http://www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/~shaww/web_page/strings/strings.pdf

One should also note the point of view discussed there that the standard bosonic string quantization is incomplete: the classical phase space is missing the complex forms of the classical ground state , i.e. complex null geodesics corresponding to spinning systems.

I definitely did not say that. In fact, most of the time I ask questions for the reason that I can not predict the answer. The reason why I don’t ask Peter whether or not he considers something ugly is that it doesn’t matter to me. I want to hear the scientific arguments. Whether or not somebody perceives these as ugly or beautiful is a subjective judgement. I didn’t count the amount of times he used the word ‘ugly’, and the repetitive use of the word is probably not a very good writing style, but then he never meant to qualify for the Nobel Prize in literature.

Best,

B.

Bee, Peter Woit’s discussion of beauty in physics (Chapter 13 in his book) is also quite reasonable, although I do not agree with his opinion that superstrings are not beautiful. In this thread, Peter refers to string theory as “ugly” ten times. (While criticism and skepticism are overall healthy and welcomed, the amount of repetitions here and elsewhere makes Peter skeptical style (also regarding other parts of the debate) a sort of “skeptical harassment,” which is, in my opinion, a rather problematic style of skepticism.)

I think that seriously thinking about the role of beauty in physics or science can be of interest. The evaluation of supersymmetry can be a good test case. If Peter indeed described a clear approach regarding beauty of physics theories, as you said, Bee, we should be able to predict Peter’s answer on this particular matter without asking him. (But, of course, I did ask him and he just did not reply, (which is perfectly OK).) Peter’s description of supersymmetry (Chapter 12 in his book) is very good and support my view that this is a very beautiful idea/theory.

Anon wrote: “If you want to argue FOR the beauty of string theory, a real scientific argument for it would be useful, too. (Science as in empirical reality and not just something that you wish to be true.)”

The issue is precisely how to discuss beauty. If ‘beautiful’ is just the same as ‘empirically valid’, there is no point to talk about beauty at all. If ugly is a synonym for difficult or complex, again there is no point to discuss it as a separate concept.

Bee wrote: “In my subjective perception for example the length of this comment section is ugly.”

I am not sure, B. It may be true that we are well ‘over the hill’ here, but it is always nice to hope otherwise, no?

how about you ask Peter? You are the one who wrote he regards string theory as very ugly. I meant to say he has written a whole book that clarifies his opinion. That doesn’t mean you have to share it. In my subjective perception for example the length of this comment section is ugly. Best,

B.

If you want to argue FOR the beauty of string theory, a real scientific argument for it would be useful, too. (Science as in empirical reality and not just something that you wish to be true.)

You wrote regarding the beauty issue “Lee as well as Peter, have made it more than clear what exactly they mean with that”

If Peter’s approach is more than clear, is it clear to you, B, if Peter regards supersymmetry as beautiful or as ugly?

(Lee’s approach to beauty and physics is oveall quite reasonable.)

yes, beauty is definitly subjective. But both, Lee as well as Peter, have made it more than clear what exactly they mean with that. Best

B.

The issue of beauty and physics is quite prominent in this discussion. Lee Smolin warns against adopting a physics theory based on aesthetic consideration and bring Kepler’s theory relating the five planets and five platonic solids as an example. Peter Woit makes (repeatedly, here e.g. on #145, and #252,) the claim that string theory is simply ugly, very ugly.

Well, beauty is a subjective matter. I remember my dear grand uncle Lena telling me:” Gina, aren’t we very lucky that people see things in a subjective way? If men were objective they would have all fallen in love with my own beloved wife (here name was incidentally also Gina,) who is clearly the most beautiful woman, and this could have caused all sort of complications.”

I, for example, regard string theory as very beautiful. Supersymmetry which grew up from string theory is an extremely beautiful notion. (In my view, suppersymmetry has a natural form of beauty while string theory has an exotic and peculiar beauty.)

But the really interesting question in my mind is how to debate beauty. Can beauty be argued and debated at all?

Here is a story about arguing beauty in court, which may be of use. It was a case were the defendant was accused of a terrible crime.

The attorney for the defendant said in his opening speech: “Look at the defendant. Looks how beautiful she is and look at her eyes of an angel. Do you really think she is capable of committing this ugly crime?”

At first, The prosecutor thought to ignore this remark altogether, but then the remark was repeated and similar sentiments were expressed by some witnesses. The prosecutor watched how this non-issue is becoming an issue and was worried that the beauty claims may convince some jury member.

