The Stagnation of Physics

The problem is that the culmination of all human theory about the base reality stagnated abruptly and mysteriously in 1973. Imagine that physics stopped when "Crocodile Rock" was top of the charts. Everything we know about the physical universe at its deepest level is on this slide in front of you, and it hasn't moved.

Now recently, many of you have seen that Marc Andreessen had a meeting at the White House, and at that meeting something fantastic was revealed. The Biden White House told him that they had stagnated deliberately fields of theoretical physics. Read that quote—it should send chills down your spine.

This graph shows the youngest living Nobel laureate in theory, in theoretical physics theory. That number is always below the age of 50 until this magical point where string theory enters the game as a theory of quantum gravity. And our youngest living Nobel laureate is now over the age of 70 because the field is not producing new results.

This is also terrible, but it turns wonderful, because if we can find the problem, we can make progress and reach the stars. Change "AI" to "physics," "technology" to "science," and "startups" to "alternative theories" in reading the following quote, and you will see what they did. They took a couple of theories, they cocooned them—string theory being preeminent among them—and they said all competitor theories will die. And in the field of physics, it's called "the only game in town." You try to do something else, your career comes to an abrupt end.