Comment by themafia
3 days ago
> he would either respond to the criticism
He has. Not in a particularly satisfying way, but in at least a few video interviews out there, he does offer some response along with deeper explanations of his work and position. I do not find them convincing but they exist.
> or revise his position to something which is useful
I think "revise his position" is an interesting phrasing. It seems like what you are after is for him to publicly and completely abandon the theory. Is there no room to "revise the theory [itself] to address criticisms?"
Wouldn't a fair criticism of the work itself be "it's too impenetrable and inventive for the majority of the field to show much interest or spend much effort on it." He should revise it to be simpler and to avoid tricks like the "ship in a bottle" operator. Until then it's a curiosity only for advanced players.
Is that not fair?
> It shouldn’t be our job to dissect his theory to find what can be salvaged.
I hate to do it again but "our job" is interesting phrasing. Why does the existence of his paper make you feel this obligation? In Engineering it's fun to dissect and to dismantle other peoples theories and systems. If it's so weak then why do physicists take such umbrage at such an easy task?
> Not go on Joe Rogan and say my PR was just “entertainment”.
I think there's a "cult of physics personalities" that don't appreciate when /any/ public attention is given to fringe ideas from outsiders like Eric. I honestly think that they're the most responsible for giving Eric's theories the credibility and air time they have received. Had they taken a more professional and earnest approach to his and others work I doubt it would even be a topic of discussion on "popular social interest" programs like Joe Rogan or Piers Morgan.
It's a 15 year old paper that didn't really go anywhere. There's no reason it should still be a topic of discussion. I think Eric is a symptom and not the disease.
> I think Eric is a symptom and not the disease.
I agree with you on this one. It’s a symptom of scientific illiteracy, that people can’t see that a work of creative writing that makes no testable predictions about the world isn’t science.
The problem isn’t that Weinstein is too creative or his math is too impenetrable. The problem is his paper doesn’t make testable predictions. It’s a complicated exercise in world building, not science. A physics paper has well-defined terms and equations. Things that can be tested.
He said himself that it’s entertainment. He isn’t being suppressed by the DISC (“distributed ideas suppression complex”), it just turns out that fiction is a tough industry, readership is declining, and it’s a little too involved for an airport bookstore.
I don’t want him to abandon his work, I want him to engage with its critics in a serious way, not claim to be the victim of some kind of institutional conspiracy. But that would require work.
> Wouldn't a fair criticism of the work itself be "it's too impenetrable and inventive for the majority of the field to show much interest or spend much effort on it."
The problem isn’t that it is inventive or impenetrable. The standard model has plenty of unintuitive aspects as a theory. The difference is that those theories made very accurate predictions about the world which explained empirical results much better than prior theories. Weinstein’s does not.
If you make an unfalsifiable claim about a teapot orbiting Jupiter, you’re not a genius whose theories are being ignored by the establishment.
> Why does the existence of his paper make you feel this obligation
It doesn’t. I was responding to your suggestion that there might be some salvageable bits from his talk/blog post, despite your belief that it isn’t correct.
> I think there's a "cult of physics personalities" that don't appreciate when /any/ public attention is given to fringe ideas from outsiders like Eric
It’s not up to Neil DeGrasse Tyson what makes it into the Standard Model, and if I had to guess he’s probably not up on cutting edge research anyways. The relevant question is whether a new theory can explain empirical results better than existing theories. The fact that Weinstein’s paper doesn’t even attempt to do that puts it into the category of creative writing, not science.
> The problem is his paper doesn’t make testable predictions.
Do physicists do this? String theorists mostly don't seem to try, and the most common point I've seen Sabine make is that particle physicists are happy to tell you their theories are falsifiable as long as you give them essentially infinite money to build bigger colliders, when they could possibly be doing something cheaper.
I also wonder if people believe Roger Penrose is a crank; he seems to be doing the same thing when he goes around claiming consciousness is because of quantum brain tubules.