Avi Loeb

This was, I mean, a lot of money and effort went to that thousands of papers basing their analysis or mathematical constructions on supersymmetry.

Yeah, but the point is, if you allow people to follow not just the beaten path, but other paths, you have a better chance of discovering something new.

Because we cannot... I mean, Einstein made three mistakes between 1935 and 1940.

He said black holes probably do not exist.

He said gravitational waves probably do not exist.

And he said quantum mechanics doesn't have spooky action at a distance.

And all three received Nobel prizes for the teams that proved him wrong.

Those are Nobel prizes from the past decade.

Three teams doing different types of experiments and observations.

But did Einstein was wrong to make assumptions or claims that turned out to be wrong?

No, because that's the nature of working at the frontier.

You make mistakes.

Every now and then, you know, you might be right and that will be a breakthrough.

But you cannot have breakthroughs without taking risks.

And it's really, I mean, the whole idea of tenure in academia was based on the proposition that you want people to take risks so that they don't have job insecurity.

They don't worry about their... So what these...

zealots, I call them, say is, you know, we don't want people to deviate from the beaten path because we base our stature, we base our honors, awards, and so forth on past knowledge.

We don't want new knowledge.

Unless it's proven beyond any doubt.

But how would it be proven if you keep ridiculing anything different?