Top Chemist on Terrence Howard's JRE Episode "Chemistry is POETRY!" | Lee Cronin

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      "text": " All right, I'm joined with Professor Lee Cronin, who is a professor of chemistry and he's at the University of Glasgow and has a fellowship at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. For those who are unfamiliar, my name is Kurt Jaimungal and I have a background in mathematical physics and this is a podcast dedicated to theoretical physics, namely theories of everything. Here today we're going to analyze Terence Howard. He had some comments on the Joe Rogan"
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      "text": " experience as he made plenty of chemistry, even some mathematical claims. And we want to point out where we think he's correct, where we're not sure and where we don't understand and where we think he may be conflating or misunderstanding. I'm looking forward to it. Let's do it. Walter Russell and and and Michael Hudak, you know, took me under his wing and started talking to me. But he was more into the philosophy and the love that Walter was talking about. But I might. By the way, have you seen this before, Lee?"
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      "text": " I watched some of it in preparation and I watched the main part preparation and then the other stuff I was like, what's going on? Okay. So we're getting pretty much unfiltered responses. I'm fairly prepared. Yeah. Okay. It was to rebuild the periodic table, you know, build a new periodic table because the stuff I had learned in college, you know, I went to SAS, I told the teacher, the professor about the relationship between hydrogen on the spectrometer"
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      "text": " Okay, he's saying the hydrogen is the same tone as cobalt. What is meant by that? It's very difficult to interpret. I don't know whether he's meaning the same color or the same kind of frequency related with it. And but the thing is, there's only a fixed frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum where you see things, right? And"
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      "text": " And there are repetitions in the periodic table. So, you know, when you do flame tests, if you look at say sodium, you get this nice kind of orangey color. And if you have some, you know, look at say copper, you'll get some green color. And, and so I was kind of confused. I mean, I love the kind of poetic kind of, you know, thoughts about these things. And it seems to me that he's making some allegorical, um,"
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      "text": " comparison at this stage, which I think is cool. But as we can get into it, I think I can probably narrate, you know, what is correct science today? What are the actual knowledge we have about the elements? Because I think he, you know, there's poetry and chemistry, and I love that. But there is also discrete numbering in the periodic table."
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      "text": " And that's a fascinating thing and that's well known and chemists are taught this in chemistry 101. In fact, I'm bashing it into my son at the moment. He has a chemistry exam tomorrow, but he still is still arguing with me about the definition of the element. Let's continue. And he was like, no, each element is the same element and it will always be that element. I was like, you don't see the book. Oh, just a moment. I'm going to replay the relationship between hydrogen on the spectrometer and carbon and silicon and cobalt."
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      "text": " I was like it's the same exact color, same tone, just doubled in each octave. You'll see hydrogen sitting all the way over there by itself, but they don't show that hydrogen has the same tone as carbon. What do you mean by tone? Okay, so Joe is asking what he means by tone. I'm going to let him explain and then please you explain. Same key of E. Same what? What did he say? Same key of E."
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      "text": " So I think he's talking about some energy relationship, right? But it's kind of nice. Okay. Like how there's GEVs, physicists study physicists use GEV. Okay. Yeah. So they have the same energy."
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      "text": " That's what he's saying and he's kind of mistaken and I'll explain what that is in the 40.5 hertz. The next one would be like 81 hertz. You go to silicon, it would double up and would be 162 hertz. You'll go to cobalt and it'll be 324 hertz. You keep dividing light by two and you'll ultimately get back to the audible sound of it because there was a relationship between light and color, sound and tone, matter and shape. I put. OK."
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      "text": " So there's a lot to unpack here and I think it might be worth actually explaining what the periodic table does and two really important things and then we'll start to unpack this because this is very poetic but it doesn't bear any relationship to chemistry in the periodic table in a concrete sense where we're looking at what the difference between the elements is."
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      "text": " Of course the elements can have different colors, you can shine light on them and so on and they can have what's called an absorption spectrum and they can share commonalities. So what is an atom? So an atom probably all your viewers know what an atom is. There are protons in all atoms, in virtually all other atoms except hydrogen there are neutrons and then the proton has a charge and then and the electron balances that charge and so"
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      "text": " The periodic table is a count on what's called atomic number. So one, two, hydrogen, helium, three, lithium, four, beryllium, and you can keep going up the periodic table. And that is the number of protons associated with each element. You have a number of protons, you have to have the balancing number of electrons. Now, the standard kind of model of chemistry is those electrons are quite small, and they're"
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      "text": " Describe by quantum mechanics but they like quantum mechanics has discrete one time the electrons occupy. Energy is a discrete quantum and the periodic table you have this top layer and then you have layers going down and they are basically tell you about the number of layers that you have of electrons right that's a very simplistic way of looking at it now when you hit an atom with some lights electrons get excited."
