This is getting really hilarious. Someone from Rutgers is claiming to be an Asian "Qong" pretending to be Lubos Motl who is in reality an ET alien! http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/ Is this ID theft? The "ET" claims to have translated Brian Greene into Czech same as the SPS moderator at Harvard! Robert Anton Wilson and P.K. Dick could not have written this any better!
Did Brian already know this when he counseled "patience"?
I found on http://schwinger.harvard.edu/~sps/
From: Daniel (ensabah6@yahoo.com)
Subject: John Baez on string theory
View this article only
Newsgroups: sci.physics.strings
Date: 2004-05-09 08:00:08 PST
Daniel's note: this post was originally posted on sci.physics.research,
however, his criticisms include string theory.
For the record whenever I post straight stuff to s.p.r. they almost always reject it as "too speculative." Same guys who run s.p.s.
[Moderator's note: and because some statements may sound original - or at
least silly in an original way - John Baez's text appears on this
newsgroup. Please understand this posting as a beginning of a
discussion. I personally don't plan to insert many comments to
submissions that will be on-topic; John Baez's text is highly
controversial and political, and therefore I used the opportunity
to reply directly. Lubos Motl]
John Baez on the String and Loop Mafias
=======================================
"Theoretical physics today is splintered into ideological factions
reminiscent of the neoconservatives morphed from the old Trotskyites,
essentially gangs of mathematicians in physicist's clothing with little
regard or knowledge of experimental physics."
I wrote that. John Bias did not write it. [Jack Sarfatti]
[LM: Some parts of the theoretical physics community might be viewed
as ideological factions, but some physicists and even groups
of physicists go on and (also, or primarily) make physics
research more than politics. Many theoreticians not only know the
basics of experimental physics, but they also interact with the
phenomenologists (or less frequently even with experimentalists).
Well, yes, some other physicists are interested purely in ideology,
confirming pre-determined prejudices, and analogies with Trotsky.
These physicists believe that the final revolution in physics (and
politics) has been finished before 1917, and it is called GR
(Great (October?) Revolution). They insist they they know
everything - the Universe must be four-dimensional and no extra
excited particles or new non-trivial dynamics can exist - and
they want to use loops to execute all participants of the
counter-revolution - those who actually believe that the new
ideas should be looked for according to the old-fashioned
scientific standards.]
Above by LM "moderator", Loony Toon, and ET Alien? ;-)
"The members of each gang scratch each other's backs in fierce competition for vanishing government grants, especially in the G.W. Bush administration."
I wrote that. John Bias did not write it. [Jack Sarfatti]
[LM: The U.S. physics continues to be THE superpower in
high-energy-like physics, despite the fact that it is slowly losing
its dominance - see the recent article in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/science/03RESE.html
However it would be incorrect to say that the situation of
physics as a field of science only depends on the administration
of one country. The funding of fundamental physics reflects the
amount of progress that we are making. There are simply so many
new things in life sciences, genetics, biology etc. to be
investigated that the funding of these sciences naturally goes
up. On the other hand, the Standard Model - that describes
(together with General Relativity) all the known phenomena
- has been known for 30 years.
It has been known for decades
that the Standard Model is not the final word, and it has been
quite generally accepted at least for 20 years that string theory
is by far the most promising route to go beyond SM. It has had
its revolutions, and it has experienced depressions, too. The
optimists continue to say that we still live in the Second
Superstring Revolution, but whatever we say, it is clear that e.g.
the amount of citations referring to newly published papers is
smaller than the number of citations to the papers published
during the peaks - e.g. 1995-97. The activity in some
"alternative" fields of theoretical physics - such as loop
quantum gravity - disappeared almost completely. This is simply
not a situation in which one can expect the funding to double
every year. Some people seem to think that if they work in
physics, they should always have funding priority over others,
independently of whether they do good and interesting physics and
whether they do much. Well, I don't share this viewpoint.
Any human activity may become overfunded, and if a scientist is
unable to follow the development in the new hot directions and
he or she insists that what he or she learned as a student must
be the most important thing forever, it should not be surprising
if he or she becomes less interesting for others and the funding
decreases. Others can take over. Maybe others turn out to be smarter.
