29 June 2010

Motl Melts Down

A PhD and some physics publications is no proof against becoming a crank. Lubos Motl is a case in point. He is melting down. In a effort to criticize non-string theories of quantum gravity, he attacks the fact that a seminar with both string and non-string theory representatives is being held in Mexico. Why?

The Americans and Europeans who are working on "non-stringy quantum gravity" are just practitioners of this Mexican-level science. They're the Mexicans' true peers, so it shouldn't be surprising that they're third-rate scientists in the U.S. context. There's no string theory group in Mexico - another fact that shouldn't be shocking given Mexico's average IQ around 85. The IQ increment needed to go from non-stringy quantum gravity to string theory is around 20.


It reminds me of the people who claim that general relativity is a Jewish conspiracy that must be wrong for that reason.

Earlier in the same week, he is ranting against efforts to give elementary school students positive female role models in physics, because "the dominant association of science with maleness is . . . an objective fact and a consequence of some patterns in biology."

One would think that a physicist of all people, could focus on the ideas involved, and the merits of the scientific questions, but one would be wrong.

3 comments:

Luboš Motl said...

Holy crap, thank God I am away from the country with such a huge concentration of completely insane politically correct loons. Everyone in the Czech Republic who is not treated in the mental asylum would agree that your criticism shows that you are not mentally healthy.

I just wrote an obvious tautology that it shouldn't be shocking for the reader to learn that Mexico is not ahead of - or close to - the U.S. in theoretical physics.

It's not ahead in space research, maths, car industry, or anything else of this kind, and the reasons are obvious.

Your advocacy of those Fermilab social engineers is absolutely disgraceful. Those people are just liars. They are telling the kids something else about the world than what it is. They are doing so with the deliberately intent to mislead the children. I can't believe that someone who is allowed to be attorney in the U.S. may openly defend fraud. I think that there must exist laws that would put these people in the jail.

The crooks haven't created any positive female role models. They have only convinced some of the gullible kids that science is a collection of average people who don't differ from others. Well, lousy science may be described in this way - but lousy science is not terribly inspiring.

Cheers
LM

Ciudadano Kane said...

If we were honest, Lubos would be a pseudoscientific because his Matrix-Theory is not falsifiable, and has nothing to do with Nature, but rather with science fiction, embroidered with speculative math, without rigorous proofs. Thanks for the lucid post.

Dave Barnes said...

I am confused.
I thought General Relativity WAS a Jewish conspiracy.
Albert was Jewish. Therefore.