    },
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      "end_time": 527.807,
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      "text": " So sure you can those electron excitements are a function of the how much you lift the electron up and you take the negative charge away from the positive charge and then it will fall back down again and there's a really nice spectroscopy called photoelectron spectroscopy where you rip an electron off an atom it will then fall back down and give out light and that's called the absorption spectrum so if you look at if you look at the sun you can see the hydrogen lines they have nice great lines right it's a really nice"
    },
    {
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      "text": " Proof of you like what indication of quantum mechanics now the elements they they will have lots of different colors and they can overlay right they can have the same color but that doesn't mean they're the same thing. And the same absorption it just mean the energies of the electron to get out of the atom a similar. And so so i think that what he's doing is confusing a number of different things point of fact"
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      "text": " Elements are described by the periodic table and they are arranged in the conventional periodic table in order"
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    {
      "end_time": 586.869,
      "index": 22,
      "start_time": 562.995,
      "text": " Of atomic number and the reason why you have this box is like you have hydrogen here and then helium and then you can go all the way up right and you have the shells to the first show. Is that you have two electrons and the second show you have a and then it goes up and up and up as you go down. You could find many different ways of arranging the periodic table but they don't make any chemical sense."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 614.923,
      "index": 23,
      "start_time": 587.483,
      "text": " And and it all the elements in one kind of column have very similar properties to take sodium and lithium. If you to take the metals of sodium and listen lithium he talked about water and you add them to water they will basically react with the water. And that's why you can make lithium ion batteries with lithium you can also make sodium ion batteries with sodium and not quite as good and in biology."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 626.8,
      "index": 24,
      "start_time": 615.282,
      "text": " Human technology uses lithium from the periodic table for batteries but in our cells when for the energy in the cell we actually use sodium and potassium."
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      "text": " Okay and you can see the relationship going down and so i love the poetry here but i'm super confused about where the tones and the colors come from i can only surmise that he loved the absorption spectra that you can see for some of these elements but if you look in the sun with a spectrograph you'll see hydrogen and helium and lithium and they're clear lines and if you do that on earth with spectroscopy you do the same thing you will never mistake carbon for hydrogen"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 676.084,
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      "text": " That's impossible. You might see under certain conditions that carbon might have an atomic absorption in a similar region to hydrogen, but that doesn't mean they're the same. The elements are fixed by the number of protons. The only thing you can do to change that one element into another is alchemy."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 696.63,
      "index": 27,
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      "text": " Now luckily you can do alchemy in a nuclear reactor or in the sun and so i you know that's kind of my very short what is a periodic table and you can erase them and so on and it was lovely poetry. What kind of worried me a little bit was this kind of allegorical analysis people were saying you know oh."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 715.247,
      "index": 28,
      "start_time": 697.193,
      "text": " There's we've we've been told these lies there you go there's a hydrogen perspective about the periodic table what he's referring to that if you were to shine light on hydrogen it would then emit light at four well these are four different wavelengths so you shine light on so the light by pushes an electron out"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 728.148,
      "index": 29,
      "start_time": 715.572,
      "text": " Into like a zero kinetic energy like away like free like in orbit around the earth and then when it collapses back down it gives out a color and that color is absolutely diagnostic of the electron in that condition."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 754.514,
      "index": 30,
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      "text": " And, and, and so if you look at the atomic absorption, say of carbon, you'll see a completely different spectrum. There you go. And so you can see that you've got carbon and oxygen and hydrogen, they're not the same, right? Carbon has many more lines. Why? It has many more electrons, many more quantum numbers. And so that's Do you think he was saying that look, if you were to space out carbon,"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 782.568,
      "index": 31,
      "start_time": 754.821,
