Talk:An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

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

$99.{\bar {9}}\%$

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, [1]. 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)

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)

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)

Let's summarize

71, let's drop the discussion about whether or not Scientryst is Lisi, I think it's sufficient to show his edits to realize that he's rather POV, and that's more than enough, we don't need to check if his IP is from Hawaii or Tahoe and so on to see that Scientryst shows to be POV and upset when defending Lisi's POV.

Let's do even more than that, let's just focus on how to improve the article.

The lede and the chronology are too long, we don't need a detailed back and forth of everything Lisi said around, and we don't need to report every time that he was mentioned by somebody else. Let's stick to the main publications and scientific results and conferences. We can briefly mention that there was a bunch of discussions in blogs but it makes no sense to mention all the blogs and websites and everything.

The non-technical overview should be changed or re-phrased, it's not really understandable for the non-physics people and it doesn't make the article more readable.

The technical overview has to be shortened. We should show the general innovations proposed and the group structure proposed. It's absurd that this theory has more details than the theories that it's based on. In case we should write this parts in those pages and here just to say that it uses some of those results.

All the new mathematical conventions have to go. It makes no sense to use a novel convention. It would be readable by the 0.001% of wikipedia users anyways. Those users can freely download the article to read those details. This article can't be a shorter version of the paper. Seriously, not even the Pati–Salam model has a page as long. And that model is not only viable and used in a lot of more complicated models, but it has no formal problems. Lisi's model is not viable yet, has formal models, and uses, explicitly, results typical of models like the Pati-Salam model. It is then absurd to have more on wikipedia on Lisi's model than on the Pati-Salam model.

I want this article to be NPOV, simply stating the great attention that the paper has received from the media, the usual physics used, the innovations proposed, and the current problems and limitations that make it, at least for now, a not working model.

70.136.253.158 (talk) 00:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like an excellent idea; hopefully you are volunteering to make some of these changes. My only qualm is with the reasoning implied in your comparison to the Pati-Salem entry -- how do we know that page isn't too short? beefman (talk) 08:06, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I can make those changes, but when I tried in the past a very present editor here tried to revert all my changes, and this huge discussion started. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 22:18, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Scientryst's close relationship to Lisi and/or Smolin violates the Wikipedia Code of Honor on many levels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AVOIDCOI#How_to_avoid_COI_edits They violate multiple Wikipedia rules: Avoid editing or exercise great caution when editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with. Avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

Multiple red flags are showing supporting the deletion of this article. As the "theory" and article offer purely personal, speculative and now debunked research, unaccepted by the academic and scientific community (strongly violating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research), and as the primary wikipedia author/editor of this article Scientryst has outed themselves as having a direct relationship with Garrett Lisi and/or Lee Smolin, and as they are the article's strongest proponent and most constant editor and greatest author and contributor, the article is strongly violating Wikipedia's COI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AVOIDCOI#How_to_avoid_COI_edits ) and No Original Research rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research), and ought be deleted. Wikipedia is about truth as determined by a community of researchers. Wikipedia is not about people promoting personal, failed "research" by editing their own page or a page of their friends'/business partners. These are not my rules--these are wikipedia's rules. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 15:55, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I may be ignorant but I see zero evidence of COI here. I see an article that needs improvement and a bunch of folks who aren't qualified for the job beating their gums (myself included). beefman (talk) 18:10, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Beefman, the COI here is flagrant and massive. Please read the Wikipedia rules on COI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a vanity press or a forum for advertising and promoting yourself or your ideas." When the proponent of a failed theory and/or their close friends are the primary ones editing a wikipedia page, it becomes a vanity page advertising their failed ideas with a non-neutral POV. This is a flagrant COI. "COI situations are usually revealed when the editor themself discloses a relationship to the subject that they are editing." Above, Scientryst, the primary editor of this article, outed themselves as having a close, personal relationship with Garrett Lisi and/or Lee Smolin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 18:27, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Let's please stop inferring Scientryst's close relationship with Lisi and/or Smolin. It won't go anywhere. Everybody can see easily the POV in those edits (and also in some other edits from other editors against Lisi). The important thing is to agree with a shorter version that gives less details and states clearly that the theory, as theory of everything, is considered wrong. As toy model, it's still work in progress. That's all I think it's important to say. The page should be decreased of at least 50%. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 22:18, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

New Version

I'm making some changes following the (at least partial) agreement that the article is to long. I'm trying to be as careful as possible to remain NPOV, yet it's possible that some sentences seem POV to some editors given the controversial nature of the article.

I have separated the edits so that we can discuss what changes people like or don't like separately. I'm trying to change the lede at the very end so that eventual edit wars of people trying to revert that won't necessarily revert all the other changes. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 23:44, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I have reinserted the symmetry breaking in a way that is understandable for people with some knowledge of group theory in physics, but in a much shorter way and without including all the names for fields and the novel notations that Lisi chose. This way there is enough information to understand roughly what the theory is about. Which is the purpose that such a page should have when somebody looks it up instead of downloading the paper. Most readers won't even understand this, but that's normal for all such pages in wikipedia. But the people who understand, if interested, can just go ahead and read the paper. There is no need to have the whole lagrangian with all those names on wikipedia, especially because it would just be almost a reproduction of the paper. I have also put back in the last tiny part about the predictions because I think that's not technical and gives a decent review of the results of the model. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 01:13, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I am really liking the changes, btw. I definitely think it's important that we have this article, and that we explain the theory in general. I also think it's important that we don't give the theory any more prominence than it deserves by explaining it in excessive details. Thanks for the hard work. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:08, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Article Strongly Violates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research No Original Research

This theory has never been published in scientific journals, and its wikipedia page was even using a non-standard mathematical framework/jargon which only confused and confounded. Wikipedia is not the place for nonstandard, orginal, unvetted, and rejected scientific research, even if it was once upon a time hyped to the popular press as "Fabulous" by a well-funded hypester. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 17:15, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Now that time has shone the light on the Lisi-Smolin hoax, refuted the non-theory in peer-reviewed journals, shown how the theory fails to predict anything new nor even match up to the standard model, and been thoroughly rejected by the academic community, it is time to remove this article from wikipedia for violating numerous rules including, but not limited to, WP:No Original Research and WP:Conflict of Interest, now that Scientryst, the principle editor and contributor of this article, has outed themselves by admitting close ties to Garrett Lisi and/or Lee Smolin. This is not how science works, this is not how the world works, and it ought not be how wikipedia--an encyclopedia deidcated to truth and knowledge--works. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 17:10, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Where is the Original Research? Remember, just because a theory or idea is controversial (or even entirely refuted) doesn't mean that work done studying that theory is not encyclopedic. If there is actually a concern of OR, point it out, but all the sources seem Verifiable -Achowat (talk) 17:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

All what sources? Are you talking about the popular-culture sources that hyped the article upon the command of Lee Smolin who hyped the theory to the press as "Fabulous?" These are not scientific sources. Lisi's theory is not at all accepted by the scientific community, but only by Lee Smolin and the trusting media contacts he took advantage of. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 17:18, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm referring to the references at the bottom of the page. All 62 of them. A theory doesn't need to be right to be encyclopedic, and in fact the article points out that the work is not widely held. See: Young Earth Creationism, Geosyncline, Humorism, Hollow Earth. Essentially, just because it's believed to be wrong, doesn't make it unfit for inclusion -Achowat (talk) 17:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, OK--so Lisi/Smolin is a humorist/crackpot along the lines of Young Earth Creationism, Geosyncline, Humorism, Hollow Earth. Should not this be added to the description? In fact, we should delete the present article which tries to pass off Lisi's Original Research as science, and rewrite it in a way more true to what Lisi/Smolin is really trying to accomplish--humor and performance art. Can you please do this? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 17:31, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

HURRAY! I think I figured it out! 71.106.167.55 is actually Lisi and he's getting tired of getting badgered by idiots, so he's hoping to shut down this article so he can get back to being ignored by people who don't like him. WELL, Mr. Lisi, it's too late! You're famous whether you like it or not, so deal with it! Very sneaky, trying to convince us you're just a humorist or crackpot by pretending to be your own opposition! ha!

71, you've been told repeatedly why your position is wrong and not supported by policy. Continuing to bring up the same issue over and over again in WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT fashion is disruptive. Per WP policies, there's basically no circumstances under which this article will be deleted, as it is clearly a notable topic. If reliable sources state the theory is wrong, we'll add those. If you don't stop with the wild accusations, we may have to block your IP to stop the disruption to this talk page. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:45, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Let's just ignore 71.106.167.55 if they keep going with this kind of comments. Clearly 71 doesn't understand the policies of wikipedia even if people pointed out what to read. They seem to just want to offend Smolin and Lisi. Anyhow, during the weekend I'll start editing and shortening the chronology and the lede. I think I've been using a pretty good NPOV but I might need your help to make sure that others agree with my cuts and avoid nervous users (pro or against Lisi) from starting an edit war, risking to lose all the good modifications made so far. 98.244.54.152 (talk) 05:58, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

The Lisi/Smolin Affair Redux

This professionally-published (by a renown working physicist holding a respected position in academia), peer-reviewed paper's contents should be added to the article, as it shows how Lee Smolin leveraged his trusted media contacts to fan the flames of the media firestorm: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.0788v1.pdf

Dr. M.J. Duff (of The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London,) writes, "Lisi holds no university position and his paper has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. So when Lee Smolin described him as the next Einstein, the publicity juggernaut moved into overdrive: .. . Even respectable journals such as Physics World, the official publication of The Institute of Physics here in the UK, devoted its July 2008 front cover to Lisi’s paper together with an accompanying article and editorial. There was just one small problem: Lisi’s paper was incorrect. By incorrect, I don’t just mean it did not fit in with current thinking; I mean it had mathematical errors concerning the group E8 that rendered the claim in his opening sentence to unify “all fields of the standard model and gravity” just plain wrong. Nature (and the standard model of particle physics) has three chiral families of quarks and leptons.“Chiral” means they distinguish between left and right, as they must to account for such asymmetry in the weak nuclear force. But as rigourously proved by Jacques Distler and Skip Garibaldi, Lisi’s construction permits only one non-chiral family. Their paper, unlike Lisi’s, appeared in a highly-respected peer-reviewed journal [5]. How cool is that? So did Lisi withdraw or modify his paper? Did the Daily Telegraph, the Economist, New Scientist, Physics World apologise for misleading their readers? Did Lee Smolin have second thoughts about the next Einstein? On the contrary, the juggernaut just kept rolling along!. Physics World, for example, never mentioned the Distler-Garibaldi paper, but in yet another (fifth?) article on Lisi, this one devoted to his (presumably not-peer-reviewed) T-shirt, stated. . ."

Yes folks. It appears it all comes down to smolin/lisi-hyped & smolin/lisi-funded t-shirts.

The article continues, shedding more light on how E8 is nothing new, " Physics World failed to say that the E8 effect reported by the experimentalists was first predicted in 1988 by Alexander Zamolodchikov (who is, by the way, a string theorist). The discoveries of E8 in eleven-dimensional supergravity in 1979, of E8 xE8 in string theory in 1984 and more recent (peer-reviewed) papers on E8, E9, E10, E11 also go unmentioned."

So, long story short, those things that are right in Lisi's paper are nothing new. Those things that are new are wrong.

