294. Sabine Hossenfelder — Existential Physics (7)
2 (1h 12m 46s):
And this, this brings up the question like, given that, you know, this is the case, do you think that free will exist? And I would say no, because I don't know in this situation, what it would mean for something to even be free or what it would mean for something to be willed like who's doing the willing, what do we even mean by world free, from what free to do what doesn't really make sense to me. So this is why I say, let's just get rid of this idea of freewill. I don't know what it's, what it's good for, but I don't really have a problem with compatibilists who want to come forward with a different definition of free world and a different one once of them, Tim Palmer has one.
2 (1h 13m 33s):
What's his name? Elbert David Albert has one. I caught some other people who have their own ideas, something about the autonomy by what she can make decisions, as opposed to the autonomy, autonomy, autonomy off my phone or Tosta, which are typical examples. You could say they have far less autonomy, and this is all fine with me.
1 (1h 13m 55s):
Yeah. Interesting. I brought up Tim Palmer, cause I know you guys are friends. I didn't know that before I read your book and had him on the show, but so I guess what I'm getting at is if you two sat down for a beer and, and, and started arguing this question of freewill, how would you end the conversation? Like, well, okay, you have your perspective. I have mine. It's ultimately insoluble. Or could you convince him that the universe is determined and he doesn't have any free will, could he convince you using chaos theory that you have some autonomy somewhere in there? Or is it just not solvable?
2 (1h 14m 27s):
This is somewhat, somewhat disappointing me for German. I don't drink beer. I'm not the wine wine-drinking type, but yeah. So we've had this discussion many times and I think we, we don't have any fundamental disagreements. We just disagree on what can plausibly be called free will. And I, I would say he's a little bit more free about what you can call free will. So he has this particular idea of where our impression of free will comes from. And again, that, that's fine with me. I'm not really sure. Like, why would you want to call it free?
2 (1h 15m 7s):
Will I think that I kind of linguistically have a problem with the phrase free world, because it combines two things that almost oxymoronic, right? How can something both be free and be wilt with, by whom? And then why is it still free like this? So I think I just don't like the expression to some extent,
1 (1h 15m 28s):
It seems to me, it turns on the question of, could you have done otherwise? Now, if we rewind the tape and play it back, if it's a read only memory tape, then you literally could not have done. Otherwise. It's just going to replay the past as it actually unfolded. But the question is, as you go forward, could you have done otherwise if the conditions were similar, so I'll just make up an example. You like wine, okay. So let's say maybe if you drink too much wine, you get a hangover and you, you want to avoid that. So yesterday you drank too much and you got a hangover and a headache or whatever. So tomorrow, you know, Sabina is going to reconsider all the conditions that led to that mistake and not make that one.
1 (1h 16m 14s):
Okay. I'm going to only have one bottle of wine in my house so that when I drink that before dinner, during dinner and after dinner, I can't go past that. Knowing that I have this weakness, right? Future Sabina is going to do X. And I know this from the past. So I'm going to structure my environment. So now current Sabina knows that the future you is going to make this mistake. So who is doing that? You are, you are making that decision aware of past conditions, but this assumes that the universe is not predetermined. That tomorrow could be different. If you act on it, you as an agent acting in the world can change the future.
1 (1h 16m 55s):
Oh, this is how I think of it. But maybe you would say, no, no, it's, it's all predetermined.
2 (1h 17m 0s):
So first of all, this is actually not how I would think about it, but also I'm, you have to remember that because of those quantum in deterministic events, the future actually might have random element to it. So it, in that sense, to some extent you could actually say you, you could have done otherwise, though, it brings us back to the question like who is, who is doing the doing to some extent, if that makes any sense, because it was, well, maybe it was just the laws of nature who were putting in this random element. No, I, I think I, I would just look at this situation as saying, well, I'm contemplating certain possible future evolutions and I'm making a decision like which one is the one that is the best.
2 (1h 17m 53s):
It, there doesn't have to actually be like, actually in reality, be any different option to choose from. It's just that I, I have to contemplate it.
1 (1h 18m 8s):
Hm. So the statement, the universe is predetermined or the universe is not predetermined. Is there an answer to that? Or is that just one of these? Nobody knows.