      "text": " So just multiply by two. So let's just say the distance between here, this this purple one in the left side is one unit and then you times that by two. So then the space would be two units in this one. Let's call it two units. So then the space will be four units. This one. You understand that if you were to space them out, that it would equal somehow some other chemical. Is that what you think claim is? I don't think so. I don't know. I must admit I was incredibly confused."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 812.773,
      "index": 32,
      "start_time": 782.978,
      "text": " But at the same time, I thought, well, you know, he is trying to kind of understand the periodic table in a slightly different way. And I'm, you know, I kind of thought some time today about it, I even talked to my research team about it, because it's kind of an interesting example, like, he's just publicized a periodic table to millions of people. That's so cool. Good bit. Sad bit is kind of confused everybody because of his allegorical part. But that doesn't mean, you know, it's not bad. It's just not"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 839.343,
      "index": 33,
      "start_time": 813.166,
      "text": " It's not, you know, it's not correct to say that about the elements. That's not what they do. Yes. There is no mystery in the periodic table with respect to these numbers. We know they exist. We can measure them. That's where we've come very far. There's lots of mystery about how do we get these elements to react. And the one of the reasons I am an inorganic chemist, so organic chemists just focus on carbon. They're really like really dedicated to using carbon because they're for drug discovery and so on."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 868.302,
      "index": 34,
      "start_time": 839.343,
      "text": " Inorganic chemists have to deal with the whole periodic table. There's all little tricks you use in the periodic table like diagonal relationships and so on. But when he was talking about water and beryllium reacting, I think it's misunderstanding electrochemical processes and using elements to provide energy to cause other things to happen. Of course, if you take hydrogen and you add some energy to it, you can split it into hydrogen and oxygen. In fact, anyone could do it by getting a plastic cup"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 885.265,
      "index": 35,
      "start_time": 868.609,
      "text": " Put in some water in it get two brass tacks in the bottom get a nine volt battery and on top and you'll see bubbles and it one electrode you'll have hydrogen coming out and one will be oxygen and that's cause the water is being torn apart by the electric current this is well known chemistry."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 911.101,
      "index": 36,
      "start_time": 885.265,
      "text": " And so there was there were lots of layers i would love to talk to about what he meant because it was like you know he is presumably talking about inspiration and the way he was interpreting the periodic table but it wasn't clear to me why he felt it needed to be reinterpreted. What new explanation he was gonna give the world with it right yes you know men to live and all these guys thought about it for years but the periodic table is really good at predicting what happens next."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 939.565,
      "index": 37,
      "start_time": 911.596,
      "text": " You know, there were elements missing in the periodic table went, Oh, there's a gap here. I wonder if there's an element with this number of protons going to be found. And then boom, people found them. And so they went around and found all the, you know, a lot of elements. There's a lot of elements found in different minds and things around the UK and in the U S and Russia and France and so on. So I was, I was deeply confused, but at the same time fascinated by the response. Yes. So for people just tuning in or just moving to this point,"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 970.213,
      "index": 38,
      "start_time": 940.589,
      "text": " Terrence is clearly bright and just for when I was going through his work at one point he mentioned something like the free algebra generated by V or generated by X quotiented by some two-sided ideal something like that then you know enough in my opinion to be classified as bright especially if you if you come to that understanding outside the university it also shows that you're super curious which I love and usually on the Joe Rogan podcast he has his mind blown that's the"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 988.763,
      "index": 39,
      "start_time": 971.084,
      "text": " Stereotype of the Joe Rogan podcast but on this one it seems like Terrence has his mind blown constantly and and that's cool because it just means you have fervency over your the ideas that you've had for years and some science some scientists can be dry about their own research even blase Terrence isn't and I love that."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1001.92,
      "index": 40,
      "start_time": 989.633,
      "text": " The difficult part for me is that it then is him speaking like a fire hose and you have to speak to ensure that your interlocutor understands and you have to do so step by step and then re explain again and bring people"
    },
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    {
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      "text": " You have to reference steps that came before and do so in a slow manner, not a deluge."
