Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Part 1 of 2: Quantum Physics and The End of Reality with Sabine Hossenfelder, Carlo Rovelli, and Eric Weinstein hosted by Brian Keating for the Institute for Art and Ideas (#244)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome everyone to what promises to be a fascinating episode of The Into the Impossible podcast. This is actually a audio-only version of a debate that I hosted and moderated for the Institute of Arts and Ideas YouTube channel. It was live streamed on Monday the 25th of July 22, and I was honored to be asked by IAI to host a debate between my friends and past guests. on this podcast, Carlo Revelli, Sabina Hasenfelder, and Eric Weinstein about the end of reality and the origins of quantum physics. And this, we took live questions from the audience, so I do hope that you'll subscribe to their YouTube channel as well. And really, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel to get updates and links and also ask

Starting point is 00:00:57 questions. We took questions from folks of you that are members of my YouTube channel's subscriber base. I want to just request that you'll stay tuned for an interview with past guest, Sabina Hasenfelder, about her new book, Existential Physics. We just recorded that. And it's a phenomenal book and a wonderful episode, if I don't say so myself. And of course, you know Eric Weinstein from his frequent appearances. He might be my most frequent guest on this podcast, as well as Carlo Revelli, who's been a guest a couple times for his books, including his most recent book, Helgeland, which is the subject matter. content of this episode about quantum mechanics. But of course, Carlo and I recorded the first ever

Starting point is 00:01:37 audiobook version of Galileo's audio version, rather, of Galileo's book called The Dialogue on Two World Systems. And Carlo played Salviati, the Salvation. I played Sagredo, the interlocutor between him, Salviate, the genius of Galileo, a mindset. And then the simpleton, Simplicio, played by my friend Lucio Pichorillo. Of course, we had as well Fabiola Giannati reading Gallo's own introduction and dedication, and she, of course, is the director of CERN. And then, of course, we had Frank Wilczek

Starting point is 00:02:16 reading the introduction from Albert Einstein to the dialogue, and this is a labor of love, and I hope you'll enjoy it. These folks need no introduction. I was really blessed to be honored, to be asked to interview and give the feedback between the audience and these renowned thinkers. So stay tuned.

Starting point is 00:02:38 This is part one. Part two will be released tomorrow. It's a long episode, almost an hour and a half in total length. And I'll be back with some more information and updates on the podcast. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Open the pod bay doors, please. Welcome, everybody, to what? promises to be a delightful midsummer's event, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere. We have

Starting point is 00:03:10 joined together forces from the upper echelons of theoretical physics along with yours truly, the token experimentalist, Brian Keating. And we are going to debate the nature of quantum mechanics and the end of reality. We will be looking into our crystal balls and thinking about the future of an interpretation that is only about 100 years old. And I can't really think of anybody more astute and more renowned to join us than the guests that we have are ready today. And that's Dr. Sabina Hassenfelder, Dr. Eric Weinstein, and Professor Carlo Revelli. I'll read you a little bit more about them in just a bit. But I want to frame the nature of today's debate on the Institute for Art and Ideas.

Starting point is 00:03:56 This is a phenomenal opportunity for free content for folks around the world to hear from the as minds, and I'm just so delighted to be your humble host for today's event with three of my friends and past guests on my podcast and renowned authors who inspire me and thinkers that inspire me as well. So I want to tell you what the nature of this debate is, and it's kind of ironic and that people think of physicists is the most equipped to talk about the nature of reality, and yet physicists themselves battle tensions, uncertainties, anxieties about the very topic that we're going to be talking about today. And that's the nature of objective reality.

