You're a mathematician? I'm envious.

I know that Weinstein thinks highly of Anthony Garrett Lissi, calls him his "rival". Apparently Lissi takes Weinstein seriously, though they disagree on fundamental issues in physics.

I know nothing of math, so I cannot judge any of this.

You're a mathematician? — Manuel

No, I'm a failed math grad student. @jgill is a mathematician.

I'm envious. — Manuel

Me too, of the people who worked harder and had better study habits than I did. My zeal for math is that of the fallen priest for God. Thinking of Richard Burton in a couple of 60's flicks.

Oh well. I suppose there's much left to study that's not math. ;)

I'll have to talk to @jgill sometime.

I'll have to talk to jgill sometime. — Manuel

Don't expect much. :smile:

I retired over twenty years ago, but I still explore very limited and somewhat elementary areas of math and write notes as a hobby. fishfry and fdrake are modest, but they know a lot more about modern math than me, and express themselves well. As for Geometric Unity, I'm clueless.

Incidentally, you might think peer review certifies results that are published, but in math at least if what's being published is not of popular interest in mathematical circles you really can't be sure of complete accuracy. The other side of that coin is when a respected practitioner submits a paper, their colleagues who referee it might not look closely at every detail, assuming the author is quite competent.

A fellow mathematician from St Andrews U in Scotland and I created a minor journal thirty years ago for the purpose of quickly getting results to a limited community out - a little like arXiv.org now - calling it Communications . . .. We lightly refereed submissions. I'm sure some mistakes slipped by us, but we assumed legitimate journals would catch them when submitted. But even there you can't be certain.

Some famous hoaxes, like the Sokal hoax, have shown that peer review has it's failures, but I think the issue is more widespread. — ssu

It's OK if insiders acknowledge that. Otherwise it's treated like the fox and the grapes, which it often probably is.

In this video, Susan Haack is hard on peer-review & casts herself as a bit of an outsider, but I'm pretty sure she's an insider relative to Weinstein. (Different fields, obviously, so I'm talking about academia in general.) She's also just fun to listen to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Be6vheIMAA

Again, I don't know the math or science, so I can't appraise him on anything but the indirect - but this feels an awful lot to me like symptoms of something like a personality disorder - intense grandiosity + a kind of disavowed shadow self that almost perversely projects stuff onto the outside (fitting the grandiosity, he doesn't project onto others, but onto the world.) Again: He has the key to restoring phsyics and America; without the key, we have EGOS that made people fake growth and become pathological. It's so on the nose, that it's surreal. It's like he's got some kind of perverse subconscious imp. — csalisbury

:point:

Adding to this, which I agree with, I'd say he's found that he's a philosopher, a public intellectual. Ignoring the issue of quality for the moment, he's the real thing. I mean compared to us here. Same with Jordan Peterson. I don't vouch for these dudes' quality, but they shoot off their mouths and influence people. IMO, there are smarter people who ambivalently watch and comment from the shadows. In Eric's case, I suspect it's more fun to hype incidentally self-flattering grand narratives then it is to peck away at math & physics that no one understands but critical, competitive peers. [EDIT: This last line is not ironic. To think and talk about the stuff that most people care about and gets attention has rewards that obscure if impressive technicalities don't. Folks respect math and envy mathematicians but don't actually in general want to hear about the work, except to the degree that it's made narrative or philosophical. Consider Godel & Cantor on forums. ]

hey joe.

I don't know that I folllow you, (beyond , I think? an ironic undermining of philosophy, which there with you) but I will say I actually like Jordan Peterson, for the most part (IM me for details/apologia) Don't like Eric (IM me anyway, always love to talk)

Hey, ol' csal. We're both back & in the mood to throw the horseshoes. It's always good to see you in the pit.

I was being somewhat ironic. But I also was trying to emphasize that these guys put their actual faces and proper names out there and get listened to. They really are public intellectuals, in the larger forum of the world. They are professionals in the sense of getting paid for it, making it their central identity. Part of me would like to do that, while another part of me is disturbed by the immodesty. They drag their fame along with them everywhere. They can't go home again.

As for Geometric Unity, I'm clueless. — jgill

Hah. So no one can actually say if Weinstein is being legit here with his arguments. That's odd of him, I'd think he would want to let other people see his work even if outside academia...

