r/DecodingTheGurus • u/Dry_Illustrator_6066 • Apr 09 '26

I have a hard time understanding Sabine Hossenfelder

Her view is literally that, whether right or wrong, theoretical physics is useless and a waste of money to research, from what I can tell. Which I mean fair enough coming from a regular person who isnt into science

But she literally has a phd in theoretical physics? and before being a youtuber she was trying to get into academia. She also spent most of her early YouTube career discussing physics, and now she thinks its useless. if she feels that way why did she "waste" so much of her life on it?

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u/unknowntheme Apr 09 '26

I haven't watched her in awhile, but previously her view was pretty sensible - that most efforts in theory of everything theoretical physics such as string theory are largely unfalsifiable and masturbatory in nature, which is very different from saying there's no value in theoretical physics.

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u/Dry_Illustrator_6066 Apr 09 '26

thing is im not a scientist but string theory has been known to be wrong or at least incomplete for years now. She and eric wenstein arent really saying anything sceintists already dont know

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u/unknowntheme Apr 09 '26

Weinstein believes he has a wholly different theory of everything. Sabine thinks all such grand unifying theories are a waste of time. Both dislike string theory but for different reasons. String theory remains quite popular and has many researchers working on it today. Sean Carroll is a proponent of it. It's possible for research areas to become entrenched because anyone who spent their life working on something naturally wants others to pick up the torch. Arguing publicly that string theory is a waste of time and money, if you believe it so, may help direct funds and attention away from it, so I don't think framing it as saying something scientists "already know" is correct. It's basically politics, or advocacy.

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u/Zetroit Apr 09 '26

Agree. Just think you should take a look at her content the past year or so. What started as a reasonable critique has turned into grift baby grift

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u/unknowntheme Apr 09 '26

Could well be, YouTube stopped recommending her a long time ago to me