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David Deutsch: Einstein Would Fail Modern Grant Applications
October 6, 2025
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Why would Einstein fail a modern grant application? Fortunately, I'm not very familiar with the ways that grant applications are dealt with. I only know the gross features
In both senses of the word gross, that is where I noticed that grants that should have been awarded aren't fairly reliably when it comes to fundamental research, which is what I'm mainly interested in. So judging by my experience, and I certainly don't know what it was like over a hundred years ago in Germany,
But judging by my experience today in Britain and in America, he wouldn't have stood a very good chance because he wouldn't have been able to say what the application, well, first of all, he wouldn't have been able to say very clearly what he was trying to do.
because there was no one versed in relativity on the panel that judged physics applications. So none of them would have known what a manifold is, what the Riemann tensor is. So his application would have had to explain that in very elementary terms and they would have had in front of them
A pile of applications which from their point of view had much more merit because they could see that these were open research problems that needed to be solved only in the bigger picture they were incremental whereas Einstein's was fundamental.
So I think he would have had difficulty getting a grant and I think in historical fact he did have such difficulty. It was only when Max Planck saw that there was something interesting about him that he got him a job and again that isn't possible nowadays because there'd be anti-nepotism rules
There'd be rules about the procedure and every procedural rule is an impediment to any new kind of thing being tried. Anti-nepotism sounds positive. What's the negative side to it? Well, so, nepotism literally, if it means not giving a job to your nephew, then perhaps that
Perhaps that has merit but what it means is in practice that if you know someone personally you can't take part in the selection process for that person and you certainly can't get the university to let that person in. So it all has to be at arms length in order to ensure fairness now the.
The amount of unfairness that can be caused by not having that rule is very tiny compared with the enormous unfairness of having that rule because having that rule means that only people who know nothing about the candidate can rule on whether the candidates accepted.
So the natural question that arises in someone's mind is why is it that we need grants anyhow? So professors of the past like, and I'm speaking about fundamental physics, not just a generic professor, but say Einstein or Feynman or Everett, which I know you have some personal stories on Everett. Yes. And I'd like to get to those at some point, but I'd never heard them complain about the grant system. However, I hear complaints, especially all fair from contemporary professors about it frequently. So why does one require grants?
If they're already paid a salary, what are the grants for? What if you don't get a grant? Are you just sitting around twiddling your thumbs? Are you then seen as a net cost to the university and they just make you lecture? Yeah, that's what it is. I repeat, I'm not very familiar with the system and that's not an accident. I have intentionally distanced myself from any knowledge of the system because it is a very unpleasant thing to be connected with.
But yes, professors can do full-time teaching. Most of them don't want to. And that's not because they don't like teaching, I think, in many cases, but because they have to teach to a regimented
Curriculum and syllabus and they can't exercise their creativity and reveal to students why they are passionate about the subject and they have to get through a lot of it because the students are all competing with each other to get the exam results which are a very inaccurate measure of how suitable they are for future research. It's not even intended for that, it's intended for
displaying their qualifications usually to do something else which is by two orders of two orders of remove away from suitability for research and then and then here in britain i don't know what is like in the u.s. the professor has to apply for a grant
To do research which is going to and some of that money goes to the university so he had doesn't have to do. As much teaching but the student or graduate student has to separately apply for a grant that the math fact that the professor wants to include him on his research team is not enough. To provide for subsistence for the student.
And again the university takes a cut notionally because of desk space or lab space or whatever it is. So I think this this whole superstructure is contrary to what is needed for fundamental research and actually for all the functions of a university but particularly for fundamental research. What it should be is that
The grant-giving authority or the entity that pays for somebody to do fundamental research, whether it's a private charity, a private individual, the government or various branches of the government, the military, whichever it is, what they should be doing is awarding the grant to one person.
Sometimes that one person alone, like it would have been with Einstein, that one person alone is the research group. But in a more general case, that person would then spend part of his grant on hiring postdocs and undergraduate students. I mean, this whole hierarchy is counterproductive.
And in the research group, I believe in flat hierarchies. So ideally it should be the boss and everyone else. And the boss and everyone else should be equal as well. So that no one's commanding anything. They're all there on a joint project, which they believe passionately in. And that reminds me of another incident with my former supervisor.
Dennis Sharma, by the way, I've been very lucky, I was very lucky with my supervisors. He was once told by the higher-ups that they would be instituting a, what you call it, not time and motion, but yes, a clocking-in system where the students and post-docs in the morning, they would sign
The the whatever it was the register that they had how can they had to be in by 9 a.m. And so Dennis Sharma objected to this saying if any of my people Is in the department at 9 a.m. It's because they've been up all night Right. There's a story about Schwinger who was told can you lecture at 10 a.m. And then he paused and thought I don't know if I could stay up that late. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Well that that is the way
You know when physics was a small enterprise and there weren't that many physicists in the world and they were all rather eccentric and they were all supported by various other means other than a system. They were all rather eccentric and they all had their quirks and the thing whatever it was that sustained them.
Approved of those quirks so like in the Institute of Advanced Study as well as the first thing someone was told when they were given their 10 year or 15 year old 50 15 year grant or whatever is do whatever you like. That's that's what that's what the grant holder should be told. And that's what the grant holder in my opinion should tell. The postdocs and the graduate students and whoever else is working with him.
The. You might think well. It told that why shouldn't they just spend all the time drinking and well it's because they've been hired for the purpose it's been hired. Because they are passionate about something. And when you when you.
Peter Higgs said, I believe this was a decade ago now, that he wouldn't be able to get an academic job in today's environment. I think he said it's quote unquote as simple as that.
That he wouldn't be productive or something akin to that yes nor would I. Could quantum computing get invented today. I think what would happen. I think probably yes but but the way it would happen is that which is happening a lot already which is that people who are really passionate about some new fundamental thing apply for a grant to do something else.
To do something incremental. And they, they do the incremental thing to the minimum level required to sort of pass the various tests. They publish, they publish again, they publish again. Meanwhile, they're passionate thing. They don't necessarily publish because they're grappling with very difficult problems that don't, that don't admit of successive papers doing it better and better. They, they're waiting for a breakthrough.
So they do that in their spare time. And that is highly unsatisfactory. I imagine the retort would be, look, there's plenty of great work occurring. It would be foolish to paint all of academia with a brush of stagnation, although that word hasn't come up. I would like to talk about that as you had a whole conversation with the Conjecture Institute. I'll place a link on screen to that. It was fantastic about that subject. Anyhow, we don't want to paint all of academia with a brush.
So I don't want to appear to be trashing incremental research.
And also in that list of things you just mentioned, I don't want to classify all of those as incremental research. Some of them are indeed fundamental. What I want to say is that the research landscape taken as a whole is heavily biased against fundamental discoveries.
Everything we've talked about, the criterion for getting a grant, the structure of careers, the structure of university departments, all of them are heavily biased against fundamental research such that it is much more done in people's spare time.
then it is done in pursuance of the grant that they're getting. So, by the way, I also think that you mentioned what do I mean by grants. Somebody pays for research, which is blue sky research. It used to be that aristocrats did it. They funded their own research. So that's one way to go. But
The main so in regard to who funds it the main thing that is wrong with the existing setup is that there are too few. Sources of funding because the government has entered the field not only have they sort of crowded out other means of funding and also.
Prevented it in various ways, but the say the private charity, for example, who funds research, they're going to use the same criteria because they are what they do is they have a committee whom they assign the task of searching through sifting through all the applications and picking the best ones and they don't know
how to do that either they can't possibly know and they're forbidden from using one of the few ways that they could namely to ask their colleagues do you know someone who is worthy of this grant as they're not allowed to ask that
So in other words, broadly speaking, the government has now contributed. It sounds like a positive to physics, to fundamental research. They've given plenty of money. However, with that money comes some poor practices. These poor practices are then adopted by the individuals who previously used to donate without these poor practices. Yes. And and the result is not stagnation. I mean, there is a kind of stagnation, but that's a different story.
The result is not that the result is stagnation it's that there is a rather indirectly it is the result is. The emphasis of the fundamental in favor of the incremental not that there's anything bad about incremental research i said.
Yes, yes. And I would like to get to this definition of fundamental research. But just to pause here about government funding, I see public funding, which is a synonym for government funding as a net good. So am I incorrect in that? Or do I have to delineate between different types of public funding in my mind? The thing when the government funds something, it's very rarely
Doing harm i mean that does happen as well but on the whole. The things that funds are worth doing but they're not always worth the money. Especially when there are other things that could could be done which are prevented by the by the system by which the funds allocated. Now on the archive.
For those people who are listening who aren't researchers, there's something called ARXIV, pronounced archive, sometimes at least pronounced archive, where researchers post and also researchers look on a weekly to daily basis for new research. There's HEP, so high energy physics, and then there's quant physics. Is there a specific subcategory of the archive for this quote unquote fundamental research that you speak of, or does it just get pulled into one of these two?
It's done by subject, there is no category for fundamental and of course there is no category either there or in grant application forms for things that haven't been invented yet. So when I applied
for a grant to do research in quantum computation. Of course, one of the things you had to do is check the check boxes for what kind of physics you're doing, solid state physics, astrophysics, and none of them were quantum computing, because computing wasn't considered a branch of physics in the first place, and especially not quantum computing.
Now there is a checkbox for quantum computing and consequently now. You can get a grant to do incremental research in quantum computing but you can't get a grant for inventing a new thing that would go on that list. Yes.
And that's impossible that it's impossible that could be i'm not i'm not saying there should be a thing on that list it's impossible to put something like that on the list and therefore it's impossible to judge applications. According to classify applications according to what they're trying to do like that and if you could if you had another box for fundamental none of the above. For example.
The people on the committee wouldn't know how to judge that. The only way to judge that is for example with quantum computing there would have been some people like Wheeler and Feynman who were aware that there was something to be learned in the physics of computation or the physics of information that hadn't yet been incorporated into physics and they might have been able to point to young researchers
Who would be deserving of getting a grant, but they weren't on the committee and the committee couldn't consult them. So, okay. Do you think that there should be a new box? Maybe this is not the solution, but let me just posit it. Do you think there should be a new box that is for new boxes? It's the season for all your holiday favorites, like a very Jonas Christmas movie and Home Alone on Disney Plus.
Do you think there should be a new box that is for new boxes? Um, as I said,
If you had such an application, suppose I had an application, suppose I was on the committee and I had an application in front of me for a new propulsion system for spacecraft, let's say. Now I know nothing about that. And I know no way of judging. I mean, I could probably tell if it's, if it's a crank or crackpot, but if it's, if it's something which, um,
Is viable but is not a modification of something in existence already as obviously i can't give an example of that right now because i'm i'm i'm giving you an example of something that i don't know about yes so who should who should get such a grant well that person who deserves such a grant will have been talking to somebody with luck
They will have been talking to somebody who already has a reputation. For making progress somewhere in physics and that person should be listen to. There should be a mechanism for that person to cause somebody to be funded to do some fundamental research i have several times tried to recommend.
Such people people that don't fit into the into the standard categories and without success Only private entities have have funded them But but even that was very difficult because as I say they use very similar system and very similar criteria But at least there's diversity at least there's more than one place you can apply to there ought to be dozens of places you can apply to
Okay, so about the quantum computing checkbox, I imagine, and I know that you mentioned that you're not as familiar with the grant system as one could be, or even maybe you do not want to be. But I imagine that it's not as simple as the checkbox for quantum computing. I imagine there's sub checkboxes like quantum hardware or cryptography or fault tolerance or algorithms or what have you in the quantum computing space. Now there would be, yes. But when I was doing it, there were none of those.
right okay for the creation of these new checkboxes are you saying that they would be done inadvertently but you can't predict ahead of time so what you should do is you should fund people with potential yes fund people that that that's how it should be uh yeah that's how it should be in incremental research as well the the whole of uh scientific research should be like that i thought you were about to say
You'd be allowed to make a new box and say what should be in it and all the sub boxes that I wouldn't have known what the sub boxes are. They were, they too were only invented later and not by me. So the communities that I also traffic in other than physics or philosophy and math and the grant situation there doesn't seem to be as dire. There's no expectations of grants as a prerequisite for tenure, for instance.
This just the hope and the promoting of people who have strong publications. So a math department meeting may say something like congratulations on your annals paper. But I imagine that a physics department meeting would include like your grant expires next year. What's your renewal plan? So what's the difference here between physics and math? And I'm speaking about fundamental physics.
Because you can always say, well, if it's experimental physics, it's quite clear. You do need plenty of money to fund your machines and your computers and your servers and your students and so on, but fundamental physics. Yes. So, um, for the, um, in the structure that I advocated earlier, the, um, research group leader should indeed be judged not on his past papers, not on his, but, but on his
On his previous success in advancing the subject. Should be a well known figure. In the field who is who has a track record of making progress and now he wants to make progress. In a way that. Can engage several other people.
Maybe, maybe, you know, if he's an experimentalist, he wants to build this with a machine or if he's a theoretician, then the field has broadened enough for him to see that there is potential there that he doesn't yet know what it is. But he knows who he wants. That's that's the thing. Ten years earlier, he knew what he wanted to do. Now he knows what kind of person he wants to work with.
Anyone knows that he wants to hire five of them or ten of them. But not five hundred of them. So he is funded not because he can say what his next paper is going to be about. He's funded because he says he's very interested in stuff and he's going to do research on it. And somebody who funds him will be saying
I think that this guy is good. Or gal. Yeah, well, I don't want to use gender neutral language because I think it's silly. Obviously when I say he, I mean he or she. And if I said mister or missus, I might also mean his majesty or master so and so. So yes, it's
Um, it, it, it's completely natural in this whole scheme of things that I'm advocating that everything is tuned to doing the research, make, creating the new knowledge. Everything is subordinate to that. If somebody is going to care whether the graduate student is male or female, then they're not, they're not the founder that I want.
Suppose right now there's a wealthy patron or multiple and you could speak directly to them and these people who are watching, they care about fundamental physics, maybe foundational research in computer science as well, just foundational in general.
Which we can get to distinguish in between fundamental and foundational to me. I see them as quite close. I can't distinguish them. Maybe you can. But but anyhow, what is your message to them? What are they to do? They have this money. What are they to do? They want to help. Yeah. So they each one of them is different. Each one of them has interests. Each one of them has reasons for wanting to to promote fundamental physics.
I need to find somebody that they think is good. Somebody usually be somebody who has already done some of the things that they want done.
And then they should approach that person and say, could you use some money? Um, often the answer will be no. Um, but, but often it will be yes because with money, they can, um, do a lot of things in parallel, but they would otherwise have to do in series by themselves or with a, with a small, smaller group. Um,
Now there is a thing that just started up the conjecture institute and i don't know how they make their choices but what i've seen is seems to be following the pattern that i advocate quite closely. So they found the person not the research project.
They and and they they seem to fund people who are interested in foundations i don't know whether that's because. They death thing is to found is to fund foundations or whether that thing is to fund things which are normally funded because of her so i don't know which of those it is.
I'm either of those would do and lots of variations on that would also do like i said i i would like that to be dozens of such entities. I'm and that with all with the different ethos or with a different theory of what foundations are what therefore.
And all with a different theory of what's wrong with the present thing why why why somebody hasn't already funded the thing that they want to find that sort of thing. So firstly what is the difference between fundamental research and foundational research. I don't make much difference between those things but foundational suggest to me that you have a field and you're drilling into its foundations so you want to understand it more deeply than it has been before.
Fundamental means to do with fundamental knowledge that is knowledge that is needed for all sorts of different areas. For example, quantum computation I think is fundamental or was because it has to do with
Mathematics and epistemology as well as physics and computation and computer engineering so that there's a whole bunch of things that it might unite if it works and but but it's it's fundamental in its conception that it's not it's not like working at existing foundations of anything.
Okay, so someone who's listening who doesn't care about fundamental or foundational research, they hear you keep bringing it up. Why is it so important to you? And of course, you are not saying that the incremental conformational research that's done on existing theories is not important, but that the fundamental foundational has been somewhat excluded or not incentivized properly.
But that implies that why should we even care that it's incentivized properly? What is it about foundational and fundamental research that's so vital to your conception of knowledge in the world? The thing that unites them, so the growth of knowledge can't be regimented. There's, you know, if you tell somebody like Henry Ford said something like, you know, if I asked people what they want, they would have said a better horse.
I'm so the essential thing to. Intellectual progress of all kinds weather incremental fundamental whatever is interest that somebody is interested in doing this. If they weren't paid they'd still do it they'd get a job doing something else and they do it in their spare time.
Like Van Gogh with his painting, you know, nobody ever bought a painting from him in his lifetime. Even though his brother owned an art gallery. I mean, I don't know the story of that, but you know, it's obviously not, it's not the standard story of slotting into an existing structure. So some, but yeah, sorry, I've gone off the subject slightly.
What unifies fundamental and incremental research is that someone's interested in it. And it's that interest that drives all progress. It's true that fundamental research eventually, typically, eventually drives something useful as well, but not always. And you know, you could ask, well, if the general theory of relativity hadn't been invented for another
60 years let's say after einstein nothing practical would have been affected then then it was needed for the gps system then now it's being needed for other things but but perhaps if you were interested in in purely utilitarian outputs you would have delayed einstein but
Then if you take that kind of utilitarian attitude to Einstein, you would have taken the utilitarian attitude to everything and you would never have had antibiotics and rocketry and satellites and that sort of thing. And the reason that it's all connected is not so much that
Progress in the whole of science and engineering. Comes from fundamental research as a sort of wellspring. That also happens but but it the main thing is that the whole of progress in human ideas is a single thing. An indivisible thing which is all powered by.
Okay, so it's not an argument to pursue foundational research, because in your mind, maybe a decade from now, maybe 200 years from now, it will prove to be useful. No, it's not that. I thought what you're going to say, it's an in and of itself argument.
It doesn't sound like that it sounds like pursue it because this is part of a larger knowledge creation process exactly. Exactly it's needed for that and if you if you suppress. The impulse to create the impulse to to improve anywhere you're going to affect everywhere or you may affect everywhere you could be lucky and not affect.
I'm the theory of evolution or whatever but in practice you usually do. Interesting ok sorry to interrupt you so it sounds like you're saying that.
Look, a child has a natural curiosity. As you get older, your curiosity morphs into various subjects. One of those subjects could be foundational research in physics. But that is an example of foundational research curiosity. And that is important. Yes. And therefore, if you're talking about your hypothetical rich person, a hypothetical rich person who has that interest
Or who wishes they could pursue that interest when they didn't have time to do it when they were younger or that kind of thing with somebody who for reasons of their own. Things that that is important and curious as to where that will go and they want it to they want to get the answer before they die that is the thing that this hypothetical rich person should be funding.
Yes. And I imagine this hypothetical rich person was not able to pursue foundational research because you hypothetically don't get rich by pursuing fundamental research. That's the whole point of our conversation for the past 30 minutes. Yes. Yes. Presumably something else interested them and that involved making money. I don't think by the way, I don't think there's there's hardly anybody who's who's interested in making money per se.
