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Entropy
Discussion
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For me, this is the best lecture in this course so far. However, as much as I deeply respect Dr. Vafa and enjoy all of the content in this course, I wish more had been offered by way of motivating string theory rather than just presenting chunks of somewhat disconnected (but very interesting) information. At the outset, challenging our ideas about what is fundamental and introducing the concept of duality frame invariance are both great elements, but there is really no discussion of how and why string theory has come to represent such a uniquely powerful approach to quantum gravity and better unification of fundamental physical concepts. For instance, what are the corners of a parameter space? I love the Escher picture – it’s a fabulous analogy. But these corners appear to be critical to understanding duality frames and I would like a better understanding of just what is converging there. PBS Spacetime has some great videos that present the motivation and history of string theory, but I would love to hear about these things from Vafa himself – I’m sure his insights would be incredibly interesting. That said, some of the remarkable ideas in this video, like how a massive amount of black hole entropy can be stored by winding around compactified higher dimensions, are really illuminating. I really appreciate WSU and applaud all the effort and brilliance that go into making these courses. I just think there are necessarily some expository challenges that come with building courses around repurposed elements, and perhaps greater sensitivity to motivating the material – setting it in the conceptual context it deserves – would make the courses even better.
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For me, this is the best lecture in this course so far. However, as much as I deeply respect Dr. Vafa and enjoy all of the content in this course, I wish more had been offered by way of motivating string theory rather than just presenting chunks of somewhat disconnected (but very interesting) information. At the outset, challenging our ideas about what is fundamental and introducing the concept of duality frame invariance are both great elements, but there is really no discussion of how and why string theory has come to represent such a uniquely powerful approach to quantum gravity and better unification of fundamental physical concepts. For instance, what are the corners of a parameter space? I love the Escher picture – it’s a fabulous analogy. But these corners appear to be critical to understanding duality frames and I would like a better understanding of just what is converging there. PBS Spacetime has some great videos that present the motivation and history of string theory, but I would love to hear about these things from Vafa himself – I’m sure his insights would be incredibly interesting. That said, some of the remarkable ideas in this video, like how a massive amount of black hole entropy can be stored by winding around compactified higher dimensions, are really illuminating. I really appreciate WSU and applaud all the effort and brilliance that go into making these courses. I just think there are necessarily some expository challenges that come with building courses around repurposed elements, and perhaps greater sensitivity to motivating the material – setting it in the conceptual context it deserves – would make the courses even better.
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