Talk:An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything/Archive 4

Distler-Garibaldi
The Arxiv is showing a new paper which purports to prove that any reasonable theory as proposed by Lisi is impossible inside of E8: http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.2658. Probably it'll be a little longer until the experts weigh in on this particular paper, but it looks plausible; perhaps it warrants a preliminary mention on Wikipedia while we wait to hear from them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.43.132.153 (talk) 04:49, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

The authors claim that their paper is accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal (Communications in Mathematical Physics), and so far their paper is the only detailed scholarly response to Lisi's preprint. So a prominent mention seems warranted. 98.251.121.173 (talk) 04:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The Distler-Garibaldi paper has appeared in Communications in Mathematical Physics. Nevertheless, mention of it was removed from the introduction by Scientryst as "unsourced POV". That judgment seems rather peculiar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.112.184.239 (talk) 05:33, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The Distler-Geribaldi paper is discussed in the "Chronology and reaction" section. Is there a reliable, third-party, published source we can draw on for what this paper says? There are several other published scholarly responses to Lisi's paper, including "Chirality in unified theories of gravity" in PRD, "A Novel View on the Physical Origin of E8" in J.Phys.A, "Mixing internal and spacetime transformations: some examples and counterexamples" in J.Phys.A, and "The Plebanski action extended to a unification of gravity and Yang-Mills theory" in PRD. These would seem to deserve equal mention. --Scientryst (talk) 09:57, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Here is a reliable third party source: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/setting-the-record-straight-no-simple-theory-of-everything.ars I don't really have time to edit, but I hope this helps resolve the terrifyingly pedantic discussion here as to what is or isn't a source. I just read the article on Ars and came here to see what was mentioned. This page reads with an incredibly pro-Lisi bias to me, given that most of the scientific/mathematical community seems to dismiss his theories. I'm no physicist or mathematician, but Lisi struck me as more of a rock star/publicity hound than a scientist. Honestly, to reduce the bias, this paper should come near the top of the article, in a sentence explaining that Lisi's theories are not accepted as useful by most in his field. Loverevolutionary (talk) 21:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Sure. We could mention what those other papers say about Lisi's theory. However, most of them only mention it in passing, and then to say that it probably doesn't work.

"Chirality in unified theories of gravity" says:

"More recently, an ambitious attempt to unify all known fields into a single representation of E8 [5] stumbled into chirality issues [6]."

"A Novel View on the Physical Origin of E8" says:

"Last year, Garrett Lisi [3] proposed that one could unify all the fields of the Standard model and gravity by means of the exceptional group E8. Lisi’s approach differs from others [4] in attempting to explain generations in terms of triality. It has attracted considerable attention and criticism. Regardless of whether the particular model due to Lisi will turn out to be correct or not, it would be desirable to find a possible physical basis for the group E8."

"Mixing internal and spacetime transformations: some examples and counterexamples" says:

"These investigations have been stimulated in part by recent discussions of unified theories. One way of achieving a unification of gravity and gauge interactions is to treat the Lorentz (gravitational) connection and the Yang–Mills gauge field (for some group G) as components of a connection of a larger unifying group [13-17]."

The only paper on your list that does more than make a passing reference to Lisi's theory is "The Plebanski action extended to a unification of gravity and Yang-Mills theory". But even it does not address the issue of the viability of Lisi's theory. It is devoted to showing that there's a way of rewriting Lisi's action to make the E8 symmetry more manifest.

I don't see why you think that papers, which mention it only in passing, would deserve the same treatment as Distler-Garibaldi, which is the only one to directly address the mathematical consistency of Lisi's theory. More importantly, I don't understand your justification for removing it from the introduction as "unsourced POV." That seems completely unjustified.

"Is there a reliable, third-party, published source we can draw on for what this paper says?"

Why do you need a 3rd party published source to draw on? Why isn't a peer-reviewed, published scientific paper, by itself, considered reliable?

If every statement in this article required a 3rd party published source, we could make the article a lot shorter, by removing every statement whose sole source is Lisi's unpublished, and un-peer-reviewed paper. Is that really what you want to do? 70.112.184.239 (talk) 00:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

An anonymous editor, 198.161.29.105, currently located at the Banff Centre in Canada, is being quite insistent that the sentence "The paper by Distler and Garibaldi shows on purely mathematical grounds that the theory cannot work.", should be in the introduction, backed by the scientific paper by Jacques Distler, who coincidentally is currently "attending a conference" at the Banff Centre. Since WP:PRIMARY states "a scientific paper is a primary source" and that the policy is

"Reliable primary sources may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source can be used only to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source. Do not base articles entirely on primary sources. Do not add unsourced material from your personal experience, as that would make Wikipedia a primary source of that material."

It is quite clear that the statement being pushed by 198.161.29.105 runs counter to this policy, and should not be included. --Scientryst (talk) 00:47, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

No "interpretation of the primary source is involved. The source says, in the first paragraph of the paper, "The purpose of this paper is to explain some reasons why an entire class of such models—which include the model in [1]—cannot work, using mostly mathematics with relatively little input from physics."

The sentence in dispute here is a direct paraphrase of the above. In deference to Scientryst's insistence that paraphrase constitutes "interpretation" (a very dubious assertion, in this case), I have replaced the paraphrase by a direct quotation. I trust that using a direct quotation from a reliable primary source will address Scientryst's concerns. 198.161.29.105 (talk) 02:30, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Scientryst seems to be stubbornly resistant to the precriptions of Reliable_sources, which state

"Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources when available."

and

"Material that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses."

It is good to have the argument in this paper presented in the article. But Distler's POV should not go in the introduction without support from secondary sources. --Scientryst (talk) 07:15, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It is not POV. A peer-reviewed, published scientific article is a reliable source. If there were other, peer-reviewed scientific articles which disputed its results, then you would have a point. But there aren't, are there?

You are incorrect to state that peer-reviewed, published scientific articles require a secondary source, and you are incorrect to state that special rules, in this regard, apply to the introduction, but not to the body of the article. 198.161.29.105 (talk) 14:18, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Finally, if you want further evidence that the Distler-Garibaldi result is accepted in the scientific community, we can look at how other peer-reviewed scientific papers cite it. To repeat what was said above, "Chirality in unified theories of gravity" (published in PRD) says:

"More recently, an ambitious attempt to unify all known fields into a single representation of E8 [5] stumbled into chirality issues [6]."

(where [5] is Lisi's paper, and [6] is Distler-Garibaldi). So Nesti and Percacci agree with the conclusions of Distler-Garibaldi. Can you find any peer-reviewed scientific papers that dispute the conclusions of Distler-Garibaldi? 198.161.29.105 (talk) 15:11, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Scientific papers are primary sources, containing original research. WP policy is:

Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable secondary sources. This means that while primary or tertiary sources can be used to support specific statements, the bulk of the article should rely on secondary sources.

Primary sources, on the other hand, are often difficult to use appropriately. While they can be reliable in many situations, they must be used with caution in order to avoid original research.

Your paper is Distler and Geribaldi's original research, and should not be unduly weighted, as it is not backed by secondary sources. --Scientryst (talk) 17:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

You are misusing the term "original research", which has a specific meaning on Wikipedia. Wikipedia's policy on citing scholarly research is quite clear, and I will quote it again:

Many Wikipedia articles rely on scholarly material. Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources when available. However, some scholarly material may be outdated, superseded by more recent research, in competition with alternate theories, or controversial within the relevant field. Try to cite scholarly consensus when available.

and

Material that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses.

This describes Distler-Garibaldi -- a peer-reviewed scientific paper, published in a well-regarded scientific journal. No contradictory scientific papers have appeared, and this one has been cited by at least one other peer-reviewed scientific paper, published in reputable scientific journal, as having shown that Lisi's idea "stumbled into chirality issues."

If you think that their result is not accepted by the scientific community, you need to cite a paper that disputes it. Otherwise, according to Wikipedia's rules, we should take their result as reliable.

Finally, you still haven't justified your contention that different rules apply to the introduction than apply to the rest of the article. 198.161.29.105 (talk) 20:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Scientific papers are primary sources and should be handled with care. You're insisting that material from this primary source should go in the introduction. It should not. If it is included, which it can be, carefully, while not giving it undue weight, it can go in the body of the article. --Scientryst (talk) 20:39, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Scientific papers are primary sources...

You keep saying that, but it's not true. Reliable_sources says that peer-reviewed scholarly papers are reliable sources, in fact, "usually the most reliable sources when available."

Secondly, we are "handling [it] with care," by quoting it verbatim, rather than paraphrasing it (which, frankly, seems an unnecessary precaution, but I'm willing to go along with that).

Third, "handling with care" does not mean "should not appear in the introduction," despite your repeated assertion that it does. 198.161.29.105 (talk) 20:47, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Not true?!? It says explicitly in WP:PRIMARY, "a scientific paper is a primary source." It runs against WP policy to put primary source material in the introduction of an article. What is the problem with having your material in the body of the article? --Scientryst (talk) 10:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Jesus. The least you could do is quote an entire sentence:

"An account of a traffic accident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the accident; similarly, a scientific paper is a primary source about the experiments performed by the authors."

We are not using the paper as a first-hand account of Distler and Garibaldi's experiments (or calculations, or whatever). We are using it for its statement on the mathematical status of Lisi's theory. As such it falls under the rubric of Reliable_sources, where peer-reviewed scientific papers are considered "the most reliable sources when available."

"What is the problem with having your material in the body of the article?"

Surely, the mathematical status of Lisi's theory is of great importance to any readers of this article. It should not be buried deep in the text of the article, with no mention in the introduction. That is the consensus of everyone else (except for you) in this thread.

Let me put the question differently: why is the factoid that Lisi's paper was the most-downloaded article on the arXivs sufficiently important to merit mention in the introduction, but the theorem proven by Distler and Garibaldi does not merit such a mention? 198.161.31.146 (talk) 22:47, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The comment about Lisi's preprint being the most downloaded is in the introduction because it was reported and considered important by secondary sources.

You think Distler and Garibaldi's statements from their paper should go in the introduction because you think it is "of great importance." And it is true that only important things should go in the introduction. But it is not up to you what importance to attach to this primary source (and, as a scientific paper, reporting the results of original research, it most certainly is a primary source). Nor are the opinions of Wikipedia editors (who so far are anonymous, single purpose IP's) relevent. What matters is what secondary sources (such as news, magazine articles, or scientific review articles) consider to be important. --Scientryst (talk) 06:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC) "You think Distler and Garibaldi's statements from their paper should go in the introduction because you think it is 'of great importance.'"

A proof that Lisi's theory doesn't work is obviously important to an article about Lisi's theory. Can you please explain, under what possible definition of "important," such a proof would be considered "unimportant" to an article about Lisi's theory?

Do you seriously want to argue that case?

I was under the impression that you questioned the reliability of the source. However, a published, peer-reviewed scientific article which, moreover, has been cited, approvingly by other peer-reviewed, published, scientific articles (Nesti and Percacci), and for which there is not a single contradictory article in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, fits Reliable_sources's definition of "the most reliable source[s] when available."

Not even you seem to be willing to argue with Reliable_sources, so you're reduced to the absurd argument that, while it may be a "reliable source," it's not "important" because, well ... because nobody's written a newspaper article about it.

By that criterion, most of the articles in Wikipedia, on Mathematics (my field), would not exist.

"Nor are the opinions of Wikipedia editors (who so far are anonymous, single purpose IP's) relevent."

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. 198.161.31.146 (talk) 07:06, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The Greater Goal of The Smolin-Lisi Enterprise?
Reading through the above discussion, I am quite amazed that scientryst (lisi?) is actively trying to define peer-reviewed and published scientific articles as untrustworthy and unreliable, while trying to define popular articles and blogs and well-funded hype as trusted and reliable. Is this really happening? Really? Please discuss. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.238.60 (talk) 18:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was no move at this time. There seems to be a general consensus that a page move might be warranted, but there is no agreement on an acceptable title. Feel free to request this again if a more solid consensus on the new title develops. Peter Symonds ( talk ) 20:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything → E8 theory —

This article covers the theory presented in the paper, and not the paper itself. The paper's history is glossed over, and the article covers papers that are NOT the paper of the title, that are used to support the theory presented in the paper. Therefore, this is not an article on the paper, it is an article on the theory.

