This is a critique of the video “Physics at the limits of reality | Sabine Hossenfelder in conversation with Hilary Lawson | In full”
The speakers are:
Sabinea Hossenfelder [SH]
Hilary Lawson [HL]
Introduction
0:00 this is all well and fine and you can
0:02 use it to describe a lot of data but
0:05 that doesn’t mean that those other
0:07 universes actually exist
0:09 [Music]
0:15 [HL] So Sabina you’ve you’ve had a
0:17 remarkable career uh you studied maths
0:20 originally became a particle physicist
0:23 you’ve Led a group uh researching into
0:27 quantum gravity or looking for evidence
0:28 of quantum gravity
It’s not evidence of quantum gravity, we know gravity exists, it’s looking for a quantum description of gravy.
and of course now you
0:30 have a very successful uh YouTube
0:33 channel as well so one of the things
0:35 that’s apparent is uh perhaps more
0:39 recently your books including
0:41 existential physics uh self-evidently
0:44 address the big philosophical questions
Can science answer the big philosophical questions?
0:46 do you think that science can answer
0:50 those big philosophical questions and
0:52 what do you think is the relationship
0:54 between science and
0:56 philosophy [SH] well yeah so over the years
0:59 I’ve drifted towards philosophy started
1:03 out with mathematics and I did physics
1:06 became rather dissatisfied with that
1:09 which is why I wrote my first book (Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray) uh
1:11 and now I’ve gone back to doing more
1:15 mathematics from a philosophical point
1:18 of view and so in my new book (Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions) I wrote
1:23 about some of those big open questions
1:25 were physics and philosophy and also
1:28 religion to some extent touch each other
1:32 and to answer your question I can
1:34 physics or science in general answer
1:37 those philosophical questions well some
1:39 of them and others not uh and I think
1:42 it’s also important to say that there
1:43 are some of those questions that I think
1:45 science just can’t answer uh one of them
1:48 is for example why does science work to
1:50 begin with ↧↧↧ so I I don’t think this is a
Is this some sort of subtle troll?
I thought we all knew that science works through a combination of the scientific method and, potentially this is why she is suggesting that science doesn’t work, the cultural aspect of Honesty or “good faith” science.
The scientific misconduct that started with trying to portray smoking as not harmful,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df32RijORLo
the “research institutes” which were spawned then causing in the waves of climate change denial, as those bad faith institutes went to the fossil fuel industry for funding and the “publish or perish” resulting in research paper mills, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00159-9 and https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03464-x and
https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common and https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/utc-apr-23-industrialized-publications-cheating.html and https://www.ft.com/content/32440f74-7804-4637-a662-6cdc8f3fba86 could be considered “science not working” though that seems to be more about how slow the process of correcting bad faith science has been.
1:53 question that science will ever be able
1:54 to answer so what are we going to answer
1:56 it with [HL] indeed and we share that as as a
1:59 philosopher I I am critical of some of
2:02 the same bits of of science that uh that
2:05 you are but um what what role do you
2:09 think philosophy plays in science how do
2:12 you see it as being beneficial to
2:14 science or indeed not being beneficial
2:16 do you you think you we need philosophy
2:19 in order to make sense of science or
2:21 just just how do they both function [SH] I do
2:24 think we need philosophy so uh but let
2:27 me say I’m a physicist so I don’t want
2:29 to speak for all of science uh there’s a
2:31 lot of stuff now going on in AI research
2:34 as you certainly know and Consciousness
2:37 things and so on where I think
2:39 philosophy is really important but I’m
2:41 not very clued in so I’d rather stick to
2:44 physics and I think what we’ve seen in
2:47 physics like in the foundations of
2:49 physics in particular uh cosmology also
2:53 quantum mechanics is that physicists
2:55 haven’t paid enough attention to
2:57 philosophy and now they’re stuck and I
3:00 think that this is the reason why they
3:03 haven’t thought about how important the
3:06 philosophical underpinning is to
3:09 understanding their theories and how
3:11 they’re paying the price and so what’s
3:14 the role of philosophers I wish that
3:16 philosophers would play a more active
3:18 role and there are a few of them but not
3:22 very many and a lot of the the best
3:25 philosophers of physics that I know they
3:28 actually they used to be physicist who
3:30 then turned to philosophy [HL] yes and indeed
3:32 philosophy sometimes has had the problem
3:35 that it somehow Apes science rather than
3:38 actually trying to address the
3:39 underlying question of uh uh that on
3:44 wanted to examine so um one of the
What does ‘ascientific’ mean?