Starting point is 00:04:34 Many scientists assume that there is a central role of what's called an observer. And the question of whether or not what we observe is nature itself or not. And that was a question framed a hundred years ago by the great Werner Heisenberg, for which one of our guests, Carla Rovelli, recently wrote a wonderful book. I'll recount that in just a moment. But in our studies of reality and nature, the observer plays a role. And yet, what is it? Can we fully understand the bedrock laws of physics? And there is no bedrock more firm than quantum mechanics. It's given us our most precise tests in all of science as to the nature of what is knowable about our universe. And human beings, as we are called homo sapiens. Sapien means to one who knows and the question of what do we know if the nature of quantum mechanics is not as solidified as we have come to think about it. least in the popular imagination. So should we recognize science and the reality that we study,

Starting point is 00:05:35 myself as an experimentalist, my guest as observers and theoreticians, should we really have to formulate it in a way that's independent of an observer? And how could we do that without understanding the role of the three-pound supercomputer that sits on our shoulders, namely our brain? How do we interact with the things that we measure? Can we not remove the observer as our friend and Roger Penrose suggests that consciousness, he has said, reeks of something quantum mechanical. And we all discussed with him his various ideas, Nobel laureate Roger Penrose, which are controversial, but at least stem to make a connection between fundamental reality, observation, and the human mind, and how they all might play into the theory of consciousness

Starting point is 00:06:19 itself and how that, in turn, impacts our understanding of quantum mechanics. So I want to read to you the biographies. It's kind of formal for three of my friends, and in one case, a co-author, co-producer. So first is my good friend, Dr. Eric Weinstein, who is a podcast host, who has a PhD in mathematical physics and has been on these IAI events in the past, and that is Eric. Eric, you want to wave to the many millions of fans that are joining us out there. Sabina Hasenfelder, again, is a great friend of mine and a friend of the... the show that I host called Into the Impossible. She's a theoretical physicist who specializes in quantum gravity.

Starting point is 00:07:01 And she's also the author of a second book, which is called Existential Physics, which has not an insignificant amount of interpretation about quantum mechanics, reality, and the role of the observer. This is coming out soon. She has a book that already exists called Lost in Math. If you just can't wait to get your hands on this in the next week or two, or until she appears on my YouTube channel into The Impossible. But she also has a YouTube channel of her own,

Starting point is 00:07:29 which is called Science Without the Gobbledy Gook, Sabina. How are you today? Yeah, I'm great. Good to see you all. Excellent. And last, but certainly not least, is my friend Salviati himself, Carlo Revelli, a theoretical physicist. He's made groundbreaking contributions in physics of space and time. his book's seven brief lessons on physics.

Starting point is 00:07:57 Reality is not what it seems, the order of time. And his most recent book, Helgeland, is actually about this very topic. Actually, I shouldn't say his most recent book because he did read the voice, along with myself, Lichia Picciarillo, Frank Wilczek, and Fabiola Gianati and James Gates of Salviati in the first ever audio translation of Galileo's dialogues. You can find that wherever audiobooks only are sold. So I want to outline the debate today, what we're talking about. It is a debate. We're all friends, but even friends, you know, show their love. As, as it said, you know, what's not important is the things that we go through. It's the friends we lose along the way. Not the friends we make along the way. And today, we're going to continue the friends, friendship. But we're going to talk about three fundamental questions. We're going to talk about three questions, which I'll define in just a bit. A lot of it involves questions of observer, of What is reality? How do you know that you're real and not famously a brain and a vat?

Starting point is 00:08:57 These are questions that can be answered, perhaps for the first time, or may not be able to be answered. But the first question is, are they important to the understanding of it? I never go to my lab and say, hmm, do I exist before I do a particular cosmological experiment? So we're going to have three questions. First, we're going to have kind of an opening statement from each of the discussants. then I'm going to ask the following three questions, three questions about three themes involving observation, analysis, if you will, and the role of the observer. And then there's going to be questions from you, the audience, that we've taken on YouTube,

Starting point is 00:09:32 on the IAA channel where you're listening to this. I've taken some questions on my channel, Dr. Brian Keating, and you can tune in and retweet your question and we'll try to pick up as many as we can. So this is going to run a little bit longer than the normal hour, and so hopefully we'll be able to get to the most interesting questions possible. So that all sounds good. Fighters put your hands up and the universal signal that we're ready to do battle. Okay. So the first question that I want to pose is just kind of an opening statement from each one of you. I want to get your position on where you believe this conversation should go. I'm going to give each one of you three minutes.