76.66.197.2 (talk) 13:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with a move to E8 theory. --Scientryst (talk) 20:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * E8 is used for so many things that this may be too general. I think the paper title is less ambiguous. It is also a description of the theory, not simply an arbitrary paper title. --JWB (talk) 21:18, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Not decided on the need to move yet, if if it is to me moved it should have a better title than E8 theory, as this could be confusing to some reader and is not specific enough to lisi's work. Something like "Lisi's E8 theory" might be better.--Salix (talk): 22:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Lisi's E8 theory is fine by me (I am the nominator) 76.66.197.2 (talk) 04:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That raises the question of whether it should be separate from Garrett Lisi. --JWB (talk) 08:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

There is an existing redirect from E8 Theory, so it would seem straightforward to swap article titles, with An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything redirecting to E8 Theory. Renaming to Lisi's E8 Theory seems unnecessarily specific, since there aren't any other significant uses of the E8 Theory moniker, as far as Google knows. --Scientryst (talk) 22:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * E8 plays a huge role in heterotic string theory; just see that article. This is not something Lisi invented, and heterotic string theories are not his. --JWB (talk) 00:51, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think people would confuse the name "E8 Theory" with Heterotic String theory, so I don't see a problem here. Also, as a side note, the HST article says HST can use SO(32) or E8&times;E8, so it doesn't seem to "own" E8. It seems strange to claim that "E8 Theory" is owned by HST when googling the term, and many references, use this name for Lisi's theory and nothing else. --Scientryst (talk) 03:43, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * HST doesn't 'own' E8 - it is used in many other things which are also just as worthy as Lisi's theory. Suggest you read E8 before going further with this idea.


 * Just what is wrong with the current title (actual title of the paper, good representation of the qualities Lisi claims for the theory) or a title referring to Lisi? Either would be far more informative than "E8 theory". --JWB (talk) 03:51, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I've posted on other E8-related talk pages asking for input. --JWB (talk) 03:59, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * E8 Theory currently redirects here, but it seems not specific enough, only a single application in physics to a mathematical group. I think I remember reading Lisi got his inspiration from the recent (2007) mapping of the structure of the E8 group - here: . I'd say just keep it here under the paper name. Tom Ruen (talk) 04:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Banned user" revert
On 12-27 Golumbo did a mass revert to a version from sometime in the past including reintroducing the claim that the theory is named E8 Theory. Edit summary says it is reverting edit by a banned user, but does not name the user and the revert is obviously over multiple editors work. I'm going to try to revert this revert at least until there is adequate explanation. Apologies to the editor who has added one more edit since then. --JWB (talk) 06:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. In short: Please rewrite, don't revert. Most edits are harmless and typically of high quality. Select few, however, are not. The banned user used maybe more than 100 sock puppets / IP addresses. BeforeAfteread (talk) 20:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Split
If the paper is notable in its own right independent of the theory which it presents, then the theory should sit at a separate article, if not, then the theory should be the article. As the intro paragraph claims that this article is about the paper, the it would violate the spirit of WP:NOTPLOT (ofcourse, this isn't fiction, but this also isn't supposed to be an article on the theory, it claims to be an article about the most downloaded arXiv paper)

76.66.197.2 (talk) 13:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the paper is probably more notable than the theory. It is doubtful whether theory by itself is notable enough for an article. TimothyRias (talk) 11:22, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The theory and the paper hardly exist independently of each other. It would make no sense to have two articles and dividing the content would be difficult and arbitrary. The article name can evoke the paper, the theory, or both, whatever is most effective and common usage. --JWB (talk) 20:35, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Based on the references and content, the article is more about the theory than about the paper, but seems to cover both OK. So, I agree with JWB. Scientryst (talk) 22:12, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That looks like a "no" to me. Removing tag.--Afteread (talk) 20:00, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Lots of minor edits
Apologies to those who dislike seeing a block of 50 minor edits in the history log. I suppose I could have taken a copy into my userspace, but I would rather have some feedback. I feel a little bad because I know how exciting this was and how it might be used to inspire some young students to pursue a physics career, but it is important to make it clear that the consensus of the math and physics communities is that Lisi's proposal does not work.--Afteread (talk) 14:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

called E8 Theory?
Scientryst is asserting "E8 Theory" is a proper noun and the name of Lisi's theory, claiming the following 6 references support that contention. --JWB (talk) 18:29, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Lisi preprint Note all the references are at the end of the paper, not at the beginning where you would expect a name to be.
 * p. 28 - "from the viewpoint of this E8 theory" - not capitalized, saying this E8 theory is one in a class.
 * p. 29 - "The “E8 theory” proposed in this work" - not capitalized, the E8 theory in this work as opposed to others.
 * p. 30 - "quantum E8 theory" (2x) and "If E8 theory is fully successful as a theory of everything" - not capitalized, discussing E8 theory and quantum E8 theory as fields with a range of possible theories, not a single theory.
 * FQXi "his E8 theory of physics" - Lisi's particular E8 theory as opposed to other possible E8 theories.
 * Scientific American "E8 theory" not used at all.
 * SEED (direct Lisi quote) "this E8 theory" - this, as opposed to others - same phrasing Lisi uses himself in preprint - if meant to be a proper noun it would be "the E8 Theory" or "E8 Theory".
 * Telegraph "And he is organising an E8 Theory conference with the backing of the American Institute of Mathematics." On theories using E8 - does not say that Lisi's is the only possible E8 theory. Only case so far where "Theory" is capitalized.
 * Telegraph - same author, same sentence.

JWB, what source do you have for claiming that "this is being called one of a class of E8 theories" other than your opinion? It is true that E8 is used in other theories, but none of them have been called "E8 theory," as a proper noun, in many verifiable sources, as this one very clearly has. What other theory has been called E8 theory? Can you find even one that's sourced? As to the sources above, the Scientific American article says: "For the particles in the E8 theory to represent the known particles properly..." How much more definitively a proper noun does it need to be? And there are more sources like this. I just didn't think I would need to dig up more than six, since you have found exactly none backing your POV. Would another verifiable source help convince you? Please try a Google search on "e8 theory" before continuing this argument, it should be helpful. --Scientryst (talk) 19:08, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I missed searching page 2 of the Scientific American article. Definite article explains "It may be the same thing that the speaker has already mentioned, or it may be something uniquely specified." In this case it is late in the article and is the same thing, Lisi's theory, that has been mentioned earlier in the article. Note the article also says "E8 has come up before in physics, most notably in string theory".
 * You're welcome to dig up any sources, but none of them so far support the proper noun contention. The closest is the Telegraph article (note this is a newspaper not a science journal or even a popular science magazine) which does capitalize "Theory" but even this is far from definitive. Is the AIM going to sponsor a conference where Lisi's E8 theory is discussed but any other different or modified E8 theories may not be discussed? --JWB (talk) 20:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * As you suggest, here's Google Search on E8 Theory.

--JWB (talk) 21:07, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) This Wikipedia page
 * 2) aimath.org doesn't even mention Lisi or his theory, talks about E8 string theories.
 * 3) HowStuffWorks doesn't stop at "E8 Theory" but abbreviates all the way to "E8". Ugh. Extremely confused.
 * 4) Video results, Lisi at TED, and one on Youtube.
 * 5) Boingboing also abbreviates all the way to "E8". "E8 Theory" is only used as part of "Garrett Lisi's E8 Theory of Everything" which hardly makes a case for unqualified use of "E8 Theory".
 * 6) Ming the Mechanic: An E8 theory of everything - Also uses "E8 theory" only as part of that phrase. "theory" not capitalized.
 * 7) Telegraph - what you already cited.
 * 8) Distler paper at arXiv does not use phrase "E8 Theory".
 * 9) THEOREMA EGREGIUM uses "E8 theory" only as qualified in "Garrett Lisi’s E8 theory".
 * 10) Linuxnotes uses "E8 Theory of Everything". Does have "Blog reaction to the E8 theory" as title of a link to Backreaction, which however does not use "E8 theory" at all in the blog post, and in the comments has "this E8 theory" (8 times), "this particular E8 theory", "the E8 Theory" (1 time), and one link "E8 Theory...".

Heavy paragraph
"Lisi's paper attracted a great deal of attention after its release and spun-off a variety of debates across various blogs and online discussion groups. Numerous news sites from all over the world reported this new theory, noting the personal background of Lisi, and the controversy in the physics community surrounding the preprint. Mainstream and scientific press coverage included: The Daily Telegraph (14 November 2007),[9] New Scientist (15 November 2007),[28] Wired News (16 November 2007),[29] Le Monde (19 November 2007),[30] The Economist (22 November 2007),[31] The Daily Telegraph (22 January 2008),[32] Discover Magazine (26 February 2008),[33] Wired Magazine (27 February 2008),[34] Scientific American (1 March 2008),[4] Physics World (1 July 2008),[35] and The New Yorker (21 July 2008).[36] Numerous blogs and forums also discussed the work including Sabine Hossenfelder's Backreaction,[37] Luboš Motl's The Reference Frame, which objects to the addition of bosons and fermions in Lisi's superconnection, and to the violation of the Coleman-Mandula theorem,[38] Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong,[39] Sean Carroll's Cosmic Variance,[40] Steinn Sigurðsson's Dynamics of Cats,[41] Physics Forums,[42] Slashdot,[43]Digg,[44] and Reddit.[45] Woit and Smolin are generally supportive whereas Motl and Marcus du Sautoy are critical."


 * While it is helpful to have some of these articles and references mentioned, I suggest a refphraseing of the paragraph, as it is unnecessary to the article to have so many references. It makes the sentences very unreadable, and drowns the meaning of "included". Now, I don't think my english is good enough to do this, but I suggest cutting the "less known" magazines (again, I am uncertain which that would be). /TR 212.10.50.204 (talk) 16:27, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

An Explicit Embedding of Gravity and the Standard Model in E8
Another Lisi paper has surfaced.

An Explicit Embedding of Gravity and the Standard Model in E8 at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1006/1006.4908v1.pdf

I'm not touching the article until I've had time to read & digest both papers. Hotfeba (talk) 22:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Recent Developments
There were many significant edits with a negative bias made to the article in the last few days, including describing Lisi's theory as the "smolinification and destruction of physics." Do any recent developments (and sources) support this more negative point of view? On the contrary, Lisi's theory seems to be gaining traction in the scientific community, with a recent conference covering his work. At this conference, Garibaldi was reported to still be critical, but has fallen back from his initial claim of a "proof that the theory can't work" to now saying "the theory has nearly been ruled out by experiment" -- a very different, and weaker, statement. Also, Lisi has recently written a new article on the theory, which he claims to be submitting for peer review. --Scientryst (talk) 14:15, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't believe that this is the exact and only thing that Garibaldi said. Basically because the theory has no real prediction as all the masses are missing (or are the same), so it would be silly to say that it's been ruled out until it doesn't become, at least, a real theory that reproduces what we observe now. So far Lisi's theory has failed at its attempts to do so. Let's wait for a working theory.

A possible interpretation of Garibaldi's words could be that the mirror particles have been nearly ruled out, but that's a different statement. The proof in their paper is pretty solid. If anybody finds a mistake, they should publish it, that's how physics works. Opinions or impressions or interpretations from conferences are very important, but at the end what counts is what people write down on real papers. Even Lisi had to go back and modify his original idea. His idea was intriguing for sure, E8 is the largest exceptional group, and it would be nice if it works. But it's also kind of forced by the algebra to obtain cosets that have the right quantum numbers for one generation of particles (three was the original goal, but that does sound impossible). From there to actually say that they are fermions instead of massive gauge bosons it's a different step, not mathematically defined yet. Again, maybe a hunch, not a theory in that specific regard. It's not even a conjecture, it's more like an assumption or an ansatz. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.55.28 (talk) 23:45, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Is Scientryst garret lisi? at any rate the above was corrected to its proper form: "Lisi's "theory" represents the Smolification of physics, whence Goldman Sachs wires money gained from scandals and taxpayer bailouts to institutes for the purpose of fiat physics." Thanks for pointing this out g. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.217.76.166 (talk) 00:55, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Can someone explain what is going on with the many "edit summary removed" changes by an admin? --Scientryst (talk) 09:11, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Never mind the wikidrama, thank you for adding the interesting SciAm reference. 166.216.162.35 (talk) 13:03, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

A Sci Am Dec 2010 E8 article typo?
Greetings one and all! I need to have the following either confirmed or cancelled!

