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Speaker 1: I want you to think back to the last truly

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massive argument you had with someone. Oh boy, yeah, you

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know the exact kind I'm talking about, the kind where

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your blood pressure is just spiking, your hands are maybe

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shaking a little bit, and you are absolutely one hundred

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percent convinced that you are right, and.

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Speaker 2: The other person is, you know, completely out of.

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Speaker 1: Their minds exactly. You have the facts, you have the

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memory of exactly what was said. You can see the

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entire sequence of events perfectly in.

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Speaker 2: Your head, right and you're just looking at them like,

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are we even on the same planet right now?

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Speaker 1: Yes, you feel like they are clearly delusional, twisting reality,

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remembering things that just straight up didn't happen.

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Speaker 2: It's such a universal human experience. I mean, we've all

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been there, that feeling of uh, I am the same

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one here and you are broken totally.

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Speaker 1: But and here's the hook to start us off today,

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and it is a genuinely terrifying What if science And

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I'm not talking about like psychology or couple's therapy here,

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I'm talking about hard physics and neuroscience.

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Speaker 2: That foundational stuff.

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Speaker 1: Right. What if hard science proved that you were both right?

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Speaker 2: Which sounds impossible it does.

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Speaker 1: Not in a metaphorical hey, let's agree to disagree kind

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of way, but in a literal, physical sense. What if

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you and that other person were simply not inhabiting the

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same reality.

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Speaker 2: I mean, when you phrase it like that, it sounds

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like science fiction or maybe a philosophy seminar that went

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way off the rails, right, But as we are going

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to unpack today, this is rapidly becoming scientific fact, and that.

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Speaker 1: Is exactly what we are grappling with on today's show.

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Welcome to Thrilling Threads. Everyone. I'm your host, and I'm

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joined by our resident expert to guide us through this

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absolute madness.

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Speaker 2: It is great to be here, and I have to

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say I've been buried in these research papers all week

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and I had a few moments where I just steered

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at my coffee cup and wasn't totally sure if it

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was actually there.

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Speaker 1: I do not blame you at all. So the mission

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for today today's thread that we are pulling on is

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basically going to unravel the entire fabric of your existence.

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Speaker 2: It really is a two front war on reality.

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Speaker 1: We are looking at this frankly terrifying compilation of research

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from the entity of Chronium. They've done the heavy lifting

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of pulling together studies ranging from you know, neurobiology labs

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at Harvard all the way to high level quantum physics

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experiments in Vienna, and.

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Speaker 2: The picture they paink is well unsettling is probably the

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most polite word for it.

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Speaker 1: Unsettling is putting it mildly, because we assume the ground

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beneath our feet is solid, right, but A Chronium's research

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suggests this solid world we trust is actually what researchers

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are calling a mathematical void.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not just the universe out there that's glitching,

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it's the processing. And here inside your skull, we're finding

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out that the biological machinery we use to preceide the

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world is less like a high definition camera and more like.

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Speaker 1: Really creative fiction writer.

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Speaker 2: Exactly a storyteller, making things up on the fly.

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Speaker 1: So by the end of this, we're going to question

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how your brain fakes data, how quantum mechanics proves the

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past literally doesn't exist until you look at it. And

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we might even question if we exist as individuals at.

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Speaker 2: All, or if we're just dissociated fragments of a single

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universal mind, which is a wild concept.

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Speaker 1: We will definitely get to Okay, So let's unpact this

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because usually when we talk about reality being fake, people

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immediately jump to, you know, the matrix simulation.

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Speaker 2: Theory, right, some guy in a higher dimension typing code

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in a basement exactly.

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Speaker 1: But we need to start closer to home. We need

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to start with the wetwear, the biological machinery, the.

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Speaker 2: Brain, because before you can even ask if the universe

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itself is real, you have to ask if your perception

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of it is actually accurate.

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Speaker 1: Right? We trust our eyes Implicitly people say I saw

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it with my own eyes, as if that is the

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ultimate mic drop that settles any argument.

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Speaker 2: But neuroscience is known for a long time that the

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brain is not a camera. It is absolutely not a camera.

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Speaker 1: What is it doing?

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Speaker 2: Then? A camera records pixel for pixel exactly what is

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in front of it. The brain is a sensor. It's

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this highly efficient editor that actively erases data that just

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doesn't fit its internal narrative.

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Speaker 1: And the source material highlights this specific study from twenty

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thirteen by Trafton Drew at Harvard, which I have to

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be honest, this one really freaked me out because of

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who the subjects were. Can you walk us through the

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gorilla experiment.

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Speaker 2: Oh, this is the gold standard for what we call

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inattentional blindness. Now, normally these psychology studies use like nineteen

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year old college.

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Speaker 1: Students, right, people who are probably distracted anyway, exactly.

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Speaker 2: But Trafton Drew wanted to really raise the stakes here.

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So he took a group of twenty four highly trained radiologists.

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Speaker 1: And we need to pause on that for a second,

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because these are experts. Their entire career, their paycheck, their

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professional reputation, it all depends on their ability to spot tiny, anomalous,

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weird little nodules in lung CT scans.

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Speaker 2: They are professional noticers. They're paid hundreds of thousands of

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dollars to see the things regular people miss. Okay, So

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Drew took a stand stack of long CT scans, the

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exact kind these doctors look at all day long, but

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he edited them. He inserted a literal image of a

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gorilla into the scam.

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Speaker 1: A gorilla, a gorilla just hang it out in lunk.

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Speaker 2: Just right there in the lung tissue. And this wasn't

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some microscopic where's waldo situation either. This gorilla was forty

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eight times the size of a typical cancer nodule. It

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was huge relative to the data they were scanning. That

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is just absurd, completely out of context.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So he asked the radiologists to scroll through the

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scans and look for cancer nodules. That was their instruction.

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But here's the kicker. They didn't just ask them afterwards

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if they saw anything weird. They used eye tracking technology

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to see exactly where these doctors were looking millisecond by millisecond.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, so we know for an absolute fact if

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their eyes physically crossed the image of the gorilla. There's

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no ambiguity.

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Speaker 2: We have the receipts the eye tracking show that every

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single one of them looked directly at the gorilla. They

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foviated on it, the photons from the monitor their retinas.

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Eighty three percent of them did not see it.

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Speaker 1: Eighty three percent. That is a staggering failure rate for

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trained professionals.

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Speaker 2: When asked afterwards, they swore nothing was there. They looked

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right at it, and their conscious mind registered absolutely nothing.

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Speaker 1: That is terrifying because the implication here is that if

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the brain doesn't expect to see a gorilla in the

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lung scan, it just it just deletes it. Treats it as.

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Speaker 2: Spare Precisely, it's what we call the model theory or

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predictive coding. This was famously discussed by Carl Fristen at

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University College London around two thousand and six.

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Speaker 1: Okay, what does that mean? Exactly?

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Speaker 2: The theory, which is basically the dominant view in neuroscience

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right now, is that the brain doesn't actually see the

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world in real time. That would just be way too

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much data, like trying.

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Speaker 1: To download a four K movie every second over dial

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up exactly.

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Speaker 2: It would require far too much biological energy to process

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every photon every millisecond, so it takes massive shortcuts. The

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brain runs a prediction model. It predicts what should be

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there based on your past experience.

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Speaker 1: It's an efficiency engine.

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Speaker 2: Yes. It projects its expectation onto the world. It constantly

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compares the incoming signal from your eyes against the model

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it already built.

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Speaker 1: So if the input matches the model, like let's say

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the kitchen table is exactly where it was yesterday, what happens.

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Speaker 2: It effectively ignores the actual visual data coming in from

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your eyes and just serves you the memory the table

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you see your expectator.

