We didn’t think anyone would be so honest about it, but get this from Quanta Magazine:
As things stand, the known elementary particles, codified in a 40-year-old set of equations called the “Standard Model,” lack a sensible pattern and seem astonishingly fine-tuned for life. Arkani-Hamed and other particle physicists, guided by their belief in naturalness, have spent decades devising clever ways to fit the Standard Model into a larger, natural pattern. But time and again, ever-more-powerful particle colliders have failed to turn up proof of their proposals in the form of new particles and phenomena, increasingly pointing toward the bleak and radical prospect that naturalness is dead.
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Arkani-Hamed considers his tendency to speculate a personal weakness. “This is not false modesty, it’s really a personal weakness, but it’s true, so there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. “It’s important for me while I’m working on something to be very ideological about it. And then, of course, it’s also important after you are done to forget the ideology and move on to another one.” Thinking of the naturalness question, and his quest for a mathematical theory of nature, he continued, “But certainly in things where progress isn’t so immediate, I find it very important to convince myself that it’s the one true path. Or at least a true path.”More.
Where the heck is that dam multiverse anyway? It’s proving as elusive as the tooth fairy.
See also: How cosmology became science fiction