George Johnson is always insightful to read or watch. While I think that it would be amusing to bring John Horgan on a tour of Intel or MIT labs to listen to him scoff at them wasting time on their primitive single-qubit experiments and crude early spintronic devices, his moral outrage against Brian Green rankles. Perhaps someone should alert Horgan to the legions of bright physics graduates lured to Wall Street each year to generate math models of the next globally catastrophic financial instruments in the service of even more profits for hedge fund billionaires?
Posted by: melior | Feb 1, 2011 2:21:42 AM
I'm as hostile to unfalsifiable theories as the next person. But string theory is just too young, it's not inherently unfalsifiable.
The many-worlds hypothesis, however, is by definition unfalsifiable. What's more, the *purpose* of this theory was to wave a magic wand at the unpleasant randomness inherent in quantum physics. It has to be one of the laziest solutions to a scientific conundrum in the history of science.
Posted by: Gregory Travis | Feb 3, 2011 4:13:12 PM
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George Johnson is always insightful to read or watch. While I think that it would be amusing to bring John Horgan on a tour of Intel or MIT labs to listen to him scoff at them wasting time on their primitive single-qubit experiments and crude early spintronic devices, his moral outrage against Brian Green rankles. Perhaps someone should alert Horgan to the legions of bright physics graduates lured to Wall Street each year to generate math models of the next globally catastrophic financial instruments in the service of even more profits for hedge fund billionaires?
Posted by: melior | Feb 1, 2011 2:21:42 AM
I'm as hostile to unfalsifiable theories as the next person. But string theory is just too young, it's not inherently unfalsifiable.
The many-worlds hypothesis, however, is by definition unfalsifiable. What's more, the *purpose* of this theory was to wave a magic wand at the unpleasant randomness inherent in quantum physics. It has to be one of the laziest solutions to a scientific conundrum in the history of science.
Posted by: Gregory Travis | Feb 3, 2011 4:13:12 PM
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