They make money because that is what they need to do the thing that they're interested in. Right. Should physicists study philosophy? Well, if it's relevant to their research, now in the case of quantum computing, it's rather paradoxical because I think philosophy is extremely important in the foundations of
quantum computing. But the state of the art in academic philosophy is terrible and people who study that and internalize it become less proficient at the kind of philosophy that's needed to make progress in physics. Now there are exceptions to that and I won't name them because then the people I don't name will be offended.
But there are certainly philosophers who take the right attitude to philosophy, but the overwhelming majority do not. So, you know, physicists should know philosophy provided they find the right philosophy. Speaking of naming, can you name a physics department that is doing extremely well in your eyes? Now, I said department, but it could also be institute like the Perimeter Institute, for instance.
Again i'd rather not for the same reason i don't just single p i'm a serious i prefer to talk serious rather than practice if the things that i'm saying are. True or even half true people will really recognize it people will recognize this that they've seen this happening.
Every when i speak to people about this i've very rarely had anyone contradict what i'm saying. They usually agree but they say yes but what can i do about it. I am what was it about about five years ago i was trying to. Change get the rules changed about how foreign.
I'm postdocs are treated in the british visa system. So that may seem to be a rather easy to think but it was important to me at the time because well never mind and.
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So i thought well who can i go to the head of the physics department well the head of the physics department told me said to me i've got no power over that. That's my superiors superiors said we have no power over that i thought well i'll go to the vice chancellor of the university know the vice chancellor doesn't deal with such things at all so then happened to come into my email.
Box the royal society had a document saying the structure of research funding. This is one of the reasons why i avoid this field whole field by the way structure of research fundamental research funding in britain so i downloaded it it's like you know i don't know big fat thing and i looked at it and.
i found that if i had pursued this line of who should i ask to change this rule there is no one basically the the uh structure of decision making goes right up to the minister the minister for science and education but the minister is required to consult various committees before making any decision so there is nobody i can go to
To make the change I wanted to. And that's why I gave up on that. Well, this sounds hopeless. So there must be some hope here. Physicists, professors of physics who watch this channel, they're listening and they're thinking, look, I don't like this quote unquote system that I'm in. Yeah. And I would like to change it in various specific ways that are important to them. David, what is your advice?
I suppose what they would need to do is get together and form a proposal to take to government because it's pointless taking it to the minister because the minister doesn't have that power. It's the government that has to change the rules under which the minister makes these decisions and then that can go right down through the
Through the hierarchy and i somehow these people would have to. Present it in such a way that it bubbles up to the top of what the government wants to do. I don't know how to do that i don't know i don't know how to politically campaign and i so but perhaps i'll such people perhaps they're watching.
What do you think the reason is that more physicists aren't actively critiquing the academic organization that that they're a part of? So I hear plenty of critiques off air from professors that I speak to, but on air, they're much more reluctant. And one reason may be that that occurs to people who are listening could be, well, the academic positions are precarious, especially without tenure. So when you speak, it's like you're biting the hand that feeds you. And so
Maybe have the incentive to do the opposite to say, no, no, I love everything about where I work and everything is called pathetic. No, I think very few people say that. OK, so you're one of maybe 10 people that I know who are currently in the academic institution. Yes, who are willing to say there's something rotten at the core of the institution.
And the difficulty here is when most people say something is rotten at the core of an institution, they get labeled as a conspiracy theorist. The mental image people have of what you think is OK. At some point, people sat around with cigars thinking, how can we make this less efficient and more beneficial to myself? And there were distributions of notes that said burn after reading. Yeah, nothing like that. This is nobody's fault. Nobody is to blame.
That is part of why it's hard to change. So why is it that you're a part of a small handful of people who are willing to publicly talk about this? Well, again, I can't psychologize. Sorry, I'm being...
That's fine, and you can feel free to disagree with the premise. You can also say, Kirk, no, no, I think that's false. I can list 20 people. I think it's true that few people want to criticize it, especially in public. But I can't speculate on why. Is it because of their career, like you said? Is it because they consider their position precarious?
A whole load of other considerations come in once you have tenure, because you're not a free agent when you have tenure. It's supposed to make you, to free you from peer pressure or whatever you call it, or public pressure. But in practice that doesn't really happen. Very many people who
who get permanent jobs, just slot into the system. And I don't know why, but some sociological reason perhaps. So again, you're making me speculate about things I don't know about. So I'm extremely vexed with you. Good. Yes, that's worth being. It's rare that there's a physicist who's made significant contributions even to their own field. That's something to note.
To make contributions to the philosophy of physics is something else. And then with your book, the beginning of infinity, which I'll place a link on screen and in the description, you've made contributions to philosophy proper. So that's vexing. What is it about you? I've been very lucky. As I said earlier, when I was a graduate student and postdoc,
I was very lucky to have supervisors who did exactly this would advocate they said what i came in on day one or rather even in my interview. Before i was even accepted they said. What is it you want to work on.
And I didn't say anything specific because I didn't know anything specific at the time. So I just described what kind of thing I want to work on. And I remember saying, for example, to Dennis Sharma in my first interview, that it seems to me that the most urgent problem in physics is quantum gravity. So I'd like to work on that. I know a bit of quantum field theory, but I don't know enough relativity yet. And so now it turned out
That was a bad idea and I've decided to turn from quantum gravity, which I thought was too difficult to work on at my stage yet. And I was getting interested in other things, which eventually led to physics of information and to quantum computation and so on.
somehow saw that i had the thing he wants in his students and so he he hired me and when i wanted to change and to study something completely different he not only did he not object in any way he he was interested he said you know what
What he was interested in what i want to do and why and somebody he never tried to direct my research because he assumed that i wanted what he wanted. You mentioned that quantum gravity was too difficult what do you mean.
So at the time I didn't know what was so difficult about it. I took the like, I think I'd absorbed the standard view that what we're trying to do is, uh, cure the infinities and cure the nonlinearities and that kind of thing. So the, so that, uh, the answer would be like an equation which had the desired properties. And, uh, I realized as I, as I got into the subject that those are trivial problems.
It wouldn't matter if we didn't solve that. But the chances are that we will solve that once we've got the deeper incompatibility between the two theories sorted out. So the
Fundamental i keep saying fundamental i don't always mean in the same sense we have to unpack this. At root. All the existing field theories are theories of fields on space time. Whereas general utility is a theory of space time itself and it's not a field you can think of it as.
A fixed space time with the field on top of it so it's the sort of static part and the varying part which people then try to quantize. But that's very alien to general relativity. General relativity is the theory of space time as a dynamical thing itself. And there are theories, I mean people have tried everything in quantum gravity and in my view everything has failed.
The, the, um, and, and, um, in every other part of physics, um, these fields evolve in time and what you're, what you're looking for, a dynamical equation, an equation of motion that, that says how they evolve in time, but in general activity viewed in that sense, there is no time. It's just a,
Either it's a four-dimensional thing or it's a, in the quantum sense, it's a manifold where every point is a three geometry and evolution in time is just a strip of things with a higher wave function than the rest. But how that turns into time
Various proposals anyway it's what can i say it's conceptually. Very incompatible the way we conceive of quantum fields and which have its own problems by the way. And the way we conceive of space time is fundamentally incompatible.
There are also problems with quantum field theory itself. I think general relativity in itself would be a viable theory. That's okay. There's the big bang and black holes and we're not sure how to deal with singularities, but basically it's a viable theory and there's no kind of contradictions in it.
Whereas quantum field theory is full of contradictions in its own right let alone before you try to Unify it with with gravity such as So the My favorite one at the moment So I like being baffled and this this is this is one of my favorite problems with
quantum field theory because it's so baffling. One of the basic axioms of quantum field theory is that field quantities at space like separated points, that is at points at the same time, that those quantities should commute with each other. That is, if there's a quantity A and B, then AB equals BA.
And at a later time they don't commute and that that's the that's the whole reason why quantum fields in evolve in time. It's because they don't the later thing doesn't commute with the earlier thing. So now if to.
Things that say in the same space there is a quantity here in a quantity that don't commute it means they must be described by separate algebras. And no matter how close they are they must still be. I'm described by separate algebras which means that the and the separate algebras all commute so no matter how close together these algebras are.
They still commute and yet when they coincide they don't commute because the field quantity is at the same point don't commute because that's what drives the whole thing forwards. So this. Axiom of. Commutative at space like separations. Is disastrous.
One way of looking at the infinities of quantum field theory is that they are precisely caused by that axiom. Interesting. And yet, if you try to remove that axiom, which I have tried to do, then you run into problems of causality and other problems and problems of interpretation and what the meaning of the different quantities are. It's like you're not in Candace anymore, just that tiny change in quantum theory.
Leads to a series that can't even be interpreted in the normal way as being. Things having values at different points so it becomes something else you're not in kansas anymore. So that's that's that's that's one of the problems and i like thinking about it so you have to stop me talking about it.
Hmm. Oh, I don't want to stop you talking about it. I want to know what were some of your attempted solutions. So I tried to Set up a quantum Theory where the fields at each point Don't range over the real numbers for their possible values, but they just range over plus and minus one So they're qubits as I called this qubit field theory. So you have a field of qubits
And there's a qubit at each point in space. And they don't have to commute with each other at different points. You just assume that somehow dynamically, when they're far enough apart, they'll approximately commute. But they won't commute. And when you choose two points closer and closer together, you'll find that their algebras become more and more the same. Until when they coincide, there's no blowing up or anything.
It's just a perfectly well behaved theory. So then I worked out what the possible equations of motion for such a theory are and I worked out that I think it was several years ago that I did this. I worked out I think that there are 13 possible second order differential equations that are capable of being equations of motion for qubit field theory.
And then, so the question then arose, what counts as a measurement? Because in ordinary quantum theory, if you measure something, you're putting the value of it into another thing, which then commutes with the original thing. So you can think of it as having a value, which if it's a good measurement, it will be the same value as in the thing you were measuring.
But in qubit field theory, that's not true because when you, when you measure something, the result of the measurement will still not commute with the original thing. And when you measure that the non-commutativity will spread a bit like entanglement, but this is spreading and spreading a different thing. It's spreading non-commutativity and, and I couldn't solve that problem. And so although the papers on the archive, you can read it if you want to. I'll place a link on screen to it. Right.
So it's a nice little theory. I have no idea what it means physically, and I failed in finding a thing it could mean. So I never published it, except on the archive. Is it a non-local quantum field theory? No, no, it's perfectly local. That is the right question, because normally when things don't commute, there'll be problems with causality.
But in cubit field theory, there are no problems with causality. It all, um, works, no infinities, no non-localities. Um, there is no Schrodinger picture for that theory. There's only a Heisenberg picture. Hmm. Um, so that that's, that seems to be an important thing, but, but, you know, I haven't put my finger on exactly how.
Okay, so most of the time, when people are thinking of combining general relativity with QFT, the mathematical problem is non-renormalizability. Yes. There are said to be three or so conceptual problems that are distinct from the non-renormalizability. So one is just QFT requires a fixed background, like you mentioned, background independence is the issue here, conceptually speaking. Then there is, well, what does it mean for you to have a superposition of geometries operationally?
And then there's the problem of time that you mentioned. Now, the current leading theory of quantum gravity is string theory. At the time when you were a graduate student, it may not have been there. But either way, you have heard of it at some point during your career. And what attracted you to it or what did not attract you to it? What dissuaded you or persuaded you to? I've never worked on it because I don't think that progress in fundamental physics
I should never say never, but I don't think progress in fundamental physics ever or almost ever comes by trying to find a better mathematical object and then wondering what it means as a bit of physics. For example, finding a different group for the fundamental particles to belong to.
I don't think you can find the answer to a sophisticated problem that way. What you need to do is have an idea about how, how, what physical thing you want. For example, as I was saying with qubit field theory, you want, you want the, the, um, commutation relations of different field quantities, not to be pathological. So you want everything to be smooth.
Okay now what kind of mathematics can give that to you. That's the kind of thing that i think makes can make progress in physics and string theory it seems to me is entirely the other way around is saying suppose that the fundamental things in nature are not point particles but strings. Okay now let's find out what kind of a world that would look like.
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So it was more their approach to landing on string theory that you disagreed with rather than string theory itself? Yes, well string theory itself then just becomes trying to find some equations that will make it work. And that's not
You know, you should be trying to look for equations that do the physical thing that you that you think physics is going to be like. Why should the approach matter? So let's just analogize this to scaling a mountain and you think you should be hiking to find the mountain with your flashlight and they think, no, you should be using a you could tell I'm not a mountain climber, but whatever those picks are that they use.
I did speak to Alex Henold, who's a rock climber, and I've already forgotten. Patons, I believe their names are, but yeah. Okay, sure. So there are two approaches and you find something on the mountain. To me, it doesn't matter how you got to what you found. You found it. So you just evaluate this. It's not how you got there. It's what the problem was. So you, as I said, you know, as we were saying in the earlier part of the conversation,
Someone has to be passionate about it. Someone has to be obsessed with the problem and trying to solve it. Not being expert at mathematics and making making up a new mathematical thing and then throwing that over to the physicists and saying, is it this? And they say, no, it's not that. Then you say, well, well, is it this? That that's
That's the approach that I couldn't really shouldn't really call that approach. I mean, that's not problem based. That that's not that that's not somebody trying to solve a problem. Maybe you should say you could say it's somebody trying to solve someone else's problem. But but from the physics point of view,
The conceptual thing is this fundamental that's that's again fundamental okay the sexual the conceptual thing is. Where is the whole what motivates the whole procedure if you want to make the theories work and you have an idea about how reality should be.
That would make it work or what kind of reality would make that work, not what kind of equation of motion would make it work. I think you'll never get there that way. You, if you try to, um, make general activity by that method, you would absolutely never have got there because you would never have had the theory of a dynamical space time. You just have been thinking of, you know, what terms can we add to Newton's laws?
To make it compatible with let's say electromagnetism well add a couple of times and so you can do that you might even get as far as the relativistic formulation of. Maxwell's equations which might then get you to special activity i mean this is this is this is already assuming a lot of luck.
But you'd never get your general relativity because the idea of a dynamical space time, a dynamical curved space time was needed to make that progress. And you'd never have found those equations without first having that idea. So what if the string theorist says, well, who cares about what motivated us to get to our answers?
Firstly, we're a diverse group of people. We all have different motivations. It's unclear to speak of the motivation of the field of string theory itself. But regardless, look, David, we the string theorists have given you ADS-CFT correspondence. We've revolutionized our understanding of quantum information and black holes. We've developed holographic dualities that are now used in
in condensed matter physics and sure that latter case is not string inspired but it's not string contingent okay still there are tools that we've developed the pure mathematicians used and so on so is this not evidence that we're on the correct track what is your response to that well there's never evidence that one is on the right track if there was such a thing then one could move further along the track i'm not qualified to judge mathematics
So there might be very beautiful mathematics which in string theory which sets up. Alternate realities that are like hours in some way and unlike hours in another way and i can't prove to you that when they keep fiddling with it it won't eventually resemble our one or be our one but.
To get an answer without first having the problem to which that is the answer is is i think very rare it even even when you. Site examples like alexander fleming working on bacteria and found penicillin and and it really wasn't like that he had an idea which was. Which had.
Finding a therapeutic chemical in the landscape of what he was looking for. He wasn't specifically trying to find penicillin and it was because he was in that landscape that he recognized the accidental discovery as being relevant. So it was because he recognized the now if somebody had said to him.
Let's say two or three years before, here's a petri dish. What do you see? He might well have said, I don't know. They're just some bacterial colonies on that. What am I supposed to, what, what am I supposed to look for? And then somebody might've said, well, look, there's a patch here where the bacteria aren't going. And then then he might've made further progress, but that, that I idea is, um,
I idea of that kind and a proposed solution to a problem first a conception of a problem and then a proposed solution to that problem come before. A viable theory that solves it all the addresses it partly solves it. And in the case of string theory.
I don't see the solved any existing problem what they're hoping for is that some mathematics that resembles the existing mathematics will come out of it. And will have desired properties. I don't know maybe maybe the right theory of contact gravity has infinities maybe they're a good thing maybe that we want to have more of them or whatever.
Okay so I imagine the rejoinder from the string theorist is okay you say that we haven't solved any problems but look string theory is the only framework that's been developed where quantum mechanics and gravity coexist without mathematical contradictions and every other approach either breaks fundamental symmetries or has these contradictions and so is that not progress to you David? Well it is a mathematical progress
But that it might solve the conceptual problems is a hope and I keep saying I can't prove that that's not going to be fulfilled. Maybe it'll be fulfilled tomorrow. And also it's not up to me to tell other people what to work on. So they should work on it for whatever reason they like.
And the funding entities should fund it for whatever reason they like. So getting back to committees, I imagine that the Manhattan Project had a committee. I'm not a historian and I haven't looked into that. So I'm nowhere near an expert in the Manhattan Project other than watching Oppenheimer. So what was different about their committee?
Yeah, I'm not well up on the history either, though I have seen Oppenheimer. I don't know how accurate that... We're in the same boat. Right. I think that was a very unusual organization and it did not run on this kind of committee theorem pattern. What happened? So for a start, nobody applied to be on the Manhattan Project. Ah, they were picked.
They were picked so somebody would come and see you and say do you want to work on work of national importance right and it will involve a lot of. Sacrifice on your part and we can't tell you what it is but it is of national importance and this was like during the war.
So a lot of people said yes and a lot of people then went there and never found out what it was about because they were not employed at the center of the research. They were just supporting researchers and they were just told, you know, get this machine to work, never mind why. And then there were the
Lab assistant level people who were just told keep that dial between this number and this number and turn this knob and press this button all day every day and don't tell anyone what you're doing and they did except a few who were Soviet spies. Fortunately, Stalin didn't have the wherewithal to make use of the
Of the knowledge himself before the end of the war, if there had been Nazi spies, it would have been a much bigger catastrophe. I mean, it was a catastrophe as it was, but, but, um, with not the Nazis had a, had an atom bomb project underway with Heisenberg at the head. And, uh, if he'd been told a few of the secrets, um, of the Manhattan project, he could have done it.
He later said he didn't want to, but I don't believe him. You mentioned in your interview with Sam Altman that you keep a list on your computer of progress and fields where there's been significant progress, but you thought you couldn't have achieved that progress. And I believe you said the World Wide Web was one and AGI and sorry, not AGI, but being able to converse generally in natural language with something. So I want to know more about this list. Tell me about this list.
Well, should I bring it up on my computer screen and tell you a couple of the other things? Please. Well, obviously I was wrong and being wrong could be a spur to inventing something. So another one was, I've got the list up here in front of me. So another one was Mathematica, Stephen Wolfram's program, because I thought there could never be a general purpose
Application interface that would allow you to define your own mathematical notation and interesting most most serious uses of mathematics depend on making your own notation as you go along and But Mathematica can I didn't think it was possible Just a moment to linger on this notation aspect. What are you referring to?