If it is an error it is one of substitution. My [2] explanations are unneeded as you will know sooner than immediately the result. So here goes: "A Geometric T. O. E." - Section 3 - 'DIFFERENT CHARGES FOR DIFFERENT FORCES' - paragraph 3 "Exactly half of ..." - and then my proofreader jammed on the third sentence/16th word 'neutrino'.

It seems that 1) this sentence reads equally well as "Only the L H fermions have weak charges, with the left-handed up quark and {[electron]} having weak charge +1/2 and the left-handed down quark and electron having weak charge -1/2."; & 2) that neutrinos haven't a charge.

Quite much obliged. ~ Betaclamp (talk) 05:39, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Uh....what? Nothing has been changed on this article for over a month, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:26, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Greetings; you made me think that maybe the content of the Sci Am E8 article was the same or similar to this Wiki-file, but alas they are both quite dissimilar. The on-line version of the Sci Am article is the same as the version in print, so as far as this inquiry goes, I am [still] anticipating a ruling on this by an Authority. Just in case you need it, "typo" is short for typographical error - of which there are four types - errors in syntax (or grammar), spelling, punctuation and Content. The possible error that is now under consideration is one of Content - the substitution of an incorrect term for the correct one.

Let me know how much this has cleared things up. BW - best wishes - ~ Betaclamp (talk) 05:16, 1 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Are you saying that there is a typo in the Scientific America article? If so, then you are posting in the wrong place, as this site has nothing whatsoever to do with what a scientific journal prints. Are you saying there is something wrong with this Wikipedia article?  What do you mean by your "[2] explanations"?  which term is incorrectly substituted for which term?   If you're saying that there is something wrong with the article, then you should go ahead and change it, as long as that change is reliably sourced.  Qwyrxian (talk) 05:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

One further message to Qwy - and since nothing. ~ Betaclamp (talk) 05:21, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I didn't think you needed a response to that message, as it seemed like you had understood. I don't know who told you to "produce 'the preceding' at this locale".  Was that on Wikipedia?  If so, who, and where?  If not (if someone off of WP told you this), then it seems like it just has nothing to do with us. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:25, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I deeply thank you for your input. I am here anytime you might need me. I did defer this matter to the source, as I had mentioned. Once again, much obliged. ~ Betaclamp (talk) 06:08, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

This is a dangerous page, to be maybe observed by admins or people that avoid some edit wars?
I believe this article is not presenting science as it should. There are several points that are badly handled, some about physics, some about general principles in science. I work myself in the field and I am not taking sides. But this article feels like there is a bunch of stupid old and stubborn physicists who don't embrace Lisi's fantastic theory. It communicates a bad idea of science to the reader, because parts of the article are misleading. I will give a few examples.

This is to say that the alleged annoyance at Lisi's paper of a lot of physicists is not due to some sort of unnatural dislike, it's just that there is plenty of theories of everything around, and lots of them are more complete and detailed than Lisi's. Not because they reproduce everything he says, or because they don't like him, or because they don't like the theory, but because there is too much incomplete stuff in Lisi's theory to be considered as serious as other theories. And thus the paper didn't get that much attention after the initial rumors, and it won't receive much attention until some of the most evident lacks won't be solved making this theory more attractive than other theories that also need work. Ultimately, nature will tell us if the theory is correct or not, but Lisi and the people working on the E8 theory need to solve the mathematical problem they have before considering it as a viable theory of everything, and this is what normally all the other physicists do with other theories of everything. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.55.28 (talk) 06:43, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * the first paper, an exceptionally ..., hasn't been published. This means that it isn't been submitted or approved by any journals (do you really know that it hasn't been submitted? and how... because of a SEED article?"). Anyhow, the second paper mentioned, written with Smolin and Speziale, has little to do with the E8 theory, if not for little details. The overlap is too little to allow the introduction to present this second peer reviewed paper as a form of validation of the first paper.
 * I believe that the article in this form is misleading because it gives the reader the impression that somehow the second paper gives some sort of "peer review authority" to the first paper. But that is obviously not the case. Also, the peer review system doesn't ensure that a paper is right or accepted by the scientific community (most of the unification models will have to be wrong, simply because there is many of them and the majority is mutually exclusive), it simply ensures that there is no evident (to the referee) proof that what's said is not valid science and that the construct seems to be compatible with nature and the data (unless it's presented as a toy model, but this is not a toy model, it's instead presented as an incomplete theory in development, but not as a toy model, so it has to work to be published).
 * the paper written by Distler, even if Lisi doesn't like it, it has been published and if Lisi believes that the paper is wrong it means that Lisi or other people can publish another paper disproving it. Until nobody does that it is misleading to report Lisi's answer given to a website or a blog or anything else different from a paper, because that's not an answer but at the most an hunch. The reader, though, remains with the idea that Distler is wrong. By the way, if Distler was wrong, proving it would be worthwhile. Nobody has published a paper to disproof Distler's theorem.
 * there is a lot of "taking sides" discussed, but physics is not democratic nor corruptible. We see what we see and if a theory is right it will eventually become evident (when the progress and the experiments will allow us to explore new particles, especially now with the LHC active). If Lisi's paper is right, it will eventually become apparent and everybody will recognize it. That's how science works. From this article it seems like it's just a matter of liking Lisi's theory or not and that string theorists just don't like his idea and are opposed to it by annoyance.
 * it doesn't appear to me evident from the article (but it should) that the theory is not only incomplete, but it lacks almost all the requirements that any model has to have to be considered seriously by other physicists. There is many many models on unification, of which many also use E8 (in a different way), and they all have to deal with these requirements. It usually is not enough (not just for Lisi, but for everyone else too) to state that a theory is not complete.
 * one of Lisi's most important points is to include fermions of spin 1/2 and bosons of spin zero, 1 and 2 in a unique object he calls superconnection, but he gives little meaning to this object and leaves it at a formal unexplained level. It is a very big missing point, and it's not really clear from this article. Saying that it's a BRST extended connection isn't an explanation, if you don't say how that is implemented and don't show a working example.

Should a Section Be Introduced Discussing How All This is Media Hype?
Since the article exists because of all the media hype, as opposed to scientific activities and accomplishments, should not a section be introduced remarking on this? Saw this at Sciam: "Even though Garrett Lisi is always claiming that he does not like the media attention, he does everything possible to gain the media limelight. For instance, he never asks Lee Smolin to stop hyping him as the next Einstein, nor does he back down from hyping himself into his own TV show. If one views his wikipedia page, one can see how Garrett Lisi collected all the popular media articles generated by the hype funded and flamed by Lee Smolin. Were it not for the popular media articles, there would be no Wikipedia page, representing the fact that Garrett Lisi is naught but a media creation, with no scientific backing nor reality. Garrett is very conscious of this, so in all the media interviews he seeks out, he tries to cast all the self-generated and Smolin-generated/funded media hype as something he does not covet, willfully imbibe in, fondly cherish, and passionately perpetuate; whereas the exact opposite is true." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.223.25 (talk) 02:40, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikilink Stéphane Foucart ?
Wikilink Stéphane Foucart ? 99.181.134.19 (talk) 07:26, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Stéphane Foucart helpful ? 97.87.29.188 (talk) 19:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Associated with Le Monde. 97.87.29.188 (talk) 20:04, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, we don't do cross-wiki links (except to wiktionary), because it doesn't help most readers. We definitely wouldn't link to Le Monde, as that article doesn't mention him, so a reader would have no idea why they had been sent there. We'll have to wait until such time as there is an en.wiki article on Foucart. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:17, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

What is the purpose of hiding the truth?
This article has very poor quality. A lot of edits are in support of Lisi's "vision" even though the theory doesn't work at its present formulation. In many edits people are trying to make this theory look better than it is. Hiding true facts, like Lisi's own admission that the theory at this stage doesn't work, is not complete, and has very little predictions. This page, because of the great number of visitors, needs to be moderated by admins. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.55.28 (talk) 21:16, 24 June 2011 (UTC)


 * See further concerns by same anonymous editor in section above . Tom Ruen (talk) 21:38, 24 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Pages aren't ever "moderated by admins". Pages are edited by any interested editor.  Also, note that I am reversing your addition of those tags--I actually don't see anything "advertising" or POV on the page--in fact, the page seems to be generally showing that the theory/paper is wrong.  Please explain exactly what is POV about the page.  Note, too, that if Lisi has stated in a reliable source that the theory "doesn't work", then we should include that information--please provide a source.  If you want the tags to remain, please explain here exactly what parts of the article are advertising or POV.  Qwyrxian (talk) 01:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Qwyrxian, thanks for you comment. What I meant with moderation is this the protection policy. For now I will wait and not revert the tags if there is other people in disagreement, but it seems pretty obvious to me that there is a POV attempt here. Look at the modification made just after yours, the user erased a statement where Lisi himself states that the theory isn't working in the present formulation. In general, this theory, for what it is, might be important for the media coverage, but if you look at pages like Nima Arkani-Hamed, one of the most young and successful physicist alive, and you compare his page here on wiki with Lisi's, it appears clear that Lisi's page is boosted by the media coverage, and not by achievements.


 * For the POV part, Lisi has stated in a reliable popular journal article, which is linked right after the quotation, that the theory doesn't work. In that article, Lisi stated, "(the 3 generation) issue remains the most significant problem, and until it is solved the theory is not complete and cannot be considered much more than a speculative proposal. Without fully describing how the three generations of fermions work, the theory and all predictions from it remain tenuous."


 * If you look at previous edits, it's clear that there is some people who are trying to edit the page making the theory appear better than it is, or at least that it is a working theory.


 * Honestly, reading this article there is the risk that Wikipedia would seem to be supporting somebody's vision of the world instead of the truth. Also, because I'm going to reinsert that quotation consistently, if somebody keeps erasing it, then I hope this won't end up in an edit war.


 * I am a physicist and I know the matter well. I don't think I have any special privilege as an editor, of course, but I'm saying this to explain a little deeper what the technical problems are. I have actually met Garrett Lisi personally, and I think that he is a smart person and it would be interesting if he was right. But at this stage the theory works very poorly, and is a lot less promising than other dozens of theories, and this should be reflected from the page, but it's not. Also, most techniques used in his paper are well known in physics, including E8, but in the article here it looks like he invented something new, which is also misleading. To mention another couple of "strange" edits, the tags have been removed by the same IP also in Lisi's page on wikipedia. Also, Lisi published with Speziale and Smolin (who I both met personally), a paper (that I carefully read) that is only partially related, and that it does not build on Lisi's theory, but there is some people editing the page trying to make it look like it's validating (through the peer review) his original paper, which is not, because most of the features of the original papers are not used in this second paper.


 * Also, in science people sometimes write on blogs or scientific popular journals, but those cannot be considered responses to the criticism, if one wants to help the science, they have to produce a paper, not an interview with partial and incomplete answer. Although, it appeared here, the first time the interview was cited (the history speaks clearly) that the interview was used to make it look like the criticism shouldn't be applied on Lisi's theory. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.55.28 (talk) 19:33, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I (also a physicist) am again reverting some edits made by 98.244.55.28. Here are the reverted edits, and why they were reverted, case by case:


 * If you really are a physicist then I wonder if this is a troll joke. Some of your statements would surprise any physicist.

1. "widespread skepticism and criticism" - the "and criticism" is not in the referenced article (I looked).