Discover Magazine Reports: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/13-e-nste-n : "With Smolin’s aid, DISCOVER has scoured the landscape and found six top candidates who show intriguing signs of that Einsteinian spark. 1. Garrett Lisi: Age 40, holds no faculty position but earned a Ph.D. at UCLA; lives off grants and software consulting." http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/13-e-nste-n

The Telegraph Reports: "The ideas were described as "fabulous" by Lee Smolin, of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada." --http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6532614/Surfer-dudes-theory-of-everything-the-magic-of-Garrett-Lisi.html

Smolin also sat on the FQXI funding committee which financed the Lisi hype numerous times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 15:50, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

While I think your point is a little overstated, I think that, in principle, information from the arxiv paper you provided the long quote from should be in the article. I'm a bit short on time today, but when I have time I'll look into some way to get it in that meets WP:NPOV (including WP:DUE). Of course, anyone else can feel free to do it; IP, if nobody acts on this is a couple of days, feel free to leave a note on my talk page reminding me in case I forget. Qwyrxian (talk) 11:42, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Scientryst and Wikipedia editors. The above excerpt and article are being published in a prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journal--an A-list source: "Foundations of Physics." It was penned by a prestigious physicist at a prestigious academic institution. The information must be added to the main page by Scientryst et al., so as to better wikipedia. Thank you everyone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 15:57, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Ugh...apologies. I keep adding to my list of "things to do" rather than crossing any off. I'll do it right now. I need to read the original source first, then I'll see what I can add. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:29, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Double ugh. Even that section of the article is a mess. It's wayyyyy too excessive...but I don't have the time or patience right now to fix it (not sure I ever will, to be honest). One thing--I'm not sure I got the "cite arXiv" template right--can someone else check and fix it for me if needed? Qwyrxian (talk) 07:16, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Qwyrxian|, You write, "Duff states that Lisi's paper was incorrect, citing Distler and Garibaldi's proof, and criticizes the press for giving too much positive attention to an "outsider" scientist and theory." This is not true. Duff does not call Lisi an outsider. Rather, Duff points out that Lisi's paper is incorrect, adding that it was hyped to the press by Lee Smolin as "fabulous." Duff also points out that because Lisi's paper is incorrect, it was never published in a peer-reviewed journal. Please do not put words in Duff's mouth, and please update the section to reflect the truth. Thank you for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 21:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

55 says "Duff does not call Lisi an outsider." On page 12 of his paper, Duff says "Unfortunately, journalists (and, it seems, philosophers) love them! Their favourite story line is that of the outsider [...] A recent cause celebre along these lines was provided by Garrett Lisi [...]" 55 then says "Duff also points out that because Lisi's paper is incorrect, it was never published in a peer-reviewed journal." Duff does state the paper is incorrect, and that it was not published, but does not causally connect these two statements, as 55 is claiming, as far as I can tell.-Scientryst (talk) 05:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

who is 55? did you mean 71? Anyhow, it's not important what 55, or 71 says (who is clearly too POV and a Smolin-hater), it's important what Duff says: "By incorrect, I don’t just mean it did not fit in with current thinking; I mean it had mathematical errors concerning the group E8 that rendered the claim in his opening sentence to unify “all fields of the standard model and gravity” just plain wrong. [...] But as rigorously proved by Jacques Distler and Skip Garibaldi, Lisi’s construction permits only one non-chiral family. Their paper, unlike Lisi’s, appeared in a highly-respected peer-reviewed journal." And then: "Now a mathematical theorem is, or should be, the least controversial thing in the world. It is not merely uncontroversial; it is incontrovertible. But in the land of science journalism, opinions trump theorems." Yet, here we are discussing whether or not the implication is causal, and we are hiding behind policies like original research or literal quotation, where it's obvious to everybody that the page doesn't really represent the scientific results of the theory, but more like the journalistic side and approach where, like Duff egregiously defines, "opinions trump theorems." 70.136.253.158 (talk) 01:28, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

To be explicit, when Lisi states that D-G make unnecessary assumptions on fermionic embedding, that's Lisi's opinion, with no details ever explained anywhere on why that would be the case and without even saying that that fermionic embedding is intrinsic to the definition of fermionic fields. If Lisi finds a different way, he'd better publish that one just by itself, because hundreds of physicists working on GUTs would be happy to have an alternative way to generate fermions. For now, the only mathematical truth we have is what D-G proved. Presenting Lisi's vague response on this like if it was a matter of taste and assumptions is not only wrong, but laughable. It's like if I say that I have a theory that says Einstein's general relativity equations are making unnecessary assumptions. It might be true, but if I don't show what theory I have and why there is any unnecessary assumption and how my solution is implemented then my theory is as worth as any other random opinion about science from anybody, not something worth including in a encyclopedia. Again, this page is not a place where we have to include every single response given by Lisi, we have to explain what the theory says, and what the scientific contributions are, not what Lisi says in any article he writes defending his point of view, especially if those articles just contain vague words, personal opinions and no theory details. 70.136.253.158 (talk) 01:39, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, let's tackle the lede and the chronology section.

I'm also the editor above listed as 70.136.253.158.

I'm trying to be as NPOV as possible. As I often stated above, I believe that Lisi is a physicist with interesting ideas, and that part of his theory might turn out to be useful even if the theory is wrong, at the least for bringing up the attention of physicists to some interesting topics. If anything, at least we now have the D-G theorem. Which is a very neat result. No one can escape that result, unless you invent a different definition of fields that so far seem to be working quite well. So, they don't have unnecessary assumptions on fermionic fields, they have only the "definition" of fermionic fields.

Anyhow, I'm removing some of the extra long information in the lede and I'm putting it in the chronology, then I'll start cutting a little the chronology itself, about which Qwyrxian is right, it's a mess.

I am no admin, but I will not tolerate long discussion here anymore. I spent way too much time on this. If any strange edit war starts, I'll report everything to a request for arbitration.

I will not include any offensive comment about Smolin or Lisi being a hoax, first, because they are not, second, because there is no reliable source that states so. Smolin can be very strange, at time, imho, and Lisi hardly admits the problems of his theory in an honest way, he always tries to respond so that the non-physicists can believe he's got a solution to his problems figured out but still working on it. While there isn't much you can say about those problems until you actually present a solution, instead of saying, there is a solution. But this is very different from saying that they are an enterprise blah blah blah.

So please, let's just stick with the facts. I hope I won't regret start editing this section. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 15:57, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear 70.136.253.158, Happy Holidays!

Yes let's stick with the facts in 2012. :)

We need to add more facts to the page, such as that Lisi's Theory has never been published in a mainstream physics journal. This speaks volumes regarding the failure of Lisi's work, while alos showing that this article Strongly Violates the Wikipedia No Original Research rule.

Also, it is important to add facts to the article such as the fact that Smolin funded the theory and hyped the theory to the popular press numerous times. This is a fact:

So, long story short, those things that are right in Lisi's paper are nothing new. Those things that are new are wrong. Discover Magazine Reports: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/13-e-nste-n : "With Smolin’s aid, DISCOVER has scoured the landscape and found six top candidates who show intriguing signs of that Einsteinian spark. 1. Garrett Lisi: Age 40, holds no faculty position but earned a Ph.D. at UCLA; lives off grants and software consulting." http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/13-e-nste-n

The Telegraph Reports: "The ideas were described as "fabulous" by Lee Smolin, of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada." --http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6532614/Surfer-dudes-theory-of-everything-the-magic-of-Garrett-Lisi.html

These facts *need* to be added.

It is also a fact that Lisi adds nothing new, as E8 was previously developed by others: " Physics World failed to say that the E8 effect reported by the experimentalists was first predicted in 1988 by Alexander Zamolodchikov (who is, by the way, a string theorist). The discoveries of E8 in eleven-dimensional supergravity in 1979, of E8 xE8 in string theory in 1984 and more recent (peer-reviewed) papers on E8, E9, E10, E11 also go unmentioned."

These papers/research need to be referenced and saluted, as they were all professionally published in prestigious physics journals and publications. Perhaps Lisi missed their existence (Which is really no excuse in academia), but as they pre-dated his peer-rejected "theory" by twenty years, Lisi/Scientryst needs to add them to the article, as they can no longer deny them.

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, in their tag-team faux-physics-fest.

These are all facts, 70.136.253.158. There are many more "facts" to be added, but let us start with these.

Thank you for your time, 70.136.253.158.

Best wishes for 2012! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 17:16, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

71, to respond to your comments, I don't think this page is the place to say that Smolin said things like fabulous or Einstein, otherwise every time a person is compared to Einstein we should start writing in the WP pages. If anything something like that can be added in the chronology, but it seems to me maybe more adapt in the Lisi page than here, given that the chronology part is already too long.

That the paper is no published is stated in the very first paragraph, so I'm not sure what you mean.

About the original research, you are wrong, and somebody here have told you already. This page is not original research as in an author that posts his research in WP. It's a real physics paper, and even if some ideas might be wrong and some other ideas are controversial, there is a lot of physicists who have wrong ideas, wrong papers, and controversial stands. This doesn't mean that the article shouldn't have a page. Period.

Even assuming that Lisi is out there talking about E8 *only* because of Smolin, this wouldn't be our problem. By the way I don't think it's Somlin's creation or responsibility. Other physicists, included the famous and great John Baez, talked about Lisi and his ideas without mentioning any hoax effect. Being wrong or having an incomplete theory is not a crime. And it's not a crime if people or magazines talk about you, ok, maybe Smolin was just the most *journalistic* one and used big words without realizing the impact he was having, but so what? The purpose of this page is not to prove or to show that the Lisi deal was a hype just mounted by Smolin, the purpose of this page is to explain what a famous paper is saying, to maybe mention how it became famous, but most importantly to say whether or not it's considered correct or not by mathematicians and physicists, and in the future by experiments. And to say if the theory can, at the current status, reproduce the experimentally known physics, which it can't at the moment.

The fact that E8 wasn't discovered by Lisi is obvious by the article itself, which states so clearly. It is also clear, maybe to who understands physics, what the innovations are. And it's also clear that these innovations are the part of the theory that have problems. Lisi never said that he discovered E8, he actually stated clearly, and it's easy to check reading his previous papers, that he was already working on unifications, and that he just included E8 into his previous work once he heard about it, and he was amazed on how everything was fitting and got *fund* to use Voigt's words, but this E8 deal.

Personally I believe that Lisi didn't have enough experience dealing with large groups and unification to really be impartial. He was so in love with this poetical idea of E8 that he didn't even see that some of the features he's surprised and amazed are pretty common in any GUT. And he wasn't very proficient in using fundamental representations either, although he did use them in the past, to really see that a lot of what is happening with the quantum numbers of E8 is pretty natural, it's not *exceptional*. For example saying that a family becomes another family under triality, is a pretty neutral statement, it's not very amazing. In fact, in these kind of theories, there is several dimensions in the Cartan subalgebra of the theories, and it's easy to have rotations that change families of fields in other fields. The problem is to have all the fields at the same time. Which one doesn't with E8.

Now I could take off and say that one could take a certain triality rotation, take the one family one gets with the right quantum numbers, consider that as a linear combination of the three families, and find a different way to generate fermions out of the other two families that are rotated in the "non-correct-quantum-number* states, and try to see if that produces some strange mixing that is equivalent to the CKM mixing and to explain it's origin. BUT, there is a big BUT, everything I said above is complete trash. It's complete trash unless I actually explicitly say how that is done, because there is one way known to treat fermions, and it is with fermionic chiral fields. And I can't just say that I'm trying unconventional ways without saying which ways. This is my biggest criticism to Lisi, he never gives details on all these gray areas of his theory, he always just says there are alternative ways or unconventional ways, but never writes them down or gives an explicit working (even toy-)model. Instead he uses these responses for the press, so that the person that can't judge by looking at the physics, will remain with the idea that he must have something boiling... and here we go he gets tv shows and so on, because, like Sean Carrol says, it's too good of a story to talk about the surfer dude that does physics in a volkswagen van in Maui, Hawaii or Tahoe, Nevada and that enjoys life and balance in life instead of boring professors sitting in universities. You just have to write about it, because you get readers and then you're happy. Easy. And there is nothing wrong with it, except when they try to make a non-working theory look like something special and amazing. Even though I don't like a lot os aspects of string theory, for example, it would be ridiculous to compare string theory to Lisi's theory. String theory has accomplished a huge number of useful results, while Lisi so far has none. And string theory has been using E8 for years. Even loop quantum gravity hasn't produced a lot compared to sting theory. We can like it or not for sociological reasons, but the physics and the math are in front of everybody, incontrovertibly. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 18:02, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

—

Modifications explained:

· added physics before a preprint because it should be immediately clear that the article is about physics.

