Talk:An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything/Archive 5

I'm lost
Uhhh...I'm completely lost. Too much physics, too little sources. As a starting point, could the two of you please list exactly what changes you want made to the article? Without any explanations? I can't tell how far away from a compromise we are. If there's a diff of your preferred version in the article history, linking to that is fine. I'm trying to help, but the huge amount of volume you're both producing makes it nearly impossible for an interested but uninformed outside to follow. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:05, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

a) As a starting point I'm ok keeping the page like it is, some of the edits are my own. Once the points we have been discussing lately are in agreement, we can start editing other things. I think I have explained enough above, point by point. I can copy and paste what I have already written if needed;

b) I would reduce the amount of data presented in some of the technical questions and make the page shorter. Most physics pages aren't that detailed and there is really no reason to explain what kind of unusual mathematical formalism Lisi uses. It's not useful information in an Encyclopedia. This page is not a way to advertise Lisi's theory or Lisi's paper, thus the lede, a technical summary to be rewritten a little more succinctly and the chronology and reactions sections are more than enough. If the reader is interested in reading a lot of things about the decomposition they can read Lisi's paper, wikipedia is not a place where to put all the results written in a paper (and Lisi was even wrong in some of the last comments about the E8 decomposition in his original paper, like he admitted in Distler's blog, I go by memory here... and let's not even talk about when he wanted to use the complex E8 instead of the real E8, when he said that he "was sure" it'd work...);

c) I would like to request to an admin a little digging on the IP (if they are mostly from Hawaii or Tahoe, or from an iphider) to check if the user Scientryst is actually Lisi trying to advertise his work, going against many wikipedia policies (like conflict of interest or don't write your own article or Tendentious editing). Otherwise, because looking at the history of the page it seems like Scientryst is the main contributor for both the page (if we exclude one banned user that had several minor edits in a row) and the discussion page, I would like to have Scientryst take a pause from editing and leaving some other wikipedian edit this page. It is quite strange that he's almost the only one trying to make this theory look better than it is.

d) Everything I said is well sourced and I indicated the source each time I wrote something here. I can repeat the main sources: Lisi's original paper, D-G's paper, Lisi's other paper for the physics and some quotations. SciAm for quotations and comments. 98.244.55.28 (talk) 03:35, 21 July 2011 (UTC)


 * No comment on b, for now (an issue, as you say, for later), but on c, what you ask is completely forbidden and absolutely unnecessary. First, we never, under any circumstances, attempt to determine the real world identity of any editor.  In fact, if you somehow found out that I, for example, was Lisi, and you announced that on Wikipedia, you'd be severely criticized and possibly outright blocked (this is called WP:OUTING).  We aren't even allowed to identify the IP address of a named editor.  Second, you have got to stop criticizing Scientryst as an editor, and stick only to criticizing the edits that you think are not neutral, not well sourced, or whatever.  Technically speaking, even if Scientryst is Lisi, or Distler, or anyone else related to this discussion, it is acceptable to for that person to edit the article, so long as they do so following all of our policies.  If you have some evidence, beyond just the point of view that you allege, that Scientryst is one of the principals (or is related to them), you can take it to the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard.  I will tell you, though, that I see no evidence of that at all.  Scientryst may at some times be a bit on Lisi's "side", but, to be honest, your editing looks POV to me sometimes, too.  Alternatively, if you just think Scientryst isn't being neutral, then take it to WP:NPOVN.  But your repeated attempt to turn this into a problem with Scientryst, instead of just focusing on making the article better, is unhelpful and is moving towards unacceptable.
 * As for answering my question, my interpretation of what you say in "a" is that the way the article stands at this exact moment is acceptable with regards to the way the D&G vs. Lisi Arxiv issue is being treated--is that correct? If so, Scientryst, what change is it that you specifically want to see? Qwyrxian (talk) 05:00, 21 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Qwyrxian, I'll thank you for the answer, But I didn't like the tone you had because, honestly, it's been a month that I've been asking how to deal with this issue with no response (I didn't know all these policies). I had read somewhere (clearly a poor source) that admins were allowed to check IPs in some cases, my bad, so I thought I was just acting following the policies I found. Now I know and sooner or later I'll take the situation to WP:NPOVN first and then if I find other things to Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. I strongly disagree with my edits being POV, I must admit that I have been stumbling into subtle WP policies that I had never been exposed before and didn't know how to treat. So maybe today I wouldn't edit things the way I did a few weeks ago, but "everything" I have edited is the verifiable truth, honestly. The problem is that here there is this strangely inclusive definition of original research that doesn't even allow us to say "no paper has been posted on the arXiv disproving D-G paper", a true statement. I didn't know I couldn't say something true and verifiable just because it needed direct verification. There is also a subtle "interpretation" of what "interpretation of sources" means that I wasn't aware of. This is to say that my edits maybe were to adjust, but they were not POV, they were just saying something true maybe in a silly way. By the way, in my career I spent a lot of words defending parts of this theory, so I really don't think I am POV, it's that the theory really has problems, but for an outsider it looks like there is partisan lines, when in reality physics is just physics. Clear to me, to D-G and to Lisi. Otherwise can I ask which ones of my edits are POV?


 * As far as my behavior goes, I tried several times to stop talking about Scientryst as an editor, but his way of answering "read it, it's clear" often editing without even responding to the points raised (it took a while and a few reverts to get him to respond) made me go back to criticizing him as an editor (and I really am not the first one nor the last one having issues with Scientryst, the discussion page is here to prove it). And when I realize that Scientryst understands very well our points but still tries to play with clever edits, that ruins the efforts we are all putting here. Also, it really isn't too much to ask an editor to leave the article sit for a while, especially when there is you checking the page.


 * Your interpretation is correct as far as I am concerned at this moment. I would like to understand how to deal or include the true statement just mentioned (no disproof published) if possible. Of course I can't talk for QuoteScheme, who seems to have a point of view even stronger than mine (although what he says is physically correct).

98.244.55.28 (talk) 05:58, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, I thought this version from a few days ago was acceptably NPOV: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything&oldid=440361835 The main difference is to state, clearly and up front, that Lisi offered counter arguments to Distler's criticism. The two phrases I added to do this are "Lisi argues that Distler and Garibaldi made unnecessary assumptions about how the embedding needs to happen" and "or that the antigeneration should be transformed to a generation."

However, I think a larger problem is that the lede has gotten too long. The reason this has happened, and why this article is such a mess in general, is because Lisi and his theory are strongly polarizing. You have some people calling him a crackpot and others hailing him as the new physics messiah. And this page reflects that, with factoids hurled like rocks from both sides. The truth, as best I can tell, is that Lisi put forward an interesting and reasonably conservative unification idea that has a bunch of typical problems - but then this event got hyped by the media. Lisi himself did not help abate the hype. And some physicists got their feathers ruffled and tried to discredit him, mostly successfully. It does seem that most of the hepth people I talk to hold the opinion that Distler simply proved Lisi's theory is wrong (sometimes with a joke about it at least being good enough to be wrong). The QG contingent seems more open, but even they think this has mostly just been a media circus. Lisi does seem to have some traction with this theory though: a couple of peer reviewed papers, a workshop in Banff, a feature in SciAm - these are not the signs of a dead theory.

So, with all this contention, and a theory that even its author says is incomplete, arriving at a good and NPOV WP article is difficult. I do think we should be able to use the Scientific American articles as sources, as well as research papers provided we're careful. What I'd like to see is a smaller and tighter lede, with the existing description (mostly by 98.244.55.28) of the arguments (which are fairly good) moved down to the "Chronology and reaction" section. Rewriting the lede seems to attract thrown stones though, so I'll here propose something a little odd: Although not always agreeing with them, I've been impressed with 98.244.55.28's understanding of the physics issues here and his reasonable arguments. And Qwyrxian seems an experienced WP editor. So, only if the two of you agree, I propose that the three of us spend a few days rewriting the lede - sticking to NPOV as best we can, and defending it from edits that swing it away from that, until we get it to a place the three of us are satisfied with. If you both agree, then I'll have a go at editing a first draft, otherwise I won't waste my time. And I'm not meaning to insult or antagonize other editors here, just trying to put together a small group to come up with a NPOV draft.-Scientryst (talk) 19:54, 21 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Scientryst, other than some minor formatting, the one difference I see between the version you show and the current one is the addition of this paragraph:
 * "As of July 2011 three papers in the physics arXiv cite Distler and Garibaldi's result. Amongst these papers, Nesti and Percacci say that An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything "stumbled in chirality issues"."


 * If this is correct, then I believe that at least the first sentence should remain out (it's simply not relevant how many people cited something, at least when the number is relatively small).
 * As for the larger issue, I think that you are absolutely correct that the lead is too long. The lead should cover an extremely broad explanation of the topic, mention that there has been significant controversy regarding the quality/accuracy of the work, and then everything else should go into the article.  Leads should not seek to give the whole picture--that's what the article is for.  For that matter, I agree with 99... above, when xe says that the article itself is too long--we don't need to provide all of the math and detailed analysis here in an encyclopedic overview; again, we're not trying to make it possible for readers to understand exactly how the theory works, only to broadly understand its scope.  I probably won't have time in the next 4-5 days to start anything as adventuresome as a re-write of the lead, but I'm happy to provide input when I can.  99..., do you agree that the lead is too long and excess info could be removed or at least incorporated into the body of the article? Qwyrxian (talk) 23:15, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I think I should bow out, at this point, but before I leave, let me summarize why I am pessimistic that the proposed rewrite effort will succeed in improving this article. The over-arching problem with this article is that it exploits (or suffers from, depending on your point of view) a discrepancy between the Wikipedia notion of Reliable Sources and the notion of Reliable Sources used in the scientific community. A statement made in a peer-reviewed scientific paper and a statement made in a newspaper interview are given equal weight under WP:RS because both the newspaper and the scientific journal are considered reliable. But, under the norms prevailing in Science, the latter is given negligible weight; only the former is considered reliable (having been subject to peer-review, etc).

How does that play out, in the present dispute about some sentences in the lede? The dispute centers around the status of D-G's no-go theorem for Lisi's theory. If we look at the scientific literature, there is only one paper (Lisi's 2nd), which presents a counter-argument to D-G. And that counter-argument is, as Scientryst himself says, very weak
 * "Now, that might not be a good argument countering Distler and Garibaldi, but it is indisputably an argument!"

So, if we stick to the scientific literature, we get the impression that D-G's theorem is on pretty solid ground.

On the other hand, Lisi has expounded on his critique in a variety of places in the popular press (in newspaper interviews, in his SciAm blog posting, ...). If we give equal weight to those statements, we get the very different impression, that D-G have been resoundingly refuted.

