Phlogiston. Falsified because combusted materials gain weight.

To a non string theorist, string theory seems like a theory which makes few testable predictions, like phlogiston

it made testable predictions and was falsified for them. There are a lot of retrodictive and purely theoretical constraints on a candidate ToE, they have to be pretty good just to be in the running.

What? I really didn't understand that.

Just a few months ago you seemed to be saying that we didn't need to study moral philosophy, but just try to maximize "awesomeness",

While were on the subject, weren't you trying to teach moral philosophy, Nyan?

Shminux's arguments have screened off his authority, and then some.

That isn't a fact. I don't see anything going on here except the same blind side-taking as before.

use Awesomeness or something as your moral proxy,

Not including deontology, of course.

[trap closes]

The guy without any physics qualifications is concluding that the guy with the physics PhD is incompetent in physics? You see the problem? EY's apparently authoritarian behaviour is supposed to be justified by the fact that he has plenty of evidence of Shminux's incompetence. But shminux is also doubting his competence and is much better qualified to do so. There are no rational grounds for EY-can-judge-shminux-but-shminux-can't-judge-EY. It's just a recyclying of EY-is-special-because-he-says-so-and-this-is-his-forum.

The majority of physicists working on those kinds of questions are using some form of M-theory of string theory. The next nearest rival is Loop Quantum Gravity. Other theories are minority views. M-theory is favoured because milage can be got out of it in terms of research. The metaphor or a random grab into hypothesis-space isn't appropriate.

Again, Eliezer has a large body of comments from which to reach the conclusion that Shminux has poor technical skill in the areas necessary for reasoning on that subject.

Whose comments? Who's doing the concluding?

Setting aside relativity, there is a clear natural mechanism of splitting in QM: it doesn't need to be put in. MWI proponents will admit under pressure that when they say the SE, they mean "the as yet unknown correct relativist version of the SE".