Wired magazine poll about (what are you laughing at?)

[Martin]

http://www.wired.com/culture/geekipedia/magazine/geekipedia/string_theory_smackdown

 

Wired.com has this superbrief three-round debate between (you guessed it) and (yeah! )

and they call it a "smackdown". You get to vote.

[ecoli]

not the best poll, IMO... They show you the current results before you vote. Don't you think that will tend to influence the voting?

[fattyjwoods]

it probably will (peer pressure)

[Martin]

In case anyone is curious, here's a sample. I guess you'd call them *soundbites*

 

Greene "Here, finally, is a theory that promises to realize Einstein's dream and more; a theory with the capacity to unify all matter and all forces."

 

Greene "We now have more than 20 years of research, filling tens of thousands of pages of calculations, which attest to string theory's deep mathematical coherence."

 

Greene "No one successful experiment would establish that string theory is right, but neither would the failure of all such experiments prove the theory is wrong."

 

not the best poll, IMO... They show you the current results before you vote. Don't you think that will tend to influence the voting?

It's quite true that it is not a scientific poll where you want to keep respondents in the dark as to what other people have said. It is more like US voting in a national election from a Californian's point of view, where you can hear the early returns and exit polls before you even get around to voting. There is a comment section right below the vote where you can give arguments. Someone who felt strongly about the format could write a critical comment telling them that.

 

This is my first exposure to the GEEKIPEDIA section of online Wired.com magazine, oddly enough. Almost my first look at Wired.com actually. Geekipedia is like an interactive OP-ED section of a newspaper but arranged alphabetically by topic.

=========================

 

BTW I just checked and for what it's worth the "poll" (maybe should use quotes because it is not a scientific public opinion poll) seems to be going against Brian Greene. One should be cautious about attributing any meaning to the poll. I wonder how they got the soundbites. Did they invite the guys to contribute, or sift thru their previous published output. My guess is they invited them to make statements supporting their side of the debate.