The comment sections on this blog are mostly an open forum, rather than one that is closely moderated. That is a choice that we as the bloggers have made, because (1) it’s less work, (2) choosing what to moderate and what to let by is much harder than it looks, (3) it’s less work, (4) anonymous and outsider comments are often useful, and (5) it’s less work. Complaining that a lack of high-level discussion makes one pessimistic about blogs is like complaining that your personal dislike for the most recent Harry Potter makes one pessimistic about books. Blogs are a medium, that can be used for a huge variety of purposes. If someone wants to set up and maintain a blog devoted to technical discussions among experts in an environment where civility is enforced, that would be great. But nobody is paying me to do that, and I wouldn’t take the job if offered. It’s just a hobby, you know? If you’re not satisfied, full money back.

This discussion has been conducted in public, and is a matter of public record.

Major (and I mean MAJOR) periodicals have already reported on earlier stages of this discussion.

Well-known scientists are involved.

The story could well go further in the media. I can see The Economist picking this up again, or the Tuesday section of the New York Times getting interested.

It could end up in books. It could even end up in HISTORY books.

I promise that I myself will not be dragging any reporters or such into this, directly or indirectly, but still, maybe you should think about that….

I would also like to thank everyone, and I mean everyone, who has participated in this discussion for continuing to do it in public even after it got painful. It really is fascinating, on every level including, fortunately, the scientific level.

Best,
Michael Gogins

Best,
Eric

I’m not going to right now address the physics issues. If the atmosphere improves here-or in another forum where civility is enforced-I will be happy to do that. For now that is still not happening. Note for example how Eric in 197 accuses of me of not knowing that left and right fermions coupled to separate left and right handed su(2)’s, which if he read the details of my posts (149) he would see I assume. So the nastiness continues. The point of some people here continues to be to attack credibility and not to have a scientific discussion.

For now I do want to emphasize two points:

1) I never “hyped” Lisi or his paper to journalists. Quite the opposite as I already mentioned in two posts, 83 and 86. But to say it again, in every communication with every journalist about this I emphasized that no story should be written untill experts had time to digest Lisi’s paper and that this would take some time. It is true that I made the “Fabulous…” remark, but it was made spontaneously to a few colleagues after a seminar. I am not responsible for that getting to journalists, although it is also true that when I was asked by New Scientist I did acknowledge making that remark. But that was in the context of emphasizing that it was premature to write a story on it. And every other use of that quote in the press was without my permission.

What I actually think of Lisi’s proposal is stated clearly in my paper. In particular (to Shawn 196) if you read the intro and conclusion to my paper you will find the answer to your query. It is a mixed bag and I therefor chose my words carefully. Much of the interest has to do with how his proposal fits into a literature of previous proposals of unification within LQG, to appreciate the significance of those I would you not only to study my paper but study earlier papers I reference by Peldan and others. If you take my comments out of that context I don’t think you will fully appreciate them. If any further clarification is needed, please feel free to write me an email and I will respond.

Also to Shawn, what are you trying to suggest regarding PI? Lisi was invited to give a seminar at PI, which he did. He is a physics Ph.D. who had been invited to talk by the organizers of two conferences over the summer and funded by a research foundation and we wanted to have the chance to hear about his work. The views of several people at PI on Lisi’s work happen to be in the public record, so you can look them up.

2) Let me say something on the human side. I really would like to be able to again soon have scientific discussion with Distler, HIGGS (whoever he is) and everyone else writing here. There is no one in my career I’ve never not been able to have a scientific disucssion with. But in the context of this and Distler’s blog I have been continually attacked personally and addressed in tones which are dismissive and condescending. There has been just way too many times I read something like “I thought you were a physicist but just in case let me explain something simple, ” or “Lee doesn’t understand basic particle physics” or “I’m not going to deal here with THE REST of Smolin’s paper” or, “How can he say that when he is so stupid he doesn’t understand X”.

Guys, after a while one just does not feel like discussing with people who attack you personally you like this. I have a thick skin and it takes a lot to get me angry, but you guys succeeded.

In all of the above I responded to the barrage of nastiness in the way I would prefer, by ignoring the ad hominum stuff and staying focused on the scientific questions. I tried to be respectful, fair and honest. I hoped it would be recipricated. It was not. The nastiness just got worse. I regreted having to write what I did above, but my choice was either to dissappear or do that.

You know, it is not difficult to have a constructive and respectful conversation with people you disagree with. If you want to change someone’s mind about something or explain to them that they are wrong about something, and you really want to succeed, the way to start is to approach them with a respectful tone. If you attack the person and not the view there is no way they are going to be in a mood to listen to you no matter how correct you may or may not be. On top of that the audience is going to think that what you are doing is trying to win an argument not with logic but by attacking someone’s credibility, and they are not going to be impressed.