· although talking immediately about lie algebra, simple groups, exceptional groups and E8 seems a bit excessive, it is an explanation of the title, so it's fine with me.

· it is, though, not important to mention the use of representation theory (which is a mathematical tool, not a physics concept), it can be mentioned in the explanation of the theory (and it is already there).

· the fact that the paper was the most downloaded of the arXiv.org was a tough one, but I decided that it belongs to the chronology more than the lede. in fact, although an important piece of information, it's no information you need to know about the general idea of the theory, and it's not per se something that important to be in the lede. the number of downloads on the arXiv is usually pretty low, so it's normal that a paper that ends up in the news with titles like "surf dude stuns physicists" will be downloaded more than other papers. the lede should rather focus on the general attention received by the media, but not on this detail.

· I think that Duff's statement might be moved up in the lede to show how sometimes popular magazines give much attention to something but don't follow up giving enough attention to criticism and scientific results. But for now I think it's not necessary, and I left it in the chronology and reaction section. His words reinforce the D-G theorem, but I think I'll think about it before moving it up, I need to be sure it wouldn't sound POV.

· I removed the other things written by Lisi because this is not Lisi's page, and they aren't important towards the development of the theory from the lede point of view. I left the D-G because that's about the theory, and I left Lisi's response to it because it needs to be presented NPOV and I think this does it.

· Although NPOV doesn't mean to report everything that Lisi states about this theory, it is a good compromise when we report his own words both on accomplishments or limitations or work in progress status of the theory.

· Same reason why I removed the other papers, I had to insert Smolin's first paper, because that is a direct follow-up paper to Lisi's paper, although Smolin's paper doesn't necessarily need E8 and it doesn't say much about fermions. I am not sure why this paper wasn't in the lede. I suspect that it wasn't because maybe not very relevant, but when D-G proved their theorem and somebody inserted that part, then somebody else pro-Lisi started to insert all the other following papers or articles written by Lisi. But Smolin's paper stayed out of that list, strange. Let's see how it goes and in case we can think of shorten the section again.

24.7.128.58 (talk) 17:27, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

58, the lede should include the facts that there was a peer-reviewed and published paper by Lisi describing the theory and disputing Distler and Garibaldi's argument, and that there was a conference inspired by the theory, and a paper by Lisi published with collaborators, and a feature article on the theory in Scientific American. These facts are as important as Distler and Garibaldi's criticism. If you want to move the description of Distler and Garibaldi's criticism to the chronology as well, that might work, but it's extremely unbalanced to not move it and move the others.-Scientryst (talk) 18:13, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst, I'm trying to do my best. I disagree that the paper with Smolin and Speziale needs to be in the lede. It is only partially related to Lisi's theory, and it doesn't develop the E8 theory of everything itself. It is OK to mention in the chronology and in Lisi's page. But this article is about the theory, not about everything that Lisi did.

I'll try to see if there is any common ground here asking also Qwyrxian but it is undeniable that D-G is different from Sci-Am and the other papers written by Lisi. We talked about it enough. D-G are showing a proof that E8 cannot contain the standard model, the 3 generations and gravity. It is ontologically different from another paper partially written by Lisi and from a feature article. It's not a matter of importance. It's that the feature article is ok in the section that explains the developments, the chronology and the reaction. It does not need to be in the lede. A paper that states that the whole implant is wrong needs to be in the lede, because it's crucial information. And so is Lisi's response, in a minor fashion, given that those problems are actually present in the theory. The theory currently doesn't work and doesn't reproduce the experimental results. This HAS to be clear. I won't keep discussing this. I'm gonna revert part of the changes, accomodate others, but any other step here will just make me report this to wp:COI and to wp:requests for arbitration, asking for banning if it's the case. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 19:38, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Reverted and accommodated some of the modifications made by Scientryst but not all of them. Because it's ridiculous to require all the papers to be in the lede. If this was the case then in a page on, I don't know, little Higgs or unparticles then we should write all the papers partially related written by Nima Arkani-Hamed or Georgi, which of course, it's not even conceivable. Just because this theory is mainly supported by Lisi, it doesn't mean that everything that Lisi says is golden and that we should include it all. Very different is a paper that proves that a certain embedding is not possible, especially if those difficulties are also acknowledged by Lisi himself. Please let's not start the edit war. The lede is NPOV. It's not showing or supporting any particular version. While it should at least mention that the general idea from the physics community is that the theory is wrong. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 19:59, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the conference inspired by Lisi's work reported by SciAm is notable, I forgot to replace it in a better position after I moved it in the chronology section. But I don't see the reason why it should be in the lede. It's part of the chronology and the reaction. In theory, the conference could have found that the theory is wrong, or the best theory ever written. But the fact itself that the conference existed doesn't mean that it should be mentioned in the lede. It's not an accomplishment or a development. It is noticeable that a paper inspires a conference, sure, but not to the point of having it in the lede, imho.

About the other changes, I just tried to cut things when they were repeated twice. But I will do a much more complete job later today. Please Qwyrxian, if you have 5 minutes, give me a little feedback. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 20:27, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there was never a peer-reviewed and published paper by Lisi describing the theory and disputing Distler and Garibaldi's arguments as Lisi keeps insisting. This is simply not true. The "theory" has been roundly and thoroughly rejected by the scientific community, even though Lee Smolin keeps hyping Lisi as the next Einstein and using his trusted media contacts to perpetuate the media storm. Were it not for the Lee Smolin funded/hyped media storm, there would be nothing. (this was 71, please try to sign your entries, otherwise it gets confusing).

I agree that there was no such a paper. Like many times I insisted here, Lisi's comments on the peer-reviewed paper in the conference proceedings don't find any error in D-G's arguments. He finds an explicit embedding of the one generation standard model, but D-G also say that that is possible. The point is that there is also an antigeneration that makes the theory non-chiral (and it's not a minor point). And there is no way in which you can get three generation of fermions. Lisi about it says that we don't have the mass mechanism so we can't exclude per se that we will find a way to deal with these kind of fermions and make the antigeneration heavier. Now, even though he doesn't even indicate what such mechanism would be, nobody can really say that it will never exist (as far as I know at least there isn't a theorem that proves the opposite). But the main problem is that there is nothing you can do to have three generations. And about that nothing has been said by Lisi in a paper. There is no detail on it, no example, no toy model, nothing. But I think that the page at the moment shows these points in a quite detailed way.

Even if it's true that the theory in general is perceived as rejected, I don't understand what you would want us to write about it. A rejected theory still would need to be in WP. And even if we assume that Smolin uses a lot of politics to keep his position of *power* (just to exaggerate), I still don't understand what you want. The page would still need to be in WP. And it doesn't seem to me that there is any reliable source that incontrovertibly states how Smolin is such a bad scientist. I think that's your opinion. Let's keep our expectations on a different level. Let's just explain what the theory is and what the reactions have been. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 20:44, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, all of Smolin's ideas, from Loop Quantum Gravity, to Double Special Relativity (which tries to deny Einstein's Relativity), to "The Universe is an Octopus," to Lisi's media-storm, have failed. This is a simple fact. As pointed out at Cosmic Variance, professional physicists are well-aware of Smolin's track-record of hype & failure, hype & failure:

"As a case study, let’s consider the Sunday Times article. From the article: “Could Lisi have cracked a problem that has defied some of the finest minds in history? While it has in no way embraced this lofty claim, the scientific community has given it a surprising amount of respect. Lee Smolin, founder of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, is full of praise: “It is one of the most compelling unification models I’ve seen in many, many years.” ” The journalist assumes that the views of someone of Smolin’s stature surely signify respect from the scientific community at large — a completely understandable and excusable mistake. (Normally the views of someone in Smolin’s position would signify that, and the journalist can’t be expected to know that there is an anomaly in this case.)" --http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/11/16/garrett-lisis-theory-of-everything/

Dr. Sean Carroll concludes, "Saying “there are still some issues to be ironed out” is a cop-out. In addition to the mentioned problem with mixing gravity and internal symmetries, the original theory was not unified, not quantized, and somewhat ad hoc. Jacques pointed out in his first post that you couldn’t embed all three fermion generations in E_8, which Lisi admitted was true, and in a new post he shows that you can’t even embed one generation. If anyone does not agree, it would make sense to point out why over there. And “new proposals sometimes don’t fully work at first” doesn’t count; if the Standard Model can’t be fit inside E_8, there is nothing even conjecturally interesting about the proposal. This is a sad case where media attention gave an utterly incorrect view of the scientific process."

In the comments section, one can easily see that Lee Smolin has no command of the math nor physics, but only of hype, politics, and media firestorms, which define his very existence: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/11/16/garrett-lisis-theory-of-everything/

This is a simple fact, and this current article needs to reflect that all the Garret Lisi hype is not physics, but rather it is a Smolin funded/financed/hyped media storm.

Wikipedia must publish facts. It is not a mere vanity page for Smolin hype/media firestorms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 21:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

71, while your idea on Smolin and Lisi is clear. Wikipedia is not a newspaper, a magazine or a journal. We don't do scoops here. We don't try to show whether or not a physicist is a crackpot or not. This page is about the theory, the theory is certainly no more wrong than another million of wrong theories. Does it deserve all the attention that it got? Obviously no, but it doesn't meant that it has to be presented in a derogatory way. If you want, go and edit Lisi and Smolin's pages, that are quite ridiculously positive and POV. The effort done here will never, NEVER, say "Lisi is a hoax sponsord by Smolin". Unless, of course, all the major magazines or physics journal will start saying that. And even in that case, a brief description of the theory will stay. Consider that instead, in Lisi's page, there is even a list of all the interviews he has given, something ridiculous and certainly incompatible with the policies WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE, instead of maybe having a more appropriate to list of scientific results, which, so far, would be near to empty. Somebody will have to touch those pages too. Not even very important physicists or even physicists who WON THE NOBEL PRIZE have a list of interviews, and they have shorter pages. Lisi's page and Smolin's page are a complete mess. It would be more appropriate to list of scientific results, which, so far, would be empty. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 23:07, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

71.106.167.55 (and also 98.244.55.28?), who are you anyway?

Terry Bollinger (talk) here, I'm one of those folks who likes using my name if I state my opinions strongly. Doesn't mean I'm right, but just seems a more sporting way to criticize others. That's especially if you seem to be undertaking some sort of effort that is more focused more on erasing history than on documenting it.

So, Mr or Ms Verizon 71.106.167.55, who are you, and why exactly are you wrapped around an issue that should be mostly past and gone history by now? The overall level of accusation in your edits and discussion would be downright amusing if you intended them as a good, solid satire on how mean-spirited science and math discussion can get at times. Maybe I'm misreading you... you really could just be trying by example to show how both science and Wikipedia never, ever should be done. That would be cool pretty cool if it is your real intent, and if so I must give you credit for having a superbly subtle and refined sense of absurdity!