Incidentally, you might think peer review certifies results that are published, but in math at least if what's being published is not of popular interest in mathematical circles you really can't be sure of complete accuracy. — jgill

I can only imagine how hard some of those equations and problems can become.

Hah. So no one can actually say if Weinstein is being legit here with his arguments. That's odd of him, I'd think he would want to let other people see his work even if outside academia... — Manuel

He has received strong criticism from his peers and has not addressed any of them yet. I wouldn't get my hopes up about geometric unity.
Timothy Nguyen for example has pointed out some major issues with Weinstein's GU.

He has received strong criticism from his peers and has not addressed any of them yet. I wouldn't get my hopes up about geometric unity.
Timothy Nguyen for example has pointed out some major issues with Weinstein's GU. — emancipate

He can always say "they misunderstood/misconstrued" my work. I think some of the things he discusses are interesting, but some of what he says in relation to politics specifically is quite silly. In either case, I can't understand the math. But as you point out, if many serious mathematicians think it's mistaken, then it's probably mistaken.

So I'm not a fan or not a fan.

I'll take a look at Nguyen's site. Thanks for letting me know. :up:

I listened to one podcast of his where he talks with a physicist if I recall, and he goes into it a bit.

As others have said, nothing has been presented that would be viewed as "a theory" in physics, just some ideas.

From what I understood, his main concern was going back to basics of rulers and protractors to make measurements ... that's pretty much the only thing I understood about his idea. Now, he maybe correct in that popular theories, especially of the time he studied, like string theory aren't "doing it", and some "going back to basics" is a good start.

However, "how to measure things" is already a pretty central part of what physicists do.

Furthermore, nearly all mathematics (especially found in physics) has geometric representation or analogue. Phase-space is simply extending 3 dimensions to 6 dimensions to record both position and momentum of particles, and can be understood in simple geometric terms of vectors in 6 dimensions.

A dimension for time can be added to dimensions of space to represent changes through time as simple geometry. A parabola can represent a literal parabola in space we build, or the arch of an object through space and time. General relativity goes much further than this simple geometric representation of time, and is extremely concerned with measuring geometry locally and how that may change with time and distance if space-time itself is not completely flat but can change, and that, crucially, space and time cannot be completely separated in a fundamental sense at all.

Point being, "geometric unity" can easily be referring to what is already found in physics: lots of geometry analogues and lot's of "measuring things" with protractors and rulers, and that solving the math problems between quantum mechanics and general relativity may involve geometry in some sense.

Not to say these aren't useful intuitions to reflect on, but I think any physicist (of which I am not) will say there's a massive, gargantuan distance to traverse to turn these intuitions into a coherent new physics theory; even more work to do to demonstrate it's really new and not simply equivalent to a theory we already have.

The underlying issue, I would suggest, is that fundamental theoretical physics has been stuck since pretty early days of quantum mechanics and general relativity, and all the promising theories have simply not worked in making new predictions. So, there's clearly something missing, and in the meantime learning the theories that don't work is all that there is to do and publish papers on; but it's not a sort of conspiracy by physicists, they seem to be generally aware that they are clearly missing something and likely "new physics" (new experimental evidence not predicted by either the standard model or general relativity) is the only thing likely to "unstick" the situation (if it is unstickable; some physicists are fine with the idea we just are stuck here more-or-less; we have a theory of small things and a theory of big things, and we'll never be able to unite them into one coherent theory; there is no "reason" our physics must be fully "mathematically coherent"; the universe could present to us a fundamentally "hodgepodge" view of "real reality" of which we can never understand the real functioning fully, and which does
not even correspond to a coherent mathematics we are able to invent at all; i.e. there is no a priori logical reason preventing "god" from making the universe such that our current quantum-general-relativity dichotomy is the absolute best we can ever do; which is, ironically, an obvious possibility to most pure mathematicians, but most physicists insist there is "something" they'll find in pure mathematics that will make everything empirical make sense; but, pure mathematics simply makes no guarantee of describing the world at all, any successes at all in describing the world with mathematics have no pure mathematics reason that they need to be there at all, and are purely coincidence as far as pure mathematics is concerned).

Thanks for sharing that lecture from Susan Haack. Yes, indeed careerism and bureaucracy are the pitfalls of modern academic research. One of the many great observations Haack makes.

:up:

She's a cool lady & as you say one of many great observations.