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      "text": " And so, well, we can get to one times one equals two later, but let's continue with this. Yeah, I sent over Walter Russell's trying to get to that. Yeah, it's it's Walter Russell's periodic table that he put together. Now you will compare that to what we mean. Oh, by the way, someone said a hilarious comment on the on the YouTube channel for him. They said Joe Rogan was on the Terence Howard experience."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1163.387,
      "index": 46,
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      "text": " The layoffs periodic table you'll compare Walter Russell's to it and you'll see something completely different. It's unwinding and you see there's a relationship but go back to the wiggly one. This is how I saw it more so but as a vortex but you'll see there's a relationship"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1191.237,
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      "text": " So what he's referencing is another formulation of the periodic table, which just when someone says periodic table, what they mean is some arrangement of atoms in some order that gives insight and explains relationships. So you mentioned before conventional periodic table."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1216.101,
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      "text": " So that to me means that are that implies that there are multiple periodic tables. So is that the case? Do you as a chemist use only one periodic table? Do you use none of them and just focus on some other form of calculation? Are you not aware of this? No, I'm aware. So I mean, the periodic table history is fascinating. It's a bit like, you know, the history of any technological era or any kind of understanding science, right?"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1236.493,
      "index": 49,
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      "text": " I think a good example is probably pre-Newtonian gravity, gravity, special and general relativity, right? We use Newtonian physics still because it's still pretty good to get to the moon and stuff and we can make adjustments that Einstein gave us. The periodic tables that he refers to aren't"
    },
    {
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      "text": " In any way I can't and I don't want to be rude or I don't want to be disparaging because it's cool we saw that they're not in any way in use today right there is no use of these periodic tables by chemists a chemist would look at use a periodic table to basically identify what's called a non-metal and a metal"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1275.316,
      "index": 51,
      "start_time": 1257.398,
      "text": " And look at the different blocks and we would teach that to students they get to understand the periodic table the relationships because as you go down the periodic table you get you get trends and as you go across you get trends and what he's talking about these mid points that's that's that's just."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1291.271,
      "index": 52,
      "start_time": 1276.015,
      "text": " I guess I could make reference to some kind of labeling schemes. Occasionally people like maybe in category theory, like in some areas of mathematics, you might say I'm going to make a new labeling scheme for this thing that helps me to give insight, right?"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1320.367,
      "index": 53,
      "start_time": 1291.271,
      "text": " You know take maybe say still steven wolfram using cellular automata to tell us something about physics right we might use those in some new way and say hey can we look at physical reality and that that may or may not be a robust representation of something you can play with it toolbox. Here there's no toolbox right it's not clear to me what these representations would do the chemists like basically using the current periodic table to to understand"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1343.49,
      "index": 54,
      "start_time": 1320.708,
      "text": " Where the valence electrons are these electrons on the outside and these electrons are responsible for all the chemistry. That you do right how you do the reactions and so on and as you get deeper in the electrons are less boring i'm more boring except for some very special heavy ones where the electrons in the sent me in the middle actually pop out."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1362.5,
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      "text": " I'm a very sharp and they use the colors in phosphorus like european and have you been caught these these rare arts and they're really good at making shiny colors and you can use them in some kind of medical imaging and so i'm just super expensive."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1392.705,
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      "text": " So that's a very long answer. So there's only one periodic table that's in use today. The other periodic tables have no use other than to explain how science kind of bowed to try and figure out what was the ground truth. In the same way that when people were looking at electricity, is electricity a liquid? Is it a solid? How do you account for static electricity and a battery and a lightning and then AC? And they realized that electricity was unified by electromagnetism."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1419.787,
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      "text": " In the same way the unification of the periodic table is here a dissity that comes from filling electrons in shells and going down quantum levels so what i mean by that is the top of the project table you have hydrogen helium one electron two electrons there is no more electrons you can have in the veil and shell at the top when you go down a level then you go down to lithium. I'm really am i'm across right to you know."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1447.91,
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      "text": " Add the first row when you have carbon is there in nitrogen is there in oxygen is there you go down a level when you have electrons there. Right and then and so you have this counting scheme. I'm not counting scheme is critical for understanding bonding bonding and structure we use it to design drugs understand structure dna we use it to basically actually do all the tool craft we doing chemistry today. I'm and it's kind of the bedrock."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1463.558,
      "index": 59,
      "start_time": 1448.234,
      "text": " So the reason why i'm going in such detail is important for viewers to understand there is not a new periodic table here you can use the chemistry it would be confusing and none of the things we do would work we train physicians."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1490.776,
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      "start_time": 1463.916,
      "text": " So those things don't really exist. It's only one substance. Now, the problem is the first thing that we're able"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1518.951,
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      "text": " Okay, just a moment. He's saying something doesn't exist. I want to rewind a bit. And then explain. Between hydrogen, carbon, silicon, cobalt, rhodium, they're all bonded. They all sit as the middle point between two noble gases. So those things don't really exist. It's only one substance. Now the problem is... So that's where I really kind of fell off my chair."
