Researchers need encouragement, not hypocrites

Go to arxiv.org and search for "theory of everything". You get 82 results. 82 preprints in 24 years. That is really low. After all, researchers are all looking for  theory of everything, aren't they? Two preprints are by Nobel prize winners, but both are nonsense. The other 80 preprints are equally nonsense. The truth is this: 0 real papers about the topic.

Imagine that a manager heading an organisation with 5 000 employees that work for 24 years to find a law of nature. He pays them a salary and promises money and fame to the finder. Of the 5 000, in over 24 years, nobody succeeds. The manager did something wrong. So did the 5 000 employees.

But the story gets even better. A few commenters state loudly that something is wrong. But when asked, they refuse to give hints where to search, they refuse to give advice, and they refuse to encourage others. These hypocrites are a disaster: they discourage their peers more than the lack of results does.

When you search, you need encouragement, not hypocrites. Shut the hypocrites up - or change them into encouraging fellows.

Get an attic to find the TOE

Peter Shor offers this advice to those searching for a TOE:

So the only advice I have is that more physicists need to not worry about grants, and go hide in their attics and work on new and crazy theories, the way Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat's Last Theorem. 

But there is a little issue: most researchers have no Attics any more - by which I mean a topic dear to their heart on which they will work in special time. So far, I have only met a handful of researchers that had one.

Interestingly, the majority of them were women. There is hope. I think women will reach there first.

Physicists and their Loch Ness monsters

True story: We all know why people around Loch Ness tell the story of a monster: to get tourists there. They invent stories to get money.

Satire: We all know why fundamental physicists tell the story about supersymmetry being a symmetry of nature: to get more funding. They invent stories to get money.

Satire: We all know why solid state physicists tell the story about quantum technology being the future of technology: to get more funding. They invent stories to get money.

Moral of the story: do not confuse the situations: The people around Loch Ness are crooks. The researchers in supersymmetry and into the solid state are honourable. Please treat them with great respect.