John Baez enjoys to politicize science in virtually every
sentence he writes - in this text, he relates the physicists to
Trotsky, Stalin, Lysenko, George W. Bush, Orwell, McCarthy,
Carlos Castro, Tony Smith, and others. To balance
his position, let me also say that a major part of the
crisis in particle physics is the limited supply of new
experimental data. Had the SSC been built, we would have probably
known for more than 10 years whether supersymmetry exists at the
TeV scale etc. The SSC was supported especially by Reagan and also
by Bush Sr., but not so much by Clinton and the Congress during
his presidency.]
OK, that's by Loony Toon. ;-)
"Occasionally some of them are candid:"
I wrote that. John Bias did not write it. [Jack Sarfatti]
"There is not one whit of experimental evidence for either string theory
or loop quantum gravity, and both theories have some serious problems, so
it might seem premature for philosophers to consider their implications."
John Bias did write the above.
[LM: Although loop quantum gravity has serious problems, this
statement does not apply to string theory. String theorISTS
may have problems to derive what they want and need to derive
and calculate, but these are *their* problems - for example
the neverending problems with vacuum selection. However, there
exists no evidence that string theory suffers from any
inconsistencies of the type that torture loop quantum gravity,
and there is no known evidence that string theory could be
incompatible with a feature of reality, at least with the level
of accuracy that reflects our current understanding of the
theory. There is a lot of uncertainty about how much progress
in predicting the actual values of the parameters we will be
able to make.]
"It indeed makes little sense for philosophers to spend time chasing every
short-lived fad in these fast-moving subjects. Instead, what is worthy of
reflection is that these two approaches to quantum gravity, while
disagreeing heatedly on so many issues, have so much in common. It
suggests that in our attempts to reconcile the quantum-theoretic notions
of state and process with the relativistic notions of space and spacetime,
we have a limited supply of promising ideas."
John Bias wrote this one too.
[LM: Yes, we have a limited supply of promising ideas. Generally
speaking, we have exactly one promising package of ideas, and it
is called string theory. Unlike John Baez, I don't think that
this limited supply should cause us headaches. On the contrary,
the observation that the supply of ideas is limited shows us that
we should treat this idea (string theory) very seriously. And we do.
We have one Universe to explain, and therefore we want one
package of ideas. The correct package.
Yes, loop quantum gravity suffers not only from a lack of good
ideas, but from a lack of any ideas, and therefore the
publications about it converge to zero, but this is (so far?) not
the case of string theory.
I think that the main problem today is that we have *too many*
ideas, even within string theory. We have now many very different
scenarios that could reproduce the real world - intersecting
brane models (with fluxes?); M-theory on G2 manifolds; some other
flux vacua; M-theory on a domain wall times the Calabi-Yau space;
F-theory on Calabi-Yau four-folds. Warped geometry, fluxes and
branes can appear anywhere, and many ways to combine these
ingredients are capable to reproduce the Standard Model plus
gravity plus physics beyond them. What we need is to acquire a
better understanding of the organizing principles relating these
different vacua - and a part of this organizing mechanism is
almost definitely in cosmology. This is why (together with the
desire to explain the cosmological constant) so many people study
try to study string cosmology and time-dependent backgrounds - at
least in the simplified context of two-dimensional string theory.
The dream to find a solid description of string theory that would
also work for the early "Planckian" evolution of the Universe can
also be credited for Cumrun Vafa's attack on quantum foam (so
far, in topological string theory).
Once again, there are many ideas, but all of the correct ideas
seem to be compactible. They seem to be parts of string/M-theory,
even though the large supply of the ideas is forcing us to think
that the "landscape" of stringy possibilities is huge.
Nevertheless it would be much more frustrating if we had many
*incompatible* ideas how to go beyond the Standard Model plus GR.
In that case, our research would resemble a random walk in an
infinite desert. There would be no point to study theory *before*
the experiments actually decide which theory is correct. We must
be grateful to the ability of mathematics to actually derive
something new and unambiguous, given some assumptions. It turned
out to be extremely nontrivial to reconcile gravity in d>4 with
the principles of quantum mechanics - so non-trivial that the
solution of this problem seems to lead to string theory as the
only solution. Despite the peaks and recessions in string
theory, this statement seems to remain true.]
"It is an open question whether these ideas will be up to the task of
describing nature. But this actually makes it more urgent, not less, for
philosophers to clarify and question these ideas and the implicit
assumptions upon which they rest."