 * The criticism is shown in many of the other references. I will provide many more if needed. It is a fact that the paper is criticized.
 * I am sorry I didn't realized it was an actual quotation. My bad. Fixed it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.136.253.158 (talk) 00:34, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * A possible reference if we want to include the criticism is from one of the papers that cite Lisi's, A Novel View on the Physical Origin of E8 by Matej Pavsic, which states: "It has attracted considerable attention and criticism." The paper doesn't build on Lisi's paper but is about the E8 structure. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 01:06, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

2. Jacques Distler and Skip Garibaldi propose a direct proof that Lisi's theory, and a large class of related models, cannot work. - this is POV (and wrong) because (going by Lisi's Scientific American piece here) what Distler and Garibaldi have proposed is an argument relying on the non-existence of mirror fermions, which has not been physically established, and is not a direct proof. The previous description, prior to 98.244.55.28's edit, was clear, concise, and NPOV.


 * You should not be going by Scientific American, which IS a popular journal, not a physics scientific publication. The mirror fermion problem has nothing to do with the three generation problem. Distler and Garibaldi wrote a clear paper, which is a better reference than what Lisi reports on it on SA.

3. As of June 2011 no paper has been published or posted in the physics arXiv disproving Distler and Garibaldi's result. - this is unsourced POV (and wrong). Lisi says his arxiv paper, "An explicit embedding of gravity and the standard model in E8," is a counter argument to Distler and Garibaldi.


 * The statement was correct. Distler and Garibaldi's result has not been disproven. Lisi new paper does not represent a counter argument. Lisi has just one generation of fermions in his 2010 paper. Lisi in the paper (plase go to the original sources when you want to discuss the matter) states: "Nevertheless, it was helpful of Distler and Garibaldi to emphasize the difficulty of describing the three generations of fermions, which remains an open problem. Although it is possible to deﬁne a map, based on triality, between the generation of sixty-four Standard Model fermion generators in E8(−24), the sixty-four mirror fermion generators, and sixty-four non-Standard Model boson generators, these cannot be interpreted as three generations of fermions under a direct decomposition of E8(−24). The proposal that these three blocks of generators might correspond to the three generations of fermions, suggested in [5], remains a vague hint towards some more mysterious structure, and not a direct identification. The explanation for the existence of three generations of fermions, all with the same apparent algebraic structure, remains largely a mystery."
 * This clearly proves what I said above.

4. he recognizes that the theory doesn't work with three generations. - this is POV because it implies that Distler and Garibaldi convinced Lisi of the three generation problem, which is wrong.


 * It is instead correct. See above. Now there is also another quotation to include in the page.

5. partially related paper on unification, in a peer-reviewed journal, that has an alternative treating of fermions. - "partially" is injecting POV, and the last phrase is unsourced (and wrong) and grammatically incorrect.


 * False. Partially is NPOV, because it is the truth, the paper written with Smolin and Speziale (see reference) clearly indicates so. They present fermions directly and not starting from generators of E8. It is sufficient to read the paper. Thus, the fermions are treated in an different way.

6. In May 2011 Lisi wrote an article on a popular journal offering some answers to criticism, although, the answers are often partial and some are still incomplete. - Lisi's article on criticism was not on a popular journal, it was on the official Scientific American blog. And the last phrase is pure POV.


 * Scientific American is a popular journal, what else? And you can just read the answers to realize they don't fully answer the criticism. And it is Lisi himself who says (correctly) that the theory at this stage is incomplete. What else do you want?

7. In that article, Lisi stated - this big quote from Lisi is good, but should probably go in the criticism section instead of the lede. In fact, it may be good to draw from more of Lisi's criticism article for that section.


 * I disagree, if Lisi states that his theory is still far from being viable or predictive and that it is still incomplete it must be stated immediately, not in the criticism. It's a fact stated by the author himself, after all. The criticism section would just hide the problems that the author himself admits.

8. A few - POV, since "few" implies the number of citations is small.


 * False. First, the number of citation IS small. Second, "few papers" would have had a negative implication, "a few" is objective. In fact, Lisi's paper has only 16 citation. This is the usual metric (used by SPIRES)
 * Renowned papers(500+ cites)
 * Famous papers (250-499 cites)
 * Very well-known papers (100-249)
 * Well-known papers (50-99)
 * Known papers (10-49)
 * Unknown papers (0-9)
 * Definitely 16 citation cannot be considered several in the usual definition of how a paper is normally considered in physics. 16 = a few.


 * Also, very important. Some of those papers that cite Lisi's paper do not build on Lisi's work, but just cite it. Thus it is POV to say that they build on Lisi's work. Specifically the examples listed don't, in fact, Smolin writes a Plebanski action that could be E8 invariant and be used in Lisi's theory, but he does not take a position on fermions and does not use Lisi's work in his paper, and Percacci talks in general about the Coleman-Mandula theorem that is also discussed in Lisi's paper but there is nothing about the E8 theory. I could talk more about these two papers. Some of the 16 papers briefly mention Lisi's paper, like the most recent citation from Bjorken, but they don't "build on" Lisi's paper. Stating the opposite would not even be POV, just false. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 01:06, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I hope this makes it clear that these edits being pushed by 98.244.55.28 are POV.-Scientryst (talk) 17:06, 27 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you proved the opposite, and this sounds like an unfortunate edit war, with somebody interested in hiding true facts about Lisi's (respectable) work. A scientist doesn't become less smart or good if his theory is wrong, most physicists work on theories that will be proven to be wrong eventually, because they are often mutually exclusive. I have to revert. And I think the tag needs to be there as well. Also, Scientryst, you gave the impression to some previous editor that you were being really POV, I'm starting thinking that they might have been right. Please comment here instead of reverting back and forth. 98.244.55.28 (talk)

Only one note about the above: I don't understand most of the physics, but it's patently wrong to include words in a quotation that are not actually in the original text (the "and criticism" part). Those must be removed, with no question whatsoever. It doesn't matter if "and criticism" is "true"; if Dance didn't say it, it can't be in a quotation attributed to her. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:46, 27 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Which quotation are you referring to? I just noticed that the sentence was in quotation. I had no idea. I knew the fact as true and didn't even realized. Obviously the person who edited that part was wrong. I'll fix it myself.
 * When I answered to Scientryst I thought he was referring to that as a concept not present literally in the reference. My bad for not realizing it was in quotation marks.
 * The rest stays valid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.136.253.158 (talk) 00:22, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Protection requested
It's good that the two (I assume this is 2 of you on dynamic IP addresses, although if there are more, my apologies) are talking. The problem is that you shouldn't also be reverting at the same time. The whole point is that once it is clear that there is a dispute, all sides should come to the talk page and work out where to go; if they can't do it by themselves, they should go through the steps of dispute resolution. As such, I've requested that the page be fully protected for a while so that this can be worked out.

Unfortunately, I don't (as I said above) understand the actual physics involved, so I can't usefully comment on the issues of fermions, three generations, or whatever. However, I am going to try to find one or more Wikiprojects that could possibly help us out with more input. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:46, 27 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree. The page should be protected, as I was suggesting above. I work in particle physics so I would be happy to go discuss the matter through the steps of dispute resolution. At the end what I said can be easily read on the papers mentioned, and it will appear obvious to whoever can read a scientific paper. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.136.253.158 (talk) 00:39, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It is not even pleasant because I believe that Lisi wrote clear papers, where the limitations of his results are clearly stated, but the press and the fans are transforming it into some sort of myth, which doesn't help his theory. The theory has so many problems at the moment, compared to other theories, that all the strange attention by non-physicists is pushing away physicists who don't want to start endless discussions on something that is no more than a toy model so far... again, this doesn't help the theory and physics in general, imho (I can be POV here when I express my opinion) 70.136.253.158 (talk) 01:06, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Scientryist is clearly ignoring the comments and is just trying to revert again without talking. I'll revert the statement (most of them had been there for a long time) until somebody intervenes. Removing the Lisi's quotation also is clearly attempting to hide what Lisi's himself states about his theory 98.244.55.28 (talk) 02:51, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst, it's funny that you say that your edit was essentially just a revert to an earlier version when your user contributions are essentially JUST on this page about Lisi's paper. It's also interesting that you are the second frequent editor of this page with 84 edits, some of them are reverts from people writing criticism to Lisi's theory. I wonder why there is a user on wikipedia who writes just on Lisi's paper to defend it. Somebody in the past even accused you to be Lisi. Certainly your attitude isn't helping. We can discuss as much as you want about physics here in the appropriate discussion page, but I will revert to the version that includes the quotation until somebody finally starts a technical discussion or protects the page. 98.244.55.28 (talk) 03:02, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Both of you: immediately stop reverting each other. You're both edit warring, which is strictly forbidden by policy.   I think (if I'm counting the number of participants correctly) that you're both at 3RR--more than 3 reverts in a day is grounds for an immediate block.  Furthermore, you gain nothing: when the page is protected, the admin will choose a random version to protect, and then you both still have to keep discussing here.  Note that the admin is not going to try to decide what the "right" version is.  I actually recommended the 1 May 2011 version, only because it was stable for a while.  But the admin could just as well pick any "Wrong version" to protect, because at this point the only goal is to stop the edit warring and get the two of you to stop.  Neither of you should revert even one more time, period.
 * Second, 98..., there is nothing wrong if Scientryst wants to edit mainly this page, so long as xe does so according to policy--no one is required to do anything more on WP than what they are interested in. Stop talking about each other, and talk about the article.  It's good, for example, that 98... noticed that changing the quotation is wrong--that's a step in the right direction.  But we also need to settle the rest of the problems, and we need to do that by discussion, not by reverting.  Either of you.  I thought page protection was the nice way to go, but I will instead switch to recommending blocking both of you if you keep edit warring. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:22, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I perfectly agree with you, Qwyrxian. I am sorry if I gave a wrong impression talking about Scientryst, but what I stated is true. The thing that I think is strange, is that I am reverting to a version with a quotation that Lisi himself stated (which is also true physically), and I don't see how this can ever be denied, it's clearly in Lisi's interview and also a similar version of it is paper (quoted here, above). I have strong ethics and I will stop reverting immediately, I just hope that the page will be protected soon. I also hope that some physics wikiproject will want to contribute, because the correct physics is the only thing that is important to be shown here.98.244.55.28 (talk) 03:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I stand by the eight numbered points I laid out.-Scientryst (talk) 04:56, 28 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Which all have clear (and correct) comments (points became 7 anyways, because I realized that there was something on quote marks that I agree was wrong).
 * Well, I don't see how anybody can come to a conclusion at all if Scientryst doesn't even respond to the details of the answers above. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 16:28, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Now that both sides of the arguments on issues (1) through (8) are presented, it would be good to hear from an experienced editor so we can reach a description that maintains NPOV.-Scientryst (talk) 15:10, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree, not only from experienced editors, also from experienced particle physicists who are editors here. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 17:24, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Let's add some comments to the points above to better address the issues with this page.

1) This has been solved.

2) As I was saying above the statement "Jacques Distler and Skip Garibaldi propose a direct proof that Lisi's theory, and a large class of related models, cannot work." is NPOV. In fact, this paper has been published and nobody has published a paper that disproves it. What Scientryst was saying about mirror fermions, does not represent a counter argument to Distler and Garibaldi's proof, which remains flawless. The point that Scientryst was making refers to a weaker form of the proof, which I will describe. The main purpose of the paper is to show that gravity, the Standard Model, and the three generations of quarks and leptons cannot be embedded in E8. What Lisi does in the paper "An explicit embedding of ..." and writes on the popular magazine Scientific American does not involve three generations (really anyways, we are citing Scientific American for a counter argument? really? if it is true then somebody should publish that result, because it would be worth having in the scientific community (and it would be worth asking for a grant too if you can really disprove that paper). Let me try to be more clear:

-Lisi states in those papers that the 3 generations are far from being well embedded in E8, even tho he believes that triality will bring him to town. -Distler and Garibaldi prove and show that it's impossible to get three generations of chiral fermions plus standard model plus gravity in E8. -Distler and Garibaldi also prove that even if you give up on the three generations (and two) and want to try to get at least only one generation, you can't anyways because there would also be an antigeneration (that Lisi calls mirror fermions) which will make the fields not chiral (this is a well known problem of such theories). -Lisi recognizes that his theory is currently not working for three generations and that is still something incomplete. -Lisi doesn't agree with the impossibility of having at least one generations, claiming that the antigeneration (not seen so far) will be solved in some other way because he states that we don't understand the origin of the particle masses. He claims to give an explicit embedding of this. -Distler and Garibaldi never said this embedding was not possible, they just said that those fermions would not be chiral. -Lisi believes they can be, still there is no explicit example about how to make chiral fields out of these nonchiral fields (or if there is then it's worth publishing)

Point being, there is NO explicit embedding including the whole standard model, gravity and three generations of fermions, and Distler and Garibaldi's paper is still completely valid. The theory cannot work. If somebody can show the opposite please write a physics paper so that science can progress. All these statements are verifiable reading the following references: Distler and Garibaldi's paper, Lisi's first paper and the one cited here. Reading Lisi's quotation already in the page.

