On my side, and to build on top of what you've said here, I think the article misses the point of the fact that anger is a useful and healthy societal tool.
The naive disney approach to anger is "you should not be angry, it is baaaad". But anger is an important signal to put limits on what is not acceptable to do in society. If my neighbour throw their garbage over the fence in my garden, me being angry at them is the uncomfortable situation they will be faced with and that will teach them it is not acceptable. Alternatives don't work: any other response will signal that what they've done is in fact "not that bad afterall, otherwise people would have been angry".
I think it's what is missing in the article. Anger incorrectly directed is a bad thing. But the article implies that there is no correct direction to the anger, which makes the article sounds as naive and misdirected as people who get angry at the wrong persons.
I would even say that being angry at the wrong person is as bad as not being angry at the right person.
Being angry is a societal tool to put limits on what can or cannot be done. If there is no anger when people crosses the line, then there is no real signal for them to not cross the line. And, no, "a peaceful rational argument" is not an alternative. This is not at all the same signal, this is a signal that is sent way earlier before that specific line and it is exactly how the overton window shifts.
Also, a scientist is interviewed in the documentary (I haven't seen the documentary, but my understanding is that it is the only real expert involved), Prof Katya Rubia, and they recently reacted to the documentary:
"My own contribution to this programme has been largely misrepresented as my comments were cherry-picked, truncated and presented out of context to make them fit into the programme’s narrative"
They comment further in the article, also concluding that the documentary is non-scientific and ill-advised.
Same as the parallel comment: the situation of string theory is the same as with black holes and relativity. It is not it is not testable, it is that it is not testable yet. The situation is very similar of the situations of black holes and relativity at their own time.
The fact that so many people, like you, just INVENT that it is not testable is quite worrying. Why? What's the point of doing that?
No one has "invented" that it's untestable. String theory literally doesn't give predictions that would allow it to be falsified. There are an astounding number of possible geometries that mean that any set of data could technically be "consistent with string theory". There are no specific energy bounds where it kicks in - if an experiement doesn't show existence of strings, it's "try again with more energy" instead of "falsified".
String theory can't be disproved even in theory. Spending decades on that is akin to spending decades rearchitecting your software to make it more beautiful and full of design patterns and promising users/management that some day it'll all make sense.
First, it is incorrect to say that "any set of data is consistent with string theory". For example, string theory is death in water if we observe a single Majorana fermion with no partner at a comparable scale. This is an observation that fully falsifies string theory.
But more importantly, "falsifiable" means "observations reduce the landscape". It does not matter if the landscape never fully disappear, as long as the observations constrain the parameters of the theory, then the theory is falsifiable. This is the real condition for a theory to be unfalsifiable. Astrology is not falsifiable: whatever the observation, the full astrology theory remains exactly the same, nothing has been constrained.
Why is it the correct definition? Because your definition leads to illogical situations. For example, I can divide "string theory" into "string theory of region 1", "string theory of region 2", "string theory of region 3", ... which are all in different parameters space. In this case, suddenly, "string theory of region 1" can be fully excluded. But it is illogical to pretend that "string theory of region 1" is suddenly "good falsifiable science" just because you renamed it while the physics is 100% the same. Another example of illogical situation is "an observed theory suddenly qualifies as falsifiable" (cf. the example with the electromagnetism below).
Also, "try again with more energy" is very common in beyond standard model physics. It is the case for lepton compositeness, heavy bosons, fourth lepton generation, SUSY, all of Effective Field Theory, ... None of these theories are abandoned because "unfalsifiable". The argument that string theory is bad because unfalsifiable feels like a bad faith argument while plenty of other physicists activities have the same characteristics but people who are against string theory does not care when physicists work on those.