I think Bias wrote this too. I did not.
[LM: Although Sheldon Glashow would often like to suggest
otherwise, string theory is not philosophy but physics. Anyone
who wants to understand and analyze the assumptions of string
theory - or a more specific model or conjecture within string
theory - must first of all study all physics from the basics of
classical physics to the basics of string theory, including its
mathematical tools. She must be very careful to know why she
believes or knows this idea or another, and what is the relation
between all of them. A degree from philosophy will be pretty
much useless for her, I think. Well, yes, I agree that the
abilities that are necessary to defend a thesis about some sort
of alternative philosophy or religion are not too different from the
abilities that allow people to join the loop quantum gravity
community. In both cases, the answers are determined in advance
(four dimensions, Einstein's equations valid exactly and
everywhere, the Pope makes no mistakes, etc.), and the goal of
the priests or the scientists is to look for evidence (or
"representations") for these pre-determined answers.
But it would be very incorrect to think that these are the same
procedures or skills that are useful to do particle physics or
string theory (or any natural science, for that matter).
The gap between string theory and loop quantum
gravity can be described as a gap between physics and philosophy:
two intellectual fields that used to be unified, but they split
millenia ago. Let me re-iterate that John Baez and philosophers
won't be able to say anything useful about the relation between
the ideas undelying string theory until they start to learn what
this theory really says and why does it say. String theory
cannot be ruled out by any sort of "a priori" philosophical
arguments, without looking to the scientific essence.]
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0404040 v2 14 Apr 2004
Quantum Quandaries: A Category-Theoretic Perspective John C. Baez
[Moderator's note: the title of Sokal's hoax in "Social Text" was
"Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". Aren't they similar? Actually
I think that Sokal's title is better for the type of article that
John Baez wanted to write. Why does John Baez exactly think that
this sort of philosophical or even ideological junk should be
read by physicists? Whom does it help? It reminds me of the
approach of socialist (and national socialist) politicians who
wanted to associate every theory with a political flavor, and
use this flavor to make decisions (c.f. Jewish pseudoscience
and the imperialistic string theory). It is against everything
I believe about the way how the truth should be looked for.
It applies to mathematical-philosophical arguments, too. Category
theory is not a theory of physics (rather mathematics), and therefore
its perspective and conclusions are not guaranteed to have any
relevance for physics.]
I agree that Bias's paper on QM Gravity and Category Theory is very close to the level or levity of Sokal's hoax.
"Neither string theory nor loop quantum gravity has made any hard
predictions of any facts, nor have they provided compelling explanations
of the several observational mysteries of precision cosmology and particle
physics."
Bias wrote that too.
[LM: It depends how "hard" is "hard". String theory has predicted
gravity - gravity has become a consequence of a specific, low-lying
vibrational mode of a string. String theory led to the discovery
of supersymmetry - which remains to be one of the essential parts
of string theory - and supersymmetry is still the number one
solution of the hierarchy problem (the puzzle why is the
electroweak scale so much lighter than the Planck scale).
Thousands of papers describe detailed predictions of stringy
scenarios for the future accelerators - they describe the spectra
of superpartners; Kaluza-Klein particles moving in extra
dimensions; some of them even excited stringy modes that could be
seen. Supersymmetry that originated in string theory - at least
in the West - allowed the people to improve the gauge coupling
unification at the GUT scale, and once/if the relevance of the GUT
scale will be showed experimentally, we will know that the GUT
scenarios also correctly predicted the rough magnitude of the
neutrino masses. I could continue, but the most important
conclusion is that it is not fair to compare loop quantum gravity
with string theory, as far as their abilities to predict are
concerned.
String theory has become a part of the phenomenological cannon
and its tools - although in a simplified edition - are being used
by most phenomenologists, those who directly and primarily want to
deal with experimental predictions.
Loop quantum gravity has only made the (wrong) prediction for
quantization of areas - that are not measurable with Planckian
accuracy anyway, not even in principle - and then it made the
prediction that the Universe can't work. It must crumple into
a Planckian piece of foamy spin dirt. If one believes in
miracles without any justification, she can imagine that the
smooth space (or spacetime) can exist, but then she can derive
that special relativity can't work and the Lorentz symmetry must
be violated. If she believes in another miracle that saves
the Lorentz symmetry well enough so that LQG is compatible with
the experiment, she can prove that all particles must be added by
hand and the scalar Higgs particles can't exist and therefore the
electroweak symmetry can't be broken. If she believes in another
miracle that allows her to forget about the interior of the black
hole and only consider its surface, she can "surprisingly" prove that
the entropy is proportional to the surface area. Unfortunately the
proportionality factor comes out incorrectly, unless she
believes in another miracle that log(2) morally equals sqrt(3).pi.