3) Scientryst wrote <> You can check from what I explained above that not only the statement in the page is not wrong, but that what Lisi says in his arxiv paper is not a counter argument to Distler and Garibaldi's main result, but only on their version with one generation. Their main result has no flaw so far. Also, why should we believe to what Lisi says in his paper (it's wikipedia, not "how Lisi sees the universe")? But even if we do, still we have Lisi's explicit statement about not having a way to treat three fermions (and then to predict anything in particle physics). His words. It's a POV attempt if you try to make people believe that the mirror fermions is the problem here. The main problem is the three generations, the mirror fermions is just another problem. This is verifiable in the same references I indicated for point 2)

4) I think that Lisi himself can answer to Scientryst's objection: "Nevertheless, it was helpful of Distler and Garibaldi to emphasize the difficulty of describing the three generations of fermions, which remains an open problem. Although it is possible to deﬁne a map, based on triality, between the generation of sixty-four Standard Model fermion generators in E8(−24), the sixty-four mirror fermion generators, and sixty-four non-Standard Model boson generators, these cannot be interpreted as three generations of fermions under a direct decomposition of E8(−24). The proposal that these three blocks of generators might correspond to the three generations of fermions, suggested in [5], remains a vague hint towards some more mysterious structure, and not a direct identification. The explanation for the existence of three generations of fermions, all with the same apparent algebraic structure, remains largely a mystery." This is a direct quotation taken from Lisi's paper. Verifiable.

5) The article now has this sentence: "partially related paper on unification, in a peer-reviewed journal, that has an alternative treating of fermions." Scientryst says that this is POV. While we could agree that it's not the best english ever, the objections don't apply. "Partially" is indeed NPOV and correct. In fact, the paper is the one written together with Smolin and Speziale. This paper does not include, like Lisi says somewhere, 90% of his theory, unless you assign the percentage to so many things that any theory then would be at least 80% included here. Anyhow, the paper IS just "partially related", because it has an alternative treatment of fermions. I can't see how this can be denied when it is clearly stated in the paper. I'll quote "The coupling of the uniﬁed bosonic connection to fermions occurs in the covariant Dirac derivative, [equation 29], in which ψ lives in a spinorial representation space of Spin(1 + N, 3)". The fermions in Lisi's original paper don't live in a spinorial representation, in his paper they are part of the Lie group generators of E8, which is one of the most criticized points of his paper. In addition, Lisi, Speziale and Smolin even say this directly, in quotes: "For alternative ideas on the coupling to fermions in this type of grand uniﬁcation scheme, see [3, 5, 6, 8, 18]". The paper cited as 6 is indeed the paper that gives name to this page. Thus it is pretty obvious that not only the statement above was true and NPOV, but the word "alternative" is even used in the paper we are referring to. Again, this seems to me an attempt to make Lisi's first paper look better than it actually is, and to make this second paper appear like it's building on Lisi's first paper while it clearly isn't because fermions are treated in an alternative way. The two papers are intrinsically just "partially related", given that in particle physics having a different way of treating fermions changes the theory completely. This point is verifiable directly checking the quotations in the papers, which are freely available online and are already in the reference list of the page.

6) Scientryst was claiming that Scientific American cannot be called a "popular journal" but "the official Scientific American blog", like if an official blog has any authority in science. Anyhow, I don't see how that should be then called, given that Scientific American is called a "popular magazine" even in the definition here on wikipedia. If you want to change the word "journal" to "magazine" that's fine to me, i thought journal was even better than magazine. Anyhow, again, it seems to me that Scientryst is trying to advertise Lisi's work, action that is clearly against wikipedia's policy.

7) Scientryst wants to move Lisi's quotation about his theory not being complete and not being very predictive at the end of the article in the criticism section. I believe that the result would be hiding the truth, which is that Lisi himself states that the theory has a big problem with three generations. It's not a criticism, it's a fact, and it should be stated at the beginning of the article, because the reader should know of this incompleteness right away, not in the criticism section. Putting it down there would just result in making Lisi's theory appear like it words just fine (if you read just the introduction).

8) "A few" is clearly the right word. Even my first paper from undergrad had 16 citations when I was just one year into grad school. 16 is definitely and clearly a small number, the metric adopted is above. Verifiable at spires and arXiv. Important papers in physics get hundreds of citations in the first few years, certainly not 16. And the phrase "build on Lisi's work" is intrinsically POV, because it is sufficient to check those papers to realize that some of them are properly citing it, some of them are Lisi's following papers, some are just briefly mentioning it and some are very critical ("hopeless attempt"). Thus trying to include the form "build on Lisi's work" is a clear POV attempt to make Lisi's work seem more important.

There are many other changes to the page to be made. One for all the fact that it should be stated more clearly what is original in Lisi's work and what is normal technique used in gravity or particle physics. A student asked me once how it was possible that Lisi built the whole thing by himself, then I found out that he believed that Lisi even invented the Lie groups and how to use them in particle physics. It should be better stated that most of the techniques are used in many many theories.

98.244.55.28 (talk) 03:51, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

More changes
I thought that before starting changing the page we should have come down to a conclusion here. Scientryst started modifying the page (again all towards Lisi's point of view instead of a neutral one). I'll try to modify things myself without incurring in a war. But certainly user Scientryst isn't helping. 98.244.55.28 (talk) 16:29, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I also saw the edits, but they appeared to remain neutral to me. Was there a specific one you had a problem with?  You can undo it directly (the article isn't protected), and then, per WP:BRD, it would be up to Scientryst to come back here and argue for the particular edits; but, again, I'm not sure what specifically you were objecting to. From memory, for example, I thought the change from "a few papers" to "sixteen" seemed like an improvement, as it is more precise.  Qwyrxian (talk) 22:29, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Good. I am trying for precision, NPOV, and convergence.-Scientryst (talk) 23:09, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I am still concerned about this sentence: "As of July 2011 no paper has been published or posted in the physics arXiv disproving Distler and Garibaldi's result." (now with two references). Although it is true that Distler and Garibaldi's proof has not been found in error, Lisi has argued that their premises were faulty, leading to a faulty result. If Lisi is to be believed, then this constitutes a disproof of Distler and Garibaldi's result. And the two references offered are not references, but rather lists of citations to Distler and Garibaldi's paper, which both include the paper with Lisi's counter argument. So these facts would appear to make the sentence false. Unless there is an actual reference for this sentence from a reliable secondary source, it should go. Also, this sentence and the subsequent clarifications are making the lede too long. Might be better to move some of this material to the Criticism section.-Scientryst (talk) 23:34, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Ok. Let's be clear. There is no point in Lisi's paper where he says that Distler and Garibaldi have faulty premises on the three generation case. THIS on the three generations is the most important result. The one that proves that E8 cannot be the theory of everything because it has no 3 generations. Moving the discussion onto the one generation case is misleading. On the three generation case there is no discussion about the premises. If there is any other publication that explains how Distler and Garibaldi are wrong about the three generation case then I will be happy to read it.


 * The counter argument presented by Lisi is not about the three generation case. It's about the one generation case, on which they have different interpretation. Distler and Garibaldi also get the antigeneration or mirror fermions, for them that means that the theory is non chiral (there is a similar problem in particle physics when using gauginos for similar purposes, because they are intrinsically non chiral). But what Lisi presents is not a counter argument, it's a different interpretation towards the mirror fermions, and he doesn't indicate how to treat them anyways, leaving the theory without masses and specified parameters.


 * The references I posted indicate clearly that nobody in the arXivs has cited Distler and Garibaldi disproving their work. In fact not even Lisi does. Lisi doesn't have a counter argument for the three generation case. The one generation case is less important because the three generation problem by itself places the model amongst the ones that don't work so far. And what Lisi does for one generation is not technically a counter argument, it's a different interpretation on the mirror fermions, in fact the explicit embedding he makes is perfectly compatible with what Distler and Garibaldi prove. But NOBODY wrote a paper disproving the three generation case, not even about it's premises. Otherwise please give a reference. I will be happy to read the paper.


 * Moving things to the criticism isn't appropriate. At least not for the statement that Lisi himself does about his theory being not complete and not predictive. That's the most important result of the theory, and must be stated immediately.


 * Qwyrxian, I agree that "sixteen" is better or more precise than "a few". But it seems to me obvious that any change that Scientryst does is to make the theory appear better. Sixteen to an inexperienced eye might seem a large number, in particle phsyics is a tiny number. But I'm ok with that change and in fact I did not change it. Eventually I will quote also what's said about it in the other papers, so that to present also other direct citations. The problem is more about how it seems that Scientryst doesn't want to be completely clear that Distler and Garibaldi really preved that you cannot have three generations of fermions. And it seems to me that this fact is trying to be hidden by the controversy about the one generation case (where Lisi has a different opinion, but it's correct to notice that he doesn't have a way to show how to solve this mirror problem, he says there is some, but still nobody has a direct example applied on his theory). The criticism about the one generation is the one that maybe can be moved in the criticism section. But the three generation result from Distler and Garibaldi, and Lisi's statement about the theory not working with three generation, must stay in the first part of the article. Also if you look at the history, all the changes that Scientryst makes are of this kind.


 * To finish this silly back and forth. This is where I stand. It has to be clear that nobody disproved Distler and Garibaldi's result with three generations and that Lisi states that the theory with three generations doesn't work. Exactly like the article is written now. I'm ok with moving the one dimension case to the criticism, but just the one dimension dispute (with no mention of it in the three generation case). I won't accept Lisi's paper as a counter argument to Distler and Garibaldi's result in three dimensions, simply because it's not true. The problem is that it takes time to understand the details of these papers, and it seems to me that there is a game here from Scientryst trying to rephrase things so that it doesn't appear clearly that those results are solid and that his theory has a lot of problems. I like Lisi, and I like some of his ideas, not all of them. But so far his theory is simply between the many that don't work. There is many many theories that don't work and this doesn't make them less respectable, simply they don't represent our world. If somebody in the future will be able to make them work then great, but it could instead just be that the case that the idea is wrong. From this page it has to be clear that the theory currently is wrong if taken as a real theory of everything. It's a fact, and it's verifiable. So let's stop with all this little edits just to make it seem like it's a debate instead of a scientific, verifiable, fact.


