[knzhou]

I personally know the vast majority of the material in both roadmaps, so I know that 't Hooft's is far harder to learn from. Anybody can check this for themselves. There's plenty of broken links, extremely rough drafts of lecture notes, and wild fluctuations in sophistication. The ordering puts graduate-level stuff before its sophomore-level prerequisites.

My statement would only be controversial if you believed that arbitrary adversity in learning was necessary to be a good physicist -- and for my own sake I hope that isn't the case!

[scottlocklin]

Yeah, well, t'Hooft's is harder to learn because it's actually a serious curriculum which is worth knowing rather than training wheels from someone who never did anything serious in physics. Title is how to be a good theoretical physicist; not "what someone might study as an undergraduate."

[meroes]

I mean sure but t' Hooft also denies every interpretation of QM other than superdeterminism, which is almost anti-science (no indepedence of experimenters).

I'd rather learn mainstream before I go solo

[scottlocklin]

Susan Fowler isn't and never was a physicist. t'Hooft won the Nobel Prize in physics. The title is "how to become a good theoretical physicist" -not "what they taught me as an undergraduate." The end.

[mnky9800n]

Wtf are you talking about. All the recommendations here are look at what physics departments teach and do that. Instead of listening to some Jack ass who thinks the only real physics is theoretical physics.