Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Time and Quantum Mechanics SOLVED? | Lee Smolin

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Lee Smolin joins TOE to discuss his work in theoretical physics, the dynamic nature of the laws of physics and the concept of time.TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 - Intro00:04:13 - Doubly Special Relativity and Violation of Lorentz Invariance00:09:15 - The Concept of Thick Time00:19:11 - Duality Between String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity00:23:50 - Condensed Matter Theory00:28:35 - Approximating by a Continuum and Discrete Sets00:34:11 - Misapprehensions about Loop Quantum Gravity00:38:43 - Defining Complexity and the View of the Universe by One Observer00:43:52 - Causal Energetic: The Relationship Between Varieties and Kinetic Energy00:48:38 - Varying Parameters in the Universe00:53:35 - The Bomes Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics00:58:30 - Causality and Relativity01:03:15 - Different Styles in Mathematics and Chess01:07:55 - The Fundamental Questions in Biology01:12:49 - Marrying Outside Your Field01:18:04 - Discussion on Authors and Novels01:23:35 - Conversations with Fire Robin01:28:39 - Being Sincere and Ambitious01:33:39 - A Visit from BJ01:38:34 - OutroNOTE: The perspectives expressed by guests don't necessarily mirror my own. There's a versicolored arrangement of people on TOE, each harboring distinct viewpoints, as part of my endeavor to understand the perspectives that exist. THANK YOU: To Mike Duffey for your insight, help, and recommendations on this channel.Support TOE: - Patreon: / curtjaimungal   (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) - Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE - PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE - TOE Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch Follow TOE: - Instagram: / theoriesofeverythingpod   - TikTok: / theoriesofeverything_   - Twitter:  / toewithcurt   - Discord Invite: / discord   - iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast... - Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9... - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: / theoriesofeverything   Join this channel to get access to perks: / @theoriesofeverything   LINKS MENTIONED: - Sabine Hossenfelder's channel: / @sabinehossenfelder  -Sean Carrol's Mindscape episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTM-8memDHs-Against Method (Paul Feyerabend): https://www.amazon.com/Against-Method-Paul-Feyerabend/dp/1844674428-Science in a Free Society (Paul Feyerabend): https://www.amazon.com/Science-Free-Society-Paul-Feyerabend/dp/0860917533-Lee Smolin's paper w/ Clelia Verde: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.09945-Podcast w/ Carlo Rovelli on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_fUPbBNmBw-Podcast w/ Abhay Ashtekar on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ReIvXKrrU

One says that relative time position, so I talk about your yesterday or my future. This is one view, and the other view is the view that really there is no time. Today we have something special, the man, the myth, the legend, Professor Lee Smolin. Professor Smolin's work in theoretical physics spans several decades, focusing on quantum gravity, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and cosmology. He was also instrumental, along with Ashtakar and Rovelli, in the development of something called loop quantum gravity, which is a competing theory to string theory, one that attempts to make consonant, general, relativity, and quantum theory. I've spoken to both Ashtakar and Rovelli on the podcast before,

and the links to those in-depth three-hour discussions are in the description. Lee Smolin is exalted not only for his contributions to theoretical physics, but to his contributions to the philosophy of physics. His research in quantum cosmology and the role of time in physics led to the proposal that the laws of physics aren't fixed over time, but rather that they evolve. One variation of this is that whenever there's a black hole, there's a new universe that's birthed,

and the physics of this embryonic universe has slightly varied laws. Lee is also a time realist. Now, this sounds like a strange proposition because colloquially, we think, hey, well, time is obviously real, but the difficulty is, well, what do we mean by real? And then secondly, how do we explain that mathematical equations are timeless? This latter view is also known as Platonism, and Lee is not a Platonist, at least not anymore. Lee has also been diagnosed with Parkinson's. This is a neurological disorder that he once hid from others during the

early stages, but he's now decidedly open about it. In fact, Lee valiantly wanted it on display without blandishments in order to bring attention to the issues of Parkinson's. This is one of the reasons why the audio was tough to capture at different points. I was filming this alone with limited resources. Usually I'd set the camera down static, but Parkinson's makes it such that you must move about. Thus, I used a handheld camera, and I had to balance both the framing and the audio and interviewing itself. Every word of this interview, just like every other Theories of Everything podcast, is meticulously transcribed, so you can enable the captions on YouTube. Every podcast is translated in over 20 languages. You can also visit kurtjaimungal.org for transcripts. Speaking of which, my name is

Kurt Jaimungal, and this is a podcast called Theories of Everything, where we explore, generally from a theoretical physics perspective or a mathematical one, what are the constitutive laws of nature, what is reality? colossal rigorous exhaustive video on the mathematics of string theory there's also going to be a subsection inside covering loop quantum gravity so subscribe to get notified as there are new videos every day on this channel now enjoy this interview with the man the myth the legend lee smolin i'll start off with a joke okay stephen wright a comedian, said, someone asked me, can you tell me what time it is? And I said, yes, but not now. So what is your idea of the thick present? Oh, it's a good joke. Good joke involving time. Now, the thick present is an idea of some philosophers. I don't remember who

right now. That time has an extension. That's so that there can be two events which are at the same time, but one is to the future of the other, of the other way around. So as a technical idea, it's clear when it's to be settled, does it violate relativity? And I think it challenges relativity. What's the difference between contradicting relativity and challenging it? Understanding something and not quite understanding it, yeah.

So, there's something that you have invented called doubly special relativistic theory. With some friends, yes. What is that, and does that violate Lorentz? It extends Lorentz invariance. The idea of doubly special relativity is that, let's go back to special relativity. In special relativity, we have one scale, one velocity, which is invariance.

So when we travel, if we were traveling, you're going that way, I'm going this way. We have a relativity, Galilean relativity, whereby our length and time measurements change relative to each other. But in doubly special relativity, we impose the constraint that not only is the speed of light fixed under those transformations between frames, but so is an energy. So that if we measure an energy of some particle, we can transfer between your measurements and mine, and the transformation will be more complicated in such a way that there are two length scales, or one velocity and one energy, which remain valiant. So is another way of saying that there's a universal cosmic speed limit, which all observers agree on,

but then also a universal cosmic limit to the length, so the Planck length is somehow also fundamental? Yes, although I'm trying to keep H-bar in the game. cosmic limit to the length? So the Planck length is somehow also fundamental? Yes, although I'm trying to keep h-bar in the game. So I'm trying to I want to pick whether it's an energy that's invariant to a length that's invariant. I don't want to assume that h-bar equals one. And what you decide is that what's invariant is the ratio of what we usually

call the Planck energy, to what we usually call the Planck length. Why is it that you don't want to set h bar to equal one? Is there something that you feel like is lost? Yes, because if we want to have a theory which explains h-bar, it can't be one in which H-bar is one. Uh-huh. So what led you and your collaborators to develop this? Sabina Hassenfelder, to be short.