Speaking of amusing, your comments about others not knowing math really do come over as a bit hilarious, and I just have to assume you really are trying to be funny there. If you are by chance a strong advocate of string theory -- are you? uh, what was you name again, I think I missed it? -- I cannot as a computer person think of a more delightfully bad excuse for claiming math expertise than claiming it by being an expert in string theory. In computers we just call that kind of decades-long, layer-by-layer accumulation of poorly verified micro-logic "assembly code," and try hard to wean newbies away from falling into such bad habits of obscuration and noise generation. In retrospect, over the last couple of decades computer science has seem a big decline in assembly-language level thinking, so I'm beginning to suspect that all the folks with that inclination went over to string theory instead, where such exercises in accretion are better appreciated... :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Terry Bollinger (talk • contribs) 07:57, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Terry Bollinger,

When Scientryst (Smolin/Lisi) reveals their true identity, I will reveal mine. Above you are trying to out us--both 71.106.167.55 and 98.244.55.28. It is against wikipedia policy to out editors, so we must ask why are you trying to intimidate us into revealing our true identities? Have you not seen the way Smolin/Lisi/Sientryst snark/attack those who laugh at their pump-and-dump media-storm physics-free failures. Do you really want us, innocent wikipedia editors, to fall victim to their well-funded (Goldman Sachs funds P.I. & Smolin's failed mathematical models/media storms), tyrannical media wrath? Is that why you are outing us, because that is both wrong and dangerous! Also, why are you not trying to intimidate Scientryst into revealing their true identity? Please, on behalf of wikipedia, do not try to out editors, nor try to intimidate editors, as this is wikipedia policy. If you continue in this vein, we will report you.

Smolin also published dozens of papers in String Theory, and I agree with you that Smolin's papers were but "obscuration and noise generation," much like his double special relativity and his Loop Quantum Grvaity and his latest Lisimania media storm affair. So we agree on this.

But please, I must remind you, do not try to out wikipedia editors, nor intimidate them to do so themselves. Do not violate Wikipedia policy, or we will have to report you, as is our duty. It is one thing if an editor outs themselves, like Scientryst did above, revealing that he was Lisi/Smolin, but it is against the rules to out other editors. Did you not know this? Well, now you do, and this is your last warning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 16:10, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Um...Scientryst never said that he was Lisi or Smolin. Never. In any event, 71, it's not outing to ask, but Terry, there's really no reason to ask, as no one is ever under any obligation to reveal anything about their real life identity (though we prefer it when people identify if they have a conflict of interest. Furthermore, using a real name like you do, a fake name like I do, or an IP has no bearing on one's right to comment or criticize here. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:08, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Qwyrxian, so you are finally stating that you would like Scientryst and the associated sockpuppets to reveal their conflict of interest. Paging Scientryst! Please reveal your conflict of interest, as is Wikipedia policy. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 16:48, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand why writing my name would change the substance of what I'm saying. I'm not criticizing Lisi, in fact, often I defend him. What I'm criticizing is the fact that there is a user here, and a user on Lisi's personal page, and they want to hide a lot of information just because it's not supportive of Lisi. I understand very well all the physics here, and I can see that these users very often play with words, phrasing and policies just to try to make the page look more favorable to Lisi than it would be if it was honestly presented with a NPOV. I always motivate with lots of reasons my edit. These users just revert, change phrasings and barely respond here. And why do you think that Scientryst is doing a better job than us. Showing a nickname is not very different from an IP. I don't want my other edits in wikipedia to be related to this page. And because I often write from different places I have many different IPs (I'm not 71, tho). Is there anything wrong with this? If I were sock puppeting to help my edits this wouldn't be allowed, but I'm not. Unlike Scientryst, that I believe is sock puppeting with SherryNugil in Lisi's page and that isn't using the same nickname to avoid being to obvious that xe's trying to present Lisi in a POV way in both pages.. And I'm about to write a long review to ask for banning these editors for conflict of interests, POV, sock puppeting and, in case, autobiography. 98.244.54.152 (talk) 11:36, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Propose title change

I propose that we change the title of this article from its current title to E8 Model, because this article isn't about just the one preprint, but rather the overall theory, the various articles/preprints that have discussed it, and the responses/criticisms of that theory. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:10, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, because the title of the preprint is the most famous title. There is no such recognition in physics to justify this model to be called E8 model, otherwise even E8xE8 heterotic string theory should be called E8 model, being used for many more years than Lisi's model. 98.244.54.152 (talk) 10:53, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, please understand that E8 is nothing new, nor is its application to physics, nor gravity, anything new. What is new is Lisi's erroneous applications of it and Smolin's media firestorm. What happened is that Lisi said some incorrect things about E8 and Lee Smolin hyped the errors to the press as "fabulous." Lisi's errors were subsequently completely revealed and rejected by professional scientists in peer-reviewed, published papers. 98.244.54.152 is correct that this article is famous in no way for any accepted physics it promotes, but rather it only exists because of Lee Smolin's unprecedented media hype/media storm, funded in part by FQXI and Goldman Sachs. Because this article has nothing to do with any successful physical E8 model, and everything to do with Lee Smolin's media firestorm, this article is only notable in that it represents Smolin's unprecedented media hype married to Garrett Lisi et. al.'s unprecedented sock puppetry, anonymous snark, and intimidation. Physics hype/crackpottery is a very lucrative field for those who do not do physics, and thus Smolin/Lisi et al. have great incentive to edit this page with their personal POVs, instead of scientific rigor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 16:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I have reported user Scientryst for sock puppetry but I would like to ask if it is correctly defined as sock puppetry as opposed to other things. User Scientryst here always has edits pro Lisi and very often POV (we can see that a lot of them had to be fought for a long time before having a stable version). In Lisi's personal page, user SherryNugil has just broken the 3RR policy and I'm trying to revert following the BLD exception, which they are also claiming to be using, with few comments on the discussion page that never prove and bias or unreliable references. SherryNugil has a very similar style as Scientryst and similar edit habits, always pro Lisi and very often POV. Both users just edit respectively on this page and on Lisi's page. If they are the same user I believe this is sock puppetry because they are trying to hide being the same person to hide their conflict of interests and tendentious edits. Qwyrxian, once you mentioned the possibility that this page could be edited by Lisi himself or by somebody close to his group/fans. I believe this is not only true here but also on Lisi's personal page. This page has become very stressful for every body, and we still don't have a version that *clearly* states what the general impression about the theory is from the point of view of the mainstream science. It violates wp:undue weight policies and wp:fringe. Showing Lisi's words almost as much as other physicists, like if he always had the right to make his statements look as reliable as other physicists, even when other physicists write a peer reviewed paper and he responds in a blog entri on SciAm. 98.244.54.152 (talk) 10:53, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear 98.244.54.152, thank you for reporting Garrett Lisi for sock puppetry. I too have noticed this but have been afraid to speak out, as Qwyrxian has repeatedly threatened me for pointing out Lisi's violations of wikipedia's rules, from behind his anonymous mask Qwyrxian. It seems that some here are hell-bent on letting Lisi/Smolin violate wikipedia on multiple levels, including NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH, UNDUE WEIGHT, FRINGE, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, POV, 3RR policy, SELF-EDITING, CONFLICT OF INTEREST (COI), and more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 16:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I did not report Garrett Lisi, I reported users Scientryst and SherryNugil. I don't care if they are Lisi or Lisi's friends or collegues or collaborators of if they have no relation to Lisi himself. What I care is that I believe they are the same person, and are sock puppeting to try avoid being spotted being the same user modifying both Lisi's page and Lisi's theory page. It also pretty easy to spot their POV. They violate many policies in undeniable fashion. I hope this gets to an end soon. I will try to ask for a permanent ban if things don't improve. It is impossible to constructively edit this page. It's always almost uniquely one editor that resists to calm and unbiased modifications. And this editor seems to be editing only one page, and with the same style. I hope that some of you, on both sides in case, will be available in reporting honestly what is happening here in the arbitration page. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 16:30, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

From Garrett Lisi's google plus public profile: "Merry xmas, someone's furiously messing with long-standing wikipedia pages on me and E8 Theory. I must have angered a wiki elf."

Again in a comment Lisi states: "The weirdest thing to me about the wikipedia drama has been how it has connected back and forth to outside forces. Jacques Distler complained early on about the E8 Theory wiki page on his blog, and a wiki editor (the same one responsible for recent edits?) commented there with a call to action. I guess they didn't have good sources backing up Distler's criticism of the theory though, so now appears Michael Duff's hit piece on me and E8 Theory in an editorial paper that is ostensibly a defense of string theory. You know, until now, I've tried to be nice to string theorists, attempting to largely steer clear of the string controversy, but the political maneuvering of this particular string contingent is reprehensible."

Almost to laugh, if it wasn't so similar what Scientryst, SherryNugil and Lisi say, and the words they all choose. BTW, this to me looks like a lot more a call to action than the one on Distler blog, where it was explicitly asked to be NPOV and not offensive. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 17:15, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Yup. Garrett Lisi/Scientryst updated his facebook page with this "CALL TO ACTION" too. Boy, does he monitor these pages or what? It is hilarious how Garret Lisi tries to accuse anyone who points out his massive violations of wikipedia policy as a "String Theorist," trying to fan the flames of the aging Smolin media storm, which even Smolin is now trying to distance himself from, as Smolin doesn't want his legacy to be married to the Lisi sockpuppetry. Smolin was also a String Theorist, and Lisi has a lot in common with the String Theorists, as he is bascially profiting off the pumping and dumping of a failed theory. If anything, this is turning into a case study of the underhanded social media machinations/abuse of the Goldman-Sachs funded Lee Smolin and Garrett Lisi. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 17:22, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

It's cool how Scientryst and SherryNugil are taking the day off here, as Lisi focuses his hype energies on his google + and facebook pages for the day, realizing that he needs other unsuspecting "fans" to come eidt his pages, now that everyone sees that Scientryst, SherryNugil and Lisi are one and the same, following in their mentor Lee Smolin's pump'n'dump media-firestorm tradition of hype. Hey Garrett/Scientryst/SherryNugil, we are not String Theorists. While Lee Smolin published dozens of failed string theory papers, before turning his attention to his failed DSR (Double Special Relativity which denies Einstein), his failed Loopy Quantum Gravity, and his failing Garrett Lisi hype media firestorm, we have not published any String Theory papers. And the fact that you call us String Theorists, equating us with your mentor Lee Smolin who publishes failed pump'n'dump stringy papers, is reprehensible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 18:15, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with a name change, for the reason described by Qwyrxian. But the name of the theory, coined by John Baez, used by Lisi, and used by many other sources, including Scientific American, is E8 Theory. There is currently a redirect from that page. The name E8 Theory is unambiguous, as a Google search shows, and would not be confused with the use of E8xE8 in heterotic string theory. -Scientryst (talk) 05:19, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The name change makes absolutely no sense, as Garrett Lisi's failed/unpublished/refuted paper, in addition to being proven wrong in peer-reviewed journals, also completely ignores the prior art of E8 Theory and the E8 model, "" Physics World failed to say that the E8 effect reported by the experimentalists was first predicted in 1988 by Alexander Zamolodchikov (who is, by the way, a string theorist). The discoveries of E8 in eleven-dimensional supergravity in 1979, of E8 xE8 in string theory in 1984 and more recent (peer-reviewed) papers on E8, E9, E10, E11 also go unmentioned." So, long story short, those things that are right in Lisi's paper are nothing new. Those things that are new are wrong."

Garret Lisi's/Scientryst's failed theory does not deserve a Wikipedia page nor title. And as it ignores the true forms of E8 while bastardizing it and breaking it and using it in ways that do not work, Lisi's work does not deserve the E8 Theory title, as Lisi but bastardizes what others have done correctly, and because Smolin hyped the bastardization to his professional media contacts, and because Lisi built a career out of Smolin's hyping of Lisi's bastardization, Scientryst/Lisi now wants to save the broken, failed theory by renaming it with that which he bastardized--E8 Theory. This would be like renaming Smolin's failed Double Special Relativity as "Relativity," or renaming LQG as "physics."