It's also the case with common theories like electromagnetism or weak force: we are happy with them because we have observed them, but theoretically (in their current formulation), their parameters are free: if the alpha constant was 10 to the power -100, electromagnetism would have been undetectable up to now (the world would be quite different, but still). And if in this parallel universe a physicist would have came up with the theory and tried to observe it and failed, they could have always said "well, it just means that the alpha constant is even smaller". So, do you agree that electromagnetism is a non falsifiable theory because the alpha constant is a free parameter and could have been arbitrarily small? Because if not, you are saying that exactly the exact same theory is sometimes falsifiable, sometimes unfalsifiable, depending on where the free parameters are: right now string theory is unfalsifiable, but if we observe cosmic superstrings, suddenly, the theory qualifies as falsifiable.
Finally, the more you eliminate part of the landscape, the more the credibility of the theory decreases. And even if some part of landscape remains, the theory is abandoned when it is virtually useless.
String theory necessitates observable objects to remain viable as an useful theory (for example, SUSY particles, specific inflationary signature, ...). If these are not observed, the theory is not 100% rejected, but it becomes "useless": it will prove that the reality needs another fix than the string theory to explain some of the problem we observe in the current standard model. In other term, "string theory" can always remain a possibility, but "string theory as the answer of the current problems" would be 100% rejected and physicists will start working on other theories.
The idea that you pretend that physicists will still work on string theory when all the "juice" would been removed due to constraints is just so surreal to me. The reason string theory is popular amongst physicists is because they want to understand the current problems and that, according to them, string theory is a good candidate to explain them. It is crazy to imagine that when we have demonstrated that string theory cannot explain these problems, people whose main motivation is to explain these problems would say "we know we will not get anything of what we want if we work on this subject, but, hey, it's theoretically not fully excluded, so, I have to continue for eternity before passing to a more promising subject".
We're in too deep to let go of each other now, Cauch. Stalking? No. I'd say, unsolicited following.
On a serious note, I was reflecting the other day and recognize I need to do better with how I address people online. I genuinely apologize for my part in our nasty interaction. It's something I've struggled with, but I will do better.
Too deep? Have you considered seeking help? Our interaction should not be a big deal for balanced people. I had forgotten about it myself and moved on. If you cannot, it shows there is something wrong going on and maybe it should worry you.
As for the unsolicited following, I'm not sure what you would get out of it. I guess you will regularly spew your bile. But it does not really affect me, it just confirms I'm right about what I think of you. The "unsolicited following" perfectly fits the character, it is not really an action that you expect from the "winning side" of the story.
Damn, you really do have issues. Welp, I tried. Seek help my man.
I personally don't care how you respond to my apology; I don't say that defiantly. I just believe that I should own any toxicity I spewed unnecessarily.
But how you respond to someone's genuine apology speaks volumes about how rotten you have become as a person. And I say that in a factual manner; not in any retaliatory way. You are a truly rotten person.
If you have any, I truly feel sorry for your spouse and any children.
Anyways Cauch, best of luck, bud. May your spirit one day be free from the anger and bitterness that oozes from your being.
I think that if you wanted me to be compassionate, you should have avoided to be so creepy. Put yourself in my shoes, I just feel like I'm been accosted by a drunk who want to both become my best bud and shout at me. And because of that, I'm, on purpose, avoiding to give you any compassion or any other excuse to believe I care about you. That's the best strategy with this kind of crazies.
And this is quite creepy: 1. tracking me back, months after we had our discussion, as if it is something you still think about, this is super creepy, 2. saying, even under the cover of humour (cf. next point), that we're "in too deep" or that it is an "unsolicited following", this is creepy, 3. and bringing all that as a "joke", that is just so bizarre, it reminds me of the caricatural obsessive date "oh we should definitively move in together ... just joking ... and decide the name of our future children ... just joking ahahah ..."
So, yeah, just consider that I'm a rotten person if it helps you, or blame others for not showing you the compassion you crave when you admit that you have been shitty with them. You are not relevant to me, I've forgotten about you so fast last time and I can easily block your username if I decide I have better entertainment elsewhere, and I truly don't care about whatever fantasy you invented about me in your strange brain.
I'm not considering that you're a rotten person. I'm telling you that as a matter of fact. You're not able to see it and I understand that. One day you're young and full of life; the next, you're a middle-aged man that is bitter.
I wouldn't expect someone who finds themselves in that state to pick up on it.
