294. Sabine Hossenfelder — Existential Physics (2)
2 (12m 49s):
So that's one part of the story, but I think the worst part of the story is that they don't, they really don't see anything wrong with, with most of it. They've just become so used to this motive procedure that it's okay. You just throw together some equation and Paula, you have a new theory for the origin of the universe. It it's just become generally accepted.
1 (13m 19s):
Right? Yeah. So you and I were on this panel a few months ago on theories of everything they brought me on just to talk about people outside of science who think they have theories of everything. If I get these theories that people send to me, I guess they're hoping I'll publish them in skeptic. And their idea of skeptic is that we should be skeptical of mainstream physics because the outsiders have some kind of truth. You must get these all the time. What do you think the appeal is to theories of everything that mostly focus on physics and cosmology and astronomy? I mean, I rarely get ones about biology or physics or geology or medicine. I mean, there's a few, but, but it seems like people, and it's almost always guys that that think they've concocted, you know, like the origins of the universe, or I've shown that Einstein was wrong and Newton was wrong and, and Stephen Hawking and Richard Fineman were wrong and they usually misspelled their names.
1 (14m 13s):
What is the appeal do you think? Is it, I don't know. What, what do you think is the appeal there?
2 (14m 18s):
So yeah, I mean, it's certainly something that is, that happens a lot in theoretical physics though. Also in other disciplines, I recently learned that, for example, in seismology, there are lots of people who think they can predict earthquakes. So I think there are some appeal in this because you can download the data, then you can try to fumble around with it. And yeah. And then interestingly, those earthquakes theories come in two types. On the one side, you have the engineer type who tries to fit some data series that on the other side, you have stereotypically, I'm afraid, mostly women who think they can feel earthquakes coming.
2 (15m 3s):
So, and we w we don't get this in physics. I, I yet have to find, find a woman who can, you know, feel a document that goes through with something like this. So what's the appeal. I think it comes from the way that we have communicated research on the foundations of physics. You know, for decades, we have taught people all were so close to finding this theory of everything and they there's gotta be something. And so people think, you know, they'll be the one to find it. And it goes together with this, that, that we have very much popularized this lonely genius myth. You know, you just sit there and suddenly, wow, you have an idea.
2 (15m 43s):
And, and everything works out fine, which has never been the case that it's actually worked in reality. But I think a lot of people, you know, when they're kind of near retirement, they feel like, oh, maybe they should try their hands on helping in your theory of everything. And that's how it happens. And I have to add there, you know, I have a lot of sympathy for that because those are interesting problems. And, you know, if you're thinking about stuff like dark matter or the measurement problem, quantum mechanics, and so on and so forth, and it's fine with me, you know, if people want to work out their brain and thinking about those metals, I just kind of wish they wouldn't send that theories to me.
1 (16m 26s):
Right? Yes. Well, Einstein's always a target, cause I guess he's the most famous scientist in history and he, you know, he's often portrayed as well. He was just this, nobody working at a patent office and he came up with these theories. Why can't I come up with theories just doing my regular job. And of course he wasn't just a patent clerk. He had already had a PhD in physics and deep training in German physics community and, and so on. It's. So it's not like, as I like to say, if I had a dream about riding on a beam of light or falling down an elevator shaft, I'm not coming up with the theory of relativity because I have no background to any of this. Right. So I, you know, I think to think out of the box, you have to know what's in the box.
2 (17m 11s):
Yeah, that's right. I was very connected to the entire community. At the time. You, you can tell this already by looking at the names of all the mathematical equations and structures, like, I mean, there's Lawrence symmetry, right? It's not quite Einstein symmetry. It's called Lawrence symmetry. That's Minkowski space. There are three Mannion geometry. There is the, the Hilbert action, you know, all those people, they were working with him on this. Basically they were developing the mathematics along with him and he was collaborating very closely with them.
2 (17m 51s):
So I don't mean to diminish his achievement. You know, he worked, he was kind of the person to put all the puzzle pieces together and without Einstein, you know, it might have taken decades longer. So, so that's, that's super amazing, but he was also one person in a community. And I, and I entirely agree with you if, if you are, if you aren't part of, I'd say Pronto, your research in the foundational or pollinators or physics at the moment, there's no way you will come up with the great solution by sitting in the shower or whatever he wants to do.
2 (18m 32s):
It's just not going to happen.
