Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Is there an explanation for the Universe, or is it random?

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Is there an explanation for the Universe, or is it random? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, do you feel lucky to be who you are?
0:12
Speaker 1: I guess so. I don't really know how to be
0:15
Speaker 1: anyone else, so I guess being me feels pretty good. Well,
0:18
Speaker 1: do you ever think about all of the other possible
0:21
Speaker 1: Katie's out there, like maybe a Katie who became a
0:25
Speaker 1: snake wrangler instead of a podcaster? Yeah, you know, out
0:30
Speaker 1: there in the Katy Verse. Wow, the Katie Verse, I like.
0:34
Speaker 1: I like how that rolls off the tongue. I think
0:36
Speaker 1: it's better than the multi Katie, the multi Katie cinematic universe.
0:41
Speaker 1: Good luck at the box office with that one. But
0:43
Speaker 1: something I wonder about if you're thinking about all the
0:46
Speaker 1: possible instantations of you, is whether they all feel lucky
0:50
Speaker 1: to be where they ended up or if you know
0:52
Speaker 1: you're unusual, if you're an outlier. Well, I feel like
0:56
Speaker 1: Katie the bee Keeper and Katie the Accounts Received Double
1:00
Speaker 1: Manager probably aren't on a podcast, so you're not getting
1:03
Speaker 1: a representative sample until physics gives us a way to
1:07
Speaker 1: travel through the Katy Verse. I have to warn you, though,
1:10
Speaker 1: before you visit the mass of the Katie versus obscure
1:14
Speaker 1: trivia about parasites and also pictures of my dog. Hi,
1:33
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist in this universe and
1:37
Speaker 1: probably also in many other of the Daniel versus. I'm
1:41
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. I'm the host of Creature Feature in this
1:45
Speaker 1: universe and the CEO of Beekeepers Anonymous in some other universe.
1:52
Speaker 1: Do you mean that to be a negative? Somehow? You
1:54
Speaker 1: put beekeepers up there with like accounts receivable, as if
1:57
Speaker 1: being a beekeeper is a horrible fate. It sounds wonderful
2:00
Speaker 1: to me. You have like thousands of pets. No, I'm
2:03
Speaker 1: not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying if
2:05
Speaker 1: I'm busy keeping bees, I'm not going to bother with
2:08
Speaker 1: him doing a podcast. It's an all encompassing kind of job.
2:13
Speaker 1: I think it is. It's hard to keep bees alive. Well,
2:18
Speaker 1: was there a time in your life when you thought
2:20
Speaker 1: about being a beekeeper? Was that an alternative version of you?
2:23
Speaker 1: I think so, because I like the idea of it.
2:26
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I never got stung by
2:28
Speaker 1: any bees. Actually, I only got stung by a bee
2:31
Speaker 1: once an adulthood, and it was a complete accident and
2:35
Speaker 1: it didn't really hurt that much. So yeah, no, I
2:38
Speaker 1: think me and bees have something some kind of nice vibe.
2:41
Speaker 1: It sounds like beekeeping might also be in your future.
2:44
Speaker 1: But it makes me wonder about like the path of
2:46
Speaker 1: our lives, you know, how we ended up where we are,
2:50
Speaker 1: how many decisions led to us being just right exactly
2:53
Speaker 1: where we are, and how common that is, you know,
2:56
Speaker 1: out there. And then Daniel verse, how many of us
2:58
Speaker 1: really did become partical physicists, and how many of us
3:01
Speaker 1: are unemployed writers sleeping under highways. I do like the
3:05
Speaker 1: idea of having sort of a big conference, either in
3:08
Speaker 1: the Daniel verse or the Katie Verse or listener name verse,
3:12
Speaker 1: where you get to meet all your various other selves
3:16
Speaker 1: and just kind of have like the Daniel Conference or
3:19
Speaker 1: the Katie Conference, and all the various Katies and Daniels,
3:22
Speaker 1: you know, just meeting together, swapping notes, you know, kind
3:26
Speaker 1: of thing like, oh, these life choices ended up here
3:29
Speaker 1: and you somehow became a dictator. That's interesting. Well, welcome
3:34
Speaker 1: to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, because
3:37
Speaker 1: all of your life choices lead you to be right here,
3:41
Speaker 1: right now, listening to this podcast about everything that's happening
3:46
Speaker 1: in this universe. The way it is the way it
3:48
Speaker 1: might have been, the way it turned out, and the
3:50
Speaker 1: way it cannot be. On this podcast, we seek to
3:53
Speaker 1: unravel the very nature of space and time, to reveal
3:57
Speaker 1: the truth about the universe, if it even exists, To
4:00
Speaker 1: drill down into the deepest foundations, the very bedrock of reality,
4:04
Speaker 1: and understand the universe at its core. We talk about
4:08
Speaker 1: the things that we do understand and all the things
4:10
Speaker 1: that we do not understand. We make a bunch of jokes,
4:13
Speaker 1: we make fun of beekeepers, and we explain all of
4:15
Speaker 1: it to you. My friend and co host, Orgy can't
4:18
Speaker 1: be here today. He's on a well deserved vacation, and
4:21
Speaker 1: so as usual, we've invited Katie to step in and
4:24
Speaker 1: make a bunch of jokes. Maybe I'm just an alternate
4:27
Speaker 1: universe version of Jorge. But you two exist in the
4:32
Speaker 1: same universe, don't you. Have you guys ever spoken I've
4:35
Speaker 1: never been in the same room with him, I've never
4:37
Speaker 1: spoken to him directly. How do I know that that's true.
4:40
Speaker 1: I've never been on the call with the both of you.
4:42
Speaker 1: Maybe that's impossible. Is one of you Clark Kent and
4:45
Speaker 1: the other one Superman? It's the glasses only one of
4:50
Speaker 1: us those glasses. That's right? Are you saying? If you
4:54
Speaker 1: take off your glasses, you look like Jorge? That's my secret.
4:59
Speaker 1: The the glass has really changed my entire facial sort
5:03
Speaker 1: of structure. But you know, this kind of thinking, wondering
5:07
Speaker 1: how you got to be where you are and whether
5:10
Speaker 1: you could have ended up in a different place in
5:12
Speaker 1: your life, extends well beyond you and your life choices.