You mentioned the caricature that it reminds you of. That is a reflection of something that is taking place inside you and baggage that you bring into an interaction that doesn't merit it. If you can't discern that, that is not something I, or anyone else, can help you with.
You mentioned that I wanted compassion from you. The fact that you're so comfortable making that assumption says a lot about the intellectual integrity you have and the lack of honesty you bring to discussions in your life. Nobody was expecting compassion. However, I emphasize once again and my point remains: how you respond to someone's genuine apology speaks volumes about you.
I know that reflection in the mirror is one you will try to deny and rationalize away, but it's one you should reflect on and, who knows, maybe even use as moment in your life that catapults you into change.
You pointed out, almost in "gotcha" fashion that I admit I have been shitty with people -- I have. 100%. The difference between you and I is not that I have been shitty and you haven't. It's that I still have something inside me that compels to own my shitiness and change. You don't. You're comfortable in your rotteness.
You'll block my username only when the truth of my words hurts too much. Otherwise, being the rotten person you are, you will continue to enjoy the back and forth because you get off on the rage.
Anyways, I'm about to go workout and enjoy my day. I am releasing you Cauch!
I'm still not sure what you imagine this conversation will do. What do you think will happen? You know I think you are ridiculous and pathetic, already from the previous conversation. And you're coming back after months to do this strange little dance, it just looks so unhinged. Do you really think this whole conversation will change that, and not in fact reconfirming that my first impression was correct?
I feel that you are trying to convince me that you are very wise by doing more and more unhinged things. I'm not sure why you think this would even work.
As I've said, I'm 100% fine to know that you think I'm rotten. You already insulted me previously, I got the message and I can't care less, so why come back to do it again? Why would you think I will take you seriously now? Are you "trying to save me from myself"? That's not really convincing: coming back to a stranger on the internet after few months for pure altruism, that is not something that a sane person would do (especially as you were pretending that you did not care at all). Instead of "trying to save me from myself", the readers will suspect that you came back because you still have things on your chest, and that this conversation is more for you than for me. That's sad.
This conversation won't change the fact that you like this. Bitter people like having a vehicle they can't get their toxicity out on. That is why you can't help yourself and you continue.
At this point, every single one of your responses is just a reflection of you, not me.
You keep saying you don't care. But you can't help yourself from responding to me every single time.
You do care, Cauch. You care because the toxicity in your bones that you refuse to let go of needs an online enemy you can't direct your toxicity towards.
Responding is fun because your answers are entertaining and make me laugh. The fact that I keep putting a coin to see the little monkey dance does not mean that when the little monkey emits some sound I would take it personally.
And I enjoy thinking you get more and more convinced that I care the more I answer. Why would I stop? You are literally giving me reward for answering you.
> You care because the toxicity in your bones that you refuse to let go of needs an online enemy you can't direct your toxicity towards.
I cannot let go so much that I recontacted you out of the blue after weeks. Oh, wait, it was you. "We broke up but my ex is so not over me, it is very annoying. They even said my name and got angry when they saw me stalking them behind the bush, if it's not the proof".
Again, you did not answer: what is your goal here? What do you think you will receive? You know that it will never go further than that, that you will never feel that you've "won", that you will never be really convinced that any of your insults have ever landed. It will end like the last conversation, and it will be as unsatisfying for you.
In fact, even if I say exactly what you want to hear, you will not be satisfied, because you will always have a doubt in the back of your mind that I just said that to fool you to think you've "won".
Whatever rationalization you need to keep responding -- it's all yours Cauch!
The guy who initially accused me of being creepy all of a sudden understands that there's an entertainment component to how I communicate.
You ask me what my goal is. The question is, for someone who keeps saying they don't care -- what is yours?
The good old Cauchenator needs somewhere he can release his anger.
You mention that tried fooling me so that I can think I've won. I apologized to you. Someone who has even the slightest desire of winning doesn't apologize bubs.
Good ole, Cauch. If we ever run into each other, that'll be in an interesting discussion. We're not that far from each other.