 * 98.244.55.28 (talk) 00:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)


 * In his letter to Scientific American on criticism, Lisi says: "the theory does not accommodate all three generations of fermions in an obvious way, or describe their masses. This problem was identified in the original paper, with a potential solution coming from triality." So it is disingenuous to say Distler and Garibaldi proved the theory can't work, based on the fact that three generations don't work directly, when Lisi said in the original paper that it can't work this way. Please go back and read Lisi's Scientific American letter carefully - it's very clear.-Scientryst (talk) 03:30, 15 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Scientryst, I have read that letter, but I don't need to read a letter on a popular magazine that about about Lisi's paper, because I know Lisi's paper very well. I know perfectly what he says in his first paper and how he says it. The problem is that in science you can't just say "I have an idea about how to solve that" to actually state that you have a counter argument or that the theorem doesn't apply. So far there is one thing that is clear, that three generations of fermions don't fit in E8, and if Lisi has a magic hat to get those out of, then we will wait for him to publish it. Also, the problem is that without three generations there is no physics to predict or test, so the that should be the first priority. What Lisi says in the original paper is in fact honest, but in the paper, after the triality argument, there is just a discussion about the fact that the interpretation isn't that obvious, but it seems still to be open to a possible more complicated embedding. Instead, Distler and Garibaldi proved that there is no embedding. So, now, if Lisi wants to find a new way of making those fields fermions, great, I would like to read it because it would be a very cool tool. But until this is done, we'll have to stick to the only result that is peer reviewed and published that states that there is no theory of everything in E8. It's easy to understand, the rest is smoke to confound the reader. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.55.28 (talk) 07:12, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Disproving Distler and Garibaldi
Pardon me while I try to cut through all of this. I'm going to tackle just one issue right now, then later move on to others. Does anyone have a source that states that nobody disproved Distler and Garibaldi? As in, I don't mean you've searched the arXiv yourself and found none--I mean an actual sentence in a reliable source that says "Thus far, Distler and Garibaldi have not been disproved"? If not, Scientryst is in my opinion correct that the sentence should remain out of the article. Not because of the number of generations, or because of the letter in Lisi's original work, but because proving that something does not exist falls under what Wikipedia calls original research. I don't really mean that the act of searching the archives is original research, but that the act of "deciding that it is worthwhile to search the archives, and from that search imply something about the quality of D&G's theory and as a consequence imply something about Lisi's theory" is original research. This is why I have removed those "references"--as Scientryst points out, those are not references in a Wikipedia sense. 99..., my guess is that you're a scientist (you certainly sound like one), so you'll want to note that Wikipedia's definition of Original Research is far more inclusive than the one generally used in the science field. So, does such a source exist? If so, please add it where the cite needed tag is. If not (as I suspect), the sentence itself will have to come out. Once we get this worked out, I'll move on to the next part (sorry for being slow, I just think that for highly detailed problems like this, treating problems one at a time, if we can, is better). Qwyrxian (talk) 04:40, 15 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I understand your point of view. But here the issue is much simpler. The sentence says the simple truth, that paper has three citations, and none of them disproves their theorem. How else should that be phrased? I am not even talking about "there is no paper anywhere", I'm talking about "there is no paper in that arXiv website", which is a simple and true statement. The three papers are available to anyone who wants to read them, they are freely distributed. The sentence is explicitly about the arXiv, which is what is referenced. If you want you can rephrase it with "no paper cites distler's bla bla with a counter argument" this is almost tautologically true, because the simple act of checking that list is the reference to the statement (that says that in that list there is no disproof). How can such a thing be more verifiable than this?
 * If you want to be picky, much of what's said in this article is a lot less verifiable than the statement we are talking about: the whole non-technical overview is not directly referenced, other parts are misleading. It's not clear, for example, that most techniques used by Lisi are commonly used in physics, i could keep going. And discussing about whether or not to put the (true) statement that there is no paper


 * The three generation - one generation point is instead very important. Because not even Lisi says that that part of Distler's paper is wrong, simply because Distler did the math right, and nowhere there is a criticism on Distler's result in the strong form, the three generation one. What Scientryst is talking about is the minor issue about the one generation case, which again, is just a way to hide the main result. If you want I can add more direct quotations from the papers to make this point clear. Also, in science, math, physics, anything, how will you ever prove that a theorem is valid? You publish a proof, and then if there is an error, people will point it out. So it's natural to consider to be very important the fact that nobody publishes a paper to disprove Distler's paper, not even Lisi, who by the way even states that the theory with three generation doesn't work.


 * What is said about this page is that if you talk to researchers in physics, they laugh at this theory (even more than they should), for the many many problems the theory has. Instead we are here talking about how Scientryst is trying to make the theory appear better. Which should immediately look suspicious from the policy point of view given that a user in the past even thought he was Lisi himself.


 * If you take that sentence out, then the counter argument presented by Scientryst will also have to come out, because it's false. It is presented like a counter argument but it's not a counter argument, and it's not on the main result; it's just a different interpretation of a smaller detail, it makes no difference for the main result. It would be acceptable just in a section that talks about the sub-argument of the one generation, which is much less important than the main argument. The thing that makes me sad about but also focused on this page is that if a person understand about particle physics, everything i say would appear clear, as it would appear clear the attempt Scientryst is making to hide the problems. But we are here because Scientryst is a very clever editor that is trying to put things so that they fit the wikipedia policies, still trying to hide the real truth about the theory. Because Scientryst certainly knows that there is no paper disproving D&G's theorem (like Lisi obviously knows), still he puts the tag there in the hope that the sentence will come out and makes other corrections so that it seems that the main result is more debated than it is. I think this is really poorly ethical and shows personal interest. I don't know how to make myself more clear.


 * I can just say that I trust your judgement on the verifiability and the original research arguments, but this page really needs a different author from Scientryst to defend Lisi's point of view. I would never say something that makes Lisi's theory look worse than it is, but the opposite is happening quite often. And it's really sad for Wikipedia, because this is time consuming and silly.


 * 98.244.55.28 (talk) 07:03, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

By the way I want to thank you Qwyrxian for dedicating some time to even illustrate all the wikipedia policies, it's hard sometimes to move around those without an impact. 98.244.55.28 (talk) 07:26, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Last thing, would anyone say that I cannot write "as of the year 2000 no paper has been published disproving the pythagorean theorem in an euclidean space"? :-) I don't think this should be considered original research... 98.244.55.28 (talk) 07:35, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I do agree that we need to say here what is true, but it also needs to be well sourced. As far as what's true, I think we need to agree on two points: (1) Lisi stated in the original paper that embedding three generations of fermions doesn't work in the usual way and (2) Lisi's second E8 paper included a counter argument to Distler and Garibaldi on the issue of embedding a single generation. Do we agree? Once we agree on those, then I think we can do a better job on the lede.-Scientryst (talk) 13:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

(1) "... in the usual way" is not accurate --- it implies that Lisi showed that the embedding works in some "not-usual" way. In reality, his paper speculated on various possibilities on how the embedding of three generations might work. Distler and Garibaldi proved a no-go theorem, showing that those speculations don't work. (2) Lisi's 2nd paper is not a counter-argument to Distler-Garibaldi, even in the 1-generation case. The embedding he uses is already discussed in their paper (see Remark 8.2 of their paper) as an example of their general theorem. QuotScheme (talk) 14:53, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah, good, let us be more precise. On (1), in the original paper, Lisi says: "When considered as independent fields with E8 quantum numbers, irrespective of this triality relationship, the second and third generation of fields do not have correct charges and spins." That is direct. He's saying that embedding three generations doesn't work, and is apparently hoping for some sort of indirect association of E8 roots with the second and third generation fermions, but doesn't know exactly how that would work. The most optimistic thing he says is "It is conceivable that there is a more complicated way of assigning three generations of fermions to the E8 roots to get standard model quantum numbers for all three generations without triality equivalence." And we could talk about how to interpret "more complicated" - but really we don't know what he's implying. What we do know is that he's said a direct embedding doesn't work, and has emphasized it in the Conclusion as the biggest problem: "The relationship between fermion generations and triality is suggested by the structure of E8 but is not perfectly clear — a better description may follow from an improved understanding of…" And, if I remember correctly, he described the three generations as the biggest problem for the theory on some blogs, well before Distler and Garibaldi's paper. On (2), in Lisi's other paper, he writes: "Given this explicit embedding of gravity and the Standard Model inside E8(−24), one might wonder how to interpret the paper “There is no ‘Theory of Everything’ inside E8.”[7] In their work, Distler and Garibaldi prove that, using a direct decomposition of E8, when one embeds gravity and the Standard Model in E8, there are also mirror fermions. They then claim this prediction of mirror fermions (the existence of “non-chiral matter”) makes E8 Theory unviable. However, since there is currently no good explanation for why any fermions have the masses they do, it is overly presumptuous to proclaim the failure of E8 unification – since the detailed mechanism behind particle masses is unknown, and mirror fermions with large masses could exist in nature. Nevertheless, it was helpful of Distler and Garibaldi to emphasize the difficulty of describing the three generations of fermions, which remains an open problem." Now, that might not be a good argument countering Distler and Garibaldi, but it is indisputably an argument! Also note that he thanks Distler and Garibaldi for "emphasizing" the problem with three generations, not for pointing it out.-Scientryst (talk) 22:39, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

"...but it is indisputably an argument!"

Is it?

Distler-Garibaldi prove that the "best" Lisi can ever do is to obtain one generation and one mirror-generation. This is a problem on two counts.


 * 1) It predicts fermions that we don't see in nature (the mirror generation).
 * 2) It fails to predict fermions that we do see (the second and third generation).

On both counts, the theory that Lisi discusses in his second paper (which was already discussed by Distler-Garibaldi, as an example of their theorem) is "unviable" (to use his own phrase). The vague (and not terribly accurate) statement that "there is currently no good explanation for why any fermions have the masses they do" doesn't make it any less "unviable."

At best, Lisi is stating (I think, correctly) that a non-chiral theory (one generation and one mirror-generation) is self-consistent. That may be true, but it's not an argument against Distler-Garibaldi. QuotScheme (talk) 00:07, 18 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Apologies, because I can tell you're all quite interested in the subject matter, but this seems like its getting into WP:FORUM area. Remember, we aren't here to debate the merits of the individual theorems, nor can we do any original research in determining whether or not the people refuted each other.  Again, I get that as scientists you're used to using this sort of robust debate to achieve good answers (and I think that it's critical that you do so), but it's just not what we do here. It sounds like we can't even state whether or not D-G refuted Lisi; we can't decide for ourselves.  Qwyrxian (talk) 01:11, 18 July 2011 (UTC)


 * "It sounds like we can't even state whether or not D-G refuted Lisi; we can't decide for ourselves."


 * I didn't think we were trying to decide whether we could state that D-G refuted Lisi. What was stated in the article was that D-G claimed to refute Lisi (verifiable) in a peer-reviewed article one of the most respected journals in mathematical physics. Moreover, it was stated that no one has published (on the arXiv or in a peer-reviewed journal) a refutation of D-G's result. That also (should be) a verifiable statement. It suffices to note that any paper refuting D-G would necessarily cite them. So it suffices to look at the papers which cite them, to see whether any present any sort of counterargument.


 * The only one which comes close is Lisi's 2nd paper. We have been discussing whether the arguments presented there could be construed as a refutation. Clearly, even Scientryst doesn't think so: "Now, that might not be a good argument countering Distler and Garibaldi, but it is indisputably an argument!"

QuotScheme (talk) 05:55, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst, this is what I would agree with: (1a) Lisi in his first paper said that he doesn't find a way to embed the three generations, that the triality, though, gives him a hint for the way to follow, still not clear how; (2a) D-G say that there is NO way to embed those three generations in E8; (2a) Lisi says in the second paper that it's true that the three generations don't have an embedding and that their nature is obscure, but that there is at least one generation that has an embedding (this is not a counter argument). (2b) D-G in their paper list the same case implying that Lisi would get also an antigeneration (they are not in disagreement with the math, just with the interpretation, and this is explicitly verifiable); (2c) Lisi doesn't believe that the antigeneration is a problem.

This is what I would agree with.

QuotScheme, welcome, I see that there is somebody that understands what I'm saying and thanks for using very clear words. I tried for weeks.

Qwyrxian, please, I'm getting more and more confused. I understand what you say and all the difficulties related to arguments like this. But I got to the point where I don't understand how to contribute on wikipedia at all (and I've been doing it for a long time). What I'm saying is that in some sense any topic in particle physics is from some point of view original research, because what usually popular magazines report is always partially distorted if not even wrong. Say for example that I want to write something on the neutrino mass, how can I contribute? Physics at some level will always have to be related to some papers that aren't understandable by the average user. And about this specific page, don't you think then that a lot of what's written here is somehow original research? Look at the section "overview", technical and non-technical. Eventually there is even the introduction of a non-standard vector notation (not really useful in a wikipedia article). There is more on this theory and on Lisi than there is on Gell-Mann, one of the Nobel Prizes in physics. Nima Arkani-Hamed (20000 citations) has almost nothing on him. The whole Loop Quantum Gravity has even less material than this page has. What if I go to the pages of Loop Quantum Gravity and String Theory and I start complaining that a lot is original research? Should we close those pages? Here mostly it's just one user that has this "defensive point of view", while it seems to me that then a lot in this page should be considered original research, not just what Scientryst doesn't agree with. We have to agree on something. Either we add a tag of recentism or that the content is debated, or that the NPOV is debated. I don't see how it could be otherwise. Even just the page history and the discussion page are a clear proof of this. Really I don't see how to keep going.

