String Theory Has Failed for 40 Years

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Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist, former Managing Director of Thiel Capital and a podcaster.

Eric give his thoughts on the 2024 presidential election, whether we are being gaslit on a global scale by the media. Eric has many interesting ideas but this means people will not agree with all or possibly most of the ideas. However, there is value in considering well considered positions.

He explains why science and physics can finally be free of string theory.

Eric proposes that there needs to be a way for Physicists and Mathematicians to capture some of the value from true advances that they make. It is not good for society to have huge benefits from some physicists, scientists and mathematicians but for those enabling progress in basic science to almost completely fail to be rewarded.

String theory has not yet made any experimentally verified predictions about our physical world that go beyond the Standard Model of particle physics and general relativity.

Speculative scientific ideas fail not just when they make incorrect predictions, but also when they turn out to be vacuous and incapable of predicting anything.

There are applicable areas of physics. Fields like condensed matter physics, quantum computing, or applied optics have more direct technological applications.

31 thoughts on “String Theory Has Failed for 40 Years”

  2. Eric Weinstein is NOT the only one saying that. Several other high grade theoretical physicists are making the same criticism of String Theory.

    There are several Youtube videos with such debates… like Sabina Hossenfelder, Roger Penrose and someone else against Michio Kaku…

  3. Is media gaslighting us or 1 lying criminal? Wasnt Hitler saying he will make Germany great again? That “corrupt” Jews are the problem,…

    • Let’s not hijack this into a political thread. But rather than make hamfisted Hitler comparisons, ask yourself what party is arresting their political opponents, stifling free speech, controlling the narrative and threatening those that challenge their power. It is those from whom your New Hitler shall arise. And as for String Theory? It’s notso-hotso. 😉

      • Well, considering the Russian collusion hypothesis has been proven fake vis a vi the Republicans, perhaps the real relevant question is which party is colluding with China? But you wouldn’t like that, would you?

      • The Russians have stated publicly on multiple occasions that they would prefer for Kamala Harris to win the election.

        • Which is itself just support for the obvious truth that Putin very much wants his asset, Trump to win, and in fact it’s his main hope and strategy. These statements are just as believable as other Russian disinformation.

  4. The problem with theories beyond the standard model is that you need to build gigantic collider, maybe the size of the earth or even more, to make experiments on these small scales (10^-30m). Some of those theories could be correct (like loop quantum gravity) but we are centuries away to verify it. It’s like wanting to land a rocket on the moon with 17th century tech.

    • Michio Kaku described string theory in the early 90s as a late 21st century theory accidentally stumbled upon by 20th century mathematicians. 30 years later he’s still right, we’re a long way from verifying it.

  5. Lovely conclusion. Eventually the unmeasurable neutrino concept will die as well. Lots of groupthink and hubris out there in the aether…. like the dozens of startups that think they can make a micro reactor that Westinghouse couldn’t have made 50 years ago if there was an application for it.

    If the theory doesn’t lead to a device that can cook an egg, it is nothing.

    • The basic challenge for those who advocate this position is that it is impossible to predict which fundamental science findings will have applied significance in the future and how long in the future it will take. Ask any Nobel Laureate. From studying CRISPR in bacteria to fluorescent proteins in Jellyfish to RNA modifications that ultimately led to RNA vaccines. Given the decades before useful application, I guess we should have berated Einstein for wasting everyone’s time on relativity?

    • Neutrinos are real. Its ignorant to say they are unmeasurable. They have been measured. Their enrgy has been measured even if their masses are in contention.

      • You should use a questioning attitude and go look at the experimental results. All measurements are inferred. Neutrinos are pseudo-science. That recent nobel prize for measuring the “oscillations” and relying on time of flight is a real word salad – has all the hallmarks of pseudoscience. The ‘neutrino detectors’ generally use scintillation counters and photomultiplier tubes, which are the least discriminating devices for radiation measurement. They will respond to any radiation present, even the tramp radionuclides in the PMT itself. I implore you to read more closely.

        • You should look into the experimental setup (measuring equipment) for the supposed “muon topography” as well which uses multi-electrode, yet macroscopic ion chambers. Lord knows what their 8 counts per hour represent, but it certainly lacks the statistics required to produce actual images… detectors are responding to background radiation.

  6. Brian, what happened with LK-99?, you were so obsessed with this subject, are you still following it?, was it fraud after all? Some updates?

    • It doesn’t come close to explaining any electromagnetic/weak/strong forces. It’s good at what it does but let’s not pretend it’s a panacea.