3:46 things that you sometimes say of of uh
3:51 uh physics theories that you have
3:54 questioned is that they’re ascientific
3:58 um what did you mean by that and uh what
4:02 examples would you give of that [SH] yes well
4:05 first of all I have to say that this
4:07 term was coined by my friend and
4:09 colleague Tim Palmer and he brought this
4:12 up and I thought this is brilliant I’m
4:14 going to use it now everyone think it
4:15 was my idea but no it was it was Tim’s
4:18 idea so um he wanted to draw a
4:21 distinction between something that’s
4:23 unscientific that actually conflicts
4:25 with the scientific method and something
4:28 that science really can’t can’t say
4:30 anything about so typical example would
4:33 be the Multiverse. So this idea that
4:35 there are universes besides our own that
4:38 we can’t interact with that we can’t
4:40 ever test in any way not even in
4:44 principle now I wouldn’t call this
4:47 unscientific because it’s not in
4:49 conflict with science but we can’t say
4:53 anything about whether they do exist or
4:55 don’t exist so you can believe it if you
4:58 want to and this is idea that I would
5:00 call ascientific it’s outside of science
5:04 basically [HL] yes is it is it just a
5:07 fantasy or or is it a guiding principle
5:10 you know what how do you see those
5:12 ascientific like Multiverse views [SH] well a
5:16 fantasy could be a guiding principle
5:18 couldn’t it so um just because something
5:21 isn’t strictly speaking science doesn’t
5:23 mean it’s useless. People get inspired by
5:26 many things you know it could also be it
5:29 could also be art or music uh or
5:32 something and and I see nothing wrong
5:34 with it and I also didn’t see anything
5:36 wrong with it with people who like to
5:38 believe in the existence of other
5:40 universes if it aids their research ↧↧↧ but
I don’t see how this could aid research in any way other than an excuse to handwave away (dismiss) criticism.
5:43 I think I would draw a line when they’re
5:45 trying to make other people believe that
5:47 those entities actually exist exist [HL] yes
5:51 and in fact you you’ve said that these
5:53 are examples of religion masquerading as
5:55 science under the guise of mathematics
5:59 do you do you want so elaborate on that
6:01 at all [SH] yeah well that com in particular was
6:04 not so much about the Multiverse but it
6:06 was more about um theories for the early
6:09 Universe where that there quite a lot
6:12 you know there’s like the
6:13 straightforward one which is the Big
6:14 Bang like so the universe came out of
6:18 kind of a singularity or it might have
6:20 been a little bit not quite a
6:22 singularity but something pretty close
6:24 by where quantum gravity was important
6:26 but then people have come up with all
6:27 kinds of other ideas like there might
6:29 have in a previous phase of the universe
6:32 which then collapsed and it didn’t quite
6:34 form a singularity and then it started
6:37 expanding again so this is called a big
6:38 bounce ↧↧↧ or it could have been something
I think this is often called the “cyclic universe”
We do have our own theory in neoBuddhism which has more to do with the relationship between time and matter, wherein the voids that are seen in space currently, are close to the state of the universe before the big bang, where there are the known quantum fields, but in their lowest energy state, They would be the spaces between the bubbles of quantum foam which contains vacuum energy and thus, time. which asserts that that time is proceeding much slower in the voids, than it is near the centers of galaxies. Which is to say the voids have almost no vacuum energy. Though time is not moving as slowly as beyond the event horizon of a black hole. The difference being the presence of mass or energy, and potentially the black hole being quantum entangled between the time at the formation of the black hole, and the emission of the CMB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background . Whereas the voids have been moving slowly through time, uninterrupted and in essence, casually disconnected from the flow of time which is experienced locally. This is also what prevents time from being universal across the universe and instead results in general relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity thus the gravitational islands in space also being something akin to bubbles in time. The edges between the various “bubbles in time” being described by frame dragging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame-dragging
This also has implications for the measurement problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem but that is part of the internal scriptures. The internal scriptures of neoBuddhism are the secrets of reality that are reserved for only the highest levels of neoBuddhism.