Dear Qwyrxian, please do not let Lisi/Scientryst/Smolin take advantage of you, as they do the general public. Smolin's media firestorms are not science, nor is it how science works. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 16:12, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Fringe Theories noticeboard

A notice: I've opened a discussion about this article (and, by extension, Antony Garrett Lisi) at the Fringe noticeboard). You can see and comment on the discussion at WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Need help on An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything. 12:58, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Lisi using Smolin-funded Social Media Network to Harass/Out/Namecall Wikipedia Editors

Does Wikipedia support the use of social media campaigns to harass, internet bully, and out wikipedia editors and slander them via namecalling?

Realizing that he was beginning to look pretty silly sockpuppetting as Scientryst--the virtually lone supporter/editor of these pages supporting his irrelevant surfing biography and failed/unpublished/rejected "theory"--Garrett sought help by posting to his google + and facebook accounts: "https://plus.google.com/108405429084641270297/posts," calling upon his Smolin-funded network to come here and harass and out us, with "Merry xmas, someone's furiously messing with long-standing wikipedia (Smolin-funded/hyped) pages on me and E8 Theory. I must have angered a wiki elf (the Truth/Science)."

One Terry Bollinger answered Garrett's call to come here and harass us and try and out us. David Andrews bullies/namecalls and calls us "schmucks" at Garrett's Google page. So you can see how Team Smolin operates with a scorched-earth policy, burning and destroying anyone who questions the Smolin-funded media hype/classic Smolin media firestorms. Is it no wonder that we must remain anonymous, with the Smolin/Lisi hype moneystream at stake here? These people will stop at nothing to save their bread-and-butter--hype centered around failed, unpublished, refuted, disproved, unaccepted, and rejected pump'n'dump hype which bastardizes the subject of E8. This is how Smolin has destroyed modern physics, by creating a politicized atmosphere where either you support Smolin's failed DSR, failed LQG, or failed/unpublished/rejected/disproved Lisi, or you are a "Schmuck" String Theorist and Crackpot. They are getting desperate as their entire media empire and money stream depends upon hype and lies, pump'n'dump failed theories, and more hype and lies centered about unpublished, failed-theories which are widely rejected by real scientists and the scientific community.

Note how Terry Bollinger (from team Smolin/Lisi/Scientryst), while trying to out us and the various IPs who are different people, never tries to out the Scientryst editor, as he knows that Scientryst is Lisi/Smolin/Associate. So you see that anonymity is fine when used by Lisi/Smolin/Sockpuppet/Associates to snark, intimidate, attack, and peddle false, unpublished, unaccepted, completely-refuted theories, but whenever anyone else uses anonimity out of fear of the Smolin scorched-earth-policy machine of destruction, they are called a "Schmuck" on a Lisi hosted media platform.

Scientryst, a Lisi/Smolin/Sockpuppet/Associate with a POV and COI, has made far, far more contributions to this page (erroneous ones based on Smolin-funded hype and lies) than all the other IP editors combined. And yet Terry Bollinger, when called by Lisi to attack those who question the Smolin hype, attacks the anonimity of the IP Editors, while giving Scientryst/Lisi/Sockpuppet/Smolin a free pass.

Is there some way to communicate to Lisi/Scientryst/Sockpuppet that using Smolin-funded social media networks to out, namecall (calling wikipedia editors schmucks), and harass Wikipedia Editors is against Wikipedia Policy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 15:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Delightful!

58, after I stopped rolling on the floor laughing, I still could not help but savor the delicious irony of what you just posted! Thank you, just just made my day.

I ask for something as simple as "could you please put in a 4-tilde or use a meaningless name for tracking?," and suddenly you honor me unjustly by calling me, a poor, bewildered computer scientist, part of "team Lisi"? I bow humbly in your direction for bestowing upon me an honor I have not earned! Physics for me is a delightful but slow process, with many a textbook cracked just to get the right basics down.

"Smolin-funded Social Media Network?" Dr Smolin, if you are by any chance reading this, wow... You must have boo-coo more bucks and computer savvy than I ever imagined! Effective social networks are hard to design and expensive to fund; see the movie "The Social Network" for details.

And anonymous request, etiquette-violating (no 4-tilde again) request to the Powers that Be to support your right to drop as many ad hominems as you like, and to edit out as much real history as you like, all for a web page that was probably best just left alone as history?? Wow!

Ever hear the Shakespeare line about protesting too loudly? My last requests to you (paraphrased) included, let's see: "Please use 4-tildes"... "If your register a nonsense name it would make it easier for others to find your analysis" and I think "please take pride in your own work." I think I also encouraged you to develop your own theory if you have some strong interests in specific approaches. And to that you post a long reply worrying about people trying to find out your real name? You're not reading carefully: I was suggesting ways by which you could "play fair" on Wikipedia pages *without* revealing your name.

Again, thanks. This was a kind of boring day, and now I'm feeling downright energized! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Terry Bollinger (talk • contribs) 17:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Terry Bollinger, I agree with you that Scientryst MUST reveal their true identity and COI. And yes, as Lisi's fame for a failed, disproved, rejected, non-theory that has never been published in a peer-reviewed physics journal, was bought and paid-for by Lee Smolin, so was Lisi's social network and contacts funded by Lee Smolin, who hyped Garret Lisi's failed, faulty, unpublished "theory" to the press numerous times as "fabulous" science, causing the media firestorm which Lisi leveraged into creating this wikipedia (lisipedia) page by harvesting the Smolin-funded/financed/furthered, unscientific media hype:

Discover Magazine Reports: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/13-e-nste-n : "With Smolin’s aid, DISCOVER has scoured the landscape and found six top candidates who show intriguing signs of that Einsteinian spark. 1. Garrett Lisi: Age 40, holds no faculty position but earned a Ph.D. at UCLA; lives off grants and software consulting." http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/13-e-nste-n The Telegraph Reports: "The ideas were described as "fabulous" by Lee Smolin, of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada." --http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6532614/Surfer-dudes-theory-of-everything-the-magic-of-Garrett-Lisi.html Smolin also sat on the FQXI funding committee which financed the Lisi hype numerous times.

"As a case study, let’s consider the Sunday Times article. From the article: “Could Lisi have cracked a problem that has defied some of the finest minds in history? While it has in no way embraced this lofty claim, the scientific community has given it a surprising amount of respect. Lee Smolin, founder of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, is full of praise: “It is one of the most compelling unification models I’ve seen in many, many years.” ” The journalist assumes that the views of someone of Smolin’s stature surely signify respect from the scientific community at large — a completely understandable and excusable mistake. (Normally the views of someone in Smolin’s position would signify that, and the journalist can’t be expected to know that there is an anomaly in this case.)" --http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/11/16/garrett-lisis-theory-of-everything/ Dr. Sean Carroll concludes, "Saying “there are still some issues to be ironed out” is a cop-out. In addition to the mentioned problem with mixing gravity and internal symmetries, the original theory was not unified, not quantized, and somewhat ad hoc. Jacques pointed out in his first post that you couldn’t embed all three fermion generations in E_8, which Lisi admitted was true, and in a new post he shows that you can’t even embed one generation. If anyone does not agree, it would make sense to point out why over there. And “new proposals sometimes don’t fully work at first” doesn’t count; if the Standard Model can’t be fit inside E_8, there is nothing even conjecturally interesting about the proposal. This is a sad case where media attention gave an utterly incorrect view of the scientific process."

As to why we are wary of using our true names? Well, the Goldman-Sachs-funded Smolin/Lisi team actively supports internet bullying and calling people "Schmucks" upon the social networks they host. Why should we allow the money/fame/hype-hungry Smolin/Lisi team to denigrate us with vicious namecalling? Espcially when the Smolin/Lisi/Scientryst camp hides behind anonymous sockpuppetry. But you will note, we do not call them names, nor descend to using derogatory terms such as "Schmuck," while the Lisi/Smolin camp delights in such behavior. Again and again, we see how Smolin's media machinations and ambitions hath destroyed the once exalted field of physics, as the Smolin/Lisi team destroys the hopes for civil debate with a dire combination of anonymity (Scientryst), sockpuppetry (Scientryst/Lisi/Smolin/SherryNugil) and slanderous namecalling and internet bullying (hosted on Lisi's google+ account where Team Smolin et al. call wikipedia editors "Schmucks.")

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 17:25, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Time for Scientryst/Lisi/Smolin/SherryNugil/Sockpuppet to Share their massive COIs

It is a wikipedia rule that editors must share any Conflict Of Interest. It has been noted by multiple editors here that Scientryst/Lisi/Smolin/SherryNugil/Sockpuppet are and have been violating numerous wikipedia rules including NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH, UNDUE WEIGHT, FRINGE, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, POV, 3RR policy, SELF-EDITING, CONFLICT OF INTEREST (COI), and more, and as this has been going on for years with Scientryst/Lisi/Smolin/SherryNugil/Sockpuppet running wild and being the sole contributors/editors supporting the Lisi/Lisi Theory pages, Scientryst/Lisi/Smolin/SherryNugil/Sockpuppet has also been flagrantly violating the wikipedia rules by failing to share their massive COI. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 16:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

More Erroneous Garrett Lisi Attempts at Outing Wikipedia Editors Garrett's Google + Network

Does wikipedia support the use of social media to try and out wikipedia editors? How come Garrett is not trying to out the anonymous Scientryst/Lisi/Smolin/SherryNugil Sockpuppets? Why is Lisi exempt from wikipedia rues? Why is Lisi and his well-funded Smolin fanbase allowed to flout dozens of wikipedia rules for several years? While engaging in anonymous sockpuppetry, hosting a social media forum supporting internet bullying of wikipedia editors and Jacques Distler, and promoting namecalling and using the word "Schmuck" to attack wikipedia editors, the Garrett Lisi/Smolin camp is further fanning the flames of the outing of wikipedia editors, now WRONGLY attacking Jacques Distler and slandering UC Davis students at Garret's google + page, as Garret Lisi announces at his google + page, "Terry Bollinger, you will of course form your own opinion, but anonymous attacks of people which whom he disagrees is very much Distler's style, as is back-room dealing, deception, and extortion (DOES Garrett Lisi have PROOF of Distler EXTORTING someone? If not, this is slander and libel). There was such an incident on Peter Woit's blog, where he outed him. I suppose I shouldn't let it bother me, but the main material that's been cut from the wikipedia page on the theory (a week or so ago I think) was the mathematical description and the graphical description. Interested people can read my papers for that, but that description seemed like an OK mathematical summary. The IP's (mainly one person as far as I can tell) vigorously editing the theory page, since April or so, I don't think is Jens Koeplinger. I think it was the same physicist or physics student from UC Davis who posted the last comment to Distler's blog as "Dan" back in July: http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/002233.html" Dear Garrett, I am not Jacques Distler. I am not a UC Davis Student. I am not Jes Koeplinger. I choose to remain anonymous while speaking the truth here, rather than suffer the Goldman-Sachs-funded Lisi/Smolin camp's branded internet bullying, outing, and slanderous namecalling, whcih is how they treat the speakers of truth and all those who threaten the Lisi/Smolin empire of lies and false media-firestorm money machines built upon a neverending-deluge of faux/failed crackpottery hyped as science, propped up by bullying, intimidation, anonymous wikipedia editing, backroom, underhanded dealing, and namecalling. 'Tis the complete and utter Smolinification of once noble physics, folks.