Starting point is 00:10:12 And I want you to kind of discuss what is this question of the nature of reality? Is it hype? Is it reality? Is it something that is important to the average viewer out there? Remember, we're not only talking to three exceptionally qualified physicists and me, but we're also talking about, we're talking to the general public. And I view, as people know, listen to my channel, I think scientists have a moral obligation to give back to the public who pay our salary. So anyway, Carl, I'm going to start with you. Opening statement, what are your general thoughts on consciousness and on quantitative?

Starting point is 00:10:42 reality and the nature of reality, and then we'll get into these three themed debates. Carlo, take it away, please. Thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure. Fast on reality to then we'll have time to go more in depth. Reality, of course, is essential for a physicist, but reality is subtle. Three hundred years ago, the Copernical Revolution jumped started modern, the modern development of science. And essentially it was a discovery that to make sense about the motion, what we see in the sky, the planet, the moon, the sun and the stars, we have to take into account that we're viewing this from our own perspective, to take into account observer.

Starting point is 00:11:31 Not because there is something in our mind and not because it's this conscious, there's involved, not for some mysterious reason, but because we're sitting on a spinning rock, so we're seeing things, spinning because of that. So the observer has always played a role in science. We view the world from our perspective, with our instrument, with our eyes, and we have to take this into account. I think quantum mechanics is more of that. It's telling us basically the same thing.

Starting point is 00:12:01 Of course, we talk about reality, what else? But reality is subtle because we view it through our eyes. And we are a physical system like any other in the universe. So we do reality as a physical system interacting the rest of the universe. So yes, we're talking about reality. What else? That's what we want to talk about. Yes, we have to take into account observer.

Starting point is 00:12:22 No, in any way this has to do with consciousness, the mind, or anything like that. I think that quantum mechanics has nothing to do with that. I think that the mind is a fantastic problem, but it has to do with our neurons, the complexity, and not in any way that I can understand directly with quantum mechanics. But certainly, and I close here, quantum mechanics is telling us that this interactive way, which makes reality, so the fact that like the computer system, what we see, it's interaction between the sky and us, goes very deep. And in a sense, all properties of all physical systems come about in interactions with other

Starting point is 00:13:06 systems. So, yes, quantum mechanics tell us that the observer is not important, but not because our mind is important, or conscious is important, because reality is interaction. So we describe always from the perspective of some physical system. That's where it's done. Very good. And Sabina, you have on many occasions talked about the height that surrounds this particular topic. There's no small amount of insults hurled at people that talk about quantum healing, quantum all sorts of things in your work. Talk about your position on this manner. Yeah, so I would say scientists can't understand reality independent of the observer and they never have because scientists are observers. So we can't get rid of the observer.

Starting point is 00:14:00 but maybe I should say that I can't understand reality independent of the observer and I never have because I'm not sure that you actually exist. For this reason, I'm not a realist. I saw that Eric made a remark on Twitter that he's guessing he's in team reality. I guess it puts me in the team anti-reality, whatever that means. So I'm not a realist because I think it's scientifically indefensible. You know, I can't prove that anything exists besides me. So from the scientific perspective, I would say I am an instrumentalist.

Starting point is 00:14:41 The task of science is not to figure out some truth about reality, whatever that might mean. But the task is to find descriptions of our observations, not more and not less. but I have to admit realism is a good working hypothesis so for practical purposes I think it makes sense that I assume you exist for the time being that seems to describe

Starting point is 00:15:08 quite well what I observe so I'm happy you know to use realism as a kind of an assumption but I think we have to keep in mind that after all it's just it's just a philosophy This doesn't mean, though, that measurement outcomes depend on the observer.