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Speaker 1: He wait, let me get this straight. When I walk

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into my kitchen tonight, I'm not seeing the kitchen as

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it actually is right now. I'm seeing my brain's idea.

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Speaker 2: Of my kitchen in a very real biological sense. Yes,

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you are hallucinating your kitchen based on your memory of it.

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Speaker 1: That is wild.

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Speaker 2: The brain only really pays attention to prediction errors, things

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that violate the model. But if the violation is too weird,

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like a gorilla in a lung scan, the brain often

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decides the incoming data must be noise. It decides the

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input is faulty, so it filters it out to preserve

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the model.

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Speaker 1: So it actually prioritizes its own internal story over external reality.

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Speaker 2: We see what we expect to see, period.

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Speaker 1: You know, this explains so much about traffic accidents. You

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always hear drivers say I looked, I swear I looked,

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and that car just came out of nowhere.

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Speaker 2: The car was there, the driver's eyes absolutely saw it.

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We know this from dash cams and crash reconstructions. But

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their brain's model of that specific intersection at that specific

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time of day didn't include a.

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Speaker 1: Car, So the brain literally erased the car until the

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collision was imminent, and the prediction error became way too

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loud to ignore. That makes me feel incredibly unsafe in

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the world. It means we were all navigating reality wearing

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a blindfold made of our own expectations.

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Speaker 2: It does get worse, though, Oh great. It's not just

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missing things, it's about the brain swapping things out entirely.

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A Chronium highlighted that famous door study from nineteen ninety eight.

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Speaker 1: Oh right, Daniel Simon's and Daniel Levin. This study is

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honestly hilarious, but when you think about the implications, it

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is deeply disturbing. It feels like a hidden camera prank.

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Speaker 2: Show exposes a massive flaw in our perception called change blindness.

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Speaker 1: Set the scene for us. This wasn't in a sterile lab, right, No,

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this was.

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Speaker 2: Out in the real world on a college campus. Imagine

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you are a pedestrian walking across the quad. A stranger

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walks up to you holding a map and asks for directions.

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Speaker 1: Okay, standard human interaction. You start pointing out where the library.

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Speaker 2: Is, right, and suddenly two construction workers carrying this massive,

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solid wooden door walk right between you and the stranger.

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They rudely cut right through your conversation, completely blocking your

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view of the person you're talking to for just a

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second or two.

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Speaker 1: Rude. Sure, But things like that happen in a city

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or on a campus.

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Speaker 2: Except while that door is passing between you, the stranger

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you were talking to is swapped out, swapped out. One

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experimenter ducks behind the door and walks away with the

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construction workers, and a completely different person steps into their

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place and continues the conversation with you once the door passes.

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Speaker 1: And we're talking about a physically different person, not an identical.

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Speaker 2: Twin, a totally different human being through different height, different voice,

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different clothing. Sometimes you were wearing a different hat or

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had a different haircut.

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Speaker 1: And people notice this surely, I mean you would notice

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if I suddenly turned into a completely different person mid sentence.

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Speaker 2: You would, really hope so. But the results of the study, yeah,

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seventy five percent of people did not notice at all.

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Speaker 1: Seventy five percent.

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Speaker 2: They just continued giving directions to this brand new person

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as if absolutely nothing had happened.

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Speaker 1: That is mind blowing. You are looking directly at a

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human being, making eye contact, engaging with them, and your

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brain doesn't register that they have been body snatched.

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Speaker 2: It proves that we aren't looking at the fine details

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of the world. We are looking at concepts. Your brain

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tags the person in front of you with a conceptual

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label stranger asking for directions.

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Speaker 1: Wow, So as long as the new input vaguely fits

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that category.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, as long as it's a human and they are

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still asking for directions, the brain just pastes over the reality.

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It assumes continuity because checking the details takes too much energy.

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Speaker 1: It really makes you panic about what else we miss

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every single day, Like do I actually see the subtle

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expression on my partner's face when we're talking, or am

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I just seeing the expression I expect them to have

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Because we've had this exact same conversation one hundred times before.

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Speaker 2: It's a very valid fear. We are filling in the

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blanks constantly. We are skimming the book of reality. We

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aren't reading every word. And there's actually one more biological

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layer to this illusion before we even get to the

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physics of the universe.

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Speaker 1: Oh, you mean the tape delay.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the actual signal processing speed of your nervous system, right.

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Speaker 1: Because light hits your retina, but that signal doesn't just

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instantly appear in your mind. It has to physically travel

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down the optic nerve. Get routed through the thalamus and

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eventually reach the visual cortex at the back of your brain.

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Speaker 2: And all of that transit and processing takes time.

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Speaker 1: The Achronium source says it takes about eighty milliseconds.

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Speaker 2: Give or take. Yeah, now, eighty milliseconds doesn't sound like

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a lot to us. It's literally less than the blank

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of an eye.

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Speaker 1: But in the modern fast paced world, that is a

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huge amount of time.

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Speaker 2: It's an eternity. Think about it. If you were driving

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on the highway at sixty miles per hour, your car

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travels a full meter about three feet in those eighty milliseconds.

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Speaker 1: So physically speaking, when I react to a car slamming

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on its brakes in front of me, I am reacting

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to where that car was a full meter ago.

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Speaker 2: Correct. You have never, not once in your entire life,

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actually experienced the present moment. You live permanently on a

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tape delay. That is just your brain is constantly presenting

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you with a live feed that is actually on a lag,

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and it's incredibly clever about it. It edits the timestamp

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to make it feel immediate. It synchronizes the sound and

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the video perfectly so you don't feel like you're watching

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a badly dubbed foreign movie. But it's all a post

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production trick.

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Speaker 1: That is profound. We are literally living in the past,

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physically biologically trapped in the past.

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Speaker 2: We are always always catching up to reality. We never

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touch it.

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Speaker 1: Right now, Okay, let's just take a breath and look

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at where we are. This is just the biological side

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of the argument we've been unpacking. My brain deletes things

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it doesn't expect, like giant gorillas. It swaps out entire

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people without me noticing because it relies on broad categories

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instead of fine details. And the whole hallucination is happening

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on an eighty millisecond tape delay.

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Speaker 2: That's what we call the glitch in the machine. Your

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hardware is fundamentally faulty.

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Speaker 1: Okay, fine, I can accept that. I can accept that

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I'm a flawed, fleshy biological organism. But here's the pivot.

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Surely I can trust the world itself, right, I mean,

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the table in front of me is solid wood. The

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math of the universe adds up. Physics is reliable. If

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I take a tape measure and measure this table, the

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table is there.

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Speaker 2: Well, this is where we have to transition from the

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glitch in your machine to the glitch of the universe itself,

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because it turns out the universe is even more broken

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than your brain is. Oh, come on, that's solid table.

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It might not actually be there in any way that

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you currently understand being there.

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Speaker 1: This is where we step into the quantum void. And

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I want to start this section with a concept that

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sounds like a dry legal term but is actually a

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total reality breaker contextuality.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the Cochinspecker theorem from nineteen sixty seven. This is

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quite possibly one of the most important theorems in quantum mechanics,

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and yet nobody talks about.

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Speaker 1: It, probably because it's terrifying.

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Speaker 2: It mathematically dismantled the entire concept of a context independent reality.

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Speaker 1: The Eucronium outline used a really great analogy for this,

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the glitchy smartphone. I think everyone listening can relate to

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this immediately.

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Speaker 2: It's the perfect way to visualize it without getting bogged

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down in the math. Imagine you have a smartphone that

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is totally hopelessly bugged out. If you turn on the

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Wi Fi, the camera app instantly crashes. If you try

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to open the camera, the screen goes completely black.

