by bvonahsen » Fri Aug 18, 2006 6:25 pm
I was on <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/">Science Friday</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> today on the segment on String Theory. So I thought I would toot my own horn a little<br><br>Guests:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Lee Smolin<br>Author, "The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next" (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)<br>Faculty Member, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics<br>Toronto, Ontario, Canada<br><br>Brain Greene<br>Author, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" (WW Norton and Co., 2003); "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality" (Knopf, 2004)<br>Professor of Mathematics and Physics<br>Columbia University<br>New York, New York <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>The Problem:<br><br>String theory just doesn't seem to be working out and is failing to produce verifiable and testable ideas that can be put to the experimental physists to prove or disprove. That is how it usually works; the theorists propose and the experimentalists try to shoot 'em down. That's the Idea anyway, thing is, it hasn't been working so well. This comming from one of string theories' major proponents, Lee Smolin.<br><br>I could have put my own ideas forward. Namely that perhaps by hoarding information as the secret parts of our government (the powers that be, the shadow government, the millitary/industrial complex, the nine) are wont to do, perhaps by removing certain things from public knowledge they have crippled scientific advances. If the scientific community doesn't have all the information available to it, it is hardly surprising they are getting nowhere of late.<br><br>But if I had said that, they would have politely nodded and not heard a thing I said. So I put it very generally:<br><br>(paraphrasing here, I don't remember it all exactly, but this is close)<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"You guys need a bigger box, you need someone to really think outside of the box, and then think oputside of <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>that</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> box. Maybe there is something in how you think, in the scientific community as a whole, that is introducing a bias somewhere."<br><br>"You need to go way back in the descision tree and... maybe what you think is a root is really just another branch."<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>And they kind of hemmed and hawwed and were a little defensive, these are bright guys and I think they had an idea of what I was getting at, but I got heard. Which was all I wanted in the first place. It just might sink in later on, you never know. You see, I kind of think of myself as a cell in the body politic. My task is to take in information and then express a meme, just like a cells' task is to take in proteins and express a gene. This forum is a social organ that supports many cells performing simular functions. <br><br>This meme needed to get passed on to the larger body, so to speak, but I couldn't use the words we use here. So I wrapped it up in a little sugar and sent it on it's way. Someone somewhere will pick it up. Of that I am sure.<br><br>Yeah yeah, sounds kind of goofy, but that is how I think sometimes. The audio isn't available at this writing, later I suppose. And you get to hear my ugly voice... I'm Brenda from Minneapolis. I guess I could worry about being too open about my identity. (although trust me, I havn't disclosed <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>that</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> much.) But I try not to worry about it too much. There is less anonymity on the internet than you think anyways. I could, I suppose, get PGP and use Tor to surf with or any of a number of things. But I'm basically lazy and I don't think I'm that big of a fish (to mix metaphors) for anyone to worry about. <p></p><i></i>
