>>11357832i honestly feel that the field of physics has evolved to a state where no physics grad student can actually understand modern physics. even more specifically, no modern high-energy theorist can understand high-energy theory.
this is a hot take, but seriously. i mean, i know plenty of theorists, but have they worked through how 't Hooft renormalized Yang-Mills theory? no, none i've met have. and that happens to be basically the most significant step in the formation of the Standard Model of particle physics. but that's not part of their curriculum. why? because to get a PhD, you need to speed ahead and get to research topics, and unfortunately actual quantum field theory and gauge theory is old-hat by now.
so for probably a decade or two we have been training high-energy theorists in string theory and AdS/CFT, but they don't even know the fundamental results of gauge theory and QFT. and this is not trying to pick on string theory in particular, i am just saying that the nature of how PhD's are awarded nowadays does not allow enough time for students to truly master, or even make a reasonable survey, of the field they are getting their PhD in. they simply are pushed into a niche of research without having covered the "in-between ground" that bridges what was in their classes with what they do research on. so we are in a situation where all the current millenial "experts" of the field, as well as many of the Gen-Xers, have no idea of the foundations of QFT like how one renormalizes Yang-Mills theory. instead they live in the string world, which in theory SHOULD be connected to real physics like QFT, but instead that connection was never formed in their young minds, so they basically work as mathematicians and don't know how physics grew into what they are actually working on nor how what they are working on really connects to physics