Starting point is 00:15:32 We know that measurement outcomes depend on the measurement. This isn't something which is specific to quantum mechanics, it's generally always the case. If you're measuring a small system with a big apparatus, then you're changing the thing that you're trying to measure. This is something we always have to take into account. Like Carlo, I don't think that there's a particular role to be played by consciousness, but I can't really exclude this either.

Starting point is 00:16:02 It's just that I personally think that the problems which we currently have in quantum mechanics and cosmology can be solved without retreating to talks about consciousness. And Eric, is team reality similar to Team America? What exactly is Team Reality? and do we have to worry about the end of reality in any meaningful sense, at least not today, hopefully? Hopefully not today. I think that in a certain sense,

Starting point is 00:16:34 we're all trying to figure out what would a productive fight be and to do it constructively and collaboratively. So let me just say that I agree with Sabina that we can't for sure say that anyone else exists, but what I would say is that there's a simple article of faith, many of us try to hide in our science. And in my case, I would say it's that the universe is not maximally pathological. You could imagine a pathological universe in which you could not discover the nature of its rules because it's sort of constructed to occlude your vision.

Starting point is 00:17:11 And happily, we have not seemed to find ourselves in that situation. And I think that there's sort of a tale of two narcissisms here. there's the narcissism of believing that you're at the center of this story as an observer and that you have in some sense failed to recognize that you're present. And then there's another narcissism where you put yourself at the center and you talk about relativism endlessly and the inability to remove yourself from the system. And of course, it's hard to get out of that sort of devil in the deep blue sea problem. So I would say that observers are important, but they may not be absolutely dispositive.

Starting point is 00:17:59 You know, the status of the observer may not, in fact, be the crux on which everything hangs. And the last thing I would say, which is probably the most meaningful, is that there's an expression, the map is not the territory. And when the world was not mapped well, maps changed frequently as discoveries of new lands were made or filled in with more specificity. One of the great dangers of stagnation in theoretical physics is that general relativity is now over 100 years old, and our modern picture of quantum theory is about 50 years old. And so as these maps have not been changing for effectively a human lifetime, maybe a short one, 50 years, we're in danger of seeing the same map over and over again and starting to believe that the map is the territory. And so if we were adding to the standard model and to general relativity, I think we would be in less danger of codifying these things as reality themselves as opposed to simply models of them on our way to something where the map might finally be the territory. And that would be sort of a final theory. Very good.

Starting point is 00:19:08 Well, yeah, that kind of dovetails into their first theme of today, which is going to involve the observer. Reminded of a quote that Sabina mentions an existential physics available. wherever books will be sold in the future if the future exists. And that is from Bertrand Russell, I'm paraphrasing here. The role of the observers is very subjective and also very biased because it depends on past events to construct prior probabilities. And Bertrand Russell's conjugation in this sense, he mentions, well, I'm going to change it. He basically is referring to the turkey, you know, who all throughout the summer is getting nice and plump and fat, at least here in America. And then, you know, he's got a good life.

Starting point is 00:19:51 He's fed every morning. And then October rolls around. He gets some extra corn or whatever. And then November comes and all of a sudden he gets his head chopped off. Or for you, vegans out there, I had to make a vegan version, Sabina. So in America, at least throughout October, the farmer takes care of the pumpkin all through the month of October. And then some kid carves its face open, okay, on Halloween. Can we really talk about the – and I'm sorry for any Europeans who don't get either one.

Starting point is 00:20:20 of those references. But the question that I have is really one of, you know, do we get mired down? Merman, I think it was, said, you know, shut up and calculate. For me, I was told by Jim People, shut up and measure, you know, make observations rather. You know, the question is, what is the importance, if any, and I'll start with Carlo, what is the importance of talking about an observer? Can we uncover objective reality without understanding the structures, the mind, the limitations of an observer. Is Carlo, could you address that? Do we have to talk about the nature of the person doing the operation of observation?

