Totally agree. I tried to account for this by saying "for better or worse." But what are its actual, real-world claims on our major experimental infrastructure in the present?
> what are its actual, real-world claims on our major experimental infrastructure in the present?
At present, now that the LHC has failed to show any of the evidence for supersymmetry that string theorists were confidently predicting it would show, string theorists appear to be pushing for the next more energetic collider, confidently predicting that it will show evidence of supersymmetry.
I accept this as at least somewhat responsive. But (1) it's pretty vague and speculative as a statement about how resources have in fact been allocated thus far. And (2) it seems like no matter how much I try to clarify, you just can't resist making this into a matter of how bad string theory is, which is all well and good but is not the point of my question.
I was hoping for something along the lines of "Yeah, check out chapter 4 of Peter Woit's book where he gets into the crazy things he witnessed at his campus during the 2010s" or something like that.
I guess I'll just try Peter Woit's book and peruse his blog a bit to see what he means.
Um, you specifically gave "not demanding billion dollar funding projects" as an advantage of string theory. So pointing out that string theory is in fact demanding such projects is exactly to the point. And it's not just right now; as my comment should have made clear, string theorists were promoting the LHC for the same reasons they are now promoting the next collider.
