>>11287906>what do you even mean by “large-scale covariance”? I meant invariance in the sense that the GS manifold in the thermodynamic limit isn't a single orbit under some rep of the internal symmetry. This is the case in ordered media and invertible topological phases (c.f. Wen or Kitaev, this includes Witten-Djikgraaf & WZW, btw). In other words, you need some satisfactory explanation for your GS degeneracy, else it doesn't tickle my mental prostate - at least when considering physical theories.
>outside their little realmYou do know most HEP people are now migrating towards EFT and DM, and rarely care about what string theory people are doing? Aside from the fact that cond. mat. and HEP are two of the largest fields of ancient and modern physics, how is what cond. mat. people contribute a "little realm" exactly? Name a field of theoretical physics aside from cond. mat. that's keeping string theory alive, because god knows string theory people themselves can't.
If you want to discredit cond. mat. influences on string theory this is by far the worse approach I've ever seen.
>CM guys who claim credit for quantum gravityI see you've never met Volovik. Besides, that's not my point of contention; I only saidthat developments in cond. mat. cannot be ignored if you want to look at where string theory is going, and general physical conditions (or "axioms") that constrain them should also play a role in string theoretic candidates of ToE. Nothing more and nothing less. We can have the discussion on the influences of cond. mat. theory (and the associated mathematical structures and developments) on string theory some other time.
