Are Physical Laws Inevitable?

Peter Woit in Not Even Wrong:

Peter Woit

The last couple days have seen various discussions online generated by a piece at Quanta Magazine with the dubious headline Why the Laws of Physics Are Inevitable and an even worse sub-headline claiming “physicists working on the ‘bootstrap’ have rederived the four known forces” (this is utter nonsense). For some of this discussion, see Sabine HossenfelderJohn Baez and Will Kinney.

One reason this is getting a lot of attention is that the overall quality of reporting on math and physics at the relatively new Quanta Magazine has been very high, a welcome relief from the often highly dubious reporting at many mainstream science media outlets. The lessons of what happens when the information sources society relies on are polluted with ideologically driven nonsense are all around us, so seeing this happen at a place like Quanta is disturbing. If you want to understand where this current piece of nonsense comes from, there is an ideology-driven source you need to be aware of.

More here.