Above it is revealed that Garrett Lisi is sockpuppeting as Scientryst/SherryNugil who both display an extreme COI in editing and maintaining your pages supporting a failed, disproven, never-published, non-scientific, Lee-Smolin-funded media firestorm. It is time for you to be forthright, drop the anonymous wikiedpia editing and internet attacks and bullying at your google + page, and stop violating dozens of wikipedia rules, including your trying to out wikipedia editors, NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH, UNDUE WEIGHT, FRINGE, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, POV, 3RR policy, SELF-EDITING, CONFLICT OF INTEREST (COI), and other violations of wikipedia policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.167.55 (talk) 19:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Garrett Lisi, Wikipedia is not the place where to directly describe your own theory or your own person.

Dear Lisi, dear user:Scientryst, dear user:SherryNugil, being clear that you all follow very closely Lisi's pages on wikipedia (and for the latter two, you edit almost only those), it's probably time to start thinking about policies.

Instead of trying with ridiculous and laughable bullying methods to out editors, you should try to see how you see the world. Was yours a threat by the way? In your google plus blog, dear Lisi, you wrote material that can easily end up in a lawsuit. You should watch your mouth when accusing people of "back-room dealing, deception, and extortion". Do you really think that there is a conspiracy here against you instead of just editors loving physics and trying to simply write the truth about your theory (both good aspects and bad aspects). Why do you think that a NPOV necessarily coincides with your POV?

Specifically, it doesn't matter if the mathematical summary "seemed OK to you". It matters whether or not the material is WP:UNDUE and the weight in presenting it is unbalanced towards your personal POV instead of a N(eutral)POV. Also, given that you amusingly follows all the IPs around here and all their actions, you should probably also recognize that I'm the one that re-included the graphical representation of the algebraic breakdown. Proving you wrong about my intents, other than proving you obsessed about your own page.

You should look into the wikipedia policies about writing your own page, wikipedia is not your personal server or webpage, conflict of interest and all that. There is a lot written that you might find useful. About it, I would like to copy and paste a few sentences from Wikipedia:Autobiography:

Just because you honestly believe you are being neutral doesn't mean you are. Unconscious biases can and do exist, and are a very common cause of the problems with autobiographies—which is why we discourage autobiographies themselves and not just active, deliberate self-promotion. Not only does this affect neutrality but it also affects the verifiability and unoriginal research of the autobiography. One may inadvertently slip things in that one may not think need to be attributable even though they do, due to those very same biases. Even if you can synthesize an autobiography based on only verifiable material that is not original research you may still not be able to synthesize it in a neutral manner.

It is difficult to write neutrally and objectively about oneself (see above about unconscious biases). You should generally let others do the writing. Contributing material or making suggestions on the article's talk page is considered proper—let independent editors write it into the article itself or approve it if you still want to make the changes yourself.

In clear-cut cases, it is permissible to edit pages connected to yourself. So, you can revert vandalism; but of course it has to be simple, obvious vandalism and not a content dispute [...] Be prepared that if the fact has different interpretations, others will edit it.

So, Garrett, trust a little more the intent of others that aren't necessarily evil just because don't share your vision about yourself or your theory. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 22:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Warning

The next person who calls for this article (or the article on Lisi) to be deleted will be brought to WP:ANI, and I will request that you/your IP/an IP range be blocked. The next person who accuses someone else of sockpuppetry here (instead of at WP:SPI with evidence in the form of diffs) will be taken to ANI and I will request you be blocked. The next person who accuses someone else of being a principle in the dispute (i.e., of being Lisi, or Smolin, or Distler, or a part of an off-wiki campaign) here (instead of at WP:COIN or at WP:DRN) will be taken to ANI and I will request that you be blocked.

There is no policy based reason to delete this article. The paper/htheory has received more than enough discussion in reliable sources to meet WP:N, and thus an article on it is appropriate. We don't say "Oh, this theory is completely wrong/disproven, so it shouldn't have an article." All we do is ask, "Has this theory/paper been discussed in detail in multiple, independent, reliable sources?" Since the answer is yes, an article (so long as it is neutral, well-sourced, etc.) will be here. Even if tomorrow an international panel of physics experts got together and wrote a formal paper that said that E8 is worthless and has absolutely no scientific validity, we'd still have an article on it. Yes, the article needs to accurately reflect both the theory and responses to it; i.e., it may well be that the article is mostly negative points about E8, if that matches the prevailing scientific opinion, though of course we'll include the positive comments from the non-scientific sources as well, along with any positive sources within the scientific community.

But all of the accusations are disruptive, and making it impossible to actually discuss what to do with the article. If anyone has serious accusations backed up by appropriate evidence, take it to the appropriate noticeboard for administrative action (if you don't know what that is, ask me on my talk page). Qwyrxian (talk) 23:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Precedent

There is precedent in Wikipedia for dealing with articles on scientific papers. For example, the article on the RKKY interaction in condensed matter physics is based on four theoretical papers. A search for the first paper by "Ruderman" on Google Scholar gives a minimum of 1800 cites. This indicates the amount of impact needed for notability. A search for "A G Lisi" on Google Scholar [2] gives a little over 100 cites in total with 46 for the paper on which the article is based. This is not remotely enough to establish notability on the basis of the impact on mainstream science. Wikipedia does not have an article on every paper with over 45 cites. However, there may be a case for notability on the basis of the wide publicity generated by the proponents of the paper. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

Correct. The notability here doesn't depend on the scientific impact, which is very little, although not inexistent. The notability is based on how many independent articles and interviews Lisi has received on his paper. The media covered the topic quite a bit. That is enough to be in wikipedia, although it should be clear what the status of the theory is, what the scientific community's position is on it, and what kind of scientific impact it has had. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 02:42, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed as well. And since it seems like the theory/paper are not widely accepted--that it isn't notable for it's scientific qualities--the article should focus more on the non-science stuff, and less on the actual science. Thus the reason for the earlier trimming of the content section. Qwyrxian (talk) 15:52, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm far over my head, but sure this sounds wrong. non-science stuff?! If I were a reader I'd want to know what's being proposed (what's complete and what's ongoing), what are the criticisms against this unification, and why Lisi (and others?) still consider further work as promising. However I admit Duff's using it as a case study is valuable perspective, more than just saying Distler&Garibaldi said the embedding into E8 can't work. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:26, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I would like to write such section, and I have even mentioned it in the past, but I'm hesitant at doing that because I'm afraid it would be considered original research. There is no really any comprehensive reliable source that states clearly what's new in Lisi's theory, what Lisi is building on, and what the problematic aspects are. The current version of the page includes as much of this information as we could agree on, using just reliable sources and quotations. I think, although, that the page does a decent job at explaining what the theory was proposing and what was criticized and what is considered incomplete even from the author. I admit that it could be better and with a less messy "blog"-like chronology section. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 22:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The long Scientific American article and description of criticism appear to be reliable sources for this, having undergone the scrutiny of Scientific American's editorial board. Although these sources are light on equations, those can be pulled from blogs, articles, and papers without constituting OR.-Scientryst (talk) 23:00, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

No, those are biased sources, because they are both written by Lisi and they are the source of an already very long and problematic discussion here. The scrutiny of the board let's leave it out, given the poor job that they have often done in other fields. In fact, they certainly don't check equations or original work or whether or not something is an innovation or not. This is exactly what I meant when I said that "there is no really any comprehensive reliable source". Tom, I don't know how much of the discussions above you have read. But if you try reading above or in the last archived page you will be surprised on how hard it's been to come up with any form of consensus. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 01:02, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, hard to synthesize a summary without risking OR or needing extensive quotes! I don't know if video can be a source (without a transcript), but I found this interview helpful [3], a background on his TedTalks presentation [4]. In the interview he talked about the value of visualization in relation to conveying science. His Ted Talk focused on using proojections of high dimensional "charge space" into 2 dimensions to isolate different subatomic particles, noting some particles overlapped in the charge spaces, and using unknown charge dimensions to distinguish known particles, within a framework of the Lie group root systems, progressing upwards until he speculated that E8 structure could contain all the known particles, along with missing ones that might yet be found. So I'd like to see this article expand in this direction, including recovering some article material removed. Tom Ruen (talk) 23:23, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Mmm, the problem with this is that this has little to do with the E8 paper itself. In physics that sort of representation has been used for decades, look at here in the page for mesons, the graphs reported there all use the same visualization method used by Lisi. Similar patterns would appear in unification attempts such as SO(10) or SU(5). Because the use of weights and roots in particle physics is a well known thing, I don't think we should use a lot of space to describe it here, if anything, we should create a better article to talk about those aspects. It is true that Lisi uses this graphics more than a lot of people in group theory, but the graphs are, as you said, communication. So we should try to maybe find a reliable source that talks about it and write a sentence that captures this aspect well in the context of the use in particle physics. Also, when starting including projections from an 8 dimensional space, is it really easy to understand what that sort of projections mean? Also, some of the particle identification in Lisi's video and website is at the least controversial, since he assignes particle names to roots that don't necessarily have the correct quantum numbers (see 3 generation problem), so what is it really that we are watching? You understand that everything here is pretty complex. And finding an unbiased way to present it is not the easiest thing possible. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 01:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

24.7.128.58, you are correct that weights were used in the past for mesons, and that this same mathematics has been known in particle physics for a very long time, but as far as I know Lisi, in his E8 paper, was the first to use weight diagrams extensively to describe unified models. In the Scientific American article, similar diagrams are used to describe the SO(10) or SU(5) models. Even if Lisi's E8 unification turns out to be wrong, bringing these diagrams back into use for fundamental particle physics is a significant contribution, at least to the popularization of particle physics.-Scientryst (talk) 02:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually I've seen the root diagrams in lot of papers, especially in math. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that Lisi did a good thing, and that this kind of popularization is a good thing he did. But I don't think there is enough objective material here to write a paragraph about it. I think I remember Baez (correct me if I'm wrong) say that people wil start using these diagrams when they will become useful to them (as opposed to just the mathematical properties). Think of what would happen if you started using this diagrams with Little Higgs models (a class of models that works, and still it's smaller than this page, they don't describe all the possible models in detail), like the model with SO(9)/(SO(5)xSO(4)). If you started graphing this I suspect that you could get very exciting pictures of the cosets and what quantum numbers they have with respect to each other, I have never done it in more than 4 dimensions so I don't know for sure. But very often physicists don't need pretty pictures when they write papers. But yes, it could be an improvement in communications, both in presentations and in the popular press. If in the future some sort of merit will be recognized to Lisi for this then it'll go in the page. But I feel that 1) it's still too early to say and 2) having a reliable source of this as opposed to original research or biased points of view would be pretty hard. I still think that the readers would just be tricked about actually understanding these pictures, because I'm sure they wouldn't really be understanding projective geometry in high dimensional spaces. But yes, it is my opinion that Lisi communicates better these aspects than lots of physicists and I think that in the future he might receive some credit for it. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 03:03, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you seen weight diagrams before used in the way Lisi has for describing fundamental particle charges and interactions? This, as far as I can tell, is exactly what the Scientific American article was for. And it satisfies your criterial of being a reliable source.-Scientryst (talk) 03:32, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the projective diagrams are complicated, and incomplete and possibly wrong, but apparently parts of it are correct as substructures of E8. I suppose the idea exciting to me for the same source as Lisi - we both read the "also hyped" computer search of the structure of E8 in March 2007, [5]. My connection was the uniform polytopes of Coxeter, and so wanted a picture of this shape! So I helped get the first graph of E8 on wikipedia File:E8_graph.svg, and an article on its related 4₂₁ uniform polytope projections from Coxeter. Anyway Lisi's TedTalk presentation makes it clear that he's building on previous work, apparently up to 6 dimensions, and expanded by the 1973 Pati–Salam model, which Lisi says raises the model to 7 charge dimensions. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you seem to know what you are talking about. So, with that in mind, it's exactly why they could be wrong that they shouldn't be on wikipedia. WP isn't a place where a person shows and describes their theory, this principle has been established pretty firmly in WP's policies. And the problem is exactly what you said in the following phrase, which is that apparently parts of it are correct substructures of E8. Now, which parts? How can we communicate that the fermionic part is instead not a correct substructure of E8? And what if E8 was the right unification theory but just as a gauge theory, not including the fermions? That could certainly be the case, but the theory would be completely different. So where do we stand? Do we have right parts, wrong parts? When, where? What is really Lisi's contribution in this? The dimension 7 and 8? The identification of the particles? But those have wrong quantum numbers (2 families of fermions) and so how is the theory different from a SO(16)-like theory if we ignore the fermions? It's all way too complicated and it doesn't have a clear explanation anyways. And because Lisi isn't the first one introducing these concepts then it's better to just say what the theory says, without making our life more complicated. If people want to see the video, they have the link. Otherwise they can look up what Dynkin diagrams are and so on... 24.7.128.58 (talk) 02:44, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Scientific American is careful to check the facts of its articles, which is why it's considered a reliable source. I would think diagrams appearing in Lisi and Weatherall's article there on unification, which uses the diagrams extensively, would be reliable, within reasonable standards. One should of course check these things, especially if there's reason to doubt! For Dynkin diagrams, these are wonderful geometric summaries of root diagrams, but they loose some of the structure, such as the number of particles relating to the number of roots, and the direct correspondence between weights and fundamental particle charges. What Lisi appears to have done with his models is to bring these mathematical weight diagrams for particle physics back into use. That may even be more important than his unification idea, and these diagrams should be included in this article.-Scientryst (talk) 03:04, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Can we try to postpone the discussion about the diagrams to after we take care of shortening the blog-like nature of the chronology section? Again, I think a decent job could be done showing one or two graphs, but then the point becomes whether or not those graphs should be explained somewhere else, or otherwise we will go back to a million other impossible problems. If I knew that there was a decent way to present unbiased and truthful information with these diagrams I'd support it, but at the moment I'm highly skeptical this will become another edit war together with lots of original research. By the way, how to we deal with the wrong fermionic quantum numbers in those diagrams? The triality isn't enough to present this particle projected onto some planes that don't show a problem in the identification of particles. Wikipedia isn't a way to present these things. Yes, it might be that bringing back these diagrams for the popular use and communication is even more important than the unification. But we don't have enough just yet. I like them, a lot, but again, it's for appearance, physicists have been dealing with complex group theory well enough just even with generators. I hope Lisi will be eventually get some credit for pushing physicists to use these diagrams for presentations and articles. But let's not start another infinite discussion on something that definitely isn't doable here. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 03:14, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