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      "index": 62,
      "start_time": 1519.155,
      "text": " You know that's just that's just not true so that it's so an element is defined is defined by its number of of atomic number right because it the entire thing is the the proton the number of protons electrons now i give an act a given atom."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1561.271,
      "index": 63,
      "start_time": 1538.712,
      "text": " An element can have different numbers of neutrons and they're called isotopes. And in fact, I'll give a plug for Glasgow. The isotope was discovered by Frederick Soddy at the University of Glasgow, just a few miles from here, where he was like, Oh, I'm going crazy. I've got these elements. I've got these, sorry, these elements, they have the same chemistry, but when I weigh them, they weigh differently. What's going on?"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1578.148,
      "index": 64,
      "start_time": 1561.937,
      "text": " And then and they realize that actually those different numbers of neutrons and then we put together atomic theory so no carbon and hydrogen are not the same if you the only way you can turn hydrogen into carbon is in the sun when it when it basically explodes."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1608.302,
      "index": 65,
      "start_time": 1578.66,
      "text": " So the only way these can come one is if you were to literally rip apart all the protons and neutrons and get out the constituent quarks and gluons and make a quark gluon plasma at whatever million, hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin. And so, so this fit was just, you know, uh, you know, not correct. And I'm, I'm not sure why he was, what he was trying to say made it my only thought is if he was doing in good faith,"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1635.196,
      "index": 66,
      "start_time": 1608.439,
      "text": " Is either number one mistake and we just fair enough we're mistaken at the end of the time or number two is trying to convey some kind of acoustic poetry to say although the one thing because they have these values that could equate it with them a bit like if i took a blue car and a blue jeep. And a blue bicycle they are different things but they are they are all blue yes and maybe he was trying to say something that was my understanding so."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1655.469,
      "index": 67,
      "start_time": 1635.589,
      "text": " The string theorists would say, well, hydrogen and helium and lithium, they may look different, but they're firstly all just some arrangement of protons, neutrons and electrons. And then even further, there's some quarks and then electrons. So they're all just quarks and leptons. Even further, they're just strings, manifestations of different vibration, vibrational modes of the strings."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1682.261,
      "index": 68,
      "start_time": 1655.896,
      "text": " So it was my understanding that what he's saying is that that they're the same in a similar manner. No, he's not saying the string theory is correct. In fact, I don't believe he's referenced string theory. And by the way, for the people watching, I have a string theory iceberg case you're interested with about the math of string theory. It's a three hour video. But that was my understanding. As for what is that unifying element or substance, I don't know what he was saying. I think he was saying it was all"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1694.104,
      "index": 69,
      "start_time": 1683.012,
      "text": " Reflections of hydrogen or whatever hydrogen is maybe he calls it something else Does that sound like what he could be saying"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1717.21,
      "index": 70,
      "start_time": 1695.282,
      "text": " I mean i think i think so i mean is it a wonderful exposition and i mean i saw online and there's like all the people go wow there's a new reality and there's all the haters going this is complete gibberish and i'm like what is not he's not a chemist right and he's not using chemistry to do stuff and so i you know what an interesting non sequitur."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1744.77,
      "index": 71,
      "start_time": 1718.183,
      "text": " You know i but i i i the reason why i'm talking to you about this is i think i a super interesting culturally and be no no there is one periodic table it works quite well thanks and i'm the same way you know you can say one level description with all strings if string theories and d correct and that let's assume it could be like that's good but then another level description where we've got clocks and gluons they're all one thing but the fact is the difference between a hydrogen atom and a carbon atom"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1765.196,
      "index": 72,
      "start_time": 1745.282,
      "text": " is six protons versus one. That's amazing right to actually turn a hydrogen into a carbon you have to get at least six of these charges together and you have to come up with some neutrons as well to boot to make sure you get your c12 because you want six protons and six neutrons and six electrons."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1792.995,
      "index": 73,
      "start_time": 1765.503,
      "text": " And so that's really, that's a really hard thing to do. And you can view that these elements are like crystallized matter at this energy level. So basically, if you have ultimate infinite energy in the universe, then everything's just basically, I don't know, whatever the, the highest level energy description is, it could be, let's say a quark and gluon. And then as you, as you call it down, they crystallize into certain things and the crystallization is controlled by the way they interact."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1820.776,
      "index": 74,
      "start_time": 1792.995,
      "text": " I would be remiss if I didn't mention it is like the elements in our body that help us to help biology work. I mean, they were manufactured in the star as it exploded with stardust. And so that's kind of for me, like, you know, don't give up on the element easily. They're not the same thing. Something really absolutely incredible happened."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1848.319,
      "index": 75,
      "start_time": 1821.237,