As HIGGS says, take a deep breadth and think: how would you respond if you had to deal with a barrage of personal attacks? Wouldn’t you agree this just has to stop?

I would like to move forward from this. What would allow that instantly would be if all those who have made nasty or condesending or negative personal remarks cease them and apologise for them.

Another possibility, if you think that something I’ve written is wrong, is to communicate with me directly, off line. I empahasized above that I would welcome that. If someone really thinks I am being obtuse about something easy to understand just email or phone and let’s talk about it. This is what we used to do in the days before blogs and it usually works.

3) There really is a metaissue about how much slander and personal attacks can be allowed on a blog, whether anonymous or not. At the very least it makes us look terrible in the eyes of the public. And it really does drive good people out of the profession. To those of you who are defending the personal attacks, saying its part of the territory, let me ask you how bad does it have to be before it goes over the line of professional conduct in your university? Hard, honest discussion between colleagues is one thing, and I have no problem with that, but standards of professional conduct generally do not allow one colleague to make personal attacks in public on another.

Thanks,

Lee

Though your comment was addressed to Peter, allow me to reply to
your statement

My interest in the matter springs largely from the fact that the Canadian tax dollar is partially responsible for the maintenance of the Perimeter Institute.

PI operates in a country where the tax dollar automatically buys
transparency. If anyone should deem PI above that, then PI has automatically
become the same type of ivory tower held under so much scrutiny in so many
popular “anti”-string books.

First, let me remind you that there are like 80 or so researchers here at PI. As far as I know, Lee is the only one who has done some work that was inspired by Garrett’s model. I know of two-three others that find it interesting, but prefer sticking with their own research topics. I personally don’t consider it to be very promising, so I’m on wait and see.

I can’t but wonder what you are asking for? Here you have your ‘well-known
representative’ whose paper is available on the preprint server for literally
everybody, and who discussed in great length publicly what his
current thoughts are, despite being insulted and being made fun of, and has
repeatedly offered to continue discussion by email. What more ‘transparency’
can you possibly ask for? A live chat?

If you read through this comment section you see very clearly how anonymity is a self-supporting problem. The only outcome of discussions like this is that scientists will try to avoid commenting on blogs under their real name. For one because blogs sadly have a bad reputation, and I don’t think it’s getting better with exchanges like this. But worse, gee, one could misunderstand something, or make a mistake, or say something embarrassing that everybody could read, and make fun of, and it’s all saved in a database! CAREER PANIC!

The problem with scientific discussions on blogs is that too little people have invested any thought in how to deal with it efficiently. I didn’t start writing a blog to have technical discussions, and as I have stated repeatedly I am not sure whether it’s a good thing, but still it seems possible to me. That however would require some conscious effort. The above mentioned ‘background noise’ is only one of these problems. E.g. reading through this comment section is like hearing several groups of people speaking at once.

The other, more serious, problem however is closely related to what Jacques mentioned above with “I think the root of the problem is the lack of a common language”. Now I have to ask myself in which sense is this better or worse than in face to face communication? I mean, if I discuss some matter with somebody else, it always takes a while until we know we are actually talking about the same thing, and until one has established some basis for communication. What’s new about that? Yes, one spends a significant amount of time repeating things one has already said, and yes this requires patience, and good will. Where is the patience, where is the good will? One more thing that’s different about blogs to, say, email exchange is the time pressure. If somebody asks a question, you are kind of forced to reply rather soon. I thoroughly dislike this, but maybe it works for others.

The most obvious point however is that we are not all good writers, and manage to express ourselves clearly. With that I don’t mean the technical aspects, but I mean that some people might come off more rude or impolite, or morally superior, etc than they actually are if one talks to them in person (see also links I provided in # 148). E.g. if I talk to somebody I know, that person usually doesn’t have to say ‘I didn’t get that’ because I can tell from their face and add more details while proceeding. So how does that work on a blog? Esp. if somebody has a problem admitting he or she didn’t understand something? The result is that people cling to single sentences they can nitpick around, boldface statements somebody has made earlier, make fun summaries or other jokes, etc. Some of that might be entertaining, but usually doesn’t have much of an outcome. I have the impression that it’s very hard to understand other people’s motivations from such comment sections, esp. if one doesn’t even try. I don’t think it’s impossible to work around these challenges, but just assuming that a discussion in a comment section can be lead like a discussion one would have in a group meeting isn’t sufficient. It might work where a group has established a common ground to build up upon, or when people already know each other.