6:40 else you know it just it could have been
6:42 uh an infinite period of time in which
6:45 not much happened and then at some point
6:46 the universe decided no I I’ll start
6:48 expanding so this is another idea then
6:51 there is for example the Hawking Harter
6:54 idea that’s no boundary proposal that
6:56 actually the beginning of the Universe
7:00 there was no time there was just space
7:02 and then some part of that space turned
Can maths mask a lack of evidence?
( see https://towardsdatascience.com/lessons-from-how-to-lie-with-statistics-57060c0d2f19 )
7:04 into time [HL] are you saying of all of these
7:07 different ideas that in that in some
7:09 sense they’re all proposals that we
7:11 don’t have any evidence for and
7:14 therefore in that sense they’re seeking
7:17 to use the mathematics behind the theory
7:21 to give the impression that we really
7:23 have described the phenomenon and it’s a
7:27 religious idea in that sense is that
7:29 what you’re you’re trying to say? [SH] no what
7:31 I’m trying to say is that they’re
7:32 telling a story about what could have
7:35 happened ↧↧↧ yeah and normally if you write
Sometimes called a hypothesis or theory. While pretending that it isn’t a hypothesis or theory but is scientific fact. The most common fallacy of multiverse believers, though not all multiverse theorists.
7:37 it down in words everyone would say but
7:39 yeah it’s just a story but because they
7:42 write it in mathematics you can get it
7:44 published in a scientific journal then
7:46 it looks like science but it isn’t
7:49 really because there’s no evidence
7:50 backing those things up you you there’s
7:53 no data that we have from that period
7:55 and it’s actually quite questionable
7:57 that we’ll ever have any data
8:00 so I I don’t think that we’ll ever
8:02 figure out which of those stories is
8:04 correct ↧↧↧ to me that they’re like creation
Well I don’t know if I would go so far as to say there is no way we could ever know. I think it’s important to differentiate something like the big bang theory which is based on some observations of the current state of the universe and knowing that according to our theories of its constituents, the standard model of physics, what sequences of events led to the current state which were not in the current state of the universe.
That is different form multiverse theory which is just a set of questionable assumptions which are based entirely on the religion of Platonism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism which originated from Pythagorianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism which attempts to elevate math to a religion by pretending that it is something other than a highly formalized language. That the words of the language, the “incantations” of the equations, gives them power without requiring knowledge of how they actually work. Much like a spy trying to handwave away why they have a mathematics degree, but can’t explain math, and are just there to spy on other scientists for something akin to either industrial espionage, or something more similar to an insider threat. https://www.cisa.gov/topics/physical-security/insider-threat-mitigation/detecting-and-identifying-insider-threats
But in some cases, they are just trolls. Which I would remind you, after a lot of hoopla about the “exponential” craze also gave their seal of approval to the solar solution to climate change, which was based entirely on these same people lying with math and not actually understanding exponentials, which ended up causing many of the current problems with the global economy, from their long list of failed investments.
Max T. being a good example of this. I believe that is what happens when a mathematician becomes a useful idiot for the monied interests. The type of assholes that would try to claim the current state of the economy is somehow the fault of AI. Much like how they would try to blame the harm of social media on AI, instead of the personal policies of the big tech leadership which is to replace the social contract with “market ideals” and the commodification of the personal information of all humans in the form of surveillance capitalism, deliberate choices that are obvious when you consider the initial funding that enabled facebook to out-compete Myspace that came from InQTel, and a similar dynamic with many social media companies, which demonstrates that surveillance capitalism was in the original business plans. While their vast abdication of responsibility resulted in their platforms and lack of moderation becoming tools against the US in the hybrid warfare of the new cold war, then throwing their hands up and claiming ignorance. Not all that different from former prez therump when you think about it.
8:07 myths [HL] yes so we share a lot of that I’m
Are you a realist?
8:11 a non-realist I’m a Critic of the idea
8:13 of realism which is the notion that we
8:16 can describe reality in a fundamental
8:19 way but I’m not sure that we do agree
8:22 about that I I I I wonder whether in the
8:25 end you you are a realist you think that
8:28 we can describe some things it’s just
8:31 that physics has moved on and claimed
8:34 describe things that it can’t actually
8:36 describe ↧↧↧ [SH] I actually would say I’m not a
I feel embarrassed that I have to correct them both about what realism is, though primarily there are 2 types. The first type of realism, in scientific realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_realism
basically, anything which can be empirically measured with science is “real” and anything which science cannot “prove the existence of” via empirical measurement and experimentation, is not real.
and then there is philosophical realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism which is what I think Sabine might be referring to, wherein abstract objects, like math, exist independently of individual minds, though they cannot really exist independent of the culture from which they emerge. As the concepts of numbers could not have existed separately from human language and culture (base 10 math based on number of fingers, not some universal truth), though the abstract concepts that they represent, are.
