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Lex Fridman Podcast / episode intelligence

#428 – Sean Carroll: General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Black Holes & Aliens

22 Apr 2024 38 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Lex FridmanSean Carroll

Claim mix

belief 16evaluation 7uncertainty 5commitment 3prediction 3preference 2observation 1recommendation 1

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Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

38 published records

01 / evaluation

He is a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins, host of the Mindscape Podcast that I personally love and highly recommend, and author of many books, including the most recent book series called The Biggest Ideas in the Universe.

“He is a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins, host of the Mindscape Podcast that I personally love and highly recommend, and author of many books, including the most recent book series called The Biggest Ideas in the Universe.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

03 / uncertainty

I also was, I almost say pleasantly, but I don’t know whether it’s pleasantly or unpleasantly, but factually surprised by the recent rate of progress.

“I also was, I almost say pleasantly, but I don’t know whether it’s pleasantly or unpleasantly, but factually surprised by the recent rate of progress.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

04 / belief

I think we are part of the physical world, the natural world. Physicalism would’ve been just as good a word to use as naturalism, maybe even a more accurate word but it’s a little bit more off-putting so I do want to snap your more attractive label than physicalism.

“I think we are part of the physical world, the natural world. Physicalism would’ve been just as good a word to use as naturalism, maybe even a more accurate word but it’s a little bit more off-putting so I do want to snap your more attractive label than physicalism.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

06 / belief

I think that that’s a super important question that I can imagine making progress on, but right now I’m more or less maximally uncertain about what the answer is.

“I think that that’s a super important question that I can imagine making progress on, but right now I’m more or less maximally uncertain about what the answer is.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

07 / belief

There’s one pitfall that I’ll just mention because there’s a move that is made in these theoretical edges of cosmology that I think is a little bit mistaken, which is to say I’m going to think about the universe on the basis of imagining that I am a typical observer.

“There’s one pitfall that I’ll just mention because there’s a move that is made in these theoretical edges of cosmology that I think is a little bit mistaken, which is to say I’m going to think about the universe on the basis of imagining that I am a typical observer.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

09 / evaluation

You can come up with the words and you can wave your hands, but then you got to write down the equations; and I did. And I figured out that it could help with the dark energy, the acceleration of the universe; it doesn’t help with dark matter at all.

“You can come up with the words and you can wave your hands, but then you got to write down the equations; and I did. And I figured out that it could help with the dark energy, the acceleration of the universe; it doesn’t help with dark matter at all.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

12 / belief

I have no idea. But I think your intuition is right that it would’ve been easy for there to be lots of civilizations then we would’ve noticed them already and we haven’t.

“I have no idea. But I think your intuition is right that it would’ve been easy for there to be lots of civilizations then we would’ve noticed them already and we haven’t.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

13 / uncertainty

According to the rules of quantum mechanics, I can set up an electron, let’s say, in a state where it is neither purely clockwise or counterclockwise but a superposition of both. And that’s not just because we don’t know the answer, it’s because it truly is both until we measure it.

“According to the rules of quantum mechanics, I can set up an electron, let’s say, in a state where it is neither purely clockwise or counterclockwise but a superposition of both. And that’s not just because we don’t know the answer, it’s because it truly is both until we measure it.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

14 / belief

I think I have some sort of intellectual humility about the whole thing because I was humbled by several stages in the machine learning development over the past 20 years.

“I think I have some sort of intellectual humility about the whole thing because I was humbled by several stages in the machine learning development over the past 20 years.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

15 / belief

I think that there are colleagues of mine who think that we’re pretty close to figuring out how information gets out of black holes, how to quantize gravity, things like that.

“I think that there are colleagues of mine who think that we’re pretty close to figuring out how information gets out of black holes, how to quantize gravity, things like that.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

17 / uncertainty

I try to be clear on what is professional expertise, what is just me babbling, what is my level of credence in different things, where you’re allowed to disagree, whether, if you disagree, you’re just wrong and people can disagree with that also. But I do think I’m happy to go out on a limb a little bit, I’m happy to say, “Look, I don’t know but here’s my guess.

“I try to be clear on what is professional expertise, what is just me babbling, what is my level of credence in different things, where you’re allowed to disagree, whether, if you disagree, you’re just wrong and people can disagree with that also. But I do think I’m happy to go out on a limb a little bit, I’m happy to say, “Look, I don’t know but here’s my guess.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

18 / observation

Maybe. The point is that black holes are mysterious for various reasons. So yeah, if our best theory of the universe is wrong, that might help explain why.

