Well, let me assume you're a software engineer. Suppose that one day you heard of some smooth talker who was going around pushing their vision of an AI-powered cloud blockchain as a service, or whatever. And everything they were saying just seemed empty: they would deliver the same polished, mindblowing speech about how this would revolutionize the world and topple all other software companies, but they hadn't written a single line of code, or even a whitepaper. And yet they were eloquent enough to end up with an audience of millions and billions in funding, exceeding the sum total of everybody doing real work in the area. And every time you tried to tell anybody about the real work you were actually doing, they would ask "but what do you think about the block cloudchain thing?"
That's what the situation is like for actual physicists. There's people who do the actual work, there's people who are famous for claiming to have done great things, and there's very little overlap between these two sets.
(Also, there's an "imprinting" effect here. For example, in the scientific community, we talk all the time about why there are only 3 generations. It's one of many, many mysteries that everybody is always aware of. You might have heard it from Weinstein first, but people really have spent enormous effort investigating the question. And a flashy self-promoter tends to erase those people.)
Ok but he’s held very intellectual conversations with physicists so I can only infer he has a basic fundamental knowledge — despite the ego and fantastical colorful language.
And I heard about the 3 generations when I was a freshman in HS in AP physics and I wrote a sci-fi story on it. Obviously it’s a widely known problem, I assumed people would understand me.
I’m defending the public sphere, promoting thoughtful ideas and intellectual adventures. Most people still don’t know who Elon Musk is yet it seems like they would. I want the average person to know the great open questions in physics.
Other professionals, hackers and those with PhDs in mathematical physics can contribute something novel and true to the future of understanding physics. No one owns mystery or the right to explore it.
Even if it’s just an artist or mathematician inspiring a physicist to understand an idea that could lead to something unrelated but true. Or public support to increase scientific funding.
I also work with a physicist who probably would criticize my perspective here. He has analyzed and critiqued pseudoscientific claims for national security reasons. So my experience here isn’t non-existent.
And I’m not a software engineer. I was a hacker. I like to reverse engineer things and understand the world through first principles...
That's what the situation is like for actual physicists. There's people who do the actual work, there's people who are famous for claiming to have done great things, and there's very little overlap between these two sets.
(Also, there's an "imprinting" effect here. For example, in the scientific community, we talk all the time about why there are only 3 generations. It's one of many, many mysteries that everybody is always aware of. You might have heard it from Weinstein first, but people really have spent enormous effort investigating the question. And a flashy self-promoter tends to erase those people.)