Regarding ‘the maintenance of the Perimeter Institute’ I am very happy to report that the roof is being fixed, so hopefully water will stop leaking in.

Best,

B.

I think most people who have been following the physics blogs over the years clearly know that you inserting mindless comment in these blogs is just a way to make yourself feel important. You know in your bones that you have nothing to contribute, so you keep coming back as a self declared etiquette police.
I suggest you stop this shenanigans and do real work. Ok, its alright to talk about tone once or twice, but here you are with your propaganda, with nothing robust to contribute in terms of science and you are demanding respect. It simply doesnt happen.

1) Does Lisi’s proposal actually give a generation + antigeneration as Distler says, a point missed by both you and Lisi?

This is a math question with a yes or no answer, and we are waiting for your response. If you agree that Distler is correct, follow-up questions are:

2) Do you agree that not having chirality is a fatal problem for the idea?

3) Does the failure of this proposal even at the level of group theory, leaving physics aside, affect your assesment that the theory is “fabulous” and “the most compelling unification scheme you have seen in a very, very, very long time”?

4) Had you known all this before, would it have changed the way you hyped it to journalists?

Amused: I agree with much of what you say, but your comparing of the hyping of Lisi with brilliant young string theorists is a sick joke. The young string theorists being “hyped” in the 80’s, where “hyped” means “strongly supported by the community” and not “talked up to the press as the next einstein”, were the likes of Polchinski, Seiberg, Sen, Strominger and Vafa and others. And it was completely justified. Every one of them went on to make many spectacular contributions each; their papers have been cited multiple tens of thousands of times, they all turned into the superstars of theoretical physics due to their accomplishments. Similarly with Maldacena in the 90’s–yes, he was “hyped”, had all the best job offers straight out of graduate school and so on, but it was again completely justified, as he went on to revolutionize the field. This isn’t called “hype”, its called “good judgement and a good eye for major talent”. Comparing this to what Smolin did with Lisi is too ridiculous for words.

I don’t think there’s any need to form such a prejudicial and gloomy outlook.

True, there are some people here who seem to be interested in riling others up just for the fun of it. True, some of them are doing it behind the veil of anonymity. True, not every posted comment is worth its weight in gold.

However, there are still some people who are genuinely interested in the heart of the matter, which leaves no room for the concensus that you suggest.

My interest in the matter springs largely from the fact that the Canadian tax dollar is partially responsible for the maintenance of the Perimeter Institute. *

So here we are: a well-known representative of PI has made some very encouraging comments about Lisi’s paper (which also lists PI in the acknowledgements), some “opponents” have raised objections, and now we are waiting patiently for a summary of what encouraging components remain.

PI operates in a country where the tax dollar automatically buys transparency. If anyone should deem PI above that, then PI has automatically become the same type of ivory tower held under so much scrutiny in so many popular “anti”-string books.

As for the spirit of open and honest communication being trampled upon, I think it’s fair to say that this was a dead horse from the very beginning. Lisi himself has said that it’s rude to contact others regarding one’s own discoveries about physics **. I wonder how many young people who are passionate about physics will be deceived into thinking that this type of prejudicial behaviour is actually how the real world operates.

Anyone who studied Michael Abrash’s “Graphics Programming Black Book” *** back in the 90’s is probably familiar with the story of a young person writing to Abrash on their independent “discovery” of backface culling. Abrash marvels in the ingenuity of his young and passionate correspondent, instead of deriding them for their wasteful focus on such a “trivial” matter. The complete lack of “alternative respectibility” in physics is just plain sociopathic, and is being upheld from both sides of the string/”anti”-string fence. So really, what do you expect to come out of calling the kettle black? If it’s to fool lay people such as myself who live in the real world, it’s absolutely not working.

- Shawn Halayka

* http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/About/History/Funding/

** http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum.php?action=topic&id=108

*** http://www.byte.com/abrash/

http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=202439&page=7

It seems that a title of the paper was very misleading since it might not yet be TOE, also that there was no _full_ E8 symmetry to begin with in the paper either.

I’m with you on the physics issue, together with a dozen others, but the whole thing is a non-starter, time to move on.

So you say.

Allow me to make four predictions for 2008.

1) There will be several further followups to Lisi’s paper.
2) The protagonists will insist (if ever challenged on the matter) that no flaws in Lisi’s or Lee’s paper were ever proven.
3) Anyone who attempts to say otherwise will be denounced as
a) rude
b) a “string theory partisan”, with suspicious motives.
4) Peter Woit will chime in, to announce that the whole affair reflects badly on the string theorists.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Happy Holidays to all!