5:17
Speaker 1: It extends also to humanity. You know, think about the
5:20
Speaker 1: various things that had to happen for humans to even
5:23
Speaker 1: be on this planet. Beyond just that crazy asteroid that
5:27
Speaker 1: wiped out our competitors sixty five million years ago, there
5:30
Speaker 1: were so many branching points where life could have gone
5:33
Speaker 1: this way or that way. The chances of humans evolving
5:37
Speaker 1: on Earth itself seems sort of infinitesimal, and yet here
5:41
Speaker 1: we are. What do you make of that, Katie? I
5:43
Speaker 1: often wonder about if the chemistry of Earth was just
5:48
Speaker 1: slightly different, where it was more of a water planet,
5:51
Speaker 1: if we would have had a species of super intelligent
5:55
Speaker 1: cephalopods of some kind of underwater society, or if that
6:00
Speaker 1: just wouldn't be possible, if their tentacles would get too
6:03
Speaker 1: tangled to ever be able to make tools, and could
6:06
Speaker 1: you have podcasts, you know, through the muffled sounds of water,
6:10
Speaker 1: or would we be communicating in some other way? What
6:13
Speaker 1: kind of jokes do cephalopods make? Do they have a
6:15
Speaker 1: sense of humor? Yeah, like like, hey, where did I
6:18
Speaker 1: put my hat? I guess I left it on the
6:20
Speaker 1: mantle and it's on their head because that's called a mantle.
6:24
Speaker 1: That good that I feel like, that's a dad that's
6:27
Speaker 1: a dad joke in cephalopod. Well, it's like eight times
6:30
Speaker 1: funnier than human jokes exactly. And that's the right way
6:33
Speaker 1: to think about it, to wonder whether we are the
6:36
Speaker 1: only species capable of having these thoughts, and so it's
6:39
Speaker 1: sort of amazing and incredible that we are here wondering it,
6:42
Speaker 1: or if it's inevitable, if whoever had evolved on this
6:46
Speaker 1: planet would have those kinds of thoughts and find themselves special,
6:50
Speaker 1: like each one of us are special and unique and improbable.
6:54
Speaker 1: You know, the combination of a sperm and egg it
6:56
Speaker 1: just the right moment to develop you and it here
7:00
Speaker 1: you are asking why am I here? If some other
7:03
Speaker 1: sperm it fertilized that egg, then that person would be
7:05
Speaker 1: asking why are you here, but we can push this
7:08
Speaker 1: even further, not just the development of you or humanity
7:12
Speaker 1: or life, we can also wonder about the universe itself. What, Yeah,
7:18
Speaker 1: it seems like the universe is hospitable to life. You know,
7:21
Speaker 1: so many things had to go right in the very
7:24
Speaker 1: beginning of the universe, so many constants of nature and
7:26
Speaker 1: needed to be set just the right way to make
7:29
Speaker 1: life possible in this universe. Sort of makes you wonder. Yeah.
7:33
Speaker 1: You know, there's this quote I believe it was Douglas Adams,
7:37
Speaker 1: where a little puddle of water will always think smugly
7:41
Speaker 1: to itself, Wow, this hole was made perfectly for me.
7:45
Speaker 1: And that's how sometimes I feel about the universe, like, Wow,
7:48
Speaker 1: the universe was made perfectly to sustain life. Are we
7:51
Speaker 1: sort of a puddle fitting into this perfectly shaped hole
7:55
Speaker 1: for us? Or was the whole made for us exactly?
7:58
Speaker 1: And it's a deep question in physics because when we
8:01
Speaker 1: look at the universe, we don't just want to understand
8:04
Speaker 1: how it works, like what are the mechanisms of it?
8:07
Speaker 1: We want to understand why the universe is the way
8:10
Speaker 1: that it is. Could it have been different? And we
8:13
Speaker 1: are just lucky to be in a universe that supports
8:16
Speaker 1: life or are there reasons that it has to be
8:19
Speaker 1: this way that no other universe is sort of logically consistent.
8:23
Speaker 1: And what does it mean for there to be a
8:26
Speaker 1: universe without someone to view it, like it doesn't have
8:30
Speaker 1: to be a human, but something that can observe the universe, Like,
8:36
Speaker 1: without that thing that is observing, it feels like the
8:40
Speaker 1: universe's existence almost doesn't even matter in a way, if
8:44
Speaker 1: a universe exists in the forest by itself doesn't even exist. Well,
8:48
Speaker 1: that's a great question. But we think that the universe
8:51
Speaker 1: existed before there was any humans in it, probably before
8:55
Speaker 1: there was any alien life in it. You know, there
8:57
Speaker 1: was probably nothing alive and observe in the Big Bang.
9:01
Speaker 1: But we do think that it happened right right, But
9:04
Speaker 1: it happened, and that past of it happening is based
9:08
Speaker 1: on our observations now. So it's just it's a hard thing.
9:13
Speaker 1: And maybe this is extremely egocentric of me, but it's
9:17
Speaker 1: hard for me to imagine there being a universe just
9:21
Speaker 1: hamming along with no consciousness within it to perceive it. Yeah,
9:26
Speaker 1: on one hand, that sounds kind of sad. On the
9:29
Speaker 1: other hand, it's probably less sad because there's no like
9:32
Speaker 1: mobi depressed people in it wondering about what their point
9:35
Speaker 1: of the universe is. Right, it just sort of is.
9:39
Speaker 1: It's like the most zen universe possible without any Zen
9:42
Speaker 1: philosophers in it. But this is a deep question in
9:45
Speaker 1: physics and in philosophy, and people have wondered about whether
9:49
Speaker 1: we can conclude anything about our universe, whether being alive
9:53
Speaker 1: and intelligent and observers in our universe means something, or
9:56
Speaker 1: whether we're just lucky, or whether there's a deeper explo
10:00
Speaker 1: nation to all of it. And today on the podcast,
10:02
Speaker 1: we're going to dive deep into one particular idea that
10:05
Speaker 1: tries to explain all of it. It's called the anthropic principle.
10:09
Speaker 1: So on the podcast today we'll be answering the question
10:16
Speaker 1: what is the anthropic principle? So are you familiar with
10:20
Speaker 1: this explanation for the meaning of life, the universe and everything, Katie,
10:24
Speaker 1: I am not, But it sounds like something I could
10:28
Speaker 1: guess if I might dare, and I know our listeners
10:31
Speaker 1: are going to guess as well. But it sounds like
10:35
Speaker 1: it has something to do with human beings sort of
10:41
Speaker 1: being very full of ourselves. It sounds like the hubristic principle.