The dilemma was not a simple one. Trying to argue that the defendant is not beautiful may convince a few jurors but will the strengthen the belief that indeed beautiful eyes is an obstruction for being a criminal. Trying to argue that there is no connection between the innocent angel look and the crime may give this whole business some credibility and may cause those jurors who believe in this connection to take for granted that the defendant is indeed beautiful

This is what the prosecutor said in his closing argument:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. There are two types of beauty. There is the beauty that reveal a beautiful soul and there is the beauty that covers us a corrupted and distorted personality. It is very difficult to distinguish between theses two types of beauty, and often our initial hunches and intuitions turn out to be wrong.

We have carefully proved during this trial that the defendant committed the crime she is accused with, and therefore you must conclude that to the extent you find her beautiful this is a beauty of the bad kind, a beauty which covers a corrupt personality able to commit terrible crimes.”

(The moral is that if you want to argue against the beauty of string theory your best chance is, as Clifford Johnson often say in his tea-cup series, to come up with a real scientific argument against it. Of course, in such a case, the whole beauty issue becomes of secondary importance.)

BTW Woit’s blog (which recently contains a lot of cool stuff and relatively little dozes of boring string bashing,) has in the May 5 posting a link to an interesting discussion on beauty and physics theories.

One interesting part of this discussion in LHC prophecies and interpretations of various scenarios.

Peter Woit wrote (#260): “The all too depressing possibility is a 160 GeV (or whatever the number is that makes the theory consistent at very high energies) Higgs.”

In this case, Peter’s opinion that discovering the Higgs and no-more-and-no-less scenario is disappointing (even depressing) appears to be that of quite a few physicists. Looking at it well from the outside, I beg to disagree.

It is a possibility (to which I will give a substantial but small probability) that LHC will fail. (And it also seems likely that the time schedule will not be as expected; Setting the expected date for definite results to 2012/3 rather than 2009/2010 seems reasonable.) But once LHC will succeed to run it is a win/win/win situation.

If “only” the Higgs will be discovered this will be an amazing success for the scientific endeavor. (This is especially clear if you regard empirical verification of a scientific theory a major ingredient and not just a nuisance.)

Sure, like any major achievement it will raise the question, what is next. But as is the case after the Everest was reached, or the Moon, or the Poincare conjecture solved (in the affirmative as most people expected) the question of what is next is of secondary importance.

Of course, evidence for suppersymmetry will be another amazing success. Many physicists would not bet even money on this possibility but still regard it as a probable possibility. The stakes are so high that it certainly worth the wait.

In any case, there is a very good chance that in 5-6 years we will replace some tentative theoretical beliefs with a firm knowledge. This is what science is all about isn’t it? And if we will get a conformation for more speculative insights, and some unexpected data to keep are busy in the future this will be welcomed too.

It is possible to stabilize the moduli without fluxes in M-theory compactified on singular manifolds with G_2 holonomy. See hep-th/0701034 for the details.

In this class of models the racetrack-type superpotential is purely non-perturbative and the hierarchy problem can be naturally solved via the dimensional transmutation. Moreover, surprisingly, in this construction the tuning of the CC results in a constraint which completely fixes the scale of gaugino condensation at ~10^14 GeV which in turn results in O(1-100)TeV scale superpartners.

I think I’m going to take a break from answering that. I can’t guarantee that I won’t be sucked in again, but I can’t imagine I have anything new to say at this point.

It looks that you like Peter but not Lee, why is that?

The only thing worse than a string critic without alternative ideas is a string critic with alternative ideas.

As for topics for discussion here are two which are related to our discussion and yet we can explore without even mentioning the S-word.

1) Symmetry: Is symmetry what it’s all about or perhaps just a cheap mathematical trick.
(Of course, there are many possibilities in between)

This is a very interesting issue on which I suspect that Peter Woit and Lee Smolin sharply differ. Peter sees, as far as I can tell from his book, that symmetry is in the essence of things and he gives an unflattering description of physicists (from the pre-QCD bootstrap time,) that dared thinking otherwise. Lee , on the other hand, has an interesting lecture called “against symmetry” that plato linked and referred to in #429.

2) Time: Given a movie or a musical symphony played on a crooked video tape or audio tape. How can we find an “correct” internal clock for the piece?
Perhaps there are known methods that engineers already use? This can help if we want to define time as an emergent feature.

Aaron: “Now, if we could only get Lee to post his latest screed here, we’d easily make it!”

Dear Aaron, Any comments by Lee will be most welcomed, as he makes a lot of interesting contributions and in a gentle style. It looks that you like Peter but not Lee, why is that?

Wikipedia to the rescue for Gina’s questions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor_%28physics%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Aaron