You should read the Scientific American article and see if the diagrams present truthful information, including correct fermionic quantum numbers. If it's presented truthfully, then there should only be one generation of fermions shown embedded in E8, and the mirror fermions should show up on the opposite sides of the diagram.-Scientryst (talk) 03:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

People can read that SciAm article if they want. Wikipedia is not a place to show this. About the specifics, which is the specific image you are talking about? Leave a link. Anyhow, the information would be truthful only if it explained that the antigeneration doesn't exist (or explain a method to get higher masses for them which is consistent with observed data). Plus, it should be stated that that doesn't cover the other two generation so it's not a good representation of the standard model. A truthful diagrams would add those particles in the fundamental representation on top of the SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1), and would show the fundamental representations of larger groups in unification. Anything different from this would be misleading (regardless the phrasing), possibly wrong (depending on the phrasing) and certainly propagandistic. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 23:12, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Both the Scientific American article and description of criticism are written by Lisi himself and cannot be considered to be sources independent of the subject that would establish notability. A further comment: citation rates in physics vary between its subfields. Citation rates for this subject, fundamental theory, can be very high: for example a Google Scholar search for Michael Duff (physicist) (as M J Duff), another practitioner in this field, returns thousand of cites, too many for me to count. The conclusion must be that the impact of Lisi's paper on the mainstream science community has been very minor and it is hardly appropriate for Wikipedia to have such an extensive article about it. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:29, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

Removed section: Visual representation

This edit from Nov 24 [6] Qwyrxian removed many sections, with the comment "Per discussion on the talk page, this much, this detailed, and this technical information is not appropriate, given that the theory is basically unaccepted in the community; more cuts may be appropriate later".

Below is a section that was helpful for me, including an animation. That animation is the only content specifically uploaded by Lisi, as seen in the file information. I'd like this section restored, but apparently it is not acceptable. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Tom, please try to approach this a little more slowly. This has been a problematic page. I don't remember now all that has been said about that video. In my opinion, that video doesn't help at all with an understanding of the theory. Not in any meaningful way. I can explain in detail what I mean if needed. It is a cool tool, but I think it's one of the sources of misunderstandings. Plus, it is very likely to be considered SPAM or a precedent for other people to upload their own videos. One thing is the link to the video, another thing is the video itself with a complex explanation that would need a lot of extra explanations and care.

I think we should all talk about the strategy on how to approach this before we start trying editing or re-including or excluding things. The risk is that a lot of supportive things and a lot of criticisms that we decided didn't belong here would all come back making us lose our minds. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 01:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Sure. I don't want to cause trouble, but thought I'd try a small challenge, outside my expertise! And I'm not concerned about the animation specifically (although I fit your category of precedent of "other people" for uploading scientific animations, like File:Lunar_libration_with_phase_Oct_2007_450px.gif), but that the geometric explanation of the model (like the static figures in the paper, like the 30-gonal symmetry projection [7] and others], along with supportive key) adds something more than words can share. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:02, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Sure, although your animation, even though could be evil and false (I'm joking), it's a sequence of photos of an object. It isn't an attempt of explaining the entire particle physics. If Lisi uploaded a picture of an atom, that wouldn't be a problem. But let's not forget that Lisi has a website and also sells his shirts. And I have mixed feelings about conflict of interests in the idea of hosting in his page an image that is on the shirts that he sells and wears in his tv show. Especially because it's not a very important movie to understand the theory. Other particle physicists don't use the graphical version of their geometry because they don't need so, but other people have used in presentations. So, if anything it would be useful to dedicate some more time to a generic page about these kind of visualizations, not just Lisi's. My problem anyways is not even just that, it's that the geometric explanation is biased. It doesn't say, for example, that most of these symmetries already appear in other models, while they seem to be a peculiarity of E8. Also, as I said above, some of those particle assignments are wrong, if taken literally, because they have the wrong quantum numbers. Ultimately, that video is really biased and looks to me like propaganda. It would be like if you had a theory about the moon libration and wanted to upload the video that you made to present (and unconsciously biased-ly support) your theory. A person that watches that video is brought to think "man, that theory must be right, look at all those patterns", and it would be very difficult to explain in words what's the problem with those patterns. And we certainly don't want to start a trend in which each person that comes up with a theory also wants to include their own propagandistic videos. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 02:29, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Rotation of the E8 root system in eight dimensions, with particle assignments corresponding to gravitational, electroweak, and strong charges. The algebraic structure of the standard model and gravitational fields may be described using group representation theory, with roots and weights corresponding to the charge quantum numbers of elementary particle states. Different kinds of charge correspond to the different fundamental forces, with weak hypercharge and weak isospin of the electroweak force combining to produce electric charge, and two kinds of charge quantum numbers associated with the color charge of the strong force. These four kinds of standard model charge are conserved in all elementary particle interactions. In Lisi's theory, the spin of elementary particles are the charges with respect to the gravitational force, with a different spin charge for the left and right chiral parts of the gravitational spin connection. The quantum numbers of all elementary particles is a pattern of points in six dimensional charge space, which may be projected down to two dimensions and plotted, creating a visual representation of the algebraic structure. In Lisi's E8 Theory these charges in six dimensions are a projection of some of the E8 root system in eight charge dimensions. The standard model or E8 system of charges and allowed particle interactions may be rotated in eight dimensions and visualized via an online tool, the Elementary Particle Explorer.

Tom, Lisi has given many talks using weight diagrams to describe particle physics and unification, and puts the slides on his wiki. Those slides might be a good source for images and equations, since I think his wiki is GPL.-Scientryst (talk) 03:18, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian can help me here, but advocating that Lisi was the first at using these diagrams without a third party reliable source, trying to see how they fit the current knowledge of particle physics and the structure of Lisi's E8 model as opposed to standard quantum field theory and the structure of the E8 group, has definitely a nasty smell of original research for promotion purposes. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 23:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Since I can't easily help directly with this article at the moment, perhaps I can help get something started with at least a stub weight diagram article. Currently it is referenced just an open link at hypercharge [8]. I found one article Visualizing Lie Subalgebras using Root and Weight Diagrams. The closest existing article to integrate with might be Weight (representation theory). Tom Ruen (talk) 03:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Tom, I see weight diagram as a redirect, not a stub.-Scientryst (talk) 07:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

That seems pretty good. Given that the field has been developed decades and decades ago, I'm sure we can find plenty of things to use from group theory books/articles. You can look at more typical example here http://www.udel.edu/mvb/PS146htm/146noqu.html or also Eightfold_way_(physics).

If you want a 3D example more similar to the SO(7)->G2 projection deal that is present in Lisi's theory then you can look at this page http://accessscience.com/content/Quarks/563300 that was inspired by this pdf (After C. Quigg, Lectures on charmed particles, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Fermilab-Conf-78/37-THY, April 1978) http://lss.fnal.gov/archive/1978/conf/Conf-78-037-T.pdf where even a hand-drawn rotation of the weight diagram is shown. It's a beautiful pdf. But it is true that nowadays, as far as I can tell, in general people don't use these graphical ways in unification papers very much. And it's also true that it's a good thing that Lisi used them again. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 04:32, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Right, we discussed this. Those diagrams are all for mesons. Where are the diagrams, other than Lisi's, for fundamental elementary particle charges: hypercharge, weak isospin, color, and how these embed in GUTs?-Scientryst (talk) 07:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

First, they aren't all for mesons but also for baryons and fundamental particles. Or didn't you see the diagrams with the triangles and the three flavors for the SU(3) global symmetry of u, c, d quarks? Thay are, as you perfectly know, the fundamental 3 and 3bar representation of SU(3) global. They are in many many books. Do you think people never showed the colors r, g, b in the same fashion? It happens pretty often in grad school. It is true that people don't use very often higher than 3 dimensional root diagrams for local symmetries because they become 4D and so on and it's hard to explain what's going on. Ultimately that technique doesn't change group theory, it changes your way of showing the same physics. It looks pretty though, just there is no need for it for researcher. But I like them and I think they should be used, not in papers, but in presentations. Anyways, certainly here we are not going to do original research saying that Lisi has this recognition just yet or that he would deserve it. Not even Lisi stating so would be enough (otherwise we would have Lisi stating so this evening and some people trying to bring that up as a reference). You have got to relax, recognition is not something people necessarily obtain in 10 minutes, 10 days, or 10 years. Sometimes they never get their fair recognition. Let's wait for the process to happen, and stop trying to use wikipedia as a mean of promotion. Wikipedia isn't part of this process, like you would like it to be. Wikipedia reports what is strongly referenced. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 21:08, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Article length - try to be constructive, please

I came to my own conclusion that this page is creating a lot of problems because of the excess of details. I think that it's possible to shorten the page (mainly just the chronology section really needs to be taken care of) and make it more readable. I believe that giving Lisi his credit and mentioning clearly some limitations and criticism can be done without having to discuss about very very advanced math and physics.

