some people are making a stink about how Tom Banks is so smart with his "Asymptotic Darkness" stuff. as far as i can tell this is where he introduced the idea in the literature: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0503066.pdf

but wasn't Gerard 't Hooft saying this for years and years before that? let me quote one of 't Hooft's books:

>This then is the importance of black holes for the theory of elementary particles at the Planck length. Black holes would be an ideal laboratory for thought experiments. All by themselves they reach the energy regime of the Planck numbers. A healthy theory should be able to tell us how to calculate here. And, for nearly a decade, I have been pointing out this objection to superstring theory: it tells us _exactly nothing_ about black holes, let alone how a black hole that may have commenced its life as a large, 'astronomical' black hole, endis its life explosively. Since 1994, however, string theorists have been frantically trying to remedy this situation. As for any healthy theory of gravity, string theory does predict the existence of black holes, but, as of this writing, there is still much confusion concerning the procedures that are to be followed to calculate their physical properties
(1/2 --- 't Hooft quote continued in next post)
(also pic related is /ourguy/ laughing at Tom Banks)