We had a previous theory, which was doubly specialized theory. had a previous theory, which was doubly special route theory. And we didn't understand it completely. And Sabina saw that there would have to be non-locality in some field theory if that theory was going to encompass doubly special route theory. And so we then, and this was four of us, we were working together a couple of times a year at Limear. And we realized more or less simultaneously that the way to answer Savina was to let simultaneity be relative and also let locality be relative. So whether some interaction took place locally or non-locally was dependent on whether you were close to the system being observed or far from it. Mm-hmm. So what did Sabine say to the concept that locality itself

is a relative concept? She didn't like it, and we continue to have disagreements, and I think she continues to disagree with us. And her disagreements are? Are that you can have a theory, now we call it a theory with these amendments,

we call it relative locality, because that's a more precise description. Okay. Speaking of what's relative, there's something called A and B series of times. I never remember which is which, but in one of them, one says that relative time position, so I talk about your yesterday or my future or the dog's past, and those are relative to the dog at some moment. The past of the dog is not the same as the future at another time. And this is one view, that that's okay. And the other view is the view that really there is no time, so that there is only, I think I'm saying it backwards,

in the one view, let's call it the A view, although I'm not sure that this one's... Sure. You can be an observer to the future of another observer. And we allow that, that is, we allow ourselves in the theory to discuss relative times as realistic, real things, but relative to an observer, if that makes sense. And is this related to your thick time or no?

It needs thick time to make it consistent. Have you heard of Nicholas Gissens or Nicholas Gissens? Oh, sure, sure. Well, what is his concept of thick time, and is it different? I don't think so, but I haven't studied it. Okay. So explain to me why thick time neat or why a or the b series needs thick time can we come back to that sure something that the viewers may notice by now and

i've already mentioned it in the introduction is the movement and you mentioned that you don't want to hide any of this. Well, it's would-be heartache. Yeah. So can you explain? What you're seeing is an overcompensation for Parkinson, coming from taking a bit too much dopamine, which is, in the context of being interviewed, a good thing to do. Why? interviewed, a good thing to do. Why? Because the other setting, it's a very quick transition. I think it is a phase transition. By the way, I'm doing some work on the brain and the regions of the brain which are relevant. It seems to be that there is a phase where things seize the control of the brain.

And a phase where things go uncontrollably nuts. Okay. And you want to be in a kind of critical state between them. Yes. And that's what the dopamine allows you to reach. Yeah, and so right now you're in the critical phase, or you're pushed off to one of those directions? I'm way overcompensated.

Oh, but does that mean that with time it will get better? Yes. Okay, with time throughout this day, I mean. It's coming right up. Oh, okay. And you'll see it happen because the critical phase, as in most physical systems that have a critical phase, is a cause of critical vibrations.

So you'll see I'm making it happen, but you'll see half an hour from now, my thing's going critical, with critical scaling, and then it'll be over. Does it just affect your physical body? It affects everything. Okay, how does your mental state or your state of consciousness affect it? It makes me, I don't have much of an executive function when it's on stream.

Aha. So that's the worst thing. I can overreact. Yeah. So why don't you talk about how your how you studying physics well, it's more like researching. Researching physics has been impacted.

Your collaborations even. It's more irregular. As working with my collaborators. I'm on more, and we use the words on and off. So, um, but I don't know. You have to, you have to ask them. Although I don't know if I want to know the answer.

I'm glad to have still collaborated. When we talked, actually, we talked a couple years ago, on the phone briefly, I don't know if you recall, but I was asking if you had taken a look at Geometric Unity because I was going to be interviewing you at that time and I was giving an overview of some of the questions and you mentioned Eric is a dear friend.

Yes. He has to be. He's not your dear friend. He's not going to be your friend. Okay, so can you please talk to that and then also geometric unity? Herrick is, well, his strength as a researcher is certainly

his commitment and his he's extremely smart, extremely quick, and he can go at something for years and years and years. And that's very important if you're trying to do original work in physics or anything. Is this quality of going forward on a single idea or a single theme for years rare?

Yes. So it seems like for me, when I was reading your work, and by the way, you don't know this, but so my background's in filmmaking, math and physics, and then I did a film. Okay, what was the film? Film is a dramedy, so comma dramedy, called I'm Okay. It's a heavily Toronto-based film.

Oh, so I may know people then. Yeah. Because I know a lot of film people. Yeah, so when i was filming it and i had the cinematographer in my car and the sound recordist in the car we would be listening to your book oh wow yeah one of them one or two of them during the filming of it anyhow that was a fun experience because they would ask me, what's a Calé-Vial manifold? They wouldn't pronounce it like that, but they would say, so what is that? And why does that

have anything to do with background independence? And why does background independence matter? Why does gravity have anything to do with curvature? Curvature of what? Space? No, not curvature of space. Curvature of space-time, which is different than space. Anyhow, this interview itself, just meeting you, it's a dream. I would be listening to you in the car. I had no idea that I could ever not only see you in person, but shake your hand and speak to you like this. So thank you.

You're welcome, but that's extraordinary to me because I just live here. And I don't feel very... Well, Parkinson's has a way of leveling things. I would say everything is now in question. Every interview, every talk is every painful. It's an experience sort of on the edge. Meaning that you don't...

I don't rest on reputation. I can't. Aha. But the work that I'm working on now is my favorite work. It's very, I'm very impressed with it, which is a funny thing to say, that you're impressed with your work. And that work is, why don't we just briefly outline it now? We can come back to it later. Well, that's 10 what we're talking about the work that you're working on now is what is um well uh yeah why not i'll tell you before it's in published paper um but what i've been broadly speaking, is extending the notions of time as real and... Well, first I'm a realist, so let's get that out of the way. Okay. I don't believe, I'm not interested in physics,

which is, there is realistic people and there are people who make physics too... Subjective? Almost subjective. Like Bayesian? Yes. But Bayesian is the mathematical realization of this idea. Okay. So you're not a Bayesian.

I'm certainly not a Bayesian. I'm a good old-fashioned realist. I believe that there is a way that the world is, and I'm interested in knowing what that is. Realism to most people means something's external and objective. Is that what you mean? Yes. But at the same time, I believe that the world has to be understood

in a language of what observers see. But it's very important that, to me, that there are many observers. And so Einstein allows you to just have an observer and another observer and talk about their relations between what they see. Einstein is a realist, but he is using the methods of this thing that we can't remember the name of. So it sounds like there are objective and subjective elements, and what you're saying is that there are some people who believe there are only subjective elements, and you're not one of those.

are some people who believe they're only subjective elements, and you're not one of those. No, I'm saying that we can talk about and record and work with other people's observations as well as your own observations. And they're all real to you. And it's just a word. It's what Lucian always calls himself, Lucian Hardy. Lucian Hardy?

Lucian Hardy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. What does real mean in this instance? Because you said it was real to you, which to me sounds subjective. Yes, that's unfortunate. Real means that I'm interested in what makes up the world and what the world is.

I believe that if you took me out of the world, it would still be the same. But you still can make interesting transformations between what one observer will see and describe and what another observer will see and describe. I see. Sabina is one. I'm a recent strong, strong fan of Sabina.

Okay. Sabrina. And one of the things that she likes to say is that every problem in physics is a translation problem. The argument between string people and loop people, which unbelievably we still have going on,

is a translation problem for her. What does that mean? They're both right in different regimes. Yeah, I recall reading one of your books. Forgive me that I don't know the name, because there are several. And in one of them, you mentioned that you believe loop quantum gravity to be a subset of string theory.

Or no, you said there was duality between them. Yes, but I know that's way too simplified. Okay. Yeah, and you used the word duality, that there is a duality between them. And I don't know if you used that word poetically, or if you meant that mathematically there's duality? There are theories which are dual to each other. And for example, one of them is,

you can take electromagnetism, and you can look at its phase with the magnetic field frozen. That means that magnetic field expresses itself by making magnetic field lines discrete. And that's, and so then you have a phase of electromagnetism where electric, where magnetic field lines are discrete.