Do you mean to say like Leibniz invented the little s that squished together for an integral and that would be, I imagine, trivial to program anything back in the, even when early computers came out to display whatever notation you like? No, I mean, things like, well, so when working on quantum computers, I wanted to go over to the Heisenberg picture,
um which was an unusual thing to do and i wanted a notation that was very suitable for the heisenberg picture so instead of using sigma matrices i i i wanted to say q a q matrix where q was a function of t function of time and then i wanted to um have an automated thing to to say take the commutator of two q's
Take the commutator of two Q's at the same time would be zero, unless they were the same Q, in which case they'd be the Pauli algebra. And then at different times, it would be the commutator would depend on how much the Hamiltonian had evolved the two of them. Sorry, how much it had evolved one of them compared with the other one at an earlier time.
I did have a computer at the time, it was a home computer and I had to write my own software for doing that for me. So I wrote a little program to manipulate these Q quantities. With Mathematica I could just define the Q quantities and Mathematica couldn't do it and I didn't see that
I didn't see how a general purpose thing of that kind could exist. I see. But Mathematica did. So after getting Mathematica, I didn't have to write my own program to manipulate things anymore. Okay. Tell me more about what's on this list. Okay. Okay. So another important one was
When i was first told about the laser guide star technique for allowing. Telescopes to see through shifting atmosphere. I didn't think that that could make much difference i thought the difference that could make was very marginal because. The the.
The atmosphere affects the laser beam going up as well as coming down. So you don't know what to correct for.
And the people i was i was in denis charles department as well when the early days of people doing this and they were making the hardware. And they were explained to me how it worked and i was saying i don't see how that can be and they were trying to explain it to me. Perhaps they weren't trying to explain it very well but i came away with the idea that this wasn't going to make much difference.
um and um it makes a lot of difference um so that was a that was a piece of hardware or experimental physics that i i underestimated the power of an idea what's the latest on this list excess community notes okay all right tell me about that well um so
So a previous one was wikipedia which i didn't think could work because it would get filled up with spam edits yeah i don't know who thought that would work is remarkable well it worked for several years and that so that's why it's on the list but i've it's now on the list but crossed out because now it no longer works
This this failure mode has actually happened, but several years later, so I don't know why it worked. I still don't know why it worked. When it did work, but I now know why it isn't working anymore and it was my original objection. And now the and I thought that the community notes thing would suffer from the same problem.
The error correction mechanism would itself get taken over a bit like AIDS infecting the immune system so that the immune system was not capable of combating AIDS, that kind of phenomenon. So I thought that the trolls and the bad actors
on x would find ways of infiltrating the or sorry not infiltrating because it's it's now completely automated as far as i understand it so not they'd find a way of gaming it okay maybe they still will but again i thought it wouldn't work at all i thought it would make matters worse but it it didn't it has made matters better
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The issues you're referring to regarding Wikipedia, are they of spam or of bias? Bias. Except I don't think bias exists. It's error. Either intentional or unintentional. Interesting. Okay, let's talk about Everett. I heard that you had a restaurant conversation with Everett. Is that story true and do you mind me telling it if it is? Yes.
I, Bryce DeWitt contrived to let me sit next to Everett when he visited Austin. Um, I forget when it was sometime in the seventies. Um, and, um, the group of us, uh, postdocs, graduate students, uh, and professors often did go out to one of the restaurants in Austin and have lunch together.
And on that occasion, Everett joined us and I had a long conversation with him over lunch. What happened during that conversation? Did Everett say something that convinced you of many worlds? No, no, I was already, this is why Bryce DeWitt sat me there. I was already convinced long before, but I was curious about whatever it thought about various of the issues that came up.
The most important thing perhaps for historians, any historians watching this, there's a sort of myth growing up about Everett, or two myths. One was that he didn't think in terms of parallel universes, that he thought in terms of relative states, but he was the most enthusiastic person about
Parallel universe is that i had met up to that point he was very enthusiastic the relative states were thing that was imposed on him by his supervisor wheeler. So that was one thing and nothing is that that was sort of folklore in physics at the time i think people have realized that this is now this is false was that he left physics because of the lack of reception of his ideas.
But that's not the case, he left physics because he wanted to make a fortune. Interesting. And he did make one. So he, I mean, he didn't say this, but presumably he didn't, you know, he didn't have any problems that he thought he could solve by remaining in academia. So he went into the consultancy business and worked for the Pentagon.
Wait, was it so that he could be rich or because he didn't have problems to be solved? Yeah, sorry. I was speaking too glibly. Okay. It's because he wanted interesting problems and he found interesting problems in a different way and optimization. I don't know what it was exactly. What was he like personally? Very intense.
Very very smart. I'm very quick quick on the uptake and quick and in jumping from. Stepping stone to stepping stone. I'm chain smoker. That upset everybody even then even in the seventies like like you know people smoke but not the whole time like that. He was a chain smoker.
Do you think he understood his many worlds theory beyond just unitary evolution? Yes, yes, yes. So for a start, he'd thought deeply about the problem of probability. He got that wrong and Bryce DeWitt had a better theory, which was also wrong.
And my theory which is right okay i am develop that because price to it told me that his version was wrong and explain it to me and i have told the story many times i used to go and see me in his office in texas. And whatever we were talking about he would say at some point he would say what is this problem of probability.
And he would write on the board you know what the problem was and then i would say okay i see the problem i'll think about it when i got home. I forgot what the problem was and this happened several times until the finally i have it in mind is about the fifth time but maybe it was only the second time or something but sure anyway the finally i went home and i still remember what the problem was. When i was at home and then i worked on it and then i sold it.
So this is now called the decision theory approach to probability in quantum theory. I see. Okay. What were Wheeler's and Dewitt's and Graham's roles when developing or promoting Everettianism? Well, this is a very complicated story and you need to ask a historian. But as far as I know, in short,
Wheeler hated the Many Worlds interpretation as it was called then but Wheeler was a good supervisor and wanted to give his student every possible opportunity to get his work seen as far as possible. It was Wheeler who sent Everett's paper to do it
And we wrote a scathing response saying, you know, there's a problem with this. There's a problem with that. There's a problem with that. And he ended up saying, and finally, I don't feel myself split and ever wrote back his famous reply saying Galileo didn't feel the earth move, but it does. And, and that persuaded to it. And he then became for several years, the major
I'm back of everett of everettian quantum mechanics. And he got together this book of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics princeton university press which contains every paper even remotely relevant.
To ever in not a very thick book at the time. And he is responsible for me and many other people getting interested and taking the theory forward. So do it.
As i said he had a theory of everettian probability which didn't quite work and he knew it didn't quite work and he wanted to fix it i don't know why he didn't fix it himself. He was doing some highly mathematical things above my head at the time. Yes he had a kind of attitude that. It was kind of obvious.
that this was the right interpretation and he didn't have any interest in working on it like it's like backwards looking and that was true of Everettian quantum theory for many years that everything was focused on trying to explain again and explain again and again and again to reluctant people
Why the prevailing view is untenable why is this illuminating and it's the only possible one that will work. And the trouble is that attitude as i have often said that's a bit like as if biologists had spent all that time.
Proving and reproving that creationism doesn't work and that you should have Darwinism. Yes, you can keep doing that, but what was needed was to improve Darwinism and make further progress. And they wouldn't have made further progress if they'd kept on just engaging with this problem of why the creationists are wrong.
So Everettians tended to, by the way, I think no one was a full-time Everettian. They were all working on other things as well. So they did spend a lot of intellectual effort on killing and re-killing and re-killing these zombie theories that were already dead.
I'm until relatively recently, a lot of progress has been made on Everett and after the probability thing, there's also the question of the structure of the multiverse, which I think is still an unsolved problem that we don't have an equivalent geometry.
Of the multiverse the same in the sense that we do for space time we can say space time is. A four dimensional sudo remanian manifold with metric and so we can we can say what it is mathematically yes. Which is different from saying it a base i'm science equations here you are the equation database that's a different thing right right with everett we only have.
Not only that's an exaggeration but we do not have that statement the multiverse is we don't have that yet. We only know it in in special cases like like. Measurement and quantum teleportation and some but we don't have a general theory of what the multiverse is in general.
Speaking of people who are skeptical and then you constantly have to disprove or correct their misunderstanding of many worlds, I was speaking to Leonard Susskind on this podcast. I asked him about many worlds and he said, he said, there are several technical questions that people who are believers in many worlds have, I mean, sorry, that I have toward them that they aren't able to answer. And he listed two that I recall. One was that branches in quantum theory
can recombine he said this whole notion of completely separate branches is well he questions that we'll get to that and then number two he said well what about if you have sure you can have half a branch here half a branch there and the born rule says fifty percent fifty percent but what if it's two branches and then one is one third and the other is two thirds does the universe split into three and then then irrational yeah okay numbers and so on
So I know that these issues have been solved or at least have answers and have had answers for decades. Yes. So my question is two parts. One, I would like you to actually answer those questions for people who are in the audience who are like, yeah, those sound like reasonable objections. But then number two, someone like Susskind, who's in the field of fundamental physics, he said they've never been able to answer this. So
It's either that he's asking people who are rudimentary in many worlds theories or he's not asking them or he's not listening to them or or something like that. I don't know what's going on there. And I don't know if you see that as well with many of these people who are skeptics saying, look, they're never able to answer this. You're like, I've had answers to these. You're just not listening. Or I guess that's a psychological question, which you perhaps don't want to go down. But yeah, either way, what is the answer to those two critical questions? We'll get to the
psychoanalyzing question later so the um that was the one about probability recombination of branches so yes recombination of branches well um this is going right back to to ever one of the things that was kind of mistaken in ever's view is that it it regarded the although he made the enormous bit of progress of
Regarding a measurement as a quantum process instead of regarding it as. Structural classical process that gets an answer so that the measurement process is a process like any other and then you see that there are super positions of the observer. As well as the system and then you can see how the correlations happen and so on. However hello.
He analyzed the measurements that way. He analyzed the measurements in terms of what happened at the beginning and what happened at the end. He didn't actually ask what happens during the measurement at the time when the branches are forming. And people later did that in the 1980s.
I had a go at doing it in the late seventies and early eighties and my proposal was rubbish but at least it kept me interested in the subject and then some philosophers actually were the people that persuaded me what the right answer is which is that the branches
Are emergent properties says there's no branches don't appear in the fundamental theory. Instead of. Like in ever it's way of doing it you had one world and then three worlds that sale one world and million worlds. Where is what really happens is that there isn't really one world even even when you have.
A single pure state of a system. It's still the state of a particle being at a particular place also includes within that unity there is a diversity that the more the particle is in one place the more its momentum is different.
So there is no such thing as there being one world at the beginning. There is always a continuum of of universes or worlds but the only was calling universes when they. Subsequently evolve independently of each other and typically that happens when there's been a measurement in a measurement process.
So, uh, before there's a measurement, when there's just a particle of a wave packet sitting there, yes, there's lots of momentum. There's lots of positions all happening at once. Nothing is ever sharp, but you can't say that there are different momentum in different universes because all those universes are interacting with each other. So you should only call something the universe when it is causally autonomous. In other words, it's behaving.
Exactly as it would if the others were not there. And that's what happens after after a measurement. So it's been a bit long winded, but the answer is that the rejoining of universes
Is is what happens in interference experiment and during the interference experiment you can't speak of universes because the different branches are affecting each other Precisely the interference is precisely the fact that you you that the different different paths of a single photon round interferometer They're not behaving as if the other were not there so when they when they come together
They do something completely different if the other one is there from what they would do. If the other one won't then that's the whole interference phenomenon. So that is the picture you can have in mind is that there's a there's a continuum in some. Kind of entity that's a bit like space time but in in hill but space or something in the multiverse which we don't know how to.
Classify mathematically yet but and then that that continuum just differentiates itself into two and as it's differentiating there is no moment of split what happens is that. Branch a is affecting branch be less and less and when they have separated enough. Like when you have made the measurement and you copied it or something then there.
Hardly affecting each other at all. They're affecting each other only to the level of 10 to the minus 10 to the hundred or something. So then you can speak of them, those things as different universes. So that's what happens after a measurement and during interference and also in the general case, you can't speak of universes. You can only speak of the multiverse and the multiplicity of values of things within the multiverse.
And now briefly speaking probabilities. Probability is so whoops. Basically, why do we need probabilities at all? And the answer, whether within physics, the answer is basically because we need to know when we have refuted a theory. If the theory says that there's a probability of 10 to the minus 10 to the hundred of
x happening and the rest of the probability is all about why happening why can we be confident that why will happen and that we will never see x even though we know that in the multiverse we will some of us will see x but why why should we expect why to happen and not x so then um uh you only have to um
Give an account that kind of synthesizes probability in certain special cases like when there's a thing to expect and not only happens after a measurement. Add the time when.
The universe is a d have to go ahead and in fact we know who's when the this should be an obvious we know that when when the universe is have not decode here they don't even obey the probability calculus or other the physical world does not obey the probability calculus. When when you're in the middle of a of an interference phenomenon there's a probability of a half that this will happen and probability of a half that that will happen
And at the end there's a probability of one quarter, one quarter, one quarter, one quarter when they pass through another beam splitter. And that's simply not true. The probabilities do not add up in the way that the probability calculus says relative probabilities ought to behave. But you want to have relative probabilities behaving properly when there has been a measurement and you're actually looking at what happens rather than thinking about it theoretically.
What what is the particle doing and if you look at it that way then. It turns out that quantum theory with the born rule removed just having no reference to probability just quantum theory sort of stripped down quantum theory without probability and then you take classical decision theory. Which is about things like.
If you prefer a to b and you prefer b to c then you prefer a to c that sort of thing. If you take the classical decision theory and take the probability rule out of that, the rule being that you should prefer the thing that has the highest expectation value of your utility.
Take that out because there's no. Take that out because you've taken probability out and therefore there's no such thing as an expectation value. Then you put the two together quantum theory without probability and. Decision theory without probability put them together.
And they tell you what a rational person would decide in the case in the case where there is some substantial amplitude for two or more things to happen. And it gives in those cases it gives the born rule but you don't have to postulate it.
So when you were developing early quantum computing, was Everett's interpretation important to you or was it a driving force behind the idea of quantum advantage? Completely crucial. Yeah.
Yeah, I couldn't have done it if I'd been thinking in the old way. Does that prove to you in your mind that research in quantum foundations or philosophy of quantum mechanics actually drives scientific breakthroughs? Well, it did in this case, but I don't think that's a proof of anything. As I said some time ago, it very often happens that fundamental things
Cause practical improvements as well eventually. I don't think it's it's it's tenable to say that that's why one should think about the fundamental things. It's a thing that can happen sometimes i think that often happens perhaps even very often i don't know how to characterize it. But it certainly happened to me in this case if i if i thought of quantum theory in the
In the wave function collapse way. I wouldn't have thought of quantum computation and in fact at the time when I was persuading people of quantum computation and that it's a thing and they ought to think that way. A lot of them. Didn't want to make this this change in their conceptual conceptualization I remember talking to land our in his office.
When i think i was either just about to publish. My first paper on that or just after and i gave a talk he very kindly invited me to give a talk even though he very much disapproved of the theory at the time and he was saying to me. No you this is just something you write down on paper this can never work because.
Because the because when the wave function evolves in this way and then there are two systems and then the door was partly open in his office. He had quite a small office for such an eminent man. Yeah. Um, and, and so he, he grabbed the door and he said, so when you, when you shut the door, slam, he slammed the door and he said, you see, it's not coming back. If this was quantum, it would bounce back.
So he was he was explaining why basic in in modern times he was explaining why quantum error correction is impossible. And but it isn't impossible and then i infuriated him by saying. That's a problem that's a problem that will be solved and you send us behind the closed door. No i didn't have that would be a joke yes.
No i said that that's good and heat in his mind it was a fundamental problem that will never work that same and asher perry's. Make the same objection. Add to me at the broadway conference.
um uh he said you know i was writing stuff up on the blackboard and he said yeah but that won't work in real life um because uh the the the um uh this will be more effort to correct those errors than than to uh than than what you're correcting ah okay and again i said
Technical problem that is going to be solved and indeed it was solved by peter shaw very soon afterwards. No the reason i thought it was a technical problem and they didn't is because i was thinking everett and they were thinking collapse yes. Is the universal function as physically real to you as.
The camera or your laptop that's in front of you and the microphone, is it more real? What are David Deutsch's ontological commitments? So I try not to have commitments, like WW Bartley said. We should retreat from commitment. And I also try not to have beliefs either. But it is, let me put it this way around. My
My theory that this computer that i'm talking into now exists has the same status in my mind as the theory that many copies of it exists in other universes and in both cases that status is that there are no rivals to that theory that i know of that are nonsense i mean there are only nonsense rivals.
So you could call that belief but that suggests that I wanted to be true or that I would resist it not being true if an argument were presented but I hope and expect that that is not the case. But it's whereas the opponents of Everett do have beliefs
Let me be psychic. It seems like beliefs to you is synonymous with dogmatic beliefs.
Belief that nothing could persuade you otherwise so that's absolute dog dogmatic belief but i'm i'm against having a ten percent dogmatic beliefs saying that you know i'm pretty sure that it would take a lot to persuade me that that's true. I don't have anything on that scale and i don't think that stuff on that scale really exists it's a it's a
It's a misconception about how thinking works. The way thinking works is to have a problem and then solve it, attempt to solve it, and then criticize the attempted solutions. And if you're lucky enough to come to a place where there are no criticisms left that you can think of, then you don't accept the theory. You just are in the position of not being able to think of another
So, when David Deutsch has a interpretation of Everettian quantum mechanics and Sean Carroll has an Everettian quantum mechanics and David Wallace has an Everettian quantum mechanics, are these different theories, like are there disagreements between you and Sean Carroll and David Wallace?
There certainly are disagreements, but the things we're disagreeing on are very, very minor compared with the difference between Everettian theory and all the other theories. So, for example, David Wallace thinks that
Think thinks that there are substantive assumptions behind my proof of the equivalent of the Bourne rule in decision. Decision theoretic approach to quantum probability and I don't think there are substantive assumptions. So he naturally works on. Trying to make clear what those assumptions are to analyze them to see what the arguments for and against those assumptions are.
I don't think such assumptions are needed, so that's the difference between me and David Wallace. Assumptions in this case, is that just axioms or something else? Okay, so is there a rigorous list of axioms of your specific Everettian approach somewhere? So I don't believe in axioms, but David Wallace has written down how he characterizes my approach. So in his book, he has what he thinks are the axioms behind my approach.
I don't think physics should work that way. Axioms are a bit like definitions. They're something you can come back to after you've got a theory. But working forward from them is... So the axiom never completely captures the theory anyway. We know that from Gödel and so on. We know that Pierre knows axioms.
don't don't tell you everything that's possible to know about the integers but you can have a conception of the integers and you can say oh this new axiom someone's proposed makes that conception brings the theory closer to my conception of the integers well i was going to ask you what the axioms of constructor theory are oh well so the the basic axiom of constructor theory if you can call it an axiom
Is that the laws of physics can be characterized by specifying a dichotomy? between Pro physical processes that can be brought about By something else which is a constructor, but we needn't say that that can be brought about and those that cannot be brought about Once you've stated that dichotomy with all possible
All conceivable physical transformations you stated the laws of physics. And so then the construct theory research program is on the one hand to reformulate all existing laws of physics in those terms. What is possible to bring about and what is impossible to bring about and then.
