306. Fear of a Black Universe (6)
1 (57m 8s):
You know, like, like max take marks, you know, the universe is mathematical. I don't even know what that means. I've asked people, explain it to me, I'm not sure I really intuitively get it, but maybe that's pushing up against that wall.
2 (57m 21s):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I, you know, I'm sympathetic to that idea, but it's, I don't, I, I, let's say I, I have a hard enough time in my own problems, but one interesting thing about that, you know, is, that's funny. You know, you know, one interesting thing about what you just said there, and, and your question actually is related to something else that had that, that, you know, it's a quote from Abdu Salam, you know, the Nobel Prize winner, the Pakistani Nobel Prize winner. He won the Nobel Prize for electro week co-discovered along with Stephen Weinberg and Shelly Glashow, the electro week unification, the quantum field theory that unifies the electromagnetic and the weak interactions.
2 (58m 8s):
And in his noble speech, noble prize speech, he said, Scientific inquiry is a common heritage of humanity. So, in other words, his observation, and he's somebody that actually was very studied the history of science a lot. He even wrote a book on it, is that actually no matter where you go on the globe and you look back at history and this idea that somehow scientific and this type of, this way of thinking, mathematics, science is only something that, you know, that, that happens with Europeans. It's happened all over the world. I mean, the Ren papyrus is this olds from Egypt data. I don't know, I definitely, over a thousand years before, before Greece came on the scene, you know, paths and you know, Plato and others, and you'll find mathematical equations.
2 (58m 57s):
It's something that humans do. If you leave us alone, no matter what culture we find ourselves in, we might apply to different things. You know, you know, you know, not enough weaves and complicated ways, right? I mean, but that mathematical ability and that type, that type of thing, amongst other type of things in thinking, including music, musical thought, right? Is there, Right? So I find that's just sort of like a qu area of what you just said there, which is that we let the hardware run. Like, we're gonna do this, We're gonna be thinking, we're gonna be doing math, and trying to unuse that as a lens. It seems to be a sixth sense that that human culture has developed.
2 (59m 40s):
Right. And we could learn it, we can teach it to each other. We could pass it on just like we pass on language. And I think that's really cool.
1 (59m 48s):
Yeah. We, Steve Pinker toyed with that idea and our issue on, are we living in a post-truth world? His answer is, well no, because it, it, that statement alone would have to be defended. And the moment you open your mouth, you've refuted yourself. Cuz you have to give arguments for why you think we're living in a post-truth world. Right. So,
2 (1h 0m 9s):
Yeah, he's a, he's a clever guy.
1 (1h 0m 11s):
Yes, indeed. He is.
2 (1h 0m 12s):
Yeah. You know, I got a great Steve Pinker story. Oh yeah. So one time, so I'm, you know, I'm friendly with, I'm friends with, and I was friends with his, his, with Rebecca Goldstein. And so Steve and Rebecca back, you know, a number of years ago I invited them and some colleagues over my place. This is when I was at Dartmouth for dinner. So I was in my kitchen making Trinidad and curry chicken, and I was with this big knife chopping the chicken. And Steve was in, in the kitchen and, you know, he, we were both drink, he was drinking a glass of wine, we're talking, and then, and I knew that he wrote this book, you know, I forget what book, but he said, but he made a, there was, he started a big argument, a big debate in the music cognition community cuz he made a statement that music is evolutionary cheesecake.
2 (1h 0m 59s):
Meaning that, you know, there's nothing deep about it. It's nothing cognitive. And then people like Danny Levithan, you know, people, it was a fun thing to debate in that, in that community. Yeah. And here I am thinking that I was gonna write this book, and I was scared to tell Steven about that. I was gonna write an entire book about why jazz music is like physics. Right. So anyway, so you know, where he we're in the kitchen and I have this big knife, I'm chopping the chicken. And he goes, So what do you, what are you thinking? Rebecca tells me you're writing, thinking of writing a book. And I was like, Yeah, I'm writing this book about, and I know that, you know, you said this thing about music, but I'm writing this book about jazz music and physics.
2 (1h 1m 41s):
And he goes, Oh, that's a great idea. You know, you should call that book The Jazz of Physics.
1 (1h 1m 46s):
There you go.
2 (1h 1m 47s):
So he gave me my book title. Oh,
1 (1h 1m 49s):
That's nice. Oh, that's great. Yeah. That's really funny. That's a good story. Yeah.
2 (1h 1m 54s):
Well, thank you Steven.
1 (1h 1m 55s):
Yes. I will pass that along to him. He'll be out here next month for some conference. We're gonna go for a bike ride Anyway. Yeah. So
2 (1h 2m 2s):
I said hi.
1 (1h 2m 3s):
I will indeed. Okay. Couple other things. So on the Nick Bostrom, it's more than 50% probability we're living in a, a simulation Now, what are your thoughts on that?