You have a phase where neither field lines are discrete. You have a phase where neither field lines are discrete, that's the usual behavior of electromagnetic fields. And then you can go into a dual to the magnetic field lines frozen, to where the electric, I'm sorry, you can go into a dual of the phase where the magnetic field lines are frozen to the phase where the electric field lines are frozen.

And that's what, in the phase where electric field lines are frozen, you have confinement. And the confinement is represented by the frozen electric field, which means that there's a cost in energy per length of the electric field run. And that's why the quarks behave in a way which is confined. And we leave that. That's the way that non-emitting gauge fields behave when they represent a gravitational field. So that would be an example of a duality? Loop-frontal gravity.

Okay. Being dual to a field theory of gravity. Uh-huh. Which is described by general relativity. Is this another way of saying that there's a translation issue, that they describe different regimes, or this is different phenomena? I don't know. But it's a way of explaining what happens in quantum gravity. Ed Witten was once asked, recently actually, in the past five years, what about other approaches to quantum gravity, other than string theory? And he said, what other approaches? Right, of course he was. And then they listed some, like causal sets or loop quantum gravity.

And then he said, well, the reason why string theory is supreme is because the mathematics of those are described in string theory, or tend to be more and more. String theory tends to gobble up, whereas those don't

tend to gobble string theory. So he said, if there's something to loop quantum gravity, I'm sure we'll discover it in string theory as well. They already have a long time ago. Can you explain that? And what do you make of that statement overall? I was paraphrasing, so please don't quote me on that. Oh, that's okay.

What am I supposed to hire? His father was a good friend of my mother's. Lewis Witten. Lewis Whitten. Lewis Whitten, yes. And I think, I don't know, here's something I realized recently. Ed used to give me advice. Edward used to give me advice. Edward used to give me advice. And I used to misunderstand it because I was too oversensitive to being criticized, and especially by him. For example, he

would come to me and tell me, when I was a graduate student, he would say, you know, you really ought to have a research program and develop it. And I said, but Edward, I have a research program, but he never was interested in mine. That's the way it felt. Well, not recently, but maybe 20 years ago, I was for a day at the Institute. I gave a talk and so forth. And he came over to me and he said, I have some advice for you. And he came over to me and he said, I have some advice for you. And I said, sure, what? And he said, you know, you're really smarter than you look.

And for people to become convinced of how smart you are, you should get out of quantum gravity for a while and work on condensed matter theory. Because there are a lot of people who are working on interesting problems. And people will get to see how smart you are. Now, I heard that as criticism. Okay. But I think he was actually trying to give me what would have been. I couldn't have taken it because I'm interested in condensed matter theory.

I'm interested in applying ideas from condensed matter theory to loop one gravity and help you one way to explain to Edward what we're doing. But I took it as a strong criticism, whereas I'm sure he meant it kindly as advice. And so we all have found. Anyway, I know what Edward is trying to say. I think the reverse is true. And I think there are a lot of results related to Luke Herman Gravely,

mathematically exempt, that if he took the time to learn, he would see what their purpose was in string theory. And I like to talk about string theory and Luke Herman Gravely. I would rather talk about background independent and background dependent. Sure, sure. Because I'm sure that they're the same theory. We'd rather talk about background independent and background dependent. Sure. I'm sure that they're the same theory. There are background independent approaches to string theory, though.

I don't know any that work. But please, show me one. There are some talks that I saw, and I'll get the... I can send you over email. Recently, in the past two years, I'm sure they have limited applicability like it's just for type 2B. Right. If it's ADS-CFT, it's hard for me to be interested

because that has a background on it. Yes. Sort of by definition. And it doesn't allow me to ask the questions that I want to ask. So Feynman was extremely concerned with his, with appearing intellectual or appearing smart. And one of the, like he talks about this, he likes to trick people into them thinking that he's brighter than he is by memorizing large sums

or cracking safes and so on. And Gell-Mann, I think, criticized him for this. He said, Feynman, you focus on the marketing of Feynman and not the physics. Like, focus more on the physics. As you age, insecurities tend to dissipate. Maybe other ones creep up. I don't know. Yeah, they certainly do in my case. Yeah. What were your insecurities when you were younger? Well, they mostly related to women. Yeah. As they do. Right. Yeah. You know Jonathan Oppenheim? Sure. What do you make of his stochastic gravity approach?

I like some of it, but I don't believe if he had, there's a part of it, now maybe he's giving this up, but there's a part of it where he says that gravity is classical. And although I don't believe that gravity is quantum mechanical, I don't believe that gravity is classical either. Do you believe it's a third option? Yes, the third option is that space doesn't exist, time exists and is fundamental, and space and spacetime emerge from the fundamental world,

which is basically a fancy version of causal sets. And we can show how our fancy version of puzzle sets allows space-time to emerge in a way that lets there be, in the emergent level, something like general relativity, but only at the emergent level. version of that. Sometimes when Edward Witten is giving some introductory talks, and when I say introductory, I mean to graduate students or upper undergrads, he starts off by saying, like, let's study this toy model where there's only time.

So just 1D system. And let's look at the action of that and then we'll find that particles emerge from... No, just 1D, just time. Just time. Richie curvature is just a scalar, all you have is just one One dimension of time. No, just 1D. Just time. Right. Just time. Ritchie curvature is just a scalar. All you have is just one extra degree of freedom.

So are you saying, hey, Edward, you thought you were studying a toy model that's actually the universe? There's no toys in that. Well, the problem is that his closed ceiling is continuous. It has a continuous metric. Whatever gives rise to the continuum, whether it is a continuum indeed or it's something else, you can always still say it's approximated by a continuum. So why does the contin... no? Okay. We find that approximating by continuum

is a very strong constraint on a discrete set. If you have a tensor which approximates some discrete set, that discrete set. Well, think about how many dimensions we're talking about to describe this space. If there's enormous constraints on the continuum space, if it's, let's think about it the other way,

if it gives an approximation to a discrete set. And so it's very hard to get, for example, a theorem of some mathematician who works with Sorkin, Raphael Sorkin, played through with him that a generic causal set is embedded in three dimensions. There are three elements in the causal order. Okay. So that's very non-generic. So in other words, a generic causal set will not approximate any causal order of the lower dimension. Yeah. What is the relationship between

causal dynamic triangulation or causal set theory and loop quantum gravity, other than them being discrete? Well, should we talk about the Hamiltonian version first and then the Lorentz-Hilbert version? So the Hamiltonian version is the quantization of general relativity treated as a gauge theory, where the configuration variables are the left-handed part of the space-time connection.

And you can write general relativity in such a form. That is where, there's a way to take general relativity and let the degrees of freedom of the metric and the gauge field be independent. So you start with that version of the field. So there are the 10 degrees of version of the thing. So there are the 10 degrees of freedom of the connection, and then there are the 16 degrees of freedom.

I'm sorry, this is the other way around. There are 10 degrees of freedom of the metric and 16 degrees of freedom of the connection. And you can let all of them be free. And then the equations that restrict them to only metric degrees of thickness, so that the connection degrees of freedom are functions of the 10 metric degrees of freedom,

become field equations. Okay. Okay, so that's a well-known modification or slight extension of Einstein's version of general relativity. You can go one step further and reduce the degrees of freedom of half the connection to the other half ago has degrees of freedom of the metric, the degrees of freedom corresponding to half of the connection, and no other degrees of freedom, because the other half of the connection are just reduced to functions of degrees of freedom of the full set of the connection. And that's called a chiral version of general relativity.

