- #36
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Atyy, I really like the recent post by "Surprised"! I imagine you have seen it. It is a modest frank account of string limitations which conveys a sense of integrity and leaves room for other approaches.
Too often we get misleading half-truths, obfuscation, defensiveness. There's a kind of kneejerk reaction that whatever could be wrong with the string program must be twice as wrong with the other approaches. It would be unthinkable to acknowledge a strong point in a rival program, or a weakness on one's side which doesn't equally afflict the others.
Maybe I'll copy some of "Surprised" post here so we can reflect on it conveniently without distracting from the "What I REALLY don't like..." thread. At this point it seems to me that criticising the string program is becoming more and more irrelevant. What interests me is to see how it leaves room for other approaches, and what new stuff the others bring.
Especially where there seems to be some handle on both QG and matter. It is the background independent QG+matter potential (and the cosmology potential) that seem so interesting.
Too often we get misleading half-truths, obfuscation, defensiveness. There's a kind of kneejerk reaction that whatever could be wrong with the string program must be twice as wrong with the other approaches. It would be unthinkable to acknowledge a strong point in a rival program, or a weakness on one's side which doesn't equally afflict the others.
Maybe I'll copy some of "Surprised" post here so we can reflect on it conveniently without distracting from the "What I REALLY don't like..." thread. At this point it seems to me that criticising the string program is becoming more and more irrelevant. What interests me is to see how it leaves room for other approaches, and what new stuff the others bring.
Especially where there seems to be some handle on both QG and matter. It is the background independent QG+matter potential (and the cosmology potential) that seem so interesting.