10:49
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, yeah, the me, Me Me principle. Well, it's
10:54
Speaker 1: funny you say that it is sort of about placing
10:56
Speaker 1: humans at the center of everything. On the other hand,
10:59
Speaker 1: we do sort of feel like the center of our
11:02
Speaker 1: own universes. Right, as you say, we are observing the
11:05
Speaker 1: universe from our perspective. We're not observing it from like weird, squishy,
11:09
Speaker 1: octopy intelligent beings and alpha centauri. Right, we can't observe
11:13
Speaker 1: it from any other position other than inside our own skulls,
11:18
Speaker 1: So we are limited to that perspective. Yeah, the only
11:22
Speaker 1: perceivable universe that exists is the interaction of our neurons
11:28
Speaker 1: inside our brains. Like, that's what it is. It's like
11:30
Speaker 1: whenever you try to take a look at anything in
11:33
Speaker 1: the universe that is a result of chemical reactions inside
11:37
Speaker 1: a pile of meat, inside a dome of bone. And
11:42
Speaker 1: there is a limit to what we can observe in
11:44
Speaker 1: the universe, and therefore the questions we can ask. Sometimes
11:47
Speaker 1: in the podcast we talk about things that you cannot observe,
11:50
Speaker 1: you know, like predictions of the multiverse, other universes you
11:53
Speaker 1: could never interact with, and whether that's really a scientific question,
11:57
Speaker 1: because if you cannot observe it, if you cannot prove exists,
12:00
Speaker 1: how do you know that it's real? And so in
12:03
Speaker 1: that sense, we are definitely limited to what filters through
12:06
Speaker 1: our few senses into our little meat computer and gives
12:10
Speaker 1: us the experience of it. So, as you said, I
12:12
Speaker 1: did go out and ask some of our listeners to
12:15
Speaker 1: volunteer to answer a question without any preparation at all,
12:19
Speaker 1: and I'm, as usual, eternally grateful to those of you
12:21
Speaker 1: who volunteered to play this fun game. If you would
12:24
Speaker 1: like to give answers to random physics questions without the
12:28
Speaker 1: chance to prepare and hear your speculations on the podcast,
12:31
Speaker 1: please don't be shy. Send me an email to questions
12:35
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. It's fun, it's easy,
12:38
Speaker 1: it's low stress. So think to yourself, do you know
12:41
Speaker 1: what the anthropic principle is? Here's what our listeners had
12:45
Speaker 1: to say. Anthropic principles seems like something to do with
12:50
Speaker 1: human beings and the and actually the anthropology as we
12:55
Speaker 1: know it, So sort of like having the consciousness of
13:02
Speaker 1: what we feel. I believe that is that we see
13:06
Speaker 1: everything as a reflection of ourselves. So they want to
13:09
Speaker 1: think of aliens. They have two arms, two legs, two eyes.
13:12
Speaker 1: They're symmetric, and that's because that's the way we are.
13:18
Speaker 1: So when we look at different things in the galaxy,
13:21
Speaker 1: we are looking for things that look like what we
13:24
Speaker 1: think life should be, in other words, another Earth like planet,
13:28
Speaker 1: and are kind of dismissive of alternatives because if that's
13:34
Speaker 1: the way we are, that's the way it must be.
13:37
Speaker 1: Anthropic principle. Is it related to anthropomorphisms somehow? I don't know.
13:43
Speaker 1: I feel like the anthropic principle kind of relates to
13:45
Speaker 1: all the numbers that seem to crop up time and
13:47
Speaker 1: time again when we're studying the universe, like the value
13:50
Speaker 1: of pie or the speed of light or the plank length,
13:54
Speaker 1: like they seem arbitrary but also so deeply ingrained in
13:57
Speaker 1: the universe. It's kind of like, is it a totally
13:59
Speaker 1: random like kind of roll of the dice that we
14:02
Speaker 1: happen to have these values, or are they saying something
14:04
Speaker 1: intrinsic about the nature of the universe and that we
14:06
Speaker 1: couldn't have a universe without these numbers exactly as they are.
14:10
Speaker 1: The entropic principle, it's basically the universe was made for intelligence,
14:18
Speaker 1: being like us to be seen by soul. The universe
14:22
Speaker 1: made us to look at it, if I remember right,
14:25
Speaker 1: which I probably don't. The anthropic principle has to do
14:29
Speaker 1: with how we describe the universe in terms that makes
14:33
Speaker 1: sense to us, and we tend to assume that everything
14:37
Speaker 1: works the way that our intuition says it would. Tricky,
14:42
Speaker 1: tricky chick. I have no idea, so I'm just gonna
14:46
Speaker 1: say I'm just gonna leave this one as a shrug.
14:50
Speaker 1: I liked the guess about it may be being related
14:54
Speaker 1: to anthropomorphism because this touches my little biology heart where
15:00
Speaker 1: this is a big problem in biology, where we when
15:04
Speaker 1: we see animal behaviors, we try to reframe it, even subconsciously,
15:08
Speaker 1: even without intending to. We reframe it in terms of
15:11
Speaker 1: human emotions and human behavior. So it's a constant thing
15:14
Speaker 1: we have to struggle against. And with physics, I imagine
15:19
Speaker 1: it's also a huge problem because you don't even have
15:23
Speaker 1: a competing consciousness. Uh well, I guess I can't say
15:28
Speaker 1: that for sure, but we're very limited in our observation
15:32
Speaker 1: of the universe in terms of it has to be
15:34
Speaker 1: something we can fit inside our little human brains. That's right.
15:38
Speaker 1: And I hear people anthropomorphizing physics. Sometimes they talk about
15:42
Speaker 1: particles and they're like, the electron it doesn't want to
15:46
Speaker 1: go hang out with other electrons because it's a fermion,
15:49
Speaker 1: you know, where protons don't like to be together. And
15:51
Speaker 1: I'm like, they don't like or dislike anything. They don't
15:54
Speaker 1: feel anything unless you subscribe to max text marks idea
15:58
Speaker 1: of computronium. How the whole universe is somehow self aware.
16:02
Speaker 1: None of these electrons are making decisions, They have no
16:05
Speaker 1: free will. But it's just sort of the way that
16:07
Speaker 1: we think, right, we take our choices and our frame
16:10
Speaker 1: of reference and our ideas and we project them to
16:13
Speaker 1: the whole universe. And I don't mean that critically. That's
16:15
Speaker 1: basically what physics is, right. We are trying to build
16:18
Speaker 1: a model of the universe inside our head to understand
16:22
Speaker 1: our experiences. So yeah, we got to put ourselves in
16:25
Speaker 1: it also, and we've got to use the language that
16:28
Speaker 1: exists in our head to explain it to ourselves. That's
16:30
Speaker 1: why we talk about particles, sometimes as tiny little balls
16:33
Speaker 1: of matter and sometimes as waves of stuff, because that's
16:36
Speaker 1: the language that we have, and what else can you do? Man? Yeah,
16:40
Speaker 1: I mean, how can you think as not a human?