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Speaker 1: Right, I can check my email or I can take

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a photo, but the phone physically will not let me

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do both at the same time. The features clash.

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Speaker 2: The Cochinsbecker theorem essentially proves that our universe is exactly

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like that broken phone. Historically, we used to think that

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a particle like an electron, just has a set of

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innate properties spin, position, velocity.

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Speaker 1: Charge, like character stats in a video game, exactly, and.

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Speaker 2: We assume those properties just sit there, fixed and real,

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waiting for a scientist to come along and measure them.

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Speaker 1: Like reading a book, the words are printed on the page,

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whether I open the book or not, The quote to

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be or not to be is physically sitting on page fifty,

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regardless of whether I'm currently looking at it.

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Speaker 2: That perspective is called realism. It's common sense. But Cocaine

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and Specker proved mathematically that a particle does not have

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a value for a property until you actually measure it,

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so it's hidden. No, that's the crucial part. It's not

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that the value is hidden inside the particle. It's not

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that we just don't have good enough microscopes to see it.

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Yet the value is functionally undefined.

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Speaker 1: So going back to the book Analogy, the book is

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entirely blank until I open it.

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Speaker 2: It's even weirder than that. The physical act of opening

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the book is what writes the words onto the page,

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and the specific way you choose to open the book,

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the angle, the speed determines what words actually appear. Measurement

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doesn't read a pre existing reality, it creates the reality.

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Speaker 1: I mean that sounds like pure magic. How can physicists

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possibly prove that? Isn't that just a philosophical debate, Like

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if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears.

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Speaker 2: It, it is rigorously mathematically proven. They showed that if

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you try to assign fixed definite values to all the

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possible properties of a quantum system at the same time,

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you literally end up with a logical contradiction. The math

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breaks you get zero equals one.

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Speaker 1: So the rules of the universe just cancel each other out.

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Speaker 2: If you try to define everything simultaneously. Yes, reality is

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entirely contextual. It strictly depends on how you choose to

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look at it.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so the properties of matter are fluid. They are

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generated on the fly by observation. But surely, I mean

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I'm grasping at straws here. Surely arithmetic holds up basic

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counting one plus one equals two. If I put two

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apples into a basket, I have two apples, you would

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really hope.

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Speaker 2: So logic and math should be the bedrock, right, But

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let me introduce you to something called the quantum pigeonhole principle.

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This was tested recently by Yakir Aharanov at Chapman University

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around twenty fourteen.

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Speaker 1: This one hurts my head so much, but I absolutely

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love it because the setup sounds so incredibly simple. It's

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just a basic logic puzzle, it is.

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Speaker 2: It's based on the classical pigeonhole principle in mathematics. Very simply,

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if you have three pigeons and you only have two

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pigeon holes to put them in, then.

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Speaker 1: At least one hole has to contain two pigeons.

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Speaker 2: Right, it's undeniable. You physically cannot put three separate things

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into two separate boxes without doubling up somewhere.

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Speaker 1: It's logic one oh one. A toddler understands this.

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Speaker 2: So ro Andov and his team decided to do this

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exact puzzle, but with subatomic particles. They put three photons.

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Those are our pigeons, and they sent them into an

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innerferometer with only two possible paths. Those are our holes.

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And then they measured the paths to see which photons

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were sharing a path.

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Speaker 1: They were looking for the double up exactly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they checked every they have. Did photon one photon

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two share a path? The answer was no. Did photon

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two and boton three share a path?

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Speaker 1: No?

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Speaker 2: Did photon one and photon three share path?

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Speaker 1: No? Wait, stop, Three separate particles went in. Only two

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paths exist, but no two particles were ever found in

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the same path together direct That is literally impossible. Where

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did the third one go?

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Speaker 2: It didn't go anywhere. They were all accounted for in

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the system. But the fundamental logic of counting simply broke down.

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At the quantum level. The concept of a number just

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does not work the way it does up here in

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our macro world. The particles were able to traverse the

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system without ever acknowledging each other's presence in a shared space.

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Speaker 1: It implies that counting is just a human construct. That

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one plus one equals two is a convenient rule for

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grocery shopping, but it is not a rule for the

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basement level of reality.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, we built our entire system of logic based on

401
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interacting with apples and rocks. But the universe isn't made

402
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of apples and rocks. It's made of these bizarre probabilities,

403
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waves that frankly, do not care about our rules.

404
00:19:02,839 --> 00:19:04,680
Speaker 1: And if that isn't enough to make you question the

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solidity of things, let's talk about the Cheshire Cat experiment.

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This was done at the Vienna University of Technology in

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twenty thirteen.

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Speaker 2: I love the naming convention here. It's a direct nod

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to Alice in Wonderland. Obviously, the cheshire cat slowly fades away,

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but its creepy smile remains just hanging there in the

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empty air.

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Speaker 1: Which is a beautiful, surreal image in a children's book.

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But you're telling me they did this in a physics lab.

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Speaker 2: In the lab, they did this with a neutron. A

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00:19:28,240 --> 00:19:31,400
neutron is a real subatomic particle. It has mass, you

416
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could bounce it off things, and it also has a

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property called spin, which is a type of magnetic momentum.

418
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Think of the physical mass of the neutron as the

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cat and its magnetic spin as the smile.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I'm with you, cat and smile, mass and spin.

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Speaker 2: They shot this neutron through a specialized beam splitter which

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separates particles based on their properties, and they managed to

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send the neutron, the physical mass the actual particle down

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the left path of the device.

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Speaker 1: A cat goes left, but.

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Speaker 2: They successfully sent its spin its magnetic rotation down the

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right path.

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Speaker 1: Hold on, That's like saying I physically walked into the kitchen,

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but my height walked into the living room, or my

430
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sense of humor went out to the garage while my

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body stayed inside.

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Speaker 2: That is a perfect analogy. They successfully physically separated a

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property from the object that belongs to The magnetic property

434
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was just hanging there in a location where the particle

435
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itself was not.

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Speaker 1: So let's review properties can be ripped off objects. Basic

437
00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:34,000
arithmetic breaks down completely, and nothing actually has defined values

438
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until you measure it. We are really starting to see

439
00:20:36,759 --> 00:20:38,920
that this solid world we live in is just a

440
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collection of loose attributes that don't even stick together unless

441
00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:43,640
we are actively watching them.

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Speaker 2: We are peeling the onion layer by layer and realizing

443
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there is absolutely nothing in the center.

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Speaker 1: But surely, and I am begging you here, surely the

445
00:20:51,799 --> 00:20:54,799
past is safe, even if the present moment is a

446
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glitchy contextual mess. What happened yesterday is locked in history?

447
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Is history a toast for breakfast this morning?

448
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Speaker 2: That happened? You are such an optimist. I really like

449
00:21:04,759 --> 00:21:05,279
that about you.

450
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Speaker 1: I try to be, but I can hear in your

451
00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:08,720
tone of voice that you're about to tell me the

452
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past is fake.

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Speaker 2: Two, I'm going to tell you about the legged garg

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inequality from nineteen eighty five. This was a framework designed

455
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specifically to test if the past exists when we aren't

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looking at it. It tests a concept called macrorealism.

457
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Speaker 1: How do you even test if the past exists? You

458
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can't physically time travel to check.

459
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Speaker 2: You test it by measuring a system at different intervals

460
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of time. Well, it's called them T one, T two,

461
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and T three. The physicists developed a mathematical metric called K. Basically,

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K measures how well the measurements at these different times

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correlate or agree with each other over time. If the

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system had a defined state between your checks, meaning if

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it actually had a solid history while you weren't looking,

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The absolute maximum logical limit for K is exactly one.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so if K equals one, that means the past

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00:21:53,599 --> 00:21:56,240
is real. The object was physically doing its thing while

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my back.

