The Failure of Supporting Alternative Ideas in Physics

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I would completely agree with that critique of the field as a whole. I do think that we have a failure of creating a mechanism for supporting and nurturing those kind of alternative ideas. And some people, by the way, just don't want to have any support for alternative ideas. They think that they more or less know the right way forward.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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