This E8 stuff has had a page as long as QCD and longer than the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa_matrix page. Lisi's page was longer than Murray Gell-Mann. Those are a fundamental discovery of the last 50 years and a Nobel Laureate for QCD. Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa also are Nobel Laureate and their page is shorter. Recent work on evaluating the importance of scientific papers using Google's PageRank algorithm identifies Nicola Cabibbo's paper "Unitary symmetry and leptonic decays" as the top ranked out of 353,268 articles published by the American Physical Society since 1893 in journals such as Physical Review Letters. The same research shows that most of the authors of the top-ranked papers are also Nobel Prize winners. And Cabibbo has a page shorter than Lisi does.

Now, do we realize that it must be possible to write a page about Lisi and this E8 stuff in a acceptable size, given that so far the theory hasn't accomplished a whole lot compared to the gentlemen above?

The more we want to explain the tiny details the further away we go from the purpose of having such a page on wikipedia. This page should be honest and NPOV, but at the same time it should not require edit wars and an amount of effort that is minor than mainstream working theories. I'm confident that we can find a compromise if *everybody* stops trying to defend or change even the smallest sentence to make Lisi look better or worse.

If nobody tries to make Lisi look like the next Einstein and his theory the most amazing thing on Earth but are objective and NPOV, then I'm sure than nobody will need to include any tiny criticism and negative comments about him and his theory either. It really must be possible to just quickly explain what the theory is saying and why it's being criticized. And the present objective status of the theory as in papers, not with a million of quotations and interviews and discorsive articles and so on to be supporters or detractors. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 02:01, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I think we can agree on NPOV. For your length argument however, if you think the other pages are too short, you should make them longer and better. The comparison seems poor justification for cutting page content. But, if you must compare... would it be reasonable to compare page traffic statistics? For example, how do the access numbers for Cabibbo and the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa_matrix compare with those for Lisi and An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything, hmm? I'm not suggesting that we actually use this metric, because if we did then Wikipedia would be mostly about Justin Bieber. However, if you're going to make length arguments based on popularity or importance, which is silly, at least try to be objective about it.-Scientryst (talk) 09:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

See the new section. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 23:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Page hits certainly doesn't matter. Importance doesn't matter directly--that is, it's not just about "Person X won a Nobel Prize, so that person's page should be longer"...but we do need to consider real world importance with reference to WP:DUE. That part of WP:NPOV says that we can't over-represent how important something is on Wikipedia. That is why, for example, this article should not have extended details, especially all of the math, about this theory, because the math and science of the theory simply aren't that important (at least, that's what people have explained to me via the sources). What is important about this theory is the mainstream press it got, and the limited attention it got from the physics community (including both negative and positive points, again, in due relationship to how prevalent those points are in the real world).

A good start, in my opinion, would be to completely re-organize the "Chronology" section--to make it not a chronology. Because I don't think the exact sequence of events (what happened first, second, third--i.e., a chronology) is what matters. What we care about is not a blow by blow account, but the end result, the final points, the big story. I'd be willing to bet we can do that with half of the citations and quotations, or less. Since there are obviously so many concerns with this page, I strongly recommend working in a sandbox first--this will let whoever is doing it work gradually, step by step, examining references. I have to say that I'm not going to be the one to do this--I simply don't understand the physics well enough to pick out the most salient details. And I'm sure there will need to be discussion about how to do it. But I strongly recommend starting there, and then going back to the lead later (it's almost always easier to build the lead after the text). Qwyrxian (talk) 13:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Although the citation count is not high, I think it's incorrect to say it got "limited attention from the physics community." What criteria is Due Weight based on, because I thought it was based on weight in reliable sources, such as Scientific American? And, if it's based on academic citations alone, you have some editing to do over on Justin Bieber...-Scientryst (talk) 17:02, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Seriously? This is the point? After months and months of discussion we are still bringing up the idea that it's incorrect to say that it got "limited attention from the physics community"? Should we try to revive a bunch of comments and quotations about the theory from physicists? I thought it was a good idea to avoid having them all given that maybe some of those physicists didn't even read the article, but if we are even trying to go back to "having or not received a lot of attention as a theory" then I'll report all the actual comments. I'll start collecting evidence for showing how POV some editors are here and on Lisi's page. Not even in the constructive attitude it's possible to reduce Scientryst's personal overestimation of this page. I tried, and again, failed to generate a compromise. Now there is even a discussion about generating original research as in using this page as propaganda of Lisi using some graphics. Some editors really don't want to ever compromise. Let's see if it brings more goods than bads. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 23:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The due weight is certainly not based on one popular magazine that hosted articles written by the author of the theory. Due weight is based on what the scientific community, as a whole, says about a theory. So, the theory will have an important weight when lots of papers will start citing Lisi's paper and when, as a consequence of the citations, popular magazines will start covering the Lisi's E8 stuff writing articles, written by other people and other physicists other than Lisi, that will start saying how the theory has become important in the physics community. Until then the theory isn't important. Period. This is the due weight. QCD is important, Supersymmetry is important (if anything, because there are thousands and thousands of people believing it's a working theory and working on it or on experiments to test it). Lisi's E8 stuff is one of the million models, and for now it doesn't even work. Period. Easy. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 23:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Scientryst, speak honestly now: are you deliberately trying to be disruptive, or are you simply not understanding how WP works? You (should) know that Justin Beiber is a different issue--that is a topic entirely within pop culture, and thus is appropriately measured by its discussion in pop culture related sources (mainstream news, entertainment tv shows, etc.). This is an article about a scientific paper along with its reception. The Scientific American point has already been discussed, and your raising it again is tendentious--that is a pop science journal. Should we include it? Absolutely. Does it demonstrate notability within the scientific establishment? Absolutely not. Or, more generally, was this theory considered interetsing and exciting and received lots of press in the mainstream/pop science field? Absolutely, and we should say that (and we do)--and the SA article helps demonstrate that fact. Has this theory been considered widely interesting or discussed in scientific journals? No, it has not, and when it has been discussed, outside of a few publications, it has been generally crticized, to the point where reputable scientists have said that it not only isn't interesting, it's mathematically flawed. And, of course, this article must say that. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:21, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, it is possible that I don't understand. As far as I can tell, you and 24 (can we give him a name?) are arguing that Due Weight for an article about a scientific topic is based on citation count, and that an article's length should be limited by Due Weight. Could you direct me to where these two are stated in WP policy? Because my current understanding is that Due Weight should correspond to what is in Reliable Sources, which includes popular science articles. And as to limiting page length based on Due Weight, I don't know a standard, but one may exist and I just don't know of it yet.-Scientryst (talk) 07:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Call me GT (I like Group Theory). Qwyrxian and I have similar but different ideas. Anyways you know we aren't just saying that citation count is the only metric. But certainly you know what the real situation is. This page cannot be a promotional page for Lisi's E8 stuff, and given that Qwyrxian outlined pretty well what the real situation is, please stop trying to go over and over on the same thing. SciAm articles are written by Lisi, which is certainly not a good way to judge Due Weight. What do you think an author would ever say about his theory. Nowhere (by any means) it's said that those articles have been requested or written because Lisi's E8 stuff is important in physics. Otherwise please give a reference that states how this theory is important and (highly) considered in the physics community. Articles please not written by Lisi. Until such a reference doesn't exist, the Due Weight is what Qwyrxian says it is. Period. I suggest to read this page, [WP:Frienge_theory#Notability_versus_acceptance] which states: "One important bellwether for determining the notability and level of acceptance of fringe ideas related to science, history or other academic pursuits is the presence or absence of peer reviewed research on the subject. [...] Peer review is an important feature of reliable sources that discuss scientific, historical or other academic ideas, but it is not the same as acceptance by the scientific community. It is important that original hypotheses that have gone through peer review do not get presented in Wikipedia as representing scientific consensus or fact." Scientryst, you seem not to be able to distinguish between vandalism attempts and referenced NPOV reviews. To you, each sentence, that states clear that Lisi's E8 stuff is not considered in good shape, seems like vandalism. You are never willing to accept that a smaller version of this page, indicating clearly flaws and merits, criticism and compliments, is the best thing. Instead you want to use it to promote Lisi's E8 work, giving it more apparent weight than the theory actually has. The theory is presented respectfully. Period. Trying with this ridiculous appeal to the existence of SciAm articles written by Lisi himself to play with wikipedia's policies is becoming dishonest and borderline stupid. No one will ever agree on the importance of the theory based on the SciAm articles. They ensure notability, not rightness or consensus or due weight. "Wikipedia summarizes significant opinions, with representation in proportion to their prominence." Those SciAm articles have no hope to indicate prominence. Period. Stop wasting our time, we don't want the theory of Lisi look bad. We want to have an objective page, respectful of the people involved and without misrepresenting, in either direction, the facts. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 20:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Advertisement, promotion and original research.

Qwyrxian, I understand that you don't want to edit, so I'm asking you some advice on policies.

A big chunk of the discussions above is starting to have an unfortunate halo of original research to try to overcome the idea of cutting down a little the page and to create more mess trying to include images and details of the theory. They seem to me attempts to almost promote these ideas, even though they have never been recognized or expressed anywhere else. It seems like an attempt to use wikipedia to promote Lisi's work. Is it really that difficult to wait for the general consensus OUTSIDE of wikipedia before we start talking about these new aspects in the page? If Lisi will in the future be recognized for this, I'll be happy to write that part myself giving him all the glory he deserves, but let's wait for the recognition to happen before we start drawing our own conclusions.

A lot of the material discussed above seems to me hopeless to be ever published on the page if we follow WP policies, so before we start talking for weeks about those new aspects if would be good to have some help. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 23:26, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

There is some substance in what I mention the page length, not just poor justification. The point being, if Lisi had a page as long as Cabibbo or Gell-Mann, should Lisi be unhappy with that page? Why is it more important to have a page on Lisi, which objectively accomplished a lot less than those two physics giants? Showing twice as much details in Lisi's page as opposed to Gell-Mann's page is certainly UNDUE, because otherwise we would give the impression that Lisi deserves more or as much attention of those people. Same goes for the theory. If I am a reader, and I read more on Lisi's theory than on Loop Quantum Gravity, I would think that Lisi's theory might be as important as loop quantum gravity. Which is certainly not the case in the physics community. Where Lisi's theory and related papers count few papers and few scientists, while LQG counts thousand of papers and physicists working on it. This is why it is a good idea to compare physicists and models or approaches. Of course, the fact that one is poorly written should push to improve it instead of just cutting down material from other pages. But there is also a good limit when we are talking about Nobel Laureates and FUNDAMENTAL theories, like QCD. It shows that showing more details in Lisi's pages is certainly an attempt to promote a theory that doesn't really have lots of attention in the physics community. At the least it is UNDUE and it is a misrepresentation of the weight of the theory. All this not being offensive of Lisi or Lisi's theory. Same goes, given that I mentioned it yesterday, Little Higgs theories. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 23:38, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Discuss Lisi's page at Talk:Antony Garrett Lisi. In any event, your complaint isn't valid, and it's time to drop the stick. The problem with your complaint is that it presumes that the articles on Cabibbo, Gell-Man, or Loop Quantum Gravity are somehow ideal articles in a finalized form. But they're not. So comparing this one and those doesn't tell us if this is too long or if the others are too short. Instead, simply apply policies, and, where policy is silent (that is, policy doesn't spell out for us exactly how much info should be included), get consensus. If you can't get consensus here, we'll use dispute resolution. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:31, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

If you say that the policy doesn't apply this way then I'll believe you and I will drop this, although this is a minor point. But your line of reasoning above seems confusing to me. I didn't assume that those articles have an ideal length. But what is the metric to judge due weight if we don't compare something with other pages? Avoiding an overrepresentation of the weight of a theory must be done compared to how much it's written about theories on average. Those example above I thought would set a good comparison because it's very famous people related to the same physics that Lisi does. That's all. Still my points about not including all the graphs stay. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 03:53, 30 December 2011 (UTC)