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Speaker 3: Oh hey, it's your old Internet uncle Dad wordmon podcast
Speaker 3: here with another episode of Ologies Ali word Hi, So
Speaker 3: do you remember your first real existential crisis? Also, if
Speaker 3: you clicked on this and don't know jack or shit
Speaker 3: about quantum physics, you're in the right place. You're in
Speaker 3: good company. Okay, before we spiral into deep deep space
Speaker 3: and dark matter, let's shine a little light on some business.
Speaker 3: So first off, thank you to everyone on patreon dot
Speaker 3: com slash ologies for supporting the show sending in your questions.
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Speaker 3: Friday twenty nineteen. Shannon and Bonnie put up some wintry
Speaker 3: new stuff for y'all. Go to town get a deal.
Speaker 3: It's there for you. Also, thanks to everyone who rates
Speaker 3: and subscribes and especially reviews the show. You know that
Speaker 3: I peruse the reviews and I pick a new one
Speaker 3: to read to you each week, such as from Irritated
Speaker 3: Ebb says that one time I was hiking while listening
Speaker 3: to the Pharaoh Echronology episode when I passed a lady
Speaker 3: riding a non iron horse and they were both listening.
Speaker 3: I guess the lady and the horse to the same
Speaker 3: episode on a speaker. I yelled Ologies, and the lady
Speaker 3: fist bumped me and it was magic the end to
Speaker 3: Irritated Ebb and all of the horses listening to Ologies
Speaker 3: right now, well hot damn. Thank you so much. Okay,
Speaker 3: quantum ontology, so many syllables, what do they mean? Quantum,
Speaker 3: in terms of physics, deals with matter and energy at
Speaker 3: its most fundamental level. And quantum comes from the Latin
Speaker 3: meaning how much, how far, how great an extent? Already
Speaker 3: so many questions just to the definition of this. Also,
Speaker 3: ontology comes from the root aunt, meaning being, and it
Speaker 3: is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.
Speaker 3: So quantum ontology matter, what the hell is it? What
Speaker 3: are we made of? What is real? Just tuk a
Speaker 3: bib onunder your brain, kiddos, because this week's episode is
Speaker 3: just a hearty. It's a feast of information. It's dense,
Speaker 3: It's like a bucket of mashed potatoes, and it's filling,
Speaker 3: like drinking a pint of gravy. It's going to make
Speaker 3: you question everything about life itself? What is reality? What exists?
Speaker 3: Why are we here? But first, will we cover everything
Speaker 3: about this topic?
Speaker 4: Hell no?
Speaker 3: Will we have to leave out a bunch? Hell yes,
Speaker 3: Consider this like a warm welcome and entree into some
Speaker 3: of the basic concepts about the hiccups in observing and
Speaker 3: understanding existence. So this oologist has a ba in philosophy
Speaker 3: and in physics from Cornell and a PhD in astrophysics
Speaker 3: from the University of Michigan. Is a celebrated science writer
Speaker 3: and the author of the new book What Is Real
Speaker 3: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, which,
Speaker 3: by the way, the Wall Street Journal calls fascinating, The
Speaker 3: New York Times calls a thorough illuminating exploration of the
Speaker 3: most consequential controversy raging in modern science. Splendid says, The
Speaker 3: Washington Post Science magazine calls it riveting. So the book,
Speaker 3: it's good. I met this ologist about four years ago
Speaker 3: at Sycom camp and he handed me his business card,
Speaker 3: which read freelance Astrophysicist. I was like, I like this guy.
Speaker 3: And then the next year he mentioned he was pitching
Speaker 3: a book, and then the following year he said he
Speaker 3: had a book deal and was writing it. And now
Speaker 3: here we are his book. It recounts a lot of
Speaker 3: the drama in the quantum physics worlds. Boy, howdy, is
Speaker 3: there some Not only are you going to walk away
Speaker 3: with an exciting overview of what the hell the universe
Speaker 3: may be all about, but you'll also hear about some
Speaker 3: academic infighting and why it's exciting that there are so
Speaker 3: many mysteries in the universe. So in between seminars and
Speaker 3: panels at si com camp, we pulled up a couch
Speaker 3: we got to talk in, so settle in for philosophical
Speaker 3: physics fun times, wherein we discuss what matter is made
Speaker 3: of and how many universes there could be, and why
Speaker 3: what we think we know just does not add up,
Speaker 3: and how someone could say you're wrong, but maybe you're
Speaker 3: right than everyone realizes. And also how an inbox can
Speaker 3: be a lot like a crackpot, and how to tackle
Speaker 3: your dreams when they seem too big to fathom in
Speaker 3: Einstein and string theory and gravity and tunneling and wormholes
Speaker 3: and cats and more with astrophys assist, author and quantum
Speaker 3: ontologist doctor Adam Becker.
Speaker 4: Although it would be fun, yes, okay, so is this good?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Let me check your level?
Speaker 4: Okay, Hi, how's this?
Speaker 3: It's great? You have a good radio voice. Let's go
Speaker 3: back in time? Yeah, if you will?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 3: Would it be a wormhole that I could go back
Speaker 3: in time to ask you about your childhood?
Speaker 4: I guess you could.
Speaker 3: Sure? Why not would a wormhole do it? Or is
Speaker 3: it a different type of tunnel?
Speaker 4: On time. I mean, there's no there's no known way
Speaker 4: that would definitely work to go back in time, but
Speaker 4: wormholes are one of the you know better theories about
Speaker 4: how you could maybe do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's go through a wormhole. Now going back.
Speaker 3: Did you always like physics? Astrophysics? How do you How
Speaker 3: does someone decide that they're into something so complex?
Speaker 4: Oh wow, that's a good question. So yeah, see, I
Speaker 4: didn't think that I was going to sit on a
Speaker 4: couch and talk about my childhood, but yeah, you trap me. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So when I was a really little kid, like a
Speaker 4: lot of other kids, I wanted to be a paleontologist
Speaker 4: because dinosaurs are awesome. I love dinosaurs. And then I
Speaker 4: discovered space and decided, no, no, space is more awesome,
Speaker 4: and so I got really into space and astronomy and astrophysics,
Speaker 4: and then sort of slowly slid from astrophysics just to physics.
Speaker 4: And so by the time I was in high school,
Speaker 4: I thought, Okay, yeah, I think physics is the direction
Speaker 4: I want to go in. This seems really interesting. And
Speaker 4: I read a lot of pop physics books and they
Speaker 4: said some confusing things, and in particular, they talked about
Speaker 4: two theories that said really wild and strange things about
Speaker 4: the world. One of them was Einstein's relativity and the
Speaker 4: other one was quantum physics, and you know, really really
Speaker 4: weird things in both of those theories. But turns out
Speaker 4: relativity doesn't require more than like early high school math. Okay,
Speaker 4: you don't need calculus. You don't even need pre calculus, like,
Speaker 4: it's just geometry and algebra. And so I learned relativity
Speaker 4: in high school and I thought, oh, all that weird
Speaker 4: stuff seems a lot less weird. Now. I bet when
Speaker 4: I get to college and I learned quantum physics, that's
Speaker 4: going to seem less weird too. That is not what happened. Yeah, No,
Speaker 4: So instead I got to college and I started learning
Speaker 4: quantum physics, and it didn't get better, it got worse.
Speaker 4: And so I was in this class where the professor
Speaker 4: was talking about one of the weird things in quantum physics.
Speaker 4: I don't remember exactly what because it was a long
Speaker 4: time would go, but you know, he was saying something
Speaker 4: about how when you're not looking at things, you can't
Speaker 4: talk about what's going on, but then when you look,
Speaker 4: things change. And I probably asked something like okay, but
Speaker 4: what do you mean by looking? What does that mean?
Speaker 4: And we kind of got into it, and I don't
Speaker 4: remember exactly how the fight went down, but I just
Speaker 4: remember that at the end he said, in this like
Speaker 4: really haughty, disdainful voice, he said, well, if that's the
Speaker 4: kind of question that you're interested in, then why don't
Speaker 4: you go to the philosophy department. Burne, Yeah, but but
Speaker 4: joke was on him. I'd already gone to the philosophy department,
Speaker 4: and so I did double major in physics and philosophy.
Speaker 4: Oh god, A lot of that was trying to wrap
Speaker 4: my head around like what the heck is going on
Speaker 4: in quantum physics, because like, this is this is a
Speaker 4: really it's a really weird area, but it's also supposed
Speaker 4: to be this really fundamental theory about you know, the
Speaker 4: fundamental constituents of the world, right, like the tiniest things,
Speaker 4: the things that the things that make us up are
Speaker 4: made of, right, like sub atomic particles. And yet it
Speaker 4: wasn't at all clear what was going on, And so
Speaker 4: I started digging into that, and the more I dug
Speaker 4: into it, the weirder it got. And I just did
Speaker 4: that more and more, and eventually thought, you know, I
Speaker 4: want to write a book about this because this is
Speaker 4: just so strange and I don't understand why this isn't
Speaker 4: more widely known.
Speaker 5: Am I?
Speaker 3: Am I going to feel like I'm on mushrooms?
Speaker 4: I mean, look at the cover of my book. It
Speaker 4: says what is real? And it's got like wavy rainbow lines. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so yeah, the answer is probably yes.
Speaker 5: Okay, don't you feel funny?
Speaker 3: Well let's go back first and define what is quantum ontology?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So quantum I mean, quantum physics is the physics
Speaker 4: of the ultra tiny, except that we think that ultra
Speaker 4: tiny things make up the world around us. So although
Speaker 4: it's the physics of the ultra tiny, there's also reason
Speaker 4: to think it's it's just the physics of everything. Ontology
Speaker 4: is the study of what there is, of what stuff
Speaker 4: is in the world, So quantum ontology is the study
Speaker 4: of Okay, what does quantum physics tell us is in
Speaker 4: the world? Or you know the title of my book, right,
Speaker 4: what is real? And it is not clear what quantum
Speaker 4: physics tells us about the world. It's just not clear
Speaker 4: at all. Even though it's not a new theory, it's
Speaker 4: been around for almost one hundred years.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, let's start with a theory relativity which someone
Speaker 3: with high school math could understand. Sure, can you give
Speaker 3: that to me? Like a nutshell? Sure he sounds unsure,
Speaker 3: but that's okay.