  8. Also spare me the quantum woo. Some people claim the hippies saved physics. Oh really? What technological breakthroughs has post 1960 theoretical physics lead to? All of the technology I am aware of has come out of theoretical physics the pre-dates 1970. All of the post 1970 theoretical physics has yet to yield a single technological development. This suggests its all bogus.

    • Then you’re not paying attention. Computer chip design and manufacturing has been very strongly affected by quantum mechanics; one major problem with further miniaturization has been that quantum effects were starting to influence the reliability. Functional computer components designed around quantum mechanical effects have been built and function but are not economically viable yet.

      Quantum mechanics is one of the most exhaustively tested theories in human history, probably second only to relativity.

      • The technology underlying semiconductor chips is all based on quantum theory that was developed prior to 1960’s. Most quantum theory came about during the 1920’s to 1930’s.

        The last notable development of quantum theory is quantum entanglement. This was hypothesized in 1935and observed in the 1950’s. There has been no further development in quantum theory since this time. All of woo came about after 1970’s and has produced nothing of value.

  9. String Theory is untestable, meaning it is not science.

    Dark matter and dark energy have neither been directly identified or created in a laboratory. This suggests these are the present day equivalent to the luminiferous aether of the 19th century when the Michelson Morley experiment proved the latter could not exist. Likewise, an experiment was just performed that ruled out leading explanations such as WIMPs and the like as dark matter candidates. Just as Relativity and Quantum theory provided an explanation for the propagation of light through space, new theories will have to come about to explain the observed phenomenon that dark matter and dark energy were cooked up to explain. Additionally, the expected supersymetry particles are not being found either.

    All of this suggests that theoretical physics is about to undergo a major revolution like it did a century ago when we got GR and QT. Who knows what new technologies will come about as a result of this revolution.

    • “…the luminiferous aether of the 19th century when the Michelson Morley experiment proved the latter could not exist…”

      This is not true. it is false. I don’t care what your textbooks say, they are wrong, I have seen and read an original copy of the scientific report. What they found was the difference was not the speed of the earth in it’s orbit but they did find a difference. It’s in the back. Look it up, find a copy. I think it was 8km/s. In subsequent test by several physicist they also found a difference also. Tested under all sorts of conditions. The reason that we are being gas-lighted is the worship of Einstein. The last test they did was in a mine shaft. Well, of course the matter of the earth would skew the results. They should do the same test in lower and higher space orbits. I suspect the difference would get larger as you go to higher orbits.

      • Subsequent experiments also debunked the luminiferous aether as well. Michelson-Morley was only the first of several such experiments. In contrast, many experiments have demonstrated repeatedly the soundness of both SR and GR. All is not lost. GR does allow for the possibility of FTL with either warp or wormhole. I assume your beef with relatively is with regards to FTL travel.

    • But at least with dark matter, you can test any theory against current and future observations of galaxy movements, so it’s possible to falsify it, right?

    • “All of this suggests that theoretical physics is about to undergo a major revolution like it did a century ago”

      No it does not suggest that at all. What it suggests is that we don’t have a clue as to what is really going on. Now if someone comes up with a testable theory that explains it in the next 20 or 30 years then your statement is correct but for all we know physics could be stuck here for the next 2 or 3 centuries so no major revolution may be on the horizon for quite some time.

      • Well, they said the same thing around 1900 when the luminiferous aether had been disproven. But no one had any idea how light propagated through space.

    • “All of this suggests that theoretical physics is about to undergo a major revolution like it did a century ago”

      No it does not suggest that at all. What it suggests is that we don’t have a clue as to what is really going on. Now if someone comes up with a testable theory that explains it in the next 20 or 30 years then your statement is correct but for all we know physics could be stuck here for the next 2 or 3 centuries so no major revolution may be on the horizon for quite some time.

  10. Seeing the prevalence and preeminence of such a huge pseudo scientific theory for so long, I’m tempted to believe what the presumed UFO disclosers have said: we have been socially engineered and gaslighted indeed, with public funding and pursuing theories the funders knew were wrong, but that also knew would be followed thanks to their clever math trickery (thanks to unfalsifiability) and the human desire to belong and #FOMO.

    Something the Threee Body Problem novel showed as inflicted to us by aliens, but IRL it was our leaders doing it to stop the research of things they were trying to keep hush hush, probably real theories discovered by humans and not from any aliens. Or maybe yes, there was something ultra-terrestrial there.

    Yeah, I’m getting carried out, but whatever it is, these are the people that are supposedly the smartest for goodness sake.

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