      "text": " So those things don't really exist. It's only one substance. Now the problem is the first thing that we're able to perceive is hydrogen. That's the first visible element because before it is too dense for us to perceive it. You understand what I'm saying? Okay. Okay. I don't understand what he's saying."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1860.435,
      "index": 76,
      "start_time": 1848.626,
      "text": " So I have no clue what that is about. Oh, I could speculate. But he's on a different plane of existence to be at this point. Okay, I thought at first he was referring to"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1888.473,
      "index": 77,
      "start_time": 1860.981,
      "text": " How directly after the Big Bang, you couldn't see photons even because they were too high energy. By the way, this has a technical term called recombination, which means that the universe was opaque because there were photons that were constantly scattering off free electrons. So in other words, the path of photons were extremely short and they couldn't travel without interacting with electrons. Maybe, but that's kind of, it's kind of, yeah. Okay. That's cool. Okay."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1916.049,
      "index": 78,
      "start_time": 1888.848,
      "text": " So it seems to me like what's happened here and maybe I keep this and maybe I keep this out, but it seems like someone is is studying at the first or second year undergraduate conceptual level and then realizing that what was told in high school was incomplete, maybe even incorrect. Like F doesn't equal MA and M isn't just M, there's rest mass as well. And then rather than having the feeling like, well, this is cool, which tends to be the feeling that most physicists and mathematicians have in my experience."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1931.305,
      "index": 79,
      "start_time": 1916.51,
      "text": " He has Terrence has taken it from this is cool to this is reflective of something covert and tendentious and I'm going to assume there's something suspicious going on and part of that's correct at least to me the suspicious part because Hear that sound"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1958.387,
      "index": 80,
      "start_time": 1932.21,
      "text": " That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 1984.411,
      "index": 81,
      "start_time": 1958.387,
      "text": " There's also something called Shopify Magic, your AI-powered assistant that's like an all-star team member working tirelessly behind the scenes. What I find fascinating about Shopify is how it scales with your ambition. No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Join the ranks of businesses in 175 countries that have made Shopify the backbone"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2007.79,
      "index": 82,
      "start_time": 1984.411,
      "text": " of their commerce. Shopify, by the way, powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge names like Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklynin. If you ever need help, their award-winning support is like having a mentor that's just a click away. Now, are you ready to start your own success story? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2037.602,
      "index": 83,
      "start_time": 2007.79,
      "text": " One of the reasons why I started this podcast was because there, there are three levels of explanation. There's level one, which is the high school Popsci understanding surface level, cosmetic level understanding. And then there's level two, where you understand now the rigor, the equations behind it."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2066.647,
      "index": 84,
      "start_time": 2038.046,
      "text": " And then there's level three, where you're able to derive the equations based on the Popsci definition, because you have such familiarity with the equations. Public science communication is at level one. So you can think of Neil deGrasse Tyson is at level one. And there's also a level two. And so to me, you should be wary of level one or you should know where the person is who's giving you the information. You're obviously at level three. Lee Professor Cronin is obviously at level three."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2093.507,
      "index": 85,
      "start_time": 2066.988,
      "text": " And so you should just know where is the level that you're getting the information from and what level are you speaking to? Because the surface level simplistic ones can be misleading. There's nothing wrong with what he is doing from a curiosity point of view. But what I think what is interesting if there is a confusion here, if it's not allegorical and it's just confused, what he's done is picked different levels and mixed them up and he's trying to synthesize something else and he maybe hasn't had time."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2118.08,
      "index": 86,
      "start_time": 2094.002,
      "text": " Or hasn't had confidence and i can't understand the end of the science we do that all the time that's why you know you can make fun of what is saying here indeed i'm sure some chemists do but. Just imagine how difficult is for someone who understands cell biology and string theory to try and talk to one another and they can whenever you are level one understanding of each other's respective disciplines and try to dig deeper where there's a new thing has to happen."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2145.776,
      "index": 87,
      "start_time": 2118.422,
      "text": " And that's why I'm very sympathetic, but what I like to do is remove the conspiracy nature because the high school is just expediency, right? You know, my son is 16. He's doing his high school chemistry exam and he's making fun of me because I said, you don't have to define what's an element and he can't define it. He said, but he's not in my curriculum. They don't ask for that. That's, you know, you know, and, and, and he's not wrong, right? They don't ask for that precise thing. And so I think there is this kind of, you know,"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2173.951,
      "index": 88,
      "start_time": 2146.135,
      "text": " This kind of conspiracy ask thing and then this confusion and then this frustration and actually he has the makings of a great scientist great scientist have to contain. The frustration for being not understanding. The conspiracy that maybe they're not quite knowing what's going on with reality because reality is not giving them what they want to know and then basically is wish to interrogate and get the information then synthesize it over time."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2199.07,