Speaker 4: Right, So here's one way of looking at what the
Speaker 4: theory of relativity tells us. So we sort of think
Speaker 4: from our everyday lives that if I'm standing still, or
Speaker 4: if I'm in a car going at like twenty miles
Speaker 4: an hour, there are some things that just don't change
Speaker 4: between those two situations, Like how fat my watch runs
Speaker 4: shouldn't change between those two situations, or how far it
Speaker 4: is between my house and the movie theater down the
Speaker 4: street that shouldn't change either. It turns out, though, that
Speaker 4: these things that we think of as not changing between
Speaker 4: those two situations, we call those things invariant because they
Speaker 4: don't vary. The invariance between those two situations aren't what
Speaker 4: we think they are. It turns out that actually the
Speaker 4: rate that my watch runs at does change between those
Speaker 4: two situations, and the distance between my apartment and the
Speaker 4: movie theater down the street does change. There are things
Speaker 4: that don't change, but those things are not distances or time.
Speaker 4: They're a combination of space and time space.
Speaker 3: Time, okay? Is time the fourth dimension?
Speaker 4: Sure? Yeah? In relativity it is okay?
Speaker 3: And now quantum.
Speaker 4: Yes theory yeah, oh oh, you want me to do
Speaker 4: the same thing for quantum theory.
Speaker 3: Just in a nutshell, just let us know what we're
Speaker 3: working with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So quantum theory says that there is something very
Speaker 4: very unusual going on in the world of the very tiny. Really, yes,
Speaker 4: and we don't know what that is.
Speaker 3: What happening now? Is this a lot about dark matter?
Speaker 3: And it doesn't make sense that there's so much space
Speaker 3: between atom's Holy shit, I just realized writing this that
Speaker 3: Adam's name is Adam. Adam what is life? Also? Real quick?
Speaker 3: The matter all around you, the stuff that makes up
Speaker 3: everything you see and touch and smell and lick. All
Speaker 3: that matter in the universe is five percent of what exists.
Speaker 3: And according to NASA, dark matter is something that we
Speaker 3: can calculate but we can't see or detect, and it
Speaker 3: interacts with gravity but it doesn't emit or reflect light,
Speaker 3: hence it's dark, and it makes up about twenty seven
Speaker 3: percent of the universe. Something called dark energy makes up
Speaker 3: sixty eight percent of the universe, and we know it's strong,
Speaker 3: and it's getting stronger, but we don't get what it is.
Speaker 3: So just know. The wisest minds alive don't know shit,
Speaker 3: and it frustrates them enough to keep getting out of
Speaker 3: bed every morning just to figure it out.
Speaker 4: Dark matter are sure, we don't really know what's going
Speaker 4: on there. We know it's around, but we don't know
Speaker 4: what it's made of. There is a lot of empty
Speaker 4: space inside of atoms, but that's not that's not really
Speaker 4: what's going on here either. That's not why we don't
Speaker 4: understand this. What's going on instead is it is hard
Speaker 4: to understand the relationship between the mathematics of quantum physics
Speaker 4: and the world that we live in. Because the math
Speaker 4: works really well. We can use it to predict and
Speaker 4: explain all kinds of things, but it also doesn't really
Speaker 4: look like the world around us. And that's fine. You know,
Speaker 4: things can be weird. It's a big world. There's plenty
Speaker 4: of room for weirdness. You're weird, thank you, But it's
Speaker 4: not should be a story, even if it's a weird story,
Speaker 4: that quantum physics tells us about the world, and it
Speaker 4: needs to be a story that makes internal sense, even
Speaker 4: if it's a really really weird story. Right, There's a
Speaker 4: difference between being bizarre and being internally contradictory.
Speaker 3: Right, So what he's saying is that the universe kind
Speaker 3: of like a huge restaurant tab at a friend's birthday
Speaker 3: dinner where no one has accounted for tax or tip?
Speaker 3: Are there three beverages? Things just don't add up, and
Speaker 3: everyone is testy about it.
Speaker 4: The weird thing is that the standard way of answering
Speaker 4: questions like what does quantum physics tell us about the
Speaker 4: world around us? Is to say, shut up, that's a
Speaker 4: stupid question. There's actually a saying in physics to summarize
Speaker 4: this attitude, shut up and calculate. Oh boy, because no,
Speaker 4: no one that that was originally coined by the physicist
Speaker 4: David Merman as as like a put like he was
Speaker 4: describing an attitude that other people have. Right, No one
Speaker 4: actually should say that in earnest, but some people do.
Speaker 4: And yeah, it's it's completely fucking ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Well where are these logic gaps? Like I know that
Speaker 3: it's so bizarre, and at least if you could understand
Speaker 3: the bizarreness, But what is it that's so contradictory, Like
Speaker 3: what do we think, what don't we get?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so so there's this there's this thing in quantum physics,
Speaker 4: this sort of fundamental role that the idea of measurement plays.
Speaker 4: Say that I want to describe I'm holding a pen.
Speaker 4: Say I want to describe where this pen is, you know,
Speaker 4: or where I'm going to find this pen using the
Speaker 4: physics that we had before quantum physics, like Isaac Newton's physics.
Speaker 3: Okay, quick aside. Newtonian physics is also called classical mechanics,
Speaker 3: and it deals with objects that aren't at a tiny,
Speaker 3: tiny scale, and how they move and rest and such.
Speaker 3: So apple's falling on our heads, tossing your socks in
Speaker 3: a hamper from across the room, the inertia that causes
Speaker 3: you to spill hot tea on your crotch in the car,
Speaker 3: all of those things exist in space and behave in
Speaker 3: predictable ways.
Speaker 4: I can do that with three numbers. I can say, Okay,
Speaker 4: this pen is this height above the ground, and it's
Speaker 4: this far off to the right, and it's this far
Speaker 4: in front of me. That's three numbers. It's all I
Speaker 4: need if I want to take all the information I
Speaker 4: have about where I'm going to find an electron or
Speaker 4: some subatomic particle. In quantum physics, it's not going to
Speaker 4: require three numbers. It's going to require an infinity of
Speaker 4: numbers scattered across all of space. And this set of
Speaker 4: numbers is called a wave function. And as the name implies,
Speaker 4: it kind of waves. It undulates smoothly, right, And that
Speaker 4: wave emotion is described by this very nice, pretty equation
Speaker 4: called the Schrodinger equation. And the Shroinger equation kind of
Speaker 4: smells like a law of physics. Okay, it looks like
Speaker 4: a good candidate for a fundamental law of physics, and
Speaker 4: it says that wave functions, they wave, they move smoothly,
Speaker 4: and they move in a completely determined fashion. There's nothing
Speaker 4: random or probabilistic about it.
Speaker 3: Okay, So when we zoom all the way into an
Speaker 3: atom or the elements that make up an atom, instead
Speaker 3: of having three dimensions xyz, we have an infinity of
Speaker 3: numbers to describe its location, and those infinity of numbers
Speaker 3: make up a wave. Got it, Look, we understand everything
Speaker 3: makes sense. We're pretty much quantum physicists. Now all of
Speaker 3: us just kidding, but we can still celebrate it.
Speaker 4: But the standard way of using quantum physics says, okay,
Speaker 4: wave functions, obay, the Schrodinger equation, except when you look,
Speaker 4: when you actually look for the electron, the Schrodinger equation
Speaker 4: is temporarily suspended, at which point this entire other law
Speaker 4: of physics that is completely different in contradictory comes in.
Speaker 4: It's called the Born rule. This is Jason Bourne, Okay.
Speaker 3: It's actually named for German mathematician and physicist Max Bourne,
Speaker 3: who helped develop quantum mechanics and was nominated for a
Speaker 3: Nobel Prize by Einstein himself. But most importantly, Max Bourne
Speaker 3: is the grandpa of Greece's Olivia Newton John. When I
Speaker 3: read that, I had chills, like multiplying. But yeah, the
Speaker 3: Boorn rule measures probability of a particle's position, and it
Speaker 3: came on the quantum scene in nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 4: And that says, oh, yeah, that wave function that moves smoothly,
Speaker 4: it stops moving smoothly. It goes to zero everywhere except
Speaker 4: in the spot where you found the electron.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so this leads to a couple of questions.
Speaker 4: First of all, that's weird. Yeah, why does that happen?
Speaker 4: I don't know, Yeah, weirdness though it's fine. The real
Speaker 4: problem that the contradiction, right, the gap in logic is, Okay,
Speaker 4: we have these two rules, they're not the same rule.
Speaker 4: When do we apply one and when do we apply
Speaker 4: the other? Because we need to know that because they're
Speaker 4: not the same rule. The usual answer is, oh, we
Speaker 4: use the Shrodingir equation when we're not looking, when we're
Speaker 4: not making the measurement, and we use the Born rule
Speaker 4: when we do the problem is that the idea of
Speaker 4: measurement is really really fucking vague, Like is it when
Speaker 4: I make a measurement? Does quantum mechanics only apply to me?
Speaker 4: Adam Becker? Like that? That can't be right? Right? Does
Speaker 4: it work when a dog looks at an electron?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Right? Or or you know, do you need to be
Speaker 4: like better qualified the bananas? It's completely nuts. And the
Speaker 4: other thing is, like I said, electrons aren't the only
Speaker 4: things that have wave functions. This pen has a wave function.
Speaker 4: You have a wave function. I have a wave function.
Speaker 4: The universe has a wave function.
Speaker 3: You get a wave function. Do you get a wave function?
Speaker 3: You get a wave function? Quantum ontology. It's like the
Speaker 3: opera of the physics world.
Speaker 4: Was the wave function of the universe just waiting for
Speaker 4: billions and billions of years for someone to come along
Speaker 4: and suddenly collapse it. And you know, have the Shroding
Speaker 4: air equation not apply, Like it's just not clear when
Speaker 4: one equation applies and one another applies. There are people
Speaker 4: who would say that I am wrong about that. These
Speaker 4: are the same people who tell you to shut up
Speaker 4: and calculate if you ask them, if you pin them
Speaker 4: down and try to ask them, Okay, fine, hotshot, when
Speaker 4: do you use one and when to use the other,
Speaker 4: they're going to give you something that's either internally contradictory
Speaker 4: or that contradicts the idea that quantum physics is more
Speaker 4: fundamental than Newton's physics.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, and now oive there's a lot going on.
Speaker 4: There's a lot going on.