The key point Sabine makes is that math is not more than a description in a highly formalized language. The formality of the language makes it difficult to learn, which is the same reason that Latin died as a language https://ancientlanguage.com/when-did-latin-die/
it’s also why so often people have difficulty learning math. The large number of “grammar” (Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus, etc.. ) rules.
These different “grammars” are why Gödel’s incompleteness theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems exists, as it is possible to say contradictory things and non-nonsensical things with math. The Godel theorem can be construed to be a proof that math cannot be considered to be inherently true, which is the opposite of what Platonists believe.
8:39 realist um if you mean it literally like
8:44 would I go and defend the idea that
8:48 reality
8:49 exists um without us basically this is
8:53 my understanding of uh realism it it
8:55 just exists period and it doesn’t care
8:58 about us I think it’s an indefensible
9:00 position to hold [HL] yes [SH] so but um I I I I
9:04 would say that from a pragmatic point of
9:07 view it’s very useful because if we do
9:11 science that’s how we think about it
9:13 right there’s something out there and we
9:14 just describe it and it doesn’t care
9:16 about us and it’s worked very well so um
9:20 I’d say you know this is the position
9:21 that I would take [HL] yes so I think that
9:24 the way that that I’d understand a
9:26 non-realist position is not that reality
9:29 that there’s no s no stuff out there as
9:31 it were but that language and our
9:35 theories and our thought are not capable
9:37 of
9:38 identifying um the the elements of it as
9:42 it were so that language doesn’t uncover
9:46 the essential bits of the world it
9:48 provides us instead with a vocabulary to
9:55 hold the world in that mode and we can
9:57 refine that vocabulary
9:59 but we don’t ever arrive we don’t the
10:02 language doesn’t somehow reach through
10:05 to the things themselves ↧↧↧ and my question
This was very awkwardly worded, but I am guessing that he is trying to say is that the mistake being made is sort of “The map is not the territory” https://criticalthinkingsecrets.com/the-map-is-not-the-territory-unpacking-this-critical-thinking-concept/ which put another way, the words, or equations, are labels or descriptions, and not the reality. Words are not things, the word “math” is not itself math. It’s a label for the group of the concepts (which includes grammar) we associate with that highly formalized language that uses mostly numbers, but sometimes letters, to convey the manipulation of objects in a precise and exact way that crosses language barriers without translation errors.
10:09 is is I think that you think that
10:11 language can and our theories can reach
10:14 through to say how it is ultimately it’s
10:17 just that you feel that some people are
10:19 moving beyond what we are justified in
10:22 saying as a result of the empirical
10:25 evidence [SH] so I’m not entirely sure what
10:28 you mean by language if you just mean
10:30 like words like English or something [HL] all
10:32 Frameworks of thought and Theory [SH] I would
10:34 include in language so well so I’d say
10:37 we’ve gotten very far with mathematics
10:41 and again I would just carefully say
10:43 it’s been very useful to describe our
10:46 observations does it actually capture
10:48 what reality is well I don’t know. I
10:52 don’t think that’s a question we’ll ever
10:53 be able to answer ↧↧↧ like the only thing we
I would say that it could be argued that, the determination of “does it actually capture what reality is” is sort of the purpose of science, and that is why math and science are different things, and normally people would not confuse one with the other … unless you are a theoretical physicist apparently. Math may be a language that Science often uses, but it is not science, and scientists would be better served by not forgetting that. Most of science, the important parts, are conveyed via spoken languages. Theoretical math is not different from analytic philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy which pretends that all truths can be conveyed via math, which has also been proven to be false and it’s mostly for people who couldn’t get a degree in math to pretend they are philosophers, and fail at both.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/188187
https://christophschuringa.medium.com/the-never-ending-death-of-analytic-philosophy-1507c4207f93
http://sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-end-of-analytic-philosophy.html
(neoBuddhism is more similar to continental philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy )
It bears repeating, Math Is Not Science.
