321 | David Tong on Open Questions in Quantum Field Theory

Hey, Zach. Are you smiling at my gorgeous canyon view? No, Donald. I'm smiling because I've got something I wanna tell the whole world. Well, do it. Shout it out. T Mobile's got home Internet. Home Internet. Woah. I love that echo. T Mobile's got home internet. Internet. How much is it? Look at that, Zach. We got the neighbor's attention. Just $35 a month a month. And you love a great deal, Denise. Plus, they've got a five year price guarantee. That's five whole trips around the sun. Time switching. Boom. Yes. T Mobile home Internet for the neighborhood. Donald, you still haven't returned my weed whacker. Carl, don't you embarrass me like this, please. What's everyone yelling about? T Mobile's got home Internet. And Donald's got my weed whacker. Yes. T Mobile's got home Internet. Just $35 a month with autopay and any voice line. And it's guaranteed for five years. Beautiful yodeling, Carl. Taxes will be supplied. Ctmobile.com/isp for details and exclusions. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. In the last AMA, the last Ask Me Anything episode, we touched on an issue that is talked about a lot in the set of online discourse involving, people who care about physics and people who care about science, which is the rate of progress in physics. Are we making progress as fast as we should or in science more generally? Personally, I think that in science more generally or even in physics outside fundamental theoretical physics, the rate of progress is really, really good, and we have nothing to complain about, although people will complain just because they don't have their flying cars. There is something to be said about the rate of progress in modern fundamental physics. From the inside, it just makes perfect sense that the rate of progress is not as big now as it was in the nineteen twenties, a hundred years ago, or even in the nineteen sixties, because you have to deal with the hand nature deals you. Right? You have to play with the hand nature deals you. You don't get to pick your cards. We don't have as much experimental input and puzzles to solve, and we have a really mature theory that works too well, etcetera, etcetera. There's a whole bunch of things to say about why we're not having earth shattering discoveries in particle physics and gravity as frequently now as we did a hundred years ago. There's a counter way of thinking about it that it's all because of sociology and group think and there are powerful personalities who are keeping good ideas down, which is I mean, I wanna say it's nonsense, but it's not a 100% nonsense. It's like 98% nonsense. You know? Physicists are people. Some of them do have strong personalities and strong opinions, and others will say, like, yeah, if that person thinks it's a good idea, maybe it is a good idea. But it's really …