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Starting point is 00:21:25 Free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. The C Store online for details. Well, let me address this question of the light also what Sabina and Eric said before of this debate of sort of realism versus Swintonism, as Sabina put at the beginning. I think I'm not too far from any of the two of Eric and Sabine. And I'll come to your question in the following sense. Sabine started off by saying,

Starting point is 00:22:02 I cannot say for sure that there is a reality out there beside me. And of course, she's right. This is a well-known fact. But I think she would agree in continuing this by saying, well, and this is not very interesting after all, because I don't think that science, this is the main point to get it, I don't think that science is about,

Starting point is 00:22:28 find certainty about things. That never have been the motivation, at least for the best scientists around, and for the people I think who have in different manners understood what science is through the same person today. Science is not about uncovering the final objectives, reality or finding complete certainty about something. So this is a process in which we learn about what is around us through our interaction with the rest. And we come up with a story, tools for

Starting point is 00:23:02 thinking about what we call reality, which is the thing we interact with. Are we sure of any of this? No, of course, like the turkey of your story, we're not sure of anything, but we have extremely good reasons for taking very serious obviously, facts like that the moon is there, even if I don't see, and that there are the kind of astronomical things that Ubrides, the Bride in the sky, and that inside the sun and there are actually the nuclear reactions. So science is credible. It's credible, is reliable, it's credible, in its predictions, without any need of making

Starting point is 00:23:45 philosophical ultimate statement. about yes, we know the absolute reality, but nevertheless, using heavily the notion of reality, because this is one of the main tools that physicists and scientists in general work. Scientists work with a mixture of instrumentals, they're very ready, the best ones, to take what they know for reality out there, and, as Eric was saying, be able to change the mind about that is a thing that is real. Right? I mean, what we think is out there in the world, the world is made of changing, and it will be changing again.

Starting point is 00:24:23 So reality changes the best way we understand it. So what we do is science. I think we are evolving a best way for interacting what we call reality outside. And we can use the expression of creativity. We can use expression of reality without being. being afraid of, but also without overplaying this, we're never certain about anything that's the bottom line. And then you ask, do we have to take into account the mind of the observer? I would say not in any substantial way, but very often in a useful way, of course. I mean, you say you don't ask about your mind if you go to the laboratory,

Starting point is 00:25:09 but maybe you were drunk and I take into account your mind. what you say maybe and we what i mean maybe and well i don't know and i have to count how my instrument work and the limitation of my brain which certainly are and uh and all that and ultimately i've also to take into account that of course what i'm interacting with uh it's a reality i'm interacting with so i see to the to the interaction and i should not follow and i close here in what eric called the two narcissism especially the narseses the narcissist of saying, well, the only thing I'm sure is myself, and therefore I start by assuming that I exist everything else know. I'm an only child. This is a kind of mistake that only child

Starting point is 00:25:53 children make when they're very small, but then maybe perhaps a little bit later than those who have brothers and sister, even the only children learn that, no, it doesn't make, it's not useful to think about universe that as you, the only existing thing. You being me, Carlo, we humanity, our language or anything like that. We are part of a story and we understand us as part of the story and we have to close a circle because that story, of course, we access it through our connection with the rest of the reality. Well, thanks. Yeah, I'm also an only child, but I'm not my parents' favorite child. Eric, when we think about this, I'm reminded of, you know, kind of this statement, you know, the hard problem of consciousness, you know, David Chalmire's famous statement, but I think

Starting point is 00:26:40 it's more like the hard problem of the measurement problem. Can you talk a little bit about that? Maybe respond to Carlo, but also, aren't we really just talking about stuff that's been troddened ground for 100 years, as you said, 50 years certainly? It's a measurement problem at some level of bedrock, right? Yeah, and the problem is that I would like to just dispense with this all, but I would not be fair to the system because like Bell's inequalities, were done relatively late in the quantum story. So that even though I have a prejudice that says we shouldn't wallow infinitely in the foundations

Starting point is 00:27:21 of quantum theory, that's a good counter example where I would have been wrong, is that I probably would have discouraged Dr. Bell from doing his work. So it may be, and it's possible that all of this theorizing about quantum foundations and the measurement problem will be productive. I mean, to the extent that I've tried to contribute it all to that discussion, I've tried to take the point of view that classical theory is either deterministic or mute.

