>>13260400Stop reading popsci. String theory is a consistent theory of quantum gravity -- this is a fact nobody disputes. There are a finite number of string vacuua to search through, one or more of them will work, or you could rule out them all and kill the theory (won't happen). It won't take long, classifying the finite simple groups was harder.
>>13260410The predictions of string theory are ridiculously precise and extremely nontrivial, at ridiculous energies we will never be able to attain. If we could build a Planck scale accelerator, string theory would relate the high-energy scattering to the structure of our vacuum, which is also what gives us the low-energy matter, and all the couplings. So with a certain finite number of measurements, about as many as you need to fix the structure of the solar system, you can predict the results absolutely every experiment you can ever do. This is more predictive power than any theory has ever had.
But unfortunately, we can't build a Planck scale accelerator, so the verifiability which is always there in principle, is out of reach. But when people say a theory is "not verifiable", they mean it is vague nonsense that you can fiddle with arbitrarily to make anything you want come out. String theory is not like that at all, it is not vague, it is not nonsense, and you can't fiddle with it, it is uniquely determined, and so it must never be confused as "not verifiable in principle".
