Don't forget to take your mad scientist out for a daily walk.
Nothing in his email queue can't wait another couple hours, and it will all be there when you get back. Take advantage of the asynchrony of email -- nobody expects you to be on call 24 hours or even all 7 days...
5a. Garrett has been unfailingly polite and open, and freely admitted every hole in the theory as stated in the paper - even in the face of someone like Lubos Motl being an asshole from Hell. [*]
5aa. Even if it turns out that Garrett is dead wrong, he gets across that he understands that science doesn't care if you're a nice guy or an asshole in terms of rightness. But more people will still accept Garrett as someone who understands that and is worth listening to because he took getting it wrong on the chin like an honest and decent fellow. And that'll stand him in even better stead if the theory turns out to be right ;-D
[*] Lubos Motl is probably nothing like that scary in person. There's a thing called "modem balls," and by all reports that he's quite nice in person, Motl has a really bad case of them. Though it amuses me to think of him as a mad scientist in a Transylvanian castle, with Eye-gor bringing him branes in a jar ...
issues that are bombarding the theory now would have trickled out one by one later
I think you are quite right in this. It is very common for TOEs to be advanced in a spirit of optimism - "it presently does A, B, and C, and I hope it will do X, Y, and Z as well" - and then years will pass while people scrutinize X, Y and Z. But in this case the theory got reported as if X, Y and Z were already accomplished. So Garrett is being challenged on all those fronts at once. I imagine he feels ambiguously about it - it's stressful, but it also means a lot of attention (of the informed sort). Many people write ambitious and original papers that pass entirely unremarked, because the ideas are too unfamiliar.
Most of these issues (four out of six) will have to be explained in a different manner to string theorists. LQG seems to understand, and so do many others - but not string theorists for some odd reason. So these four things are already solved, but need further explanation to those unfamiliar to them. The other two are things that Garrett talks about in his paper...and those may make or break this theory. Also, in every article I have read, Garrett talks about how this is just a theory. And most of the fan mail acknowledges this, to my relief. This is really quite a conservative paper, and the math is baby math to the mathematicians familiar to it (not to me!). This is the kind of theory that if successful people will be kicking themselves...or Garrett for a while. Garrett gave two talks before putting this paper out. One was in Morelia Mexico, and the other was to the LQG group. These ideas were received very very well before all of the press. We will all wait to see where it goes, but these recent events will definitely
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Nothing in his email queue can't wait another couple hours, and it will all be there when you get back. Take advantage of the asynchrony of email -- nobody expects you to be on call 24 hours or even all 7 days...
Reply
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5aa. Even if it turns out that Garrett is dead wrong, he gets across that he understands that science doesn't care if you're a nice guy or an asshole in terms of rightness. But more people will still accept Garrett as someone who understands that and is worth listening to because he took getting it wrong on the chin like an honest and decent fellow. And that'll stand him in even better stead if the theory turns out to be right ;-D
[*] Lubos Motl is probably nothing like that scary in person. There's a thing called "modem balls," and by all reports that he's quite nice in person, Motl has a really bad case of them. Though it amuses me to think of him as a mad scientist in a Transylvanian castle, with Eye-gor bringing him branes in a jar ...
Reply
Reply
I think you are quite right in this. It is very common for TOEs to be advanced in a spirit of optimism - "it presently does A, B, and C, and I hope it will do X, Y, and Z as well" - and then years will pass while people scrutinize X, Y and Z. But in this case the theory got reported as if X, Y and Z were already accomplished. So Garrett is being challenged on all those fronts at once. I imagine he feels ambiguously about it - it's stressful, but it also means a lot of attention (of the informed sort). Many people write ambitious and original papers that pass entirely unremarked, because the ideas are too unfamiliar.
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