> The guy who initially accused me of being creepy all of a sudden understands that there's an entertainment component to how I communicate.
You realise I laugh at you and not with you, right?
For example, the hilarious fact that you try to convince me that I "refuse to let go" when not only you are the one starting talking to me, saying we're in "too deep", saying you want an "unsolicited following" of me, and now wishing to "run into each other" and implying you care enough to be interested to know where I live.
You are really obsessing over me, don't you?
> You ask me what my goal is. The question is, for someone who keeps saying they don't care -- what is yours?
What? My goal for what? For answering? It was literally the content of my previous comment, you pillock.
Your turn to answer now, what was your goal to contact me. Wait, I can do it for you: "because I'm so great that I needed to apologize to you because you are so pathetic and I worry about you and wanted to help by explaining how much you suck". Move on, bud, you are pathetic. Whatever you are looking for, you will never get it. Cut your losses and stop obsessing over me.
> The good old Cauchenator needs somewhere he can release his anger.
And yet you are the one who had the need to talk to me.
> Someone who has even the slightest desire of winning doesn't apologize bubs.
Someone who has even the slightest desire of not looking like an idiot does not pretend that the person he practices an "unsolicited following" over is the one who "cannot let go". Idiots don't always do things that align with their goal.
But, yeah, you know what, if you want to convince me that you did not contact me because I got under your skin in the previous conversation and you are still upset about it, you know what you can do: tell me what is your goal for talking to me.
> If we ever run into each other, that'll be in an interesting discussion. We're not that far from each other.
You would love that, wouldn't you? Obsessing over me much?
I don't think "shared knowledge" means "shared knowledge between mathematicians and lay persons" (there is no much point in that, the same way a smartphone technician knows how a smartphone works deep down to the details but there is no big interest for society to have every lay persons being informed about it). I think it means "shared knowledge between mathematicians".
And at this level, while there are anecdotical exceptions, mathematicians have always been pretty decent (with their conferences, workshops, paper publications, international collaborations, ...).
So, it does not mean "teaching the subject", it means "creating a human network of people that share the understanding". LLM can be useful at telling a human, but you still need a human. The point of Tao is not that LLM is not good at providing explanations, it is that "providing explanations" is not the contribution to science, "the human network" is. It's like saying "LLM are great cook, they generate tons of food in space", but the point of having cooks is so that people can eat food and not die. Having LLM generating mathematical proofs is as useless as having LLM generating food that no one can access: the point was never to "generate proofs" or "generate food", the point was "creating a shared human understanding" or "eating the food so human can survive".
I get that there is a cultural benefit to keeping it alive. Just like we ideally want the languages represented at the universities.
But keeping humans in the loop does not appear to be necessary in order to call it science, and certainly not in order to have progress or dessiminate that progress.
I don't have a problem with people doing math. As long that we don't idiomatically hold on to that way of doing things.
I do, however, find it hard to belive that individual humans will play a big role from here and forward, in any scientific desciplines.
The goal is indeed to have progress or disseminate that progress.
The point of Tao is that people see LLM providing "proofs" and are concluding that this is all that is needed to "have progress or disseminate that progress". That is the same mistake of thinking that "generating food" is all that is needed to "have people not dying of hunger".
The hard part of "have progress or disseminate that progress" is the human network. A fundamental point of this human network is that it generate trust, accountability and reliability. Generating "useful new theorem" is useless unless the society also built the trust around the theorem to distinguish it from a fake theorem.
Maybe in the future, we will have AI doing some part of it, but this is a totally different AI animal than the one we are able to have now, and people who think the current AI that we see now is able to do that have no understanding how it works. This is demonstrated by the facts in math: current AI is able to provide math proofs, and yet, a lot of human work is still needed to get progress out of current AI.
I would not bet that individual humans will still play a role as big as today in the future. Maybe AI will be different in the future, but the reality is that we don't have any indication if this is even possible.
Why is there a cultural benefit to keeping it alive, or to having universities? It seems like education is toil that could be automated for those that don't have fun with it.
