One of the brilliant young physicists of our age is Scott Aaronson. It’s hard to pick a particular post of his that I like the most, but one I’d like to call your attention to is Mercenary in the String Wars. This guy cracks me up, like the strong force separating from the electroweak force in the first microseconds of the big bang. He sucks me in, like a stable strangelet consuming local baryonic matter. He rocks my world, like… okay I’ll stop. Sorry to ruin it, but I just have to post the end of the blog entry I linked:

I have therefore reached a decision. From this day forward, my allegiances in the String Wars will be open for sale to the highest bidder. Like a cynical arms merchant, I will offer my computational-complexity and humor services to both sides, and publicly espouse the views of whichever side seems more interested in buying them at the moment. Fly me to an exotic enough location, put me up in a swank enough hotel, and the number of spacetime dimensions can be anything you want it to be: 4, 10, 11, or even 172.9+3πi. Is it more important for a quantum gravity theory to connect to the Standard Model, or to build in background-independence from the outset? Can one use the Anthropic Principle to make falsifiable predictions? How much is riding on whether or not the LHC finds supersymmetry? I might have opinions on these topics, but they’re nothing that a cushy job offer or a suitcase full of “reimbursements” couldn’t change.

Someday, perhaps, a dramatic new experimental finding or theoretical breakthrough will change the situation vis-à-vis string theory and its competitors. Until then, I shall answer to no quantum-gravity research program, but rather seek to profit from them all.

On his post on getting a real job, after presenting his research statement, teaching statement, and CV, he writes:

In your offer letter, make sure to specify starting salary, teaching load, and the number of dimensions you’d like spacetime to have.

As I’m currently reading Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics, I find Aaronson’s cynicism funny - and relevant.