Speaker 3: And so the notion of do you remember snuffalop Gus
Speaker 3: from obsession? Is there a Snuhalopus rule?
Speaker 4: Like he's only there when people who aren't Big Bird
Speaker 4: aren't looking. Yeah, oh man, big Bird is definitely not
Speaker 4: the the the prime observer of quantum mechanics. I can
Speaker 4: tell you that right now. Carol Spinney does not have
Speaker 4: like special quantum power. Big Mark it's all right, No.
Speaker 3: It's not. Just side note, Carol Spinny is the actor
Speaker 3: and puppeteer who played Big Bird until his retirement last year,
Speaker 3: and also did everyone else know his name? And that
Speaker 3: he also voiced Oscar the Grouch? Or do astrophysicists just
Speaker 3: have large brain buckets full of trivia? Where were we? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 3: So the wave function that describes the place of a
Speaker 3: tiny particle collapses to a point when it's observed. This
Speaker 3: is wave function collapse. Does observing something make it exist differently?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: So then what does that mean for us?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: If I am a wave function until someone looks at
Speaker 3: me and then I'm not? What does that mean for ontology,
Speaker 3: for the science and the study of being? What is anyone?
Speaker 4: Yeah? It means that there's something we don't understand here.
Speaker 4: It means that the story's clearly not complete. It means
Speaker 4: that shutting up and calculating is good practical advice if
Speaker 4: you want to, you know, calculate stuff. But it means
Speaker 4: it can't be the real story about the world, Like
Speaker 4: it is good to ask these questions because there must
Speaker 4: be something else going on. So the problem then is, Okay,
Speaker 4: what is that story of the world, and the answer
Speaker 4: is we have multiple candidates for a possible story of
Speaker 4: the world and interpretation of quantum physics. There are multiple
Speaker 4: interpretations running around. There isn't a consensus about which one
Speaker 4: is the right one.
Speaker 3: Okay, So when it comes to quantum ontology, are we real?
Speaker 3: What are we? What is reality? How does it work?
Speaker 3: Why don't things add up between points versus waves? And
Speaker 3: why can't we detect or describe dark matter or dark energy?
Speaker 3: Nobody knows, but there have been scratch paper pads and
Speaker 3: whiteboards just chock a block filled with theories with you
Speaker 3: give me some of the top ones, like is multi
Speaker 3: versus one?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's one of them. That's probably the most popular one,
Speaker 4: other than you know, the non answer of shut up,
Speaker 4: that's a stupid question. So the many World's interpretation, which
Speaker 4: was developed by this joker named Hugh Everett a third
Speaker 4: in nineteen in the mid nineteen fifties, while he was
Speaker 4: a grad student in physics, he basically got drunk on
Speaker 4: sherry one night with a couple of other physicists and
Speaker 4: then like basically developed this interpretation in part to like
Speaker 4: stick it to the guy he was drunkenly arguing with
Speaker 4: who was an assistant of this guy, Nils Borr, who's
Speaker 4: a big famous physicist.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Hugh Everett, who as a child wrote a
Speaker 3: letter to Einstein and got a nice response, and then
Speaker 3: later in his life, setting on some of Einstein's lectures,
Speaker 3: ran with his posse. So this Hugh Everett, Oh, he
Speaker 3: loved booths and smoking and quantum theory, and he got
Speaker 3: his PhD in it in the quantum theory at least,
Speaker 3: and Neil's Boorr, who, by the bye was a big
Speaker 3: deal Nobel Prize win quantum physicists and one of like
Speaker 3: the folks who propose the structure of an atom with
Speaker 3: the electron spinning around it, and parts of what became
Speaker 3: known as the Copenhagen interpretation that a particle exists in
Speaker 3: every position of the wave function until it's observed. Okay,
Speaker 3: so Everett. He was gently shmammered and arguing with someone
Speaker 3: from Neo Boord's lab about Schrodinger's equation, which tries to
Speaker 3: find the probability of a particle at a certain point
Speaker 3: surfing that wave function when we look at it. Okay,
Speaker 3: so they're arguing.
Speaker 4: Everett basically said, look what if it's just all Schrodinger
Speaker 4: all the time. Like, what if that's the only thing
Speaker 4: that plays on the quantum physics radio station, It's just
Speaker 4: one hundred per sting. What if that other thing, the
Speaker 4: Born rule never comes in? Wave functions never collapse.
Speaker 3: What does it mean to be wall to wall Shrodinger?
Speaker 3: Is that like boxed in by Shortinger is a dead
Speaker 3: cat involved?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 4: To explain that, I need to bring in like the
Speaker 4: most famous thought experiment in all of quantum physics, Schrodinger's cat. Yes,
Speaker 4: So Schrodinger came up with this way before Hugh Everett.
Speaker 4: He came up with his cat in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 4: to explain why he thought there was a big problem here.
Speaker 4: Because Schrodinger and Einstein and a couple of the other
Speaker 4: founders of quantum physics were really bothered by this problem.
Speaker 4: It got a special name later on, the measurement problem.
Speaker 4: They were really really concerned about this. They thought there
Speaker 4: was something missing from the fury. Schrodinger illustrated this by saying, look,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe quantum particles are weird. You know, maybe
Speaker 4: they can perform strange tricks. That wave function describing where
Speaker 4: you're going to find an electron, it sort of smeared
Speaker 4: out over all of space. That kind of suggests that
Speaker 4: maybe the electron is in multiple places at once until
Speaker 4: you look.
Speaker 3: But who's looking and what counts Nobody actually knows anyway.
Speaker 4: So he said, imagine that you have a box, a
Speaker 4: sealed box, and in that box, you have a very
Speaker 4: slightly radioactive, you know, lump lump of metal, and you
Speaker 4: have a radiation detector pointed at it, and you have
Speaker 4: this contraption set up so that when the detector detects radiation,
Speaker 4: it drops a little hammer that smashes a glass vial
Speaker 4: of cyanide. And there's a cat in there with this
Speaker 4: whole thing. So basically, if the lump of metal emits
Speaker 4: any radiation, the cat will die. Oh okay, So you
Speaker 4: put this all together, you seal the box, and you
Speaker 4: wait like thirty minutes, and at this point the Shroding
Speaker 4: equation says, okay, look, the chunk of radiation that could
Speaker 4: be emitted by this metal, it either has or has
Speaker 4: not been emitted. And so the wave function sort of says, well,
Speaker 4: it's been emitted and not emitted, which means that the
Speaker 4: detector has and hasn't been tripped which means that the
Speaker 4: glass vial has and has not broken. So the cat
Speaker 4: in there is, according to the Stroating Hair equation, is
Speaker 4: sort of part dead and part alive, or both dead
Speaker 4: and alive. It's in this state called a souper position,
Speaker 4: which is sort of generally the state that most things
Speaker 4: are in most of the time, according to the Schrodinger equation.
Speaker 4: But according to the usual way of thinking about quantum physics,
Speaker 4: this this sort of very unsatisfying and incomplete idea that
Speaker 4: you just you know, shut up and don't think about
Speaker 4: what it means to measure. When you open the box,
Speaker 4: then the cat is either dead or alive, and somehow
Speaker 4: opening the box made that happen, and that's ridiculous, Shreddinger said.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe particles can be in one place or
Speaker 4: more than one place at a time, but cats are
Speaker 4: either dead or alive. And if you open the box
Speaker 4: and find a dead cat, then the minute before you
Speaker 4: open the box, the cat was either dead or dyeing.
Speaker 4: And if you open it and find a living cat,
Speaker 4: it's not like it was not entirely living before you
Speaker 4: open the box, right, all right.
Speaker 3: So remember our Sherry shithammered, fun loving physicist Hugh Everett,
Speaker 3: arguing with the biggest fish in the physics pond that
Speaker 3: their Copenhagen interpretation was bullcock a horsepucky.
Speaker 4: Everett solved this problem a different way. Okay, Everett said, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: it's all Schrodinger all the time. So when you open
Speaker 4: the box, you know the cat's both dead and alive
Speaker 4: before you open the box, and then when you open
Speaker 4: the box, you get entangled with the stuff in the box.
Speaker 3: Okay, heads up on this next part. Entanglement sounds like
Speaker 3: a boundary issue in an unhealthy relationship, but it's actually
Speaker 3: quantum physics and it's cool as hell.
Speaker 4: So Everett said, sure. So what that means is, you know,
Speaker 4: the box split according to the Schrodinger equation, and then
Speaker 4: when you open the box to look, you split into
Speaker 4: two copies.
Speaker 3: Hello John, Hellojo.
Speaker 4: And the reason that you don't see both a living
Speaker 4: and a dead cat is because you split, and so
Speaker 4: each copy of you only sees one cat. One of
Speaker 4: you sees a living cat, thank god, and one of
Speaker 4: you sees a dead cat, but both copies only see
Speaker 4: one hat.
Speaker 3: So then every time there is a decision, it splits
Speaker 3: and splits and splits and splitze.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's this entanglement sort of contagious and ends up
Speaker 4: going through the whole world. And so the whole world
Speaker 4: eventually splits into the dead cat and the living cat branches,
Speaker 4: and this happens over and over again all the time,
Speaker 4: and so you end up with this massive collection of
Speaker 4: universe is a multiverse?
Speaker 3: What if there's three options, because not everything's on a binary.
Speaker 4: That's right? Yeah, so then you get three copies? Or
Speaker 4: what if you left the cat in there for fifteen minutes? Right,
Speaker 4: so instead of instead of leaving it in there long
Speaker 4: enough that you had a fifty to fifty shot of
Speaker 4: finding a dead cat, you've probably got a living cat. Okay, right, sweet,
Speaker 4: So then there's two copies, but somehow you're more likely
Speaker 4: to be the copy that sees the living cat. And
Speaker 4: this is another part of the problem, right, because because
Speaker 4: quantum physics famously only gives you answers in terms of
Speaker 4: probabilities almost all the time. But the Schroding air equation
Speaker 4: is in a random equation. It's completely determined. So where
Speaker 4: do the probabilities come from, Well, they come in when
Speaker 4: you use this other rule, the born.
Speaker 3: Rule, Born rules or refresh calculates the probability of measuring
Speaker 3: or observing a particle at a particular spot on.