Starting point is 00:27:57 If you ask a good question, it's deterministic. And if you ask a bad question, it doesn't attempt to help you out in any way to pretend that your question was good. quantum mechanics is exactly as deterministic as classical theory when you're asking a good question. And we should say what a good question is. The state of the system is presented with a huge infinite list of multiple choice answers. Are you in this state? Are you in that state? Are you in the other state?

Starting point is 00:28:27 And we call those eigenfunctions or eigenvectors, but we might as well just call them multiple choice answers. and, you know, they have different values. Those would be, you know, is it seven? Is it 17.3? Those would be called eigenvalues. And the key question is, is the state of the system on the list of good answers for that question? The question would be called an observable.

Starting point is 00:28:52 So that's to try to make this a little bit less physics and a little bit more just common sense. A bad question would be a question in which the state of the system is not represented by any particular answer on the list. So you've come back from, let's say, Europe, and you get a landing card, which says, did you accumulate funds? Answer, A, all in pounds, B, all in euros,

Starting point is 00:29:19 C, all in Swiss francs, all in Swedish cron. You, in fact, have a bunch of different stuff in your pockets. So that's a bad question. Classically, you just can't answer the landing card. quantum mechanically, if you ask the question, suddenly all of your change transmutes into euros or Swiss francs based on the percentage of the amount of money that you had in each currency. And so that weird accommodating nature has been my little contribution to try to reframe the quantum weirdness debate, which is why, not why is quantum theory probabilistic, but why is quantum theory so accommodating of lousy questions? which is a completely different sort of feel to it because it is deterministic. We don't talk about the other part of quantum theory, which is the amazing propagation

Starting point is 00:30:12 where physicists do most of their work learning how to propagate an initial state into a final state because that, in fact, is a deterministic process and it doesn't give us those sort of quantum fields that we're used to talking about. So I find it very strange that physicists don't talk enough about quantum propagation, which is deterministic. We talk about the weirdness of the collapse of the state function, but in my mind, that's the sign that you're trying to work in an effective theory that doesn't really have full ability to wrestle with reality.

Starting point is 00:30:47 And so I'm very unmoved by the attempts to answer those questions within our current framework. I'd rather expand the framework and then try to get at those questions, rather than imagine that we can solve the puzzle of quantum measurement from this particular set of models. I mean, you hear people say that spacetime has got to go and that we need a really big new theory in order to make progress. What they're effectively saying is there may be new maps of this territory. And in the new maps, these are not huge paradoxes. But I really feel like if we want to answer these questions, the thing to do is new models, new equations, new Lagrangians, rather than trying to figure it out from here,

Starting point is 00:31:32 because I think we have a pretty solid answer that this is state of the art, for the most part, relative to the maps of reality that we built. And I think that it's going to be the new maps of reality that are going to allow us to make part of it. Great. Sabina, your sort of a vocal opponent, if I'm not mistaken, of panpsychism

Starting point is 00:31:52 and the role of inanimate physical objects playing a role, keeping mind that there's over 1,500 people observing us right now on YouTube, all of whom should push the thumbs up button, like, and subscribe to this channel, please. But where do you fall in this debate? I mean, if I'm not mistaken, you don't believe in panpsychism. So is there any sort of crisp measurement where we could really dissociate an observer from the observed or not? So you've thrown me a little bit off track because I was about to say something entirely different. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. First of all, I entirely agree. I disturbed the measurement. Eric, we need some kind of he.