To formulate purely constructor theoretic laws that can that are over and above that which which are a bit like. Like the laws of quantum theory are at a level above. The dynamics of particular systems got quantum theory doesn't refer to any particular system it just says it just has a theory of what laws of physics. Can say. Like they have to have.
Yeah, a space of states and they have to have a Hamiltonian or whatever or Lagrangian, whatever you say, however you want you phrase it. So, um, constructed theory is a level above that. It's, it's a law about laws, but also a law about laws, about laws. Hmm. Okay. Uh, and, um, that's actually how I first thought of it because I first thought of it as an extension of the theory of quantum computation.
In a way, the theory of quantum computers contains the whole of the rest of physics, since the universal quantum computer can simulate any other physical system. So the set of all motions of the universal quantum computer is a one-one correspondence with the set of all possible motions of anything.
So in a way, the study of physics is the study of the of the possible motions of the quantum universal quantum computer. Well, then I realized that that was that wasn't right because you still have to have a theory of which programs of the universal quantum computer correspond to which physical systems. And that is not contained in the abstract theory of the universal quantum computer.
So I wanted to have an extended theory of the universal quantum computer that included saying which program corresponds to which physical system. And then I built on that and so on and eventually got down to the to the core of the of the issue, which was the dichotomy between things that can be brought about and those that can't.
Speaking about interpretational splits as a framework or theory develops, for constructor theory, has it developed, since I think almost more than a decade now, has it developed in a manner that you're largely happy with, you agree with, or are there, no, other people who are, you're on the wrong constructor branch? Yeah.
So you're right to say that the development of constructive theory since I first thought of the idea has been mainly the correction of errors in it mainly the correction of ways that I thought were viable which turned out not to be viable and in fact Chiara Marletto first
I came to me, say after giving a talk at the car and laboratory about mine ideas of construct a theory so she came she came up to me at the end of the picture and said that thing you said can't be true because so and so and i said oh yeah right okay thanks and then i invited her
Eventually we end up working together on the theory, we ended up solving that and many other things. The first thing that resulted in was the Constructor Theory of Information, which is the only Constructor Theory of something that we've completed so far.
You could say that we've also got a constructed theory version of quantum theory, but you may or may not think that. But for information, we made real progress and we unified classical and quantum information via constructed theory. It couldn't have been done otherwise.
And as for how it's developed with other people involved in constructor theory, there's now a quote unquote program of constructor theory. Largely speaking, do you look at that field with pride and happiness or are there some child that you you pick out of the house? I like being baffled and we're still at the so I haven't really worked on quantum computers ever since I stopped being baffled by the field.
There's still plenty of things to be baffled with in the experimental side on the experimental side, but I'm useless at experimental physics. So, so I'm, I, there's nothing I can really compute contribute really contribute to, um, on the theoretical side nowadays. Um, uh, in, in constructive theory, um,
No, it's not satisfactory yet. But I don't think that there are crass errors in it anymore. OK, now before my last question of what advice do you have for people who are watching? And as I mentioned, they comprise professors, researchers, graduate students, but also laypeople. So before I get to that question, I have a question from Scott Aronson here about free will.
So Scott said to me, David once remarked that he's certain that free will exists and equally certain that it has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. Well, he wants you to expound on that. What could possibly be the source of such certainty on either account? So rather like with belief, I certainly don't want to be certain of anything. And I want to think, you know, on introspection, I think
If i was presented with a good argument on either of those points i would be open to it but in both cases i think the idea that consciousness doesn't exist free will sorry the free will doesn't exist all that free will requires quantum theory are both in the status that that there is no such position.
You can say maybe it has something to do with quantum theory, but there is no there is no actual theory or even in principle of how apart from pen roses, which I think is wrong for other reasons. There is no actual theory of how quantum theory could produce free will or philosophical theory about how free will could not exist. And I think that the philosophical
Problem that people have with free will is that they have a conception of free will which by definition violates the laws of physics. It's basically, although they don't often say it like this, but it's basically free will is the human capacity to override the laws of physics. And I don't think anything overrides the laws of physics. We might be wrong about what the laws of physics are.
Again, like Penrose thinks, but in that case I don't see a proposal for different laws that would help with the problem of consciousness. Sorry, free will. Now, I think that free will has to do with knowledge.
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The problem that does make sense about free will is that
We have an intuition and it's in our all our explanations of human behavior and so on that we when when we make a choice not a random choice but a choice that that we have thought about the we have brought something new into the world so for example when Einstein was inventing general relativity
He was bringing that into the world. It didn't exist before. The theory of general relativity did not exist before Einstein thought of it. And ultimately, if you think it did, then you've got to say it was in the Big Bang. Okay, so I don't think it's tenable view philosophically or physically, that all the knowledge that's ever been going to be created in the world was in the Big Bang.
And that all that happens is that it's being made real in some sense, although why one time should be more real than another time. I don't know either cause that seems to violate relativity as well. So, but I think there is such a thing as bringing something new into the world and the thing that you're bringing into the world is knowledge or explanatory knowledge. So, um, uh, Einstein, the thing that didn't exist before.
Even if the equations of general relativity existed like apparently hillbott had the equations before einstein. We didn't know what they were about. I didn't understand the physics problem which which is again touches on the thing we were talking about earlier. Einstein was was seized of the physical problem and he eventually came up with equations and and and i think that the discovery of general relativity.
Was discovery of the explanations of what the equations mean, which actually came before the equations. So, um, and it's the same with everything. When, when you decide that you want to have a curry for dinner tonight, um, and you know, if it was possible that you would, would have chosen something else, you, that decision is something new you have brought into the world. Um, when children learn their native language,
The language which they learn is different from everyone else's and it has been an act of creativity to bring that language which is unique to them into the world. You seem to be puzzled, but you know, if I make a list of 20 words and ask you to define them, you will not produce the same list of 20 definitions as anyone else on the planet.
So everyone has a different has a different language in mind and it's a bit of a miracle that we can communicate with each other. The reason we can is basically error correction and again creativity because we need not mechanical error correction but creative error correction. So creativity brings something new into the world and then there is no problem with
How come you're violating the laws of physics? Because it's not new trajectories of the electrons that you're bringing into the world. It's new knowledge, which can only be understood at an emergent level. So that's my answer, I think, to both questions. I've forgotten what they were now. Well, one was about advice to prospective students and researchers and so on. Right. OK. Again, I don't know, because I
I'd have to be psychic to be able to second guess someone else's decisions about their own life but in the most general setting in the most general scale at the most general scale I would say go for the thing that is fun rather than the thing that you think will lead to fun or lead to some other benefit heaven forbid some other benefit that isn't fun
That is extremely dangerous but the more prophecy you have to make to justify your present choice the more error prone it's going to be and the more different from the reality that is going going to happen what do you mean the more prophecy you have to make what do you mean well so if i decide to. Work on.
LLMs because I think that LLMs are going to give rise to AGI and I want to do that because I think that AGI is going to be terribly dangerous and that we have to understand it well and so I'm prophesying various things in the future according to some theory that I have now
But that theory is going to change if that theory doesn't change over the period we're talking about you know ten twenty years then then i won't have discovered anything or nobody will have discovered anything if that landscape of ideas doesn't change okay so it's better. To make decisions according to the shortest possible time scale of prophecy. I see so.
In the case of someone predicting about AGI, thinking it's an important issue, let me attempt to solve that now. That would be different if they were passionate about trying to solve the issue of AGI. Exactly. I imagine you would say, yeah, that's your curiosity, that's the fun you refer to, go after that. Don't try to leapfrog ahead two decades, let alone one decade, let alone two decades.
And then think backward from there, because it could be incorrect. Most likely when working on it, if you have an idea for AGI, you can work on it today. You can drop what you're doing and work on that instead. That's that's the sort of thing you should be doing. Professor, it's it's an honor to speak with you. It's something I've wanted to do for years, and I'm I'm honored that like more than honored to have spent a couple hours with you.
And I appreciate that you took some time out of your day to spend with me. Well, it's been fun to say it oppositely. And hopefully next time we speak, I would like to talk about consciousness as that got brought up toward the end and also the philosophy of science. Thank you. You're welcome. Fun chatting. Hi there, Kurt here. If you'd like more content from theories of everything and the very best listening experience, then be sure to check out my sub stack.
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It's somehow already became number two in the science category. Now, Substack, for those who are unfamiliar, is like a newsletter, one that's beautifully formatted. There's zero spam. This is the best place to follow the content of this channel that isn't anywhere else. It's not on YouTube. It's not on Patreon.
It's exclusive to the Substack. It's free. There are ways for you to support me on Substack if you want, and you'll get special bonuses if you do. Several people ask me, like, hey, Kurt, you've spoken to so many people in the field of theoretical physics, of philosophy, of consciousness. What are your thoughts, man? Well, while I remain impartial in interviews, this Substack is a way to peer into my present deliberations on these topics.
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"text": " In both senses of the word gross, that is where I noticed that grants that should have been awarded aren't fairly reliably when it comes to fundamental research, which is what I'm mainly interested in. So judging by my experience, and I certainly don't know what it was like over a hundred years ago in Germany,"
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"text": " because there was no one versed in relativity on the panel that judged physics applications. So none of them would have known what a manifold is, what the Riemann tensor is. So his application would have had to explain that in very elementary terms and they would have had in front of them"
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"text": " There'd be rules about the procedure and every procedural rule is an impediment to any new kind of thing being tried. Anti-nepotism sounds positive. What's the negative side to it? Well, so, nepotism literally, if it means not giving a job to your nephew, then perhaps that"
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"text": " Perhaps that has merit but what it means is in practice that if you know someone personally you can't take part in the selection process for that person and you certainly can't get the university to let that person in. So it all has to be at arms length in order to ensure fairness now the."
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"text": " So the natural question that arises in someone's mind is why is it that we need grants anyhow? So professors of the past like, and I'm speaking about fundamental physics, not just a generic professor, but say Einstein or Feynman or Everett, which I know you have some personal stories on Everett. Yes. And I'd like to get to those at some point, but I'd never heard them complain about the grant system. However, I hear complaints, especially all fair from contemporary professors about it frequently. So why does one require grants?"
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"text": " If they're already paid a salary, what are the grants for? What if you don't get a grant? Are you just sitting around twiddling your thumbs? Are you then seen as a net cost to the university and they just make you lecture? Yeah, that's what it is. I repeat, I'm not very familiar with the system and that's not an accident. I have intentionally distanced myself from any knowledge of the system because it is a very unpleasant thing to be connected with."
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"text": " displaying their qualifications usually to do something else which is by two orders of two orders of remove away from suitability for research and then and then here in britain i don't know what is like in the u.s. the professor has to apply for a grant"
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"text": " Dennis Sharma, by the way, I've been very lucky, I was very lucky with my supervisors. He was once told by the higher-ups that they would be instituting a, what you call it, not time and motion, but yes, a clocking-in system where the students and post-docs in the morning, they would sign"
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"text": " Approved of those quirks so like in the Institute of Advanced Study as well as the first thing someone was told when they were given their 10 year or 15 year old 50 15 year grant or whatever is do whatever you like. That's that's what that's what the grant holder should be told. And that's what the grant holder in my opinion should tell. The postdocs and the graduate students and whoever else is working with him."
},
{
"end_time": 723.439,
"index": 25,
"start_time": 694.855,
"text": " The. You might think well. It told that why shouldn't they just spend all the time drinking and well it's because they've been hired for the purpose it's been hired. Because they are passionate about something. And when you when you."
},
{
"end_time": 753.49,
"index": 26,
"start_time": 724.155,
"text": " Peter Higgs said, I believe this was a decade ago now, that he wouldn't be able to get an academic job in today's environment. I think he said it's quote unquote as simple as that."
},
{
"end_time": 783.2,
"index": 27,
"start_time": 753.916,
"text": " That he wouldn't be productive or something akin to that yes nor would I. Could quantum computing get invented today. I think what would happen. I think probably yes but but the way it would happen is that which is happening a lot already which is that people who are really passionate about some new fundamental thing apply for a grant to do something else."
},
{
"end_time": 812.483,
"index": 28,
"start_time": 783.933,
"text": " To do something incremental. And they, they do the incremental thing to the minimum level required to sort of pass the various tests. They publish, they publish again, they publish again. Meanwhile, they're passionate thing. They don't necessarily publish because they're grappling with very difficult problems that don't, that don't admit of successive papers doing it better and better. They, they're waiting for a breakthrough."
},
{
"end_time": 842.875,
"index": 29,
"start_time": 813.507,
"text": " So they do that in their spare time. And that is highly unsatisfactory. I imagine the retort would be, look, there's plenty of great work occurring. It would be foolish to paint all of academia with a brush of stagnation, although that word hasn't come up. I would like to talk about that as you had a whole conversation with the Conjecture Institute. I'll place a link on screen to that. It was fantastic about that subject. Anyhow, we don't want to paint all of academia with a brush."
},
{
"end_time": 871.817,
"index": 30,
"start_time": 843.285,
"text": " So I don't want to appear to be trashing incremental research."
},
{
"end_time": 898.916,
"index": 31,
"start_time": 872.517,
"text": " And also in that list of things you just mentioned, I don't want to classify all of those as incremental research. Some of them are indeed fundamental. What I want to say is that the research landscape taken as a whole is heavily biased against fundamental discoveries."
},
{
"end_time": 924.684,
"index": 32,
"start_time": 900.077,
"text": " Everything we've talked about, the criterion for getting a grant, the structure of careers, the structure of university departments, all of them are heavily biased against fundamental research such that it is much more done in people's spare time."
},
{
"end_time": 954.121,
"index": 33,
"start_time": 925.196,
"text": " then it is done in pursuance of the grant that they're getting. So, by the way, I also think that you mentioned what do I mean by grants. Somebody pays for research, which is blue sky research. It used to be that aristocrats did it. They funded their own research. So that's one way to go. But"
},
{
"end_time": 978.422,
"index": 34,
"start_time": 955.384,
"text": " The main so in regard to who funds it the main thing that is wrong with the existing setup is that there are too few. Sources of funding because the government has entered the field not only have they sort of crowded out other means of funding and also."
},
{
"end_time": 1009.309,
"index": 35,
"start_time": 979.462,
"text": " Prevented it in various ways, but the say the private charity, for example, who funds research, they're going to use the same criteria because they are what they do is they have a committee whom they assign the task of searching through sifting through all the applications and picking the best ones and they don't know"
},
{
"end_time": 1024.787,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 1009.548,
"text": " how to do that either they can't possibly know and they're forbidden from using one of the few ways that they could namely to ask their colleagues do you know someone who is worthy of this grant as they're not allowed to ask that"
},
{
"end_time": 1051.391,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 1025.845,
"text": " So in other words, broadly speaking, the government has now contributed. It sounds like a positive to physics, to fundamental research. They've given plenty of money. However, with that money comes some poor practices. These poor practices are then adopted by the individuals who previously used to donate without these poor practices. Yes. And and the result is not stagnation. I mean, there is a kind of stagnation, but that's a different story."
},
{
"end_time": 1071.203,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 1052.005,
"text": " The result is not that the result is stagnation it's that there is a rather indirectly it is the result is. The emphasis of the fundamental in favor of the incremental not that there's anything bad about incremental research i said."
},
{
"end_time": 1096.408,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 1071.8,
"text": " Yes, yes. And I would like to get to this definition of fundamental research. But just to pause here about government funding, I see public funding, which is a synonym for government funding as a net good. So am I incorrect in that? Or do I have to delineate between different types of public funding in my mind? The thing when the government funds something, it's very rarely"
},
{
"end_time": 1122.619,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1097.261,
"text": " Doing harm i mean that does happen as well but on the whole. The things that funds are worth doing but they're not always worth the money. Especially when there are other things that could could be done which are prevented by the by the system by which the funds allocated. Now on the archive."
},
{
"end_time": 1150.111,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1122.944,
"text": " For those people who are listening who aren't researchers, there's something called ARXIV, pronounced archive, sometimes at least pronounced archive, where researchers post and also researchers look on a weekly to daily basis for new research. There's HEP, so high energy physics, and then there's quant physics. Is there a specific subcategory of the archive for this quote unquote fundamental research that you speak of, or does it just get pulled into one of these two?"
},
{
"end_time": 1173.968,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1150.862,
"text": " It's done by subject, there is no category for fundamental and of course there is no category either there or in grant application forms for things that haven't been invented yet. So when I applied"
},
{
"end_time": 1203.66,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1174.309,
"text": " for a grant to do research in quantum computation. Of course, one of the things you had to do is check the check boxes for what kind of physics you're doing, solid state physics, astrophysics, and none of them were quantum computing, because computing wasn't considered a branch of physics in the first place, and especially not quantum computing."
},
{
"end_time": 1223.387,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1204.65,
"text": " Now there is a checkbox for quantum computing and consequently now. You can get a grant to do incremental research in quantum computing but you can't get a grant for inventing a new thing that would go on that list. Yes."
},
{
"end_time": 1251.681,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1224.258,
"text": " And that's impossible that it's impossible that could be i'm not i'm not saying there should be a thing on that list it's impossible to put something like that on the list and therefore it's impossible to judge applications. According to classify applications according to what they're trying to do like that and if you could if you had another box for fundamental none of the above. For example."
},
{
"end_time": 1281.886,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1252.654,
"text": " The people on the committee wouldn't know how to judge that. The only way to judge that is for example with quantum computing there would have been some people like Wheeler and Feynman who were aware that there was something to be learned in the physics of computation or the physics of information that hadn't yet been incorporated into physics and they might have been able to point to young researchers"
},
{
"end_time": 1309.923,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1283.217,
"text": " Who would be deserving of getting a grant, but they weren't on the committee and the committee couldn't consult them. So, okay. Do you think that there should be a new box? Maybe this is not the solution, but let me just posit it. Do you think there should be a new box that is for new boxes? It's the season for all your holiday favorites, like a very Jonas Christmas movie and Home Alone on Disney Plus."
},
{
"end_time": 1339.002,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1310.879,
"text": " Do you think there should be a new box that is for new boxes? Um, as I said,"
},
{
"end_time": 1366.988,
"index": 49,
"start_time": 1340.282,
"text": " If you had such an application, suppose I had an application, suppose I was on the committee and I had an application in front of me for a new propulsion system for spacecraft, let's say. Now I know nothing about that. And I know no way of judging. I mean, I could probably tell if it's, if it's a crank or crackpot, but if it's, if it's something which, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 1396.698,
"index": 50,
"start_time": 1367.551,
"text": " Is viable but is not a modification of something in existence already as obviously i can't give an example of that right now because i'm i'm i'm giving you an example of something that i don't know about yes so who should who should get such a grant well that person who deserves such a grant will have been talking to somebody with luck"
},
{
"end_time": 1425.708,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1397.005,
"text": " They will have been talking to somebody who already has a reputation. For making progress somewhere in physics and that person should be listen to. There should be a mechanism for that person to cause somebody to be funded to do some fundamental research i have several times tried to recommend."