You were the one introducing the argument "they are getting advantages out of it so we should be careful to not take what they say as an impartial view". Same can be told of Hossenfelder (personally, I would say that Hossenfelder has shown more clues that indeed she is not very reliable and would prefer caricatural sensationalistic descriptions, which is not what the typical string theory physicist does).
No, my point was only to refute the idea that people need to be egotistical or moronic (the only two options) to cling to an idea past its expiry date. People could also be “pot-committed” career-wise. Or they could have myriad other reasons (identity, sunk-cost fallacy, etc).
Nowhere did I suggest that “the reason for discrediting string theorists is that they have financial stakes in the idea.” Please try to be more charitable than that.
> No, not morons, but people who have built a career on string theory. At this point, even if they regret their decisions, it’s too late to turn back now.
This is not presented as "yet another option that may or may not be the reality", this is presented as your conclusion of why we observe what we observe.
Maybe it is not what you are thinking, but you cannot blame people for interpreting your message the way you have written it.
I agree with you that there are several options, one of the most probable, that you did not mention, is that the situation of the string theory is just "normal" and some idiots are not able to understand that.
I don't think it's a good argument. String theory is just "one application" of advanced mathematical physics. It's like saying that software developers specialised in ReactJS would lose their career if ReactJS is suddenly abandoned.
Not a fair comparison because one is exposed to real life market forces vs. academic inertia.
ReactJS devs will retrain when the market dies. Professors still publishing theories/experiments costing large amounts of public monies better spent elsewhere.
There is no more inertia in the academic sector than in the software developer sector.
You have tons of software developers that cling to their preferences for ages. They have their beloved language, or beloved paradigm, and they will invent any excuse to explain how relevant it is. It is also visible with current LLM, where there are plenty of software developer islands where they blanket ban LLM usage as an emotional response. There is a big contrast with the academic sector where the most sceptical people did not blanket banned it, but find way to put guardrails (and I'm sure you can find anecdotal places that are emotionally against LLM in academia, but it is an order of magnitude lower than in the software development sector).
Same about "real life market forces". Especially when at the same time people criticize, correctly, the "publish or perish" hyper-competitiveness problem in academia. The reality is that a physicist need to retrain plenty of time, probably as much as a ReactJS dev. But that reality flies high above the head of people who jump into the first caricatural idea they have about the sector.
As for "costing large amounts of public monies", you don't seem to even know what you are talking about. String Theory probably costs society way less than plenty of other useless things, and still managed to provide very useful tools that are used in mathematical physics outside of string theory (not that I'm saying it was worth it, but it is just not fair to pretend that they did not produce anything). In contrast, the software development sector has a huge contribution on enshittification, stealing user data, making porn, creating social media addiction and creating financial bubbles that splash in the whole economy. Between the two, there is clearly one that is way more toxic on the society.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in "taking side" and particularly defending physicists. I'm sure they are making mistakes and wasting money, like any other sectors, and that we still should find these places and fix them. But your depiction is so caricatural that I had to rebalance the situation by reassessing the facts.
There is no more inertia in the academic sector than in the software developer sector.
That is not true. In academia you have extremely niche research specializations and tenure as two major contributors to inertia. In general software development you have an enormous amount of career mobility.
Software developers learn new languages, new frameworks, new tools, new development methodologies all the time. A string theorist who decides to pivot away from string theory essentially has to start their career over from scratch. It’s not even close!
It's not even clear where String Theory is categorized in this article. Maybe High Energy Physics? Maybe Condensed Matter? It already shows how broad it is, as they already consider that people with such a different specific subject (for example theoretical dark matter in HEP or superconductivity in Condensed Matter) are not even "changing field" when they move to String Theory.
In this article, you can see on Figure 1 that about 65% of physicists (similar in HEP and CondMatter) are also working on subjects that are in one other category (so, it's not even that the person is doing String Theory and another subject inside their own group, like dark matter or superconductivity, it is more like String Theory and Astrophysics).
