundamental physics but this is just lame honestly
The Greek found out abouit the atom by thinking about it...thinking is tha base of every theorie. Sometimes a theory is proofed hundreds of years later....
Andreas Exactly.
But string theory is just nonsense. This theory cant be falsified. It has more in common with mysticism rather than empirical science.
I wish physics was empirical like in 19th century.
Without falsification experiments you may end up for millenia being stuck in wrong assumptions. Often assumptions are half bad half good and its like a troyan horse or a goebels lies poisoning everything built on top of it.
Smh modern-day physicsist are the most egotistical people alive . These men are highly intelligent much more than me so i wont doubt that but geez these guys are on a high horse
like you know in advance, what fundamental research will lead to....
There was plenty of time to see that string theory was a rabbit hole
No you didn’t annoy him-you showed yourself to be highly arrogant. Are you scared of his response? Then why didn’t you post it?
I think there is a way to scientifically determine who is right and who is wrong. It is called Bayesian Analysis. Experts should apply Bayesian Analysis to String theory and no-Strings theories and see which approach has more viability. As for the efficacy of the method, we all remember how many clues there were that on Mars there must had been some form of life, all those signs of water etc. Well, scientists on MIT applied Bayesian analysis on the whole thing and...nada. Nothing. I think all this debate is about allocating significant funds in lieu of strings and other prospective theories. Hence, it makes sense to establish Bayesian analysis committee that would make all funding decisions on the basis of Bayes. Bayes is all about decision making in uncertain dynamic situations.
The question is a valid one about theory being disconnected from experiment. It might be clever mathematics that Dr Witten has produced but if it has no connection to the real world it's mathematical metaphysics. The problem is that too many people are blindly following this project.
i am not a string theorist but nevertheless i was annoyed, maybe you should take this in consideration
I'm joyous that at lest one physicist is calling out the pseudoscience.
He's alone (thank God). Every argument against him is a fortiori ad hominem. On the topic which you have so carefully avoided ("crank or not"), I suggest to read the comments on Peter Woit's blog, the most notorious opponent of string theory on the media, to give an idea how his speech (not a "comment") was received on the anti-string camp.
The interviewer was right - You are all being lied to, whilst his peers are all working on anti-gravity, the rest play on mathematical games. Its a diversion folks
Yes, when Witten said "...your point is clear...", your point was clear. Mentioning seven billion people is a stretch. How can emotion mix up with logic? Don't ask what physicists can do for you, but ask what you can do for physics. Critics are always noted, but your pressuring someone not to think the way they like is nothing short of forbidden of free speech. By the way Newton is not God. Using his words to validate your points doesn't have much meaning.
Mr Unzicker, I have read your book and I liked it. You began to ask a reasonable question but the speech that followed was not necessary. You should have allowed Witten to respond.
He probably got a good reply he doesn't wanna share it with us probably
I just saw this and the answer from Witten provided in the link. Basically Witten stated the obvious: other things were thought of as impossible or crazy in the past, yet they were true. What he didn't said is that many, many more things were thought of as impossible or crazy in the past, and they stayed as such. Of course he doesn't like this possibility for his work. Who does? It's only human. But its beneficial for him and others to be reminded of this possibility. And stay silent in front of such questions because nobody knows. Especially the scientist.
Today we forgot something fundamental. Physical theories are not mathematics. A mathematical theorem is correct and it will stay correct even after the death of the universe. Special relativity is not "correct" in the same sense. One and only one experiment in enough to prove relativity wrong. Relativity and any other theory is correct until further notice.
I thought that all the above notions were common place. I guess they are not.
If only the FIeld Medal winner listened to you, he could stop wasting his time. It's amazing how in the modern era all a theoretical physicist needs to do is read a comment on CZcams to improve their theory. It's such a great thing that we've given every person in the world a platform to say all the incredibly informed and relevant things they need to say.
GR was not testable for quite some time after the mathematical formalism (Forget about Eddingtons' tenuous confirmation).
I agree that Physics is defined as a body of theory that correctly predicts observations. Should the worlds greatest minds be diverted down a potential dead end? That's a valid question, but an inappropriate one in this forum(video). Perhaps String theory will resolve to further models which CAN be tested. We need to continue to obey Feynmans' great advice of CONSTANTLY "Taking the world from a another point of view." In the meantime, String theory appears to be very promising (unfortunately), but other paths must be explored.
***** ROFL. thank you
@@mipmip4575 That's putting words in Mr. Unzicker's mouth and is false.