      "index": 89,
      "start_time": 2174.394,
      "text": " And it's just sometimes if you know i'm quite gullible as a scientist and then suddenly i'm up to like oh no of course that doesn't work i need to do that control well like i remember a few years ago i was making magnets and i thought i i did what i does i designed by i discovered with my team a magnet that was really hard but it was based on carbon"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2228.968,
      "index": 90,
      "start_time": 2199.514,
      "text": " And I was like, wow, I've got this magnet. It's really hard. It acts like iron, but there's no iron. It's really hard. And I was like, oh my God, this is, this is great because it means we can use carbon, like, which is really cheap and make really hard magnets and not have to mine stuff like, you know, all these rare earths and all this. And I was doing all the experiments. I was starting to write the paper. And then I was like, I said to my team, there's something wrong here. And we, then we took the stuff and burnt it in a certain way and we burn all the carbon away."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2257.056,
      "index": 91,
      "start_time": 2229.599,
      "text": " so it's the magnetism should have gone away but still there are magnetic flakes and i realized what had happened is i was using a nickel spatula and the atoms of nickel were falling off the spatula and going into my carbon they were just gluing onto it and nickel was really magnetic under some circumstances and it was faking out my car and i was like you know and i was like oh i'm so gullible there's no electrons there there's no magnetism it was a nickel contamination"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2286.596,
      "index": 92,
      "start_time": 2257.261,
      "text": " Damn. I see. I see. And so, so sometimes mixing this kind of curiosity kind of, and, and, you know, this childlike, wow, what has happened here is a great recipe for doing science, but you then need to have the razor of reason, if you like, you know, exactly. So, so I said, I said on Twitter, I was somewhat joking, but somewhat serious that there's this phrase called shut up and calculate. And I said, understand and speak up is greater than"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2315.725,
      "index": 93,
      "start_time": 2286.8,
      "text": " shut up and calculate like just great 100% 100%. However, what I didn't say, which is underneath that implicit, hopefully is that in order to get to the point where you understand and can speak up, you do need to go through a period of calculating. So you need to have precision with your fingers and pen and work with a concept or an equation or with coding. And otherwise you just get a misunderstanding times another misunderstanding, which"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2345.725,
      "index": 94,
      "start_time": 2316.118,
      "text": " Unfortunately, does not equal understanding despite one times one equal in one. So so I'll give you a subtlety, a subtle case. So the one times one equals one. He says the reason why that's not true is that it's not true that if you have one dollar times one dollar, you get one dollar and he's correct. One dollar times one dollar doesn't equal one dollar. However. OK, let me say it like this. Five dollars times one dollar does not equal five dollars, but five times one dollar equals five dollars."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2374.974,
      "index": 95,
      "start_time": 2346.118,
      "text": " And so to people who are just listening in their car and they're driving, they're like, but that sounds the same. What do you mean? Well, think about it like this. If you have two apples and then someone gives you someone multiplies your apples by three, then you have six apples. OK, but if you have two apples and someone multiplies your apples by three apples, you're just you have WTF amount of apples like it doesn't make sense. You have apples squared. It's a different unit. So"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2386.886,
      "index": 96,
      "start_time": 2375.862,
      "text": " $1 times $1 doesn't equal $2, it equals some amalgam, something like $1 squared. $1 squared is in the brackets."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2415.811,
      "index": 97,
      "start_time": 2387.329,
      "text": " You can still have one times one equals one because it's unit lists. By the way, I have this whole two hour video on natural units, which goes over the undergraduate education and theoretical physics in approximately two hours from a natural units perspective. And all you need is high school math. That's absolutely right. That's a really nice way of putting it because there's this, this whole idea that mathematics, the laboring schemes that go with mathematics, when you're trying to get to abstraction, you start with physical example, you're one dollar times one hour."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2434.957,
      "index": 98,
      "start_time": 2415.811,
      "text": " And then you abstract out and abstractions right can i know apply my counting to i know to pounds. Tomatoes and so on and then as you go down and go up it's like the process of abstractions the way of building is mental architectures and then removing the units in such a way that you can understand."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2464.07,
      "index": 99,
      "start_time": 2435.555,
      "text": " architecturally where you add them on and there's so many things we do that we we build these architectures on if you think about the concept of of debt or interest rate right and and and i think actually the the concept of our economics is more proof that time is fundamental but that's for another podcast another day because you're you're you're betting on the possibility space of new things you can build right you know the whole concept of of of capitalism is to basically take capital"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2487.824,
      "index": 100,
      "start_time": 2464.07,
      "text": " Put it into technology and build new things and the value of the stuff goes up with the value of our economy goes up but there's a big digression from here but it's just a nice thing that fits into the one time with one argument and i'm you know when i saw that i was just like no dude. We need to do some category theories i know it's not gonna do that is like it's just a simple misconception that's easily. Easily adjusted however."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2509.36,