“Maybe. The point is that black holes are mysterious for various reasons. So yeah, if our best theory of the universe is wrong, that might help explain why.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

19 / belief

I think Ilya Sutskever said this, that the future of humanity on Earth will be just the entire surface of Earth is covered in solar panels and data centers.

“I think Ilya Sutskever said this, that the future of humanity on Earth will be just the entire surface of Earth is covered in solar panels and data centers.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

20 / commitment

” The reason why that idea, Everett’s idea that the whole wave function always sticks around and just obeys the Schrodinger equation was not thought of years before is because naively, you look at it and you go, “Okay, this is predicting that I will be in a superposition, that I will be in a superposition of having seen the electron be clockwise and having seen it be counterclockwise.

“” The reason why that idea, Everett’s idea that the whole wave function always sticks around and just obeys the Schrodinger equation was not thought of years before is because naively, you look at it and you go, “Okay, this is predicting that I will be in a superposition, that I will be in a superposition of having seen the electron be clockwise and having seen it be counterclockwise.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

25 / belief

I think the philosopher, David Chalmers, has done what I consider to be a good job of arguing that we should treat things that happen in virtual reality and in simulated realities as just as real as the reality that we experience.

“I think the philosopher, David Chalmers, has done what I consider to be a good job of arguing that we should treat things that happen in virtual reality and in simulated realities as just as real as the reality that we experience.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

26 / belief

I think that what we mean by aesthetics or morality are we’re attaching categories, properties to things that happen in the physical world and there is always going to be some subjectivity to our attachment and how we do that and that’s okay and, the faster we recognize that and deal with it, the better off we’ll be.

“I think that what we mean by aesthetics or morality are we’re attaching categories, properties to things that happen in the physical world and there is always going to be some subjectivity to our attachment and how we do that and that’s okay and, the faster we recognize that and deal with it, the better off we’ll be.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

27 / prediction

If you look at the data, their data gives out exactly where our cutoff is. That doesn’t mean that our cutoff is right, it means they lose the ability to do the experiment exactly where we predict the cutoff should be.

“If you look at the data, their data gives out exactly where our cutoff is. That doesn’t mean that our cutoff is right, it means they lose the ability to do the experiment exactly where we predict the cutoff should be.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

28 / belief

I think a nice way to test the difference between objective reality and the observed reality is what happens at the edge of the horizon of a black hole.

“I think a nice way to test the difference between objective reality and the observed reality is what happens at the edge of the horizon of a black hole.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

29 / evaluation

The single best reason in my mind to be skeptical about many-worlds is not because it doesn’t make sense or it doesn’t fit the data or I don’t know where the worlds are going or whatever, it’s because to make that extrapolation, to take seriously the equation that we know is correct in other regimes requires new philosophy, requires a new way of thinking about identity, about probability, about prediction, a whole bunch of things.

“The single best reason in my mind to be skeptical about many-worlds is not because it doesn’t make sense or it doesn’t fit the data or I don’t know where the worlds are going or whatever, it’s because to make that extrapolation, to take seriously the equation that we know is correct in other regimes requires new philosophy, requires a new way of thinking about identity, about probability, about prediction, a whole bunch of things.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

30 / evaluation

In the progress of science, the words that would be used to give the most fundamental description of how you were predicting the sun would rise changed because now you have curved space-time and things like that and you didn’t have any of those words 200 years ago.

“In the progress of science, the words that would be used to give the most fundamental description of how you were predicting the sun would rise changed because now you have curved space-time and things like that and you didn’t have any of those words 200 years ago.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

31 / prediction

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 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.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

33 / evaluation

There’s one difference that is important, which is the following; If you have a curve in space, I’m going to draw it horizontally, because that’s usually what we do in spacetime diagrams, if you have a curve in space, you’ve heard the motto before that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

“There’s one difference that is important, which is the following; If you have a curve in space, I’m going to draw it horizontally, because that’s usually what we do in spacetime diagrams, if you have a curve in space, you’ve heard the motto before that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

37 / preference

I’m a fan of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and that is very beautiful in the sense that fewer ingredients, just one equation, and it could cover everything in the world. It depends on what you mean by beauty, but I think that the answer to your question is quantum mechanics can start with extraordinarily austere, tiny ingredients and in principle lead to the world.

“I’m a fan of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and that is very beautiful in the sense that fewer ingredients, just one equation, and it could cover everything in the world. It depends on what you mean by beauty, but I think that the answer to your question is quantum mechanics can start with extraordinarily austere, tiny ingredients and in principle lead to the world.”
Speaker
Sean Carroll
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast
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