16:43
Speaker 1: It's impossible not to think like a human because every
16:46
Speaker 1: human that is thinking is a human. So it's literally
16:51
Speaker 1: impossible until we've figured out some way to avatar our
16:55
Speaker 1: brains inside of a galactic squid, like we have to
17:00
Speaker 1: think as humans, and so everything we think about we're
17:03
Speaker 1: going to think about in terms of, you know, of
17:06
Speaker 1: our kind of human experience, which is why when there
17:09
Speaker 1: are minds that work on these big problems, sometimes you
17:13
Speaker 1: have someone who contributes greatly to science by thinking about
17:17
Speaker 1: things in a different way than people have thought about
17:20
Speaker 1: things before. But even then, even you know, the outliers
17:23
Speaker 1: who think about things in different way, they're still thinking
17:26
Speaker 1: with their human meat brains. So, you know, we we
17:30
Speaker 1: can't think like a solar system because that doesn't make sense.
17:34
Speaker 1: Our brains are not solar systems. Our brains are brains
17:37
Speaker 1: until we meet those galactic squids and we get to
17:40
Speaker 1: talk science with them and we learn how differently they
17:43
Speaker 1: view the universe. Although you know, I worry that when
17:47
Speaker 1: we do meet the aliens either, they will be so
17:49
Speaker 1: alien that we can't talk to them, which means that
17:51
Speaker 1: that fascinatingly useful, incredibly different perspective will be lost on us,
17:56
Speaker 1: or they'll be so similar to us that we can
17:58
Speaker 1: talk to them and they'll have nothing really to add
18:01
Speaker 1: to the conversation because they'll basically just be other squishy humans.
18:05
Speaker 1: I think they're probably gonna shove one of their space
18:07
Speaker 1: tentacles up our noses and plug it directly into our
18:10
Speaker 1: brains and just kind of create a new sort of
18:13
Speaker 1: like duo brain for us. That's my theory. Well, it'll
18:17
Speaker 1: be interesting when we meet those galactic squids if they
18:20
Speaker 1: are also asking the questions that we are asking, if
18:22
Speaker 1: they are looking around at the universe and wondering why
18:26
Speaker 1: is it the way that it is? You know, you
18:28
Speaker 1: hear people in theology sometimes making the argument like if
18:32
Speaker 1: you find a watch in a desert, then that's evidence of,
18:36
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of design. You would never conclude
18:38
Speaker 1: that the watch assembled itself randomly. I think, you know,
18:41
Speaker 1: that's cute and it's clever. But a better question is
18:43
Speaker 1: sort of like, if you find a watch in a
18:46
Speaker 1: pile of watch parts that's like almost infinitely big and
18:50
Speaker 1: jiggling around for a long time, would you be surprised
18:53
Speaker 1: to have found sort of a watch eventually self assembled
18:56
Speaker 1: in a big soup of watch parts, and then to
18:58
Speaker 1: bring it home for today's episode. You know what, if
19:01
Speaker 1: you are that watch, you know you have discovered yourself
19:04
Speaker 1: made out of these watch parts and a big soup
19:06
Speaker 1: made out of these watch parts and a big soup
19:08
Speaker 1: of similar bits. Should you be surprised to find yourself
19:12
Speaker 1: existing and self aware, surrounded by all the things necessary
19:16
Speaker 1: to make you well? You know, I don't have the
19:17
Speaker 1: answer to that question, Daniel, But you know what you
19:20
Speaker 1: season watch soup with right? No, I don't tell me
19:23
Speaker 1: you season it with time. I can't believe I just
19:28
Speaker 1: walked right into that one. So, Daniel, this anthropic principle,
19:34
Speaker 1: right like, I feel like I'm starting to get a
19:36
Speaker 1: sense of the direction we're going. But what is it
19:39
Speaker 1: really like? What? What is this principle as it's defined
19:43
Speaker 1: in physics? So this is an attempt to try to
19:46
Speaker 1: answer the question of why we seem to be lucky
19:50
Speaker 1: to be here, why the universe seems to be sort
19:53
Speaker 1: of like fine tuned for life and maybe even for
19:56
Speaker 1: intelligent life. And the answer that it offers is a
20:00
Speaker 1: little bit controversial and somehow unsatisfying. It's an argument that
20:04
Speaker 1: sometimes coincidences don't need explanations, that you are biased in
20:09
Speaker 1: the way that you look at the universe because you exist,
20:13
Speaker 1: and so it might just be that the reason you're
20:16
Speaker 1: here asking questions about why you got so lucky is
20:20
Speaker 1: because you are the one who is here asking those questions.
20:24
Speaker 1: You know, like the watch example, if a pile of
20:26
Speaker 1: watch parts self assembles itself into an intelligent, self aware
20:30
Speaker 1: of robot, and that robot asks why am I here?
20:34
Speaker 1: Who made me? It might just be that it's only
20:36
Speaker 1: asked that question because it's here, and if it hadn't
20:39
Speaker 1: self assembled, it wouldn't be asking that question, And so
20:41
Speaker 1: there is no sort of like deeper explanations, no designer
20:45
Speaker 1: of that robot. There's no reason why the robot had
20:48
Speaker 1: to exist. If it didn't exist, if it hadn't assembled
20:51
Speaker 1: itself out of watch parts, there would be nobody to
20:53
Speaker 1: ask that question. And I think, speaking of anthropomorphism in
20:56
Speaker 1: our conversation earlier, I think this is a hard, difficult
21:00
Speaker 1: concept for us to wrap our brains around, because human
21:04
Speaker 1: beings are very like Our way of thinking is usually
21:08
Speaker 1: cause and effect or motivation and effect, So we think
21:12
Speaker 1: about things in terms of I want to do this,
21:15
Speaker 1: so I do it, or I need something, so I
21:18
Speaker 1: make this thing to accomplish this thing. It's this kind
21:21
Speaker 1: of directional thinking of I put on this sweater because
21:26
Speaker 1: I was cold, or I put some time on my
21:29
Speaker 1: suit because it didn't taste like anything. So we have
21:33
Speaker 1: this like type of thinking that when we look at
21:36
Speaker 1: bigger concepts or patterns, even in evolutionary biology, will think
21:41
Speaker 1: about things like, well, how could an I have possibly evolved?
21:45
Speaker 1: It's too complicated. The eyeball is kind of like that
21:48
Speaker 1: watch in the desert, right, it seems like it just
21:51
Speaker 1: kind of self assembled. But the answer that kind of
21:54
Speaker 1: is unsatisfying is like it evolved because it evolved. Like
21:57
Speaker 1: it evolved because the things that evolved, the early or
22:00
Speaker 1: versions of it, survived and they survived because they had
22:05
Speaker 1: these benefits. And so things evolved just because they survive
22:09
Speaker 1: and that's it, Like they survived pass on their jeans.
