Nothing more rigorous than the people who toss random infinities into their equations to make them work, and think nothing of handwaving a 120 order of magnitude difference between theory and observation.https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1403921214234447890 …
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Replying to @Pinboard
As an ex-physicist I’m gonna disagree on both fronts. (1) Ken Wilson’s scaling approach to effective field theory showed why the infinities are just an artifact of a conceptual error about what field theory is about. And…
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Replying to @FBoondoggle @Pinboard
(2) The cosmological constant problem (your 120 orders of magnitude) is widely considered to be one of the biggest theoretical problems in fundamental physics. Any “hand waving” is just a stand-in for “we don’t understand this but here are some things we can discuss anyway”.
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Replying to @FBoondoggle
That's what I mean about lack of rigor, though. If it really bugs you that GR and QED are mutually inconsistent, or that we don't even have a theory about how to get a theory about a bunch of stuff, you go off and do math. If you're more interested in physical law you do physics
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Replying to @Pinboard
I get what you’re saying. But if you don’t consider, say, 11 digits of agreement between calculation and observation (g-2) to be “rigorous”, what does that word even mean?
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That's what makes the whole thing so interesting. You have areas of unimaginably close agreement between reality and theory, and then really basic stuff that doesn't even add up, and no clear path to a resolution of that tension. I find the status quo in physics super interesting
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