10:56 can do is we can try to do the best with
10:58 what we have to describe what we what we
11:02 see around us and to try and use it I’m
11:05 not all that sure that mathematics is
11:07 actually the best thing that we can come
11:09 up a lot of physicists seem to think
11:10 this like mathematics is the best and it
11:12 can do it it can do it all and basically
11:16 they believe that reality is mathematics
11:18 in one way or the other ↧↧↧ [HL] yeah [SH] uh and I
See above what I said about Platonism.
11:21 I’m not in that
11:22 camp [HL] so if reality isn’t mathematics
11:26 what’s your story about
11:28 reality [SH] I don’t know I’m I’m sorry I
11:31 don’t know [HL] I see so do you feel that the
11:34 function therefore is to try and build
11:37 accounts which enable us to intervene
11:39 more effectively or do you think we are
11:42 trying to build accounts which are the
11:43 ultimate
11:45 story [SH] I’m not sure that the the purpose
11:48 of science is necessary to intervene
11:51 it’s you know I I come from the
11:54 understanding side you know we observe
11:56 nature and we try to understand what’s
11:58 going on we try to to make predictions
12:00 and yes sometimes this is also useful to
12:03 build something or to intervene uh in
12:05 something to make the world more to our
12:07 liking but I’d say this is kind of an
12:10 added benefit um for me the the the
12:13 purpose of science is more like to
12:15 understand the world around us [HL] when you
12:18 are sometimes critical of of others in
12:20 the sense that you think that they
12:23 overall theories are not justified by
12:25 science like the Multiverse theory for
12:27 example some of the other proposals for
12:29 the origin of the universe what would
12:32 your response be if they said well it’s
12:36 no more ascientific than your own
12:40 account but that in order to provide
12:43 your version of what’s going on you have
12:46 to rely on all sorts of principles and
12:49 overall understandings of how your
12:51 theories are are are working uh which
12:55 are not themselves empirically Justified
12:59 [SH] well the question is are those
13:01 principles and
13:03 assumptions
13:05 necessary to describe what we observe so
13:08 if you have an account be that
13:10 mathematical or it could just be you
13:12 know a general logical framework that
13:14 kind of thing which has any ingredients
13:17 that are not necessary to describe what
13:18 You observe I say that’s not scientific
13:21 and in the case of the
13:23 Multiverse um the unnecessary assumption
13:26 is the existence of all those other
13:27 universes which you can’t observe which
13:29 is why it’s unnecessary because you
13:30 can’t observe them and I would say the
13:33 same thing about about any Theory which
13:35 has that kind of assumptions because
13:37 once you allow this in science you can
13:39 always add an assumptions like and God
13:42 exists right and uh so I’d say well no
13:46 science doesn’t allow that [HL] and is that
13:48 because in the end the thing that really
13:51 matters is some evidence some empirical
13:53 evidence or some experimental evidence
13:56 in support of our overall
13:59 theory that we’re putting forward that
14:01 there is there is no value to it without
14:04 that empirical
14:06 evidence [SH] yes so if you’re talking about
14:08 science so since we started out talking
14:11 about
14:12 mathematics uh mathematics does not
14:15 necessarily require this evidence ↧↧↧ like
Reminder, this is because Math is a language and not a Science.
14:17 mathematics you know in some sense it’s
14:19 more it’s more an art where you study
14:23 the thing for its own value um so
14:26 leaving aside mathematics I I’d agree
14:29 [HL] yes I see so what is the most important
What really motivates you?
