I think that's not quite right: it is reasonably certain that string theory can produce both the standard model and most extensions people have dreamt up, so the problem is rather that all the obviously "stringy" predictions are currently unavailable, while the string theory derived predictions for achievable experiments look like what we get from other theories we already have.
To make this valuable, it should produce a limited set including standard model. If you produce pretty much everything one can dream of, that does not carry predictive power.
What does string theory predict that (1) is within experimental reach in, say, 5 years (2) if not found, would prove it wrong. Was there ever anything satisfying these two simultaneously? AFAIK,the answer is "no".
No, I am simply stating what is expected of a good scientific theory in physics. Such a theory should have power to explain things as well as make new, testable predictions. It is valuable to collect our present information under one umbrella, but if everything falls under that umbrella, it may as well not exist. String theory does not have predictive power (mostly because of energy scales mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, unless someone comes up with an ingenious way to probe its domain with low energy experiments), and its explanatory power is not very useful since it explains both reality and things out of reality, indiscriminately.
Everyone is free to pursue what they want. I did not comment on that at all. You click on whatever part of the tech tree you want. However, my expectation is that the string theory does not have the qualities of a scientific theory that improves one's knowledge about universe.
But we've discovered a number of useful tools and techniques that are applicable to other areas of research have we not? The billions of dollars spent on string theory hype might have unlocked a strategy or technique that ends up being useful in a civilization changing way that we just don't know about yet. Maybe string theory and the hype it was able to generate was just the catalyst that we needed.
Compared to all the other useless endeavors we send our brightest minds to work on (optimizing ad sales, high frequency trading, crypto) I'd say physics research has the highest chance of being useful
I think that's not quite right: it is reasonably certain that string theory can produce both the standard model and most extensions people have dreamt up, so the problem is rather that all the obviously "stringy" predictions are currently unavailable, while the string theory derived predictions for achievable experiments look like what we get from other theories we already have.
To make this valuable, it should produce a limited set including standard model. If you produce pretty much everything one can dream of, that does not carry predictive power.
What does string theory predict that (1) is within experimental reach in, say, 5 years (2) if not found, would prove it wrong. Was there ever anything satisfying these two simultaneously? AFAIK,the answer is "no".
Making a hard, arbitrary deadline is a pretty extreme thing to do. ie Higgs Boson was a lot longer between theory and experiment than this.
You write this as though reality is a 4X game and we're obviously wasting time not clicking on the other item in the tech tree to optimize the build.
No, I am simply stating what is expected of a good scientific theory in physics. Such a theory should have power to explain things as well as make new, testable predictions. It is valuable to collect our present information under one umbrella, but if everything falls under that umbrella, it may as well not exist. String theory does not have predictive power (mostly because of energy scales mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, unless someone comes up with an ingenious way to probe its domain with low energy experiments), and its explanatory power is not very useful since it explains both reality and things out of reality, indiscriminately.
Everyone is free to pursue what they want. I did not comment on that at all. You click on whatever part of the tech tree you want. However, my expectation is that the string theory does not have the qualities of a scientific theory that improves one's knowledge about universe.
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But we've discovered a number of useful tools and techniques that are applicable to other areas of research have we not? The billions of dollars spent on string theory hype might have unlocked a strategy or technique that ends up being useful in a civilization changing way that we just don't know about yet. Maybe string theory and the hype it was able to generate was just the catalyst that we needed.
what didn't se develop because those people were working on string theory? That is an unanswerable question. It is also the important question.
Compared to all the other useless endeavors we send our brightest minds to work on (optimizing ad sales, high frequency trading, crypto) I'd say physics research has the highest chance of being useful