22:11
Speaker 1: There's no creature that has a thinks about wanting something
22:16
Speaker 1: and then involves into it. And so with the universe,
22:19
Speaker 1: it seems like we have a similar problem right where
22:22
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, so how are we lucky or are
22:25
Speaker 1: we here just because we're here, and then that's why
22:28
Speaker 1: we feel lucky exactly. And physics is a drive, as
22:32
Speaker 1: you say, to understand that cost and effect chain, to
22:34
Speaker 1: go back to the very very beginning and find the
22:36
Speaker 1: simplest explanation and derive everything from that. And it's worked
22:40
Speaker 1: so far. You know. Sometimes we've looked at the universe,
22:43
Speaker 1: we've said, we don't understand it, why is it this way?
22:46
Speaker 1: And we've struggled to find explanations, But then we have
22:49
Speaker 1: found them. We have figured out, like, oh, why are
22:51
Speaker 1: there a hundred elements? Is it just that the way
22:54
Speaker 1: it is? No, it turns out it comes from a
22:56
Speaker 1: deeper organizing principle, comes from the way quarks fit together
23:00
Speaker 1: and electrons link around them and build those elements. There
23:04
Speaker 1: is an answer, but that doesn't mean that there always
23:06
Speaker 1: will be an answer, because we are observing the universe
23:09
Speaker 1: from a sort of biased perspective, you know. The anthropic
23:12
Speaker 1: principle says that some things that seem like coincidences that
23:17
Speaker 1: are needed to make observers, to make people around to
23:20
Speaker 1: ask those questions, might not need further explanation. That the
23:25
Speaker 1: answer might just be, hey, it's random. But when the
23:28
Speaker 1: coincidences don't happen. They just don't make observers, So there's
23:31
Speaker 1: nobody there to notice, nobody to ask the question. You know,
23:35
Speaker 1: It's like if you said, why have we survived all
23:37
Speaker 1: of these calamities? Is there somebody protecting us? If we hadn't,
23:41
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be here asking why we survived that meteor,
23:44
Speaker 1: why we survived all those ice ages and all those
23:47
Speaker 1: pandemics and everything in the past. And if we get
23:50
Speaker 1: wiped out by one in the future, nobody will be
23:52
Speaker 1: around to sort of count that against our luckiness. So
23:56
Speaker 1: we feel lucky because we are alive, but we only
23:59
Speaker 1: notice we're lucky because we are alive. It's like you
24:02
Speaker 1: never question why wasn't I born? It's always the question
24:06
Speaker 1: why was I born? Exactly? So, you have to balance
24:09
Speaker 1: a couple of things. On one hand, you want to
24:11
Speaker 1: keep a skeptical mind. You want to look for explanations,
24:14
Speaker 1: You want to dig deeper and understand the true meaning
24:17
Speaker 1: of the universe, if there is one. On the other hand,
24:19
Speaker 1: you also have to recognize that you are biased in
24:22
Speaker 1: how you observe the universe, that your perspective indicates that
24:27
Speaker 1: you are not in a random sampling of the universe.
24:31
Speaker 1: So this is why we have science, right. We understand
24:35
Speaker 1: that human beings are biased, so we have scientific experiments
24:41
Speaker 1: to try to remove that bias. So why can't we
24:44
Speaker 1: just remove that bias through some really good scientific experiments
24:50
Speaker 1: that we run, like with the Hadron collider. Oh yeah,
24:53
Speaker 1: it's no big deal. We can totally run those experiments.
24:56
Speaker 1: They consist of starting the universe over again million times
25:01
Speaker 1: and observing what happens and seeing if there are intelligent
25:05
Speaker 1: observers in those universes. Also, I feel like I detect
25:09
Speaker 1: some sarcasm here, But the answer is that we just
25:14
Speaker 1: have this one universe. We have this one example, and
25:17
Speaker 1: from this example we have to draw all of our conclusions.
25:20
Speaker 1: That's it. We're limited to that. You know, it's sort
25:22
Speaker 1: of like, um, you know, say that you're put on
25:24
Speaker 1: a firing squad and there's like a thousand people shooting
25:27
Speaker 1: at you and they all miss. What can you conclude
25:30
Speaker 1: from that one experiment? Can you conclude, well, they're all
25:34
Speaker 1: terrible shots, or can you conclude that they intended to miss?
25:37
Speaker 1: Or can you just not at all estimate your chances
25:41
Speaker 1: of survival because you're only there to answer the question
25:44
Speaker 1: if you do survive. And so that's essentially the argument
25:47
Speaker 1: of the anthropic principle that you can't accurately estimate the
25:51
Speaker 1: chances of the kind of thing happening if you need
25:53
Speaker 1: that to happen in order to be around to ask
25:56
Speaker 1: those questions. Right, So when we're studying the universe, you know,
26:00
Speaker 1: we can think of this universe like an individual. So
26:05
Speaker 1: when you do a study on say, mice or something.
26:08
Speaker 1: If you did some kind of medical research on a
26:11
Speaker 1: single mouse and they're like, hey, this mouse is weird.
26:13
Speaker 1: Look at how its heart works, and everyone would laugh
26:16
Speaker 1: you out of you know, the journal, because you only
26:20
Speaker 1: did that study on one mouse. You're like, hey, this
26:22
Speaker 1: mouse has a tiny planet inside its stomach. It must
26:26
Speaker 1: be that all mice have these planets inside their stomachs.
26:29
Speaker 1: But in this case, the mouse is our universe, and
26:32
Speaker 1: it's like, well, this universe is the only one we
26:35
Speaker 1: can look at, and we can look at it because
26:39
Speaker 1: the universe is such that we can be. And so
26:42
Speaker 1: now my mind's a pressle again inside the uni mouse
26:47
Speaker 1: with keen golden exactly, and you know, I want to
26:50
Speaker 1: dig into how this might explain things and the questions
26:54
Speaker 1: that it helps answer. But I also want you to
26:56
Speaker 1: keep in mind before we get there, that there's also
26:58
Speaker 1: another side to the anthro principle. There's a danger. The
27:01
Speaker 1: danger is that the anthropic principle tells us that there
27:04
Speaker 1: are no answers to our questions, there is no deeper explanation,
27:08
Speaker 1: and it sort of discourages us from digging. And digging
27:11
Speaker 1: is what physics is all about, is pushing hard to
27:13
Speaker 1: try to find that answer. So it would be a
27:15
Speaker 1: tragedy if there was a deep explanation for why the
27:19
Speaker 1: universe is the way that it is and we didn't
27:21
Speaker 1: find it because we gave up because we thought, I
27:24
Speaker 1: guess it's just chance and we got lucky. But before
27:26
Speaker 1: we get into lots of examples of how the anthropic
27:28
Speaker 1: principle can be used, let's take a quick break. All right,
27:44
Speaker 1: we are back and we're talking about how amazing it
27:47
Speaker 1: is that I'm here and Gaty is here, and you
27:50
Speaker 1: are here listening to us, and we hope that you
27:52
Speaker 1: don't regret it. So we were talking about how the
27:57
Speaker 1: anthropic principle can be potentially inangerous right and discouraging more exploration.