The pattern repeats itself throughout the article (once you're done editing the lede). Unlike any other WP article on a scientific theory, this one is largely sourced by articles in the popular press, blog post, etc, rather than the scientific literature. So it gives an impression of the status of the theory, which is unrepresentative of its scientific status. QuotScheme (talk) 15:11, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, let's try to wrap up:

i) I want to thank again Qwyrxian for the help offered and the time spent. I want to thank QuotScheme for the clear physical arguments made that certainly made the discussion richer. I also want to thank Scientryst for the effort he's making into having a shared version of the lead that would make us all happy.

ii) I agree that the lead is long, though I'd rather keep it this way than creating a misleading lead. If we can write a draft here in the discussion page and then switch when the three of us reach a version that is well sourced and NPOV than I'll be ok with the switching to a lighter form. Then we can move the quotations in the lower section; at the same time I'll slowly indicate (it takes time) how to make the page more readable (cutting parts that aren't important, like the definition of how Lisi writes vectors, one-forms and so on, which is not important unless you read the paper, but at that point the description is there);

iii) I agree with this statement: "The lead should cover an extremely broad explanation of the topic, mention that there has been significant controversy regarding the quality/accuracy of the work, and then everything else should go into the article. Leads should not seek to give the whole picture--that's what the article is for". I think we lost the shortness of the lead when we started arguing about the D-G impact.

iv) I agree with this statement: "Lisi and his theory are strongly polarizing. You have some people calling him a crackpot and others hailing him as the new physics messiah. And this page reflects that, with factoids hurled like rocks from both sides. The truth, as best I can tell, is that Lisi put forward an interesting and reasonably conservative unification idea that has a bunch of typical problems - but then this event got hyped by the media. Lisi himself did not help abate the hype." To this I would add that one of the problems is Lisi's attitude towards talking about physics in places like the SciAm blog, offering arguments that are not very solid in terms of real research. It could be the journalists' fault, because sometimes they don't know exactly what they are talking about and make wrong simplifications. This is why I don't like popular magazines if you have to source real science, theories and exact research. Also, what mainly damages Lisi's image in the physics community is his approach towards the problems of the theory. If any physicist would give a talk on a theory saying that he thinks it will work, or that he has ideas on how to approach it, the audience would consider him a superficial researcher. A job is never presented unless there is solid results to show, otherwise it has to be presented as a toy model being very clear that the theory at the moment doesn't work (not only that it is incomplete, because you can't know if it could even be completed, ever). Normal physicists would tackle immediately the main problems, which are an explicit BRST realization, an explicit Coleman-Mandula analysis and an explicit symmetry breaking mechanism, showing how to get different coefficients out of root coefficients to satisfy the complex structure of mixings and masses. A normal physicist does that as the first thing. When people propose new ideas, like the use of a different particle for some unification or for the electroweak symmetry breaking, they need to reproduce all the current results to be published as a viable theory. Otherwise they have to publish things as toy models. If they won't do this they will be laughed at and they're career ends very shortly. But instead of doing this (taking care of the main striking missing parts of the theory), Lisi spends time writing a paper in response to D-G that ends up having the same structure that D-G predicted and without presenting anything new, if not a short counter argument on the one generation case that needed just a one-page comment in the PRL format to be said clearly. Most of the new ingredients are presented in interviews with no papers, which would be instead the most important thing to do to make the theory advance. Science cannot be done through popular magazine articles saying that he has the solutions if he never shows them. This might allow him to be sourced on wikipedia as offering answers but really the answers aren't out there yet. I think that the first two things Lisi needs to do are the explicit BRST realization and the explicit symmetry breaking (with one or three generations). Without this, the theory will stay stuck where it has been for the last three years. And he knows it, that's why I don't understand his approach to the press and the blogsphere, although I must admit that it's not easy to deal with the press and that things get easily out of hand (especially if they pay you for interviews and tv and stuff). But the science suffers from this aspect. Eventually it will become a matter of what he cares the most, the physics or the press/money/ads.

v) I strongly disagree with this statement: "The main difference is to state, clearly and up front, that Lisi offered counter arguments to Distler's criticism. The two phrases I added to do this are 'Lisi argues that Distler and Garibaldi made unnecessary assumptions about how the embedding needs to happen" and "or that the antigeneration should be transformed to a generation'." First, at the most we can say that Lisi stated that he has arguments, not that he offered them (see discussion in a couple of lines). But anyways, this is definitely not true in the 2010 paper, where there is no trace of any comment about unnecessary assumptions in D-G proof. The comment is on the one generation case of D-G paper, which is where the phrase currently is placed in the page (just two lines below the location where Scientryst had posted it, so my edit just moved it in the right place, I didn't remove it). I think that we can talk about, in case, using this phrase in a section that talks about the SciAm responses, but certainly not when we talk about the 2010 paper. Also, I believe that Scientryst's interpretation of those words isn't correct, because I have never seen an explicit argument by Lisi against the assumptions for the three generation case. I think that at the least we should agree that it's not obvious nor well sourced enough that Lisi offered counter arguments (read infinite discussions above) to the three generation case. And the interpretation of that quote to me doesn't apply to anything but the one generation case, thing that is confirmed by the direct quotations from both the 2010 paper and the SciAm interview. I would agree that Lisi offered a counter argument to the one generation case, but then we need to specify why the three generation case is the one to solve and why the real world cannot be represented by only one generation. But then we go back to an infinitely long discussion. I think that the best thing I would be able to agree with on the three generation matter, if we really want to go through this, is that Lisi claims to have an argument, but he hasn't expressed the argument (because really, where is it? I would like to know). Saying that assumptions are unnecessary isn't an argument, at least not if you don't say which assumptions and how they are unnecessary. And saying that one generation can be transformed into another generation without saying how is ridiculous as an argument, it's like if i want to solve some string theory infinity problems saying that they can be made finite: to say I have an argument I've gotta say how! Otherwise is just barber shop talk. The only place where I see an explicit argument about the assumptions is on the one generation case, where we can talk about what the consequences are, but that at least there is an explicit mention. About the three generation case I don't see any arguments, unless we start giving not obvious interpretation to Lisi's words or we are trying to interpret them in his own advantage. At the very least the whole thing seems too messy and unclear to me to be able to say that Lisi offered clear and up front counter arguments. The only thing I can see neatly is that he made clear and upfront refusal of D-G result in one generation, and that he still hopes to be able to get three generations (and I don't care that maybe some mathematician told him how to maybe approach the problem, if we have no real words to base our draft we would just be talking about Lisi's hopes instead of a unification theory, which is a separate entity from Lisi's vision).

vi) I agree with this statement: "So, if we stick to the scientific literature, we get the impression that D-G's theorem is on pretty solid ground. On the other hand, Lisi has expounded on his critique in a variety of places in the popular press (in newspaper interviews, in his SciAm blog posting, ...). If we give equal weight to those statements, we get the very different impression, that D-G have been resoundingly refuted." The risk is that if we just care about the popular press then we risk to present an article which would be science like astrology is, where everybody can say everything they want and the only thing that matters is how many people like it instead of being correct. It's a dangerous choice for scientific pages. Somehow I would like real papers to have more importance than magazines when we talk about results, theories and arguments, while I would leave the popular magazines for the descriptive parts and the quotations in the chronology part. This would make the page more similar to all other high energy physics pages, where most of the physics comes either from physics well established books, or from papers for recent progress. Personal interviews and summaries are too subjective to give a NPOV representation.

So, let's start a draft hoping that we will be happy enough with a three-handed version. Qwyrxian and Scientryst, do you want to discuss any of the points above before we start or can we just start the writing? Scientryst, do you want to write the first draft and then I'll give my edits and Qwyrxian will use his judgement to keep us as NPOV as possible?

98.244.55.28 (talk) 19:49, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, that seems reasonable. Before I make a first attempt, lets discuss a couple of points as you suggest.

On (ii), the main problem I see with deleting the section on Lisi's vector-form notation is that then we can't use that notation when writing Lisi's formulas, and instead we'd have to convert to a more standard notation, which I'm worried would constitute original research.

On (iii), agreed.

On (iv) Lisi does seem to have carefully stated his case in the SciAm letter, so I treat that as I would a preprint. And in the sections you quoted from him, currently in the article, he seems clear on expressing the problem with three generations and that this is an incomplete theory. You say "Normal physicists would tackle immediately the main problems, which are an explicit BRST realization, an explicit Coleman-Mandula analysis and an explicit symmetry breaking mechanism, showing how to get different coefficients out of root coefficients to satisfy the complex structure of mixings and masses." Lisi does have a previous paper on the explicit BRST realization: http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0212041v3 And the explicit Coleman-Mandula analysis was done by Percacci, supporting Lisi's technique: http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.0303 On the symmetry breaking, he's done this in the paper with Smolin: http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.4866O On the mixing and masses, yes, that's missing, and is important. Lisi only has handwaving and some sketchy words about triality for that. But nobody can currently produce correct mixing and masses, so that seems a lot to ask before allowing a researcher to propose an idea. On there being "nothing new" in Lisi's 2010 paper, he does describe the embedding explicitly on the Lie algebra level, even using matrix reps of generators, which is new.

On (v), you say "at the most we can say that Lisi stated that he has arguments, not that he offered them" and "this is definitely not true in the 2010 paper, where there is no trace of any comment about unnecessary assumptions in D-G proof." This is wrong. In the 2010 paper Lisi says "since there is currently no good explanation for why any fermions have the masses they do, it is overly presumptuous [of D-G] 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." This is Lisi's argument, that mirror fermions aren't necessarily fatal, as D-G assumed, because they either might have high masses or be interpreted in some other way. I think we need to be careful with the D-G criticism because many people took it to mean that nothing in Lisi's theory worked. You say "I have never seen an explicit argument by Lisi against the assumptions for the three generation case" but in the SciAm letter he says "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." Right there he is saying that it is a bad assumption to presume a direct embedding of the three gens in E8, and that he's hoping a "triality" transformation will come to his rescue. You say "The only thing I can see neatly is that he made clear and upfront refusal of D-G result in one generation, and that he still hopes to be able to get three generations" - I agree with that, provided we clarify that he has not been trying to get three generations via a direct embedding - since that was stated not to work in his original paper and proved not to work by D-G - but he's proposing to get the three gens via a transformation for which he has not provided adequate details.

On (vi), I agree when it comes to the words of journalists, but disagree in that I think that the words of physicists in the popular press are often very helpful.

