absolutely no progress on bridging the gap between quantum mechanics and gravity.

the theoretical models have obviously been incomplete and disjointed ever since they were created, and there isn't even a hint that this will be resolved anytime soon.

etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435223)

string theorists: "we need a particle accelerator the size of the orbit of a planet to test this" lmao

some crazy cosmologists: "there probably are multiple universes out there with different physics than ours, but there's absolutely no way to observe this, so i'm really just publishing papers with ideas that a pothead could come up with"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435234)

you have 300 lb shaquiras and goblinas now graduating w degrees in physics from Harvard

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435567)

physics hasn't been treated as ontology since Newton; questions of ontology are largely limited to the imaginations of potheads. only some physicists acknowledge this.

the fact that QG seems to apply only extreme cases is irrelevant; the goal of physics is to develop intelligible theories of the world regardless of practicality. engineering is a separate discipline for this reason.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435477)

On "first theoretical leap" in physics in 100 years -- like I said earlier I don't agree on this. Renormalization group theory and EFT, QFT, QCD, Topological formulations of field theories, Topological phases quantum hall, and condensed matter physics -- all of these things are deep restructurings of how we model fields, phases and interactions--arguably as or more important than QG. When I say overhyped, I'm saying its sold as *the* bottleneck to fundamental understanding, which is an exaggeration compared to its actual empirical leverage and vs. these other advancements.

On ontology: you say "physics hasn't been treated as ontology since Newton". Agreed, that is basically my starting point. But then you immediately sneak ontology back in when you talk about merging QM/QFT and gravity into ONE THEORY. The idea of insisting on a single mathematical structure that covers both domains is already an ontological bet: that nature must be described by one unifying formalism rather than a tower of effective descriptions that don't glue together into a single neat Lagrangian.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435536)

your point on ontology reflects what i stated earlier: physics has nothing to do with ontology, but even some of the most accomplished physicists don’t understand this. it could very well be that theoretical unification, despite being the most obvious direction, may be the wrong route. but the key point is that physics only presents THEORIES of the world; again, since Newton, it has been acknowledged by many people that moving from theory to a true description of reality can’t be accomplished by physics. modern questions of ontology are largely limited to academics who are largely ignored and potheads.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435686)

Also, the idea that since Newton ontology discussion has been eliminated or relegated to unread papers is overreach. Maxwell, Einstein, Bell etc. like Newton were also hardcore realists. And then there are the hardcore instrumentalists, the structural realists and a zoo of mixed positions.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435733)

i did not state nor did i mean to imply physics lacks practical value -- my belief is the opposite; it's the best resource we have to make sense of the world.

putting aside the ontological question for a moment, it seems to me very premature to state that non-negotiable invariants exist. to take two of your examples, some conservation laws are inherently approximate. causality and virtually everything else break down into an unknown state in black holes. etc.

i should have been more clear about ontological discussions. as i stated, ontological questions were thrown out the window by Newton, particularly because his theory of gravity worked but didn't make sense; he considered "action at a distance," the foundation of gravity, to be an unintelligible "absurdity" despite theoretical validity. Hume appears to be the first philosopher to recognize this as an unbreakable divide between physics and reality.

ontological questions, when discussed by physicists, are largely superficial philosophical speculations that don't address the limits of theory. "serious" discussion of ontology is relegated to philosophers, who are largely ignored today because they cycle through the same unanswerable questions with the same, repeating trends of speculative answers.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435847)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Esquivel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanda_Prescod-Weinstein

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/11/01/alan-sokal-critiques-a-bizarre-paper-from-chandra-prescod-weinstein/

The paper’s thesis was that black women (more than black men; it’s intersectional) face huge bigotry in physics which keeps them not only out of the field, but also from contributing to the canon of knowledge in the field. The bigotry supposedly reflects the hegemony that knowledge claims in physics reflect a “white spistemology”, and that soon after black women enter the field in substantial numbers, our ways of doing physics, as well as what we learn, will change dramatically. Here’s the paper’s abstract:

In this article I take on the question of how the exclusion of Black American women from physics impacts physics epistemologies, and I highlight the dynamic relationship between this exclusion and the struggle for women to reconcile “Black woman” with “physicist.” I describe the phenomenon where white epistemic claims about science—which are not rooted in empirical evidence—receive more credence and attention than Black women’s epistemic claims about their own lives. To develop this idea, I apply an intersectional analysis to Joseph Martin’s concept of prestige asymmetry in physics, developing the concept of white empiricism to discuss the impact that Black women’s exclusion has had on physics epistemology. By considering the essentialization of racism and sexism alongside the social construction of ascribed identities, I assess the way Black women physicists self-construct as scientists and the subsequent impact of epistemic outcomes on the science itself.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435575)

I describe the phenomenon where white epistemic claims about science—which are not rooted in empirical evidence—receive more credence and attention than Black women’s epistemic claims about their own lives.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435582)

I take on the question of how the exclusion of Black American women from physics impacts physics epistemologies, and I highlight the dynamic relationship between this exclusion and the struggle for women to reconcile “Black woman” with “physicist.” I describe the phenomenon where white epistemic claims about science—which are not rooted in empirical evidence—receive more credence and attention than Black women’s epistemic claims about their own lives. To develop this idea, I apply an intersectional analysis to Joseph Martin’s concept of prestige asymmetry in physics, developing the concept of white empiricism to discuss the impact that Black women’s exclusion has had on physics epistemology. By considering the essentialization of racism and sexism alongside the social construction of ascribed identities, I assess the way Black women physicists self-construct as scientists and the subsequent impact of epistemic outcomes on the science itself.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435590)

She is of Barbadian descent on her mother's side and Russian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish descent on her father's side.

Prescod-Weinstein is queer and agender.[5] Her husband is a lawyer.[3] She is the daughter of author and activist Margaret Prescod and labor activist Sam Weinstein.[2] Through her father she is a granddaughter of feminist Selma James and the step-granddaughter of Trinidadian Marxist writer and historian C. L. R. James.[66][67]

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798780&forum_id=2в#49435595)