28:04
Speaker 1: But for me, it's kind of it makes me want
28:07
Speaker 1: to know even more because it seems really mysterious how
28:10
Speaker 1: you could have a universe relying on totally random chance
28:15
Speaker 1: leading to us being around. And it makes me wonder
28:18
Speaker 1: what's behind these rules of the universe that allowed such incredible,
28:23
Speaker 1: seemingly random chance and such a large scale. We just
28:27
Speaker 1: don't know, right, And it's the kind of thing that
28:28
Speaker 1: we wonder about. We wonder at the very core of
28:31
Speaker 1: the universe, if some of the numbers that control the
28:34
Speaker 1: universe were set randomly, and what mechanism sets those random numbers.
28:39
Speaker 1: I think that's what you're getting at. And if it's
28:40
Speaker 1: even possible to imagine other universes with different values of
28:44
Speaker 1: like the speed of light or the charge of the
28:46
Speaker 1: electron or the mass of the mun you know, whether
28:49
Speaker 1: it even makes sense whether it's possible to have those
28:52
Speaker 1: different laws of physics, or whether there's some deeper explanation
28:55
Speaker 1: to sort of links them together and says there can
28:58
Speaker 1: only be one value. Right. That's the thing that really
29:01
Speaker 1: makes me go cross side, is why are physics rules
29:04
Speaker 1: the way that they are not another way? Is that
29:07
Speaker 1: a problem that we run into with this anthropic principle
29:10
Speaker 1: where we obviously can't observe another universe that maybe has
29:14
Speaker 1: different rules. So could we never really answer something like, hey,
29:18
Speaker 1: could a universe have different rules, like are these rules arbitrary?
29:22
Speaker 1: It's a tough question because if it's true that the
29:25
Speaker 1: universe could have had lots of other values for important
29:29
Speaker 1: confidence that control the way the universe is, you know,
29:32
Speaker 1: the strength of gravity, the expansion rate of the universe,
29:36
Speaker 1: the speed of light. If it's true that those universes
29:39
Speaker 1: could have had other values, and we are just one
29:42
Speaker 1: among a huge landscape of multiverses that have this value,
29:46
Speaker 1: then there is nothing we could do to discover why
29:50
Speaker 1: our universe has these values and not other values. And
29:53
Speaker 1: it could be that many of those other universes just
29:56
Speaker 1: don't have intelligent creatures in them because they're not hospitable
29:59
Speaker 1: to life. On the other hand, if there is a
30:02
Speaker 1: reason if only certain values of those parameters are allowed
30:06
Speaker 1: because of some deeper laws of physics that we have
30:09
Speaker 1: not yet discovered, some rules about how the universe has
30:12
Speaker 1: to work, and you know, we are certainly not finished
30:15
Speaker 1: understanding the deep nature of space and time and quantum mechanics.
30:19
Speaker 1: We have a huge journey ahead of us. We've only
30:21
Speaker 1: just begun. So you've got some job security. That's good.
30:26
Speaker 1: In the case that there is a deeper explanation, then
30:29
Speaker 1: we could potentially discover it. We keep doing experiments, and
30:32
Speaker 1: that's sort of the history of physics is that we
30:34
Speaker 1: have peeled back layer after layer of reality and understood
30:38
Speaker 1: the way it is and why it has to be
30:39
Speaker 1: that way, you know, like we understand how chemistry emerges
30:44
Speaker 1: from particle physics. Now you can't just say, well, chemistry
30:47
Speaker 1: of life is the chemistry of life, and we wouldn't
30:50
Speaker 1: be here to ask about it if it wasn't this way,
30:52
Speaker 1: So it just is. No, there are deeper explanations for biochemistry.
30:56
Speaker 1: You can explain it in terms of the atoms and
30:59
Speaker 1: the core works and the electrons and the other smaller particles.
31:02
Speaker 1: You don't need to stop there and throw up your
31:04
Speaker 1: hands and say, well, anthropic principle says that we wouldn't
31:07
Speaker 1: be asking this question if it didn't exist, and therefore
31:10
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be asking any more questions. And that's the
31:12
Speaker 1: danger about the anthropic principles. You never know when to
31:15
Speaker 1: apply it. You never know when to say there is
31:18
Speaker 1: no further explanation, it's just random. We're just lucky because
31:21
Speaker 1: it describes what you don't know, and so to me,
31:24
Speaker 1: it's fundamentally disappointing and scary because it encourages you to
31:29
Speaker 1: stop asking questions. Are there cases in which it would
31:32
Speaker 1: actually encourage you to ask questions though, where it's like
31:36
Speaker 1: where we realized that something must be happening in the
31:40
Speaker 1: universe for us to be able to observe the universe. Yeah,
31:45
Speaker 1: there are some really great examples of how the anthropic
31:47
Speaker 1: principle does help steer us towards better understandings of the
31:51
Speaker 1: nature of space and time. And one of them has
31:54
Speaker 1: to do with something we talked about on the podcast
31:56
Speaker 1: a lot, which is the rate of the expansion of
31:59
Speaker 1: the universe. So we know, and we've known for about
32:01
Speaker 1: a hundred years now, that the universe is not static,
32:04
Speaker 1: it's not just a bunch of stars and galaxies hanging
32:06
Speaker 1: in space, but that it is expanding, and in the
32:09
Speaker 1: last twenty years we discovered that that expansion is actually accelerating,
32:13
Speaker 1: that galaxies are moving away from us faster and faster
32:17
Speaker 1: every year. This is something we call dark energy. So
32:20
Speaker 1: something out there is sort of tearing the universe apart,
32:23
Speaker 1: is pulling things apart, is creating new space between us
32:26
Speaker 1: and other galaxies, and we think that this is controlled
32:29
Speaker 1: by some parameter. It's called the cosmological constant. It's just
32:33
Speaker 1: a number. You put it in Einstein's field equations for
32:36
Speaker 1: general relativity, and if you crank it up, then it
32:39
Speaker 1: expands the universe really really really fast, and if you
32:41
Speaker 1: crank it down expands the universe more slowly. So it's
32:45
Speaker 1: just sort of like a number that controls how quickly
32:48
Speaker 1: the universe expands. But that number has to be within
32:50
Speaker 1: a certain range for the universe as we know it
32:53
Speaker 1: to have formed. If that number was way too high,
32:56
Speaker 1: it would have torn the universe apart before. For example,
32:59
Speaker 1: even Adams could have formed in the very beginning of
33:02
Speaker 1: time before electrons and protons found each other to make hydrogen, right,
33:06
Speaker 1: And so that sort of sets a limit, an upper
33:08
Speaker 1: limit on the expansion read of the universe. If it
33:11
Speaker 1: expands too quickly and too rapidly, then you just don't
33:13
Speaker 1: get interesting structure. And so that's fascinating, it's super interesting,
33:17
Speaker 1: and it's helpful actually because when we go to calculate
33:21
Speaker 1: the cosmological constant, when we try to figure out, like
33:24
Speaker 1: what is that number, how do we get what that
33:27
Speaker 1: number is. We can try to calculate it because we
33:29
Speaker 1: think it's related to the energy of empty space, and
33:32
Speaker 1: we add at the energy of all the quantum fields
33:34
Speaker 1: and empty space, and we get a number, and that
33:37
Speaker 1: number turns out to be really big, like way too big.