Qwyrxian, specifically answering your points. It's not true that we can't stat whether or not D-G refuted Lisi. We can, easily, it's Scientryst that is not agreeing (and in my opinion with non ethical behavior). But even if you don't think this is the case, at least the words in the papers are clear and undebatable. I would be happy even just citing explicitly sentences from the papers. Because their significance is unambiguous and univoque. We are not deciding anything here, we are reporting what a paper said, period. I don't want to discuss whether or not D-G are right or wrong, that would be research. I just want to write that D-G said something, Lisi agrees with the three generation case (in a stronger way than what he originally wrote in his first paper), but then he believes that the one generation case has a different interpretation. This is simply what they said, without any research on our side. Can I understand why my logic is wrong? If anything, it's exactly following Scientryst and saying that what Lisi says is a counter argument that would be (wrong) "original research", because it is obvious that they all talk about that same case, which intrinsically makes it not a counter argument but a disagreement on the interpretation. We could even report the two direct quotations (or their summaries), which are: "D-G prove that the three generation case won't work for a large class of models, including Lisi's. Then they discuss and present a one generation case saying that the existence of an antigeneration makes even this simplified model non viable; Lisi responds that the antigeneration is not per se a problem. They both agree about the fact that the three generation case doesn't work." If not even this can be done, then at this point I suggest to decrease drastically what this page says and to make it very short and straight to the point, so that everything said will be universally agreed by all of us. At the end there is really no need for this page to be even longer and more detailed than the Loop Quantum Gravity page. 98.244.55.28 (talk) 04:39, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

On issue (1), I thought that Lisi was not hoping to embed three generations in the usual (direct) way, but rather use some sort of mapping based on triality to identify the anti-generation and other E8 generators with the other two generations. He doesn't give details, but he does say in the original paper that one doesn't get three generations in the usual way, and in his SciAm letter he says he said that. So I don't think it's right to imply that Distler and Garibaldi discovered the problem of three generations not embedding.


 * "I thought that Lisi was not hoping to embed three generations in the usual (direct) way, but rather use some sort of mapping based on triality to identify the anti-generation and other E8 generators with the other two generations. He doesn't give details ..."


 * Nor, in the intervening 3.5 years, has he supplied those details. So it's safe to assume that this was a speculation that didn't work out. He also speculated, in the same paper, that an alternative embedding might yield three generations. That possibility was closed by D-G.


 * +1 98.244.55.28 (talk) 17:06, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Quoting Lisi's first paper "This relationship between fermion generations and triality is the least understood aspect of this theory. It is conceivable that there is a more complicated way of assigning three generations of fermions to the E8 roots to get standard model quantum numbers for all three generations without triality equivalence. There is such an assignment known to the author that gives the correct hypercharges for all three generations, but it is not a triality rotation and it produces unusual spins. A correct description of the relationship between triality and generations, if it exists, awaits a better understanding." D-G had this awaited better understanding, such an embedding does not exist. 98.244.55.28 (talk) 19:00, 19 July 2011 (UTC)


 * "So I don't think it's right to imply that Distler and Garibaldi discovered the problem of three generations not embedding."


 * I don't think that's what's implied. Lisi certainly noticed the problem, but it was D-G who proved that it was unfixable. On the other hand, it is fair to say that Lisi did not notice the problem of mirror fermions in his original paper. We can credit D-G for point out that problem. QuotScheme (talk) 13:25, 19 July 2011 (UTC)


 * +1 98.244.55.28 (talk) 17:06, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

But I'm not sure what to do here. The page currently has 98.244.55.28's edits, some of which I think are unsourced, POV and problematic. They've also added some lengthy quoted material to the lede while at the same time arguing that the page is too long. I'd try to fix this, but 98.244.55.28 is accusing me of being unethical (without specifying why - presumably for POV), and reverting my edits. Also, I'm not sure, but someone (possibly 98.244.55.28) has been trying to rally Distler supporters (see bottom of http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/001505.html ) So maybe Qwyrxian should have a go at editing the lede, and we can help out as needed.-Scientryst (talk) 11:31, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst:

1) which would be my unsourced POV edits? I thought I gave sources and NPOV answers to all the points you raised...

2) I'm not arguing that the page is too long for my edits, I think the quotations are actually more important that a lot of the rest of the page (see non-technical overview and all the group theory stuff with the decomposition that is pretty useless IMHO). I'm saying that I believe this page should be a fifth of what it is now. And i think that would be the correct thing to do. If instead we have to be so lengthy, then the quotations need to be there because they clearly state what is said by Lisi and leave no space to misinterpretations.

3) It's interesting that you accuse me of rallying Distler's supporters, when: a) it seems to me that on the page you linked there was also Lisi responding and also people trying to be impartial; b) the post asks for impartial opinions and even says "don’t be supporters or detractors" but you still say it's for "supporters"; c) you are the first one here being accused to be Lisi, now you accuse me while you even go check Distler's blog, you don't fully answer here when we point out things, but have the time to go and check people's blogs, very interesting; d) if you were really Lisi this would be a clear infringement of policies like conflict of interest or don't write your own article (it's easy to request an admin to check your IP and see if it's from Maui or Tahoe or both, if accused of promoting yourself); e) i did specify why you are unethical: it's because you clearly know a lot of things about Lisi's research, but you point out things on the edits that you obviously know are true, but are trying to make them go away because they don't make Lisi's theory look good. And I think this is by definition Tendentious editing.

4) Again, my words maybe were not clear, Lisi in the first paper says he couldn't find a way, but leaves open the possibility of including the three generations in some other way. D-G prove that there is NO way. Lisi after that he has other ideas how to do it. This ideas have never been expressed. Nor it has been expressed what kind of BRST will be used to make those generators actually fermions, if for a miracle all the quantum numbers would work.

5) I vote for making this page a fifth of what it is to avoid edit wars on little details (like the ridiculous "several arXiv papers build on Lisi's theory" when just few of the papers that cite Lisi's are actually building on it, and most of them are Lisi's following papers, hiding the fact that one was a disproof, others briefly cite it, another even call it a "hopeless attempt"... this is to talk about being unethical... caring about several, or 16, with respect of "a few" when the substance of the citations is ignored).

98.244.55.28 (talk) 17:06, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

98.244.55.28:

On (1), they've mostly been correctly dealt with. I think we're down to this: You're refusing to remove your sentence "As of July 2011 no paper has been published or posted in the physics arXiv disproving Distler and Garibaldi's result." even though it has no source. And, more importantly, you deleted the phrases "countering Distler and Garibaldi's argument" and "Lisi argues that Distler and Garibaldi made unnecessary assumptions about how the embedding needs to happen" even though these statements were well sourced. This seems like it could be easily fixed with a small edit, which I'll make now, and you can once again revert and discuss if you find it objectionable.

On (2), I do agree that it's best to be clear, and appreciate that you've done that.

On (3), I may have to wait to see if I have been complimented or insulted. I use a Google alert on the name of this article, which showed me your blog comment. And I don't think my edits have been one sided - I'm shooting for NPOV.

On (4), not quite. Lisi in the first paper says that the usual way (a direct embedding) doesn't work, not just that he couldn't find it.

On (5), a few of those papers do build on Lisi's theory. But it does apear that we can reach agreement by relying on precision, such as using "16" rather than loaded words like "a few."

QuotScheme:

Lisi did not say that an alternative embedding might yield three generations, he said there might be some more complicated way than a direct embedding. And in the SciAm article he say he's been working on a solution: "Early on, it was pointed out that the theory does not accommodate all three generations of fermions in an obvious way, or describe their masses. This problem was identified in the original paper, with a potential solution coming from triality. As of one year ago I was extremely discouraged by this puzzle, but with some insights into triality gained at the recent conference in Banff I now think it may work. E8 gauge transformations related to triality might mix and describe three generations of fermions, but it is very tricky."

D-G did prove that three generations can't be directly embedded. But they didn't mention that Lisi had already said that, rather they claimed it as a refutation of his theory. And Lisi has argued against this.-Scientryst (talk) 19:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)


 * "Lisi did not say that an alternative embedding might yield three generations"
 * I beg to differ. He says, in his paper:
 * "It is conceivable that there is a more complicated way of assigning three generations of fermions to the E8 roots to get standard model quantum numbers for all three generations without triality equivalence."
 * That's, pretty clearly, talking about finding another embedding, which would yield 3 generations, directly (i.e., without invoking "triality equivalence").
 * "D-G did prove that three generations can't be directly embedded. But they didn't mention that Lisi had already said that..."
 * Lisi was certainly unaware that the theory in his first paper contained mirror fermions. And he was certainly unaware of the general theorem that D-G proved.
 * But, in Science, it doesn't matter what you know; it matters what you publish. So D-G get full credit for point out the problem of mirror fermions in Lisi;s theory, and full credit for proving that no variant embedding can ever yield more that one generation and one mirror-generation.
 * "As of one year ago I was extremely discouraged by this puzzle, but with some insights into triality gained at the recent conference in Banff I now think it may work."
 * Again, until there's a paper, this is just idle speculation on Lisi's part. A WP article on a scientific theory should not be based on popular press accounts (that includes SciAm) about idle speculations. It should be based on the scientific literature. If you want to re-categorize this as an article about Physics Performance Art, then we can use blogs and press reports and SciAm articles as sources. Otherwise, we should remove all that crap, and stick to sources from the scientific literature (whose reliability derives from their having been vetted by other scientist).QuotScheme (talk) 04:44, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst:

1a) The sentence "As of July 2011 no paper has been published or posted in the physics arXiv disproving Distler and Garibaldi's result." The source is simply that the papers on the arXiv are three and they don't contain a disproof. The source is the arXiv. Qwyrxian argues that this would be original research, but because you perfectly know the content of the papers, you know that that sentence is true. Arguing about what is a primary source and what is original research on a fact that is clearly true just proves your POVity and the unethical approach that I was talking about. Otherwise tell me why are you arguing about the source of a statement clearly true and verifiable?

1b) The statement "Lisi argues that Distler and Garibaldi made unnecessary assumptions about how the embedding needs to happen" was not well sourced. In fact, it refers only on the one generation case. There is no point in Lisi's 2010 paper where he states that D-G made unnecessary assumption on the main topic of their papers, which is the theory of everythinig in E8, not the special case of the universe without two generations. If there is a well sourced that explains what's wrong about the assumptions on the three generations in D-G result please indicate so. Otherwise this sentence goes within the discussion of the one generation-antigeneration case.

1c) Can you source where it is said how Lisi states that he wants to transform an antigeneration in an generation? I would be curious to know where he says that...

2) It has been very hard, though, because you are trying to use wikipedia policy tricks to hide things you don't like.

3) it's just a fact that you found that post, and it's interesting that you care about this page enough to put a google alert on it. You are clearly not shooting for POV, you are playing with little tricks to make the other users tired. Qwyrxian is shooting for NPOV. You are shooting for a version that would be Lisi-approved. You have a POV that is always Lisi's, never objective or different from what Lisi thinks. And what Lisi thinks is not NPOV, because his theory can be right or wrong independently on what he believes. The page is about the theory in his paper, not about Lisi's vision of the universe. But maybe this is why people believe you are Lisi.