Okay. And you can study that as a classical theory, and Szekelyansky and Ted Newman were people who did that. And then I noticed that in the Hohenthalian version of general relativity, you can do the same. And remarkably, very remarkably, though I don't think I might explain it this way, you could reduce the degrees of freedom. You could make the action cubic in the Hamiltonian manual. So we're You can make the action cubic in the Hamiltonian manual.

So we're used to writing the first order action of general relativity as a function of three-dimensional metric degrees of freedom and four-dimensional connection degrees of freedom. And then you solve the field equations and you get just the usual Einstein's equations. Yes. But if you take the chiral version of the theory, there are no right-handed connection

degrees of freedom, only left-handed connection degrees of freedom. And to begin with, the metric degrees of freedom, you only mean a cubic action, an action which is purely cubic in the field. Whereas in all the other forms of general relativity, you need an infinite number of degrees of gain. Okay. So this is one of these things that anybody should know about loop quantum gravity.

Yeah. Are there other mistakes or misapprehensions that people have about loop quantum gravity who don't study it? Sure. Or many. But that's the most important. Loop quantum gravity is not a proposal underneath gravity. It's just a way of studying cage fields, which had a few more kids in the village. Uh-huh. So, Wolfram's physics project, I believe that's what he calls it. Mm-hmm. What do you make of it? Have you taken a look into it?

Yeah, I think it's interesting, but it's not focused enough on things like what we were just saying. I mean, I would encourage him. I think he should do it more in the direction he's working. You think it's misguided? Or you think it's just incomplete? Or it's too general? Well, I haven't looked at it in enough detail to criticize it. But if I were in his position, I would study more Chiral versions of the beard. Okay. And that's just because our world is chiral?

That's enough of a reason. We want to understand why our world is chiral. It's not enough to have some anthropic reason where the world could be symmetric, chirally symmetric,

but there's another version of the world that is left-handed, and there's actually another version of the world that's right-handed, we just happen to live in the left one. So it's okay if he's studying symmetric versions, because somehow through some anthropic arguments you can get to a chiral version.

That's not sufficient. No, I don't think it's sufficient. I don't know why the world is chiral, but I think it's very non-true. What about Peter Wojt's Euclidean twister unification? I think it's interesting, but I haven't really studied it. Okay. He has a new paper called Space Time is Right-Handed. Yes, I've seen it, but I haven't studied it.

I'm too, you know, I have a little less energy than I used to. Yes. So I'm studying things, I'm working on things that I think are important to the ideas I want to develop. And I apologize if anybody objects to that. Almost invariably, when I ask someone about someone else's theory,

they're unaware of the theory or they just haven't had enough time to go into it in detail. So you're not alone. When we talked about, let me just see here. Ah, yes, yes. So we talked off-air about this question. Look, if we can have a thick present, a thick time,

can you have a thick spatial extent? What does that mean? Um, I don't know what it would mean. Let's come back to that. Sure. In relativity, there's no preferred now moment. Yes.

But there must be. Okay. Would there be a preferred now moment for people who are close by to one another? That is, in some bubble, there is some shared moment. There is actually a moment of now. There is some notion of simultaneity. But it's very important that time is one dimension. It's important that time is one dimensional.

Now have you encountered, so other than bars, have you encountered many theories of more than one time dimension? No. I have encountered a few. Yeah. Geometric unity has multiple time dimensions. Have you had a chance to go into it, or just informal conversations with Eric about it? I've hardly seen Eric in these years. Uh-huh.

And then he's involved in these political, whatever you call them. Mm-hmm. And so you don't like that? You'd like to stay out of politics? I think it's, no, I'm happy to join into discussing those political things, but I don't have anything very, anything else to say. Yeah. And Julian Barber's view of time compares to yours how?

Beautiful, beautiful. I mean, Julian was my mentor in thinking about time. Very strongly my mentor. And I worked with him for years. And for example, the idea of variety, which is an important part of my present program, came from working with Julian. Like an algebraic variety? No, like, if I, supposing I have a graph

embedded in, or not embedded, just in some space. Uh-huh. And I want to know, I need a definition of complexity for something. One way to give a definition of complexity is to think about what the universe looks like from one point, from one observer. So that's called the view of the rest of the universe by one observer. And you can define that in several different ways. You can imagine that we take the sphere of the world around us with all the light rays coming in from different directions.

of the world around us with all the light rays coming in from different directions. And then we can define a distance between two views of the world by how much information it requires to distinguish them. And then we can sum over all the pairs of views. So we can take every pair of events and measure how different they are from each other. Okay.

And then you can sum that over all the pairs. And that's the way. So you're telling how different two events are or two observers are? It's the property of the whole set. Okay. So some cities have much more variety than other cities. I see. Because you need less information to distinguish the pairs of corners.

And when you say put a graph and you embed it in a space, you don't mean to say, well, let's decompose a space into a simplicial? I imagine that there's some way in which you can compare the view on one event with the view of another event. And you can, I can tell you lots of ways to measure how different they are. And then I can define something like a gauge theory, where the action of the theory is to increase the total variety between all the pairs. Oh, is this related to the fecund universe? No.

So… I don't know. It might be, but I don't know what it is. By the way, I never have used that term. Okay. This is just what people describe your theory as. This is a very important one, Joe. This is one of the key items.

I have a collection of four or five ideas which fit together very neatly. Oh, I would love to explore that more. For example, the function

is close to the way it turns out to the Bohmian potential. The function? There's a functional

on a set of triples of three which can see each other. the Bohmian potential. The function. There's a functional atom, a set of triples of three, which can see each other. So I can describe the universe by describing every sphere in the universe looking at it. And I'm going to tell you what each event in the universe

sees when it looks out. And it sees some distributionalities. And so why is it three? Why not something like two or four? Because that's the way it is in two plus one dimensions. Uh-huh. And this isn't related to the cubic, I forgot the term for it, but the cubic part that you were referencing earlier of loop quantum gravity? The cubic quality? Oh, yes, it's conscious from there. So it's directly related to the cubic, meaning the three?

Yes. The three, three, okay. That's another of our results. Mm-hmm. Okay, you mentioned there are four or five results of yours that you feel like are the monumental ones that feed nicely or relate nicely to one another can you outline them now then we can explore them in detail later but just so that we have a table of contents um the i'm going to make a causal set out of the events.

And I have a universe which is constructed by taking pairs of events and joining them or not. Okay. And I get in that way a causal universe. I have a rule which at every moment gives a distribution of what the events at that moment see, and it's described as a distribution on this tier. And then you have an action principle.

The action principle depends in a normal way on a product of a kinetic energy and a potential energy. And the action can be written, in fact, as the kinetic energy minus the potential energy. And the potential energy is the variety. And the kinetic energy is the rate of change of the variety. Okay. And that, when you study it for a large set, goes over into quantum mechanics.

It's non-algistic and not a quantum mechanics. So it's useful for me to have names for these. The first one you mentioned where there are two sets, is there a name for that? I don't know. Like, you haven't there a name for that? I don't know. You haven't coined a name for that? No. Okay. And then now this one about variety, does that have a name? That's the one that

you developed with Barber, or inspired by Barber. Yes, but it's in context of our, we call it causal, energetic causal sets. Mm-hmm, right, right, right. I have some questions about that. Okay. Which we'll get to later, hopefully. What else is there? You said there were a couple other ideas of yours

that you feel like are the key ones. So there's a relationship with game theory. Mm-hmm. And we've been developing it for some students. Is this the work that is currently unpublished and you're still working on? Okay, okay. That's fine. So let me just say there's a very intriguing relationship to game theory. Uh-huh.