},
{
"end_time": 1455.452,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1426.749,
"text": " Such people people that don't fit into the into the standard categories and without success Only private entities have have funded them But but even that was very difficult because as I say they use very similar system and very similar criteria But at least there's diversity at least there's more than one place you can apply to there ought to be dozens of places you can apply to"
},
{
"end_time": 1486.493,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1458.063,
"text": " Okay, so about the quantum computing checkbox, I imagine, and I know that you mentioned that you're not as familiar with the grant system as one could be, or even maybe you do not want to be. But I imagine that it's not as simple as the checkbox for quantum computing. I imagine there's sub checkboxes like quantum hardware or cryptography or fault tolerance or algorithms or what have you in the quantum computing space. Now there would be, yes. But when I was doing it, there were none of those."
},
{
"end_time": 1514.002,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1487.21,
"text": " right okay for the creation of these new checkboxes are you saying that they would be done inadvertently but you can't predict ahead of time so what you should do is you should fund people with potential yes fund people that that that's how it should be uh yeah that's how it should be in incremental research as well the the whole of uh scientific research should be like that i thought you were about to say"
},
{
"end_time": 1540.282,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1514.718,
"text": " You'd be allowed to make a new box and say what should be in it and all the sub boxes that I wouldn't have known what the sub boxes are. They were, they too were only invented later and not by me. So the communities that I also traffic in other than physics or philosophy and math and the grant situation there doesn't seem to be as dire. There's no expectations of grants as a prerequisite for tenure, for instance."
},
{
"end_time": 1561.237,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1540.828,
"text": " This just the hope and the promoting of people who have strong publications. So a math department meeting may say something like congratulations on your annals paper. But I imagine that a physics department meeting would include like your grant expires next year. What's your renewal plan? So what's the difference here between physics and math? And I'm speaking about fundamental physics."
},
{
"end_time": 1591.613,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1561.8,
"text": " Because you can always say, well, if it's experimental physics, it's quite clear. You do need plenty of money to fund your machines and your computers and your servers and your students and so on, but fundamental physics. Yes. So, um, for the, um, in the structure that I advocated earlier, the, um, research group leader should indeed be judged not on his past papers, not on his, but, but on his"
},
{
"end_time": 1621.101,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1592.159,
"text": " On his previous success in advancing the subject. Should be a well known figure. In the field who is who has a track record of making progress and now he wants to make progress. In a way that. Can engage several other people."
},
{
"end_time": 1650.896,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1621.903,
"text": " Maybe, maybe, you know, if he's an experimentalist, he wants to build this with a machine or if he's a theoretician, then the field has broadened enough for him to see that there is potential there that he doesn't yet know what it is. But he knows who he wants. That's that's the thing. Ten years earlier, he knew what he wanted to do. Now he knows what kind of person he wants to work with."
},
{
"end_time": 1679.974,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1651.698,
"text": " Anyone knows that he wants to hire five of them or ten of them. But not five hundred of them. So he is funded not because he can say what his next paper is going to be about. He's funded because he says he's very interested in stuff and he's going to do research on it. And somebody who funds him will be saying"
},
{
"end_time": 1709.718,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1681.732,
"text": " I think that this guy is good. Or gal. Yeah, well, I don't want to use gender neutral language because I think it's silly. Obviously when I say he, I mean he or she. And if I said mister or missus, I might also mean his majesty or master so and so. So yes, it's"
},
{
"end_time": 1736.544,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1710.606,
"text": " Um, it, it, it's completely natural in this whole scheme of things that I'm advocating that everything is tuned to doing the research, make, creating the new knowledge. Everything is subordinate to that. If somebody is going to care whether the graduate student is male or female, then they're not, they're not the founder that I want."
},
{
"end_time": 1762.739,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1738.268,
"text": " Suppose right now there's a wealthy patron or multiple and you could speak directly to them and these people who are watching, they care about fundamental physics, maybe foundational research in computer science as well, just foundational in general."
},
{
"end_time": 1789.275,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1763.422,
"text": " Which we can get to distinguish in between fundamental and foundational to me. I see them as quite close. I can't distinguish them. Maybe you can. But but anyhow, what is your message to them? What are they to do? They have this money. What are they to do? They want to help. Yeah. So they each one of them is different. Each one of them has interests. Each one of them has reasons for wanting to to promote fundamental physics."
},
{
"end_time": 1816.647,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1789.787,
"text": " I need to find somebody that they think is good. Somebody usually be somebody who has already done some of the things that they want done."
},
{
"end_time": 1844.428,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1817.91,
"text": " And then they should approach that person and say, could you use some money? Um, often the answer will be no. Um, but, but often it will be yes because with money, they can, um, do a lot of things in parallel, but they would otherwise have to do in series by themselves or with a, with a small, smaller group. Um,"
},
{
"end_time": 1864.582,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1844.838,
"text": " Now there is a thing that just started up the conjecture institute and i don't know how they make their choices but what i've seen is seems to be following the pattern that i advocate quite closely. So they found the person not the research project."
},
{
"end_time": 1889.838,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1866.049,
"text": " They and and they they seem to fund people who are interested in foundations i don't know whether that's because. They death thing is to found is to fund foundations or whether that thing is to fund things which are normally funded because of her so i don't know which of those it is."
},
{
"end_time": 1913.012,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1890.401,
"text": " I'm either of those would do and lots of variations on that would also do like i said i i would like that to be dozens of such entities. I'm and that with all with the different ethos or with a different theory of what foundations are what therefore."
},
{
"end_time": 1943.712,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1913.848,
"text": " And all with a different theory of what's wrong with the present thing why why why somebody hasn't already funded the thing that they want to find that sort of thing. So firstly what is the difference between fundamental research and foundational research. I don't make much difference between those things but foundational suggest to me that you have a field and you're drilling into its foundations so you want to understand it more deeply than it has been before."
},
{
"end_time": 1970.35,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1944.718,
"text": " Fundamental means to do with fundamental knowledge that is knowledge that is needed for all sorts of different areas. For example, quantum computation I think is fundamental or was because it has to do with"
},
{
"end_time": 1993.712,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1971.101,
"text": " Mathematics and epistemology as well as physics and computation and computer engineering so that there's a whole bunch of things that it might unite if it works and but but it's it's fundamental in its conception that it's not it's not like working at existing foundations of anything."
},
{
"end_time": 2020.265,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1995.759,
"text": " Okay, so someone who's listening who doesn't care about fundamental or foundational research, they hear you keep bringing it up. Why is it so important to you? And of course, you are not saying that the incremental conformational research that's done on existing theories is not important, but that the fundamental foundational has been somewhat excluded or not incentivized properly."
},
{
"end_time": 2048.131,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 2020.742,
"text": " But that implies that why should we even care that it's incentivized properly? What is it about foundational and fundamental research that's so vital to your conception of knowledge in the world? The thing that unites them, so the growth of knowledge can't be regimented. There's, you know, if you tell somebody like Henry Ford said something like, you know, if I asked people what they want, they would have said a better horse."
},
{
"end_time": 2077.619,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 2048.643,
"text": " I'm so the essential thing to. Intellectual progress of all kinds weather incremental fundamental whatever is interest that somebody is interested in doing this. If they weren't paid they'd still do it they'd get a job doing something else and they do it in their spare time."
},
{
"end_time": 2106.476,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 2078.131,
"text": " Like Van Gogh with his painting, you know, nobody ever bought a painting from him in his lifetime. Even though his brother owned an art gallery. I mean, I don't know the story of that, but you know, it's obviously not, it's not the standard story of slotting into an existing structure. So some, but yeah, sorry, I've gone off the subject slightly."
},
{
"end_time": 2134.394,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2107.568,
"text": " What unifies fundamental and incremental research is that someone's interested in it. And it's that interest that drives all progress. It's true that fundamental research eventually, typically, eventually drives something useful as well, but not always. And you know, you could ask, well, if the general theory of relativity hadn't been invented for another"
},
{
"end_time": 2162.159,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2135.196,
"text": " 60 years let's say after einstein nothing practical would have been affected then then it was needed for the gps system then now it's being needed for other things but but perhaps if you were interested in in purely utilitarian outputs you would have delayed einstein but"
},
{
"end_time": 2191.169,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2162.705,
"text": " Then if you take that kind of utilitarian attitude to Einstein, you would have taken the utilitarian attitude to everything and you would never have had antibiotics and rocketry and satellites and that sort of thing. And the reason that it's all connected is not so much that"
},
{
"end_time": 2220.503,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2192.432,
"text": " Progress in the whole of science and engineering. Comes from fundamental research as a sort of wellspring. That also happens but but it the main thing is that the whole of progress in human ideas is a single thing. An indivisible thing which is all powered by."
},
{
"end_time": 2245.708,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2220.862,
"text": " Okay, so it's not an argument to pursue foundational research, because in your mind, maybe a decade from now, maybe 200 years from now, it will prove to be useful. No, it's not that. I thought what you're going to say, it's an in and of itself argument."
},
{
"end_time": 2271.596,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2245.862,
"text": " It doesn't sound like that it sounds like pursue it because this is part of a larger knowledge creation process exactly. Exactly it's needed for that and if you if you suppress. The impulse to create the impulse to to improve anywhere you're going to affect everywhere or you may affect everywhere you could be lucky and not affect."
},
{
"end_time": 2284.633,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2272.193,
"text": " I'm the theory of evolution or whatever but in practice you usually do. Interesting ok sorry to interrupt you so it sounds like you're saying that."
},
{
"end_time": 2308.524,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2285.606,
"text": " Look, a child has a natural curiosity. As you get older, your curiosity morphs into various subjects. One of those subjects could be foundational research in physics. But that is an example of foundational research curiosity. And that is important. Yes. And therefore, if you're talking about your hypothetical rich person, a hypothetical rich person who has that interest"
},
{
"end_time": 2334.428,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2308.865,
"text": " Or who wishes they could pursue that interest when they didn't have time to do it when they were younger or that kind of thing with somebody who for reasons of their own. Things that that is important and curious as to where that will go and they want it to they want to get the answer before they die that is the thing that this hypothetical rich person should be funding."
},
{
"end_time": 2362.039,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2335.077,
"text": " Yes. And I imagine this hypothetical rich person was not able to pursue foundational research because you hypothetically don't get rich by pursuing fundamental research. That's the whole point of our conversation for the past 30 minutes. Yes. Yes. Presumably something else interested them and that involved making money. I don't think by the way, I don't think there's there's hardly anybody who's who's interested in making money per se."
},
{
"end_time": 2391.681,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2362.688,
"text": " They make money because that is what they need to do the thing that they're interested in. Right. Should physicists study philosophy? Well, if it's relevant to their research, now in the case of quantum computing, it's rather paradoxical because I think philosophy is extremely important in the foundations of"
},
{
"end_time": 2422.073,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2392.585,
"text": " quantum computing. But the state of the art in academic philosophy is terrible and people who study that and internalize it become less proficient at the kind of philosophy that's needed to make progress in physics. Now there are exceptions to that and I won't name them because then the people I don't name will be offended."
},
{
"end_time": 2451.186,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2422.875,
"text": " But there are certainly philosophers who take the right attitude to philosophy, but the overwhelming majority do not. So, you know, physicists should know philosophy provided they find the right philosophy. Speaking of naming, can you name a physics department that is doing extremely well in your eyes? Now, I said department, but it could also be institute like the Perimeter Institute, for instance."
},
{
"end_time": 2478.046,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2452.568,
"text": " Again i'd rather not for the same reason i don't just single p i'm a serious i prefer to talk serious rather than practice if the things that i'm saying are. True or even half true people will really recognize it people will recognize this that they've seen this happening."
},
{
"end_time": 2506.049,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2478.456,
"text": " Every when i speak to people about this i've very rarely had anyone contradict what i'm saying. They usually agree but they say yes but what can i do about it. I am what was it about about five years ago i was trying to. Change get the rules changed about how foreign."
},
{
"end_time": 2525.674,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2507.295,
"text": " I'm postdocs are treated in the british visa system. So that may seem to be a rather easy to think but it was important to me at the time because well never mind and."
},
{
"end_time": 2555.418,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2526.664,
"text": " This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Being financially savvy? Smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state."
},
{
"end_time": 2580.418,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2557.108,
"text": " So i thought well who can i go to the head of the physics department well the head of the physics department told me said to me i've got no power over that. That's my superiors superiors said we have no power over that i thought well i'll go to the vice chancellor of the university know the vice chancellor doesn't deal with such things at all so then happened to come into my email."
},
{
"end_time": 2606.067,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2580.759,
"text": " Box the royal society had a document saying the structure of research funding. This is one of the reasons why i avoid this field whole field by the way structure of research fundamental research funding in britain so i downloaded it it's like you know i don't know big fat thing and i looked at it and."
},
{
"end_time": 2636.613,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2607.09,
"text": " i found that if i had pursued this line of who should i ask to change this rule there is no one basically the the uh structure of decision making goes right up to the minister the minister for science and education but the minister is required to consult various committees before making any decision so there is nobody i can go to"
},
{
"end_time": 2666.118,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2637.619,
"text": " To make the change I wanted to. And that's why I gave up on that. Well, this sounds hopeless. So there must be some hope here. Physicists, professors of physics who watch this channel, they're listening and they're thinking, look, I don't like this quote unquote system that I'm in. Yeah. And I would like to change it in various specific ways that are important to them. David, what is your advice?"
},
{
"end_time": 2698.234,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2668.78,
"text": " I suppose what they would need to do is get together and form a proposal to take to government because it's pointless taking it to the minister because the minister doesn't have that power. It's the government that has to change the rules under which the minister makes these decisions and then that can go right down through the"
},
{
"end_time": 2725.862,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2698.831,
"text": " Through the hierarchy and i somehow these people would have to. Present it in such a way that it bubbles up to the top of what the government wants to do. I don't know how to do that i don't know i don't know how to politically campaign and i so but perhaps i'll such people perhaps they're watching."
},
{
"end_time": 2756.766,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2727.637,
"text": " What do you think the reason is that more physicists aren't actively critiquing the academic organization that that they're a part of? So I hear plenty of critiques off air from professors that I speak to, but on air, they're much more reluctant. And one reason may be that that occurs to people who are listening could be, well, the academic positions are precarious, especially without tenure. So when you speak, it's like you're biting the hand that feeds you. And so"
},
{
"end_time": 2778.37,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2756.937,
"text": " Maybe have the incentive to do the opposite to say, no, no, I love everything about where I work and everything is called pathetic. No, I think very few people say that. OK, so you're one of maybe 10 people that I know who are currently in the academic institution. Yes, who are willing to say there's something rotten at the core of the institution."
},
{
"end_time": 2806.288,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2779.087,
"text": " And the difficulty here is when most people say something is rotten at the core of an institution, they get labeled as a conspiracy theorist. The mental image people have of what you think is OK. At some point, people sat around with cigars thinking, how can we make this less efficient and more beneficial to myself? And there were distributions of notes that said burn after reading. Yeah, nothing like that. This is nobody's fault. Nobody is to blame."
},
{
"end_time": 2828.148,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2807.568,
"text": " That is part of why it's hard to change. So why is it that you're a part of a small handful of people who are willing to publicly talk about this? Well, again, I can't psychologize. Sorry, I'm being..."
},
{
"end_time": 2854.599,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2828.677,
"text": " That's fine, and you can feel free to disagree with the premise. You can also say, Kirk, no, no, I think that's false. I can list 20 people. I think it's true that few people want to criticize it, especially in public. But I can't speculate on why. Is it because of their career, like you said? Is it because they consider their position precarious?"
},
{
"end_time": 2884.292,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2855.606,
"text": " A whole load of other considerations come in once you have tenure, because you're not a free agent when you have tenure. It's supposed to make you, to free you from peer pressure or whatever you call it, or public pressure. But in practice that doesn't really happen. Very many people who"
},
{
"end_time": 2912.534,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2884.735,
"text": " who get permanent jobs, just slot into the system. And I don't know why, but some sociological reason perhaps. So again, you're making me speculate about things I don't know about. So I'm extremely vexed with you. Good. Yes, that's worth being. It's rare that there's a physicist who's made significant contributions even to their own field. That's something to note."
},
{
"end_time": 2941.288,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2912.944,
"text": " To make contributions to the philosophy of physics is something else. And then with your book, the beginning of infinity, which I'll place a link on screen and in the description, you've made contributions to philosophy proper. So that's vexing. What is it about you? I've been very lucky. As I said earlier, when I was a graduate student and postdoc,"
},
{
"end_time": 2966.664,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2942.005,
"text": " I was very lucky to have supervisors who did exactly this would advocate they said what i came in on day one or rather even in my interview. Before i was even accepted they said. What is it you want to work on."
},
{
"end_time": 2997.534,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2967.637,
"text": " And I didn't say anything specific because I didn't know anything specific at the time. So I just described what kind of thing I want to work on. And I remember saying, for example, to Dennis Sharma in my first interview, that it seems to me that the most urgent problem in physics is quantum gravity. So I'd like to work on that. I know a bit of quantum field theory, but I don't know enough relativity yet. And so now it turned out"
},
{
"end_time": 3028.046,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2998.234,
"text": " That was a bad idea and I've decided to turn from quantum gravity, which I thought was too difficult to work on at my stage yet. And I was getting interested in other things, which eventually led to physics of information and to quantum computation and so on."
},
{
"end_time": 3053.336,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 3029.667,
"text": " somehow saw that i had the thing he wants in his students and so he he hired me and when i wanted to change and to study something completely different he not only did he not object in any way he he was interested he said you know what"
},
{
"end_time": 3073.302,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 3053.626,
"text": " What he was interested in what i want to do and why and somebody he never tried to direct my research because he assumed that i wanted what he wanted. You mentioned that quantum gravity was too difficult what do you mean."
},
{
"end_time": 3105.299,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 3075.418,
"text": " So at the time I didn't know what was so difficult about it. I took the like, I think I'd absorbed the standard view that what we're trying to do is, uh, cure the infinities and cure the nonlinearities and that kind of thing. So the, so that, uh, the answer would be like an equation which had the desired properties. And, uh, I realized as I, as I got into the subject that those are trivial problems."
},
{
"end_time": 3127.5,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 3105.879,
"text": " It wouldn't matter if we didn't solve that. But the chances are that we will solve that once we've got the deeper incompatibility between the two theories sorted out. So the"
},
{
"end_time": 3157.91,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3129.906,
"text": " Fundamental i keep saying fundamental i don't always mean in the same sense we have to unpack this. At root. All the existing field theories are theories of fields on space time. Whereas general utility is a theory of space time itself and it's not a field you can think of it as."
