How much progress actually happens in theoretical physics?

post by ChristianKl · 2025-04-04T23:08:00.633Z · LW · GW · 1 comments

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I frequently hear people make the claim that progress in theoretically physics is stalled, partly because all the focus is on String theory and String theory doesn't seem to pan out into real advances. 

Believing it fits my existing biases, but I notice that I lack the physics understanding to really know whether or not there's progress. What do you think?

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comment by RussellThor · 2025-04-04T23:21:58.843Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Yes diminishing returns. For a purely theoretical field say pure mathematics this is even clearer. Take a fixed number of humans with a fixed intelligence (both average and outliers) then let mathematics advance. It will advance to the point that there is a vanishingly small number of people who can even understand the state of the art, with them then making little to no further progress. All else being equal the promising ideas are explored first etc.

More people just pushes you along the asymptote faster. If we took things even further, some knowledge would not even be live at one time. For example if there happened to be a few genius in a sub-field and it was in fashion, then humanities understanding of that sub field would advance, and be written down. However in 50 years or so no-one would actually understand the work, and it would require an unusual genius to be born to even take humanity knowledge to the edge of what is written down.

Given theoretical physics has such low useful bandwidth coming from experiments (Higgs is real, what else, countless null results upholding  the standard model don't help) then the same situation applies. We won't solve quantum gravity this side of the Singularity or massive human enhancement.