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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.
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.

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.
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.
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.