The word "theory" doesn't matter in the way you are portraying it as.

Like a book is a book because it's got pages with words on them glued to a spine with covers. It's not "not a book" because the plot makes no sense.

Scientists don't care about what "a theory" is, it's not philosophically important to them. It's just a vague term for a collection of ideas or a model or whatever.

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griffzhowl 2 days ago | parent [-]

I guess I'm not being clear. I don't care about the word "theory". The point is string theory makes no predictions. It's not just inaccessible energies which make it untestable, but the fact that, as a framework, string theory is compatible with a huge range of possible universes.

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colechristensen 2 days ago | parent [-]

Eh, again you're just saying "it's not real because..." whether or not you attach the word theory. It is a space with lots of possible parameters being explored and is not one set of parameters with predictions because all of the sets that have been explored so far are either broken or don't represent reality. That in itself does not mean it doesn't have merit. It's simply incomplete, but given its history it's fair to doubt that it ever will close the loop and have a final form that models our reality.

	▲	griffzhowl 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with tbh. If you look up the thread, my point is that the reason string theory is untestable is not simply that high energies are experimentally inaccessible. Rather, string theory doesn't make any definite predictions for those high energies either. It seems you agree with that?