〈 Berger | Dillon 〉

I agree that @skdh has made an important, and lucid point that needs to be addressed. That said, your chauvinistic rant seems to indicate you don’t actually understand her argument.

The premise of the criticisms I take issue with is that “new physics” can only mean “new particles,” and can only be discovered by bigger linear accelerators. The certainty with which Sabine’s critics believe that there is only one way forward in physics is the problem.

But saying theoretical physicists have made a terrible life choice is not only wrong, but it’s philosophically naive, as if QM, EM, and GR etc weren’t once “pure theory”. We follow our nose, and it’s the best we can do..

If you look at my whole rant, I mention quantum information, condensed matter, and non-eq thermo just off the top of my head as things that physicists in “our generation” (I’m 36) might have found more interesting/fruitful than searching for beyond SM-physics via new particles

The problem is that those are investigating different things.. none of those (except for QIS) are “fundamental” Physics .. they’re neat, sure but they don’t tell us anything deep

See that’s where you’re back at the assumption that “fundamental” only has one meaning and that it’s impossible for anything to be “deep” unless it’s a new excitation.

The ingredients are more fundamental than the cake.. the cake tastes good, but it’s not a fundamental quanta of cake..