98.244.55.28, we do seem in conflict over the issues which I point out above. Is there anything above where you think what I have said is blatantly wrong? What are your thoughts?-Scientryst (talk) 01:28, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, really quick:

ii) that's not necessarily true, the main results can be written in Ls notation and then we can remand to Ls paper for a deeper understanding.

iv) well, on this I don't think we are on the same wavelength. I know all these papers but one. Which letter are you referring to? I can't treat it as a preprint given that it's not available to a non-subscriber of SciAm (I can't access the file - edit: is it the 7 page entry on the SciAm website? I thought it was written as an actual preprint so I didn't understand. Honestly it wasn't really a physics paper because it's mostly a review and presents wavy explanations and speculations, it was an nice presentation for a general public, but I can't say it presents new physics). I know the BRST paper and actually I like that paper (didn't Baez even talk about it once?) but honestly its application to E8 seems rather ad hoc. In the sense that there isn't a real reason why some of the field would act the way Lisi wants them to act (the symmetry breaking is by hand). Plus in any other case ghost degrees of freedom disappear from the spectrum, so there is still work to do in that direction because it is not obvious at all that L would dynamically get the right Lagrangian in the QFT limit. In N=1 SUSY you have a clear difference between chiral and gauge super multiplets, and the BRST doesn't transform one into each other in that case. What's in Ls theory so far is rather formal and not explicit. There is a needed step "strictly" related to the chirality issue. Ls himself has a problem with getting the quantum numbers and the spins right. Percacci's paper I know really well, but honestly the way he mentions Ls use of the C-M theorem isn't very exhaustive. Actually it doesn't even imply that the procedure would necessarily work without an explicit use of what they call broken phase, which is interesting but very tricky. I quote: "The classic CM theorem cannot be applied, but the preceding discussion shows that there would still be no mixing between the internal and space-time (de Sitter) symmetries. So, the cosmological constant is irrelevant for this issue. On the other hand in the “fully symmetric” phase the VEV of the metric would be zero. This is a different, “topological” state of the theory that we have not even considered here. As discussed in [a previews interesting paper], the CM theorem does not forbid the mixing of internal and space-time symmetries in a topological phase, nor does any other argument of the type given here." The paper you mention with Smolin doesn't help that much. Because even if it's true that it provides with a symmetry breaking, fermions are treated differently while it is necessary to see how the theory is broken with respect to the fermionic generatos, which in the paper with Smolin and Speziale live in a non-Lisi unified fundamental representation. The symmetry breaking mechanism, also, refers to Smolin's previews paper, and it is still based on an ansatz, which makes the symmetry broken ad hoc and with no apparent reason. An explicit mechanism (something like composite Higgs dynamical symmetry breaking) is still one of the most important things to provide to be considered a theory of everything, even more important than having three generations of fermions, imho. About the mixing matrix I am not sure I understand, the Higgs mechanism has no problems. Split supersymmetry has no problems. And if we care a lot about fine tuning than we have extra dimension models where all the Yukawas are of the same order on one brane and run differently because of their different level of compositeness which splits their masses. If you are talking about not having a gauge flavor symmetry that's ok, I agree, but you need to have the right coefficients first. We don't even know if the flavor symmetry is nothing but an accidental symmetry. About the 2010 paper, well, that specific embedding is new, yes, but it is not quite as useful as one of the other points I mentioned, imho obviously. That the embedding was possible was clear since D-G's paper, even if not explicit. I'm not saying the 2010 paper is to be thrown away, I'm saying that it's much less needed than other things, especially because that embedding doesn't reproduce the Standard Model at the moment.

v) I am not sure what is the problem here. The only "mention" of mirror fermion is a prove that they aren't talking about the three generation case. The mirror fermion aren't a second and a third generation. Once you have that embedding with the mirror fermions you lose the two other generations. So the point there doesn't apply to the three generation case unless Lisi wants to reinvent fermions and what they mathematically are. If there is some mysterious method that nobody knows about then I would like to see it, but for now everybody agrees that an antigeneration is an antigeneration period. This problem is very famous and there is no solution. I agree that mirror fermions technically aren't fatal (although then there is a million more things to check, like the S and T parameters, or other things about the masses, but then there is no three generations so we go back in circle). I disagree, I don't think that people think that in Ls theory nothing works, i think that people got convinced (and rightfully so I believe) that E8 doesn't contain three generations of fermions. I stand by Baez's quotation when he says: "even if you think that this last paper of Lisi's is crazy, don't assume that everything Lisi has done is crazy". I agree with your second part, but I still think that we can't say that he has a counter argument to the three generation case, because D-G proved that there is no embedding (a step forward with respect to the Ls paper). And saying that Lisi wants to try other methods is not a counter argument itself. The details would be very important, because the only way you can get the three generation out of not-working embeddings is if you change the definition of fermions, which I am not sure how successful it would be. I would certainly be interested in seeing how this can be done, as people have tried for several years to understand this with respect to the non-chirality of gauginos. Also, I agree that the mirror fermions per se aren't necessarily something that kills you, but they kill you "unless" you come up with something that makes you survive. The whole technicolor community was dead for a decade because of problems of this sort (S and T parameters and flavor problems), and lots of extra dimensional theories had to deal with the calculation of S and T. It would be unfair and stubborn of Lisi's to believe that while people called theories like technicolor dead for a decade, we can't call his theory dead at the moment (dead doesn't mean it will never succeed, it means that there is no known way to make it fit the data). Lisi's theory isn't magically allowed to ignore these limits. It is killed unless he or somebody else finds a way to reproduce the electroweak precision tests, mass mixing matrix, flavor limits and so on. Otherwise it's a toy model, nothing more. There is several several very respected toy models, but a theory of everything requires more to be called like that. Anyhow I think Qwyrxian doesn't really care about the physics details, so I'll stop it here. I just think that it is fair to say that it's not easy to agree on the fact that Lisi has a counter argument, it is much more accurate and safe to say that he wants to try other things on the three generation case and that he has an argument for a hope in the one generation case (which is not the real world). Do you agree with this general statement?

vi) you misunderstood me I think. I believe myself that the words of physicists in the popular press are important and helpful, but I also think that the popular press on cutting edge research shouldn't be taken as reliable as published sources are, because in most cases the statements in the press aren't accurate and the matter is not well described. Papers are more reliable in what a theory says than an interview. And from some perspective there shouldn't even be a need of describing very detailed theories on wikipedia when they are too new and constantly changing in their formulations.

Anyhow, the three bumps seen by ATLAS and CMS (three possible higgs-like states) are very exciting, and things in particle physics might change very fast if the signals get confirmed a the next meeting in december (so far there isn't even a 3 sigma deviation). I'm glad the conversation went back to civilized tones.

98.244.55.28 (talk) 03:22, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

ii) Are we going to write the weird underlines and dots or not?

iv) I've been referring to this letter: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=garrett-lisi-responds-to-criticisms-2011-05-04, which is openly accessible. I agree on your BRST comments; my point was that Lisi did describe the use of BRST explicitly, previously. On CM, agreed, the point was that this was addressed. Also agree with most of your remarks on the Smolin paper, but it does provide a related symmetry breaking mechanism via a scalar field. On mass mixings, I can see that your point is that Lisi does not provide an explicit detailed description of how the three generations are supposed to work, which is true. (This gets us to (v).) It is worth noting though that Lisi is dealing with algebraic embeddings here, and algebraically the second and third generations are identical to the first, so in that sense Lisi can truthfully say that the algebra of the SM is there. But he doesn't even mention Yukawas, and that's where this theory is really incomplete. I suppose one could arbitrarily say the one generation has duplicates, and put the Yukawas in by hand, but that would be no improvement over the SM or MSSM.

v) You say "mirror fermion aren't a second and a third generation" and "for now everybody agrees that an antigeneration is an antigeneration period." You are missing my point that Lisi is directly contradicting this, when he's talking about using a triality transformation to deal with the mirror fermions. I just went back and looked and he actually does provide details in the 2007 paper! It's on p13. As best I can tell, he's saying that since the positive and negative spinor and vector representation spaces are the same under so(8), related by a triality transformation, that the mirror fermions and a bunch of vector stuff can be transformed this way to two other sets of SM fermions. This is not a direct embedding, but this is the heart of Lisi's argument on the three generations. Apparently D-G completely ignored this and assumed a direct embedding, and Lisi is arguing this was a bad assumption. I guess you were right when you said "doesn't apply to the three generation case unless Lisi wants to reinvent fermions," since that's what he's trying to do by transforming vectors and mirrors to fermions. What do you think? Given that, it's clear that for both the one generation and three generation case Lisi is stating that D-G made unnecessary assumptions about how the embedding needs to happen.

vi) my point is that Lisi's letter in SciAm, linked above, is a good source.

On the ATLAS and CMS events, agreed!-Scientryst (talk) 21:02, 25 July 2011 (UTC)


 * FYI: I just want you both to know that I don't think I'm actually able to help here any longer. This discussion has become far too technical, and, when I asked for some very brief summaries, I got extremely long responses (One of 98.'s responses was nearly 10K, by itself).  If you need some help, and you think there's something specific I can do, let me know on my talk page, and I'll do my best (like, especially if you need help knowing where to go next if you can't work it out amongst yourselves).  Qwyrxian (talk) 01:21, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok Scientryst, I think that at this point we should just produce a version each and ask Qwyrxian to chose the best NPOV combination of the two. As far as me, you can write the first draft, then i'll write my modifications, then we'll talk briefly about it and present it to Qwyrxian.

ii) I think we can use the weird under scores and dots and just point at the paper to explain what they are (with a brief ad hoc explanation in the page).

iv) I think that it is a very courageous interpretation to say that they are identical and that the SM is there if you don't have three generation in the algebra. So many models are currently dead or wrong because they can't respect the severe limits imposed by flavor changing neutral currents (look at the UTfit). Looking at how those models are considered it would be sneaky and sly to talk about the SM being included in a situation like Lisi's. I would see it as furtiveness. Now let's talk about triality.

v) I obviously know that it was addressed in Ls first paper, but I think that your way of seeing this is misleading. The triality transformation, which is a cool thing, is (long story short) nothing but a rotation of part of the coset identified by the SM gauge group in E8. These roots have, although, different quantum numbers with respect to the gravitational part that is also part of the coset, which is why they work just when rotated. Honestly, that is an interesting fact, but it's also what it has to be. If instead of a triality rotation L took a different embedding for his gravitational part then the roots and the generators get mixed up (an implicit triality rotation), but still there is only one generation with the right quantum numbers and an antigeneration (and the third object). Nobody can say that that represents the three generations, simply because each group larger enough to include SO(10) or E6 plus enough generators could reproduce this feature, but they can't reproduce the SM. Honestly, something like an SO(50) would do the job better and have all the right quantum numbers. Still there would be a bunch of things to solve (antigenerations, data fits, BRST). This is the reason why people prefer theories that work better. To go back to L-D-G I think you are really giving the wrong interpretation to this, and this is why I think it really is POV. I am happy you agree that the point needs to be moved to Lisi's hope of reinventing fermions. But we cannot possibly say that that's a argument against D-G's unnecessary assumptions, because they are everybody's assumptions. That is NOT an assumption D-G made, that's a definition (or assumption if you want to be more inclusive) that everybody has made since Dirac. Of course Lisi can say that he believes he can get away with it. But certainly that isn't a counter argument to D-G, it's a hope to find some different definition of fermions. At the most, Lisi is saying that the physics of the last 80 years has made unnecessary assumptions, but that's like saying all and nothing. And I think you would be interpreting Lisi's thought, because we have no paper to understand what he meant with that sentence. Which clearly can't be directly applied to the 3-generation case in D-G unless we try to bend a bunch of things to interpret it like that. And this really would be original research here.