Come on guys, according to any standards in physics - even very
mild ones - loop quantum gravity has already been ruled out. OK,
let's return to the world of John Baez and his way of thinking about
physics. Well, is it physics or politics? I ask you.]
"Yet some of the self-appointed guardians of respectability and ideological
purity, reminiscent of Stalinist Lysenkoist pseudo-science in the Soviet
Union on the LANL Cornell Archive, as we see, for example, in the shocking
Orwellian McCarthyite blacklisting of dissident visionary physicists like
Carlos Castro and Tony Smith, Siddarth from India and Gao Shan from
Beijing by MacArthur Fellow Paul Ginsparg."
I, Jack Sarfatti, wrote the above.
[LM: I guess that virtually every reader will agree that comparing
the preprint archive with Lysenko is a sign of Baez's very limited
intelligence and self-control, and therefore we don't need to
join this game. Paul Ginsparg has written papers; he has written
TeX macros; he has been independent as far as the opinions about
physics go. Most people agree that his preprint arXiv is his
most precious gift to theoretical physics. Although tens of
classical refereed printed journals - which are not controlled
by Paul Ginsparg - still exist and anyone can read them, it is
just almost generally accepted by the community that the arXiv has
become a much more useful source of scientific information, and
the fast Ginsparg-driven filter removing the crackpots is
probably more efficient than the peer reviews. These virtues
allowed the community to choose Ginsparg's arXiv as the number
one source. Ginsparg is as self-appointed as anyone else who is
running a journal, newsgroup or anything of that type. The difference
with Ginsparg is that he is a clear winner: the community chose
his server to be the most important tool to exchange the scientific
ideas, even more important than sci.physics.strings (so far
by several orders of magnitude). ;-)]
I note that someone calling himself Lubos Motl also wrote on
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/
" My name is Abbe Hyupsing Qong and I came from the planet called Zetor here. My specialization is the terrestrial biology and the new theory replacing Einstein's relativity by Prof. Vlcek, based on quasicircular inertial motion and the time common in all the rest frames. This theory by Prof. Vlcek is a monumental achievement of the human race at your planet.
Anyone working at the Service for a Convenient Aliens' Life must learn two languages and adopt a nationality. I adopted the Czech nationality and learned English and Czech even though I have never been to Europe. The reason is that I liked books by Havel and Kundera a lot. Now I can speak Czech better than English and our native language. Incidentally, my adopted name is Lubos Motl. You can also see a picture of my older brother who has unfortunately passed away during the last flight.
 
I hope that you are not distracted by the animated picture of myself. All of us had to prepare special masks to look just as the people living on the Earth. So whenever you meet me at the Department of Physics and Astronomy in New Jersey or at NASA or our spaceship, you will see a person looking precisely as the terresterial human beings. My mask is able to change its gender so I can look both as a girl and as a boy. You can see my mask here.
I like to chat via computers at the UFO.ORG. But sometimes I also chat or mail with some terresterial human beings, especially from the Czech Republic which is my specialization as I have already said.
This page and all the organizations by aliens are secret so far. But there are some efforts against the UFO and Alien secrecy. I tend to sympathize with them and sometimes I uncover part of our mystery to human beings.
 Many human beings ask me about the physical principles of our spaceships. Shortly, the presentation is easy. We use magnetic monopoles to catalyze a complete annihilation of the latent energy" written by Lubos Motl.
"Oddly enough, mass media like Scientific American and NOVA's "The Elegant Universe" are quick to embrace speculations much more radical than Carlo Castro's." written by Jack Sarfatti
[LM: String/M-theory is not just a speculation. It is at least
a magnificent and amazing mathematical structure which shockingly
well reproduces the real world, at least at the qualitative
level. There have been some clear speculative models - e.g. the
ekpyrotic universe - in the NOVA's program, but I think that it
has been clearly explained that they were speculative proposals.