Starting point is 00:32:32 theory and so on. So I agree with this. I was a little bit perplexed because Eric's answer wasn't the one that I expected to Carlo, because Carlo kind of questioned this idea that we would ever have a fundamental, final description of reality, whereas Eric said earlier one day maybe the map will be the territory. So I'd be kind of interesting to hear how you reply to that kind of thing. But to come back to the measurement problem, I mean, there's the reason the measurement problem is called measurement problem and not observer problem, because you don't necessarily need an observer to make a measurement.

Starting point is 00:33:17 What you need to make a measurement is an apparatus. So I really don't see how anything like consciousness even comes into the question. But this doesn't mean that the role of the observer doesn't play any role in physics. I mean, for one thing, as you yourself certainly know, our own position and what we can observe with our telescopes introduces a bias in the data that we get, which we have to take into account. Like if we look out in the cosmos, there are certain stellar objects or galaxies and so on that we can observe, and not the stuff. We can't observe, and if we want to make some statistics out of this, we have to take into account, which direction did we look into? What's the kind of data that our telescopes can even capture? So this is certainly something that we need to take into account.

Starting point is 00:34:10 Again, this doesn't really have anything to do with consciousness and so on, but it certainly has something to do with what we can observe. And also this whole story of the anthropic principle comes in there, which a lot of people get easily offended about. this but let's be honest physicists never really talk actually about life when they talk about the anthropic principle right they talk about certain preconditions for life like carbon or sufficiently complex molecules and that kind of stuff and we certainly know that carbon exists right and this puts a constraint on the kind of theories that we can write down They have to allow for the existence of carbon. And so I think these are certain, in a certain sense, those are observer constraints,

Starting point is 00:35:03 observer created constraints to some extent. And then let me mention one final point, which I understand is really the focus of the debate, where we have to keep in mind how our brains work because Carlo brought this up. It's that in the end, the way that science progresses is not just by one individual, but we have to work together in a community. And we have to evaluate other people's proposals. And there are certain cognitive biases that come into this. And they are based on the way that our brain works, right?

Starting point is 00:35:44 And this is something that we have to take into account, I think, if we want science to work properly. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Well, that's a wrap on the first part of the special two-part episode of The Into the Impossible cross-posting, cross-hosting,

Starting point is 00:36:06 a debate alongside my friends at the Institute for Arts and Ideas who host things like How the Light Gets in Festival. If you're in the UK, you should definitely do that. I'm hoping to make an appearance there next year. I can't make it this year. but due to travel constraints, but by next year I hope to be able to make it there. Subscribe to the podcast for Part 2 coming out tomorrow,

Starting point is 00:36:24 and that will involve the topics that you, the listeners, submit it if you're a subscriber to my YouTube channel or to the IAI's YouTube channel or to either one of our Twitter accounts. Mine is Dr. Brian Keating or Instagram. So please do that for future episodes. This I was told was the most popular live stream they've ever done, so I feel quite proud of that. Part 2 takes a deeper dive into the role of the observant.

Starting point is 00:36:46 and quantum mechanics crossed with cosmology. So don't miss that one. As I often do, I really don't ask you for much. There are no ads in this episode. And so I just have an advertisement to just leave a rating or a review of this podcast on Apple podcast where you can do both on Spotify, on Audible. You can only leave a constellation, hopefully five stars or more. But on Apple, you can leave a review, such as this listener, Mikey Biggs from the USA,

Starting point is 00:37:16 said he was turned on to this podcast from another podcast and I have no regert's phenomenal content and information. Thank you so much from Mikey. That means the multiverse to me. You two can do that. And really, that's all I ask for, for your humble support. And join my mailing list, Brian Keating.com slash list where I'll apprise you of all the current going ons in the universe that I call home and you call home. And hopefully I'll take suggestions and recommendations. And you might even win a tiny bit of space schmots of meteorite, as I mentioned at the end. of this conversation with these renowned thinkers and friends. Anyway, that's all for now.

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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Part 1 of 2: Quantum Physics and The End of Reality with Sabine Hossenfelder, Carlo Rovelli, and Eric Weinstein hosted by Brian Keating for the Institute for Art and Ideas (#244)

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