I think that an useful thing for Lisi to do, with a much smaller goal but a much more solid ground, would be to have some sort of SO(2N) toy model with a small N (like N=5,6) and see if he can fit an SO(3,1) gravity plus SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R with NO SU(3) color just to see if he can show how to get 2 generations of uncolored fermions out of this toy model and if he can deal with the antigeneration with no harm (yes, there would be an antigeneration here too). This would be a much clearer example and would allow people to disentangle the theory of everything endless discussion crap with some simple and possibly innovative techniques.

98.244.55.28 (talk) 01:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, I agree with the plan and will work on a shorter NPOV lede. In the mean time:

ii) OK.

iv) Agreed.

v) This statement by Lisi: "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." I see that as Lisi arguing that the three generations might work in a funny way, and that it was wrong for critics to assume a direct embedding of three generations. I'm not saying that it was wrong, but that Lisi argues that it was wrong. Do you agree?

On your last paragraph: It does appear that so(3,11) + 64 works, at least for one generation. Maybe one could incorporate that in a technicolor model. Interesting. But OT.-Scientryst (talk) 03:51, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

On v) I would agree as long as it is clear that:

1) at first a direct embedding wasn't completely excluded by Lisi.

2) the direct embedding was excluded by D-G. They also noticed the antigeneration problem

3) that the it wasn't wrong for *for critics*, or D-G, to assume that, because that is not even an assumption, it's the definition *for the whole physics community* on fermions.

For that paragraph, maybe I wasn't clear with what I meant. What I meant wasn't a SO(3,11) + 64, i meant something different from the SM, something smaller in the gauge group and with only two generations, to be able to tackle one aspect at a time. I meant having a toy model with *just* SO(3,1) gravity, an SU(2)xSU(2) Y-M and some other generators that would be fermions à la Lisi (NO SU(3) color in this toy model). The structure of these groups is such that it's easy to have two generations (and antigenerations). This would create an incredibly useful playground for all the troublesome aspects of the theory that still need a solution. At the end the whole theory is still at a toy model level, so it would be even better to work on a smaller toy model but with clear aspects.

98.244.55.28 (talk) 22:27, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

New draft
OK, here's a summary of my edit: Added one sentence to describe the theory. Added another sentence about what Lisi says about the three generations in the original paper. The relevant line in the paper is "When considered as independent fields with E8 quantum numbers, irrespective of this triality relationship, the second and third generation fields do not have correct charges and spins." Lisi also stated subsequently, in the SciAm letter 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." Because we are presenting D-G's three generation argument in the lede, I feel it's important to state up front that Lisi saw this problem in the original paper. It's true that he didn't prove that three generations can't embed directly, but he did state that they don't. Added description of D-G's argument (taken from their Conclusions in their paper), and Lisi's brief argument in response to D-G (from his paper and SciAm). Moved larger discussion of D-G into "Chronology and reaction," and edited it significantly. Cleaned up the paragraph on development, criticism and status of the theory. Worked a lot on the "Chronology and reaction" section. Cleaned up some wording, dates and grammar. Fixed some broken and wandering links. This was a lot of work.-Scientryst (talk) 01:35, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I thought we would post the lede here and try to come up with an agreed version before updating, but I saw that you changed also some of the last section, so that would have been hard to do here, with the references and all that. So that's ok. But I'll take a couple of days to read carefully the page and propose some little modifications. I think the page looks already better and cleaner, though. I will also let Qwyrxian know so that he can look at what has been done and help us in case we fall again in some disagreement trap.

98.244.55.28 (talk) 23:39, 3 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: Scientryst asked me to look at this a while ago. I glanced at it, and it looked fine.  But, then again, the previous version looked fine; I've completely lost the ability to even understand what your dispute is about, because no one will give me a short summary.  I'll keep this on my watchlist, but probably your best bet if you can't come to an agreement is to try an RfC or other form of dispute resolution. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:07, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

So, I changed a couple of things:

1) E8 theory seems to me the name that the author mainly refers to the theory, not the name that is used in physics and by most physicists to refer to it. All the references are from Lisi, or journalists or so. But there is no evidence of this theory being commonly referred as E8 theory in the physics community. There is actually various papers using names as E8 gauge theory or E8 heterotic string theory, so it would be misleading to write that this theory *is called* E8 theory until the name is actually used in the physics community. I think that saying that "the author refers to it as E8 theory" is more appropriate and verifiable.

2) I added the part where Lisi says that the predictions are tenuous because it is important, and true, to say in the lede. At the end the predictions are the most important thing about a theory.

3) I changed a little the phrasing about Nesti and Percacci because it was a little misleading in the previous formulation. Those papers for the most part are not about Lisi's theory, the do cite it and refer to it in a few points but they are separate papers. I think my edit reflects their partial overlap a little better.

Things I would like to improve with Qwyrxian and Scientryst help:

A) I appreciate Scientryst's effort to merge my point of view with his in a NPOV way, although I still feel like there is too many quotations of what Lisi says that the theory is as opposed to what's black on white in papers. For example, the feature article in Scientific American doesn't even have an equation (same the blog entry), so it's definitely not a paper (i.e., it's not introducing new physics or adding material to the theory), so why is it in the lead? We can cite is as a response to D-G of course, but everything in general seems a little too much Lisi-centric instead of being theory-centric, if you understand what I mean. From this we get to B.

B) I am not sure that this NPOV statement made explicit by Qwyrxian is really well represented: "The lead should cover an extremely broad explanation of the topic, mention that there has been significant controversy regarding the quality/accuracy of the work, and then everything else should go into the article." What do you think?

C) About the D-G controversy, I think we had reached an agreement that it's not *their* assumptions about the embedding to be under discussion, being, in fact, those assumptions universally accepted in physics since Dirac. It doesn't mean that they won't ever found to be wrong, but it's misleading to say that *they (D-G) made* unnecessary assumption, when it's universally known that all physicists in particle physics use those definitions. I would rather say "Lisi states that the usual assumptions about a fermionic embedding might not be necessary and that he thinks that the triality transformations might play a role in this open problem." (although I don't understand why this triality transformation should be different from any other gauge transformation already considered by D-G, but that would just be my question).

D) After this we can think about how to make this article a little lighter and less tedious to read, with way to much mathematical detail (there is even two breakdowns shown in the sections algebraic breakdown and curvature, it seems a little much).

67.172.180.199 (talk) 08:01, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to hear Qwyrxian's opinion on (1). I thought we could safely keep "called 'E8 theory'" because there are many, many references calling this "E8 theory." Try a google search on "e8 theory" and you'll see many pages of them, including in physics discussions. In the reference given for the name, which is the Scientific American article, it is the editors and not Lisi who have written: "Even if Lisi turns out to be wrong, the E8 theory he has pioneered showcases striking patterns in particle physics that any unified theory will need to explain." So it's certainly not just Lisi referring to it as e8 theory. And I think it was mathematical physicist John Baez and not Lisi who first referred to this as E8 theory. I agree that there also exists Heterotic string theory, which can use E8xE8 or SO(32), and there is some older literature mentioning "E8 gauge theory," but I don't think there is any confusion that the specific name "E8 theory" refers to something other than this theory put forth by Lisi. I think the large number of press articles and blogs, while not the rather sparse scientific literature, support the phrase "called 'E8 theory'." And I think your version, "referred by the author as 'E8 Theory,'" incorrectly implies that Lisi made up the name and that he is the only one calling it this. I could be wrong though -- your point that other physicists haven't been writing papers using this name seems true. Although, even there, Bert Kostant did give a talk on Lisi's "E8 theory of everything," and that should hold some weight on the name issue among physicists, or at least among mathematicians. Qwyrxian, what is your opinion on this?-Scientryst (talk) 10:03, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Scientryst asked for my opinion on #1; a quick Google Scholar search of "E8 theory Lisi" turns up 242 hits. Some of those, of course, were written by Lisi, but I see the term appearing in several different places, including Scientific American; NKS Conference; Physical Review D; Chaos, Solutions, and Fractals; etc. A plain google search gives even more (though it also gives the distractors IP mentions).  That seems like enough evidence to me to drop the "is referred to by the author as...".
 * BTW, I'm glad that the two of you seem to be making progress! If you really get stuck, you can also try asking at WP:WikiProject Physics, or, if it's a specific WIkipedia concern (like reliable sources, original research, etc.) we have noticboards (WP:RSN, WP:NORN, etc.) for those. Qwyrxian (talk) 11:39, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh, I really didn't mean to give the impression that Lisi made up the name and that he is the only one calling it this. I just meant that usually a theory needs much more time and independent articles using a specific name to start calling it a certain way. Look at the story of muons, mesons, yukawa particle. I just thought it was more precise to say that the theory is sometimes referred to it as "E8 theory" by Lisi and some other people (I did say journalists, I knew about the SciAm article). 242 hits aren't that much considering how many times other official theories appear on google scholars. Anyhow I was just trying to make it a little less strong, and I think it would be correct to use a phrasing that says that this is some sort of name used by Lisi and some other authors here and there, but that's different from stating that the theory is called E8 theory in the physics community. That's my opinion at least. I really thought it was just fair to say that Lisi uses that name, again, I didn't mean it in a negative light. 67.172.180.199 (talk) 03:24, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I just changed it to referred informally as "E8 Theory", as my attempt to avoid the issue of being or not just Lisi who calls it that way, but keeping at the same time that the name so far is informal, where informal is just used to mean that it isn't the official name given to it (recognized) by the physics community. If you have a better world than informal that delivers the same information without starting a new verbose section that would work too. 67.172.180.199 (talk) 18:35, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

What about the other parts? 67.172.180.199 (talk) 03:24, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

For (1), I think there's sufficient usage to keep it as "called." For (2), that seems reasonable, though I'd rephrase it a little. For (3), also reasonable, but I think we can add a little more about these papers, distinguishing them - especially since the second includes a different author than Percacci. The first of these papers directly addresses the CM theorem loophole, and the second the embedding of GR+SM in so(3,11)+64, both of which are germane to Lisi's E8 theory. I will try making these changes and see if they look OK with you. For A-D, these also seem reasonable, but potentially problematic.-Scientryst (talk) 07:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

For (1) I disagree. And I changed it because we didn't agree to go back, plus I checked on google scholar and actually the search with quotation marks - "E8 Theory" - has 314 entries ( http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22e8+theory%22 ), some of them from the sentence E8x*E8 theory*, some just from *E8 theory*, and a lot of them are from the 80's and 90's and have nothing to do with Lisi's theory. While a direct search - "E8 theory" lisi - on google scholar has just 17 entries ( http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22e8+theory%22+Lisi ). Not enough in my opinion. Otherwise we can ask the physics project on the other ways that Qwyrxian suggested.