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Speaker 2: Was turned exactly. But when they actually run these experiments

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on quantum systems, the value of k reliably comes back

472
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at one point five.

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Speaker 1: One point five. But you just said the mathematical maximum

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is one.

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Speaker 2: The maximum logical limit is one. Getting a result of

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one point five is a brutal, undeniable violation of logic.

477
00:22:15,519 --> 00:22:19,039
It implies that the statistical correlations between the timeframes are

478
00:22:19,119 --> 00:22:22,400
stronger than a real continuous history could ever allow. It

479
00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:25,519
mathematically proves the particle did not exist in any defined

480
00:22:25,519 --> 00:22:26,880
state between the times you.

481
00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:29,599
Speaker 1: Checked it, So between the exact moments I looked at it.

482
00:22:29,599 --> 00:22:33,319
It wasn't just hiding somewhere else. It was literally nowhere.

483
00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:35,759
Speaker 2: It was nowhere. It had no trajectory, there was no past.

484
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:38,279
The past has created only when it is observed in

485
00:22:38,319 --> 00:22:40,680
the present moment. You are generating the history of the

486
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:43,200
object backward in time by the act of measuring it.

487
00:22:43,319 --> 00:22:46,240
Speaker 1: Right now, That sounds like a massive paradox, but it

488
00:22:46,279 --> 00:22:49,359
ties directly into the quantum switch experiment too, doesn't it,

489
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:51,720
The one by Philip Walter at the University of Vienna

490
00:22:51,759 --> 00:22:52,680
in twenty twenty one.

491
00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:56,640
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, the quantum switch directly attacks our concept of

492
00:22:56,680 --> 00:22:58,880
cause and effect. We all think of time as a

493
00:22:58,920 --> 00:23:01,200
straight arrow. Event causes event B.

494
00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:03,480
Speaker 1: Right, I put on my socks and then I put

495
00:23:03,519 --> 00:23:05,519
on my shoes. I strike the match, and then the

496
00:23:05,519 --> 00:23:08,839
fire starts. There is a strict chronological order. Well.

497
00:23:08,839 --> 00:23:12,359
Speaker 2: In the quantum switch experiment, they applied two distinct operations

498
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:15,440
that's called them A and B to a photon. In

499
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:19,119
our macro world, either operation A happens before B, or

500
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:21,559
operation B happens before A. That has to be one

501
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:24,359
or the other logic again, But in the experiment, the

502
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,799
photon experienced operation A before B and operation B before

503
00:23:27,839 --> 00:23:31,319
A simultaneously. The causal order itself was placed in a

504
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:32,480
quantum superposition.

505
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:35,559
Speaker 1: How is that even comprehensible? How can the shoes beyond

506
00:23:35,559 --> 00:23:38,160
before the socks A and D the socks beyond before

507
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:38,640
the shoes.

508
00:23:38,920 --> 00:23:41,960
Speaker 2: It heavily suggests that linear time, that arrow pointing from

509
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:44,799
the past into the future, is just a biological filter

510
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:47,279
of our nervous system. It's a tool our brains used

511
00:23:47,319 --> 00:23:49,559
to organize data, but it's not a fundamental law of

512
00:23:49,559 --> 00:23:52,440
the universe itself. At the base level of reality, causal

513
00:23:52,559 --> 00:23:55,519
order simply does not exist. Events are just this soup

514
00:23:55,599 --> 00:23:59,000
of possibilities until the consciousness threads them together.

515
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:01,880
Speaker 1: And the Acronium source mentioned a University of Queensland study

516
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:05,160
from twenty nineteen that called this phenomenon the cheat codes

517
00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:05,920
of the universe.

518
00:24:06,079 --> 00:24:09,480
Speaker 2: Yes, because they showed that you can actually use this

519
00:24:09,599 --> 00:24:14,039
lack of causal order to transmit information much more efficiently

520
00:24:14,079 --> 00:24:16,480
than linear time would ever allow. If you don't actually

521
00:24:16,519 --> 00:24:18,759
have to wait for process A to finish before process

522
00:24:18,759 --> 00:24:21,720
B starts and vice versa, you can completely bypass the

523
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:25,319
clock speed of the universe. They are essentially hacking the timeline.

524
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:29,119
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's recap this nightmare. No solid objects, no

525
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:34,359
innate property is without observation, no past history, no fixed timeline.

526
00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:37,400
It really feels like we're just drifting alone and avoid here.

527
00:24:37,559 --> 00:24:40,359
Speaker 2: And it gets even lonelier because now we have to

528
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:43,960
ask the really dark question. If reality is this fluid

529
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:46,880
and observer dependent, do we at least share the same

530
00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:50,279
fluid reality? If I'm hallucinating my world and you're hallucinating

531
00:24:50,319 --> 00:24:52,200
your world, are we even in the same room.

532
00:24:52,559 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 1: This is what the outline refers to as the subjective universe,

533
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:58,880
and this brings us to a mind bending modern update

534
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:00,559
on a very old thought experiment.

535
00:25:00,839 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 2: Wigner's friend Eugene Wigner came up with the original idea

536
00:25:04,079 --> 00:25:07,519
decades ago, but in twenty eighteen, Daniella Fraukier and RENARDA.

537
00:25:07,519 --> 00:25:11,119
Renner at eat Zurich upgraded the math to basically break

538
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:12,000
physics entirely.

539
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:14,279
Speaker 1: Walk us through this scenario because this is the one

540
00:25:14,279 --> 00:25:16,839
that proves we can literally have different facts.

541
00:25:16,559 --> 00:25:19,799
Speaker 2: Right, yes, Okay. Imagine you have a friend who is

542
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:25,240
inside a completely sealed, isolated laboratory. Inside that lab, she

543
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:27,799
measures a quantum particle. Let's say it's a quantum coin. Flip.

544
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:30,839
She measures it, and she gets heads for her inside

545
00:25:30,839 --> 00:25:34,039
the room. That is an objective fact. The universe has

546
00:25:34,079 --> 00:25:36,880
decided it is heads. She writes it down on her clipboard.

547
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 1: Okay, simple enough, she has established a fact.

548
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 2: But you are standing outside the lab. You cannot see inside.

549
00:25:41,759 --> 00:25:44,119
To you, that lab is just a giant sealed box,

550
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:47,599
and according to the strict rules of quantum mechanics, until

551
00:25:47,599 --> 00:25:50,759
you open the door and look, the entire lab, including

552
00:25:50,799 --> 00:25:54,920
your friend, is in a superposition, a mix of all possibilities.

553
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:56,519
Speaker 1: So to me out in the hallway, the coin is

554
00:25:56,519 --> 00:25:57,559
both heads and tails.

555
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:02,119
Speaker 2: Exactly. Now Here is the twist. You perform a highly

556
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:05,519
complex mathematical measurement on the whole lab from the outside,

557
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:09,680
treating the building itself as a quantum system. The math

558
00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:13,240
rigorously proves that you can get a result that definitively

559
00:26:13,279 --> 00:26:14,799
implies the coinless tails.

560
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:17,960
Speaker 1: Wait. Wait, she looks at it and sees heads. She

561
00:26:18,079 --> 00:26:20,640
knows its heads. I stand outside, do some math and

562
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:21,880
prove its tails.

563
00:26:21,839 --> 00:26:25,039
Speaker 2: And you are both one hundred percent correct. The laws

564
00:26:25,039 --> 00:26:27,920
of physics say her result is perfectly valid and your

565
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:29,319
result is perfectly valid.

566
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:32,400
Speaker 1: But they're mutually exclusive. A coin cannot be heads and

567
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:34,599
tails at the same time once measured in.

