Matthieu Wyart: evaluation

Transcript context

…what we can bring. I mean, when we spoke with Chomsky, he was quite disparaging about the enterprise of physics. He was talking about the original hard problem, motion. And he said that Newton exercised the machine, the mechanical universe view. But he left the ghost intact. So we still don't know how mind and consciousness works and all of that kind of stuff. But he was rather pointing to this notion that a lot of physics is idealization. And then there's an interesting question about whether our theories are really to actually understand how the universe works or are they more to help us understand in terms that we can understand? So are are we intentionally leaving something out? Yes. I I think both. I mean, both. I mean, certainly they are interacting with the world because those theories theories in physics are super useful to build technology. I mean, think about the laser. I mean, 0.5 of the technologies are I mean, a big fraction of them are coming from theory. But another big portion of it is coming from I mean, it's the other way around. Technology is asking immense questions. So yes, I think we need theory also to have a sort of highway, build your highway of of thinking super fast about problems. And then mean, then the difficult question is at which level of precision do you need your theory to be? And that depends the question you're asking. And who were your mentors? Who inspired you? What books did you read? How did you kind of land on your current trajectory as a physicist?…

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