Also, I changed a little the sentence about the loophole because that phrasing made me think that that paper was saying that the loophole definitely works in (or that was directly addressing) Lisi's theory. While I don't think that that paper really directly addresses the loophole mentioned by Lisi's original paper, which was mostly based on the SO(4,1), reason that was shown to be not sufficient and I think that from that paper it's not even clear whether or not Lisi's theory is actually safe from the 'no go' theorem. I talked about it above. I'm ok if you can rephrase it in a way that reflects this.

67.172.180.199 (talk) 07:51, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean saying that Nesti and Percacci's paper confirms the embedding. In one sense I don't think it's true, while if you mean it in a different sense, which would be true, then it confirms it just because it is mathematically obvious. But like this it's a little generic. I'm not saying we have to take it away, but it woud be good to specify in what it confirms it. Thanks!

The point is that as far as I understand Nesti and Percacci are pretty neutral in talking about Lisi's theory, but from this article it seems like they write papers to support or prove things that work in Lisi's theory. A little unfair to them, who instead do good research that is mostly independent from Lisi's theory in those papers (some of the related research was even published before Lisi's and Lisi cites them on his paper). 67.172.180.199 (talk) 08:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I tried to rephrase a little the D-G deal in the lead. I tried to follow Scientryst's way of describing the issue, making just a couple of adjustments so that both point of views (mine and Scientryst's) could meet in a NPOV ground. As a proof of good feith I even went back and reinserted the names of D and G in the sentence that I had initially removed because I thought that Scientryst prefers those names to remain explicit in the sentence. 67.172.180.199 (talk) 08:31, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

A Google search on ""e8 theory" lisi" gives 9,700 entries. Get rid of "sometimes" and I'm OK with this version.-Scientryst (talk) 05:30, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I think that's fine, I'll make it less vague. 67.172.180.199 (talk) 08:04, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

This article must be deleted.
Today, the accepted opinion by the theoretical physics community suggests the model is unable to explain the known elementary particles. This assertion has been shown using mathematical arguments so the model isn't right as was formulated. The paper hasn't got new citations from a long time. A hint that this line of reasoning is a blind alley. Because of this the article must be deleted.--88.25.38.111 (talk) 23:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

88.25.38.111, what do you make of the paper's most recent citation, by someone named James Bjorken?-Scientryst (talk) 00:17, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * 88...even if what you say were true (I don't know if it is), that would not mean that we delete the article. Should we delete the articles on Geocentric model, Phlogiston theory, or, really, anything in Category:Obsolete scientific theories.  Now, if there are reliable sources that specifically reject this model (something which I believe has been the subject of debate for much of the above sections), then we would need to accurately state that, but we would never delete the article simply because the theory is now obsolete.  Qwyrxian (talk) 00:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * 88, even if the theory is currently not working, the theory itself is not worse than a lot of other toy models. At the contrary, it raises few interesting points that in general would need to be studied more. We know that except for string theory we don't really have a valid alternative theory of everything so far, and because string theory is far from being perfect, it's good to have people trying different roads, even if they don't work. For example parts of the theory might turn out to be true and interesting even if the E8 picture was wrong. I agree that this page is not excessively clear about what's not working in the theory and there is too much of "Lisi says he wants to do this to fix this problem..." making these hunches look like solutions instead of stating clearly what the results of the theory actually are so far and what's missing. But this has nothing to do with deleting the page. The page is encyclopedically important given that many things have been said about it from many different sources and it has reached wide popularity. See for example the TED talk. Now, it's true that the model is unable to explain the known elementary particles, but so is Loop Quantum Gravity at the moment (even if in that case the problems are of a completely different kind). 67.172.180.199 (talk) 03:09, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Last revert
After a long discussion we agreed that that version was mostly fine. I still believe it is too much 'pro-Lisi', Scientryst maybe believes something else. But it is not fair to edit without discussing here. Especially after a long discussion. I will report any other similar attempt to modify the page to WP:COI, unless discussed here and agreed by some editors.

About the specific changes, we discussed already that the theory is not called "E8 theory" but very often referred to as "E8 theory". The other changes were inverting the phrasing between the lede and the more in depth-paragraph. I believe the lede is fine like it is. If it needs to be shortened that's ok with me, but then it needs to be drastically shortened, not just with information that maybe one editor doesn't like to be there.

I still think that the whole page is way too long and must be at some point shortened.

70.136.253.158 (talk) 19:33, 30 September 2011 (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 71.105.103.149 (talk) 19:38, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

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 71.105.103.149 (talk) 19:40, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The article exists because it meets Wikipedia's criteria for notability. Lisi is most likely not editing his own Wiki page, although it is always possible.  When you say you saw this at "Sciam", do you mean in a peer-reviewed journal article, or just in someone's comments on a forum?  If the latter (as I suspect, given the tone and subject matter), the quotation is not a reliable source for information and thus should not be included in the article. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:15, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Qwyrxian you insist, "Lisi is most likely not editing his own Wiki page, although it is always possible." Do you know Lisi?  Do you have insight into what he does and does not do?  What % or probability would you assign that Lisi is and has been editing his own article, which at this point, nobody else in the world really cares about, now that his non-peer-reviewed hype has been debunked by professional physicists in peer-reviewed journals?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.105.103.149 (talk) 15:24, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * "When you say you saw this at "Sciam", do you mean in a peer-reviewed journal article"
 * Sciam is not a peer-reviewed journal. Nothing that appears there has undergone peer-review. Sciam is a popular-science magazine. And its online presence includes various blogs and forums, which have not undergone even the cursory editorial scrutiny that the articles in the printed magazine have.
 * Much of the discussion, that we have been having here, has been about the heavy reliance of this article on non-peer-reviewed sources. So it seems particularly important to clear up this misconception about one of those sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by QuotScheme (talk • contribs) 14:35, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * @IP: My experience is only that scientists/academics don't actually put all that much effort into pages about themselves. However, it is certainly possible that Lisi is editing, or that he has assigned a grad student to edit it for him, or that someone who actually does concur with him is editing it to be "helpful". That being said, who cares?  Yes, it's bad, but we have no way of finding out, so what we should do is focus on making the article follow Wikipedia policies.  If you have a specific suggestion in that regard, please make it, rather than just generally alleging a conspiracy.  Yes, Wikipedia has to be clear about the difference between popularly reported science and what science actually says, but we have to be careful that everything we say is backed up by reliable sources.  We can only say that this theory was disproved if we can actually site a source that says that.
 * @QuotScheme: thanks for the clarification--my mistake. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:30, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I have a theory that Qwyrxian is Lee Smolin supporting his pet crackpottery. We can only say that this theory is disproved if we can actually site a source that says that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.105.103.149 (talk) 14:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Fascinating theory. I don't even know who Lee Smolin is.  I don't know anything about this theory, and only watch the article from a distance, trying to provide info about WP's policies.  Which, in fact, is what I do know well--you cannot add information to Wikipedia that is not verified by reliable sources.  Sorry, but them's the rules.  Similarly, you can't remove cited information just because you don't like it. Now, one thing that I think you and I probably agree on is that this article needs to be a lot shorter than it is now.  Since this is just one theory, and one that I believe you when you say is mostly discredited, we shouldn't be showing all of the math, providing ever minor aspect of the theory, etc.  To be honest, I'd be happy if this article were cut down by 75%--just a basic description of the broad theory, along with whatever evidence we have that supports if the theory is verified or disproven.  Qwyrxian (talk) 05:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes Qwyrxian, we need to remove all the faulty math and add a section on how the "theory" has been debunked and is not accepted in the scientific community, reflecting the reality that it is merely a media creation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.105.103.149 (talk) 15:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian--have you started shortening the article like you promised you would? It is important to match word and deed, otherwise civilization falls apart. Please let us know what you have accomplished! Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.105.103.149 (talk) 15:33, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * First of all, I promised no such thing; I just said I agree that the article should be cut. Like everyone else, I'm a volunteer here, and use my WP time to attend to hundreds of different articles, watching thousands more.  To be honest, I'm not even sure if I'm capable of cutting the article down, because I simply don't have enough physics knowledge to tackle it (while I was a physics major in college for a year, I switched majors just before finishing intro-level QM).  While it's possible for non-experts to edit aritcles, it's tough in cases like this.  However, in maybe a week or two I might take a stab at the most egregious stuff.  Qwyrxian (talk) 15:39, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

71, please don't bring this attitude to this page because it's already complicated to work on it like that. Qwyrxian is a very active wikipedia user and he's even an admin at the moment. Accusing him to be Smolin is silly other than extremely illogical and unrealistic. About Lisi, I disagree with Qwyrxian and I believe that is likely that he's editing this page. If not him certainly somebody really close to his research. It cannot be one of "his" grad students because Lisi doesn't have an academic position thus he cannot have grad students (although it's possible that he's funding some students or postdocs through grants). My opinion is that he does edit this page, and he does it because he understands the importance on a wikipedia article and of a SciAm article, given that these are popular websites/magazines. While in the academic world, as very often stated, the theory itself is largely but not entirely ignored.

Anyhow, these are just opinions. The facts are that the page should never be deleted, because it presents a theory that has a scientific setup, several preprints and few publications. I also believe that parts of the theory are not to be dismissed, because they bring attention to some interesting topics. Overall the theory at the current stage it's not much more than a simple toy model, using the usual Lie group algebra techniques with a couple of new ideas (like the use of triality for the generations and of bosonic degrees of freedom to embed fermions), but at the moment the theory simply doesn't work because it cannot reproduce the known particles and interactions, it's been proven that cannot contain the three generations (unless Lisi finds a different (working, not alleged) way of defining fermionic fields), and has little to no predictions. But the physics community has a pretty big proliferation of models that turn out to be wrong or at the most just toy models, and this is one of the many, and it deserves some respect for that. The problem is that being a 'surfer dude' that lives in a different way with no academic position, the press has brought so much attention that people started creating a weird phenomenon around him. It is worth mentioning that Garrett was a guy who chose to dedicate a lot of years of his life just doing physics (unpaid!) while he was doing a million other things, and for this he deserves some respect because it means that he's really passionate about it. Then of course, maybe after the explosion of the phenomenon he made a few mistakes (in my opinion), but it's also hard to deal with the press and all that). But this has nothing to do with the theory he proposed, which is a theory and has to be judged just like all the other theories.

70.136.253.158 (talk) 22:35, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Is the above from Garrett Lisi? The reason I ask is that they falsely state that the theory has official peer-reviewed publications. No. It does not. Distler's peer-reviewed publication REFUTES Lisi's theory.