568
00:26:34,559 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 2: A shared, objective, global world. No, it can't. But this

569
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:41,799
experiment mathematically implies that two people can possess mutually exclusive facts.

570
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:44,640
Speaker 1: That completely breaks the definition of the word fact. A

571
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:47,079
fact is supposed to be something that is true for everyone,

572
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:48,480
regardless of perspective.

573
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:51,839
Speaker 2: It forces us to redefine it. Facts are entirely local,

574
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:55,200
not global. You live in a private universe. My facts

575
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:56,680
are not necessarily your facts.

576
00:26:56,960 --> 00:26:59,759
Speaker 1: And this isn't just a thought experiment on a chalkboard anymore,

577
00:27:00,319 --> 00:27:03,799
nor a tishlar at Griffith University actually tested this physically

578
00:27:04,039 --> 00:27:09,200
in twenty twenty. They called the framework local friendliness.

579
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:11,519
Speaker 2: And this was a devastating result for classical science. They

580
00:27:11,559 --> 00:27:15,559
put three fundamental assumptions of physics to the test. Rule one,

581
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,240
events are absolute, meaning if something happened, it happened for

582
00:27:19,279 --> 00:27:23,839
everyone in the universe. Rule two, observers have free choice.

583
00:27:24,279 --> 00:27:27,319
Rule three nothing travels faster than the speed of light.

584
00:27:27,519 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: Those seem like the absolute bedrock of reality.

585
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,559
Speaker 2: The experiment broke the system. You mathematically cannot keep all

586
00:27:33,559 --> 00:27:36,839
three rules, and to make the physics work, science is

587
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:40,880
basically being forced to abandon rule number one. Absolute events

588
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:41,759
do not exist, so.

589
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,079
Speaker 1: An event happens for you, but not necessarily for everyone.

590
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 2: Correct. There is no God's eye view of the universe

591
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,000
where all truths are stored in a master ledger. There

592
00:27:49,039 --> 00:27:52,279
is only your specific view and my specific view, and

593
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:54,960
physics says they do not have to match. We are

594
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,279
structurally trapped in our own reality bubbles.

595
00:27:57,559 --> 00:28:00,279
Speaker 1: This directly leads to that controversial framework.

596
00:28:00,559 --> 00:28:04,319
Speaker 2: Right Yes, quantum basianism. It's an interpretation of quantum mechanics

597
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:07,839
that is rapidly gaining ground. It basically argues that the

598
00:28:07,839 --> 00:28:12,079
wave function the master mathematical equation of quantum physics is

599
00:28:12,079 --> 00:28:15,640
not actually a map of the physical world. It's just

600
00:28:15,759 --> 00:28:19,440
a user manual for your personal expectations.

601
00:28:18,799 --> 00:28:19,960
Speaker 1: A user manual.

602
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:22,519
Speaker 2: Think about it like betting odds. When you measure a

603
00:28:22,559 --> 00:28:26,440
particle and the wave function collapses. External reality doesn't change.

604
00:28:26,839 --> 00:28:30,119
The only thing that changes is your personal information about reality.

605
00:28:30,319 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 1: So the universe is quite literally just me updating my

606
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:35,400
internal betting odds on what I'm going to see next.

607
00:28:35,599 --> 00:28:39,039
Speaker 2: That is the core cubist view. Life is a single

608
00:28:39,039 --> 00:28:42,319
player game. You were just a consciousness making bets against

609
00:28:42,359 --> 00:28:42,759
the void.

610
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:44,799
Speaker 1: Okay, I really need a breath here, because we have

611
00:28:44,839 --> 00:28:48,079
dismantled solid matter, we've killed linear time, and we've erased

612
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:51,720
shared objective truth. But surely, and I mean at this time,

613
00:28:51,799 --> 00:28:56,519
surely logic itself, mathematics the pure language of the universe.

614
00:28:56,599 --> 00:28:59,319
If I can't trust atoms, I can absolutely trust numbers.

615
00:28:59,359 --> 00:29:01,359
Speaker 2: I really hate to be the bearer of bad news today.

616
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 1: I do. Oh no, do not take math away from me.

617
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:04,400
That is all I have left.

618
00:29:04,559 --> 00:29:06,799
Speaker 2: We have to talk about the mathematical ceiling. And this

619
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:09,240
goes all the way back to Kurt Godel in nineteen

620
00:29:09,279 --> 00:29:11,559
thirty one with his incompleteness theorem.

621
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:13,759
Speaker 1: I have vaguely heard of this. It says you can't

622
00:29:13,799 --> 00:29:14,799
prove everything right.

623
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:18,440
Speaker 2: It's far more specific in damaging than that. It mathematically

624
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:22,319
proves that in any complex logical system, including the mathematics

625
00:29:22,319 --> 00:29:25,839
we use to describe physics, there are profound truths that

626
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:29,599
are true but cannot possibly be proven using the rules

627
00:29:29,599 --> 00:29:33,839
of that system. Math essentially has massive holes built into

628
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:36,880
it by design. It can never be a complete description

629
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:37,359
of truth.

630
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:40,759
Speaker 1: And Alan Turing added to this, didn't he the computer scientist.

631
00:29:40,559 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 2: With the halting problem. In nineteen thirty six, Turing proved

632
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:47,000
that you cannot systematically predict whether a computer program will

633
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:49,359
ever finish its task or if it will just get

634
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,759
stuck in an infinite loop forever. It is logically impossible

635
00:29:52,799 --> 00:29:55,160
to know in advance. There was a hard horizon of

636
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:57,000
knowledge that we literally cannot.

637
00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:59,279
Speaker 1: Cross, and then Gregory Cheaton took it even further in

638
00:29:59,319 --> 00:30:02,599
the seventies with the Omega number. This concept fascinates me.

639
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:06,480
Speaker 2: Chayden's omega is like the ultimate mystic number of mathematics.

640
00:30:07,279 --> 00:30:11,000
It represents the exact probability that a randomly generated computer

641
00:30:11,079 --> 00:30:15,440
program will eventually halt it is a specific, sharply defined number.

642
00:30:15,519 --> 00:30:18,000
It sits somewhere perfectly between zero and one.

643
00:30:18,599 --> 00:30:21,079
Speaker 1: It exists, okay, a specific number.

644
00:30:21,039 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 2: But its digits are completely random and completely uncomputable. You

645
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:26,880
can figure out the first few bits of it, but

646
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:30,720
you can never ever calculate the rest. It implies that

647
00:30:30,759 --> 00:30:34,079
the knowable world, the stuff we can safely explain with

648
00:30:34,359 --> 00:30:38,200
human science and logic, is just a tiny, fragile island

649
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:41,200
floating in an infinite ocean of unknowable chaos.

650
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 1: So there is a number that is definitively real, but

651
00:30:43,759 --> 00:30:46,680
it is physically impossible for us to ever know it exactly.

652
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:48,319
Speaker 2: The universe hides its source.

653
00:30:48,119 --> 00:30:50,839
Speaker 1: Code, And that phrase right there connects to the idea

654
00:30:50,839 --> 00:30:55,279
that the universe might literally just be pan commutationalism.

655
00:30:54,359 --> 00:30:57,599
Speaker 2: Right thinkers like Conrad Zoos Stephen Wolf from Edward Fredkin.

656
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:01,000
They argue that physics is just underlying code and physical

657
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:02,720
matter is just the data being processed.

658
00:31:02,799 --> 00:31:06,359
Speaker 1: Okay, but if the universe is fundamentally a computer processing information,

659
00:31:06,519 --> 00:31:07,599
does it ever crash?

660
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:10,519
Speaker 2: It does, and we actually have a name for those crashes.