},
{
"end_time": 3188.729,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3158.848,
"text": " A fixed space time with the field on top of it so it's the sort of static part and the varying part which people then try to quantize. But that's very alien to general relativity. General relativity is the theory of space time as a dynamical thing itself. And there are theories, I mean people have tried everything in quantum gravity and in my view everything has failed."
},
{
"end_time": 3218.677,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3189.633,
"text": " The, the, um, and, and, um, in every other part of physics, um, these fields evolve in time and what you're, what you're looking for, a dynamical equation, an equation of motion that, that says how they evolve in time, but in general activity viewed in that sense, there is no time. It's just a,"
},
{
"end_time": 3248.558,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3219.616,
"text": " Either it's a four-dimensional thing or it's a, in the quantum sense, it's a manifold where every point is a three geometry and evolution in time is just a strip of things with a higher wave function than the rest. But how that turns into time"
},
{
"end_time": 3276.22,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3249.275,
"text": " Various proposals anyway it's what can i say it's conceptually. Very incompatible the way we conceive of quantum fields and which have its own problems by the way. And the way we conceive of space time is fundamentally incompatible."
},
{
"end_time": 3298.285,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3276.852,
"text": " There are also problems with quantum field theory itself. I think general relativity in itself would be a viable theory. That's okay. There's the big bang and black holes and we're not sure how to deal with singularities, but basically it's a viable theory and there's no kind of contradictions in it."
},
{
"end_time": 3328.49,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3299.309,
"text": " Whereas quantum field theory is full of contradictions in its own right let alone before you try to Unify it with with gravity such as So the My favorite one at the moment So I like being baffled and this this is this is one of my favorite problems with"
},
{
"end_time": 3357.09,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3329.121,
"text": " quantum field theory because it's so baffling. One of the basic axioms of quantum field theory is that field quantities at space like separated points, that is at points at the same time, that those quantities should commute with each other. That is, if there's a quantity A and B, then AB equals BA."
},
{
"end_time": 3378.626,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3358.046,
"text": " And at a later time they don't commute and that that's the that's the whole reason why quantum fields in evolve in time. It's because they don't the later thing doesn't commute with the earlier thing. So now if to."
},
{
"end_time": 3407.517,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3379.053,
"text": " Things that say in the same space there is a quantity here in a quantity that don't commute it means they must be described by separate algebras. And no matter how close they are they must still be. I'm described by separate algebras which means that the and the separate algebras all commute so no matter how close together these algebras are."
},
{
"end_time": 3433.097,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3409.036,
"text": " They still commute and yet when they coincide they don't commute because the field quantity is at the same point don't commute because that's what drives the whole thing forwards. So this. Axiom of. Commutative at space like separations. Is disastrous."
},
{
"end_time": 3461.51,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3433.507,
"text": " One way of looking at the infinities of quantum field theory is that they are precisely caused by that axiom. Interesting. And yet, if you try to remove that axiom, which I have tried to do, then you run into problems of causality and other problems and problems of interpretation and what the meaning of the different quantities are. It's like you're not in Candace anymore, just that tiny change in quantum theory."
},
{
"end_time": 3488.422,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3462.108,
"text": " Leads to a series that can't even be interpreted in the normal way as being. Things having values at different points so it becomes something else you're not in kansas anymore. So that's that's that's that's one of the problems and i like thinking about it so you have to stop me talking about it."
},
{
"end_time": 3518.746,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3488.78,
"text": " Hmm. Oh, I don't want to stop you talking about it. I want to know what were some of your attempted solutions. So I tried to Set up a quantum Theory where the fields at each point Don't range over the real numbers for their possible values, but they just range over plus and minus one So they're qubits as I called this qubit field theory. So you have a field of qubits"
},
{
"end_time": 3548.251,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3519.684,
"text": " And there's a qubit at each point in space. And they don't have to commute with each other at different points. You just assume that somehow dynamically, when they're far enough apart, they'll approximately commute. But they won't commute. And when you choose two points closer and closer together, you'll find that their algebras become more and more the same. Until when they coincide, there's no blowing up or anything."
},
{
"end_time": 3576.442,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3548.695,
"text": " It's just a perfectly well behaved theory. So then I worked out what the possible equations of motion for such a theory are and I worked out that I think it was several years ago that I did this. I worked out I think that there are 13 possible second order differential equations that are capable of being equations of motion for qubit field theory."
},
{
"end_time": 3605.947,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3577.381,
"text": " And then, so the question then arose, what counts as a measurement? Because in ordinary quantum theory, if you measure something, you're putting the value of it into another thing, which then commutes with the original thing. So you can think of it as having a value, which if it's a good measurement, it will be the same value as in the thing you were measuring."
},
{
"end_time": 3635.981,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3606.459,
"text": " But in qubit field theory, that's not true because when you, when you measure something, the result of the measurement will still not commute with the original thing. And when you measure that the non-commutativity will spread a bit like entanglement, but this is spreading and spreading a different thing. It's spreading non-commutativity and, and I couldn't solve that problem. And so although the papers on the archive, you can read it if you want to. I'll place a link on screen to it. Right."
},
{
"end_time": 3664.787,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3636.647,
"text": " So it's a nice little theory. I have no idea what it means physically, and I failed in finding a thing it could mean. So I never published it, except on the archive. Is it a non-local quantum field theory? No, no, it's perfectly local. That is the right question, because normally when things don't commute, there'll be problems with causality."
},
{
"end_time": 3692.073,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3665.725,
"text": " But in cubit field theory, there are no problems with causality. It all, um, works, no infinities, no non-localities. Um, there is no Schrodinger picture for that theory. There's only a Heisenberg picture. Hmm. Um, so that that's, that seems to be an important thing, but, but, you know, I haven't put my finger on exactly how."
},
{
"end_time": 3721.271,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3693.114,
"text": " Okay, so most of the time, when people are thinking of combining general relativity with QFT, the mathematical problem is non-renormalizability. Yes. There are said to be three or so conceptual problems that are distinct from the non-renormalizability. So one is just QFT requires a fixed background, like you mentioned, background independence is the issue here, conceptually speaking. Then there is, well, what does it mean for you to have a superposition of geometries operationally?"
},
{
"end_time": 3749.292,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3721.869,
"text": " And then there's the problem of time that you mentioned. Now, the current leading theory of quantum gravity is string theory. At the time when you were a graduate student, it may not have been there. But either way, you have heard of it at some point during your career. And what attracted you to it or what did not attract you to it? What dissuaded you or persuaded you to? I've never worked on it because I don't think that progress in fundamental physics"
},
{
"end_time": 3777.858,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3750.23,
"text": " I should never say never, but I don't think progress in fundamental physics ever or almost ever comes by trying to find a better mathematical object and then wondering what it means as a bit of physics. For example, finding a different group for the fundamental particles to belong to."
},
{
"end_time": 3806.698,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3778.268,
"text": " I don't think you can find the answer to a sophisticated problem that way. What you need to do is have an idea about how, how, what physical thing you want. For example, as I was saying with qubit field theory, you want, you want the, the, um, commutation relations of different field quantities, not to be pathological. So you want everything to be smooth."
},
{
"end_time": 3832.927,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3807.142,
"text": " Okay now what kind of mathematics can give that to you. That's the kind of thing that i think makes can make progress in physics and string theory it seems to me is entirely the other way around is saying suppose that the fundamental things in nature are not point particles but strings. Okay now let's find out what kind of a world that would look like."
},
{
"end_time": 3859.65,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3833.797,
"text": " Ford BlueCruise hands-free highway driving takes the work out of being behind the wheel, allowing you to relax and reconnect while also staying in control. Enjoy the drive in BlueCruise enabled vehicles like the F-150, Explorer and Mustang Mach-E."
},
{
"end_time": 3889.275,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3860.435,
"text": " So it was more their approach to landing on string theory that you disagreed with rather than string theory itself? Yes, well string theory itself then just becomes trying to find some equations that will make it work. And that's not"
},
{
"end_time": 3913.575,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3889.872,
"text": " You know, you should be trying to look for equations that do the physical thing that you that you think physics is going to be like. Why should the approach matter? So let's just analogize this to scaling a mountain and you think you should be hiking to find the mountain with your flashlight and they think, no, you should be using a you could tell I'm not a mountain climber, but whatever those picks are that they use."
},
{
"end_time": 3939.411,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3914.343,
"text": " I did speak to Alex Henold, who's a rock climber, and I've already forgotten. Patons, I believe their names are, but yeah. Okay, sure. So there are two approaches and you find something on the mountain. To me, it doesn't matter how you got to what you found. You found it. So you just evaluate this. It's not how you got there. It's what the problem was. So you, as I said, you know, as we were saying in the earlier part of the conversation,"
},
{
"end_time": 3966.323,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3940.196,
"text": " Someone has to be passionate about it. Someone has to be obsessed with the problem and trying to solve it. Not being expert at mathematics and making making up a new mathematical thing and then throwing that over to the physicists and saying, is it this? And they say, no, it's not that. Then you say, well, well, is it this? That that's"
},
{
"end_time": 3987.637,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3966.869,
"text": " That's the approach that I couldn't really shouldn't really call that approach. I mean, that's not problem based. That that's not that that's not somebody trying to solve a problem. Maybe you should say you could say it's somebody trying to solve someone else's problem. But but from the physics point of view,"
},
{
"end_time": 4014.753,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3989.292,
"text": " The conceptual thing is this fundamental that's that's again fundamental okay the sexual the conceptual thing is. Where is the whole what motivates the whole procedure if you want to make the theories work and you have an idea about how reality should be."
},
{
"end_time": 4044.906,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 4015.299,
"text": " That would make it work or what kind of reality would make that work, not what kind of equation of motion would make it work. I think you'll never get there that way. You, if you try to, um, make general activity by that method, you would absolutely never have got there because you would never have had the theory of a dynamical space time. You just have been thinking of, you know, what terms can we add to Newton's laws?"
},
{
"end_time": 4068.114,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 4046.305,
"text": " To make it compatible with let's say electromagnetism well add a couple of times and so you can do that you might even get as far as the relativistic formulation of. Maxwell's equations which might then get you to special activity i mean this is this is this is already assuming a lot of luck."
},
{
"end_time": 4094.821,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 4068.456,
"text": " But you'd never get your general relativity because the idea of a dynamical space time, a dynamical curved space time was needed to make that progress. And you'd never have found those equations without first having that idea. So what if the string theorist says, well, who cares about what motivated us to get to our answers?"
},
{
"end_time": 4118.763,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 4095.333,
"text": " Firstly, we're a diverse group of people. We all have different motivations. It's unclear to speak of the motivation of the field of string theory itself. But regardless, look, David, we the string theorists have given you ADS-CFT correspondence. We've revolutionized our understanding of quantum information and black holes. We've developed holographic dualities that are now used in"
},
{
"end_time": 4146.34,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 4119.053,
"text": " in condensed matter physics and sure that latter case is not string inspired but it's not string contingent okay still there are tools that we've developed the pure mathematicians used and so on so is this not evidence that we're on the correct track what is your response to that well there's never evidence that one is on the right track if there was such a thing then one could move further along the track i'm not qualified to judge mathematics"
},
{
"end_time": 4170.776,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 4146.834,
"text": " So there might be very beautiful mathematics which in string theory which sets up. Alternate realities that are like hours in some way and unlike hours in another way and i can't prove to you that when they keep fiddling with it it won't eventually resemble our one or be our one but."
},
{
"end_time": 4197.602,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 4171.323,
"text": " To get an answer without first having the problem to which that is the answer is is i think very rare it even even when you. Site examples like alexander fleming working on bacteria and found penicillin and and it really wasn't like that he had an idea which was. Which had."
},
{
"end_time": 4227.227,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 4200.299,
"text": " Finding a therapeutic chemical in the landscape of what he was looking for. He wasn't specifically trying to find penicillin and it was because he was in that landscape that he recognized the accidental discovery as being relevant. So it was because he recognized the now if somebody had said to him."
},
{
"end_time": 4257.517,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 4227.944,
"text": " Let's say two or three years before, here's a petri dish. What do you see? He might well have said, I don't know. They're just some bacterial colonies on that. What am I supposed to, what, what am I supposed to look for? And then somebody might've said, well, look, there's a patch here where the bacteria aren't going. And then then he might've made further progress, but that, that I idea is, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 4284.514,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 4258.592,
"text": " I idea of that kind and a proposed solution to a problem first a conception of a problem and then a proposed solution to that problem come before. A viable theory that solves it all the addresses it partly solves it. And in the case of string theory."
},
{
"end_time": 4311.544,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4285.589,
"text": " I don't see the solved any existing problem what they're hoping for is that some mathematics that resembles the existing mathematics will come out of it. And will have desired properties. I don't know maybe maybe the right theory of contact gravity has infinities maybe they're a good thing maybe that we want to have more of them or whatever."
},
{
"end_time": 4339.599,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4312.056,
"text": " Okay so I imagine the rejoinder from the string theorist is okay you say that we haven't solved any problems but look string theory is the only framework that's been developed where quantum mechanics and gravity coexist without mathematical contradictions and every other approach either breaks fundamental symmetries or has these contradictions and so is that not progress to you David? Well it is a mathematical progress"
},
{
"end_time": 4367.449,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4340.196,
"text": " But that it might solve the conceptual problems is a hope and I keep saying I can't prove that that's not going to be fulfilled. Maybe it'll be fulfilled tomorrow. And also it's not up to me to tell other people what to work on. So they should work on it for whatever reason they like."
},
{
"end_time": 4394.855,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4368.865,
"text": " And the funding entities should fund it for whatever reason they like. So getting back to committees, I imagine that the Manhattan Project had a committee. I'm not a historian and I haven't looked into that. So I'm nowhere near an expert in the Manhattan Project other than watching Oppenheimer. So what was different about their committee?"
},
{
"end_time": 4423.404,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4395.742,
"text": " Yeah, I'm not well up on the history either, though I have seen Oppenheimer. I don't know how accurate that... We're in the same boat. Right. I think that was a very unusual organization and it did not run on this kind of committee theorem pattern. What happened? So for a start, nobody applied to be on the Manhattan Project. Ah, they were picked."
},
{
"end_time": 4447.773,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4423.848,
"text": " They were picked so somebody would come and see you and say do you want to work on work of national importance right and it will involve a lot of. Sacrifice on your part and we can't tell you what it is but it is of national importance and this was like during the war."
},
{
"end_time": 4475.52,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4448.746,
"text": " So a lot of people said yes and a lot of people then went there and never found out what it was about because they were not employed at the center of the research. They were just supporting researchers and they were just told, you know, get this machine to work, never mind why. And then there were the"
},
{
"end_time": 4503.473,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4476.084,
"text": " Lab assistant level people who were just told keep that dial between this number and this number and turn this knob and press this button all day every day and don't tell anyone what you're doing and they did except a few who were Soviet spies. Fortunately, Stalin didn't have the wherewithal to make use of the"
},
{
"end_time": 4533.78,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4504.07,
"text": " Of the knowledge himself before the end of the war, if there had been Nazi spies, it would have been a much bigger catastrophe. I mean, it was a catastrophe as it was, but, but, um, with not the Nazis had a, had an atom bomb project underway with Heisenberg at the head. And, uh, if he'd been told a few of the secrets, um, of the Manhattan project, he could have done it."
},
{
"end_time": 4565.247,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4535.538,
"text": " He later said he didn't want to, but I don't believe him. You mentioned in your interview with Sam Altman that you keep a list on your computer of progress and fields where there's been significant progress, but you thought you couldn't have achieved that progress. And I believe you said the World Wide Web was one and AGI and sorry, not AGI, but being able to converse generally in natural language with something. So I want to know more about this list. Tell me about this list."
},
{
"end_time": 4595.162,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4566.271,
"text": " Well, should I bring it up on my computer screen and tell you a couple of the other things? Please. Well, obviously I was wrong and being wrong could be a spur to inventing something. So another one was, I've got the list up here in front of me. So another one was Mathematica, Stephen Wolfram's program, because I thought there could never be a general purpose"
},
{
"end_time": 4623.541,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4596.852,
"text": " Application interface that would allow you to define your own mathematical notation and interesting most most serious uses of mathematics depend on making your own notation as you go along and But Mathematica can I didn't think it was possible Just a moment to linger on this notation aspect. What are you referring to?"
},
{
"end_time": 4649.718,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4624.121,
"text": " Do you mean to say like Leibniz invented the little s that squished together for an integral and that would be, I imagine, trivial to program anything back in the, even when early computers came out to display whatever notation you like? No, I mean, things like, well, so when working on quantum computers, I wanted to go over to the Heisenberg picture,"
},
{
"end_time": 4679.77,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4650.162,
"text": " um which was an unusual thing to do and i wanted a notation that was very suitable for the heisenberg picture so instead of using sigma matrices i i i wanted to say q a q matrix where q was a function of t function of time and then i wanted to um have an automated thing to to say take the commutator of two q's"
},
{
"end_time": 4708.746,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4680.247,
"text": " Take the commutator of two Q's at the same time would be zero, unless they were the same Q, in which case they'd be the Pauli algebra. And then at different times, it would be the commutator would depend on how much the Hamiltonian had evolved the two of them. Sorry, how much it had evolved one of them compared with the other one at an earlier time."
},
{
"end_time": 4739.923,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4710.589,
"text": " I did have a computer at the time, it was a home computer and I had to write my own software for doing that for me. So I wrote a little program to manipulate these Q quantities. With Mathematica I could just define the Q quantities and Mathematica couldn't do it and I didn't see that"
},
{
"end_time": 4769.462,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4740.759,
"text": " I didn't see how a general purpose thing of that kind could exist. I see. But Mathematica did. So after getting Mathematica, I didn't have to write my own program to manipulate things anymore. Okay. Tell me more about what's on this list. Okay. Okay. So another important one was"
},
{
"end_time": 4799.036,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4769.923,
"text": " When i was first told about the laser guide star technique for allowing. Telescopes to see through shifting atmosphere. I didn't think that that could make much difference i thought the difference that could make was very marginal because. The the."
},
{
"end_time": 4812.517,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4800.077,
"text": " The atmosphere affects the laser beam going up as well as coming down. So you don't know what to correct for."
},
{
"end_time": 4838.558,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4814.036,
"text": " And the people i was i was in denis charles department as well when the early days of people doing this and they were making the hardware. And they were explained to me how it worked and i was saying i don't see how that can be and they were trying to explain it to me. Perhaps they weren't trying to explain it very well but i came away with the idea that this wasn't going to make much difference."
},
{
"end_time": 4865.418,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4839.411,
"text": " um and um it makes a lot of difference um so that was a that was a piece of hardware or experimental physics that i i underestimated the power of an idea what's the latest on this list excess community notes okay all right tell me about that well um so"
},
{
"end_time": 4891.442,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4866.084,
"text": " So a previous one was wikipedia which i didn't think could work because it would get filled up with spam edits yeah i don't know who thought that would work is remarkable well it worked for several years and that so that's why it's on the list but i've it's now on the list but crossed out because now it no longer works"
},
{
"end_time": 4918.285,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4891.664,
"text": " This this failure mode has actually happened, but several years later, so I don't know why it worked. I still don't know why it worked. When it did work, but I now know why it isn't working anymore and it was my original objection. And now the and I thought that the community notes thing would suffer from the same problem."