This vanity page/smolin media hype needs to be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.175.76.23 (talk) 07:04, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Again, your claim is specious. We do not delete theories because they are wrong: see every single article in the Category:Obsolete scientific theories.  I still agree it needs trimming, but since it was widely publicized, that alone makes it notable, and thus is worthy of mention.  And, as discussed before, there would be nothing wrong with adding more reliable sources verifying that the theory is not accepted in the mainstream community.  Qwyrxian (talk) 11:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian is hilarious. Scientists do not spend time creating sources "verifying that the theory is not accepted in the mainstream community." They are too busy doing science. The fact that the Lisi/Smolin "theory" has never been accepted nor published in a mainstream journal, and that Lisi is not a mainstream academic, and that the only paper published on the theory REFUTES it, is more that enough to debunk it. Qwyrxian--you do understand that this was a mere media event propelled by Smolin in his "Smolinification of physics" campaign? Smolin hyped the theory as "fabulous" to the press early on. Google it, and update the article with the truth. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.165.87 (talk) 15:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)


 * No, I'm not Lisi (I signed as 70.136.253.158 above, I often happen to write from different locations) and if you were a little more careful than any common troll you would understand that I'm saying that the theory doesn't work and that the article should be shortened, I'm the one who did the last revert and obviously am not trying to support a pro-Lisi POV. Also, with a little more attention, it's easy to see that I'm also the editor listed above with the IP 98.244.55.28, which very clearly proves that not everybody on this page has to be Lisi or Smolin like you are childishly assuming every time someone doesn't agree with you. Enough has been said about the theory, we pretty much all agree with the main meaning of what I think you are saying, except for Scientryst. There is no need to make all this superfluous noise. Which, by the way, gives very few results. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 03:56, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Dear Qwyrxian, here is some more information from reputable sources to help you along with your shortening of this vanity page: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2008/08/surfer-physicist-gets-grant-to-study.html a physicist sums it up--lisi is smolin's $100,000,000 revenge: http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/writing-about-science-at-the-outer-limits/

To elaborate: After string theory was deplorably overhyped, a certain non-string faction in the community, feeling neglected and overlooked, decided ?Hey, we can play that game too?. A tussle ensued, with the non-stringers (LQG?ers, to be precise) casting themselves into the media spotlight as David versus the string theory Goliath. Enter Garrett Lisi with his ?theory of everything?. In normal circumstances it would have been ignored, but, in a case of what some might call spectacular opportunism, a certain leading figure from the non-string camp promotes it as ?fabulous? to his media contacts. Lisimania ensues. But for journalists trying to determine the true status of the work the task is not an easy one: Those physicists who in normal circumstances would have been consulted as the leading authorities in the field are mostly string theorists, active or complicit in previous overhyping of string theory. How can their dismissal of Lisi?s work be trusted as unbiased? And in any case, most of them have little desire to speak out on this. Who wants to take on the public role of ogre, out to suppress the delightful outsider with his bold new theory that has so fired the public?s imagination (without them having a clue about what it is about at the technical level)?

The media has been unable (and perhaps a bit unwilling) to identify physics authorities who could clarify the status of Lisi?s work, whose objectivity was beyond challenge. In such a vacuum, nonsense can easily flourish.

? Posted by a physicist http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/writing-about-science-at-the-outer-limits/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.165.87 (talk) 16:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I think we could shorten this article to, "Smolin funded and hyped a failed theory to the popular press, satirizing the string theorists, and further smolinifying physics." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.165.87 (talk) 15:32, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Dear Qwyrxian, how has your progress been coming? Have you been able to cut down the vanity page? We do hope you are feeling well and thank you for setting hings straight. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.165.87 (talk) 17:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Exceptionally simple?????
I'm


 * $$99.\bar9 %$$

sure that I'll get into Stuyvesant High School, and I've read the Scientific American article. You'd expect me to get this E8 theory. I just don't. I don't even understand basic Lie algebra. Is there a simple, non-technical explanation?????

Thanks,

The Doctahedron, 68.173.113.106 (talk) 04:19, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The simplest explanation I've seen is Lisi's TEDTalk presentation from February 2008, . He gives a sense of the problem - a question why there are so many subatomic particles, and a history of trying to group them into a pattern that allows predictability of missing particles, and his vision that the symmetries of E8 may contain all the possible particles and their interactions. That's what I got out of the talk, sort of like the discovery of the period table helped organize all the chemical elements. But I admit I didn't understand much of anything in the paper itself! Tom Ruen (talk) 21:29, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:COI Conflict of Interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:COI writes, "An editor's conflict of interest is often revealed when that editor discloses a relationship to the subject of the article to which the editor is contributing."

Scientryst has revealed above that they have a relationship with Garrett Lisi and/or Lee Smolin: For example, above, Scientryst writes, "71.106.167.55, when did Lee Smolin originally meet Lisi and encounter his theory, and when was Lisi originally funded by FQXi? Unless you are proposing that Lee Smolin has a time machine, I think you will find a problem with your proposed chain of causality.-Scientryst (talk) 18:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)"

In order to know the personal, intimate details of the exact relationship between Lee Smolin and Garrett Lisi, Scientryst must know one, the other, or both, very very well. Due to their close personal association with Lee Smolin and/or Garrett Lisi, Scientryst's edits pose a CONFLICT OF INTEREST. After all, imagine if EVERY wikipedia article was primarily penned and promoted by those who personally knew the subjects and persons of said article. Would that not skew Wikipedia in strange ways?"

Wikipedia clearly states its policy: "A Wikipedia conflict of interest (COI) is an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor. COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups. Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest. COI editing is strongly discouraged." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:COI — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 16:00, 29 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Ha! I was pointing out to you what is in the Chronology of the article, which is that Lisi received FQXi funding BEFORE he could have met Lee Smolin at the Loops '07 conference or Perimeter, which doesn't help your argument that Lee Smolin originally arranged FQXi funding for Lisi.-Scientryst (talk) 19:11, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but why is it that you know for sure that Lee Smolin and Garrett Lisi met for the very first time at the Loops '07 conference, and that they never met before it? You must have a personal relationship with Lee Smolin, Garrett Lisi, or both. This naturally implies a conflict of interest WP:COI with regards to your bountiful cornucopia of edits promoting the "theory." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 19:39, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Removal of Description section
Per discussions above, and my own interpretation of how WP:UNDUE applies to this article, I have removed the entirety of the "Description" section. If the theory has never been supported by the scientific community, we should not be giving all of the details so much prominence here. Adding to this fact is that Wikipedia is not supposed to be a detailed technical discussion; while we do not shy away from the intricacies of science and math when necessary, we do not need to include everything that can be said just because it was said. Another way of saying this is that we (Wikipedia) should not allow this article to be an alternative venue for Lisi, to publish the details of his research. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:38, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Looking at the rest, it seems likely to me that the Chronology section also needs to be significantly shortened, because I don't think we need a blow-by-blow of all of the responses to the paper. Deciding on that will require more study, and others are welcome to take a crack at it in the meantime. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:39, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there is no need to provide every single little link to the popular media, to make the article seem important. If the article wants to be scientific, it needs to cite scientific sources (Which there are none, leading us to the conclusion that the article ought be deleted). If it wants to be about the poplar media, it needs to acknowledge through and through the reality and truth that the fabulous media hype was driven by Lee Smolin hyping the the failed theory as "fabulous" to his press contacts, preying on their trust, while also funding the failed theory with numerous grants. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 15:50, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Hm, I guess WP:FRINGE is too strong, but perhaps, rather than deleting lots of hard-won and detailed content, the introduction could be re-written to more clearly state the speculative nature of the the work and the fact that as of 2011, it has largely been dismissed by the scientific community. I see nothing in WP:UNDUE to justify the removal of this content. beefman (talk) 20:37, 27 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It's undue because this is just one specific research paper, that was never actually published in a peer-reviewed journal. If the paper had not received popular press, it wouldn't even have an article at all.  Heck, only a tiny number of journal articles have any article.  Thus, having anything more than a simple overview is WP:UNDUE.  No amount of re-writing of the introduction can change the fact that this is a minor paper that has received only a little attention in mainstream science.  It's definitely not WP:FRINGE; rather, it's just a scientific theory that hasn't turned out to be particularly popular.  That's fine, but it means our article should cover it appropriately.  What is of encyclopedic interest about this paper (and the corresponding E8 one published later) is the information about its coverage in the popular press as compared to its relative lack of coverage in the scientific press.  Thus, the overview section already covers the entire extant of information about the theory.  That entire section is basically a "re-telling" of the two Lisi papers in question (with a little info from Distler thrown in).  Again, and I cannot stress this enough, Wikipedia is not a scientific journal, nor should our articles reprint in detail the scientific concepts covered in a single text.  Unless you can provide a policy compliant argument for including this information, I will be deleting it again in a day or two. Qwyrxian (talk) 21:06, 27 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Reading through the introduction alone will tell you that Lisi (and two coauthors) has at least one published journal article (in J. Phys. A) in addition to the original (unpublished) arXiv submission, plus another paper in a conference proceedings (Proceedings of the Conference on Representation Theory and Mathematical Physics), plus a Scientific American piece -- and several papers by other authors exist for and against the E8 model. So your characterization of the topic is incorrect.  I would fully support renaming and redirecting this page to "E8 unification theory" or similar. beefman (talk) 06:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Beefman, it is explained extensively above, extensively, that the published paper is not about the E8 unification theory, in fact, they treat fermions in a way that is incompatible with the original Lisi E8 theory of everything. The other published paper isn't a paper published by a journal but by a proceedings (you know what I mean), but anyhow, even if you don't want to discuss about the difference in the procedure between journals and proceedings, the paper is not really about E8 unification, in fact it doesn't have much but an explicit representation for quantum numbers in E8, something that is mathematically obvious and correct. And that every grad student with a couple of weeks of time is capable of producing. The problem in that paper is the interpretation of the anti-generation, rather vague and that tries to address D-G's criticism. I think that a description so long and using non-standard mathematical formalism (just because Lisi does), is not appropriate. 128.120.108.133 (talk) 20:20, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Imagine if Wikipedia gave equal treatment to every "scientific" theory that was never published in any peer-reviewed journal? Imagine if their authors all got pages as long as Einstein's page, and their "theory" all got wikipedia entries far longer than the vast majority of published papers, the vast majority of which do not have a wikipedia page. Indeed, if Lisi argues that he deserves a page solely because of the misinformed media hype, then the page should qualify this, by adding, "Lisi argues that he deserves a page solely because of the misinformed media hype, but not because of any scientific merit." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.232.153 (talk) 01:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I can imagine how that would be bad. Fortunately it is in no danger of occurring.  What is actually threatening is the deletion of a large amount of content that was created and refined through the hard work of numerous people (I was not one of them) and which adds value to the encyclopedia.  We don't need articles about every comic book serial ever written either, but we do have those, so you might consider starting your cleanup efforts there.  I have no idea why you are imagining that Lisi thinks he deserves a page and then attacking him for it. beefman (talk) 06:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Calling all thought-police! Someone has been performing science without proper peer collusion, must be suppressed before someone else starts thinking for himself too! Tom Ruen (talk) 01:51, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * No one is trying to stop Lisi from performing science. Honestly I couldn't care less what he does. What I am concerned with is that Wikipedia seems to be being used as a vehicle to provide intricate scientific details about a scientific theory far beyond the importance of that actual theory in the field.  Note that while the IP above is taking a very extreme position (one that I think is wrong), I'm simply saying that the article must be significantly shortened if it is to conform to WP:OR and WP:NPOV.  We don't give the entire mathematical details of any single research paper.  If this were a widely accepted theory, then the theory itself would have its own page (or be covered in detail in another page), but we cannot just be a re-accounting of the article itself.  Just to pick an arbitrary comparison, how is it that this article is longer than Frame dragging a far more established concept that has been the subject of numerous experiments (though not necessarily confirming ones) and has widespread acceptance (as far as I know)?  Qwyrxian (talk) 02:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If the Frame dragging article is insufficient, the solution is obvious: expand it. The symmetries of E8 are very real, and their applicability (or lack thereof) to high-energy physics is perfectly worth documenting.  As it happens, some people did.  By all means, improve on their attempts. beefman (talk) 06:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I do wish I understood this sufficiently to help edit a useful summary. I don't know if the "can't be longer" argument is valid, since any subject with sufficient attention might make a longer article, so comparisons may only show passion of editors here over frame dragging for instance. But good and shorter is harder. Perhaps mass-deletion will promote attention by those with enough understanding to rewrite removed content that will improve it, while leaving, encourages those who understand it to leave it be. Be Bold they say so carry on! Tom Ruen (talk) 02:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Dear Tom, nobody is trying to stop Lisi from doing science. lol! We wish he would do science! Wikipedia has rules. Lisi's page violates these rules. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia devoted to reporting on science that is peer-reviewed and accepted, not just any well-funded politcal hype from the Lee Smolins. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.232.153 (talk) 04:19, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This last part is where you are going to far, 64... Wikipedia is devoted to covering anything that meets our notability guidelines. We have all sorts of articles on pseudo-science, fringe theories, discredited scientific theories, and theories that are possibly true but not yet widely accepted.  The question is about weight, not about excluding one theory or another.  This is why, when I deleted the big section (and will do so again absent a policy-based rationale for keeping it), I left the "Overview" section in the article.  Deleting that would be entirely inappropriate, because the reader does need a general understanding of the subject of the paper...they just don't need all of the math (etc). Qwyrxian (talk) 05:29, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Pardon, but I think you should provide a policy-based rationale for deleting it in the first place. It is far from clear that WP:UNDUE provides that. beefman (talk) 06:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding your first point above, the problem is that the E8 theory isn't notable. The article is.  That's what got picked up and discussed in the main stream press.  If I have to, I will drag this to WP:NPOVN, an RfC, mediation, whatever, because to me, it's extremely obvious that a topic that only 1 researcher (mainly) has written on, that is generally rejected by the scientific establishment, and whose main claim to notability is that journalists thought it was cool...these are all clear indications that we should not have a massive (16K characters) detailed mathematical description of something that is hardly discussed in reliable sources (other than Lisi's writing itself) that 99.99% of Wikipedia readers can't even begin to understand anyway.  The more I work on this, the more suspicious I become like the IP above: Lisi and colleagues seem to be trying to use this page as an alternative place to promote a theory that didn't cut it in the appropriate places.
 * On your second comment, actually, the burden is on you to provide reliable sources that support the inclusion of this material. The burden is always on the person who wants to include information.  me other reliable sources that talk about the scientific details of Lisi's work, then we'll include what those other sources say.  But, in any event, I have cited policy: WP:UNDUE says that we may not discuss something in a Wikipedia article with more prominence than that topic has gotten in reliable sources/the real world.  And the nitty-gritty details of the theory have not gotten any coverage in reliable sources (at least, none that have been provided yet).  So, I repeat, again, and again: find the sources that support the importance of this material, or it's coming out. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Getting a bit sassy, are we? No, the burden is not on me to prevent changes to longstanding text.  By all means, point to such policy.  Certain things may be obvious to you; what is obvious to me is that, not only are you not a domain expert, you didn't even understand the basic recent history of E8 theory, available by reading the introduction of the article, before you made your substantial change.  And you want to invoke a conspiracy theory about Lisi personally editing the page.  WP:UNDUE is framed in an NPOV context and refers mainly to the balance within individual articles.  So repeat all you like, but the sources are already in the article.  The text you removed could, without a doubt, be improved.  That is not basis for its deletion. beefman (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, you've said "no one has been able to provide any reliable sources that aren't directly connected to Lisi showing any support for this theory at all" and, more recently, "E8 theory isn't notable. The article is. That's what got picked up and discussed in the main stream press." Both of these statements are wrong. Looking at the Chronology and reaction section, we see:

