alt Hacker NewsIt feels like Woit is just being a hater at this point. In a meritocracy, talent and funding gravitate toward the most promising options. If string theory took up a large proportion of people and resources, it’s because it solved technical problems no other framework could. Even if it hasn't yielded a Theory of Everything, the fact that its toolkit is now solving problems in other fields suggests the program has led to some success. Now that the field is in a lull, we're seeing a natural institutional rebalancing. Talent is simply self-allocating toward more fertile ground, which is exactly how a healthy scientific ecosystem should function.
The problem is the 'most promising option' is affected by hype and loud voices. Many of the string theory crowds made predictions that did not pan out at all and still did not acknowledge their mistakes. I think that's the problem. Sure there was a lot beautiful mathematics discovered, and it can be used in some other fields, but the acknowledgement of failure of string theory is needed, rather than trying to point here or there where some of the tools from ST could be used. (I am a physicist, but nowhere near the strings theory)