Okay, so there's a game theory relationship between what, loop quantum gravity in it, or the causal sets in it? This current theory is describable as a game. Okay. So the description of the universe inside of this theory is a description of a certain kind of game. And who would the agents in the game be? Particles? Observers. And they have to be rational observers?

No, they don't have to be rational. Because they don't have... These are games which go by the name of infinite games. And they don't have a desire to win. They have a desire... They. They have a desire, they have a mutual desire to keep the game going, which is what is called the infinite game.

And from this you get? The dynamics that I was talking about. Uh-huh. So in game theory, there's something called mean field game theory. Is that then supposed to be the effective field theory of this physical theory? I don't know. I know so little about game theory. It's in Paris.

So, well, okay. What inspired you to go in this direction then? I have no idea. Not your collaborators, just this idea just slowly developed? Yeah. I was thinking about what a cosmology has to be. And the cosmology can't be a... We can't try to maximize something because that's what we would do if there was one observer. But we have many observers. So how do we describe a system that's trying to maximize something in the context of moves made by many observers?

In one of your books, you had posited the idea that the universe begins by varying the laws. And then there was actually a prediction from this. And this leads to the... Uh-huh. What I want to know about that idea is that, when one says, look, let's take an evolutionary approach to cosmology, let's vary the physical constants

any time that there's a new universe. Well, why are we choosing to vary the physical constants only? And from what set do we choose the distribution? And I'll give you an example as to where my question is leading. So let's say biology works with variation. Okay, so variation, but it's not like, look, let's have a plant. And then there are a couple of properties of a plant. There's the stem length, there's the leaf length or extent, and then there's a couple properties of a plant. There's the stem length, there's the leaf length or extents and then there's how many leaves, how many stems and so on.

So let's, okay, let's tweak those parameters. Yes, we can tweak them all day but you'll never get to a ladybug from that. Why do we think that when, if there's some evolutionary progress to the universe where something is being varied, we have to put a limit on this something. progress to the universe where something is being varied, we have to put a limit on this something.

How do we know that the law of the excluded middle is now gone in this universe? Or F equals M times V instead of M times A in this universe? These are all important questions. Yeah. And we have to adjust them. We have to understand them. We're barely starting. So you're starting with the idea that, look, there's a few parameters in the

standard model, I assume, or lambda CDM, and then you just vary those? Yes. Sorry, wait. What is what we call you said, this is what we call the... The question of what do we vary? Yes. That's called the Mendelaw dilemma.

The Mendelaw. Meta, meta, meta, as in greater than. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, the Mendelaw dilemma? Yeah, but it's not a dilemma. We just say yes. And we just do it again and do it again and do it again. So we accept the idea that there's a Mendelaw. Okay. Interesting. so we accept the idea that there's a man-law okay interesting speaking of a realist notion of time

there is Tim Modlin there are a few physicists who are strident realists in time of time, sorry so much so that they think it's the fundamental ontological entity what is the difference between Tim Modlin's

idea of time and yours? Well, I don't know his whole description or his whole theory, so I can't really comment on his. We have a definite structure, and that's an advantage and a disadvantage. definite structure, and that's an advantage and a disadvantage. And by the way, you should definitely mention my collaborators, and this is not just me. Of course, yes. Also is Marina Cortez, who's a cosmologist. There is Clavio Vares and a few other people, but those are the keys, and Roberto Lundra.

What do you see the difference between physics and philosophy as being? In the present world or ideally? In our present world. I think they're trained very differently. I think philosophers are trained to make key arguments, to learn to make a powerful argument. Uh-huh. And physicists are trained to discover things.

Yes. Ideally. And so, what's the difference between physics and metaphysics? I don't know. I don't know what metaphysics is, really. What's the difference between when you collaborate with a physicist versus a philosopher? Because you've done both. Yes, but philosophers out of Warford

are not in the mainstream of well-trained philosophers. Oh. I mean, Claudia will be by the time she's done, but she's a PhD student now. I mean, trivia will be when, by the time she's done, but she's a PhD student now. She also has another life where she's a published and much-admired poet. Interesting.

So there's something called the Unruh effect. So do you mind outlining what the Unruh effect is and how loop quantum gravity explains it? I don't know that loop quantum gravity explains it. It's a very good question. explains it? I don't know if I know how to explain it. It's a very good question. But the uno effect says

that if you take an observer which is a constant acceleration, in space time, the observer will see the world around it as hot with a temperature T,

is H bar over triple AC times the acceleration. By the way, I heard that the trio of you, Carlo Rovelli and Abhay Ashtakar, all of whom have been on the channel now, by the way, Theories of Everything, that the trio has the different advantages and disadvantages. So the advantages are Abai is much more rigorous, and Carlo is much more metaphoric and poetic, and you are the middle ground. No, that's not how it was in the war, but okay.

Abai is definitely very strong, looking for exact mathematics. So he's over in the camp of the mathematical physicist and he can prove theorems. Carlo is the hippie, happy, come into my room and learn all about time version of Carlo. What do you mean by Peter Wojt is a mathematical mystic? I have no idea.

So I have that as a quote, but I don't remember the source. I don't think of him as particularly either. I think he's very pragmatic. Pragmatic is the word I was looking for to describe his type of philosophy, which is not the same as American pragmatism. You said that the many worlds interpretation is a badly thought-through version of Bohm's interpretation.

Can you explain? To me, it's the same. But why is it a badly thought-through version? So firstly, what is Bohm's? Many are familiar with the many worlds, whether or not they're familiar with what many worlds actually is. That's another story. But they're unfamiliar with Bohm's. So can you please with what many worlds actually is. That's another story. But they're unfamiliar with bones.

So can you please outline what bones is? Bones and trochleides was the original interpretation of quantum mechanics. And in it, there are particles and waves. And they're both real. Remember, we're realists now. And they're both real. Remember, we're realists now. And they're both real. And there are more laws because you have the particles are real and the waves are real. And the other laws refer to the motion of the particles as a function of where the waves go.

where the waves go. So there are additional laws that give you equations that the particles follow a certain velocity or a certain acceleration. And with respect to the waves, and the waves follow the Schrodinger equation as before. And so you get, you write, they're wearing some applications, but you get the equations of one mechanics. But the wave equation is the realistic equation for the waves to travel.

And the particle equation is a new equation that tells you how the particles move. So how does that have anything to do with many worlds? You have the same problem, which is that, how can you say it? There are ghost solutions. In other words, in the many worlds, there are many solutions, there are many ways, solutions to the ways. And they don't change. They're the same equations as they were before.

But you have to account for them. So in other words, every time in the many worlds interpretation, where the ways would, quote, split, and some would go this way and some would go that way. You have the waves still splitting in boom. But there's no particle. There's only one particle that follows. So you've got zillions of ghost waves.