661
00:31:10,599 --> 00:31:11,799
We call them black holes.

662
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:15,039
Speaker 1: WHOA wait, I have never thought of a black hole

663
00:31:15,119 --> 00:31:17,000
as a cosmic blue screen of death.

664
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 2: Think about the physics of it. What exactly is a

665
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:24,599
singularity at the center of a black hole? It's infinite density,

666
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:29,200
infinite gravity in an infinitely small point. In a computer program,

667
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:31,640
what happens if you tell the system to divide a

668
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:32,519
number by zero?

669
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:35,000
Speaker 1: You get a critical error system failure.

670
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 2: Exactly, the computation fails. The laws of physics literally return

671
00:31:39,559 --> 00:31:43,240
an undefined result at a singularity. A black hole is

672
00:31:43,279 --> 00:31:46,680
where the universe's processing system creates a massive divide by

673
00:31:46,799 --> 00:31:48,880
zero error and crashes.

674
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: And in our galaxy has what millions of these errors

675
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:52,440
just floating around?

676
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:54,559
Speaker 2: They are about one hundred million of these crashes in

677
00:31:54,599 --> 00:31:55,599
the Milky Way alone.

678
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:58,759
Speaker 1: And this leads directly into the information paradox which Stephen

679
00:31:58,799 --> 00:31:59,960
Hawking made so famous.

680
00:32:00,039 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 2: Yes, Landauer's principle from IBM in nineteen sixty one tells

681
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:07,880
us that information is not abstract. Information is physical. Erasing

682
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:11,839
information physically creates heat. You know this intereritatively. Your laptop

683
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:14,920
gets physically hot when it's working hard, deleting or processing

684
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:19,200
heavy files. But black holes seem to permanently delete information

685
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:23,680
when they slowly evaporate via Hawking radiation. If I throw

686
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:26,440
a thick encyclopedia into a black hole, and then a

687
00:32:26,519 --> 00:32:29,640
trillion years later, the black hole totally evaporates and disappears.

688
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:31,519
Where did the information in the book go.

689
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: It's gone, It's erased.

690
00:32:33,359 --> 00:32:37,279
Speaker 2: But the core rules of quantum mechanics state that information

691
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:41,039
is unitary, it can never be permanently lost. So we

692
00:32:41,079 --> 00:32:44,400
have a huge crisis in physics. Either quantum mechanics is

693
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:48,200
fundamentally wrong or black holes are doing something totally incomprehensible

694
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:48,920
with our data.

695
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:51,799
Speaker 1: So either the physical machine is broken or we just

696
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:54,200
completely misunderstand the operating system.

697
00:32:54,319 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 2: And that is exactly where constructor theory comes in, developed

698
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:00,759
by David Deutsch and Kierra Marletto, suggest we need a

699
00:33:00,759 --> 00:33:03,880
paradigm shift. We have to stop looking at what happens

700
00:33:04,039 --> 00:33:07,400
in the universe and start looking strictly at what transformations

701
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:09,119
of information are physically possible.

702
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:10,759
Speaker 1: How does that reframe things?

703
00:33:11,079 --> 00:33:15,759
Speaker 2: It completely reframes the concept of life itself. In this view,

704
00:33:16,039 --> 00:33:20,039
biological life isn't just some happy, random accident of primordial chemistry.

705
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:25,240
Life is a mathematically permitted transformation of information. The universe

706
00:33:25,319 --> 00:33:28,440
is built with a back end code that explicitly allows

707
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:30,160
information to replicate.

708
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: Itself, which brings us to the absolute biggest mystery of

709
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:36,920
all the thing that is actually doing the replicating, the

710
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:42,480
thing that is currently experiencing all of this weirdness, consciousness.

711
00:33:41,799 --> 00:33:45,079
Speaker 2: The missing link, the ghost in the quantum machine.

712
00:33:45,359 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: Neuroscience has been trying to find the physical seat of

713
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:51,480
consciousness in the brain for decades, right, but they can't

714
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:51,799
find it.

715
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 2: We can't and they won't because it's something called the

716
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:55,240
binding problem.

717
00:33:55,319 --> 00:33:55,839
Speaker 1: What is that?

718
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 2: Think about your conscious experience right at this exact moment.

719
00:33:59,279 --> 00:34:00,920
You see the ambi in color of the room, You

720
00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:02,559
hear the tone of my voice, you feel the texture

721
00:34:02,599 --> 00:34:06,799
of your chair, you perceive the chronological passage of time. Now, biologically,

722
00:34:06,839 --> 00:34:10,480
these sensations are all processed in completely different physical sectors

723
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:13,519
of your brain. Color is in V four, visual motion

724
00:34:13,639 --> 00:34:16,199
is in V five, sound is processed in the.

725
00:34:16,159 --> 00:34:19,320
Speaker 1: Temporal lobe, and they all process at slightly different speeds

726
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:20,280
too exactly.

727
00:34:20,679 --> 00:34:24,679
Speaker 2: Yet you do not experience reality as a disjointed out

728
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:28,360
of sinc mess. You see a perfectly unified picture. You

729
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:32,679
feel like one singular person experiencing it all simultaneously. The

730
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:36,440
binding problem is the stark realization that there is absolutely

731
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:39,280
no central processor to be found in the human brain

732
00:34:39,599 --> 00:34:42,800
that stitches all this together. There is no central physical

733
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:44,199
spot where it all converges.

734
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:47,199
Speaker 1: So how on earth do we feel like one unified person.

735
00:34:47,559 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 2: Well, there are a few cutting edge theories. Julio Tononi's

736
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:54,480
integrated information theory or It is a major one. He

737
00:34:54,719 --> 00:34:58,320
argues that consciousness isn't some magical ethereal spark, It's a

738
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:00,480
measurable physical quantity culled fi.

739
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:02,559
Speaker 1: FI like a metric of awareness.

740
00:35:02,679 --> 00:35:06,280
Speaker 2: Yes, five measures the degree of functional connectivity in a system.

741
00:35:06,519 --> 00:35:08,719
If a system is highly interconnected, if all the internal

742
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:11,519
parts talk to each other incredibly complex ways, it has

743
00:35:11,559 --> 00:35:14,159
a high five score, and therefore it has high consciousness,

744
00:35:14,159 --> 00:35:14,840
like a human brain.

745
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:17,519
Speaker 1: And if the system has low connectivity.

746
00:35:17,119 --> 00:35:21,119
Speaker 2: Well, this implies panpsychism, the idea that literally everything has

747
00:35:21,119 --> 00:35:24,639
some base level of experience. Even a simple thermostat on

748
00:35:24,679 --> 00:35:28,360
your wall has a tiny, microscopic, non zero amount of FI.

749
00:35:28,639 --> 00:35:32,199
Speaker 1: So my living room thermostat has feelings, not complex.

750
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,519
Speaker 2: Human feelings, not I hope the host turns my dial

751
00:35:34,599 --> 00:35:39,079
up today, But the microscopic flicker of existence, a tiny

752
00:35:39,119 --> 00:35:41,639
spark of there is something it is like to be

753
00:35:41,679 --> 00:35:43,119
a thermostat.

754
00:35:42,599 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 1: That is wild to think about. But then there is

755
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:48,199
the other side, the quantum theory of consciousness. Ork your

756
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:50,480
Roger Penrose and Stuart hammerf.

757
00:35:51,039 --> 00:35:53,800
Speaker 2: This theory was highly controversial for a very long time.

758
00:35:54,039 --> 00:35:56,480
Mainstream scientists practically laughed them out of the room.

759
00:35:56,639 --> 00:35:58,079
Speaker 1: Why what were they claiming? So?

