Sean Carroll: prediction

Transcript context

…So they look at complexity in all kinds of ways. What do you think about the emergence of complexity from simple things interacting simply? I think it’s a fascinating topic. I mean, that’s why I’m thinking about these things these days rather than the papers that I was describing to you before. All of those papers I described to you before are guesses. What if the laws of physics are different in the following way? And then you can work out the consequences. At some point in my life, I said, “What is the chance I’m going to guess right?” Einstein guessed right, Steven Weinberg guessed right, but there’s a very small number of times that people guessed right. Whereas with this emergence of complexity from simplicity, I really do think that we haven’t understood the basics yet. I think we’re still kind of pre-paradigmatic. There have been some spectacular discoveries. People like Geoffrey West at Santa Fe and others have really given us true insights into important systems. But still, there’s a lot of the basics, I think are not understood. And so searching for the general principles is what I like to do, and I think it’s absolutely possible that … And to be a little bit more substantive than that. This is kind of a cliche. I think the key is information, and I think that what we see through the history of the universe as you go from simple to more and more complex is really subsystems of the universe figuring out how to use information to do whatever, to survive or to thrive or to reproduce. I mean, that’s the sort of fuel, the leverage, the resource that we have for a while anyway, until the heat death. But that’s where the complexity is really driven by. But the mechanism of it. I mean, you mentioned Geoffrey West. What are interesting inklings of progress in this realm? And what are systems that interest you in terms of information? So I mean, for me, just as a fan of complexity, just even looking at simple cellular automata is always just a fascinating way to illustrate the emergence of complexity.…

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