There Are No Laws of Physics. There’s Only the Landscape.

There Are No Laws of Physics. There’s Only the Landscape.

In string theory, certain features of physics that we usually would consider laws of nature — such as specific particles and forces — are in fact solutions. They are determined by the shape and size of hidden extra dimensions. The space of all of these solutions is often referred to as “the landscape,” but that is a wild understatement. Even the most awe-inspiring mountain vistas pale in comparison with the immensity of this space. Although its geography is only marginally understood, we know it has continents of huge dimensions. One of the most tantalizing features is that possibly everything is connected — that is, every two models are connected by an unbroken path. By shaking the universe hard enough, we would be able to move from one possible world to another, changing what we consider the immutable laws of nature and the special combination of elementary particles that make up reality.

But how do we explore the vast landscape of physical models of the universe that might easily have hundreds of dimensions? It’s helpful to visualize the landscape as a largely undeveloped wilderness, most of it hidden under thick layers of intractable complexity. Only at the very edges do we find habitable places. In these outposts, life is simple and good. Here we find the basic models that we fully understand. They are of little value in describing the real world, but serve as convenient starting points to explore the local neighborhood.

So basically what I said in the cosmopsychism thread and anytime I've talked about the comparative stress model of existence.

There Are No Laws of Physics. There’s Only the Landscape.

The new article on string theory is in Quanta, by Robbert Dijkgraaf. There supposedly aren't any real laws of physics, just an endless complexity of string theory in a multiverse. 

Peter Woit, a noted skeptic of string theory, has a few comments on this in his blog piece "Not Even Wrong". He notes the persistent lack of evidence for string theory and the corresponding question of whether it is really science. 

"At Quanta magazine, IAS director and string theorist Robbert Dijkgraaf has signed up to the multiverse mania bandwagon with an article announcing There are no laws of physics. There’s only the landscape.
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While giving the usual 1995 justification for the “M-theory” conjecture of a unique string theory, Dijkgraaf neglects to mention that, 23 years later, no one has a viable proposal for what this unique theory might be. He mentions none of the problems of moduli stabilization, or that the theorists “mapping the landscape in detail” don’t actually know what equations govern this supposed landscape and thus have hit a dead-end, unable to predict anything about anything.
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The argument seems to be that we need to throw out our highly successful quantum field theories, replacing them with a “radical new framework” describing “impenetrable complexity”. But what is this “radical new framework”? As best I can tell, what’s now popular at the IAS is the “it from qubit” idea that is the topic of this summer’s PITP program. 
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The problem is that what Dijkgraaf is writing about is the situation of Theorists Without a Theory, trying to turn this failure into success by arguing that it is a radical new discovery, the discovery that “There are no laws of physics”.

.....so far I haven’t seen the slightest indication that this “radical new framework” can get off the ground as a fundamental unified theory."

One commenter on this blog entry notes: "...science is entering the era of post-truth. Truth is what most of the people accept or talk about or like, not the result of scientific inquiry. I’m frightened that an IAS director talks like this."

The new article on string theory is in Quanta, by Robbert Dijkgraaf. There supposedly aren't any real laws of physics, just an endless complexity of string theory in a multiverse. 

Peter Woit, a noted skeptic of string theory, has a few comments on this in his blog piece "Not Even Wrong". He notes the persistent lack of evidence for string theory and the corresponding question of whether it is really science. 



One commenter on this blog entry notes: "...science is entering the era of post-truth. Truth is what most of the people accept or talk about or like, not the result of scientific inquiry. I’m frightened that an IAS director talks like this."

I find that wierd because I've tried putting together some math for this and gotten some succesful predictions out of my framework and I'm not even in that field.

I find that wierd because I've tried putting together some math for this and gotten some succesful predictions out of my framework and I'm not even in that field.

Weird? Is it not possible that your frameworks aren't quite right?

Weird? Is it not possible that your frameworks aren't quite right?

Oh they're incomplete for sure since I don't spend as much time on the hard math but even with what I have they've proven their worth so evidently they're not just "wrong". It's just weird that people who are allegedly working in this field directly allegedly haven't come up with their own frameworks.