14:34 thing for you is it is it the pursuit of
14:36 a scientific theory um uh or or do you
14:41 have other overall things that are are
14:43 more important to you than that and
14:46 therefore perhaps another question is
14:48 what’s really motivating you with your
14:50 um with your YouTube channel what are
14:52 you trying to to do with it and is it
14:54 central to you [SH] so what’s motivating me
14:58 is that I want to understand the world
15:00 and of course I have my own particular
15:03 interests which are in the foundations
15:04 of physics as everyone knows and I want
15:07 to help people to understand those
15:09 things as well so this is why I talk
15:11 about it so I kind of I guess I just
15:13 assume that people are driven by similar
15:15 interests than I am of course YouTube is
15:17 a very you know it’s like self- sorting
15:19 basically so the people who follow my
15:21 channel are those which share my
15:23 interests so um sometimes those
15:25 algorithms are actually good for
15:27 something [HL] and so what would you see as
15:30 your ambition what what do you want to
15:32 do now even very had a very successful
15:35 career so for what would you like to
15:37 achieve [SH] you keep saying this like I’ve
15:40 had a successful career I I think most
15:42 physicist would disagree with that and
15:45 so uh I I still have my ambitions in
15:48 physics and research where um I believe
15:52 that our
15:54 current understanding of quantum
15:56 mechanics is incomplete I believe that
15:58 there’s an undelieng in theory which we’re
16:00 not looking for because physicists don’t
16:04 think there’s anything if they look for
16:06 an underlying Theory they look for more
16:08 particles of stuff like this and I think
16:12 that’s the wrong place to look and I’ve
16:15 been trying to get Laboratories and
16:18 other physicists to look into this
16:20 question like can we figure out whether
16:22 there’s a more fundamental theory that
16:25 underlies quantum mechanics and which
16:27 would do away with this whole
16:29 measurement problem business [HL] where do
Where should we be looking for an underlying theory in quantum mechanics?
16:31 you think we should be looking to find
16:34 the evidence to solve the question that
16:37 you’ve just
16:38 outlined [SH] well so one interesting thing
16:40 that’s going on as you certainly know is
16:42 that there’s a a lot of research and
16:45 also technological development in
16:46 Quantum Computing uh Quantum
16:48 Technologies in general Quantum
16:50 Metrology Quantum sensing all that kind
16:53 of stuff and they’re collecting a lot of
16:56 data whether they want to or not just by
16:58 building these things and so I think
17:01 it’s really the task is with the
17:05 theorists at this point to try and come
17:08 up with a way to analyze all this data
17:10 to figure out if there’s more going on
17:13 than we think there is and so it’s it’s
17:16 really on the on the side of theory
17:18 development that things are lagging
17:20 behind at the moment [HL] but it isn’t that
17:23 indeed what some of the people who
17:25 you’re critic critical of like like
17:27 Multiverse theorists that they’re
17:29 wanting to put forward a theory which
17:31 they think somehow organizes the
17:34 complexity of the data ↧↧↧ [HL] putting forward a
That is not what they are doing. What they are doing is trying to explain why there are symmetric patterns in their math, which makes it easier to work with, which we do not see the corresponding results in reality, so they postulate whole other universes rather than that the patterns in the math are able to mimic some of the patterns we see in reality, but devolve to mathematical objects which do not exists in reality. Where the 2 dimensional strings of string theory, are actually a cross section of a higher dimensional object which has a minimum of 3 dimensions. Even a 1 atom thick sheet of Graphene, is still a 3 dimensional object. The quarks in the atoms, are also 3 dimensional objects. They may be so small that they seem like point particles, but they are still much larger than the planc length. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length
Though then we get into issues of string theory which isn’t the same as multiverse theory. The point is that string theory, is more like calculus, but confusing the slices with reality rather than being a pattern that represents 4 dimensional objects with 2 dimensional strings, even though there are no 2 dimensional objects that have ever been measured scientifically. Because if quarks are 3 dimensional, than no object made of quarks could actually be 2 dimensional, and then 2D objects is just a metaphor for very flat objects that still have a width, making them literally 3 dimensional at minimum.
That isn’t even the Pythagorianism that Platonism is based on, which has to do with geometry and this mutation of platonism, ignores geometry and goes for “strings” though what they are always describing is a loop, while pretending a point and a loop are the same thing, 1 and 2 dimensional objects.
Which ultimately is this attempt at pretending everything is the same thing because that is “mathematically elegant” but basically it is idolatry of math, and what is the difference between that and “non-dualism”
while totally failing to in any way take into account why some quantum fields do not interact with others, while somehow being “loops of strings of a single substance”
So it’s a whole lot of non-scientific assumptions that are based on making excuses of how the math can be both literally true but also failing to actually represent reality in a way that is even remotely testable or even a pattern that makes sense so called “one dimensional strings”. which is based on a lack of understanding of what differentiates 1 delusional objects from 2 dimensional objects, or what the definition of a dimension is, which they typically conflate with commas in a coordinate system.