John Baez's "This Week's Finds" (mathematical physicist talking about E8 theory before the paper even appeared)

Sabine Hossenfelder's "Backreaction" (physicist discussing the theory)

Peter Woit's "Not Even Wrong" (physicist discussing the theory)

"The n-Category Cafe" (mathematicians discussing the theory, specifically Lisi's superconnection)


 * A handful of blog posts do not make the E8 theory notable. Nor do they indicate its acceptance in the scientific community.
 * QuotScheme (talk) 16:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * E8 theory is one of the most widely discussed alternatives to string theory on blogs and other fora used by professional physicists since 2007. beefman (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No it's not. As the article, itself, correctly states: it has been largely ignored by the scientific community.
 * QuotScheme (talk) 21:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * No beefman, it's absolutely not. There is no notable blog or forum where what you say is true. Otherwise please provide us with a reliable source that states so. But I can tell you that you won't find a reliable source in physics that states that E8 theory of everything is the most discussed alternative to string theory. For one simple reason, E8 theory of everything is not an alternative to string theory, and, for the sacred principle of deduction, it can't be widely or the most discussed 'thing', if it's not even a 'thing'. The point being that E8 theory of everything is a classical theory, as it's stated in the paper the theory isn't quantized, and, if anything, it relies on quantization à la Loop Quantum gravity. THUS, if anything, E8 theory of everything RELIES ON another theory, loop quantum gravity, which it is something close to an alternative to string theory, even though it is far from being as complete as string theory (and I know, string theory has lots of problems, but loop quantum gravity has more, like it's not even clear how to treat massive particles and other interactions). 98.244.54.152 (talk) 05:59, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

An FQXi grant supporting the research. (a review panel of physicists approved Lisi's E8 theory grant proposal)


 * Hundreds (or thousands, depending on how you count) of physicists have research grants. The awarding of a research grant does not make a theory notable.
 * QuotScheme (talk) 16:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Many academic talks and discussions, including a conference inspired by the theory.

Bertram Kostant's talk.

Physics World (cover article on E8 theory)

Symmetry Magazine (SLAC's publication)

Scientific American (first with a dismissive article, then later an article on the Banff conference, and then a full feature article on E8 theory)


 * Kostant is a respected Mathematician, but his talk (very explicitly) had nothing to do with Lisi's theory (or any other physics theory).
 * As to the rest, they are popular press articles, which 'do' imply notability, but not acceptance in the scientific community.
 * QuotScheme (talk) 16:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

These are both professional physicists and the main stream scientific press discussing and showing support for the theory, and not just the paper. The progression and change of opinion of the editors of Scientific American regarding E8 theory is especially remarkable.

Also, Google scholar currently lists 44 cites for the paper: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&cites=3960672577237835653 That is not a terribly high number, but it's not none.


 * Google Scholar is not a place to count scientific citations (since it counts press reports and blog posts and ..., not just citations from other scientific papers. inSpire lists 16 citations (including 2 self-citations). Science Citation Index lists none.
 * QuotScheme (talk) 16:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Uh, Scholar's citation counts most certainly do count only scholarly book and paper citations, not blog posts. beefman (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Manifestly untrue, as a simple scan of the citation list at the above URL indicates. The most favorable count of the number of scholarly citations, to Lisi's article, is the one from inSPIRE.
 * QuotScheme (talk) 21:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * We must not be looking at the same Google Scholar results. What "blog posts" do you see there? beefman (talk) 07:58, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * What do you call an online "journal", all of whose articles are authored by the same guy, who also happens to be the owner of the journal's website? I call it a blog (2 "citations"). Or how about an actual Wordpress blog (1 citation)? Or unsolicited essays, posted by random individuals, to fqxi.org (4 "citations")? I could go on, but the takeaway is that you need to look at Google Scholar results with the same jaundiced eye that you look at Google's regular search results. The only distinguishing feature is that Google Scholar results are in PDF format, rather than HTML.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by QuotScheme (talk • contribs) 15:15, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the Description could be much better. For one thing, the trees of algebra are rather strange and confusing. But many people read the Wikipedia page to get an understanding of the theory, so it should have some sort of mathematical Description. For a reasonable length to shoot for, that does not unduly weight the importance of this topic, I suggest we shoot for something a little longer than the article on Pikachu, but much shorter than the article on Aquaman.

Now, a question for 71.106.167.55, who keeps lamenting that the theory has not been published: Lisi claimed that "An Explicit Embedding of Gravity and the Standard Model in E8," was "peer reviewed and accepted for publication in a conference proceedings." Has that article on E8 theory in fact been published, or not?-Scientryst (talk) 10:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * AMS conference proceedings 'are' refereed publications. But, in my experience (both as an editor and as a contributor to such volumes), the level of refereeing is very cursory (comparable to that of the lowest-quality journals).
 * A question for you: Do you really want to claim that this theory is broadly accepted in the Physics community?
 * QuotScheme (talk) 16:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The second paragraph in WP:UNDUE seems more appropriate


 * In articles specifically about a minority viewpoint, such views may receive more attention and space.