Again, comparisons with Carlo Castro are beyond my abilities,
especially because I don't know which Carlo Castro JB is talking
about (I only know that he is probably a crackpot/visionary that
had a problem in McCarthy's era).
Moreover, I think that it is healthy and necessary for these
media to inform the public about the developments in theoretical
physics. One reason is that physics is exciting for the broader
scientific community and the laymen. Another reason is that
the taxpayer is paying money that are also used for research, and
she should have an idea what is being paid. The third reason is
that the layman can sometimes have an idea that could help
science - well, one might say that this was the case of Einstein
in 1905. I just don't understand how can a physicist criticize
the very fact that physics is being communicated to a broader
public. It is a great service to the community. Finally, I think
that a well-informed laymen should have some power to form the
decisions about funding - to prevent narrow-minded, slowed down,
dogmaticized, and overspecialized scientists to be overpaid.
Well, I guess that John Baez will strongly disagree.]
"These speculations called "M-Theory" and "Loop Quantum Gravity" are of extreme interest no doubt." written by Jack Sarfatti
[LM: At least one of them. Scientific American was very
democratic: it published one article about a probably correct
theory, and one article by Lee Smolin about an incorrect theory.]
"However, they are, in fact, little more than admittedly seductive sexy mathematical vaporware." written by Jack Sarfatti
[LM: The reason for this statement is that John Baez does not want
to learn anything about string theory. If he learned at least
some basics, he would know that his statement only applies to
loop quantum gravity. Even if string theory turned out to be a
wrong description of Nature, it has lead to so many insights even
about the theories that are *clearly* of experimental interests
- such as gauge theories - that one can say that the string
theorists were not quite wasting their time.]
"George Dvali's interesting remarks on extra space dimensions in February
2004 Scientific American discussed below are a good example. Just as
there are a few innocent victims on "Death Row", so too are there good
physicists falsely labeled as "crackpots" without due process by a new
generation of over-zealous "Grand Inquisitors" with personal axes to
grind."
Written by Jack Sarfatti.
[LM: Yes, I agree with this description. There are many crackpots
around, and occassionally some of them turn out to have a point,
and they become geniuses. But this conversion of a crackpot to
a genius only happens once her point is understood by the
scientific community. But the scientific establishment works,
and the (paid) scientists are usually much faster in
understanding and accepting new correct ideas. They have been
trained, and you can see that virtually all Nobel prizes go to
the professional scientists.]
Takes one to know one.
"Sure, there are real "crackpots", even they should be allowed to
publish as well on the tax-supported LANL/Cornell e-print archive, or else
all tax-money should be withdrawn from it."
written by Jack Sarfatti
[LM: I hope that the crackpots are not deciding about the funding
of Ginsparg's arXiv (so far), and therefore these tax threats
can be ignored. The arXiv is useful exactly because it is able
to increase the average quality of the articles. I think that
more or less anyone who has a really good idea today has many tools
to inform the scientific community about it. The people from the
scientifically isolated places, of course, face a more difficult
task. Also, their ideas are a bit mixed with the crackpot
culture. Science works if it has some sort of hierarchy, and
allows the people to move within this hierarchy, depending on
their contributions. Currently the number of crackpot submissions
to hep-th is not very large because they know that they would be
rejected anyway - and the new endorsement system will make it
even more difficult for them. But I am sure that if the crackpots
were not regulated at all, the hep-th archive would become
another sci.physics.research - a discussion forum for crackpots
whose majority have very strange ideas - and usually identical
ideas - about how physics works. The serious scientists would
simply disappear from these places.]
"Let the crackpots be exposed by refutations on the archive in the free
market place of ideas." written by Jack Sarfatti
[LM: The physicists would be doing almost nothing else if they had
to respond to every crackpot submission. I know very well that it
is the case because I was not too far from this goal. ;-) Once again,
the arXiv only works because it is moderated according to the right
criteria, by the right people. Note that no good physicists,
maybe with two or three exceptions, have every attended
sci.physics.research. It is because this newsgroup is controlled
by a different type of people than the arXiv, and therefore the
crackpots dominate. Their ideas are usually not original: they
copy them from each other (often from a/the central crackpot).
A certain degree of regulation can help to increase the average
quality as well as diversity.]