4) If you spent less time on google alert and more reading what is written here you would have read the quotation above, which clearly shows how misleading and POV is your answer. I'll report it here. Quoting Lisi's first paper "This relationship between fermion generations and triality is the least understood aspect of this theory. It is conceivable that there is a more complicated way of assigning three generations of fermions to the E8 roots to get standard model quantum numbers for all three generations without triality equivalence. There is such an assignment known to the author that gives the correct hypercharges for all three generations, but it is not a triality rotation and it produces unusual spins. A correct description of the relationship between triality and generations, if it exists, awaits a better understanding." D-G had this awaited better understanding, such an embedding does not exist. And it's not true what you are trying to say with "Lisi in the first paper says that the usual way (a direct embedding) doesn't work, not just that he couldn't find it." It is enough to read the quotation, it is very clear. It never says that it doesn't work, like you are trying to phrase it so that you can get rid of D-G main result. Lisi clearly said that he couldn't find one, but didn't exclude its existence "It is conceivable that there is a more complicated way of assigning three generations of fermions..." need more?

5) nobody has ever said that none of them build on his theory. but it's the minority of the papers that cite Lisi's, and most of the ones that do are even his own. the version with "build on" was then misleading and made the paper look more important in physics than it is.

70.136.253.158 (talk) 00:11, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

You are overestimating the amount of effort I'm putting in to this. SciAm source added that answers your points - read it.-Scientryst (talk) 03:27, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Am I overestimating? Look at how many edits you have on this page, and how many years it's been that you are following this. But well, if this is the game you want to play, before re-reverting, you read what I wrote here. Because I'm reverting again, given that SciAm isn't the 2010 paper, like instead the page seems to say now (the sentence isn't talking about the SciAm). Thus your edit is false. What you are quoting is Lisi's response in SciAm, which isn't necessarily what's written in the paper, otherwise point out where in the paper he says that (and it needs to be explicitly on the three generation case, otherwise it goes where I put it). That part cannot be referring to the three generation problem, which is fully and clearly described by the quoted words from Lisi. This is frankly ridiculous, your behavior is blatantly POV. And have more respect for the people who don't agree with you... I hope that your unethical approach is becoming apparent to everybody here.

And instead of telling me to read something with this patronizing attitude, try to realize that I haven't even removed that sentence, I have just placed it in the place where it should be, which is where they talk about the one generation problem. The section about his answers in SciAm is in a different point of the page. You should perfectly know that I have read carefully everything, you should be able to tell from the details I have been giving in my comments. So stop responding with this "it's very clear" "read it", you are just showing the limits of your arguments. 98.244.55.28 (talk) 06:25, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, you have been very patient here, but it's impossible to reach an agreement with a person that even tries to mix up sources to defend Lisi's point of view. I'm asking you to help us understand how to deal with this edits and this user. I hope the tones of the discussion will change. Otherwise from now on I'll use Scientryst's method, I'll modify things immediately and I'll give very short explanations here. I'm considering whether it's worth my time to even write here, I'll just modify the POV or the false statements and I'll start working on a paper on the problems of the E8 theory, at least once the paper is on the arXiv and gets published my words will have a better impact (although this page reaches more young people that any scientific journal). 98.244.55.28 (talk) 06:25, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

98.244.55.28, I have not been reverting your many major changes to the lede; rather I have been attempting to insert a short well sourced fact, which you are reverting. That fact, stated in the SciAm letter, is that Lisi "argues that Distler and Garibaldi made unnecessary assumptions about how the embedding needs to happen" - for the one generation case, and for the three generation case. The way you have edited the lede, it implies that Lisi accepted Distler and Garibaldi's argument, which isn't so. It is because you have this fact wrong, and are reverting its correction, that I recommended you read the SciAm letter.-Scientryst (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2011 (UTC)


 * "That fact, stated in the SciAm letter, is that Lisi 'argues ...'"
 * This is not an article about Garrett Lisi's hopes and dreams. There's a separate article for that. This is an article about a scientific theory and, until he writes a paper, Lisi's objections to D-G's theorem are just idle speculations. They don't belong in this article, let-alone in the lede. QuotScheme (talk) 14:24, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst, I know what the SciAm says. It is important to be accurate distinguishing what's said in a paper and what's said in the SciAm blog answer to criticism. The current edit reflect this point well I think. In your edit the sentence would look to be referring to the 2010 paper, which is clearly not the case (otherwise point out where in the 2010 paper he says that, given that there is a clear quotation about the three generation case in that paper). That quotation can be certainly included, but either in the one generation case (which agrees with what's said in the 2010 paper and it's where I put it with my edit) or in the part of the lede that has the interview, where there is also the other quotation about the three generations. There are four different things here: 1) the theory, which is based on Lisi's paper(s), that are published or publicly available; 2) what other published papers say about or prove about or use of the theory; 3) what Lisi says about the theory; 4) what others say about the theory. Point 1) and 2) should be what we need to follow when we write the page. Points 3) and 4) should have the same weight and are important when some explanations are necessary for clarity.

There is a big difference between words said in a SciAm article and in a peer reviewed article. For example, even assuming that the sentence refers to the three generations, it could be the case that Lisi wanted to include the sentence "Distler and Garibaldi made unnecessary assumptions about how the embedding needs to happen" in the 2010 paper but the referees didn't accept this sentence without a proper proposed solution or a proper discussion of the assumptions. It could be, of course we don't and can never know, and this is a clear invented example. But this is why it's very important to distinguish when things are said in a paper and when they are said in an interview. Because in a peer reviewed paper things receive a careful scrutiny, which doesn't ensure necessarily correctness, but at least a serious approach. In an interview I can say whatever I want, in fact sometimes SciAm articles are not precise, sometimes are not accurate, and sometimes they even have wrong statements. It's a popular magazine after all, not a scientific journal.

I would be very happy if Lisi published a paper that works perfectly and finds the theory of everything. Who wouldn't be? But before we claim that, we need to see how to solve: the three generation problem, the BRST problem, the different masses problem, the cosmological constant problem, the symmetry breaking problem, the dark matter problem... and so on... there is a lot to do to have a theory of everything, it's not enough to say "I have an idea on how to do it" or "I'll use axions" or "it's not used in the usual way". Things need to be showed in a theory. Otherwise you aren't talking about the theory, you are talking about what you would like the theory to do and some direction you want to follow, but not what the stage of the theory is. 128.120.115.147 (talk) 18:47, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

You both are insisting on using primary sources and not secondary sources, which is counter to Wikipedia's guidelines. However, even in your primary source of choice, Lisi's 2010 paper, he says:

"Distler and Garibaldi prove that, using a direct decomposition of E8, when one embeds gravity and the Standard Model in E8, there are also mirror fermions. They then claim this prediction of mirror fermions (the existence of “non-chiral matter”) makes E8 Theory unviable. However, since there is currently no good explanation for why any fermions have the masses they do, it is overly presumptuous to proclaim the failure of E8 unification – since the detailed mechanism behind particle masses is unknown, and mirror fermions with large masses could exist in nature."

That is an argument against Distler and Garibaldi's proof that one generation can't work - basically, that they made unnecessary assumptions. Now if it was just me saying that, then that statement shouldn't go in the WP article because it's an interpretation of a primary source. But we do have a reliable secondary source - the SciAm article - which speaks to the one generation issue and the three generation issue:

"In what has turned out to be the most widespread and destructive criticism, some physicists were misled to believe that the structure of gravity and the Standard Model (including one generation of fermions with parity-violating interactions) does not embed in the structure of the E8 Lie group. This criticism was first made and widely disseminated by Jacques Distler and Skip Garibaldi. It gained more public attention on the blog of cosmologist Sean Carroll, who wrote that "[Distler] shows that you can't even embed one generation [in E8]." Distler's colleagues also wrote a letter to the editor of Scientific American decrying the lack of parity violation. This fact would seem very damning for E8 Theory, but it is simply not true. The structure of gravity and the Standard Model along with one generation of fermions (including their parity-violating interactions) does fit in E8, as I described explicitly in a recent paper. In their misleading argument, Distler and Garibaldi make unnecessary assumptions about how the embedding needs to happen, and then prove it can't happen that way -- a "straw man" argument."

and

"Early on, it was pointed out that the theory does not accommodate all three generations of fermions in an obvious way, or describe their masses. This problem was identified in the original paper, with a potential solution coming from triality. As of one year ago I was extremely discouraged by this puzzle, but with some insights into triality gained at the recent conference in Banff I now think it may work. E8 gauge transformations related to triality might mix and describe three generations of fermions, but it is very tricky. This issue remains the most significant problem, and until it is solved the theory is not complete and cannot be considered much more than a speculative proposal. Without fully describing how the three generations of fermions work, the theory and all predictions from it remain tenuous."

and

"When one embeds gravity, the Standard Model forces, and the 64 particle states of one generation of fermions inside E8, there are many particles left over. Among these "extra" particles are "mirror fermions" -- partners to the fermions with all opposite charges (including opposite spins, making these different than antiparticles). Critics contend that these mirror fermions are bad, making the theory "nonchiral," and that the existence of physical mirror fermions has almost been ruled out by experiment. However, I see these extra particle states in E8 as providing a potential solution to the problem of the missing second and third generation fermions, since triality transformations can relate the 64 fermions of one generation to two other blocks of 64 in E8, including the mirror fermions."

Now, you may prefer primary sources, but here in this SciAm article we have a reliable secondary source speaking directly to our topics, so we should use it - and not just cherry pick the parts out of it that agree with your POV.-Scientryst (talk) 21:55, 20 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Your quixotic interpretation of WP policy notwithstanding, no other WP article about a scientific theory relies, for the bulk of its source material, on popular press reports, blog posts, etc. They all cite scientific textbooks and the scientific literature for the bulk of their sources. This article, far from adhering to WP's norms, is the embarrassing exception. (Qwyrxian is welcome to chime in on this point, but anyone, familiar with the scientific content on WP, can see where this article parts company with the others.)


 * In any case, regardless of where the information is gleaned, if the subject is unpublished speculations (on Lisi's, or anyone else's, part), then it doesn't belong in an article on a scientific theory.


 * Wait until Lisi has actually published a paper working out the details, and then you can include it. QuotScheme (talk) 22:41, 20 July 2011 (UTC)


 * "That is an argument against Distler and Garibaldi's proof that one generation can't work - basically, that they made unnecessary assumptions."


 * That's ridiculous. With or without the mirror fermions, the one-generation model is in flagrant disagreement with the real world, where there are 3 generations (and no mirror generations). It trivially "doesn't work." No assumptions (warranted, or unwarranted) are required. Obviously, Lisi is not so foolish as to think that it does work. Your interpretation is evidently flawed. QuotScheme (talk) 23:35, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst, everything you posted in your last edit here in the discussion page is perfectly reflected by the current version of the page. Like you exactly specify, the first quotation you indicated is about the one generation case, and in the current edit that is where it is placed. There isn't much room to disagree on it. You have indicated yourself that that is a disagreement on the one generation case. And that is where I moved your sentence, in the sentence that talks about the one generation case.

The other quotations are even present in the page, so I don't understand what you want to prove with those. They are part of the page already.

About the possible solutions, indicated by Lisi, to the problems, they can certainly be indicated as quotations, but not in the summary of what a paper says if it's not what the paper actually says. And we can certainly wait for Lisi to post some math on it, instead of hunches and hints, because one of the principle in wikipedia is that there is no rush to write a paper. So we can wait for Lisi to indicate how to solve this problems instead of indicating every word he says about it. Again, this page is about a theory, not about Lisi. Lisi's statement are much less important than papers on the theory. They are important, of course, since he wrote the original paper, but the quotation have to be very relevant, this is not a blog to report each thing that he says about it.

Primary sources are compatible with scientific theory pages, and you should know it because you have been told already on this page.

If instead you think that Lisi found out that chiral fermions aren't actually chiral fermions (which is something mathematically clearly defined), then I can't wait to see the new paper. But even in that case, it wouldn't mean that D-G made unnecessary assumptions, it would mean that Lisi is saying that our three generations of fermions (experimentally confirmed) aren't actually chiral fermions like the rest of the physics community believe. That's not an unnecessary assumption on how the fermions are embedded, that would be a different concept of fermions and particle physics that nobody knows anything about. The quantum numbers are what they are, they can't be changed.

70.136.253.158 (talk) 23:29, 20 July 2011 (UTC)