},
{
"end_time": 4948.251,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4918.575,
"text": " The error correction mechanism would itself get taken over a bit like AIDS infecting the immune system so that the immune system was not capable of combating AIDS, that kind of phenomenon. So I thought that the trolls and the bad actors"
},
{
"end_time": 4975.93,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4948.729,
"text": " on x would find ways of infiltrating the or sorry not infiltrating because it's it's now completely automated as far as i understand it so not they'd find a way of gaming it okay maybe they still will but again i thought it wouldn't work at all i thought it would make matters worse but it it didn't it has made matters better"
},
{
"end_time": 5003.882,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4977.278,
"text": " Hola, Miami! When's the last time you've been in Burlington? We've updated, organized, and added fresh fashion. See for yourself Friday, November 14th to Sunday, November 16th at our Big Deal event. You can enter for a chance to win free wawa gas for a year, plus more surprises in your Burlington. Miami, that means so many ways and days to save. Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow! No purchase necessary. Visit bigdealevent.com for more details."
},
{
"end_time": 5032.125,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 5005.691,
"text": " The issues you're referring to regarding Wikipedia, are they of spam or of bias? Bias. Except I don't think bias exists. It's error. Either intentional or unintentional. Interesting. Okay, let's talk about Everett. I heard that you had a restaurant conversation with Everett. Is that story true and do you mind me telling it if it is? Yes."
},
{
"end_time": 5062.073,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 5032.551,
"text": " I, Bryce DeWitt contrived to let me sit next to Everett when he visited Austin. Um, I forget when it was sometime in the seventies. Um, and, um, the group of us, uh, postdocs, graduate students, uh, and professors often did go out to one of the restaurants in Austin and have lunch together."
},
{
"end_time": 5089.616,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 5063.148,
"text": " And on that occasion, Everett joined us and I had a long conversation with him over lunch. What happened during that conversation? Did Everett say something that convinced you of many worlds? No, no, I was already, this is why Bryce DeWitt sat me there. I was already convinced long before, but I was curious about whatever it thought about various of the issues that came up."
},
{
"end_time": 5119.172,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 5090.64,
"text": " The most important thing perhaps for historians, any historians watching this, there's a sort of myth growing up about Everett, or two myths. One was that he didn't think in terms of parallel universes, that he thought in terms of relative states, but he was the most enthusiastic person about"
},
{
"end_time": 5147.927,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 5119.906,
"text": " Parallel universe is that i had met up to that point he was very enthusiastic the relative states were thing that was imposed on him by his supervisor wheeler. So that was one thing and nothing is that that was sort of folklore in physics at the time i think people have realized that this is now this is false was that he left physics because of the lack of reception of his ideas."
},
{
"end_time": 5178.677,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 5148.712,
"text": " But that's not the case, he left physics because he wanted to make a fortune. Interesting. And he did make one. So he, I mean, he didn't say this, but presumably he didn't, you know, he didn't have any problems that he thought he could solve by remaining in academia. So he went into the consultancy business and worked for the Pentagon."
},
{
"end_time": 5206.22,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 5180.418,
"text": " Wait, was it so that he could be rich or because he didn't have problems to be solved? Yeah, sorry. I was speaking too glibly. Okay. It's because he wanted interesting problems and he found interesting problems in a different way and optimization. I don't know what it was exactly. What was he like personally? Very intense."
},
{
"end_time": 5235.828,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 5206.783,
"text": " Very very smart. I'm very quick quick on the uptake and quick and in jumping from. Stepping stone to stepping stone. I'm chain smoker. That upset everybody even then even in the seventies like like you know people smoke but not the whole time like that. He was a chain smoker."
},
{
"end_time": 5256.954,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 5237.312,
"text": " Do you think he understood his many worlds theory beyond just unitary evolution? Yes, yes, yes. So for a start, he'd thought deeply about the problem of probability. He got that wrong and Bryce DeWitt had a better theory, which was also wrong."
},
{
"end_time": 5280.503,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 5257.517,
"text": " And my theory which is right okay i am develop that because price to it told me that his version was wrong and explain it to me and i have told the story many times i used to go and see me in his office in texas. And whatever we were talking about he would say at some point he would say what is this problem of probability."
},
{
"end_time": 5311.049,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 5281.271,
"text": " And he would write on the board you know what the problem was and then i would say okay i see the problem i'll think about it when i got home. I forgot what the problem was and this happened several times until the finally i have it in mind is about the fifth time but maybe it was only the second time or something but sure anyway the finally i went home and i still remember what the problem was. When i was at home and then i worked on it and then i sold it."
},
{
"end_time": 5339.599,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 5312.432,
"text": " So this is now called the decision theory approach to probability in quantum theory. I see. Okay. What were Wheeler's and Dewitt's and Graham's roles when developing or promoting Everettianism? Well, this is a very complicated story and you need to ask a historian. But as far as I know, in short,"
},
{
"end_time": 5367.671,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 5341.084,
"text": " Wheeler hated the Many Worlds interpretation as it was called then but Wheeler was a good supervisor and wanted to give his student every possible opportunity to get his work seen as far as possible. It was Wheeler who sent Everett's paper to do it"
},
{
"end_time": 5398.797,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 5368.814,
"text": " And we wrote a scathing response saying, you know, there's a problem with this. There's a problem with that. There's a problem with that. And he ended up saying, and finally, I don't feel myself split and ever wrote back his famous reply saying Galileo didn't feel the earth move, but it does. And, and that persuaded to it. And he then became for several years, the major"
},
{
"end_time": 5417.329,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5399.121,
"text": " I'm back of everett of everettian quantum mechanics. And he got together this book of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics princeton university press which contains every paper even remotely relevant."
},
{
"end_time": 5440.452,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 5417.995,
"text": " To ever in not a very thick book at the time. And he is responsible for me and many other people getting interested and taking the theory forward. So do it."
},
{
"end_time": 5467.21,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5441.63,
"text": " As i said he had a theory of everettian probability which didn't quite work and he knew it didn't quite work and he wanted to fix it i don't know why he didn't fix it himself. He was doing some highly mathematical things above my head at the time. Yes he had a kind of attitude that. It was kind of obvious."
},
{
"end_time": 5495.708,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5467.995,
"text": " that this was the right interpretation and he didn't have any interest in working on it like it's like backwards looking and that was true of Everettian quantum theory for many years that everything was focused on trying to explain again and explain again and again and again to reluctant people"
},
{
"end_time": 5519.787,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5496.408,
"text": " Why the prevailing view is untenable why is this illuminating and it's the only possible one that will work. And the trouble is that attitude as i have often said that's a bit like as if biologists had spent all that time."
},
{
"end_time": 5548.37,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5520.828,
"text": " Proving and reproving that creationism doesn't work and that you should have Darwinism. Yes, you can keep doing that, but what was needed was to improve Darwinism and make further progress. And they wouldn't have made further progress if they'd kept on just engaging with this problem of why the creationists are wrong."
},
{
"end_time": 5576.971,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5549.224,
"text": " So Everettians tended to, by the way, I think no one was a full-time Everettian. They were all working on other things as well. So they did spend a lot of intellectual effort on killing and re-killing and re-killing these zombie theories that were already dead."
},
{
"end_time": 5603.882,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5577.892,
"text": " I'm until relatively recently, a lot of progress has been made on Everett and after the probability thing, there's also the question of the structure of the multiverse, which I think is still an unsolved problem that we don't have an equivalent geometry."
},
{
"end_time": 5632.619,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5604.753,
"text": " Of the multiverse the same in the sense that we do for space time we can say space time is. A four dimensional sudo remanian manifold with metric and so we can we can say what it is mathematically yes. Which is different from saying it a base i'm science equations here you are the equation database that's a different thing right right with everett we only have."
},
{
"end_time": 5656.869,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5633.2,
"text": " Not only that's an exaggeration but we do not have that statement the multiverse is we don't have that yet. We only know it in in special cases like like. Measurement and quantum teleportation and some but we don't have a general theory of what the multiverse is in general."
},
{
"end_time": 5687.773,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5659.258,
"text": " Speaking of people who are skeptical and then you constantly have to disprove or correct their misunderstanding of many worlds, I was speaking to Leonard Susskind on this podcast. I asked him about many worlds and he said, he said, there are several technical questions that people who are believers in many worlds have, I mean, sorry, that I have toward them that they aren't able to answer. And he listed two that I recall. One was that branches in quantum theory"
},
{
"end_time": 5716.527,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5688.08,
"text": " can recombine he said this whole notion of completely separate branches is well he questions that we'll get to that and then number two he said well what about if you have sure you can have half a branch here half a branch there and the born rule says fifty percent fifty percent but what if it's two branches and then one is one third and the other is two thirds does the universe split into three and then then irrational yeah okay numbers and so on"
},
{
"end_time": 5742.619,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5717.295,
"text": " So I know that these issues have been solved or at least have answers and have had answers for decades. Yes. So my question is two parts. One, I would like you to actually answer those questions for people who are in the audience who are like, yeah, those sound like reasonable objections. But then number two, someone like Susskind, who's in the field of fundamental physics, he said they've never been able to answer this. So"
},
{
"end_time": 5772.961,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5743.439,
"text": " It's either that he's asking people who are rudimentary in many worlds theories or he's not asking them or he's not listening to them or or something like that. I don't know what's going on there. And I don't know if you see that as well with many of these people who are skeptics saying, look, they're never able to answer this. You're like, I've had answers to these. You're just not listening. Or I guess that's a psychological question, which you perhaps don't want to go down. But yeah, either way, what is the answer to those two critical questions? We'll get to the"
},
{
"end_time": 5798.319,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5773.643,
"text": " psychoanalyzing question later so the um that was the one about probability recombination of branches so yes recombination of branches well um this is going right back to to ever one of the things that was kind of mistaken in ever's view is that it it regarded the although he made the enormous bit of progress of"
},
{
"end_time": 5824.104,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5798.933,
"text": " Regarding a measurement as a quantum process instead of regarding it as. Structural classical process that gets an answer so that the measurement process is a process like any other and then you see that there are super positions of the observer. As well as the system and then you can see how the correlations happen and so on. However hello."
},
{
"end_time": 5850.708,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5825.094,
"text": " He analyzed the measurements that way. He analyzed the measurements in terms of what happened at the beginning and what happened at the end. He didn't actually ask what happens during the measurement at the time when the branches are forming. And people later did that in the 1980s."
},
{
"end_time": 5878.951,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5851.664,
"text": " I had a go at doing it in the late seventies and early eighties and my proposal was rubbish but at least it kept me interested in the subject and then some philosophers actually were the people that persuaded me what the right answer is which is that the branches"
},
{
"end_time": 5905.486,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5879.394,
"text": " Are emergent properties says there's no branches don't appear in the fundamental theory. Instead of. Like in ever it's way of doing it you had one world and then three worlds that sale one world and million worlds. Where is what really happens is that there isn't really one world even even when you have."
},
{
"end_time": 5931.8,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5906.254,
"text": " A single pure state of a system. It's still the state of a particle being at a particular place also includes within that unity there is a diversity that the more the particle is in one place the more its momentum is different."
},
{
"end_time": 5956.937,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5932.261,
"text": " So there is no such thing as there being one world at the beginning. There is always a continuum of of universes or worlds but the only was calling universes when they. Subsequently evolve independently of each other and typically that happens when there's been a measurement in a measurement process."
},
{
"end_time": 5984.735,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5957.5,
"text": " So, uh, before there's a measurement, when there's just a particle of a wave packet sitting there, yes, there's lots of momentum. There's lots of positions all happening at once. Nothing is ever sharp, but you can't say that there are different momentum in different universes because all those universes are interacting with each other. So you should only call something the universe when it is causally autonomous. In other words, it's behaving."
},
{
"end_time": 6006.101,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 5985.469,
"text": " Exactly as it would if the others were not there. And that's what happens after after a measurement. So it's been a bit long winded, but the answer is that the rejoining of universes"
},
{
"end_time": 6036.51,
"index": 220,
"start_time": 6006.578,
"text": " Is is what happens in interference experiment and during the interference experiment you can't speak of universes because the different branches are affecting each other Precisely the interference is precisely the fact that you you that the different different paths of a single photon round interferometer They're not behaving as if the other were not there so when they when they come together"
},
{
"end_time": 6066.186,
"index": 221,
"start_time": 6036.954,
"text": " They do something completely different if the other one is there from what they would do. If the other one won't then that's the whole interference phenomenon. So that is the picture you can have in mind is that there's a there's a continuum in some. Kind of entity that's a bit like space time but in in hill but space or something in the multiverse which we don't know how to."
},
{
"end_time": 6097.005,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 6067.176,
"text": " Classify mathematically yet but and then that that continuum just differentiates itself into two and as it's differentiating there is no moment of split what happens is that. Branch a is affecting branch be less and less and when they have separated enough. Like when you have made the measurement and you copied it or something then there."
},
{
"end_time": 6125.52,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 6097.449,
"text": " Hardly affecting each other at all. They're affecting each other only to the level of 10 to the minus 10 to the hundred or something. So then you can speak of them, those things as different universes. So that's what happens after a measurement and during interference and also in the general case, you can't speak of universes. You can only speak of the multiverse and the multiplicity of values of things within the multiverse."
},
{
"end_time": 6156.271,
"index": 224,
"start_time": 6127.619,
"text": " And now briefly speaking probabilities. Probability is so whoops. Basically, why do we need probabilities at all? And the answer, whether within physics, the answer is basically because we need to know when we have refuted a theory. If the theory says that there's a probability of 10 to the minus 10 to the hundred of"
},
{
"end_time": 6186.408,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 6156.749,
"text": " x happening and the rest of the probability is all about why happening why can we be confident that why will happen and that we will never see x even though we know that in the multiverse we will some of us will see x but why why should we expect why to happen and not x so then um uh you only have to um"
},
{
"end_time": 6202.261,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 6186.852,
"text": " Give an account that kind of synthesizes probability in certain special cases like when there's a thing to expect and not only happens after a measurement. Add the time when."
},
{
"end_time": 6231.118,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 6202.892,
"text": " The universe is a d have to go ahead and in fact we know who's when the this should be an obvious we know that when when the universe is have not decode here they don't even obey the probability calculus or other the physical world does not obey the probability calculus. When when you're in the middle of a of an interference phenomenon there's a probability of a half that this will happen and probability of a half that that will happen"
},
{
"end_time": 6260.998,
"index": 228,
"start_time": 6231.51,
"text": " And at the end there's a probability of one quarter, one quarter, one quarter, one quarter when they pass through another beam splitter. And that's simply not true. The probabilities do not add up in the way that the probability calculus says relative probabilities ought to behave. But you want to have relative probabilities behaving properly when there has been a measurement and you're actually looking at what happens rather than thinking about it theoretically."
},
{
"end_time": 6289.224,
"index": 229,
"start_time": 6261.596,
"text": " What what is the particle doing and if you look at it that way then. It turns out that quantum theory with the born rule removed just having no reference to probability just quantum theory sort of stripped down quantum theory without probability and then you take classical decision theory. Which is about things like."
},
{
"end_time": 6313.507,
"index": 230,
"start_time": 6289.548,
"text": " If you prefer a to b and you prefer b to c then you prefer a to c that sort of thing. If you take the classical decision theory and take the probability rule out of that, the rule being that you should prefer the thing that has the highest expectation value of your utility."
},
{
"end_time": 6337.193,
"index": 231,
"start_time": 6314.633,
"text": " Take that out because there's no. Take that out because you've taken probability out and therefore there's no such thing as an expectation value. Then you put the two together quantum theory without probability and. Decision theory without probability put them together."
},
{
"end_time": 6359.514,
"index": 232,
"start_time": 6337.363,
"text": " And they tell you what a rational person would decide in the case in the case where there is some substantial amplitude for two or more things to happen. And it gives in those cases it gives the born rule but you don't have to postulate it."
},
{
"end_time": 6388.558,
"index": 233,
"start_time": 6359.804,
"text": " So when you were developing early quantum computing, was Everett's interpretation important to you or was it a driving force behind the idea of quantum advantage? Completely crucial. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 6419.377,
"index": 234,
"start_time": 6389.906,
"text": " Yeah, I couldn't have done it if I'd been thinking in the old way. Does that prove to you in your mind that research in quantum foundations or philosophy of quantum mechanics actually drives scientific breakthroughs? Well, it did in this case, but I don't think that's a proof of anything. As I said some time ago, it very often happens that fundamental things"
},
{
"end_time": 6447.415,
"index": 235,
"start_time": 6420.043,
"text": " Cause practical improvements as well eventually. I don't think it's it's it's tenable to say that that's why one should think about the fundamental things. It's a thing that can happen sometimes i think that often happens perhaps even very often i don't know how to characterize it. But it certainly happened to me in this case if i if i thought of quantum theory in the"
},
{
"end_time": 6476.732,
"index": 236,
"start_time": 6448.2,
"text": " In the wave function collapse way. I wouldn't have thought of quantum computation and in fact at the time when I was persuading people of quantum computation and that it's a thing and they ought to think that way. A lot of them. Didn't want to make this this change in their conceptual conceptualization I remember talking to land our in his office."
},
{
"end_time": 6503.746,
"index": 237,
"start_time": 6477.125,
"text": " When i think i was either just about to publish. My first paper on that or just after and i gave a talk he very kindly invited me to give a talk even though he very much disapproved of the theory at the time and he was saying to me. No you this is just something you write down on paper this can never work because."
},
{
"end_time": 6530.845,
"index": 238,
"start_time": 6504.104,
"text": " Because the because when the wave function evolves in this way and then there are two systems and then the door was partly open in his office. He had quite a small office for such an eminent man. Yeah. Um, and, and so he, he grabbed the door and he said, so when you, when you shut the door, slam, he slammed the door and he said, you see, it's not coming back. If this was quantum, it would bounce back."
},
{
"end_time": 6560.077,
"index": 239,
"start_time": 6531.783,
"text": " So he was he was explaining why basic in in modern times he was explaining why quantum error correction is impossible. And but it isn't impossible and then i infuriated him by saying. That's a problem that's a problem that will be solved and you send us behind the closed door. No i didn't have that would be a joke yes."
},
{
"end_time": 6577.125,
"index": 240,
"start_time": 6560.452,
"text": " No i said that that's good and heat in his mind it was a fundamental problem that will never work that same and asher perry's. Make the same objection. Add to me at the broadway conference."
},
{
"end_time": 6604.753,
"index": 241,
"start_time": 6578.131,
"text": " um uh he said you know i was writing stuff up on the blackboard and he said yeah but that won't work in real life um because uh the the the um uh this will be more effort to correct those errors than than to uh than than what you're correcting ah okay and again i said"
},
{
"end_time": 6628.933,
"index": 242,
"start_time": 6605.333,
"text": " Technical problem that is going to be solved and indeed it was solved by peter shaw very soon afterwards. No the reason i thought it was a technical problem and they didn't is because i was thinking everett and they were thinking collapse yes. Is the universal function as physically real to you as."