Speaker 4: The wave One way of thinking about this is to say, oh, well, sure,
Speaker 4: you know that when you open the box you're going
Speaker 4: to split, but you don't know which universe you're going
Speaker 4: to be in when you open the box. You don't
Speaker 4: know which branch of the wave function that you're going
Speaker 4: to be in, and so you know, this rule is
Speaker 4: about figuring out the probability that you're going to be
Speaker 4: in the branch with a living cat or a dead cat.
Speaker 4: It gets really trippy.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, so this is the many world theories, which
Speaker 3: is one of the ways that you could try to
Speaker 3: explain the inconsistency. What about your own life do you
Speaker 3: think about that when you are about to make a decision.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't go through my life assuming that
Speaker 4: there are multiple copies of me. Well, so part of
Speaker 4: the reason is that I don't subscribe to the many
Speaker 4: world's interpretation. I think it's a reasonable option, but I
Speaker 4: don't know that it's the right answer. I don't know
Speaker 4: what the right answer is, and I don't think I
Speaker 4: don't think anybody can say for sure that they know
Speaker 4: what the right answer is here, because we don't have
Speaker 4: a good scientific consensus on this debate. But I mean
Speaker 4: in my everyday life, I mean, I don't know. I
Speaker 4: think I'm a pretty regular guy. It's just two things.
Speaker 4: The way I do.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't be like, well, I might as well make
Speaker 3: this risky choice because somewhere there's someone making the less
Speaker 3: risky choice. I'll fish.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's not That's definitely not how I approach my life.
Speaker 4: I do not recommend that anybody do that. Do not
Speaker 4: try that at home.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, does it ever you're you're a young guy,
Speaker 3: does it ever? Does it ever trip you out that,
Speaker 3: like in our lifetime, you may not figure out what's up?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, I mean that is frustrating, right because like
Speaker 4: you asked me again, we're on a couch talking about
Speaker 4: my childhood, but you asked me about you know what
Speaker 4: got me interested in this stuff in the first place.
Speaker 4: I wanted to know what was going on, right, I
Speaker 4: wanted to know what was up. This is why I
Speaker 4: keep saying. You know, it's fine if our theories are weird.
Speaker 4: We live in a weird place. There are so many
Speaker 4: weird things about the world. Have you seen a platypus, like, like,
Speaker 4: have you have you seen this? Is? This is one
Speaker 4: of my favorite examples of like just a weird thing
Speaker 4: in physics that has nothing to do with quantum anything.
Speaker 4: Have you done that demo at like a science museum
Speaker 4: where you sit in a in a spinny chair and
Speaker 4: you're holding a bicycle wheel and then you flip you
Speaker 4: flip it upside down. All of a sudden you start
Speaker 4: spinning like that's weird and wheel feels like it's fighting you.
Speaker 4: What the fuck is going on? Like there's a good
Speaker 4: answer there, right, So, like this is just a strange
Speaker 4: place and I want to know what's going on in it.
Speaker 4: So on the one hand, yeah, it's frustrating that we
Speaker 4: might not know, But on the other hand, it's kind
Speaker 4: of amazing that we don't know, right, Like we we
Speaker 4: have been doing science, we have been thinking about this
Speaker 4: stuff for a long time, and every time we discover
Speaker 4: something new, we find more interesting questions. And this is
Speaker 4: a complete cliche and I'm not the first person to
Speaker 4: say this, but the idea that that there are such
Speaker 4: fundamental things in the world that we do not understand,
Speaker 4: that we don't know why these things happen. We don't
Speaker 4: know what what like the nature of the world is,
Speaker 4: and we are in it, we are of it. One
Speaker 4: of the great illusions that being human, and especially being
Speaker 4: human here and now in this culture like sort of fosters,
Speaker 4: is this idea that somehow we are separate from the world.
Speaker 4: We are of the world, we are pieces of the world.
Speaker 4: This is one of the things that's so frustrating about
Speaker 4: this idea that, oh, the rules are different when you
Speaker 4: measure what's I'm not special, I'm of the world like
Speaker 4: I don't. There are not different rules for me than
Speaker 4: there are for anyone else. I am a piece of
Speaker 4: the world. I'm part of the world. So are you.
Speaker 4: So is everyone. We are all of a part with
Speaker 4: this strange and wonderful place that we live in. And
Speaker 4: it is not clear how any of this works.
Speaker 3: Well, what are some other theories? Okay, so we got multiverses,
Speaker 3: multi many worlds. What are some other leading theories of
Speaker 3: what the hell's going on?
Speaker 4: Okay, so, so another one. And this is really gonna
Speaker 4: piss some people off if I described this as a
Speaker 4: leading theory, but it totally is, and they're wrong. There's
Speaker 4: there's so much controversy here there's like it's there's so
Speaker 4: much drama this is this is a lot of what
Speaker 4: drew me to this. Once I realized, like, there's so
Speaker 4: much weird stuff in this area and this unresolved debate,
Speaker 4: I started wondering, Okay, why is it unresolved? And it
Speaker 4: turns out a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 4: just like debate and interpersonal drama between really interesting people.
Speaker 4: And then I tried to find a book about it,
Speaker 4: and I couldn't find one, so I wrote one again.
Speaker 3: The title is What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for
Speaker 3: the Meaning of Quantum Physics by doctor Adam Becker, available
Speaker 3: wherever you get books. It makes a great holiday gift.
Speaker 3: He did not ask me to say that, but it
Speaker 3: is legit a very good book.
Speaker 4: Another leading theory is this. It's this thing. It goes
Speaker 4: by several different names, but I like to call it
Speaker 4: pilot wave theory. It is this idea that when you're
Speaker 4: you know, when you're talking about you know, where is
Speaker 4: that electron? It is in a place before you look,
Speaker 4: and when you look, you find it is. But there's
Speaker 4: a wave that's associated with each particle, and these waves
Speaker 4: sort of guide the motion of those particles, and that
Speaker 4: wave is sort of associated with that wave function that
Speaker 4: we were talking about before. And one of the things
Speaker 4: that really clude physicists in in the early twentieth century
Speaker 4: to something really profoundly strange going on was that they
Speaker 4: found that things that they thought were waves sometimes acted
Speaker 4: like particles, and things that they thought were particles sometimes
Speaker 4: acted like waves. Yeah, so like something that you thought
Speaker 4: was in one place suddenly like started rippling outward like
Speaker 4: a wave. Something that you thought propagated like a wave
Speaker 4: and could ripple out and do all those weird wave
Speaker 4: things suddenly was acting like a baseball like. It just
Speaker 4: really weird. So this is sort of a puzzle, like
Speaker 4: how can particles act like waves and vice versa? What's
Speaker 4: going on? Why does everything seem to have both a
Speaker 4: particle and a wave nature? And the answer in this theory,
Speaker 4: the pilot wave theory, is oh, that's because there are
Speaker 4: particles and waves in every particle has a wave associated
Speaker 4: with it that determines how it moves.
Speaker 3: And so that.
Speaker 4: Sounds really simple and really cool. There are problems, right,
Speaker 4: There's problems with everything right, otherwise there'd be no contra
Speaker 4: The first issue though, I hesitate to call it a problem.
Speaker 4: Is remember entanglement. You know when when things get when
Speaker 4: things interact, they start sharing a wave. So when you
Speaker 4: have two entangled particles one particle, say that they're entangled,
Speaker 4: and they go flying off in different directions. One of
Speaker 4: them is way over here and one of them is
Speaker 4: way over there, right, Like, one of them is in Mississippi,
Speaker 4: and one of them is in Calgary, right, Okay, Then
Speaker 4: the one in Mississippi, if it moves a little bit,
Speaker 4: that's going to affect the pilot wave that guides the
Speaker 4: particle in Calgary instantaneously. Immediately. It happens faster than the
Speaker 4: speed of light. So that's weird, especially because you know,
Speaker 4: we can prove in the math of the theory that
Speaker 4: that's what happens. But you can also prove that you
Speaker 4: can't use it for signaling. You can't send messages faster
Speaker 4: than the speed of light this way. So so somehow
Speaker 4: there's this subtle connection that we don't see direct evidence of.
Speaker 4: When I said we don't see direct evidence, we do
Speaker 4: see evidence, but it's it's it's indirect evidence. It's evidence
Speaker 4: that they are connected. You can't use that connection, you know,
Speaker 4: like no one would dispute that they were connected if
Speaker 4: you could use one to instantly make the other one,
Speaker 4: you know, send a message. But that's not how this works.
Speaker 3: So in the pilot wave theory, there's not a wave
Speaker 3: or a particle. There's a wave that the particle is
Speaker 3: kind of surfing, and it can affect the particles in
Speaker 3: numerous superpositions. But it would be faster than light, which
Speaker 3: really irks some people because alber Einstein's relativity says nothing
Speaker 3: is faster than light, so he didn't like that. Also,
Speaker 3: Adam says this was developed.
Speaker 4: The basic idea was developed by one of the founders
Speaker 4: of quantum mechanics, a guy named Louis de Boy in
Speaker 4: the late nineteen twenties, but then he was convinced by
Speaker 4: some other physicists that it couldn't be right. He dropped.
Speaker 4: It was independently rediscovered by another physicist, David Boehme in
Speaker 4: the early nineteen fifties, and he sort of fixed up
Speaker 4: the problems that were with it that Dubois had sort
Speaker 4: of left, and like sort of made it a fully
Speaker 4: fledged theory and published it. And then he his life
Speaker 4: like descended into a living nightmare for mostly unrelated reasons
Speaker 4: like he yeah, he got caught up in the Red
Speaker 4: Scare in the nineteen fifties. Yeah he got he got blacklisted.
Speaker 4: He ended up being effectively exiled to Brazil, and then
Speaker 4: the US government confiscated his passport, so he's trapped in Brazil.
Speaker 4: Like there's a whole it's like a movie. It's like
Speaker 4: a fringin' spy thriller, Like dude got the fucking short
Speaker 4: end of the stay.
Speaker 3: Okay, who now this guy's life? My word. He had
Speaker 3: his own work at Berkeley confiscated and then classified so
Speaker 3: he didn't have access to it so that it could
Speaker 3: be used on the Manhattan Project, and he eventually in
Speaker 3: his seventies had to have electroconvulsive therapy for depression. And
Speaker 3: just the saga and the drama of his life and
Speaker 3: political affiliations affected the reception of his work sadly. Okay,
Speaker 3: But one hiccup is that the particle surfing a pilot
Speaker 3: wave doesn't work with other theories like the relativistic quantum
Speaker 3: field theory that explains what happens when you smash particles
Speaker 3: together in a nearly seventeen mile particle accelerator tube underground,
Speaker 3: which as discussed in the Cosmology episode with doctor Katie
Speaker 3: Mack is not called the hard On collider.