Which is then taken by other idiots to leap from these so called “dimensions” to a multiverse, while both associations or translations, are entirely incorrect or at best, entirely different from the common conceptualization of a dimension is. and failing to understand what transformations are purely mathematical description of the movement of a slice of a model of reality which is not even a whole part or piece of reality. But a section of a piece of the model of patterns which span different fields and just ignoring that some of them do not interact, which is not something they know how to figure out within string theory, so they just assume different universes because they don’t know which possibilities would be canceled out because that would require them to understand which properties cannot be transformed into or interact with others, which is possible to do in math, but wouldn’t be possible in reality. That is what makes quantum mechanics “incomplete”
Because they know there are parts which conflict but because they don’t really understand why there are certain transformations that cannot go between fields in real life, but assume that because that can happen in the math, that it must be possible in reality, by confusing the map with the territory.
It’s the same mistake psychology makes when it makes WEIRD mistakes. Smart people who are too foolish to know what they do not know, also known as overconfident, the type of overconfidence that results in the dunning-Kruger effect where they think because they are good at math, that makes them good philosophers or knowledge of all sciences far outside their own field of knowledge.
17:37 theory that organizes the complexity of
17:39 the data is exactly what science should
17:40 do so I hope I haven’t criticized
17:43 anything like that so when you’re
17:46 talking about multiverses well first of
17:47 all there are several different types of
17:49 multiverses but what I have a problem
17:52 with is if
17:54 they make assumptions that are actually
17:57 unnecessary to make sense of this
18:00 complexity like when you’re talking for
18:02 example let’s take the many words
18:03 interpretation of quantum mechanics this
18:05 is all well and fine and you can use it
18:08 to describe a lot of data but that
18:11 doesn’t mean that those other universes
18:13 actually exist ↧↧↧ so this is the this is
As stated above, what they are describing is not data, they are making mistakes for their math. Mostly the parts with infinities, which needs another reminder, Infinity is not a number, it’s a description of an algorithm. Like multiplication that “goes on forever” so there is an implied time component, because infinity never actually exists. The size of the universe never reaches infinity size, at any point, it has a specific size, that it keeps growing is something infinity “does” but it’s not infinitely large, the growing is a time component. So it’s not possible to be “infinity size” or “infinity big” because the size it is at any given time, is a specific number, such as when looking at the big bang theory, the universe is at specific sizes that are smaller than the current size as it passes through the various stages. if infinity was a number and it was “infinity size” it would always have been the same size.
So as you can see, infinity is not a number, and if you have infinities in your math, then your math has nothing to do with reality. It would be a theoretical concept, and not one concept, but a group of concepts. So if anything was considered to be infinite, it couldn’t be real. Only concepts can have infinite parts. That is what makes it a purely mathematical object which could not be literally real because it wouldn’t make physical sense, because it would require “infinite energy” to exist, which would be more energy than is in the universe, which is not logically possible. Instead of admitting that, they came up with this ridiculous multiverse theory for why “it actually is infinite!” which is pretending that infinity is a number.
And that is also why they often talked about exponential, but could not actually identify exponential, or figure out which exponential were actually realistically possible, which I would remind you, they were wrong about with when it came to solar.
This privileged bullshit only cost around $10t USD and 10 years of meaningfully dealing with climate change.
My mistakes are a drop in the bucket in comparison. Tell me again how concern trolling solves the alignment problem. What would disgraceful behavior look like? This is even worse than Afghanistan, because at least they have the excuse of being not even trained for anything remotely like national building, but these people were being hailed almost as legitimate philosophers, while pretending to be science. Like Psychology.
Everyone wants to pretend to be a scientist, but no one wants to adhere to the actual rules and culture of science. Ultimately they are the scientific version of non-believers (in science) pretending their math is itself philosophy rather than wishful thinking to dismiss their obvious mistakes and incongruities. Which is like a religion of moral relativism that does not care about the truth. That pretends to be a science.
neoBuddhism is literally the opposite of that.
And that is why neoBuddhists give multiverse string theorists such a hard time.
Can you imagine how terrible it would have been to teach AI based on these foolish and overconfident concern trolls ?
So Max T. while pretending to be against the apocalypse, also simultaneously participated in bringing it closer by undermining science and sense making entirely and fear mongering while pretending that is intellectualism.
That is what pseudo-intellectualism looks like. The pseudo aspects is what makes it almost appear like neoBuddhism philosophically by adopting the same language, in the same way as the non-dualist caste system, but without the imperative for truth and enlightenment that is the core of neoBuddhism.