},
{
"end_time": 6656.305,
"index": 243,
"start_time": 6629.548,
"text": " The camera or your laptop that's in front of you and the microphone, is it more real? What are David Deutsch's ontological commitments? So I try not to have commitments, like WW Bartley said. We should retreat from commitment. And I also try not to have beliefs either. But it is, let me put it this way around. My"
},
{
"end_time": 6685.896,
"index": 244,
"start_time": 6658.217,
"text": " My theory that this computer that i'm talking into now exists has the same status in my mind as the theory that many copies of it exists in other universes and in both cases that status is that there are no rivals to that theory that i know of that are nonsense i mean there are only nonsense rivals."
},
{
"end_time": 6713.78,
"index": 245,
"start_time": 6687.193,
"text": " So you could call that belief but that suggests that I wanted to be true or that I would resist it not being true if an argument were presented but I hope and expect that that is not the case. But it's whereas the opponents of Everett do have beliefs"
},
{
"end_time": 6732.841,
"index": 246,
"start_time": 6714.787,
"text": " Let me be psychic. It seems like beliefs to you is synonymous with dogmatic beliefs."
},
{
"end_time": 6760.896,
"index": 247,
"start_time": 6733.507,
"text": " Belief that nothing could persuade you otherwise so that's absolute dog dogmatic belief but i'm i'm against having a ten percent dogmatic beliefs saying that you know i'm pretty sure that it would take a lot to persuade me that that's true. I don't have anything on that scale and i don't think that stuff on that scale really exists it's a it's a"
},
{
"end_time": 6790.435,
"index": 248,
"start_time": 6761.391,
"text": " It's a misconception about how thinking works. The way thinking works is to have a problem and then solve it, attempt to solve it, and then criticize the attempted solutions. And if you're lucky enough to come to a place where there are no criticisms left that you can think of, then you don't accept the theory. You just are in the position of not being able to think of another"
},
{
"end_time": 6816.766,
"index": 249,
"start_time": 6790.845,
"text": " So, when David Deutsch has a interpretation of Everettian quantum mechanics and Sean Carroll has an Everettian quantum mechanics and David Wallace has an Everettian quantum mechanics, are these different theories, like are there disagreements between you and Sean Carroll and David Wallace?"
},
{
"end_time": 6839.667,
"index": 250,
"start_time": 6817.261,
"text": " There certainly are disagreements, but the things we're disagreeing on are very, very minor compared with the difference between Everettian theory and all the other theories. So, for example, David Wallace thinks that"
},
{
"end_time": 6871.323,
"index": 251,
"start_time": 6841.544,
"text": " Think thinks that there are substantive assumptions behind my proof of the equivalent of the Bourne rule in decision. Decision theoretic approach to quantum probability and I don't think there are substantive assumptions. So he naturally works on. Trying to make clear what those assumptions are to analyze them to see what the arguments for and against those assumptions are."
},
{
"end_time": 6900.52,
"index": 252,
"start_time": 6871.852,
"text": " I don't think such assumptions are needed, so that's the difference between me and David Wallace. Assumptions in this case, is that just axioms or something else? Okay, so is there a rigorous list of axioms of your specific Everettian approach somewhere? So I don't believe in axioms, but David Wallace has written down how he characterizes my approach. So in his book, he has what he thinks are the axioms behind my approach."
},
{
"end_time": 6931.032,
"index": 253,
"start_time": 6902.005,
"text": " I don't think physics should work that way. Axioms are a bit like definitions. They're something you can come back to after you've got a theory. But working forward from them is... So the axiom never completely captures the theory anyway. We know that from Gödel and so on. We know that Pierre knows axioms."
},
{
"end_time": 6959.753,
"index": 254,
"start_time": 6931.305,
"text": " don't don't tell you everything that's possible to know about the integers but you can have a conception of the integers and you can say oh this new axiom someone's proposed makes that conception brings the theory closer to my conception of the integers well i was going to ask you what the axioms of constructor theory are oh well so the the basic axiom of constructor theory if you can call it an axiom"
},
{
"end_time": 6986.357,
"index": 255,
"start_time": 6960.572,
"text": " Is that the laws of physics can be characterized by specifying a dichotomy? between Pro physical processes that can be brought about By something else which is a constructor, but we needn't say that that can be brought about and those that cannot be brought about Once you've stated that dichotomy with all possible"
},
{
"end_time": 7013.234,
"index": 256,
"start_time": 6987.108,
"text": " All conceivable physical transformations you stated the laws of physics. And so then the construct theory research program is on the one hand to reformulate all existing laws of physics in those terms. What is possible to bring about and what is impossible to bring about and then."
},
{
"end_time": 7041.681,
"index": 257,
"start_time": 7013.66,
"text": " To formulate purely constructor theoretic laws that can that are over and above that which which are a bit like. Like the laws of quantum theory are at a level above. The dynamics of particular systems got quantum theory doesn't refer to any particular system it just says it just has a theory of what laws of physics. Can say. Like they have to have."
},
{
"end_time": 7071.391,
"index": 258,
"start_time": 7042.09,
"text": " Yeah, a space of states and they have to have a Hamiltonian or whatever or Lagrangian, whatever you say, however you want you phrase it. So, um, constructed theory is a level above that. It's, it's a law about laws, but also a law about laws, about laws. Hmm. Okay. Uh, and, um, that's actually how I first thought of it because I first thought of it as an extension of the theory of quantum computation."
},
{
"end_time": 7094.872,
"index": 259,
"start_time": 7072.5,
"text": " In a way, the theory of quantum computers contains the whole of the rest of physics, since the universal quantum computer can simulate any other physical system. So the set of all motions of the universal quantum computer is a one-one correspondence with the set of all possible motions of anything."
},
{
"end_time": 7124.036,
"index": 260,
"start_time": 7095.845,
"text": " So in a way, the study of physics is the study of the of the possible motions of the quantum universal quantum computer. Well, then I realized that that was that wasn't right because you still have to have a theory of which programs of the universal quantum computer correspond to which physical systems. And that is not contained in the abstract theory of the universal quantum computer."
},
{
"end_time": 7148.78,
"index": 261,
"start_time": 7124.753,
"text": " So I wanted to have an extended theory of the universal quantum computer that included saying which program corresponds to which physical system. And then I built on that and so on and eventually got down to the to the core of the of the issue, which was the dichotomy between things that can be brought about and those that can't."
},
{
"end_time": 7171.988,
"index": 262,
"start_time": 7151.203,
"text": " Speaking about interpretational splits as a framework or theory develops, for constructor theory, has it developed, since I think almost more than a decade now, has it developed in a manner that you're largely happy with, you agree with, or are there, no, other people who are, you're on the wrong constructor branch? Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 7194.548,
"index": 263,
"start_time": 7172.312,
"text": " So you're right to say that the development of constructive theory since I first thought of the idea has been mainly the correction of errors in it mainly the correction of ways that I thought were viable which turned out not to be viable and in fact Chiara Marletto first"
},
{
"end_time": 7220.674,
"index": 264,
"start_time": 7195.418,
"text": " I came to me, say after giving a talk at the car and laboratory about mine ideas of construct a theory so she came she came up to me at the end of the picture and said that thing you said can't be true because so and so and i said oh yeah right okay thanks and then i invited her"
},
{
"end_time": 7243.456,
"index": 265,
"start_time": 7221.032,
"text": " Eventually we end up working together on the theory, we ended up solving that and many other things. The first thing that resulted in was the Constructor Theory of Information, which is the only Constructor Theory of something that we've completed so far."
},
{
"end_time": 7265.282,
"index": 266,
"start_time": 7244.957,
"text": " You could say that we've also got a constructed theory version of quantum theory, but you may or may not think that. But for information, we made real progress and we unified classical and quantum information via constructed theory. It couldn't have been done otherwise."
},
{
"end_time": 7295.367,
"index": 267,
"start_time": 7267.415,
"text": " And as for how it's developed with other people involved in constructor theory, there's now a quote unquote program of constructor theory. Largely speaking, do you look at that field with pride and happiness or are there some child that you you pick out of the house? I like being baffled and we're still at the so I haven't really worked on quantum computers ever since I stopped being baffled by the field."
},
{
"end_time": 7322.193,
"index": 268,
"start_time": 7296.049,
"text": " There's still plenty of things to be baffled with in the experimental side on the experimental side, but I'm useless at experimental physics. So, so I'm, I, there's nothing I can really compute contribute really contribute to, um, on the theoretical side nowadays. Um, uh, in, in constructive theory, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 7351.254,
"index": 269,
"start_time": 7322.995,
"text": " No, it's not satisfactory yet. But I don't think that there are crass errors in it anymore. OK, now before my last question of what advice do you have for people who are watching? And as I mentioned, they comprise professors, researchers, graduate students, but also laypeople. So before I get to that question, I have a question from Scott Aronson here about free will."
},
{
"end_time": 7380.657,
"index": 270,
"start_time": 7351.937,
"text": " So Scott said to me, David once remarked that he's certain that free will exists and equally certain that it has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. Well, he wants you to expound on that. What could possibly be the source of such certainty on either account? So rather like with belief, I certainly don't want to be certain of anything. And I want to think, you know, on introspection, I think"
},
{
"end_time": 7410.282,
"index": 271,
"start_time": 7381.032,
"text": " If i was presented with a good argument on either of those points i would be open to it but in both cases i think the idea that consciousness doesn't exist free will sorry the free will doesn't exist all that free will requires quantum theory are both in the status that that there is no such position."
},
{
"end_time": 7440.401,
"index": 272,
"start_time": 7410.879,
"text": " You can say maybe it has something to do with quantum theory, but there is no there is no actual theory or even in principle of how apart from pen roses, which I think is wrong for other reasons. There is no actual theory of how quantum theory could produce free will or philosophical theory about how free will could not exist. And I think that the philosophical"
},
{
"end_time": 7470.401,
"index": 273,
"start_time": 7443.046,
"text": " Problem that people have with free will is that they have a conception of free will which by definition violates the laws of physics. It's basically, although they don't often say it like this, but it's basically free will is the human capacity to override the laws of physics. And I don't think anything overrides the laws of physics. We might be wrong about what the laws of physics are."
},
{
"end_time": 7496.067,
"index": 274,
"start_time": 7471.886,
"text": " Again, like Penrose thinks, but in that case I don't see a proposal for different laws that would help with the problem of consciousness. Sorry, free will. Now, I think that free will has to do with knowledge."
},
{
"end_time": 7518.677,
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"start_time": 7496.442,
"text": " football fan, a basketball fan, it always feels good to be ranked. Right now, new users get $50 instantly in lineups when you play your first $5. The app is simple to use. Pick two or more players. Pick more or less on their stat projections. Anything from touchdowns to threes and if you're right, you can win big. Mix and match players from"
},
{
"end_time": 7528.541,
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"start_time": 7518.677,
"text": " any sport on ProgePix, America's number one daily fantasy sports app. ProgePix is available in 40 plus states including California, Texas,"
},
{
"end_time": 7557.961,
"index": 277,
"start_time": 7528.797,
"text": " The problem that does make sense about free will is that"
},
{
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"index": 278,
"start_time": 7558.865,
"text": " We have an intuition and it's in our all our explanations of human behavior and so on that we when when we make a choice not a random choice but a choice that that we have thought about the we have brought something new into the world so for example when Einstein was inventing general relativity"
},
{
"end_time": 7612.654,
"index": 279,
"start_time": 7587.722,
"text": " He was bringing that into the world. It didn't exist before. The theory of general relativity did not exist before Einstein thought of it. And ultimately, if you think it did, then you've got to say it was in the Big Bang. Okay, so I don't think it's tenable view philosophically or physically, that all the knowledge that's ever been going to be created in the world was in the Big Bang."
},
{
"end_time": 7641.937,
"index": 280,
"start_time": 7613.268,
"text": " And that all that happens is that it's being made real in some sense, although why one time should be more real than another time. I don't know either cause that seems to violate relativity as well. So, but I think there is such a thing as bringing something new into the world and the thing that you're bringing into the world is knowledge or explanatory knowledge. So, um, uh, Einstein, the thing that didn't exist before."
},
{
"end_time": 7672.176,
"index": 281,
"start_time": 7642.193,
"text": " Even if the equations of general relativity existed like apparently hillbott had the equations before einstein. We didn't know what they were about. I didn't understand the physics problem which which is again touches on the thing we were talking about earlier. Einstein was was seized of the physical problem and he eventually came up with equations and and and i think that the discovery of general relativity."
},
{
"end_time": 7701.63,
"index": 282,
"start_time": 7672.602,
"text": " Was discovery of the explanations of what the equations mean, which actually came before the equations. So, um, and it's the same with everything. When, when you decide that you want to have a curry for dinner tonight, um, and you know, if it was possible that you would, would have chosen something else, you, that decision is something new you have brought into the world. Um, when children learn their native language,"
},
{
"end_time": 7727.261,
"index": 283,
"start_time": 7702.688,
"text": " The language which they learn is different from everyone else's and it has been an act of creativity to bring that language which is unique to them into the world. You seem to be puzzled, but you know, if I make a list of 20 words and ask you to define them, you will not produce the same list of 20 definitions as anyone else on the planet."
},
{
"end_time": 7754.787,
"index": 284,
"start_time": 7729.053,
"text": " So everyone has a different has a different language in mind and it's a bit of a miracle that we can communicate with each other. The reason we can is basically error correction and again creativity because we need not mechanical error correction but creative error correction. So creativity brings something new into the world and then there is no problem with"
},
{
"end_time": 7784.531,
"index": 285,
"start_time": 7755.077,
"text": " How come you're violating the laws of physics? Because it's not new trajectories of the electrons that you're bringing into the world. It's new knowledge, which can only be understood at an emergent level. So that's my answer, I think, to both questions. I've forgotten what they were now. Well, one was about advice to prospective students and researchers and so on. Right. OK. Again, I don't know, because I"
},
{
"end_time": 7815.333,
"index": 286,
"start_time": 7785.828,
"text": " I'd have to be psychic to be able to second guess someone else's decisions about their own life but in the most general setting in the most general scale at the most general scale I would say go for the thing that is fun rather than the thing that you think will lead to fun or lead to some other benefit heaven forbid some other benefit that isn't fun"
},
{
"end_time": 7842.722,
"index": 287,
"start_time": 7815.981,
"text": " That is extremely dangerous but the more prophecy you have to make to justify your present choice the more error prone it's going to be and the more different from the reality that is going going to happen what do you mean the more prophecy you have to make what do you mean well so if i decide to. Work on."
},
{
"end_time": 7870.879,
"index": 288,
"start_time": 7845.247,
"text": " LLMs because I think that LLMs are going to give rise to AGI and I want to do that because I think that AGI is going to be terribly dangerous and that we have to understand it well and so I'm prophesying various things in the future according to some theory that I have now"
},
{
"end_time": 7899.616,
"index": 289,
"start_time": 7871.493,
"text": " But that theory is going to change if that theory doesn't change over the period we're talking about you know ten twenty years then then i won't have discovered anything or nobody will have discovered anything if that landscape of ideas doesn't change okay so it's better. To make decisions according to the shortest possible time scale of prophecy. I see so."
},
{
"end_time": 7923.507,
"index": 290,
"start_time": 7900.282,
"text": " In the case of someone predicting about AGI, thinking it's an important issue, let me attempt to solve that now. That would be different if they were passionate about trying to solve the issue of AGI. Exactly. I imagine you would say, yeah, that's your curiosity, that's the fun you refer to, go after that. Don't try to leapfrog ahead two decades, let alone one decade, let alone two decades."
},
{
"end_time": 7951.288,
"index": 291,
"start_time": 7923.848,
"text": " And then think backward from there, because it could be incorrect. Most likely when working on it, if you have an idea for AGI, you can work on it today. You can drop what you're doing and work on that instead. That's that's the sort of thing you should be doing. Professor, it's it's an honor to speak with you. It's something I've wanted to do for years, and I'm I'm honored that like more than honored to have spent a couple hours with you."
},
{
"end_time": 7981.715,
"index": 292,
"start_time": 7951.937,
"text": " And I appreciate that you took some time out of your day to spend with me. Well, it's been fun to say it oppositely. And hopefully next time we speak, I would like to talk about consciousness as that got brought up toward the end and also the philosophy of science. Thank you. You're welcome. Fun chatting. Hi there, Kurt here. If you'd like more content from theories of everything and the very best listening experience, then be sure to check out my sub stack."
},
{
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"text": " Some of the top perks are that every week you get brand new episodes ahead of time. You also get bonus written content exclusively for our members. That's C-U-R-T-J-A-I-M-U-N-G-A-L dot org. You can also just search my name and the word sub stack on Google. Since I started that sub stack,"
},
{
"end_time": 8027.278,
"index": 294,
"start_time": 8007.432,
"text": " It's somehow already became number two in the science category. Now, Substack, for those who are unfamiliar, is like a newsletter, one that's beautifully formatted. There's zero spam. This is the best place to follow the content of this channel that isn't anywhere else. It's not on YouTube. It's not on Patreon."
},
{
"end_time": 8056.374,
"index": 295,
"start_time": 8027.517,
"text": " It's exclusive to the Substack. It's free. There are ways for you to support me on Substack if you want, and you'll get special bonuses if you do. Several people ask me, like, hey, Kurt, you've spoken to so many people in the field of theoretical physics, of philosophy, of consciousness. What are your thoughts, man? Well, while I remain impartial in interviews, this Substack is a way to peer into my present deliberations on these topics."
},
{
"end_time": 8086.084,
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"text": " And it's the perfect way to support me directly, curtjaymungle.org or search curtjaymungle sub stack on Google. Oh, and I've received several messages, emails and comments from professors and researchers saying that they recommend theories of everything to their students. That's fantastic. If you're a professor or a lecturer or what have you, and there's a particular standout episode that students can benefit from or your friends,"
},
{
"end_time": 8116.203,
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"text": " Please do share. And of course, a huge thank you to our advertising sponsor, The Economist. Visit Economist.com slash Toe to get a massive discount on their annual subscription. I subscribe to The Economist and you'll love it as well. Toe is actually the only podcast that they currently partner with. So it's a huge honor for me. And for you, you're getting an exclusive discount. That's Economist.com slash Toe."
},
{
"end_time": 8134.65,
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"start_time": 8116.425,
"text": " And finally, you should know this podcast is on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on all the audio platforms. All you have to do is type in theories of everything and you'll find it. I know my last name is complicated, so maybe you don't want to type in Jymungle, but you can type in theories of everything and you'll find it."
},
{
"end_time": 8158.865,
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"text": " Personally, I gain from rewatching lectures and podcasts. I also read in the comment that toll listeners also gain from replaying. So how about instead you re-listen on one of those platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Google podcasts, whatever podcast catcher you use. I'm there with you. Thank you for listening."
},
{
"end_time": 8183.387,
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]
}No transcript available.