Comment by BriggyDwiggs42
3 days ago
Sabine is in no way neutral. She’s made the journey over the last couple of years to the kinda “academia is terrible, string theory is a scam” grift that her buddy Weinstein did.
3 days ago
Sabine is in no way neutral. She’s made the journey over the last couple of years to the kinda “academia is terrible, string theory is a scam” grift that her buddy Weinstein did.
When I was still in the physics world, almost every high energy guy I talked to thought string theory was a scam. It seems like everyone that wasn't a string theorist thought it was scam. I don't know enough of the topic to know one way or the other, but it seemed a common idea.
I don’t know the same people, so I can’t really speak to common sentiments in the industry. I think the issue with the way that Sabine goes about it is that she uses string theory as a cudgel against the entirety of academia. She kind of frames it as though string theory is the only game in town, and as though they’re all deliberate liars or stupid. To me, it reads the same way any us-versus-them grifter message does, which is unfortunate because a couple years ago I would watch all her videos. That was back when she would just explain physics concepts and trash talk quantum computing.
At one point there was a New York Times article which derided a scientist who said that we could send a rocket to the moon.
As such I don’t care about contrarians, fountainheads, or mouth pieces. Either you build something, or use knowledge that’s not directly related to build something, or you don’t.
She's trying to get into the populist Sagan, Greene, Kaku, Tyson type pundit game.