In Figure 2, you can see that 38% (resp. 21%) that have started their career as specialist in HEP (resp. CondMatter) ended up changing specialisation within about 5 years. (and this is "voluntary", it means that "changing specialisation" is in reality pretty easy, as of course the majority of people could change easily but just decide not to because they don't see the point of changing)
Even without this study, you can easily check the reality yourself. If I do a search on "computational tools for string theory", the first result I get is https://compstring.org/.
First, if you look at the list of participants, you will notice their CVs and how diverse they are, with background or even current activities in: SUSY, QFT, CFT, condensed matter, cosmology, quantum gravity, black hole thermodynamics, ...
Second, if you look at the software, you will see the majority are very recent (2025, 2023 and 2025). Each of them require learning the specific framework, with new rules, new ways of describing the problem and new ways of making the software do what you want. This is similar to passing from ReactJS to Angular (both are about 10 years old, so in fact, the String Theory community seems to change framework more often than devs).
You can also look up in wikipedia, the famous names in String Theory, they all have plenty of activities that go well beyond string theory (which means the reality is even stronger, as they were not even forced to do something else, they've done it because it was trivial for them to also work on these subjects): Maldacena and Susskind on black holes and wormholes, Shenker on quantum chaos, Seibert on SUSY, Strominger on gravitational waves, Fischler on blackholes production in particle colliders, Kounnas on GUTs, ...
> A string theorist who decides to pivot away from string theory essentially has to start their career over from scratch. It’s not even close!
That's just factually not true. And I've provided data that demonstrate that. It looks like you have no idea what a string theorist is doing and how they can transition to another field.
The error with this approach is that every single physics theory gets exactly the same criticisms.
You can take any of the theories that Hossenfelder would spend time on instead of the ones she does not like, and you would find (basically) a similar percentage of physicists saying it's a mistake to continue in this direction.
In other terms: for each physics theory, on 100 physicists, you have 5 physicists saying it is a mistake to continue working on it (number made up for illustration, and there is probably some variations, but you get the gist). You took one theory and found few physicists saying it is a mistake to continue working on it. You conclude, incorrectly, that it means this theory is fundamentally differently treated as any other theories.
(on top of that, it is unfortunate that Hossenfelder later screw up her image by doing way too much mistakes that someone reliable would not do)
I did not ignore Susskind at all. I literally say "for each physics theory, on 100 physicists, you have 5 physicists saying it is a mistake to continue working on it". I mentioned the name of Hossenfelder, but you can replace it by "Susskind" or "Hossenfelder and Susskind", and the argument is as valid.
As for Susskind, the fact that he was a main contributor is not a factor, on the contrary, what I had in mind is about the percentage of experts in the subject that later criticize the field. You have plenty of other examples in other fields: Shiffman on SUSY, Loeb on WIMP, Hirsch on applied fusion, ... or even Einstein on quantum physics ("Yes, I may have started it but I always regarded these ideas as temporary. I never thought that others would take them so much more seriously than I did.")
Some outsiders are seeing a normal scientific process where people are continuously questioning the validity or the efficiency of things, and they start in their fantasy "look, they say it should not be done this way, it's the proof it's all wrong".
Again, what we observe with String Theory is not at all exceptional. The reason it is "a big deal" is because of the populist message and the scam around "these physicists who stole the public money". It is a bit like "vaccines cause autism": it got some media attention, it resonated with the populist conspiracy theory of "the physicists know but they are farming money" and the anti-intellectual trend, and now it has become both some kind of cultural war and an easy way to farm views and followings and show themselves as "so rebel, so edgy".
Don't get me wrong, I personally think that String Theory is overrated (and I was thinking that way before it was popular to criticize it). And the return of the pendulum means that it may now be in the edge side of the average. But nothing significant to pretend there is a particular dysfunction.
The argument that I'm making was not at all discussed in the video. Can you point to the exact time in the video this argument is made?
It looks like you just took a video with someone defending string theory and simply concluded that we have the same arguments.
My point is that you could build a similar panel (with some eminent physicists pro and con investing in the theory) about more or less all cutting-edge theories. This is just a normal situation to have. Some people don't think string theory is a good use of time, others think it is. The video you presented is just that. It does not demonstrate that having this situation is specific to string theory.
