Immanuel Kant on Supersymmetry: A Practical Evaluation

TL;DR

This paper reviews the motivations for supersymmetry in physics, highlights the lack of observational evidence, questions some common assumptions, and philosophically discusses the nature of scientific conviction versus persuasion.

Contribution

It offers a critical evaluation of supersymmetry motivations, disputes some arguments, and introduces a philosophical perspective inspired by Kant on scientific belief.

Findings

No observational evidence for supersymmetry yet

Some basic arguments in favor of supersymmetry are disputed

Proposes a philosophical bet to distinguish persuasion from conviction

Abstract

A short review of the motivations for supersymmetry in astrophysics and particle physics is given. Despite the amount of theoretical research conducted in the past decades, no observational evidence for supersymmetry has yet been found. While a large part of the community is expecting supersymmetry to be discovered in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), some of the basic arguments in favor are disputed here. Since it is not excluded that the author's view may be biased by his research, he proposes a bet on the discovery of supersymmetric particles: According to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, the bet marks the difference between persuasion and conviction.