“It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”
- Einstein, 1933
I think if String 'Theory' could be tested it would've been done long ago.
GR also fails to explain the simplest case of gravity (an apple falling from a tree to Earth). A theory making some right predictions doesn't make it conceptually sound.
And before you link the videos, I've seen the videos trying to explain the simplest case of gravity with GR. You will find such logical absurdities as "the Earth is falling upwards" and "it is a consequence of time dilation".
He should have asked who won the FA cup in 1923 of English football?
LOL
Half the commenters say "Unzicker owned Witten" & the other half say "Witten owned Unzicker". You should just say "I agree with Unzicker" or "I agree with Witten".
My own humble opinion: maybe Unzicker is right, maybe not - who am I to judge - but it looks like String Theory will only disappear if and when another theory does better, i.e., makes testable predictions that are confirmed by experiment or observation. As for them getting the lion's share of the funding, that's a PR problem not a scientific one.
@Robert Hunt Nobody doubts Witten is a formidable mathematician. But that doesn't necessarily mean his physics are correct. Arguments from authority and arguments ad hominem do not work in physics (nor in any other science by the way). Until you can prove your theory by experiment, it's no use to anybody. Quantum mechanics gave us in succession: atom bombs, transistor radios, personal computers and smartphones, as well as explaining how stars work. String theory has given us nothing and nobody knows if it ever will.
@Robert Hunt OK, possibly Unzicker has a screw loose or two... I guess I was reacting to that word "upstart". You could call Einstein an upstart patent clerk, and it would be perfectly true - it doesn't tell you whether his theory was true or not, or even well-thought-out or not.
If 'better' means 'makes predictions confirmed by evidence', then string theory sets a low bar, for it makes no testable predictions at all. If any other theory makes _one_ confirmed prediction, then it will outdo string theory by a factor of 1/0 = infinity.
Where is the rest of the interview?
Shame on you.
I came from the failures of String Theory and then to Lex Fridman interview with Peter Woit and now I stymbled upon your video. Wow, ST is just a theory? I agree with you. Like Peter Woit said, it has become a tribe in science community.
Don't hold back Alexander, just let him have it. After that he should have left with his tail between his legs.
Is he talking about the same Isaac Newton's definition of science who spoiled the whole three decades in alchemy?
Unzicker does not seem very bright. Where is Witten's answer?
Witten's response would have been nice to hear.
If - if - string theory, or some later offshoot, consistently includes both quantum theory and gravitation doesn't that by itself, without any more predictions, make it a better theory than either of them separately?
We are in a paradigm shift in Physics. Much as we greatly admire the very brilliant Einstein, we have HAD to acknowledge his errors. He was a human man. He did great things but made some errors too. His "followers" would not (and could not) check for errors in such a complex structure, so EGR was allowed to take hold as a "Standard Model" without ratification or scrutiny...until today. This is a clue as to why we have made no real progress from Theoretical Physics in a century. ESR is fine btw.
I would go in the opposite direction and say that the Standard Model and the positivist, empirical methodology that led to it and QED, leads to a dead end because "there is no inductive method which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics". Dr. Albert Einstein was looking in the right direction by trying to find ways to incorporate particle physics (at least the electron with Electromagnetism but also in terms of the absence of singularities) within the General Theory of Relativity but he just didn't have the information available to him that is known today and has been the result of a century of chipping away at a difficult problem while most particle physicists drilled holes where it was easiest. The problem of "Quantum Gravity" remains to this day and physicists are returning to the problem. Dr. Albert Einstein flopped around like a fish out of water trying to find physical interpretations that would give correct experimental results for mathematical structures like Weyl's gauge theory and Kaluza-Klein 5D theory. In hindsight, Dr. Albert Einstein was so close to gauge theory and Geometric Calculus that it would make one bite one's nails to see a video of it as he passed them by in the darkness of conducting research. Group Theory Dr. Einstein! Majorana is onto it! Bivectors! Einstein-Rosen Bridge! EWKB! "Section 8, "It is remarkable..."!
Yes, Witten has misled a whole generation of physicists (Feynman too.) String theory has used up more men-hours in the history of science than any other topic, to no avail. The only concrete output is the multi universe, an awkward move to justify 10^500 possibilities, which corresponds to 10^-500 predictivity.
You don't get to spread your opinion. You think in QFT field operators at different positions act on different hilbert spaces. At least you tought that the last time I asked you. Did you since then educate yourself about QFT?
r/iamverysmart vibes