Disclaimer#1. I have not read all the posts here so if anyone has already made this point, I apologize for repeating).
Disclaimer#2. I left physics decades ago early in my career for many reasons, but I now conduct clinical work in inflammatory diseases and cancer, so I encounter similar problems in my field. Many people put out both testable and un-testable speculations, but in our case the regulatory environment limits us from going too far. Despite this, some really unlikely speculations are entertained and studies conducted, all due to the influence of a few well known and powerful people. They are bright and honest, yet end up producing what some would uncharitably call “bullshit.” I for one, see it in terms of human fallibility, nothing else.
The Popperian construct (at least these days) refers to actual experiment that can be conducted to prove or disprove something. In other words, it is not just about a mathematical abstraction like “probability”. Mathematics is a tool or a means to an end in the physical sciences, something you imply as well. If probability simply refers to the likelihood of an event from happening and nothing more, a Popperian analysis should not apply to the abstraction itself. Taking this a step further, anything goes as long as it has a non-zero probability. Could you imagine the number of crackpot contentions that will demand attention? I am not implying that String Theorists are cranks, just that they have badly oversold it. In that sense, both Woit and Horgan are right. Nonsensical theories can sometimes produce occasional predictions that come out true, but that is no reason to go after it. This where Truzzi and his band go off in their Zetetic discussions and end up entertaining ESP, Homoeopathy, paranormal, Velikoskian stuff etc., all in an attempt to be neutral or agnostic as he calls it. And the rest of us are called pseudo skeptics to boot. Some things have to be rejected outright, because they don’t fit in with elementary logic and reason i.e., what we call science. In that sense, I don’t see any fly in the ointment.

Lawrence B. Crowell

I am positive, that you do have such a theory. An observable object over a certain size simply is not effected by quantum physics, because a quantum field is weaker than gravity field. Where’s the link in that?

Qubit

http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/jill_bolte_tayl.php#more

Another example of the issue would be with the dichotomy of the Uncertainty Principle, that you can’t measure both position and momentum of quanta. I would say the notion of position is a fallacy, for if any such particle had an absolute position, its temperature would be absolute zero, so it would esstentially not exist, since measuring it requires some degree of motion. While I’m not an expert on the methods used, it would seem that measuring position actually means measuring force, since by actually stopping the particle, you measure the amount of resistance required to do so. While measuring momentum measures the direction of resistance.
So my argument is the reason reality is fuzzy is because there is no clear distinction between object and action and this applies at all scales. Describing time as a dimension, rather than a measurement, simply tries to make all action a series of objects.

Through all the details, it still seems as though the intention is to give form to function, to explain the network as extensions of the nodes.

So what has transpired is that there is now the 0-brane, which is a field at a point. This is a particle.

Two quarks in a meson are bound by QCD gauge fields termed gluons. Gluons carry the “charge” or color for the QCD force and thus attract each other. Hence two quarks in a meson are connected by this gluon-chromo-flux tube. At a distance this looks remarkably like a string. With the Regge trajectories there was this spin = 2 field with stringy properties. Thus the old hadron bootstrap theory was resurrected in string theory.

I still think it is a consequence of assuming the linear narrative of time is a physical dimension and any point on it is as subjective as any point in space. The result being higher dimensional strings of process as physical reality, rather than real change.