33:41
Speaker 1: Like if that number was the cosmological constant. If we
33:45
Speaker 1: started from first principles and quantum fields and try to
33:47
Speaker 1: calculate the energy of empty space and how much it
33:50
Speaker 1: was expanding the universe, it would be too big by
33:53
Speaker 1: like a factor or ten to the one hundred. The
33:55
Speaker 1: anthropic principle there tells us that our calculation is wrong.
33:59
Speaker 1: That if the universe was expanding at their way that
34:01
Speaker 1: we predicted that we calculated, that it would have torn
34:04
Speaker 1: itself apart much much earlier, and we would not be
34:07
Speaker 1: here to ask about it. So in that sense it
34:09
Speaker 1: is useful. So the fact that we are even here,
34:12
Speaker 1: we know that our calculations have to end up creating
34:18
Speaker 1: a universe that allows us to be here. Is that
34:21
Speaker 1: kind of what you're saying exactly, Because you can't observe
34:23
Speaker 1: a universe that doesn't lead to observers, and we are
34:27
Speaker 1: here observing it, so it has to be hospitable. Right,
34:30
Speaker 1: you can't argue that the laws of the universe are
34:32
Speaker 1: such that they don't create the universe that we see, right,
34:36
Speaker 1: It's just as really as simple as that. And so
34:38
Speaker 1: the calculations that we do now that try to predict
34:41
Speaker 1: the expansion of the universe their way off, and just
34:44
Speaker 1: knowing that the universe exists and is hospitable to life
34:47
Speaker 1: tells us that those can't be right. And so that's
34:50
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, it's a weak application of
34:52
Speaker 1: the entropic principle because you you could imagine deducing that
34:55
Speaker 1: otherwise just saying like, well, that number is different from
34:58
Speaker 1: what we observe, and so it can't be right. Couldn't
35:01
Speaker 1: we sort of use the anthropic principle to help guide
35:05
Speaker 1: our questions without its stopping our questions, because it's kind
35:08
Speaker 1: of like, I mean, it reminds me of like the
35:10
Speaker 1: famous descard thing of I think therefore I am where
35:14
Speaker 1: you know, being conscious is sort of your only proof
35:17
Speaker 1: of existing. But that doesn't mean you can't keep asking
35:20
Speaker 1: questions about your consciousness of like, well, why do we think?
35:25
Speaker 1: How do we think? You know? Those kinds of questions.
35:28
Speaker 1: Could we do the same thing with anthropic principle, where
35:32
Speaker 1: you know, okay, so we're here because we're here, but
35:36
Speaker 1: how did we get here? And are there any deeper
35:39
Speaker 1: mechanisms behind you know, the laws of physics of our
35:42
Speaker 1: universe that allows us to be here. I agree with you,
35:45
Speaker 1: and those questions are really important. The issue is that
35:48
Speaker 1: the anthropic principle sort of suggests that there is no
35:51
Speaker 1: deeper explanation, that the reason we're here asking these questions
35:55
Speaker 1: is that we got lucky, and the folks that didn't
35:57
Speaker 1: get lucky aren't here to ask those questions. So it's
36:00
Speaker 1: sort of a way of saying, look, we don't need
36:02
Speaker 1: to explain this weirdness. We see something strange, it seems
36:06
Speaker 1: really unlikely, but maybe there is no deeper explanation. So
36:10
Speaker 1: it's sort of like stops that chain of inquiry by
36:13
Speaker 1: telling you that there is no further explanation to find.
36:16
Speaker 1: There is no deeper level of reality that explains the
36:20
Speaker 1: way things are that is just random, and we are
36:23
Speaker 1: here asking that question because we're the ones who got here.
36:26
Speaker 1: I guess thinking from since I'm still stuck in my
36:30
Speaker 1: sort of anthropocentric or I guess even just like animal
36:35
Speaker 1: centric point of view when I think about randomness, I think, well,
36:40
Speaker 1: things can just be random, But then when you have
36:43
Speaker 1: huge systems, there's usually some kind of pattern that emerges
36:49
Speaker 1: from randomness. So I feel like, even if we determine
36:53
Speaker 1: something is maybe in our universe that things just randomly
36:58
Speaker 1: happen to allow life to occur, to be able to
37:02
Speaker 1: observe the universe, could there be something even bigger behind
37:07
Speaker 1: that randomness? Does that make any sense? It does, But
37:11
Speaker 1: I think that what you're actually talking about is not
37:13
Speaker 1: randomness but chaos. You know, sometimes we see things emerging
37:17
Speaker 1: from swarms of tiny, little buzzing particles, you know, for example, chemistry, right,
37:23
Speaker 1: chemistry is like a coordinated dance of lots of quantum
37:27
Speaker 1: particles following the laws of physics. And you don't need
37:30
Speaker 1: to use the weak force and the strong force and
37:33
Speaker 1: particle physics to talk about life and biochemistry because these
37:37
Speaker 1: other rules do emerge the rules of organic chemistry. So
37:40
Speaker 1: sort of like sense and mathematical reasoning does emerge out
37:45
Speaker 1: of the crazy swarm of what does seem like an
37:48
Speaker 1: insane amount of particles all moving together the way, for example,
37:53
Speaker 1: like weather patterns emerge from water droplets, and I think
37:56
Speaker 1: that's our minds. Making sense of the universe is necessarily randomness.
38:01
Speaker 1: It's more like turning chaos into mathematical stories to say, look,
38:05
Speaker 1: I can tame this. I can find some sort of
38:08
Speaker 1: simple explanation for that describes the higher level effects, you know,
38:13
Speaker 1: the way like human psychology is right. Human psychology is
38:16
Speaker 1: not fundamental to the universe. It's not written in the
38:19
Speaker 1: standard model. But people are predictable. You can describe how
38:23
Speaker 1: people will buy things and sell things and talk to
38:25
Speaker 1: each other and break up and feel in response to
38:27
Speaker 1: certain situations. That's not a fundamental law the universe. It
38:30
Speaker 1: just sort of emerges, and so we can describe that.