So do you have a preferred interpretation of quantum mechanics? Yeah, mine. I think he has. Which is, what is the name of yours? It doesn't have a name. Nobody talks about it. Okay, what is it? Do you mind describing it? It's a low energy limit of the causal theory of views. In the limit that you have non-relativistic particles, and there are many of them. So you get it from

that as you get quantum mechanics, as the description is a limit, as n goes to infinity, and certain forces scale with certain powers of n. I don't understand the interpretation. So what is it? So usually interpretations say what is the

wave function? Yes, the wave function emerges as a description of the evolution of the probabilities. So I have

to go through the stochastic. So it's a little bit stolen from the people who made the stochastic formulations of quantum mechanics. Uh-huh. Can you contrast that with something like the Copenhagen interpretation? Well, there's nothing. The Copenhagen interpretation is not an interpretation of quantum mechanics.

It's a perfectly good pragmatic physical theory to describe what's going on, but it's not. There's no realism at all. The observers believe that sometimes they see particles and sometimes they see waves. They believe strongly there's this division of the world, there's two parts. And by the way, I would say that there are two parts to the world, but I would say that one of them is the future, and the future is described by the Schrodinger equation, which only describes the future,

describes how states in the future evolve backwards and meet us in the present. Wait, how states in the future evolve backwards and meet us in the present? So like retrocausality? Yes, retrocausality. It's a little bit of it, too. A little bit of it. Yeah. So it's sort of a mixture of retrocausality. Well, you mentioned before, you just mentioned, but it is also, has this retro causality. And is this related to the thick presence?

Yes, of course. So a little bit of it meaning you can't go backward in time or influence what happened one year ago, but you may be able to influence what happened a microsecond ago? Yes, yes, I'm sorry. This microsecond, I just used that as an indistinct term, but you have a number associated with it, like 300 milliseconds or half a second. What is that number? I don't know. It's some. But you mean to say that you've calculated this number or this number must theoretically exist? Must theoretically exist. And there's no fuzziness even within the number itself?

I'm sure there is fuzziness. So then does that not technically mean that you can bring this fuzziness all the way back to one year ago? And just with a low probability you can influence what happened a year ago? Maybe, yes. Do you ever think about that? Not enough. Yes, I think about it sometimes. But the thing is that I'm trying to go,

to do better than what I have. I'm trying to do non-relativistic quantum theory. And these are really questions that will make sense. Sorry, relativistic quantum theory. And these are really questions that will make sense. Sorry, relativistic quantum theory. Right, right. And these are systems that have questions that I'll be able to answer precisely when I have that. And I have pieces of it, but I haven't worked through all the examples I want to. And by relativistic quantum theory, do you mean QFT or something else?

I mean basically what Freddy Cajazo means when he says an amplitude, a theory of quantum amplitudes, which is relativistic. Because I think I've re-discovered what Freddy and Witten and other people have been doing for a few years. But there's some tracking stones in there. What are some of the ideas in physics that you feel like...

Okay, firstly, there's some ideas that are overhyped. Yeah, sure. So what are some of the underhyped ideas? So what are some of the underhyped ideas? I think the idea that there is nothing outside the universe, and all the variants of that, that there's a finite number of particles, there's a finite number of observers, etc., are underappreciated with the power that those ideas have.

I think the weak holographic principle, as opposed to the strong holographic principle, is undervalued. What would be the difference between those two? The strong holographic hypothesis says that to the interior, if I have a space-like sphere in three plus one dimensions, then it has a boundary which is a space-like circle times evolution in time. And, I'm sorry, a space-like two-sphere. Okay. And the strong holographic principle says that the entropy of the system,

which is defined to the interior of that S2 cross time, is limited by the usual constraint, by the entropy in Planck units being smaller than six pi. And the Wee Cholographic Principle says that you should see these two surfaces as, again I'm looking for a word, but these are two surfaces that flux passes through. Okay. And it's a limitation on the entropy flux. And here, Carlo and Abai and I are very much in agreement.

And we all have published different versions of that. What would be a time where you, Carlo, and Abai have disagreed vehemently, maybe even an altercation, like a loud verbal disagreement, but it's led to something fruitful? I don't think there's... The way it stands is very, very

different. I mean, Carlo and I have very different views about time. And what about Abai? Abai stays out of the philosophy? He goes out in a different way. Explain to people who don't know what research is like, what it's like when you do collaboration, and what it means to have different styles.

Because it sounds to most people who aren't in math or physics, that it must be theorem-proving. You do modus ponens, and it's logical, it's straightforward. I mean, maybe there's idea generation, and then there's differences there. But how much can different styles come into play? I don't know. I'll give you an example. So if all you know are the rules to chess, you're just a beginner.

You have no idea what it means when someone's like, Bobby Fischer was an aggressive player. Yes. But when you know more about chess, you see, okay, whoa, like you should be on the defensive here, but he actually takes the center. He starts attacking.

He starts calling check or whatever it may be. So there's an emotional style to something that is analytical. And that's something that you get as you study chess more. I think people don't understand what chess or mathematics is. You ascribe much more reality to the rules of chess. I think these are all partial. I think if you play chess long enough, you discover contradictions. Or you might discover.

You discover the inability to prove the lack of contradictions. What do you mean by that? In chess in particular, or are you then about to make an analogy to physics? I'm making an analogy to the real second theory. Yeah, okay. What does that have to do with physics? That chess is open in the same way

that we're talking about games being open. That is, in chess you can have finite games, but you can have infinite games. That's why you can, what's it called? That's when you give up. I forget what it is. Resign? Resign first. My understanding is, tell me if I'm wrong, that there can be games of chess that can't be won by either party. Yes, they can be, my understanding is, tell me if I'm wrong, that there can be games of chess that can't be won by either party. Yes, they could be stalemated.

Yeah. So chess is more interesting, I would say, as a mathematical system than most people think. Mm-hmm. I believe it was Freeman Dyson who said that Gödel's incompleteness theorem is likely to have an implication on physics. I don't know if he said likely, but he doesn't discount it at all.

Yes, of course. And then there's some people who say it has nothing to do with physics. It's a property of formal systems. Okay. And particular formal systems at that.

What do you say? It depends on whether you can formulate physics entirely in a correct theory, which is also finite in the sense of what we're saying, in which every physics problem has an answer, which is provable or not. And I don't think we know. I mean, I've tried to ask people and talk about it with people in mathematical logic,

but I don't think there's no answer. You said you tried to talk about it. Well, I have. Well, because of my own ignorance. Okay, okay. So not because they think that's a foolish idea. Why are you even discussing that, Lee? I'm going to go now.

I'm going to have some coffee somewhere else. No, no, no. No. I think there are people who enjoy discussing these things and people who don't. But I think that and I could be wrong,

but I think that there's a lot more openness in mathematics and chess and many things. Then? And once you allow that openness to come into mathematics, then there's...then mathematics becomes much more interesting because all these kinds of questions of why this and not this

become more real, more present. How do your views on biology influence your views on physics? I think it's more the other way. Uh-huh. But I think that we really don't understand important things about biology. They're very basic things we don't understand.

I mean, so there's this paper that Marina and her husband and Stu Kaufman wrote, actually three papers. And we try to discuss these questions, but they're really hard. What are some of the fundamental questions in biology that aren't understood, or the answers aren't understood? Well, Marina's question was, how many states are there in a biological system? states are there in a biological system.

And she noted that she and most people in astronomy or cosmology who had thought about it had thought that if you counted up the states in the universe with using the standard model to count things and estimate

the densities and so forth. You got some number and you allowed biology in, and that was only slightly more. But she claimed with, I guess with Stu and not yet with me, but I think they convinced me eventually, that there are many more possible states. I have to tell you what a state is. There are many more possible states in a system which can improve biology than in a system which doesn't.