760
00:35:58,199 --> 00:36:01,960
Speaker 2: Roger Penrose proposed that human consciousiness actually arises from microscopic

761
00:36:02,039 --> 00:36:06,239
quantum wave collapses happening inside things called microtubules, which are

762
00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:10,119
tiny structural tubes inside our brains neurons. The critics screened

763
00:36:10,199 --> 00:36:12,960
the brain is too warm and too wet because quantum

764
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:17,320
states are notoriously fragile, they usually require absolute zero temperatures

765
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:20,320
in the lab to survive. They argue the messy environment

766
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:22,880
of a brain would destroy any quantum state instantly.

767
00:36:23,159 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 1: But the research from a quoranium says the evidence is

768
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:28,679
actually turning in their favor. Recently, it absolutely is.

769
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 2: In twenty fourteen, researchers found that surgical anesthetics, the drugs

770
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:37,039
that literally turn off human consciousness, bind specifically to these microtubules.

771
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:41,079
If you chemically mess with the microtubule, the conscious lights

772
00:36:41,119 --> 00:36:44,119
go out, and even more massively. In twenty twenty two,

773
00:36:44,559 --> 00:36:49,039
a team at Trinity College Dublin detected actual quantum entanglement

774
00:36:49,119 --> 00:36:52,840
signals inside brain microtubules at room temperature.

775
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:54,880
Speaker 1: That is a massive vindication for them.

776
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:57,519
Speaker 2: It's huge if our brains are actually functioning as warm

777
00:36:57,639 --> 00:37:01,400
quantum computers. That perfectly splains why we can interact with

778
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:04,079
the quantum void we talked about earlier. It explains how

779
00:37:04,079 --> 00:37:06,760
we mentally bridge the gap between wave and particle.

780
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:11,199
Speaker 1: It suggests consciousness isn't just an accidental byproduct of biology.

781
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:14,880
It's actually woven into the fundamental fabric of the universe exactly.

782
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:17,480
And this brings us to the crux of the entire episode.

783
00:37:17,519 --> 00:37:20,639
We've stripped away solid matter, we've stripped away linear time

784
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:24,199
and shared facts and basic logic. What is actually left

785
00:37:24,199 --> 00:37:25,599
standing the observer.

786
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:28,920
Speaker 2: The observer is everything. It is the only reality.

787
00:37:29,039 --> 00:37:30,760
Speaker 1: Tell me about quantum Darwinism.

788
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:33,360
Speaker 2: This is a brilliant theory by w. Chig Zurich. At

789
00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:36,320
Los Alamos, he looked at all this and asked, Okay,

790
00:37:36,559 --> 00:37:38,920
if the universe is just quantum soup, why does the

791
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:42,039
world look so stable and solid to us? His answer,

792
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:46,400
reality becomes solid because certain quantum states are just really

793
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:48,760
good at copying themselves into the environment.

794
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:49,760
Speaker 1: Like a viral internet meme.

795
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 2: Exactly like a meme, the sonnid table in front of

796
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:56,000
you is just a highly successful quantum state that has

797
00:37:56,039 --> 00:37:59,679
aggressively spammed the surrounding environment with copies of its information.

798
00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:03,760
Photons are constantly bouncing off it. Air molecules are hitting it.

799
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:07,480
It's literal survival of the fittest, but for quantum information.

800
00:38:07,679 --> 00:38:09,360
Speaker 1: But here is the catch with that.

801
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:13,519
Speaker 2: Theory, right the massive catches. This natural selection of information

802
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:17,519
strictly requires a receiver. If there is no conscious observer

803
00:38:17,639 --> 00:38:20,840
present to receive and process the copy, there is no selection.

804
00:38:21,159 --> 00:38:22,880
No solid world ever forms.

805
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:25,800
Speaker 1: So we literally physically look the world into existence.

806
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:28,199
Speaker 2: We do without the act of observer, the memes of

807
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:30,800
reality have nowhere to land, so they remain a wave

808
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:31,679
of probability.

809
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:35,360
Speaker 1: And Bernardo Castrop takes this idea to its ultimate logical

810
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,960
conclusion with the one mind theory or cosmopsychism.

811
00:38:39,639 --> 00:38:43,280
Speaker 2: This is arguably my favorite theory in modern philosophy because

812
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:46,920
it completely solves the isolation problem we talked about. Castra

813
00:38:47,519 --> 00:38:52,400
powerfully argues that the entire universe is just one single

814
00:38:52,599 --> 00:38:55,760
fundamental consciousness, one unified mind.

815
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:58,599
Speaker 1: But I feel very distinctly like me and you feel

816
00:38:58,599 --> 00:39:00,000
like you. I don't hear your thoughts.

817
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:03,760
Speaker 2: Castrop compares the universe to a patient with dissociative identity

818
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:09,239
disorder or multiple personality disorder in clinical did one single

819
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:12,679
human mind can psychologically split into separate identities that do

820
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:15,719
not share memories. They can even have totally different biological

821
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:18,840
allergies or eyeglass prescriptions, all within the same brain.

822
00:39:19,039 --> 00:39:21,679
Speaker 1: So you're saying you and I are just the dissociated

823
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:23,039
altars of the universe.

824
00:39:23,119 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 2: Yes, the universal mind has dissociated into billions of localized fragments, us,

825
00:39:27,519 --> 00:39:29,760
the animals. We were all the exact same mind, just

826
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:32,400
viewing itself from billions of different localized angles.

827
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,199
Speaker 1: And there is actual medical precedent for this kind of split,

828
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:36,599
right the split brain patients.

829
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 2: Yes. The fascinating work of Speryan Gazanniga in the nineteen sixties,

830
00:39:41,559 --> 00:39:45,159
when doctors surgically severed the corpus sklosum, the bridge between

831
00:39:45,199 --> 00:39:47,760
the two hemispheres of the brain, to treat severe epilepsy,

832
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:53,679
they literally created two separate conscious minds operating inside one

833
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:56,719
single human body. One hand would try to button a

834
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:59,000
shirt and the other hand would actively fight it and

835
00:39:59,119 --> 00:39:59,679
unbutton it.

836
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 1: That is incredible. So if a human surgeon can physically

837
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:06,280
split a single mind with a scalpel, then the Big

838
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:08,440
Bang could have easily been the event that split the

839
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:09,880
universal mind into us.

840
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,199
Speaker 2: Exactly. We are the universe waking up and looking at

841
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:14,119
itself through billions of different pairs.

842
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:17,679
Speaker 1: Of eyes, and this conscious observer it has immense power.

843
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:20,280
We touched on it earlier, but let's hit retro causality

844
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:21,880
again to really hammer this home.

845
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:26,159
Speaker 2: The delayed Choice quantum eraser experiment from nineteen ninety nine.

846
00:40:26,199 --> 00:40:29,599
This experimentally proves that measuring a quantum particle right now

847
00:40:29,639 --> 00:40:32,880
it can actually determine which physical path its twin took

848
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:34,239
in the past, and that ties.

849
00:40:34,079 --> 00:40:36,039
Speaker 1: Into John Wheeler's concept of it from bit.

850
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:39,679
Speaker 2: Wheeler believes strongly that we live in a participatory universe.

851
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:42,880
He used the mind blowing example of an astronomer looking

852
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:46,920
at a distant quasar through a telescope. The photon from

853
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:50,320
that quasar has been traveling through empty space for billions

854
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:53,960
of years, but by the astronomer actively choosing how to

855
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:58,039
measure it today on Earth, we actually determine the physical

856
00:40:58,079 --> 00:40:59,880
path it took billions of years ago.

857
00:41:00,159 --> 00:41:03,039
Speaker 1: We are actively building the deep past right now in

858
00:41:03,079 --> 00:41:03,920
the present.

