{"id":329,"date":"2006-06-19T11:01:28","date_gmt":"2006-06-19T11:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/19\/bored-by-the-landscape\/"},"modified":"2006-06-19T11:01:28","modified_gmt":"2006-06-19T11:01:28","slug":"bored-by-the-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/19\/bored-by-the-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Bored by the Landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The big event of the moment in physics, at least on the high energy\/ theory side, is the <a href=\"http:\/\/strings06.itp.ac.cn\/\">Strings 2006 meeting<\/a> in Beijing, which will feature the usual suspects talking about the usual topics in string theory. This comes on the heels of the <a href=\"http:\/\/susy06.physics.uci.edu\/\">SUSY06 meeting<\/a>, which was extensively blogged by <a href=\"http:\/\/cosmicvariance.com\/2006\/06\/15\/susy06-goes-hi-tech\/\">Clifford and others<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This would probably be a good time to post a long entry about how string theory is all a bunch of crap, as that&#8217;s been a reliable way to generate traffic in the past, but I just don&#8217;t really have the heart for it. From my outsider&#8217;s perspective, the big issues seem to be exactly the same as they were when I last wrote about them back in January or whatever, and any alleged &#8220;discussion&#8221; of these topics seems to involve the same people shouting the same slogans at one another, with no actual intellectual engagement to be found.<\/p>\n<p> I could cynically attempt to exploit this for personal gain (some might say that&#8217;s what this post is doing), but I&#8217;m really not that interested. I don&#8217;t really have a dog in this fight (other than finding the behavior of a certain subset of string theorists to be absolutely reprehensible), and I don&#8217;t really see the &#8220;landscape&#8221; issue as being worth the investment of emotional energy that others do.<\/p>\n<p>But, I wouldn&#8217;t be much of a physics blogger if I didn&#8217;t at least mention that the meeting is happening, so if you&#8217;re interested, <a href=\"http:\/\/strings06.itp.ac.cn\/\">go take a look at the meeting<\/a>, or check out the blogs commenting on it at <a href=\"http:\/\/mixedstates.somethingsimilar.com\/\">Mixed States<\/a>. Or, if you&#8217;re a contrarian sort, go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=415\">hang out with Peter Woit<\/a>, or go <a href=\"http:\/\/christinedantas.blogspot.com\/2006\/06\/top-ten-results-removed-from-blog.html\">send Christine Dantas some good vibes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong>: Sean Carroll hasn&#8217;t lost interest, and has a <a href=\"http:\/\/cosmicvariance.com\/2006\/06\/19\/the-string-theory-backlash\/\">nice post about the past and present of string theory<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.donorschoose.org\/challenge.php?id=146\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/467\/files\/2012\/04\/i-bc34b702798f01b10409f7481ac9dc21-link_donorschoose_small.gif\" alt=\"i-bc34b702798f01b10409f7481ac9dc21-link_donorschoose_small.gif\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The big event of the moment in physics, at least on the high energy\/ theory side, is the Strings 2006 meeting in Beijing, which will feature the usual suspects talking about the usual topics in string theory. This comes on the heels of the SUSY06 meeting, which was extensively blogged by Clifford and others. This&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/19\/bored-by-the-landscape\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bored by the Landscape<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-physics","category-science","category-string_theory","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}