Modern QFT is like being given a laptop with an Excel spreadsheet that does some clever things, without having any idea what a processor is, what memory is, how a hard drive works, or why the case is that funny shape.
The kinder way to put this is to say there's a lot of educated guessing going on. But the fundamental problem - reconciling GR and QFT - can't be solved without a completely new mental model. And academic research isn't funded in ways that reward the generation of creative new models.
It's become a bit of a cargo-culty pursuit. You're rewarded if you know the words to the songs that everyone else is singing, but if you try to invent a new genre you'll probably be told it's career suicide and Don't Go There.
The entire argument against string theory, is, in many ways, founded on the fact that as a group of hypotheses, none of them predict anything that would rule them in or out that's within a practically reachable detection limit.
>no one really knows what they're doing. Even Feynman said that no one understands QM
Quantum field theory makes possible the single most accurate predictions in all of science. Time and time again people whip out the Feynman (mis)quote to try to argue "oh we don't really know what's happening", but just cannot see why they think that way. Science is about finding observing reality and formulating descriptions with predictive power, and qft is objectively the best description any person has figured out so far.
>Modern QFT is like being given a laptop with an Excel spreadsheet that does some clever things, without having any idea what a processor is, what memory is, how a hard drive works, or why the case is that funny shape.
Again, preposterous. We know how qft works (we've come up with it, after all), and we know how to use it to make predictions and confirm them experimentally. If you mean know in a deeper, fuzzy sense, they maybe, maybe not.
>the fundamental problem - reconciling GR and QFT - can't be solved without a completely new mental model
>It's become a bit of a cargo-culty pursuit.
If you come up with a better idea than the current understanding, publish your findings and you will instantly become the most respected, popular, and influential physicist alive.
I will concede though that sadly funding is allocated more to "safer" avenues of research than novel ones. That's certainly a problem.
Even without gravity, modern particle physics theory is a big mess imo.
Does it matter whether mathematicians think it is handwavy? If any two trained practitioners can get to the same result of a calculation and it matches experiment to appropriate approximations that seems good enough to me.
I think that's already true today. The problem is, when theorists are out manufacturing new theories, I think it gets very confusing/handwavy (because everybody is brought up on handwavy fundamentals).
Disclaimer: I'm not a practicing physicist.
Whereas, I'm currently hearing an introductory philosophy lecture and, while physics informs my view in large parts, it's mostly about knocking down misconceptions.
The basic fundamentals, the first principles deriving conclusions, should be basic common knowledge. I don't actually need a mysterious slit experiment to be able to tell that my life, so to speek, is unpredictable, yet very regular, in the bigger picture. One common problem is language and there's almost no focus on that in physics education--if I may leave at least one lament--and since I can't say that the assembly of quantum states that is me is very likely to diverge, disentagle and grow decoherent ... philosophy still puts up with concepts like soul; or free will which is in the end not about inherent physical properties but just about regret and commitment.
Not quite sure what you mean by this. This is (part of) the standard curriculum for a physics degree. Of course physics is a vastly bigger field than quantum mechanics, so it takes 4 years to do this journey.
Good examples as cautionary tales, or worth a look as how it should be done?
Look at the spacetime one and read the Preface, it gives a good overview of the "program". Read the first chapter and see what you think.
http://szofi.elte.hu/~szaboa/MatolcsiKonyvek/pdf/konyv/Matol...
Disclaimer: I took these courses 10+ years ago from Matolcsi.
Given that there's "not much to do", it's weird that there isn't a 1% group somewhere out there who thinks this is worthwhile.
Context = I studied particle/astro physics 15 years ago and then "dodged the bullet" as the OP nicely puts it. I felt the way we were taught modern phsyics was quite poor/handwavy, esp. once the cross was made to QFT territory, and led to a lot of misunderstanding/confusion, which I still see in comment threads today, incl. between academics (!). Also, when I speak to mathematicians about this, they deeply disapprove of the way physics is taught/run today in this respect, and can routinely point to misunderstandings/confusion that hinders progress.
A good example (but probably too mathy) is the work of Tamas Matolcsi: `Spacetime without reference frames` and `Ordinary thermodynamics`.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&tex...