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farts_mckensy10/11/20244 repliesview on HN

The same could've been said of atomic theory, neutrinos, gravitational waves, the higgs boson, cmb radiation, plate tectonics, and quantum mechanics at various points in time.


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btilly10/11/2024

That statement is only true for a few of the things on your list..

Yes, it took a couple of decades to test the existence of neutrinos. But, for example, general relativity was successfully tested within 5 years of being published. Gravitational waves were a prediction that took decades before we could test them, but the theory itself had lots of other verifications.

To date string theory has had many predictions that leads to failed tests. But not a single successful test in its favor.

Shawnecy10/11/2024

Weren't those all arrived at from a series of falsifiable predictions? What does string theory even predict that can be tested?

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slashdave10/11/2024

No, not really. All of those had reasonable, technically addressable methods for testing.

lazide10/12/2024

No you couldn’t. And it’s been 80 years now!!

All of those things you name came directly out of attempts to create testable hypotheses from experimental observations, and all of them were tested as soon as anyone could build an experiment apparatus or gather the data to do it. Which didn’t take that long considering the extreme engineering difficulties in actually building the apparatus for some of them.

String theory has avoided testability it’s entire existence, nearly a century now, and no one that I’ve seen is even attempting to make an experiment to try to test it - because at this point it’s clear that no one on the theory side is interested in making a testable hypothesis. That isn’t luck, that’s talent and hard work.

It’s one of the most absurd grifts I’ve personally seen play out so far.

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