"Nobel Prize physicist Brian Josephson from Cambridge has taken an active
role against this creeping suppression of freedom of scientific inquiry in
the dominant mode of communication between physicists in the age of the
Internet." written by Jack Sarfatti
Now comes the "smoking gun."
[LM: Brian Josephson's brain is not quite healthy. He believes
that he has encountered/proved telepathy, telekinesis, and ghosts,
and his group has unified mind, matter, and music (and M-theory?).
He kept arguing with Nature that did not want to accept his paper w/
an endorsement of supernatural phenomena. He is an example how
can you end up if you receive a Nobel prize for something that
you had done as a graduate student. See the link below. It is
not clear whether John Baez seriously wanted to use Brian
Josephson as a good example which things should be published and
how, but I personally consider this proposal to be a joke.]
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/
Pol Pot calling Kettle black http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/
"Publication in paper journals takes too long and is too expensive. They
are obsolete. Paul Ginsparg and a few of his associates have too much
monopolistic power and control over what the majority of physicists will
be allowed to see." written by Jack Sarfatti
[LM: That's just nonsense. Everyone can publish in printed
journals, everyone can read them, and everyone can also submit to
(and read) the other, mostly un-filtered Ginsparg's archives.
I think that if someone writes a philosophical papers that is
viewed as a crackpot paper by Ginsparg (and probably most other
physicists), he can still submit it e.g. to the quant-ph archive,
and sometimes he can even get a beautiful preprint number, for
example quant-ph/0404040. However, other physicists are free to
decide whether they will read the papers on these other archives
or not. Occassionally, someone finds out that the papers
elsewhere are interesting, and people start to switch. But the
very principle of scientific work does not allow to organize this
switch "centrally". You should live up with the idea that the
good physicists read hep-th (and few others) because the free
market of ideas showed that it is the most useful forum. The
mainstream ideas can turn out to be twisted in the future, but
one can't predict in which way. The ideas of the community are
the best ones that the humankind can offer today. J.B. believes
that loop quantum gravity will be more important in the future,
I believe the contrary.]
"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Better that a
dozen crackpots publish, then one mis-identified paper not get published.
The logic here is the same as in capital punishment lest even one innocent
man be executed - and many have been in fact. Crackpot papers should be
refuted as such in open discussion. One could always make a special
category on the archive perhaps "Fringe Topics" or "Controversial Papers." written by Jack Sarfatti
[LM: This would give the moderators even more power than before,
and I am sure that it would make the crackpots even more unhappy.
For example, it is likely that all papers on loop quantum gravity
would have to be labeled as "Frings Topics" or "Controversial
Papers", and I guess that their authors would not like it. It is
probably more healthy for the atmosphere in the field if these
papers can be almost freely submitted to gr-qc, for example.
Although most of the "quantum gravity" papers there are far from
reasonable, anyone can pretend that gr-qc is just "another"
approach to theoretical physics. Yes, I agree that people should
know about all approaches to the questions similar to those that
they study, but I don't think that they should be forced to waste
their time with directions that they simply believe are
uninteresting or incorrect. Even the highly interesting
directions in physics had to die when it seemed that the theory
was not working for whatever purpose it was designed. For
instance, string theory almost died in the early 1970s when
QCD became accepted as the right theory of the strong force.
I think that this death was correct, and if there is something
interesting about a forgotten idea, the idea will experience
a comeback, soon or later. John Baez is however very wrong if
he thinks that these comebacks should be socially engineered,
without the idea giving a new air. Such an engineering,
based on a pre-determined decision which class (or which theory)
should be supported forever, can never be a pillar of a
sustainable progress, and it is true both in science as well
as in politics.]
Post a follow-up to this message
Message 2 in thread
From: Matthew Nobes (manobes@freeshell.org)
Subject: Re: John Baez on string theory
View this article only
Newsgroups: sci.physics.strings
Date: 2004-05-09 17:00:08 PST
Daniel
> ... John Baez on the String and Loop Mafias
> =======================================
This seemed out of character for John Baez, so I did a little
digging. I don't think these comments are his, apart from the
direct quote from his quant-ph preprint. The orginal post appears
to be
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Theoretical+physics+today+is+splintered+into+ideological+factions%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=Ifbnc.65221%24ps5.5518%40newssvr25.news.prodigy.com&rnum=1
which is authored by Jack Sarfatti, a bit of a crackpot.