So, for example, I have to allow all those chess games that we were talking about I have to allow I have to allow in my counting the states so so there are

let's count carbon atoms let's count proteins in the earth in the Earth's biosystem. Okay. Do you count the ones that are functional only or do you count all of them?

And if you count the ones that are functional, you need a language for discussing functions and counting them. And she argues that once you do that and you think about it, it's plausible that there are many more states in a system than in which. In other words, I might count, if I have a certain amount of the ingredients of proteins, and I count them as per function, I would count many more than if I just counted them as per atom.

Do you see the idea? No, I don't see why. So is the argument that, look, because you can have a thought, so you can have several thoughts, but if this were just atoms, the atoms don't have a thought. If we're to include thoughts in state space, then the entity that includes you has more in state space than if you weren't alive? Yes. Okay. So state space can also be understood as what potentially can exist. Potential. Yes. Okay, so state space can also be understood as what potentially can exist. Potential.

Yes. Why wouldn't that potential be there in the dead atoms versus you? That potential is there, otherwise it wouldn't have given rise to you with the thoughts, no? Yes. But the alternative is that there's no counting of things that are different in states which... This is really hard. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no. It's what we should be thinking about. I mean, this is exactly the question.

Do we count? We're here on the Earth in the Earth's biosphere. We're counting the states because we want to. And we want to know if we have a planet, that planet may in the future become alive. It may not become alive. And my intuition, although it's taken a long time to even consider it,

is that there are more states in the system which has the potential for life. And what gets me there is that I can't count functions. So let me give you an example of this. I don't see it, but somewhere near there is a hammer. Okay. That's a cancel. Now count its functions.

Oh, you're asking me to count its functions. Yeah. Five functions. Well, it certainly doesn't matter more than that. Okay. Because for every one you count, it's a function in a movie. Uh-huh. So there doesn't seem to be a definite number which is the functions of that. Professor, we were talking off-air at this point about what it's like to marry someone who's not in your field. So many mathematicians or many academics marry someone in either their field or is slightly adjacent,

or someone who has about their level of education. And what is it like? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages? Or maybe you don't view it like that. What are the different styles? Just that word again. Well, I don't know.

I mean, I married somebody pretty fantastic who is trustable and beautiful and smarter than almost anybody I know. And she has had many careers. She was a lawyer. She is now a consultant. She's been an actor and a producer in theater and events. And it's just wonderful.

And it's just wonderful. And it's very different. For example, a couple of career changes ago, she quit her job. And that made me very nervous because she made it through that job. And she said, trust me. And the entire time I said by the way you know you don't have a job what's going on she said no I'm doing what I should be doing

I'm lunching she's lunching because she said nobody would believe that she had quit a Bay Street firm a Bay Street law firm, unless she did quit it. And sooner or later, she got her name home from somebody who ran MetroLeaks, and she was offered a job which didn't exist before, which was improving the communications between Metro Leagues and the public.

Like a PR person? Well, but not really a PR person. There was many aspects of it. There was PR. There was going into the community and listening. When the trucks all came down and took all the houses down. Okay. And she did that for a few years

and then she quit. Etc. So now she works on housing, st. Tess. And anyway, it's interesting. I was married before to

a son at Frizen City. And she was also very interesting. But I was married before to a silent physicist. And she was also very interesting. What about the non-career aspects? Non-career aspects? So, for myself, with this job, I do plenty of thinking. Almost too much thinking. Good. So why don't you publish it? Well, these podcasts are published.

Like publish papers? Yes, why not? I'm thinking about it. Okay. Because it seems like most, if I'm not imposing on your structure here, it seems that most of the people you're interviewing are older, free-wise than you. Uh-huh. Explain more.

Most, many professional scientists and philosophers of your age or so are not doing things which are interesting. Which is a criticism I think they should be trying to do. Like what? Like tackle large problems? Yes. Yeah, so something that, one of the reasons that, one of my criticisms about the current academic system is that you get people when they're at their most creative, so they're 20 to 27,

and then you actually tell them, they come to you bright-eyed and say, I want to solve this huge problem. They say, professor says, no, no, no, no. Like, you're so naive. You'll lose that soon. What you should do is tackle a problem that you can publish on.

And they'll make this huge deal about there's a difference between a problem that's grand and a problem you can publish on. And they'll make this huge deal about there's a difference between a problem that's grand and a problem you can make progress on. Yes, they really. Yes. Then they'll say, well, look, also, if you want to get a career, you need a history in publication.

Yes. Which means you need to specialize when you're at your most creative. So for me, what I like about this podcast is that I get to speak to so many people, and I have these I have my own large ideas, but I also am interested in large ideas. Right. I get to speak to people like you. And I get an overview before I specialize.

Yes. Do you know this guy? Do you know this man? Neil? Steven C. On Richard Powers. What are these supposed to be? What's the relevance here?

They address all the fundamental questions you think you're talking about, and they don't have to answer them in these capable publications. address all the fundamental questions you think you're talking about. And they don't have to answer them when you can't label complications. And you don't have to monitor this, at least if you don't. And the guy at Judd's Pyramid is, for his best will. Now it's American, I'm with my friend. And of course,

he won't forget his name. They just, actually, this is the last, but, it's the second time. And it's a grant. This is embarrassing,

actually, but, but, It's okay. No, it's interesting that you don't know me. The book has the following... If you take all of the physics and math, that is what it's about. There's a boy and a girl. They grow up separately

at some point they're introduced to each other and they're both brilliant measures so to speak and say and it's it's

and they fall in love and they don't know what to do. So that's the seven people. Yeah. It's really dumb. There are two books, one which centers on him, sort of, and the other which centers on her. One of them dies, the other one survives. And it's a great book, I think.

It's actually two books. And unfortunately, he died in a human assassination failure. And I think that he poses the really deep questions about what is mathematics, what is physics, what is in the world, what is meant, and again, he didn't have to he didn't have to have any of the accounts or publications.

He had worked for a mental institution. He didn't work for an academic. Oh, he did. Well, I know that they paid him, that he was at the Santa Fe Institute, where he used to have lunch, and general, he was very shy. And so he had a very humble career.

I guess now it's a story that he had papers about philosophical ideas and mathematics and so forth, that I never see. And I can't remember his name. But it'll come to me.

Again, off air, I said this to you. This is a quote from my friend. He wanted to know what you thought of this. Physics does not need to obey mathematics, but our models of physics do, or tend to by design. Hence, there's a distinction between physics that we describe via models and the totally different thing, which is the physical universe. Yes, I think that's really wise.

I think that's an important distinction to start off on, on this thinking. This comes from my friend Biju, I just want to give credit right now. So can you explain why you think that's wise? I think that, let me prove to you that the moral theory of science is wrong. The model theory is the theory that says that to every mathematical, how is it put, to every mathematical model, let's say, of the world, there is a version of the world. And in the model of the world. That's the Tegmark one.

Yes. And I do believe that there's a world that exists for every value of answers to questions in our mathematical hijacks posed to this model world. I didn't say that very well, but I think you understand what I mean. Sure. Yes. And here's a thing which is true of every version of the world I know, I can think of, which is not true in any of the models, which is that in the world, it's always a moment. It's always a moment of time. And in the model world, it's never a notion of time.

What are you most proud of? Oh, well, I'm really proud of, I'm proud of Linkwano Gravity. I think that with Kano and Opai, we did something really nice. And it was fun. I learned through that and through other things that you can make really good friends while doing this activity of call research. And I think that's great.