Speaker 4: No one has found a way to unequivocally take that
Speaker 4: theory and reframe it in terms of this pilot wave stuff.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that if
Speaker 4: it's right, the job isn't finished. But there are a
Speaker 4: lot of physicists who don't like this stuff for that
Speaker 4: reason and because it's got this weird tangled history. So yeah,
Speaker 4: So that's another option, is this pilot wave theory. There
Speaker 4: are lots of other options.
Speaker 3: How often do you think people get stoned and come
Speaker 3: up with their own theories and email physicists.
Speaker 4: Oh well, I can tell you that it happens a lot,
Speaker 4: because I get a lot of those emails. Some of
Speaker 4: those people, by the way, I think are not stoned.
Speaker 4: I think that there could be like an interesting psychology
Speaker 4: paper done here. Oh man, I'm gonna get some hate
Speaker 4: mail for this that like being an old, retired white
Speaker 4: male engineer must have some effect on the brain that
Speaker 4: is similar to like cannabis or alcohol or something. Because
Speaker 4: those people, I'm pretty sure they're sober, and they send
Speaker 4: me all sorts of wacky stuff all the time and
Speaker 4: it's not correct. Do you have a favorite, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Any simulation theories?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely get those. I also get you know,
Speaker 4: Einstein was wrong and complete fraud and here's why, and
Speaker 4: I'm the only one who found it. And I'm like Galileo,
Speaker 4: I've been persecuted. Right. There's this there's this thing called
Speaker 4: the Crackpot Index online, which basically you assigned more and
Speaker 4: more points to a crackpot email depending on like, what
Speaker 4: kinds of claims?
Speaker 3: Okay? Side note. This Crackpot Index is indeed a real thing,
Speaker 3: and it was published in nineteen ninety eight by mathematical
Speaker 3: physicist John Bias and one score is determined by points,
Speaker 3: with infractions being five points for each word in all caps.
Speaker 3: Ten points for mailing your theory to someone you don't
Speaker 3: know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else
Speaker 3: about it for fear that your ideas will be stolen.
Speaker 3: Ten points for each statement along the lines of I'm
Speaker 3: not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right,
Speaker 3: so all I need is for someone to just express
Speaker 3: it in terms of equations. Ten points for each comparison
Speaker 3: of yourself to Einstein. Twenty points for emailing to complain
Speaker 3: about the crackpot index, twenty points for suggesting that you
Speaker 3: deserve a Nobel Prize, thirty points for claiming that your
Speaker 3: theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization.
Speaker 4: And I think the worst thing on that index that
Speaker 4: you can do is compare yourself to Galileo in that vein.
Speaker 3: Either we're going to create simulations that are interesting feel
Speaker 3: from reality, or civilization will cease to exist. Those are
Speaker 3: the two options. Now, what about a simulation? Okay, what
Speaker 3: if the reason why we cannot reconcile the wave versus
Speaker 3: the particle and the born versus the Schrodingert What if
Speaker 3: that is because it's all fake?
Speaker 4: Right? So, so a couple of things there. First of all,
Speaker 4: you'd still need to have rules, like if it's a
Speaker 4: simulation and a computer, like any computer, we know, there's
Speaker 4: still rules that the simulation runs on, right, So, and
Speaker 4: that that means that there still has to be some
Speaker 4: internal logical coherence, right, It can't contradict itself even if
Speaker 4: it's weird. So there's that. But more more importantly, and
Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't know if you're gonna like
Speaker 4: this answer. I think that the simulation thing is kind
Speaker 4: of not kind of no, I'm not con emit. Swords
Speaker 4: simulation thing is fucking bullshit. Okay, it's fucking bullshit. And
Speaker 4: here's what and this is going to take like a
Speaker 4: sharp left turn.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: It assumes that that's something that it assumes that that's
Speaker 4: a thing that you can do, which we still don't
Speaker 4: know that you can do that. And it also assumes
Speaker 4: that and I guess what I'm really talking about here
Speaker 4: is this argument that we almost definitely live in a simulation, right,
Speaker 4: Like there are those people who say, no, no, no, we
Speaker 4: definitely live in one, like almost certainly there's almost no
Speaker 4: chance that this is like the base reality whatever that means.
Speaker 4: I really think that's wrong because it assumes that technology progress.
Speaker 4: It assumes a lot about the future progression of technology,
Speaker 4: but it also assumes that technology always progresses through like
Speaker 4: the same inevitable stages. It assumes a lot about history
Speaker 4: and culture and the nature of life and intelligent life
Speaker 4: and intelligence itself. And I think that basically all of
Speaker 4: those a sum that go into that argument, that fuel
Speaker 4: that argument are are hopelessly myopic. They're just like completely
Speaker 4: blinkered and narrow minded about like the wide variety of
Speaker 4: ways that that things in the world can be and
Speaker 4: that you know, technology and civilization and culture can be
Speaker 4: even in this world here and now, like it's a
Speaker 4: very it's a very western centric, male centric, white centric,
Speaker 4: rich centric argument that you know, basically, yeah, no, the
Speaker 4: inevitable progression of any intelligent being in any logically possible
Speaker 4: universe is basically going to be like a rich white
Speaker 4: dude born between nineteen seventy and nineteen ninety. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 4: and that's some fucking bulksh Yeah, that is bullshit. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So and also I've been using maybe everything's a simulation
Speaker 3: as an excuse for why things are bad. But I
Speaker 3: shouldn't do.
Speaker 4: That, right, Yeah, I think I think like two things.
Speaker 4: First of all, you shouldn't do.
Speaker 3: That, okod So, yes, clearly we can't look at global
Speaker 3: warming and agonizing political situations in forest burning and that
Speaker 3: time you farted in ninth grade history class and people
Speaker 3: having cancer and being driven from their homelands because of
Speaker 3: greed just as a video game gone wrong, and that
Speaker 3: we should give up and fold our hands in our
Speaker 3: laps and just wait for the apocalypse or the game
Speaker 3: over screen.
Speaker 4: Second, even if this is a simulation. The suffering is real. Yes,
Speaker 4: I am suffering. You were suffering. We got to fix
Speaker 4: that shit. Yeah, a lot of people out there, real suffering.
Speaker 4: We can't just shrug it off as it's all video games. Yeah,
Speaker 4: exactly right. Ye do you think that we're real? I
Speaker 4: mean yeah, I mean I guess it depends on what
Speaker 4: you mean by real. But for any like good meaning
Speaker 4: of that word, sure, we're real. Yeah, I mean say
Speaker 4: that it is a simulation. Say that everything I said
Speaker 4: was wrong, Say that there's some other universe with the
Speaker 4: laws of physics and other beings and for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: they decided to build this simulation, like to build a computer,
Speaker 4: and inside that computer, like there's a simulation going on,
Speaker 4: and we're in there. We're real, We're in that simulation.
Speaker 4: We're really in that simulation in that scenario, Like there
Speaker 4: are real entities in that simulation that are you and
Speaker 4: me and all the things around us, even if that's
Speaker 4: not how the programmers think about it. Like I am
Speaker 4: having experiences here in this simulation, and I have a
Speaker 4: hand over here and I'm waving it around and I'm
Speaker 4: banging it on the edge of the sofa, like that's
Speaker 4: all happening. Does the actual structure of the world at
Speaker 4: its most fundamental level look anything like the way we
Speaker 4: think it looks? Probably not, whether or not we're in
Speaker 4: a simulation, I think that's wrong. Okay, But does that
Speaker 4: mean that we're not real? Absolutely not, you know. Okay,
Speaker 4: So here's the thing I think everyone, I hope everyone
Speaker 4: can agree that temperature is a real thing. Like thing
Speaker 4: have temperatures. You know. I can take my cool nerdy
Speaker 4: infrared thermometer and pointed at the wall and it will
Speaker 4: tell me that the wall is seventy four point six
Speaker 4: degrees fahrenheit. Because we live in a country that doesn't
Speaker 4: know how to measure tempt. But the thing is temperature
Speaker 4: according to our best understanding of temperature in physics, it
Speaker 4: comes out of third dynamics, which is itself something that
Speaker 4: comes out of statistical physics, a really really interesting field
Speaker 4: of physics. Temperature is an emergent property. It's not a
Speaker 4: property that individual sub atomic particles can have. It's something
Speaker 4: that only aggregate collections of stuff have.
Speaker 3: So one molecule can't have a temperature, but a group
Speaker 3: of them can because they're all moving around. So Adamly
Speaker 3: Liken's temperature to existence and asking the question are we real?
Speaker 4: These things in this world around us can emerge out
Speaker 4: of that lower level in the same way that temperature
Speaker 4: is a property that emerges out of the lower level.
Speaker 4: You know, little jostlings of tiny things, because that's where
Speaker 4: temperature comes from. It's you know, a tiny object, a
Speaker 4: tiny piece of that wall is moving around a little bit,
Speaker 4: and all that jiggling together comes out and looks to
Speaker 4: us like temperature. That's a real thing. That wall is
Speaker 4: actually a temperature. And we are here and we are
Speaker 4: having this conversation. Even if you know the perception that
Speaker 4: there is such a thing as space and time is
Speaker 4: something that emerges out of some lower level of reality,
Speaker 4: there's still a space and a time that we're in,
Speaker 4: even if it's not fundamental.
Speaker 3: All right, you've not let me get off the hook
Speaker 3: about existing, and I still have to like do all
Speaker 3: my bullshit and get through my to do list. That's
Speaker 3: like I can't, okay, can I ask you patreon questions?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Are you ready?
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm never going to be completely ready, right
Speaker 4: for the weirdness that is Patreon high Patreon that's.
Speaker 3: The right answer, But before we get to your genius
Speaker 3: and weird and dry and perfect questions submitted on Patreon.
Speaker 3: Each episode, we donate to a charity of the ologist choosing.