[snip much stuff from Sarfatti and Lubos]
Matthew
[Lubos: My bet is that Jack Sarfatti obtained the text directly from
John Baez, but I have no proof, of course, and the conjecture
that Jack Sarfatti simply pretended to be John Baez is totally
conceivable.]
No, goofy. You simply did not read carefully enough.
Post a follow-up to this message
Message 3 in thread
From: Serg (serg271@yahoo.com)
Subject: Re: John Baez on string theory
View this article only
Newsgroups: sci.physics.strings, sci.physics.research
Date: 2004-05-10 04:00:06 PST
It seems John Baez was framed :
http://www.groupsrv.com/science/viewtopic.php?t=34306
Jack Sarfatti wrote:
Quote:
>From my new book Super Cosmos:
John Baez on the String and Loop Mafias
[snip]
If there were a God, jacko, you'd be a burned spot for besmirching the
name of a decent, expert, and creative man.
--
Uncle Al
I did nothing of the kind. There is a God and you are talking to him. ;-)
===================
[Moderator's note: Jack Sarfatti's book is available at
http://qedcorp.com/destiny/SUPERCOSMOS.doc
The current understanding is that the part of Daniel's text up to
the words "Quantum Quandaries:A Category-Theoretic Perspective John C.
Baez" was written by John Baez, while the second half was written by
Jack Sarfatti himself, who was not mentioned by Daniel. We will always
try to correct such errors, but it is important keep in mind the sentence
from the second paragraph of the SPS charter:
http://schwinger.harvard.edu/~sps/
"Moderators will however not be responsible for the technical correctness
of accepted posts, though they may reject posts or send the posting back
suggesting revision when they note errors."
This rule is very important in the case of political statements of
Jack Sarfatti and John Baez. We do not have resources to verify
every detail in the postings with such statements.
As far as my reply goes, one sentence of it should also be corrected.
The sentence
"John Baez enjoys to politicize science in virtually every
sentence he writes - in this text, he relates..."
should be replaced by
"John Baez and Jack Sarfatti enjoy to politicize science in virtually every
sentence they write - in this text, they relate..."
The comments about the relation of string theory to the Bush administration
come from John Baez, the comments about McCarthy's era were probably written
by Sarfatti, and my qualitative conclusions are unchanged. LM]
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©2004 Google
On May 11, 2004, at 4:32 PM, Tony Smith wrote:
Jack, my apologies: I said to you
"... I don't want to act as a repository of sps postings,
or postings to any other newsgroup.
You can easily find them yourself. ...".
Since I just received a message from you saying
"... I just looked for something by "Daniel" I can't find it.
... Was it posted in a public part of the Web or only in e-mail? ...",
it is clear to me that my statement
"... You can easily find them yourself. ..."
is incorrect and wrong.
You can also look at other messages,
look at other material by clicking on links within messages,
which might lead you to see that all this mess may have
started with a post by you to unmoderated newsgroups
such as sci.physics, sci.skeptic, sci.physics.relativity,
sci.math,sci.education
and aggravated
by Daniel's false attribution of your post
to the moderated newsgroup sci.physics.research
and by
Lubos's apparent inability to read and understand
material written by one person (you, Jack) that
also contains quotes of material written by another
person (John Baez).
Although your initial post seems to me to be an
accurate expression of your views with a quote
from John contained therein,
it may be that you are grossly overestimating the
intelligence and reading ability of at least two
members of your audience, Daniel and Lubos.
If they are anything like a representative sample
of your audience, perhaps you should follow the example
of pillars of intellectual discourse such as TV news,
and greatly reduce the complexity of your compositions,
perhaps to paragraphs of no more than two sentences,
and absolutely no compound or complex sentence constructions,
and nothing requiring a continuous train of thought for more
than 20 seconds or so.
Tony
On May 11, 2004, at 5:22 PM, Physics Group wrote:
correction
On May 11, 2004, at 5:20 PM, Doc Savage wrote:
Try a Google search on Lubos Motl
The Plot thickens
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/brian/#bez
the above URL is linked from an alleged ET alien at
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/
Click on the above URL and it takes you to
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/brian/#bez
This website above is from someone who also used "Lubo Motl" who claims to have translated Brian Greene's book into Czech the same as the Lubos Motl from Harvard
http://schwinger.harvard.edu/~motl/sf/panel.html
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