I’m with you on the physics issue, together with a dozen others, but the whole thing is a non-starter, time to move on.

1. We think denigrating and insulting people is a legitimate part of a scientific discussion.

2. We think doing this anonymously is fine too.

3. We don’t understand why it is so hard to have serious discussions about physics on blogs. We suspect it is because PW keeps interfering with them.

Have I got that right?

Sean, I know you’ve been known to write that you don’t read the comment section of your own blog, but keep in mind that you are legally and morally responsible for what appears here. The decision to provide a forum for anonymous attacks by some of your colleagues (and I have good reason to believe that H-I-G-G-S is someone that you know) on another one is yours to make, but I think it’s a misguided one. Until the appearance of blog comment sections, there was no legitimate medium with wide distribution where people could anonymously attack their colleagues. No one who controlled a public information source that was widely read would allow this to go on. Unfortunately one of the main innovations of this new technology is to provide an outlet for disgraceful, unprofessional behavior that no one previously would tolerate.

–

While I am here, and while some people are around that have invested time thinking about the matter, I’d just like to repeat a question I’ve asked in several other places. Regardless of whether the theory is chiral or not, can incorporate all generations or not, I don’t understand how the dynamics can work out (naturally, without fixing by hand). If one treats the fermions like the gauge fields, writes down an action with unbroken symmetry, and then break it, I can’t see how the fermionic part for the Lagrangian can come out with the correct order of derivatives?

Sorry if that’s a stupid question - the reasoning is just if you start treating fermions like gauge fields, then how come they can eventually couple differently? Having fields that transform under the right Lorentz representation isn’t sufficient, there is no D\psiD\psi term in the SM Lagrangian, there is just one D too much. Lisi fixes this in his paper by picking a Lagrange multiplier that in the fermionic case is just \psi without derivatives. Anybody has a thought on that? Is this a constraint that can come out naturally? I’d be interested to hear.

Best,

B.

You do realize it is mainly thanks to you that this spectacle occurred, don’t you? If Jacques Distler felt obliged to get involved and try to clarify the situation when there were other things he would much rather be doing, and if his annoyance about this manifested itself in a more abrasive tone, that would be quite understandable I think.

“Does Lisi’s proposal survive Distler’s second post? Even if there is some truth to Distler’s argument…”

Can you clarify what you mean by “truth” here? Distler presented an explicit mathematical argument; are you suggesting that it might not be correct (i.e he made a mistake in it somewhere), or that it is somehow not relevant, or what? If it is the former, can you say where the mistake is, or which steps need clarification, or specify precisely what your objection is?

“A bunch of people who think they own the territory of unification are enraged. They react with all the classic symptoms of territory defense that the sociologists of science have catalogued…”

I think you are kidding yourself about that. At any rate, I count myself among the “enraged” in this instance, and it is not because I’m a string theorist (I’m not, and have no love for them) or because unification is my territory (it isn’t, and in fact I care very little about it). The real reason for the outrage (in my case, and many others as well I expect) is that it was totally irresponsible of you to hype this supposed “theory of everything” to the New Scientist journalist (which set off this spectacle) without being correct in your judgement that it merited the hype. It is embarrassing, if not downright harmful, to the physics community.

“So what is really happening here? What has happened is that one very smart, but intellectually isolated young theoretical physicists has made a bold and risky proposal for unification of physics…”

That reminds me so much of the aggrandizement of “brilliant” young string theorists that I’ve heard so often in the past. So I will just repeat what I always say to that: If so-and-so is really so great, let him go prove it by publishing some papers in PRL. If plodders like yours truly, who were judged undeserving of support by pretty much everyone they ever applied to (including you), were able publish there repeatedly then it should a piece of cake for these really smart folks.
Seeing as Lisi’s work is “fabulous”, why don’t you encourage him to submit a short version of it to PRL?

It seems that your vision of how the physics community should be involves a complete rejection of the traditional procedures for assessing the importance of peoples work. Assessments should not be based on such outdated things like getting published in the top journals; being a “seer” addressing the “big questions” is all that matters. Being bold and risky, writing papers with over-the-top titles and claims of tremendous results, modulo a few small details to be sorted out later, these are the folks we should respect and admire now. Those boring types with limited imaginations, plodding away on their piddling little problems, thinking that it signifies anything when their incremental technical advances get published in PRL - ha! they can all sod off and go to hell. Let’s get rid of them and replace them all with people who have the courage and boldness to be working directly on the big issues for unlocking the secrets of the universe!