Speaker 3: This week, doctor Becker chose tech Bridge Girls, which excites, educates,
Speaker 3: and equips girls from low income communities by delivering high
Speaker 3: quality STEM programming that empowers a girl to achieve economic
Speaker 3: mobility and better life chances. And tech Bridge Girls was
Speaker 3: one of the earliest organizations to focus on introducing girls
Speaker 3: and marginalized communities to the STEM fields. And it's based
Speaker 3: in Oakland, California, where Adam lives. So that's tech Bridgegirls
Speaker 3: dot org. That donation was made possible by sponsors of
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Speaker 3: Okay, back to your questions. Travis Damelo wants to know
Speaker 3: how does quantum stuff relate to nature? What is its
Speaker 3: role beyond technology?
Speaker 4: Oh, I mean, that's a great question. Quantum physics explains
Speaker 4: a huge variety of natural phenomena, Like without quantum physics,
Speaker 4: we wouldn't understand why the sun shines. We wouldn't understand
Speaker 4: how our eyes can see that the sun shines. We
Speaker 4: wouldn't understand, and I mean this in the most general
Speaker 4: way possible, the phenomenon of solidness, Like we wouldn't understand
Speaker 4: not only why I'm not passing through this couch right now,
Speaker 4: but why my bones are solid at all in the
Speaker 4: first place.
Speaker 3: For more on that topic, you can see the Osteology
Speaker 3: episode about bones.
Speaker 4: Just saying quantum physics is necessary for understanding where the
Speaker 4: periodic table of the elements comes from, and the idea
Speaker 4: of molecular structure, so all of chemistry and thus all
Speaker 4: of biochemistry, and thus all of life. So quantum physics explains,
Speaker 4: you know, or has a really important role in explaining
Speaker 4: almost every single possible natural phenomenon.
Speaker 3: So it's important, Yeah, just a little. So A bunch
Speaker 3: of folks asked about existence and what it really means
Speaker 3: and why, such as Wendy Lockhart, Sarah Piat, Matthew Thomas Hill,
Speaker 3: and Sam Gordon, who wants to know, how do you
Speaker 3: deal knowing what you know about existence? And Christy Stewart
Speaker 3: wants to know why does it matter if we exist
Speaker 3: or not?
Speaker 4: Humans are curious if we're going to try to engage
Speaker 4: in the dangerous game of coming up with fundamental human
Speaker 4: behaviors that are true across cultures. I do think that
Speaker 4: curiosity is a really good candidate for one, and also
Speaker 4: more generally, and this is me stealing from my book.
Speaker 4: So the ideas that we get from science, the picture
Speaker 4: of the world that comes with our best scientific theories,
Speaker 4: filters out into the wider culture. Science is not a
Speaker 4: separate human activity from the rest of the human world.
Speaker 4: It is of a piece with the rest of human activity,
Speaker 4: with art and politics and music, and you know, the
Speaker 4: social sciences and the physical sciences and the biological sciences.
Speaker 4: These all form a unified whole. And so the pictures
Speaker 4: of the world that come from science not only go
Speaker 4: out into the other sciences, but out into the wider
Speaker 4: world like a really really simple and facile heal and
Speaker 4: total white dude. Example, if Copernicus and company had not
Speaker 4: uncentered the Earth and shown us that no, the Earth
Speaker 4: is not at the center of the universe. It seems
Speaker 4: hard to imagine that Charles Darwiner or chuckyde To his
Speaker 4: friends and company would have had the audacity to suggest
Speaker 4: that humans are not at the center of biological creation,
Speaker 4: right and and instead that we're just another ape, just
Speaker 4: another organism in a giant tree of organisms. And without
Speaker 4: both of those changes in the way that we think
Speaker 4: about the world. I mean, first of all, you can
Speaker 4: probably come up with your own examples here. But without
Speaker 4: both of those changes, Stanley Kubrick wouldn't have been able
Speaker 4: to film two thousand and one, right, all those apes
Speaker 4: at the beginning, and you know, the like con that
Speaker 4: wouldn't have happened. And there's lots of other art and
Speaker 4: culture and just important things that have happened because of
Speaker 4: our scientific theories and vice versa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Samuel Ball wants to know, has the impossible issue
Speaker 3: of tunneling been solved yet or are there any good
Speaker 3: theories out there? It is tunneling?
Speaker 4: What is tunneling? So tunneling? So the short answer is,
Speaker 4: in classical physics, if I put my hand on this
Speaker 4: table and leave it here, then it will just sort
Speaker 4: of stay on of this table. But in quantum physics,
Speaker 4: there's a small chance that my hand will suddenly pass
Speaker 4: through the table, but it's phenomenally unlikely because my hand
Speaker 4: is quite large, and the probability of that kind of
Speaker 4: tunneling has to do with, among other things, the size
Speaker 4: of the object involved. For tiny objects, tunneling happens all
Speaker 4: the time. In fact, if tunneling didn't happen, the sun
Speaker 4: would not shine. So we know that tunneling happens. Tunneling
Speaker 4: is not more strange than the rest or unexplained than
Speaker 4: the rest of quantum physics. So if you can get
Speaker 4: a good picture of the world that comes with quantum physics,
Speaker 4: you get tunneling for free.
Speaker 3: Ooh, I didn't know what tunneling was until right now.
Speaker 3: I thought it was maybe something that college kids did
Speaker 3: at party.
Speaker 4: Does kind of sound like that.
Speaker 3: This next question about something that we keep in our
Speaker 3: pants pocket was asked by patrons Julie bear, Will, Matt Lack,
Speaker 3: Jess C. J. Stewart, Hodges, Mike Rotch, Courtney, markham Monroe,
Speaker 3: Michael Preston, who wanted to know why we should give
Speaker 3: a rats left ear about the topic, Philip Wayry and
Speaker 3: Spencer wants to knowe no matter how much I research.
Speaker 3: I don't understand quantum computing. Is there an easy way
Speaker 3: to understand it? Also, will all Also, will quantum computers
Speaker 3: replace all computers eventually like our phones or just supercomputers?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna take the second part first. Okay,
Speaker 4: I don't think that anyone who works seriously in that
Speaker 4: field thinks that quantum computers will ultimately replace all computers. Okay,
Speaker 4: I don't even think that they're going to replace all supercomputers.
Speaker 4: There are things that classical, normal computers can do better
Speaker 4: than quantum computers and vice versa. Okay, and I don't
Speaker 4: think that that's going to change.
Speaker 3: Also, let's explain what a con is.
Speaker 4: Also, let's explain what a quantic computer is. Quantum computer
Speaker 4: is a computer that harnesses some of the strange. And no,
Speaker 4: that's not a good way of saying it, right because
Speaker 4: because the usual way that people say it is, oh,
Speaker 4: quantum computer is a computer that runs in quantum physics.
Speaker 4: Everything runs on quantum physics, so all can computers run
Speaker 4: on quantum physics? Then people say, oh, quantum computer is
Speaker 4: a computer that uses you know, special properties of quantum
Speaker 4: physics to do you know, certain computational tricks. That's not
Speaker 4: specific enough either, because semiconductors, which are what like the
Speaker 4: computer in your lap are and in my pocket, and
Speaker 4: like all computers are built on. Basically, semiconducting itself is
Speaker 4: a quantum property, like you can explain. You can't explain
Speaker 4: that without quantum physics. A better definition of a quantum
Speaker 4: computer is a computer that uses specific quantum properties like
Speaker 4: superposition and entanglement to perform certain computations that normal conventional
Speaker 4: computers cannot perform as quickly.
Speaker 3: In that way, so it's using the superposition of say
Speaker 3: positive negative here there as kind of a replacement for
Speaker 3: the binary one zero zero one zero, yeah, and so
Speaker 3: it can go much faster because it's at an elemental
Speaker 3: level sort of.
Speaker 4: I mean, it can do some things more quickly. Basically,
Speaker 4: instead of having a bit that's either one or zero,
Speaker 4: you can have it in a superposition, okay, and then
Speaker 4: you can take advantage of some of the wave properties
Speaker 4: of matter to give you a speed up for certain
Speaker 4: kinds of computational algorithms. The more specific you get about this,
Speaker 4: the more wonky and less cool it sounds. Okay, it is,
Speaker 4: I assure you very cool Okay.
Speaker 3: Also, if you've been seeing the words quantum supremacy lately,
Speaker 3: thank Google. So in late twenty nineteen, just a few
Speaker 3: weeks ago, Google announced that they're quantum computer, which looks
Speaker 3: to be about the size of a small chandelier that
Speaker 3: dangles in a cryo chamber colder than outer space, is
Speaker 3: named Sycamore. Well, the processor a small chip is Sycamore,
Speaker 3: but it needs all those kind of sparkly golden wires
Speaker 3: to function anyway. A team out of University of California,
Speaker 3: Santa Barbara's Labs just published a paper revealing that Sycamore
Speaker 3: had solved a math problem in two hundred seconds. So
Speaker 3: a way to go Sycamore, who cares well a lot
Speaker 3: of people, because that same math problem would be booped
Speaker 3: by an existing supercomputer would take years to solve. How
Speaker 3: many years do you wonder? Ten thousand years? So what
Speaker 3: would take a supercomputer ten thousand years to calculate? Sycamore
Speaker 3: did it in two hundred seconds, like three and a
Speaker 3: half minutes. So quantum computing, it might save us, it
Speaker 3: might kill us either way. Get hype, But so you
Speaker 3: don't think that it's going to replace all supercomputers.
Speaker 4: I don't think anyone serious in the field thinks that.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are people who know a lot more
Speaker 4: about quantum computers than I do. My book is I
Speaker 4: mentioned quantum computing. I talk about it briefly. It's not
Speaker 4: primarily about that. I do touch on it because it's important.
Speaker 4: But I have talked with a lot of people who
Speaker 4: work in that field. I don't think anyone thinks that,
Speaker 4: so I unless everyone's wrong, I don't think this could happen.
Speaker 3: Okay, Jennifer Coyle wants to know. A therapist once suggested
Speaker 3: to me that one day a physicist will prove the
Speaker 3: existence of God.
Speaker 4: Thoughts, get a new therapist. Fire your friggin therapists. She
Speaker 4: is she on mushrooms? Yes? No, this is a safe space.
Speaker 4: You can tell us if you think your therapist is
Speaker 4: on mushrooms. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's going to be a no from you. Dog, Yeah,
Speaker 3: got it? Okay, old uncle dad. Word here popping in
Speaker 3: to say, everyone is entitled to their own spiritual beliefs,
Speaker 3: just so long as it's not oppressing or screwing up
Speaker 3: other people's lives. But if you're wondering if scientists tend
Speaker 3: to be atheists, at a higher rate than the general public.