2 (1h 2m 14s):
Oh, I mean, There's a part of me that's like, it's hard to be, I mean, right. You know, when I look at, when, when I study sort of like the laws of physics and I study the big bang, then I look at the str the fact that we have this a brain that is very, a very, very advanced form of circuitry. It's interesting to entertain whether that actually, I mean in a sense, like, you know, here's one way in which I think he's right. The mathematical equations that we have, right? I mean, the various solutions are like, you know, running a code. It's like running a simulation, like different, you know, I give you this matrix equations and stuff, and I, I turned the knobs this way.
2 (1h 3m 2s):
I manipulate the, the equations. And it presents basically different outcomes of a program. In a lot of ways. If you think about these equations that govern our physical law as some very complicated algorithm and program, the solutions generate actually simulations in a lot of ways. That's how we get to make predictions of our theory, right? We predicted the HS particle, right? We had a set of, you know, a set of equations, quantum mechanical equations, and we knew that the principles of quantum fuel theory, one of the sacred ones was something called unitar, the conservation of probability. And that the theory would fail if un unless you had something that looks like a, a hicks field.
2 (1h 3m 44s):
And this was used, right? This was used in a theory to fix that, to, to keep that principle of the master code. And then that thing was, that was developed in the sixties, that idea. And then there was a prediction that this should be a particle called a hicks particle, which you have these properties, you know, and should interact in these ways and it should give mass to particles in this particular way. And all those properties were found right by the large tron colitis. So it's like, it's like a code. So in that sense, but the question is of course, it's like what is the substrate? And you know, obviously you run into all these now issues of like, okay, who, no, not who.
2 (1h 4m 25s):
But anyway, I'll leave that up for the philosophers to
1 (1h 4m 28s):
Deal with. Yeah, well you really touching on a kinda philosophy of science problem that is to what extent does a theory need to be tested, or at least in principle be falsifiable, right? So had the Higgs not been found that have falsified it or, or just left it hanging there until we can do more research?
2 (1h 4m 47s):
Oh, that's a good thing. I think in the case of the Higgs, if the Higgs wasn't found, it would've made my job and the job of a lot of field theorists and particle physicists really interesting and very difficult because, and we would've had to, it's like, wait a minute, there's a baby in bath water here. Like the principles underlying our standard model as highly, it's highly constraining, right? The predictions had so far made, you know, 12, 13 decimal points in accuracy between what's observed and what's predicted. And then are you telling me that now using the same machine, same principle, same equations, I don't find this thing, then it would mean that basically in the regime that, that the theory is we thought the theory was gonna be operating, the theory is falsified and that regime, But it is, but it is, it is operational and correct in another regime, similar to how Newman's laws break down, when I actually thought asking about cause and effect, our Einstein showed that the theory had an internal in inconsistency, it had a spooky action in the distance.
2 (1h 6m 2s):
And in trying to fix that, he came up with, with, with general relativity. So, but he was, he, it's very important that general relativity in the right regime and the right approximation gave me back everything we knew about Newton because that's how we can fly satellites out there, right?
1 (1h 6m 19s):
Right. So, and airplanes, so Einstein becomes world famous after Edington tested his theory with the, That's experiment. Although that's a pretty interesting story because there were two teams, and one, so Newton had made certain predictions about the bending of light. And Einstein made predictions that were more extreme. And the one team found one closer to Einstein and the other team, which was partially clouded out. And the data was kind of fuzzy. It looked like it might be closer to Newton. But any case, the Eddington pushed the, the other team closer to Einstein and it was later corroborated. And so we know Einstein was right about that. And that's what put 'em on the map.
1 (1h 6m 60s):
Now, can a theory be accepted without a mechanism? Let me just give you an example. Like the theory of evolution and natural selection. You know, Darwin had no mechanism. He didn't know about DNA or anything like that. And he had some funky theories about Gauls blending and he didn't know. No one knew, Right? And it wasn't until 53 with Crick and Watson decoding dna. Okay? That's how it happens. Now we have a mechanism or Alfred Vainer saying, Look, looks like continents stripped around the globe. But you know, a lot of the pushback was, yeah, well that's just patternicity. They didn't use that word. But, you know, you just think the, the, the continents look like they fit together. That's just accident. Cause what could possibly push continents around the globe? They're too heavy until they got plate tectonics in the 1950s.
1 (1h 7m 43s):
Oh, okay. There's these giant cells and it's a liquid core and it's pushing them and all that stuff, you know? So to what extent can some theories of in physics be just accepted cuz they're mathematically beautiful or they, they fall, they, they pass tests experimentally, even if you don't know what's behind it. Like Newton famously, well, what is gravity? Well, I, I fe no hypotheses, right? I don't know what it is. I don't care what it is, doesn't matter what it is, This is what it does. And I can predict that. And that's all we need to know.