But on the core of the video, I don't find it very interesting. It's a shame because I personally find string theory overrated and I don't like it much, but it is sad to see that there is no good arguments against it.
In the video, Penrose's argument was just "I disagree on some aspect and I don't find it elegant". Big whoop, this happens all the time. He also admits that he does not know enough about it, and when he brings specifics, Greene reacts as if the objections were trivial things he and his colleagues also thought about but realised were not in fact a problem.
Not sure what to say about Weinstein. He basically ends up saying what I just said in my previous paragraph here: Penrose did not provide much argument, just "I don't find it beautiful". That being said, it's a bit strange to see him there as he has a bad reputation as a scientist (not sure I should go into details, but he claimed to have a terrific unified theory for years, TGU, and when he finally explained it publicly, the whole scientific community saw it was nonsense, which is not something you expect for someone who is reliable when talking about science). It does not mean that he may not have good points sometimes, but having pseudoscientists presented as scientists on the panel is not the best.
In fact, the situation is a bit like in open source free software: you have always people saying "you should not work on that, you should work on this instead". People working on KDE are "wasting everyone's time" for not working on Gnome and inversely. People working on a new software when alternatives exist are "bad for the community". And people using a given development paradigm are "fundamentally wrong" according to people who like the other paradigm.
So, in fact, another way of putting my argument: string theory is not particularly bad, what we see around it is in fact so common that you even see it around KDE vs Gnome.
What are you talking about? This is not my argument, this is a different argument.
His intervention (which is not even really an argument) is that "physicists chose what to work on and some of them think string theory is interesting" (and I think his interlocutor failed to provide any rebuttal to that. Weinstein counter-argument is "their choices have side effect so they should make the choice I prefer" which does not really hold water).
My point is that this specific debate that we observe around string theory happens in plenty of cutting edge physics and string theory is not "special".
In the section you mention, Greene does not even mention or make any reference of the situation in any other field than string theory. How is that even barely related?
When people discuss what to do after LHC, some people say "let's prepare for building a Future Circular Collider", to which some physicists are saying "no, that's a bad idea and a waste of money and time". Other people say "let's focus on other ways to probe particles with different kind of detectors", to which some physicists are saying "no, that's a stupid bad and a waste of money and time". Other people say "let's not continue to explore particle physics", to which some physicists are saying "no, that's a bad idea and a waste of money and time".
Whatever you say about what to do after LHC, they will always have people saying it's a bad idea. Maybe you have a personal opinion of what would be best, in which case, you are exactly in the same position as Greene: there will be people who will say "no, I don't like that".
("what to do after LHC" is just an example. There are plenty of other topics: do exotic physics or precision measurement, approach the problem top-down or bottom-up, cold fusion, modified gravity, supersymmetry, ...)
Tell me about it. I played the French translated version, and the pun does not translate at all. "Monkey wrench" was translated as the french equivalent, "clé à molette", which does not reference monkeys at all. I remember being stuck for ages, and finally checking the solution online and concluding that the only way to find the solution is to systematically try all combinations as there is no way to apply logic. Only years later I realised that in english, "clé à molette" is "monkey wrench".
That's not a "appeal to authority", just that reliable conclusions require people who have dedicated enough thoughts on the subject to avoid basic mistakes.
You have exactly the same thing in software development: a closed source software released by an unknown small team that makes surprising claims and that show clues that the authors don't really understand what they are doing is also not trusted.
I’m not sure where to fit in the article’s referenced “Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics”
It seems to be a statement making a statement. The rubric is not scientific, but persuasive. I think you are approaching the topic in a particularly narrow context.
The naive disney approach to anger is "you should not be angry, it is baaaad". But anger is an important signal to put limits on what is not acceptable to do in society. If my neighbour throw their garbage over the fence in my garden, me being angry at them is the uncomfortable situation they will be faced with and that will teach them it is not acceptable. Alternatives don't work: any other response will signal that what they've done is in fact "not that bad afterall, otherwise people would have been angry".