859
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:06,760
Speaker 2: We are We are the real time architects of all history.

860
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:10,400
Speaker 1: So if space and time are this incredibly malleable, what

861
00:41:10,559 --> 00:41:13,960
is the actual physical structure of the universe. We are

862
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,239
approaching the end of our thread here and we need

863
00:41:16,239 --> 00:41:17,760
to look at the holographic projection.

864
00:41:18,159 --> 00:41:21,840
Speaker 2: This comes from legendary physicists Gerard Hooft and Leonard Suskin,

865
00:41:22,199 --> 00:41:25,599
the holographic principle. They were studying black holes and realize

866
00:41:25,639 --> 00:41:28,760
something strange. All the information of everything that falls into

867
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:31,199
a black hole is actually stored on its two D surface,

868
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:33,760
the event horizon, not inside its three D.

869
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:36,559
Speaker 1: Volume, like the nutritional label on a soup can.

870
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:40,880
Speaker 2: Or exactly like a hologram, a flat two D surface

871
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:45,440
projecting a fully three D image. They eventually extrapolated this

872
00:41:45,559 --> 00:41:48,320
map to the entire universe. They proposed that the three

873
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:50,840
D world we walk around in the depth, the volume,

874
00:41:51,079 --> 00:41:54,159
the space might just be a complex projection emanating from

875
00:41:54,159 --> 00:41:57,760
a two D boundary of pure information at the absolute

876
00:41:57,920 --> 00:41:58,920
edge of the cosmos.

877
00:41:59,079 --> 00:42:03,039
Speaker 1: So we are literally living inside a holographic.

878
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:04,599
Speaker 2: Projection, a mathematical hologram.

879
00:42:04,199 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: And space itself. Is it smooth, No.

880
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 2: It's pixelated, just like a computer screen. We call it

881
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:11,840
the plank length. Tend to the power of negative thirty

882
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:14,199
five meters, you physically cannot get any smaller than that.

883
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:16,760
Space is granular. If you zoom in close enough on

884
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:18,320
the fabric of reality, you just see.

885
00:42:18,119 --> 00:42:21,079
Speaker 1: The pixels and what actually holds those microscopic pixels together,

886
00:42:21,119 --> 00:42:22,960
So we don't fall through quantum entanglement.

887
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:26,079
Speaker 2: This is the er equals EPR theory proposed in twenty

888
00:42:26,119 --> 00:42:30,000
thirteen by Juan Meldsena and Leonard Suskind. They proved mathematically

889
00:42:30,039 --> 00:42:33,679
that quantum entanglement, that spooky connection between particles, is the

890
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,280
exact same underlying geometry as a wormhole.

891
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:39,199
Speaker 1: So the empty space between me and you is literally

892
00:42:39,239 --> 00:42:41,360
stitched together by quantum information.

893
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 2: Yes, and a massive study at Caltech in twenty sixteen

894
00:42:46,079 --> 00:42:48,599
mathematically showed that if you were to somehow break the

895
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:51,440
entanglement between all the particles in a room, the physical

896
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:55,000
space itself would literally rip apart. The geometry would fail.

897
00:42:55,559 --> 00:42:58,559
Connection is what actually creates space.

898
00:42:58,679 --> 00:43:01,840
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, let's try to summarize this insane journey we've

899
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:03,800
been on today, and it really has been insane.

900
00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:04,400
Speaker 2: Let's do it.

901
00:43:04,639 --> 00:43:09,239
Speaker 1: Point one, My biological brain actively deletes reality and hallucinates

902
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:12,280
a predictive model just to save energy. Check Point two.

903
00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:16,559
Physical particles have absolutely no defined properties until I actively

904
00:43:16,599 --> 00:43:19,320
look at them. Check Point three. The past does not

905
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,079
exist until I measure it in the present moment. Check

906
00:43:22,159 --> 00:43:25,760
Point four. My objective facts are not your objective facts.

907
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:29,800
We all live in private, isolated mathematical bubbles. Check Point five.

908
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:33,280
Time and space are just user interfaces and most likely

909
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:37,280
just a pixelated holographic projection. Check and finally, the only

910
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:40,760
thing in the entire universe that actually provably exists is

911
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:43,960
the observer, me, you, the consciousness.

912
00:43:44,159 --> 00:43:48,599
Speaker 2: The one singular thing we couldn't strip away Descartes was

913
00:43:48,679 --> 00:43:53,119
right centuries ago. I think, therefore I am it is

914
00:43:53,159 --> 00:43:55,239
the only survivor of modern physics.

915
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:57,599
Speaker 1: You know. Hearing it all laid out like that, it

916
00:43:57,679 --> 00:44:00,599
sounds horrifying, like we are just ghosts flowvading alone in

917
00:44:00,639 --> 00:44:03,840
a dark void. But the acronium source material actually ends

918
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:06,679
on a surprisingly beautiful optimistic note.

919
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:09,280
Speaker 2: It really does. They call it existential.

920
00:44:08,639 --> 00:44:12,559
Speaker 1: Optimism, and the idea is, if the foundation of reality

921
00:44:12,679 --> 00:44:16,000
is completely empty, then the massive weight of all your

922
00:44:16,079 --> 00:44:18,880
daily problems is resting on absolutely nothing.

923
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 2: Exactly Your credit card, debt, your past, regrets, your anxieties

924
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:26,280
about the future. They feel so incredibly heavy, but physics

925
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:28,440
proves they are built on a structure that doesn't even

926
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:31,559
physically exist until you observe it. You are the one

927
00:44:31,599 --> 00:44:32,320
sustaining them.

928
00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: The universe literally requires you to exist in order to

929
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:38,920
open its eyes. You aren't just some meaningless, tiny cog

930
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:40,360
inside a giant col machine.

931
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:42,920
Speaker 2: You are the machine, as the source brilliantly puts it,

932
00:44:43,519 --> 00:44:46,559
go live, not because everything is perfectly fine, but because

933
00:44:46,599 --> 00:44:50,480
everything is mathematically impossible and you are miraculously here anyway.

934
00:44:50,679 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 1: That is just such a powerful thought. Everything is impossible,

935
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:58,440
but we are here. We are the impossible actively observing itself.

936
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:02,239
Speaker 2: We are the universe's unique way of experiencing itself, and

937
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:06,280
that carries both a deep responsibility and an incredible freedom.

938
00:45:06,599 --> 00:45:09,199
It means you have vastly more agency than you think

939
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:11,320
you do. You are part of the source code.

940
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:14,519
Speaker 1: So here's our final question to you, the listener. If

941
00:45:14,559 --> 00:45:18,159
reality is constantly being created by the observer, what kind

942
00:45:18,199 --> 00:45:21,000
of reality are you actively choosing to build right now?

943
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:24,199
Are you building a reality of fear and separation or

944
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:25,960
are you projecting one of connection?

945
00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:29,199
Speaker 2: And are we one single mind that is dissociated, just

946
00:45:29,199 --> 00:45:31,119
trying to find our way back to each other. Or

947
00:45:31,119 --> 00:45:34,559
are we just billions of incredibly happy accidents drifting in

948
00:45:34,599 --> 00:45:35,039
the dark.

949
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:38,000
Speaker 1: We want to know your stance. Please leave a comment

950
00:45:38,079 --> 00:45:40,840
wherever you are listening. Do you feel the one mind

951
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:43,159
connecting us or do you feel like a solitary player

952
00:45:43,199 --> 00:45:45,840
in the void. This has been thrilling threads.

953
00:45:46,079 --> 00:45:47,280
Speaker 2: Keep pulling the thread everybody.

954
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 1: We will see you next time.