2 (1h 18m 19s):
Well, so I guess strictly speaking, it's generally the case that we can never tell whether a scientific theory is true. This was Papa's point. Basically. You can't verify it. We can also, you can only falsify it. And the same is true for determinism. Non-determinism we'll never be able to fundamentally verify it's just not possible, but we can certainly look at the theories that we currently have and say, well, they have this or that property. And the series that we currently have, have this combination of determinism and non-determinism.
1 (1h 19m 1s):
Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Well, I want to be mindful of your time. Last two big questions, that existential questions you didn't exactly deal with this directly in the book, but it's suggested there. Why is there something, rather than nothing, you know, Pete theists, especially like that as this question, you know, what their answer is, but is that a problem that could even be dealt with by physicists? Or is this, are we in the realm of metaphysics? Why is there something rather than nothing?
2 (1h 19m 26s):
Yeah. So I think it's not a question for science, which is why I didn't included in the book. It would have been a very short chapter and it wasn't really worth the page, but again, it depends on what you mean by nothing. I was just the other day, reading an essay or rereading an essay from Robert Lawrence, Coon about the nine levels of nothing, which I'm sure you know. And so some physicists would say, for example, Lawrence Cross has said, excuse me, that the universe was created or have been created from nothing.
2 (1h 20m 9s):
But what he means by nothing is not really nothing according to other people, because you still have some loss of nature. You still have some quantum structures. What have you. So I guess you would say, well, that, that wasn't really nothing that you created the universe from. And I would agree with this, but you know, it's one of those cases where you have to specify your terminology. Yeah. So I, I'm kind of sympathetic to both sides. I guess I can see that it's, it's pretty astonishing. What you can do with mathematics. You know, you can produce space and time by putting an operator on some kind of abstract, abstract state in some kind of space.
2 (1h 20m 56s):
As I said, you know, there are lots of things you can do in mathematics. And you know, I, I don't have a particular problem with the idea that you can do it. I think there no evidence speaking for it, but again, it doesn't really touch on the question. Like why is there something rather than nothing? I just think it's one of those questions that, that will be forever stuck with. Basically.
1 (1h 21m 19s):
I think there's a lot of those. Yeah. Not only am I familiar with it, I wrote a whole long essay on why there is something, rather than nothing based on John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn's book, the mystery of existence. Why is there anything at all? Of course, a lot of people have written about this, but I particularly liked their kind of overview. So here's what they write first that nothing is inconceivable. Not just emptiness, not just blankness and not just emptiness and blankness forever, but not even the existence of emptiness, not even the meaning of blankness and no forever. And it's like at this point, I don't even know what the words mean anymore.
1 (1h 21m 59s):
Right? I mean, we just kind of hit some kind of the epistemological wall. It's like, what are these words? This is crazy. And he includes things that would have to be in the category of nothing physical, mental, platonic, spiritual, and God physical, all matter energy space, time, and all the laws and principles that govern them, knowing an unknown, mental, all kinds of consciousness and awareness, platonic, all forms of abstract objects, like numbers, logic forms, propositions, probabilities, and spiritual and God, anything that could possibly fit this non physical category, all forms of religious and spiritual belief. If by nothing has met no physical objects or matter of any kind, there can still be energy from which matter can arise by natural forces, the kind of stuff you talk about and so on.
1 (1h 22m 46s):
But if you, if you just carry this out, you eventually end up with nothing to even be thinking that, or even asking the questions or even ideas, platonic ideas. And so I dunno to me, I'm with you on that. I just think, okay, now what do you go have a glass of wine. Okay. So yeah,
2 (1h 23m 7s):
I've pretty much the same reaction to this question. I'm like, yeah. You know, if someone else was to think about it is fine with me, I can't really see what could possibly come out of it.
1 (1h 23m 18s):
Yes. Well, I guess psychologically, we have the capacity to know that we're going to die and in everyone we've ever seen, you know, eventually goes and everyone, whoever, a hundred billion people that lived before us, not one of them has come back from the dead or come back from heaven to describe what happens at least to the satisfaction of scientists. So, and yet you can't imagine yourself. Non-existing literally, you can't imagine it because to imagine something, you have to be existing, you have to be conscious and Cynthia, right. So I think this creates this paradox of, I can't imagine being dead. So something has to continue because I'm sitting here right now, continuing from one moment to the next.
1 (1h 24m 2s):
And I think it produces this drive to want to answer that question that may never be answerable,
2 (1h 24m 11s):
Maybe.
1 (1h 24m 14s):
All right. So being the last question in the teeth of all this we've been talking about, what is the purpose of life, the universe and everything.
