Dr. Angela Collier plays the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and talks at length about what went wrong with string theory, and how that affected science communication.
It seems a little over-the-top to be angry at physicists from 30-40 years ago for being wrong.
Scientists aren’t priests, and science isn’t a religion. Expecting scientists to always be right, always be humble, and everything they add to “science” to be sacred and correct and immutable is a little silly.
This is how science works. It’s messy. It goes in delicious looking directions that turn out to be dead ends. Humans create ideas (with all the hubris and errors of being human) that other humans test (with all the hubris and errors of being human.)
I was struck by how angered she was by physicists thinking they were right and saying “we’re doing something real”. They were doing something real: they were exploring and testing an idea. Without that work, the idea could never have been proved wrong.
(My personal “string theory” is that string/cordage is humanity’s greatest invention, and my user name is a joke.)
Not sure if you are serious? If so, I think you probably didn’t understand why she is angry. As she clearly states, studying string theory in itself is totally valid. But the way they presented their ideas or let their ideas be presented is the reason she is angry.
Who is “they”? Every string theorist ever?
Her rant is dumb because she’s mad at Brian Greene and is instead othering an entire group of physicists who simply worked hard on theory they thought might lead somewhere.
Well, I meant the field of string theory and the leadng scientists she mentioned. And calling her rant dumb seems like you are dismissing her argument without actually thinking about it. So you probably aren’t interested in an open discussion either…
