I call current theoretical high-energy physics metatheoretical physics. I also used to make the joke that I chose to get a Ph.D. in mathematics and not physics so I didn't have to feel embarrassed by my subject matter.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

Physics is anything but a cold, objective look at "reality". Great theories are those that capture the imagination. Relativity, quantum mechanics, and the mathematical framework of those theories are very pleasant. The sense of transcendence of a theory is quite important to how we feel about it, which is of no small consequence to how it will be received by the community of physicists. Physics probably fills some important narrative role for a secular era. The high priests of physics (theorists) are often true believers. The last sentence is close to pure speculation. I have known young physicists (ones still getting their PhDs), I wanted to be one myself once. I remember my sense of awe when first confronted with relativity and QM, watching the equations unfold, the feeling of a connection with something significant and important. Mathematics held the ultimate truth, physics pervaded the world, binding it into a coherent whole. I abandoned what I think of now as a rather naive romanticism, but while it had me captive I never thought about it this way, it was pure, unarguable, inescapable truth. My friends who did stay in physics seemed to feel the same way about it. Maybe they grew out of it, maybe they do physics without believing. I don't see how anyone could, I certainly couldn't.

So, string theory is the latest "thing". It doesn't (yet?) connect with experimental abilities, but like earlier theoretical projects it connects well emotionally. We can argue about what science is, and try as we might to make it cold, objective, and try to believe that it is of a "reality" which is really, really there, irrespective of the fancy of the theorist. A set of computations that work out, that predict, a patchwork of abstractions that return a measurable quantity when invoked correctly, the stuff of engineering and applied science, this is not theoretical physics, because it lacks exactly the emotional exponent of theories past.

If we find the right equation, then we know, what, exactly?

Loop quantum gravity, obviously (from the hints I've dropped about my background) but the jury is still out on that one.

I'm not sure it works either, but it's more sensible that Strings for a number of reasons. On the other hand, it is quite possible that String theory describes an effective theory of Quantum Gravity. Lee Smolin spent a considerable amount of time trying to study the connection between Strings and loops: both have 1D fundamental excitations.

The point is, we know what's wrong with our current theories, and we have two theories that seem mathematically consistent but which (in completely different ways) are not complete and fail to make contact with experiment.

Experimentally, we haven't even detected a classical gravitational vawe, and we pretend we're going to be able to decide between competing candidates for a theory of quantum gravity?

If the LHC finds supersimetric particles, the String theory crowd will call that a successful prediction of the theory, when there are loads of extension of the Standard model that also include supersymmetry. If supersymmetric particles are not found, string theory is dead... or maybe they'll just pust the "expected" mass of the lightest supersymmetric particle just above the attainable limit, as they have been doing for 30 years.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

The string theory community is about 10 times the size of the LQG community.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper