Democratic Vote Squashes Anthropic Principle

We have already heard about the panel discussion on the Next Revolution in String Theory at Strings 2005 from Clifford and Jacques. Today, it made the New York Times. It shouldn't be a surprise that the NYT had a slightly different spin. The NYT paid some homage to the concept that by their nature revolutions can't be predicted. Progress in science occurs when scientists work on questions that puzzle them rather than when they try to guess which questions might have the biggest payoff. Most of the NYT article was devoted to The Vote. At the end of the session, a Vote was taken on whether the value of the cosmological constant is explained by the anthropic principle or by fundamental physics. Surprisingly emotional debates have been sparked by this issue. People either willingly embrace or really hate the anthropic concept. There is no in-between. In heated moments, the competing ...