Speaker 3: That's a yes. Rice University sociologist doctor Elaine Howard Uckland
Speaker 3: had the same question, and in her twenty ten paper
Speaker 3: Science Versus Religion, What Scientists really think? She crunched the numbers.
Speaker 3: So only two percent of the general US population says
Speaker 3: I don't believe in God, but over a third of
Speaker 3: what she describes as elite scientists are atheists. But Uckland continues,
Speaker 3: twenty two percent of the scientists who identified themselves as
Speaker 3: spiritual also describe themselves as atheists. So wait, huh, what
Speaker 3: is this spiritual atheist? Doctor Uckland interviewed a one biologist
Speaker 3: who described spirituality this way, said that feeling you get
Speaker 3: by the seashore looking over the endless expanse of water,
Speaker 3: or the feeling you get considering the age of all
Speaker 3: things in existence and how long it could go on,
Speaker 3: sort of an awe at the totality of things. If
Speaker 3: that's what spirituality is, then I get it, said the biologist.
Speaker 3: So while the narrative of what's controlling our existence, is
Speaker 3: it ascension shadow we figure in a cloud watching over us,
Speaker 3: getting pissed when we lie, or is it chaos mixed
Speaker 3: with chance, mixed with logic and a heavy proportion of mystery.
Speaker 3: Those sources may change, they might be different for each individual,
Speaker 3: But in the end, perhaps what matters most is the
Speaker 3: awe that keeps you inspired and the respect that you
Speaker 3: show to the fellow lumps of molecules with whom you share,
Speaker 3: or the universe, or maybe it's all a video game.
Speaker 3: Are we real? Probably, but nobody knows, and that is
Speaker 3: why quantum ontology is cool.
Speaker 4: Favorite uncertainty principle joke, Yes.
Speaker 3: Hi me Agan, So the uncertainty principle was drafted by
Speaker 3: German physicist Verna Heisenberg, and yes, breaking bads Walter White
Speaker 3: took his alter ego name after this very renowned physicist,
Speaker 3: who Adam explains in his book had a deep loyalty
Speaker 3: to Germany and was the head of its World War
Speaker 3: II nuclear program. Gross Anyway, the uncertainty principle theorizes that
Speaker 3: when it comes to a particle, its momentum and location
Speaker 3: cannot be known at the same time, and Adam remains
Speaker 3: on the spot for a good uncertainty principle joke per
Speaker 3: listener Julie Bear Julie Beher wants to know favorite uncertainty
Speaker 3: principle joke.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean god, They're all just flying out of
Speaker 4: my head right now, except for the most boring one.
Speaker 4: The most boring one is this is I Yeah, I
Speaker 4: apologize to physicists who are listening. You've all heard this
Speaker 4: before and probably the person who asks this. Kopp pulls
Speaker 4: Heisenberg over for speeding and says, you know, sir, do
Speaker 4: you know how fast you were going? And he says no,
Speaker 4: but I know exactly where I am amazing.
Speaker 3: Long Isabelle b Holper wants to know which movie or
Speaker 3: TV show gets it best?
Speaker 4: Oh, like, just quantum general. Which movie or TV show
Speaker 4: gets it best?
Speaker 3: How does quantum leap?
Speaker 4: Do h Man? Quantum leap? Quantum Leap has almost nothing
Speaker 4: to do with quantum physics. But I watched that show
Speaker 4: so much growing up. Yeah, it was good there rising that.
Speaker 2: One could time travel within his own lifetime. Doctor Sam
Speaker 2: Beckett stepped into the quantum leap accelerator.
Speaker 4: What about?
Speaker 3: What the bleep do we know? Julie Hopple wants to
Speaker 3: know are people affecting the world the reality that they see?
Speaker 4: You?
Speaker 5: Bet yea, they are?
Speaker 3: What does reality?
Speaker 4: What is reality?
Speaker 3: Have you ever thought about what thoughts are made of?
Speaker 3: It is so mysterious that can't explain.
Speaker 4: Oh really, what the bleep do we know?
Speaker 3: Is?
Speaker 4: Okay? So take it out of what computer you've got it,
Speaker 4: input it on like a thumb drive that you don't
Speaker 4: care about, set it on fire, bury it. What the
Speaker 4: bleep do we know? Is wrong about everything? And the
Speaker 4: people who made it are malicious. They tricked Oh, a
Speaker 4: friend of mine who is in that movie, they tricked
Speaker 4: him into participating, and then they misleadingly edited his contributions
Speaker 4: to make it sound like he supported their crazy stuff. Also,
Speaker 4: they are literally a cult. Oh no, okay, so you
Speaker 4: heard it here first. Okay, this next one is about
Speaker 4: string theory. And as patron Nick Rinders inquires, string theory,
Speaker 4: come on, what the fuck? That's an excellent question, eate,
Speaker 4: I will attempt to summarize it in the smallest jankiest
Speaker 4: nutshell I can. String theory is that particles are actually
Speaker 4: teeny tiny, tiny tiny strings, which means that there could
Speaker 4: be more dimensions. And also, string theory may unify Einstein's
Speaker 4: theory of relativity about gravity with the other quantum physics
Speaker 4: that just do not comply. In his book, Adam Write's
Speaker 4: quote string theory doesn't describe a single universe, but instead
Speaker 4: describes a string landscape, a phenomenally huge number of possible
Speaker 4: universes ten to the five hundredth power or more. Quote,
Speaker 4: so what is happening in all those universes?
Speaker 3: Is my dog?
Speaker 4: There?
Speaker 3: Am I still wearing this yellow sweater? And does string
Speaker 3: theory finally reconcile the other theories that don't mesh together?
Speaker 3: Is string theory the dongle that all of science is
Speaker 3: waiting for. Kitty Halverson also asked about it, as did Graham.
Speaker 3: Titles all one to know string theory flimflam or science.
Speaker 4: Sure seems like science.
Speaker 3: Okay, my manager wants to know. Does quantum physics have
Speaker 3: anything to do with our consciousness? Yeah, because it has
Speaker 3: something to do with everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so so so yeah. On the one hand, sure, right,
Speaker 4: so it was putting my cards on the table. I
Speaker 4: see no reason to think that consciousness is not something
Speaker 4: that arises purely out of you know, the behavior of
Speaker 4: neurons in our brain. Okay, I think there's a lot
Speaker 4: of good evidence for that. Our neurons are made of
Speaker 4: subatomic particles. Those subatomic particles are governed by quantum physics.
Speaker 4: So in one sense, yes, but there's often another sense
Speaker 4: that people have in mind when they ask this question.
Speaker 3: Okay, real quick, remember Schrodinger's cat, So if you observe
Speaker 3: or measure it, it flips to one position you me
Speaker 3: or oh no.
Speaker 4: But what's measurement? Right? What counts his measurement? Some people
Speaker 4: will say things like, well, maybe consciousness counts his measurement.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's when a conscious being interacts with a thing.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's what measurement is in quantum physics, a couple
Speaker 4: of things. First of all, that still leaves you with
Speaker 4: this problem of okay, but does that mean that, like
Speaker 4: the wave function of the universe was waiting for a
Speaker 4: conscious being to come along? Also, what is conscious? What
Speaker 4: do you mean by consciousness? What counts as conscious? You
Speaker 4: still have that problem. It really seems like a very
Speaker 4: human centric view, and I'm always really wary of human
Speaker 4: centric views. There is a mystery in human consciousness, right,
Speaker 4: or there seems to be one, Like you know, what
Speaker 4: is human consciousness? Where does it come from? Sure you
Speaker 4: can have different views on how consciousness works and what
Speaker 4: it is, and like there whether or not there's even
Speaker 4: a mystery there, But I do not see a compelling
Speaker 4: reason to invoke consciousness in quantum physics, given that there
Speaker 4: are alternatives, And I do not see why we would
Speaker 4: say that it is more related to quantum physics than
Speaker 4: to any other issues in physics. Like I don't think
Speaker 4: that consciousness plays a more special role in quantum physics
Speaker 4: than it does in any other area of physics. The
Speaker 4: question of consciousness, sure, whatever, that's a good question. We
Speaker 4: can have interesting conversations about it, but I don't see
Speaker 4: it as related to these questions about quantum physics.
Speaker 3: Catherine w asked, Adam, what does an average day of
Speaker 3: your life look like? So as an author, he took
Speaker 3: me through his process of writing the book, which is
Speaker 3: so so so helpful no matter what you're working on.
Speaker 3: And earlier off Mike, he had mentioned that he has ADHD.
Speaker 3: You can see the molecular neurobiology episode with doctor Crystal
Speaker 3: Dilworth where we touch on that, and so these are
Speaker 3: his secret tips on how he accomplished these huge goals.
Speaker 3: This is earnestly life changing. I love this. What was
Speaker 3: the process of writing the book?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: Ah, so, first it was abject terror after I got
Speaker 4: the contract, because I you know, like after I finished
Speaker 4: partying right, I realized I was on the hook for
Speaker 4: ninety thousand words and I'd never published anything longer than
Speaker 4: about three thousand, so that was completely fucking terrifying. I
Speaker 4: had a history earlier on in my career of having
Speaker 4: difficulty getting work done and getting it done on time
Speaker 4: or getting it finished, and I had, by that point,
Speaker 4: you know, moved past that, I finished my degree and whatnot,
Speaker 4: but I still had this mental image of myself as
Speaker 4: someone who had difficulty getting work done on time, and
Speaker 4: so it was really extra scared. But I decided, Okay,
Speaker 4: the only way that I'm going to get through this
Speaker 4: is if I plan it and then just only pay
Speaker 4: attention to whatever is in front of me, because I
Speaker 4: can't write ninety thousand words, but I can write six
Speaker 4: hundred words a day, and if I do that for
Speaker 4: a while, eventually I'll have ninety thousands. So yeah, So
Speaker 4: I outlined it, and I went over the outline with
Speaker 4: my publisher, and they liked the outline. Of course it changed, right,
Speaker 4: No no plan survives contact with the editor. So for
Speaker 4: each chapter, I'd outline the chapter and then I just
Speaker 4: sort of work through that outline and write a really
Speaker 4: shitty first draft and try to do six hundred words
Speaker 4: a day. And what I'd do is I would do
Speaker 4: fifty minutes on and ten minutes off, and in the
Speaker 4: ten minutes off, I wouldn't look at anything with a screen,
Speaker 4: and I wouldn't read any nonfiction. I would I read
Speaker 4: exclusively novels. And that really helped my brain work because
Speaker 4: I found that if I didn't read at all, I
Speaker 4: couldn't write, because if there's nothing going in, nothing's going
Speaker 4: to come out. So I would write six hundred words
Speaker 4: a day and then get this shitty first draft done
Speaker 4: and then walk away from it, and then come back
Speaker 4: and clean it up and fill in all of the
Speaker 4: blank spots where I had, you know, where I knew
Speaker 4: I had a quote, but I had to find the
Speaker 4: quote and stuff like that, and things would change, and
Speaker 4: then eventually I'd have the chapter draft that I wasn't
Speaker 4: embarrassed about, and then I send it to my editor
Speaker 4: and move on to the next one. It was terrifying.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of research involved. There was a
Speaker 4: lot of running around and interviewing people, like a lot
Speaker 4: of people. If you look, if you look in the references,
Speaker 4: there the very beginning of the references of the book
Speaker 4: has the list of interviews I conducted. I think it's
Speaker 4: like forty two interviews or something like that, most of
Speaker 4: which were in person.