1 (18m 34s):
Yeah, that's right. Well, I think another appeal to general readers is right there in the title of your book, existential physics. I mean, you're dealing with the biggest questions in life that interests everybody who would not be interested in where the universe come from. What's the future of the universe, freewill and determinism, you know, what is the nature of consciousness? And, you know, you're dealing with this from a physics perspective. What is time? Is there a now, do we get to live forever? You know, in some other state and, and on and on who doesn't care about those things? I mean, those are the deepest questions in life, right? So I get that appeal.
2 (19m 13s):
Yeah. Well, I hope a lot of people would get that up here. So I mean, the stuff that I write in, in the book is kind of, you know, it's not really new, but I think it's a new way of summarizing the research that has been done, which stretches back, you know, almost a century, if you're looking at the foundations of quantum mechanics and special relativity, where, where a lot of the stuff about time and past and the passage of time, and so on changed dramatically with Einstein,
1 (19m 50s):
Right? I, I pulled out this quote. I love from Einstein that he wrote to the family of McKelly Beso after he died. And then Einstein died a month later and he writes, this is often quoted. So you'll know it. Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing for us. Believing physicists, that distinction between past present and future only has the meaning of an illusion though, a persistent one. Well, we know Einstein was not a believer in any traditional religious sense. He was an agnostic at least. What did he mean by that? So he went and what does that mean? I'm a, he's a believing physicist. He's, he's talking about the agreement about what time is and what does that mean?
1 (20m 34s):
That there's no distinction between past and present.
2 (20m 37s):
So he might have meant one of two things. One is that in, in special relativity, and also to some extent in general relativity it's, it's not possible to define a moment of now as a special moment. It's, it's called the relativity of simultaneity. That's quite a mouthful, but it basically means that this moment of now is different for, for all observers, but why should somebody else's perception of now be any better than yours? And now you have the problem that somebody else's now might be your future or your past.
2 (21m 25s):
So the only logical conclusion you can draw from this is that all moments exist the same way. So this is the one thing that he might have been referring to. The other thing he might've been referring to is that when we write down the laws, by which things change in time, you know, Wiebe or stones that you throw or galaxies, or what have you, then those are all embedded in this space time, but there is no special moment on the entire time of illusion that would correspond to a.
2 (22m 7s):
Now gives me, we can only talk about relations between the time and the configurations in space, but it's, so this experience that we have of this moment of now is a very subjective thing that comes with, from our relation to matter in the universe, loosely speaking. And it's something that I actually am worried about a lot,
1 (22m 34s):
Right? There's that scene in the, in the great biopic series on Einstein, where I think it was Beso, he was standing next to, and, and he's trying to walk him through a thought experiment and like, picture yourself up on this hill. And you see this train going by, and there's two lightning bolts that hit the same time, same time. And he goes, okay, I see that. And he goes, now the train is moving and you know, and he tries to walk them through. They, they, they can't, if you're on the train, the one lightning bolt happens sooner than the other lightning bolt. They're not at the same time, but if you're standing off to the side, they are at the same time. And he has to walk them through this a couple of times before the guy gets it like, ah, right.
1 (23m 15s):
So that's what he's talking about, right? The Mo whether you're in motion or you're off to the side watching or whatever, there is no real now
2 (23m 23s):
That's right. So, so that's, that's where it comes from. Now. It's easy to mistake this for just a quirk of our perception that comes from the speed of light being finite, but it's actually quite deeply embedded in the mathematics. There's just no way you can construct a moment of now in any meaning.
1 (23m 46s):
Right. But, but psychologically now is about three seconds. Psychologists say it's kind of that, that the time it takes to process the information that's coming in and be aware of it, and then to the next moment, and then the next moment, and those are like three second chunks, but here, we're just talking about psychology, the perception of time, not actual time. So how does a physicist define time? What is that?
2 (24m 13s):
So for, for the physicist, I would say at, at the current status of our theories time is the dimension. That's the way that we use it. So when, when you're talking about our individual perception of time, I would just say, well, that's, that's not in the realm of physics to begin with. It's much more complicated thing, but yeah, for us, time is the dimension. It's just something that we use to describe our observations. And it it's good at that. And I know a lot of, a lot has been made out of the question, whether the time is real, in some sense, I would say the, the answer is obviously yes, because it works very well to describe what we observe.
