From the holy grail to a plastic cup

Is the theory of everything really such a big deal? For decades, every physicist in the world has said so. But are they correct?

If the standard model is valid to almost the Planck energy, then there is nothing to be discovered any more. Maybe the only point remaining is the explanation of the standard model parameters.

If that is all, the TOE is not a holy grail, it is a paper cup. After all, who cares about solving mysteries? People want new mysteries, not solutions to old ones. People want drama, not peacefulness. People want to think that a TOE is like reading the mind of god, they do not want to think that a TOE is just reading formulas.

Finally: Motl advises to leave the race for a TOE

Motl is the physics blogger who likes to play the victim. All violent people do so.  Therefore he started to claim to be ill in order to hope that people are not as nasty to him as he is to others.

But now he sees that the job market for theoretical physicists is getting tight, because experiment contradicts 99.9% of all theories developed in the last 30 years. He now wrote that theorists should stop working on "wishful thinking and speculative belief".

Motl thus not only states that theorists should not work on supersymmetry or string theory. Because there is no particle theorist working on anything else than "wishful thinking", he thinks ALL particle theorists should stop working.

Yes, Motl has now joined Woit and Smolin, the people he has fought for so long, in his assessment of particle physics! The universe has a lot of humour.