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The Trouble with Physics
Smolin's 2006 critique of string theory's dominance in theoretical physics — and of the sociological dynamics by which a research program sustained itself for decades without producing testable predictions.
The Trouble with Physics is Smolin's 2006 book diagnosing what he calls the stagnation of theoretical physics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The central case study is string theory, which had dominated the field since the 1980s and which, after a quarter century of sustained effort by thousands of brilliant physicists, had produced extraordinary mathematics but not a single testable prediction. The book combines technical analysis of why string theory had failed to deliver on its promises with sociological analysis of why the field had nevertheless persisted in treating the theory as the dominant paradigm. Smolin's account of how a research program can be sustained by consensus rather than evidence provides the template for understanding similar dynamics in other fields — including, as this volume's fifth chapter argues, the AI industry's Newtonian assumptions about scaling and trajectory.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The book's technical critique of string theory focuses on specific claims that had been