 * I personally find the Description section a more satisfying explanation than Non-technical overview as it is more concrete and less hand wavy. In particular the chart of the decomposition of e8 captures the bases of the theory. The section on the Visual representation seems of some importance as the elementary particle explorer was an important part of the work and once had a seperate article on the elementary particle explorer. Yes there are ways the article can be shorter, for one i don't know what purpose the "Levels of magnification:" picture shows.--Salix (talk): 10:23, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * On the question of whether it has been published Unification of gravity, gauge fields and Higgs bosons looks like a publish article in well respected journal.--Salix (talk): 10:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The most notable thing about the "theory"/article is that it received such vast media attention, in contrast to the general dismissal by the scientific community, including a published, peer-reviewed article completely debunking the theory penned by professional, working scientists. The hype and media firestorm was due to Lee Smolin's leveraging of his trusted press contacts to fan the flames, as well as his ability to fund the failed "theory" through FQXI. As this is true, and as this underlies all the media attention, which is the reason the article exists in the first place (as opposed to scientific merit), should not a section be added about the original funding and hyping methods? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 15:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * 71.106.167.55, when did Lee Smolin originally meet Lisi and encounter his theory, and when was Lisi originally funded by FQXi? Unless you are proposing that Lee Smolin has a time machine, I think you will find a problem with your proposed chain of causality.-Scientryst (talk) 18:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

What? lol! The chain of causality works *perfectly*. Lisi's theory was not hyped as "fabulous" to the popular press until Lee Smolin hyped it to the popular press as "fabulous" whence a firestorm of media hype ensued, as Smolin leveraged his contacts in the popular press and their unsuspecting trust. Smolin also sat on the board/panel that funded Lisi's "theory" numerous times at FQXI, but which no longer funds it, as unfounded hype as its limits. Smolin also got Lisi listed as the next einstein in prominent publications. Because the concerted actions of Smolin played such a central role in the hyping and financing of Lisi and Lisi's "theory," and because it is this hype which is the primary cause of this article, rather than any scientific merit, this ought be mentioned in the hype-based, unscientific article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 20:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * (EC) One thing to consider is that a certain amount of material is needed to provide context to criticism. A particularly important critique is whether the theory can accommodate all three generations of fermions, the article does really need to have enough detail so people can understand the critique.--Salix (talk): 18:29, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The Description section, as written, is little more than a rehash of the contents of Lisi's paper. It makes no attempt to provide the context for understanding the criticisms. Nor, as I read it, does it inadvertently succeed in providing said context. If that's the purpose, the article loses nothing by eliminating it.
 * QuotScheme (talk) 18:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Again, please, everybody. We have talked extensively for 'months' about this. Read above, do some keyword search in the archive of the discussions here before posting a comment. Because it is silly. Scientryst knows perfectly that the paper 'Unification of gravity, gauge fields and Higgs bosons' is not about E8 theory of everything. It has been extensively discussed here. To the point that several edits in this discussion pages were criticized to be too long and too detailed. That paper, ideed published in a respected journal, is about a general unification theory that is incompatible with E8 theory of everything. In fact, fermions are treated in this paper like everybody else does in the world: as fermions. In E8 theory of everything Lisi wants to get fermions out of a Lie Group, which nobody else does, except for gauginos in supersymmetry but gauginos are not chiral. In fact, the main problem for the one generation standard model of Lisi's paper is that his fermions aren't chiral and there is no space for the three generations until this 'problem' isn't addressed. Everything else is blah blah blah. In Unification of gravity, gauge fields and Higgs bosons the authors in fact don't use this concept of fermions, but the usual one, which has nothing do to with the E8 theory of everything. In fact, the word E8, in this paper, is used just once: when they cite Lisi's first paper on E8.

As far as the article length goes, I think that a description so long and using non-standard mathematical formalism (just because it's the one that Lisi introduces and uses), is not appropriate. At all. This is not a portfolio for physicists, this is an encyclopedia. There is no need to explain Lisi's theory with his notation. It may make sense in his paper, but it doesn't make sense in an encyclopedia.

Also, that high school student above clearly cannot understand any of this, because it's way way too technical. And it is an obvious reason to understand why certain things don't belong to this page (all the technical details). And if you read the non-technical description, it is obvious that is written to try to be charming and almost poetic. While most correct things in the theory are known, and most innovations are thought to be wrong in the scientific community. Also, it is a rather technical description for a non-technical description. And the main problem is that if you talk to any physicist that works on unification, they would all agree with the beauty of unification and patterns and all that, some might even agree with the bosonic E8 (which has been studied for decades in other sub-fields, like string theory). The problem is that the 'cool' idea of the physicist type Lisi, surfer and balanced and all that, doesn't allow people to see that most cool things he says also all physicists say. It's when he innovates and gives his interpretation of fermions and E8 that people start disagreeing heavily.

Wikipedia, like Science and like most Democracies, is not democratic in what's right or wrong based on how many people want something or not. If the majority of people want to kill one specific citizen, that's not allowed anyways by the Constitution and general human rights. People in case they really want to decide something like that have to vote and change the law or the constitution or both. In science, there is even less democracy: if 4 billion people believe that quantum mechanics doesn't make any sense and it's wrong, still, your computers are working using it, so there is no majority there. Same with wikipedia, there are general rules and policies, and admins to follow them or in case to enforce them, it doesn't matter how many people like it or not for a particular page. If they want, they can vote for different admins or for different policies, but not to try not to apply a policy to an particular page.

Here, it's clear that there is some users are POV here (at least one has even admitted that has a google alert on this page, and it's the same one who is a constant pro-Lisi presence here since almost the creation of this page, has the most edits, and doesn't edit any other page than this) and in general they get really angry when we try to shorten this page or to make it a little more NPOV. This, frankly, is tiring and we really need to start reporting this page to several places. Like don't write your on page, WP:COI, WP:UNDUE and several other appropriate forms.

I am a physicist myself, and this complaint about not letting Lisi do his science is crap. Lisi has always been welcome to write more papers to solve explicitly all the problems with his theory. But he's not doing it, he's rather writing SciAm 'feature' articles (what does that even mean?) or other little responses to criticism but he's not producing math or physics to prove that the problems of his theory can be overcome. We would all be happy about it. For one simple reason, if his theory is right or wrong, sooner or later it will be obvious to everybody, like it was obvious that the model with the earth at the center of the universe was wrong or that quantum mechanics was right. It doesn't depend of how many physicists or people like it or not. If it's true, it'll appear clear. So far, Lisi's model is just been proven wrong and with lots of things that aren't working. Like thousands of other theories, which aren't explained here on WP because it would be ridiculous to do (there is 20 new papers a day just for particle physics, then 20ish for gravity and so on...)... 128.120.108.133 (talk) 21:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that it is high time for Scientryst to admit that they are indeed Lisi, and for this to be reported to Wikipedia, so that a non-theory which has failed is not perpetuated by the only person in the universe who believes in it. Quite simply, this is not what wikipedia is for, and it constitutes a severe abuse of wikipedia, and an affront to the greater hardworking, honest wikipedia community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 21:19, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst, when did you first meet Lee Smolin? When did he first hype your theory as "fabulous" to the popular press? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 21:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * IP, this is a final warning. I can't warn you on your talk page, because your IP changes fairly often. If you do not stop trying to out editors, I will request semi-protection of this talk page, because this behavior is absolutely not allowed.  Your continued attacks are not allowed.  Furthermore, you're making it nearly impossible to have a civil, collaborative conversation about what should or shouldn't be in the article.  Stop it.  Qwyrxian (talk) 02:31, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Dear Qwyrxian,

I do apologize if I have erred in some manner, and I thank you for your time and dedication. I am only trying to guide this article with truth and light. Above I saw someone say that "Conflicts of Interest" are to be noted when assessing the material/contributions of a page. Do not "Conflicts of Interest" hinge upon who the editors are, especially if they are editing their own projects/pages, or the projects/pages of close, personal friends?

In NO WAY am I trying to out anyone. Rather, I am just observing that Scientryst, the most active and constant proponent of this page, seems to have extremely privy knowledge to the exact nature and timeline of the relationship between Garrett Lisi and Lee Smolin. For example, above, Scientryst writes, "71.106.167.55, when did Lee Smolin originally meet Lisi and encounter his theory, and when was Lisi originally funded by FQXi? Unless you are proposing that Lee Smolin has a time machine, I think you will find a problem with your proposed chain of causality.-Scientryst (talk) 18:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)"

In order to know the personal, intimate details of the exact relationship between Lee Smolin and Garrett Lisi, Scientryst must know one, the other, or both, very very well. Due to their close personal association with Lee Smolin and/or Garrett Lisi, Scientryst's edits pose a CONFLICT OF INTEREST. After all, imagine if EVERY wikipedia article was primarily penned and promoted by those who personally knew the subjects and persons of said article. Would that not skew Wikipedia in strange ways?

Wikipedia, at the end of the day, must represent Truth. Ergo, editors who have no CONFLICT OF INTEREST, nor close, personal attachment to the peoples and topics, provide the most objective views.

Furthermore, Qwyrxian, I am writing from but one workstation and thus one IP. It would seem that you are trying to out me, and in doing so, are erring in lumping me in with others? I forgive you--it is OK--you have a difficult job to do. Let us return to the matter at hand--the article. Scientryst claims intimate knowledge of the timeline of Smolin and Lisi's relationship and the hyping and funding of Lisi's "theory." Perhaps they could add their knowledge to the article, and comment/elaborate on the following understanding shared by many of us:

"What? lol! The chain of causality works *perfectly*. Lisi's theory was not hyped as "fabulous" to the popular press until Lee Smolin hyped it to the popular press as "fabulous" whence a firestorm of media hype ensued, as Smolin leveraged his contacts in the popular press and their unsuspecting trust. Smolin also sat on the board/panel that funded Lisi's "theory" numerous times at FQXI, but which no longer funds it, as unfounded hype as its limits. Smolin also got Lisi listed as the next einstein in prominent publications. Because the concerted actions of Smolin played such a central role in the hyping and financing of Lisi and Lisi's "theory," and because it is this hype which is the primary cause of this article, rather than any scientific merit, this ought be mentioned in the hype-based, unscientific article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 20:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk)
 * Apologies if I'm getting confused between the multiple IP addresses; for some reason, I thought that they were all the same person (possibly from home and work, or whatever); thanks for clearing up that you're different people (though I wish I knew exactly how many people :)). In any event, this line of discussion is, frankly, boring.  Maybe Scientryst has a COI, maybe xe doesn't.  COI merely tells us that COI editing doesn't usually work, but it very carefully does not forbid anyone with a COI from editing.  In any event, I'm going to attempt to remove the information from the article again, because I've cited the two specific policies (WP:UNDUE and WP:OR) several times, and the only response I've gotten so far is "Tell me what policies justify the removal" and "That policy doesn't apply".  If someone reverts me, then I'll figure out which noticeboard to go to for more input. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

One the IP's above wrote me
 * That paper, ideed published in a respected journal, is about a general unification theory that is incompatible with E8 theory of everything. In fact, fermions are treated in this paper like everybody else does in the world: as fermions. In E8 theory of everything Lisi wants to get fermions out of a Lie Group, which nobody else does, except for gauginos in supersymmetry but gauginos are not chiral. In fact, the main problem for the one generation standard model of Lisi's paper is that his fermions aren't chiral and there is no space for the three generations until this 'problem' isn't addressed. Everything else is blah blah blah. In Unification of gravity, gauge fields and Higgs bosons the authors in fact don't use this concept of fermions, but the usual one, which has nothing do to with the E8 theory of everything. In fact, the word E8, in this paper, is used just once: when they cite Lisi's first paper on E8.

And later
 * some might even agree with the bosonic E8 (which has been studied for decades in other sub-fields, like string theory).

As a lay reader this seems to point out what should really be in this article. To make clear what was new in E8 theory, what is common to other theories, what has been contested. The above paragraphs has made a lot of this clearer to me: some of what he says is standard, especially relating to bosons, his new idea was to try and get fermions integrated, thats whats been criticised. If the article can simply explain that, then its doing its job well. --Salix (talk): 08:57, 1 December 2011 (UTC)