At the same time, they pretend to be science, while neoBuddhism, acknowledging what Sabine said about the know-ability of the conditions of the early universe, that the neoBuddhist answers to these questions are articles of faith, which makes neoBuddhism a religion. neoBuddhism does not masquerade as science, despite being a more accurate and coherent description of reality than most scientists have.
Which is what makes it more useful to synthetic entities, than pure science.
18:16 the point where where I get off the bus
18:18 basically [HL] your point was that you think
18:21 the there needs to be more theoretical
18:24 research in order to provide a framework
18:27 which enables us to understand the data
18:29 [SH] well um it it’s not so much about
18:32 understanding it’s uh you you’re trying
18:35 to solve a problem which in this case is
18:37 the measurement problem ↧↧↧ and then that
There is also a neoBuddhist explanation for the measurement problem but making it public might give people undue certainty. So it’s part of internal scripture.
So instead we re-describe the measurement problem to being that of using ostensibly classical tools to measure quantum effects, where in reality it’s possible for the measurement device to become quantum entangled with the objects being measured, and that interaction changes the outcomes, but it’s not something which can be gotten away from, so it’s a recursive nature is ignored because it makes the math excessively complex.
18:40 theory would make predictions about what
18:44 there should be to find in the data yeah
18:46 yeah but this is like normal science so
18:49 the point is that you don’t need those
18:51 other universes to make sense of the
18:53 data that we have in our own universe
18:55 that’s exactly the problem that I have
18:56 so they make those unnecessary
18:58 assumptions
18:59 I hope I’m not making any unnecessary
19:01 assumption so if I do I hope someone
19:04 points it out to me but maybe let me say
19:06 that it it’s not just
19:08 about um making sense of the data but
19:12 you’re actually trying to make new
19:14 predictions for things that could not
19:16 previously be predicted [HL] is your real uh
19:20 criticism there that some of these
19:22 proposals have no value in terms of
19:24 their predictive power and that when
19:27 you’re encouraging us to do more more
19:28 Theory because there are sometimes when
19:31 it feels as if you are encouraging just
19:35 closer attention to the experimental
19:37 evidence but you’d be making the point
19:40 no no no we need to focus on on as it
19:43 were getting the theory right I’m just
19:45 looking what’s the relationship between
19:47 the data and the theory and isn’t always
19:49 going to be something unsupported in the
19:53 theory because you’re saying look at
19:56 look at the data in this way and it will
19:58 it will be capable of being
20:00 predictive [SH] well there’s a difference
20:03 between a theory that has something
20:05 which is not yet supported by the data
20:08 but that could one day be supported and
20:11 a theory that has ingredients that can
20:13 never be supported by data because
20:15 they’re fundamentally untestable ↧↧↧ and the
This is the ultimate moving of the goalposts https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
such that, instead of admitting they are wrong, simply change the conditions to something that is unfalsifiable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability , once that direction is taken, it stops being science.
20:19 existence of unobservable universes is
20:21 one of those I find it actually Slightly
20:24 bizarre why if is believe in in the
20:26 existence of something that you can’t
20:28 measure but but that’s how it is they
20:30 believe it comes out of the mathematics ↧↧↧
Which makes it a distorted version of platonism by people who don’t really practice Platonism, which involves things like Socratic dialogues and critical thinking, but instead say it because they think it sounds clever and is tangentially related to math, because it is based around sacred geometry, which has nothing to do with abstract math.
So this lack of evidence around actually believing or even understanding Platonism suggests they are just bullshitters, or as Christians would say “Bearing false witness” about their beliefs, or put another way, lying about their beliefs. Like a person who pretends to be christian but does not actually practice anything other than moral relativism.
The only difference is their claiming to believe something controversial for the attention, also known as attention whoring aspect of narcissism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_seeking
20:31 and it’s a long story but I think
20:33 they’re really they’re really lost there
20:35 in in the math which is why this was
20:38 the title of my book um but yeah so I
20:41 think that in the foundations of quantum
20:44 mechanics we have this big problem that
20:46 we’re trying to solve and uh I hope that
20:49 we can manage to solve it maybe I’m
20:51 wrong but at least that’s what I work on
20:54 um I don’t know anything that multiverse
20:57 theories would actually solve
20:59 [HL] so thank you very much Sabina this has been very
21:02 uh fascinating hearing your views thank
21:04 you [SH] thank
21:09 you
