Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity”

Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by ALittleLight on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:25PM (#26371487)

I don't know enough math or physics to really have an opinion here, but my impression as a layperson familiar with these people is that if Sabine Hossenfelder (or someone writing on her blog) says X and Eric Weinstein says !X then Hossenfelder is probably right. Whenever I watch her videos she seems clear and makes sense. When I watch/listen to Weinstein I get an uneasy feeling of not quite understanding or believing the things he is saying. Hossenfelder makes things clearer, Weinstein tends to speak in dramatic and grandiose language that unnecessarily obfuscates things.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by leephillips on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:56PM (#26371712)

I've watched two of her videos and think she is a talented explainer. But I think she needs to have more people read her scripts before getting in front of the camera, because both of them contained glaring errors. Since she bristles and gets rather defensive when her errors are pointed out, I am not optimistic that these videos are going to get much better. In short, I don't see how being “a layperson familiar with these people” informs you who us correct and who isn’t in any particular instance.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by jacobolus on Saturday March 06, 2021 @07:01PM (#26371743)

Luckily, this blog post was written by Timothy Nguyen rather than Sabine Hossenfelder, so her level of personal fact-checking is largely immaterial. For a more technical version, here is Nguyen’s paper, https://timothynguyen.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/geometric_...

I must say, it is a little weird to get the public involved in an intellectual debate about theoretical physics which is so far hosted on a podcast and a blog, rather than in peer-reviewed journal articles.

Laypeople should probably wait a couple years for this idea to be hashed out more formally.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by ALittleLight on Saturday March 06, 2021 @07:29PM (#26371898)

I don't think there is any harm in laypeople being involved. The current state is that the answers aren't clear. You don't have to be a theoretical physicist to understand or appreciate that. Interested people, expert or not, should be free to follow along to the extent they are able or interested.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by jacobolus on Saturday March 06, 2021 @08:04PM (#26372114)

There's nothing inherently wrong with following esoteric debates raised by quasi-outsiders with a controversial, novel, unproven idea in some technical field, if you want to. But it's pretty time-inefficient, since an overwhelming proportion of such ideas inevitably turn out to be wrong.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by ALittleLight on Saturday March 06, 2021 @09:23PM (#26372556)

I don't think efficiency is a relevant factor because laypeople, by definition, are only learning about this stuff out of curiosity. It's not going to be used for anything. If you efficiently or inefficiently learn stuff you're not going to use I don't see what the difference is.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by platz on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:46PM (#26371638)

Because Weinstein doesn't explain graduate level maths to laypeople well doesn't make his theory invalid.

Because Weinstein doesn't explain graduate level maths to laypeople well doesn't make his theory valid.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by threatofrain on Saturday March 06, 2021 @07:04PM (#26371760)

Weinstein has been far less forthcoming than Mochizuki, but he has already gotten far better treatment. Mochizuki is an actual career mathematician, and not merely someone with a PhD.

But the refusal to be transparent in communication has made the mathematics community severely unwilling to continue to expend efforts into saving / communicating with Mochizuki's work.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by macinjosh on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:34PM (#26371549)

Your argument is bereft of logic and is based on your personal feelings about 2 individuals, not really a convincing argument

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by SurfingToad on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:53PM (#26371686)

Weinstein claims to have a theory of everything but he can't show you because he's afraid you'll steal it. Gives a vague and not-at-all useful lecture as "proof". Builds a cult of personality around his claim and coins the cringy term "intellectual dark web" to describe a group of supposed-rogue intellectuals who are really just reactionaries masquerading as Enlightened Geniuses.

If someone claims to have a theory of everything, they're probably full of shit. If they claim to have it, but says they can't show you for some reason, they're 100% full of shit.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by lc9er on Saturday March 06, 2021 @07:12PM (#26371798)

Reactionaries largely rejected from their primary field of expertise, now blatantly peddling pseudo-intellectual takes on subjects way beyond their wheelhouses.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by ALittleLight on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:46PM (#26371645)

Observing that Hossenfelder seems reliable and Weinstein doesn't and therefore putting more trust in what Hossenfelder says seems perfectly logical to me.

As an analogy, I have an aural thermometer and an infrared thermometer. From what I've read (and discussed with my doctor) the aural thermometer is the more accurate one. If my aural thermometer and my infrared disagree on someone's temperature, I believe the aural thermometer. Is this because I am bereft of logic and using only my personal feelings about the two thermometers, or because I reasonably trust one device more than another?

In areas that I don't have lots of familiarity with, like the kinds of math and physics discussed in the article, I think I can use the feedback of experts as sensing tools. Just like I can't directly infer someone's temperature by looking at them or feeling them, I can't directly infer the truth about competing claims related to Geometric Unity. What I can do though is rely on the sensing tools or experts with established credibility and see what they say.

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Re:Problems with Eric Weinstein's “Geometric Unity” by techbio on Saturday March 06, 2021 @07:48PM (#26372015)

Then again, no.

Not being an expert in thermometers, but having a vested interest in normal human body temperature, at first I thought aural was a homophone for oral, another common type of thermometer, and a strange speech recognition error.

Having googled the term "aural thermometer", I see it is a popular product, and the descriptions show that it measures the temperature inside one's ear by infrared, as in an aural thermometer is, logically, also an infrared thermometer.

If this simplest of everyday health monitors can have that much confusion in clear writing, I wonder how it is possible to believe that laypeople listening to a podcast on groundbreaking theory could expect to usefully interpret any part of it.

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