Speaker 3: Isn't forty two though? The answer to the.
Speaker 4: Universe it is. I don't know if it's actually forty two.
Speaker 4: I know I know that it's like it's somewhere around
Speaker 4: for kat Okay.
Speaker 3: At this point in the interview, another ologist had stopped
Speaker 3: in to record, and I'm going to make you wait
Speaker 3: to find out who it was. But we counted his
Speaker 3: list of interviews in the back of his book, and
Speaker 3: it's like.
Speaker 4: I love Hitchiker's Guide in Galaxy. It's forty two. Is
Speaker 4: forty two?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So yes, it was indeed forty two interviews. The answer
Speaker 3: to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
Speaker 4: Is forty two.
Speaker 3: For more on why you could see The Hitchhiker's Guide
Speaker 3: Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Oh my god, Adams again, Adams
Speaker 3: is anything fucking real? But yes, Adam Becker says, don't
Speaker 3: be afraid to start something, start writing. Just jump in.
Speaker 3: Shitty drafts, are you bff?
Speaker 4: Yeah, shitty drafts are really important. I also had I
Speaker 4: had like a spare part spin where if I had
Speaker 4: like one of my one of my darlings that I
Speaker 4: couldn't kill, like a sentence that I didn't want to
Speaker 4: get rid of but it didn't fit, I'd put it
Speaker 4: in there and tell myself, like I'd lie to myself
Speaker 4: and tell myself that he'd come back. It never came back.
Speaker 4: But more generally, like I spent a lot of time
Speaker 4: thinking about narrative structure, Like, my overall approach was, this
Speaker 4: is a book about really abstract ideas. People care about ideas,
Speaker 4: but they generally care more about people than they care
Speaker 4: about ideas, and I wanted to make it compelling. I
Speaker 4: wanted to see if I could write a book about
Speaker 4: some of the most abstract and strange ideas in physics
Speaker 4: or in all of science that was difficult to put down.
Speaker 4: And so I thought, Okay, the way to do that
Speaker 4: is to wrap these ideas up in people and stories
Speaker 4: about people. So then it was a question of, Okay,
Speaker 4: how do I build a narrative arc that that will
Speaker 4: give me good excuses along the way to explain the
Speaker 4: ideas and introduce the new characters that are that are
Speaker 4: going to come into the story. And that was a
Speaker 4: real learning process for me, and I spent a lot
Speaker 4: of time like watching YouTube videos about film editing to
Speaker 4: learn like what narrative structure looked like in other forms
Speaker 4: of stories.
Speaker 3: Also, Adam stuck to another edict to make a book
Speaker 3: about quantum ontology accessible.
Speaker 4: Oh and no math. That was the rule.
Speaker 3: No math math in the book.
Speaker 4: No math, no math. There there was one equation in
Speaker 4: the book, okay, and I didn't want to have any
Speaker 4: math in the book, so I wrote it out in words.
Speaker 4: The equation was two times three equals three times two.
Speaker 4: That's it, and that's it nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what's the shittiest thing about quantum montology is
Speaker 3: it answering those maybe religious questions or two philosophical or
Speaker 3: two loaded questions, or what's the shittiest thing.
Speaker 4: The shittiest thing is definitely dealing with physicists who think
Speaker 4: that this was all resolved ninety years ago and we
Speaker 4: should just shut up and calculate. There are so many
Speaker 4: of them. They are wrong. There are so many good
Speaker 4: arguments about why they're wrong and why these questions are interesting,
Speaker 4: and they're still out there and it's just kind of astonishing.
Speaker 4: But it is getting better. And I really think that,
Speaker 4: you know, as as like a new generation comes into physics,
Speaker 4: we will see more and more acceptance of these questions
Speaker 4: as legitimate areas of scientific inquiry.
Speaker 3: Now, what's the best thing about quantum metology? What do
Speaker 3: you love the most about it?
Speaker 4: You get to ask the biggest questions, I know, right,
Speaker 4: Like these are these are the biggest questions.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh, I thought you meant me right now?
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, well you totally do. That's the best
Speaker 4: part about your job. The best part about thinking about
Speaker 4: quantum ontology is you get to ask questions like what
Speaker 4: is real? Like what's going on?
Speaker 3: That's going up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's do it up and other Marvin Gay songs.
Speaker 4: You get to ask these really deep questions about the world.
Speaker 4: You get to think about these wonderful things. And so,
Speaker 4: like chemists have really good demos, right, they get to
Speaker 4: blow things up and you know, put put one liquid
Speaker 4: into another liquid and suddenly it's foaming everywhere and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. And because for some.
Speaker 3: Reason, John, you're a forty two year old man who
Speaker 3: needs his attention sustained.
Speaker 4: With tricks, here's some fucking mentos and a bottom diet,
Speaker 4: curt And like biology, you get like creepy Crawley things
Speaker 4: and like cute baby chickens and things like that, and
Speaker 4: like there's all sorts of fun stuff. Physics doesn't have,
Speaker 4: you know, cute baby chicks. I mean, you can have
Speaker 4: cool explosions, but like chemistry really is really really sweet
Speaker 4: for that kind of thing. But physics does have the
Speaker 4: truly you know, pervasive on its side. Right, Like, if
Speaker 4: you want me to talk about some of these questions
Speaker 4: in the foundations of quantum physics, I can point to
Speaker 4: literally any object and say, look, let's talk about the
Speaker 4: constituents of that object. Let's talk about why that chair
Speaker 4: is solid. Let's talk about why this ring on my
Speaker 4: finger is yellowish instead of silvery. Right, all of these
Speaker 4: things come back to quantum physics and thus ultimately to
Speaker 4: foundations of quantum physics. And it's just amazing, Like it
Speaker 4: goes after a lot of the reasons why I wanted
Speaker 4: to go into science in the first place.
Speaker 3: So it's everything in its ever were and we don't
Speaker 3: understand it.
Speaker 4: Yeahs owt, Yeah, absolutely got it.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, I'm more confused about my existence.
Speaker 4: Good That means I did my job.
Speaker 3: Okay, good.
Speaker 4: There's a question mark at the end of the title
Speaker 4: of my book, right.
Speaker 3: I love it. Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, this is so much fun. Thank you for doing
Speaker 4: this with me.
Speaker 3: You're my favorite quantumontologist.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 3: So remember ask smart people the big questions, even if
Speaker 3: it's about the littlest stuff, because how else in the
Speaker 3: world would you discover that there was another you eating
Speaker 3: puffer fish and cutting banks and texting your crush. Also,
Speaker 3: if you're jealous of that person, then go do those
Speaker 3: things yourself, except maybe the poisonous possle that means fish.
Speaker 5: Whatever.
Speaker 3: So more links are up in the show notes and
Speaker 3: up at alleywar dot com, slash ologies slash quantumontology, and
Speaker 3: you can get merch through that site or at ologiesmerch
Speaker 3: dot com. Thank you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 3: for managing that once again. Black Friday twenty nineteen is
Speaker 3: the shopping code if you're shopping this weekend. I'll link
Speaker 3: in the show notes along with the nonprofit and the sponsors.
Speaker 3: Thank you Hannah Lippo and Aaron Talbert for admitting the
Speaker 3: wonderful Facebook group, and to Jarrett Sleeper of mind Jam
Speaker 3: Media for assistant editing, and of course to the Wizard
Speaker 3: of Awe Stephen Ray Morris, who edits all these pieces
Speaker 3: together and also hosts the Kittie Pod, the per Cast,
Speaker 3: and the dino centric ce Jurassic Wright and the theme
Speaker 3: song was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands.
Speaker 3: Thank you also to Emily White and everyone in the
Speaker 3: transcribers group making transcriptions available at aliward dot com, slash ologies,
Speaker 3: dash extras. I'll link in the show notes now if
Speaker 3: you stick around to the end of the episode, I'll
Speaker 3: tell you a secret. This week, my friend Shone Yeesh
Speaker 3: was in town and I was telling her that I
Speaker 3: wish there was a word for when you try to
Speaker 3: improve something but you make it way shittier and I
Speaker 3: forget what you were talking about, maybe the Tesla cybertruck
Speaker 3: window demonstration, but essentially a word for one of those
Speaker 3: things where you want to make something good and somehow
Speaker 3: it would have been so much better if you had
Speaker 3: just not. In the Etymology episode, I was talking to
Speaker 3: Helen Sealtzman and I pitched maybe a bond mall like
Speaker 3: French for good bad or Greek like voivelap. Anyway, I
Speaker 3: told Simone, I wish there's a word and she said
Speaker 3: there is. In Swedish. It's called a bear favor, and
Speaker 3: it's from a fable about a bear trying to help
Speaker 3: someone by shooing away a fly with a boulder on
Speaker 3: their face and kills them. So a bear favor, y'all,
Speaker 3: there's a word for it. I'm thrilled. It's very exciting, okay,
Speaker 3: for about pacodermatology, hobbiology, hydo zoology, lithology, Yeah, technology, meteorology,
Speaker 3: all of patology, anthology, zeriology, elinology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, lowish, that'll be about as much fun as a
Speaker 1: lecture on anthological empiricism.