I also think teaching is a great human thing. Even though you have to play up with people who have bad characters. It is a combination of a selfish character and what the rules of academics let you get away. Can be pretty unpleasant. What do you mean without giving any specific names if you don't want to, but what do you mean? Can you give an instance or speak around? I'm not going to. Because anything I say would be misinterpreted

if anybody cared. But it's also true, I am in a very different situation because everything I do is hard. So getting out in the world and getting out in the world is fun. And I used to be very lazy just because I could do something, want to do something and do it. How is that lazy?

Because it didn't require much self-evaluation, self-discipline. Okay, you were undisciplined. Yes. Uh-huh, uh-huh. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure if I retired, I would keep doing the same stuff.

Right. And I think that's good. Because in my story of the world, what I have to give to the understanding of these questions is not zero. It may not be enough, but it's not zero. Suppose you were entering the field again? Oh, I was going to biology. I understand.

Suppose you're entering the physics field, or even the mathematical field, but let's say the physics field, the high energy field, which we didn't even touch on the crisis, because... Oh, let's talk about... Sure.

Sean Kier has a four-hour podcast just on why there's no crisis in physics. You know, I like Sean very much. I even deeply appreciate him, because he learned. When he first started interacting with philosophers, he wasn't very impressive, but he really studied.

He really learned, and he can do the philosophical thing of make arguments on their level to them, and that's very impressive to me. And he is also a decent physicist, quite a bit decent, if I can say it. But he somehow manages to end up on the least interesting point of view, I mean, question he deals with. And the least ambitious question. I don't know why he says that.

You mean the most conservative point of view? Yes. And it's, I don't know, I don't know. Anyway, what, you know do you know Fire Robin Fire Robin yeah do I know Fire Robin

do you know Elton no oh my god well that book is in in my office in Waterloo go home just stay here and order yeah order him. His book,

his main book, is called Against Method. He was a student of Popper from the same sort of world of Austrian I don't know, Austrian troublemakers in the 1940s. Yes. And he's a great philosopher, I think. Anyway, get that book and read it.

Uh-huh. And then Fire Robin was. Oh, no, no, no. I know who you're referring to. Yeah, sorry. I didn't understand the I thought Fire Robin was, the first name was Fire and the last name Robin. No, I know who you're referring to. Okay, good. So, Fire Robin,

one of his, he wrote a book of essays in response to articles, critiques of his book made by more conventional philosophers. And he wrote a rebuttal to them. Anyway, he's very interesting. And unfortunately died too. And this has to do with the crisis in physics? Yes. And I once asked him about the crisis in physics. So I'm really trying to lead up to that story.

And he said to me, why do you care? Just do what you want to do, and nobody will stop you. As long as it's something that, as long as you care more than they do, let it be done. Nobody will stop you.

And Pais said the same thing to me. I used to have lunch with Pais, and Pais said, look, it was exactly the same in my day. They were all bastards. So I think one just tries to have courage and goes on. What advice do you have for the teenager going into university watching this? But also it could be the 60-year-old person who wants to reenter the field. Maybe they've left it for a while.

Mm-hmm. I think it's about the same as at any age. Be sincere. it's about the same as it's at any age be sincere be if you want to know if you want to be a scientist and make it worthwhile then no lying no no lying you said?

don't lie, tell the truth if you didn't solve the problem then you didn't solve the problem, then you didn't solve the problem. And you say so. My physics undergraduate teacher, used to tell us, if you can't solve the whole problem, then find a problem you can solve.

And do that and turn it in. But that doesn't work. That doesn't make a career. the whole world problem, then find a problem you can solve. Yeah. And do that and turn it in. But that doesn't work and that doesn't make a career. At least it shouldn't make a career. That sounds to me more like it makes a career. Well, that's the problem. That is, aim to solve a real problem that affects our real understanding of the real world. have a real problem that affects our real understanding of the real world.

And if you don't want to do things at that level, if you're not ambitious enough to try to do things at that level, then do something else. Do you think there's something wrong with not having enough ambition and good about having extreme ambition? I think we don't have enough people who have extreme ambition. I think it's okay that a lot of people go into university teaching, teach, because they don't have enough people to do that.

But this is part of it. Just be honest. And maybe your ambition is here maybe it's here obviously you would make a great teacher

and that's carefully worth doing and maybe you'd surprise yourself it's really about

being open to surprise. Do you want to end the talk by talking about Parkinson's? We mentioned that off-air. Well, it's certainly true when they say it's progressive. And I didn't really, I think I didn't allow myself to see that at earlier stages. But I think it's all, I know I must sound like some, I don't know what it is, but it's a silly thing to sit in this position and say it's all about character. But in a way it is.

Why is that silly? Because I'm losing bit by bit the opportunities to have other explanations. That is, it's not worth it to live through this if you don't find a way to enjoy it. You mean to enjoy life or to enjoy Parkinson's? What do you mean? Well, you can. I mean both.

By the way, I'm trying to solve Parkinson's. Uh-huh. And of course I won't succeed, but... But you can make a huge dent. Well, let's see. I have two ideas. One of them is that the theory is chiro. The other is the phase transition?

Yeah, but it's also chiro. It affects one side of the body before it affects the other for a long time, only before it affects the other side of the body time, only before it affects the other side of the body. And I think if you try to think about how it could be that there's something in the way that my dopamine receptors on one side, and just a certain way, there's other very

similar processes going on except they lose the dopamine and that's very hard to understand and that could be and nobody there's very few people

who thought about that have you collaborated with John Baez no but I love him has he thought about this? Oh, no, not on Parkinson's. I just meant on physics or math. I would love to.

He's really interesting. Yeah, you see, if I was retired, I could just pick up and go to John if I wanted to talk to him. Uh-huh. Which, let me end on this story if I haven't told you. Do you know who BJ is? BJ?

Working. It doesn't come to mind. He is a near Nobel Prize winner in particle physics. Okay. He invented the idea that I mean, he was one of the people who invented the idea that particle physics was about short distances where things became weakly interacting

so the idea of partons and anyway I met him because he got divorced. I guess his wife died, and he got very unhappy because of that. And he works at Slack in California, but he also has a cabin way up in the hills in Wyoming, nothing like that, that he retreats to. And one year after his wife died, he was there in Wyoming by himself.

And he read something by Carnot, and he got very interested in it and decided to rebuild the sort of the quantum gravity as particle physics kind of thing. And anyway, he, what he used to do

was he had an old station wagon, I think. And he loaded the back seat down with physics books that he was interested in

and he drove around visiting friends. And he came, so I was, this was in our first term here at Furmaner and we had a receptionist and she called me up one morning and said, there's a guy who's come to see you. And I said, who? And she said, he says he's called DJ or JB or something. And he was standing in our entrance. This is the original building. And he hadn't told me unless he was coming. I had maybe met him once before. But I came in, I dressed up,

came in as quickly as I could, and started talking to him. And we invited him, of course, to stay with us. We ran him a hotel, because he was wanting to just camp in the parking lot. And he spent, in the end, most of the year with us. And that was wonderful, and that's, that's somebody who loves physics. The point of the story is that he just. He just came, he just, he wanted to understand something, he was reading Carlo's book, and he just came.

Professor, it's an honor to speak with you, thank you for inviting me into your home. Thank you. The podcast is now concluded. Thank you for watching. If you haven't subscribed or clicked that like button, now would be a great time to do so, as each subscribe and like

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