The Rise of ‘Conspiracy Physics’
Streamers are building huge audiences by attacking academic physics as just another corrupt establishment. Scientists are starting to worry about the consequences.
In recent years, a group of YouTubers and podcasters have attracted millions of viewers by proclaiming that physics is in crisis. The field, they argue, has discovered little of importance in the last 50 years, because it is dominated by groupthink and silences anyone who dares to dissent from mainstream ideas, like string theory.
Take Eric Weinstein, a podcaster and former managing director at Thiel Capital who coined the term “intellectual dark web.” In May, Weinstein appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show to talk about Geometric Unity, his self-published theory of fundamental physics that claims to supersede Einstein and resolve some of the biggest mysteries in the universe, like what dark matter is made of.
When Weinstein complained that academia has ignored his work, another guest on the show, Sean Carroll, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, tried to explain why by reading from it. “It says, ‘This document is an attempt to begin recovering a rather more complete theory which at this point is only partially remembered and stiched [sic] together from old computer files, notebooks, recordings, and the like dating back as far as 1983.’ And this is why this paper is not going to appear in the peer-reviewed literature,” Carroll explained. “It’s not serious. It’s a dog-ate-my-homework kind of thing.”
“How dare you,” Weinstein whispered. “Your intellectually insulting aspect reminds me of you as the Marie Antoinette of theoretical physics influencers.”
The German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder has attracted 1.72 million YouTube subscribers in part by attacking her colleagues: “Your problem is that you’re lying to the people who pay you,” she declared. “Your problem is that you’re cowards without a shred of scientific integrity.”
In this corner of the internet, the scientist Scott Aaronson has written, “Anyone perceived as the ‘mainstream establishment’ faces a near-insurmountable burden of proof, while anyone perceived as ‘renegade’ wins by default if they identify any hole whatsoever in mainstream understanding.”
Such renegades get a friendly reception from Joe Rogan, who regularly has Weinstein on his top-ranked podcast. Rogan’s blend of genuine interest in physics with just-asking-questions goofiness and suspicion of intellectual authority has created a template followed by other popular podcasters.
Chris Williamson, who became famous for competing on the British reality TV show “Love Island,” hosts a similar roster of scientists and skeptics on his popular show “Modern Wisdom.” “This is like ‘The Kardashians’ for physicists—I love it,” said Williamson about bitter attacks on leading physicists.
https://www.wsj.com/science/physics/the-...s-dd79fe36
Streamers are building huge audiences by attacking academic physics as just another corrupt establishment. Scientists are starting to worry about the consequences.
In recent years, a group of YouTubers and podcasters have attracted millions of viewers by proclaiming that physics is in crisis. The field, they argue, has discovered little of importance in the last 50 years, because it is dominated by groupthink and silences anyone who dares to dissent from mainstream ideas, like string theory.
Take Eric Weinstein, a podcaster and former managing director at Thiel Capital who coined the term “intellectual dark web.” In May, Weinstein appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show to talk about Geometric Unity, his self-published theory of fundamental physics that claims to supersede Einstein and resolve some of the biggest mysteries in the universe, like what dark matter is made of.
When Weinstein complained that academia has ignored his work, another guest on the show, Sean Carroll, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, tried to explain why by reading from it. “It says, ‘This document is an attempt to begin recovering a rather more complete theory which at this point is only partially remembered and stiched [sic] together from old computer files, notebooks, recordings, and the like dating back as far as 1983.’ And this is why this paper is not going to appear in the peer-reviewed literature,” Carroll explained. “It’s not serious. It’s a dog-ate-my-homework kind of thing.”
“How dare you,” Weinstein whispered. “Your intellectually insulting aspect reminds me of you as the Marie Antoinette of theoretical physics influencers.”
The German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder has attracted 1.72 million YouTube subscribers in part by attacking her colleagues: “Your problem is that you’re lying to the people who pay you,” she declared. “Your problem is that you’re cowards without a shred of scientific integrity.”
In this corner of the internet, the scientist Scott Aaronson has written, “Anyone perceived as the ‘mainstream establishment’ faces a near-insurmountable burden of proof, while anyone perceived as ‘renegade’ wins by default if they identify any hole whatsoever in mainstream understanding.”
Such renegades get a friendly reception from Joe Rogan, who regularly has Weinstein on his top-ranked podcast. Rogan’s blend of genuine interest in physics with just-asking-questions goofiness and suspicion of intellectual authority has created a template followed by other popular podcasters.
Chris Williamson, who became famous for competing on the British reality TV show “Love Island,” hosts a similar roster of scientists and skeptics on his popular show “Modern Wisdom.” “This is like ‘The Kardashians’ for physicists—I love it,” said Williamson about bitter attacks on leading physicists.
https://www.wsj.com/science/physics/the-...s-dd79fe36
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