      "index": 101,
      "start_time": 2488.66,
      "text": " i don't know if he was i don't know what i would mean like i i'm one of my best attributes is like i'm wrong all the time right so this is like someone pointed out to you that you're wrong we can do this and like oh actually that's right i think people might have tried to point out to them this one times one thing and he's like no and then and then what happens is you build in this kind of"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2539.36,
      "index": 102,
      "start_time": 2509.787,
      "text": " This kind of resilience is resistance to the new paradigm. And again, you see this in science, you see this in science, like the real scientists, if you like, or the other playful ones that make mistakes and correct. That's really cool. Whereas and that's how science kind of works. So science kind of has playful ones and occasionally make mistakes. And then there are the people like, no, this is how it is, it's not moving. And it plays together quite nicely where you have stubbornness and playfulness."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2569.77,
      "index": 103,
      "start_time": 2539.872,
      "text": " And they interact in such a way that if you're respectful of one another, you can you can basically discover new things and also stop people discovering nonsense and say, no, that's not correct. Yes, because you do critical thinking so on. But maybe that's a bit of a digression. No, it's it's a great point. So Nima Nima Arkani Hamed, the physicist said that what characterizes physicists or physicists, sorry, is radical conservatism. So not conservatism, not radicalness, but both. And the reason is that"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2595.435,
      "index": 104,
      "start_time": 2569.77,
      "text": " Einstein, while we look back fondly and romanticize and say, OK, what he did was undo what came prior to him. That's not true. He overturned one axiom, but held the rest so fixed. Let's see. Let's just get through the rest of this. Oh, and just a quick aside again. Look, if you're going to redefine one times one to equal, say, two. The multiplication has something called a group structure, so you can't"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2621.067,
      "index": 105,
      "start_time": 2595.896,
      "text": " just change one part of a group structure without changing other parts of the group structure. And one way for people to understand this is you have a multiplication to and it's called multiplication, but it's technically a group operation. And you can have a multiplication table if you have a finite group and it's something like a crossword puzzle or a Sudoku. So if you were to change just one word in the Sudoku from screen to rabbit,"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2643.746,
      "index": 106,
      "start_time": 2622.278,
      "text": " As you reach into the next octave, the carbon octave, and they call that the bisexual tone because the carbon has two tones to it. It has a negative side and a positive side."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2674.241,
      "index": 107,
      "start_time": 2644.548,
      "text": " Okay, just a moment. And I don't mean this to be a racy comment or like I'm making fun of either you or him or I just I just don't know is bisexual tone something that chemists call chemicals? Like how they're spinning? No, I mean, I wonder if he's talking about being amphoteric or the fact that carbon can be positively charged and negatively charged. I just have no clue what he was going on about. I mean, it's just like I was like,"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2702.739,
      "index": 108,
      "start_time": 2675.213,
      "text": " For me, I was completely... I mean, I was pretty bemused. And then when he got to this, I was just like, I was just... What was your initial reaction? Be honest. My initial reaction was that he was on a different plane of existence. It sounded really fun. But it wasn't my plane of existence or anyone else's. I see. And so Terry, again, I tried to reach out to Terry over email."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2732.261,
      "index": 109,
      "start_time": 2703.046,
      "text": " And I haven't been successful, but he's invited to this podcast. So you're welcome to come on, Terry. I don't want to speak of you without you being here. We're only doing so because I wasn't able to get a hold of you. And this is the closest I can get. And hopefully we can elucidate understanding for ourselves and others at the same time. Lithium behaves. Lithium is a is contractive. Beryllium is contractive. Boron is contractive. But the moment you get to carbon, you balance it out. It gets to a perfect balance of plus and minus four."
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2755.555,
      "index": 110,
      "start_time": 2732.5,
      "text": " Okay, so chemically speaking, what is what do you believe he's referring to here? What is this contraction? So he might be talking to electronegativity, right? And say that metals are losing electrons and but I have no idea. I mean, like, okay, you're so out with the birdies at this point. I'm just like, it's beautiful. It's"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2781.664,
      "index": 111,
      "start_time": 2756.34,
      "text": " It sounds beautiful, but it's nonsense. Okay, that's more than enough. Thank you, professor. Where can people find out more about you and what are you working on? Wow, you can find me on croninlab.com and what am I working on right now? I'm trying to make life in the lab because that might help us find aliens. I'm trying to work on this new theory for selection, assembly theory, which is causing people to get excited about"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2805.589,
      "index": 112,
      "start_time": 2781.664,
      "text": " Looking at selection before evolution and i'm also trying to work out how to make chemical computers and see if one day we can create chemical artificial chemical consciousness but that's the most controversial thing i can come up with with the juxtaposition of listening to this but that's maybe a podcast in the future if i get anywhere cuz i'm probably gonna fail alright thank you sir you take care"
    },
    {
      "end_time": 2986.852,
      "index": 113,
      "start_time": 2956.92,
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}