38:33
Speaker 1: So I think that's trying to grapple with something else,
38:36
Speaker 1: not randomness, but chaos. But I think it is important,
38:38
Speaker 1: and it goes to our desire to tell stories about
38:41
Speaker 1: the universe, to find these explanations. And for me, again,
38:44
Speaker 1: while the anthropic principle is hard to refute, it's hard
38:47
Speaker 1: to say no, that can't be because it might be
38:50
Speaker 1: just that we are lucky in random It's frustrating because
38:53
Speaker 1: I always want to find that story. To me, the
38:56
Speaker 1: story the universe is random and you just sort of
38:58
Speaker 1: like got lucky to be is not really an interesting
39:01
Speaker 1: story because it doesn't tell you anything deep about the universe.
39:05
Speaker 1: And we're not talking about sort of a higher power here.
39:08
Speaker 1: We're not saying like, well, then there is a galactic
39:10
Speaker 1: squid pulling all the strings. But more that maybe there's
39:14
Speaker 1: something like as we chopped the universe down to its
39:19
Speaker 1: smallest parts, like maybe there are sets of rules that
39:24
Speaker 1: are behind the rules that we can use to understand
39:28
Speaker 1: our situation better, right exactly, And let me give you
39:31
Speaker 1: an example. We look at the particles that we see
39:34
Speaker 1: in the universe, for example, the electron, and we notice
39:37
Speaker 1: that it has charge minus one and the proton has
39:40
Speaker 1: charge plus one. The proton is built out of quarks,
39:43
Speaker 1: which when you combine them together, they give you charge
39:45
Speaker 1: plus one. The amazing thing, though, is that in our
39:48
Speaker 1: theory those two numbers are independent. Like if you're the
39:51
Speaker 1: control panel of the universe, then you could set the
39:54
Speaker 1: charge of the electron to be you know, minus one
39:57
Speaker 1: and the charge of the proton two b plus one.
39:59
Speaker 1: You can also set the charge the electron to be
40:01
Speaker 1: like minus one point zero zero zero zero zero zero one.
40:05
Speaker 1: There's no like rule in physics that says you can't.
40:07
Speaker 1: Those are two independent numbers, are like different knobs on
40:11
Speaker 1: the control panel of the universe. Now, if you don't
40:13
Speaker 1: set them to be exactly opposite each other, then you
40:17
Speaker 1: don't get neutral atoms, you don't get chemistry, you don't
40:20
Speaker 1: get life, you don't get ice cream, you don't get podcasts.
40:25
Speaker 1: And so you can ask like, well, is that a coincidence?
40:28
Speaker 1: Is it random? Are there an infinite landscape of universes
40:31
Speaker 1: out there where those things don't balance, and you don't
40:33
Speaker 1: get neutral atoms and you don't get chemistry, and we're
40:36
Speaker 1: just lucky and we're here asking those questions about it
40:39
Speaker 1: because we're in the one where they balance. Or is
40:42
Speaker 1: there a deeper explanation? Is there a reason why these
40:45
Speaker 1: things are exactly opposite? For example, maybe they're built out
40:48
Speaker 1: of even smaller things that we haven't yet discovered, And
40:50
Speaker 1: the reason the electron has the opposite charge as the
40:53
Speaker 1: proton is because they come from the same fundamental units,
40:56
Speaker 1: just arranged in a different way. They're a fundamental string,
40:59
Speaker 1: vibrate in slightly different frequency or something. Right, maybe they
41:03
Speaker 1: are linked in a way that we just have not
41:04
Speaker 1: yet discovered. So the entropic principle says, don't worry about it.
41:08
Speaker 1: It's probably just random. But my visits brain says, no,
41:12
Speaker 1: it's a screaming clue that there's something going on, something
41:15
Speaker 1: deeper we haven't yet discovered. Well, right, because you can
41:18
Speaker 1: have chaos on one level that leads to something more
41:24
Speaker 1: organized on another level. It's usually it goes up, right, Like,
41:29
Speaker 1: the smaller the particle, the more chaotic it is. And
41:32
Speaker 1: then when you have a bunch of those small units
41:35
Speaker 1: in a large amount, they lead to something more organized,
41:38
Speaker 1: more of a pattern. Could you ever have something going
41:41
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction where you break a part of
41:44
Speaker 1: the smallest particle you have and you discover something behind
41:47
Speaker 1: it that actually becomes more organized, or is somehow explaining
41:53
Speaker 1: some of the chaos of that larger particle that it creates. Well,
41:57
Speaker 1: that's a deep, deep question super them. You know, it
42:01
Speaker 1: is fascinating that we notice that organization sort of emerges
42:05
Speaker 1: at larger scales, right Like as you say, a baseball has,
42:08
Speaker 1: you know, tend to the thirty buzzing quantum particles in
42:11
Speaker 1: it that are impossible to predict, and yet I can
42:14
Speaker 1: throw a baseball across the room and predict its trajectory
42:17
Speaker 1: pretty accurately without knowing anything about those little particles. Right,
42:21
Speaker 1: that's the sort of organization principle that you mean. And
42:24
Speaker 1: the truth is, we don't really know why that is
42:27
Speaker 1: in our universe. Why it's possible to tell these cute,
42:31
Speaker 1: simple mathematical stories about big things that involve intractable mathematical
42:37
Speaker 1: stories about the thousands and billions and zillions of tiny
42:40
Speaker 1: things inside them, we don't really know. It's called emergent phenomena,
42:44
Speaker 1: and it seems to be sort of a miracle in
42:46
Speaker 1: our universe that it's possible, you know, that you can
42:49
Speaker 1: describe the path of a baseball without understanding quantum gravity.
42:53
Speaker 1: We're actually having a whole other podcast episode planned just
42:56
Speaker 1: on that topic to try to understand why stories to
43:00
Speaker 1: to emerge in layers from the chaos of the universe,
43:03
Speaker 1: not something we currently really understand. I don't want to
43:06
Speaker 1: spoil the episode, but I will make a prediction. I
43:09
Speaker 1: think it is little tiny gnomes, little teeny tiny gnomes. Well,
43:14
Speaker 1: let's investigate Katie's theory of the gnomic universe, but first
43:18
Speaker 1: let's take another break. All right, we're back, and we're
43:34
Speaker 1: talking about why the universe is the way that it
43:37
Speaker 1: is and could have been other ways. And in those
43:39
Speaker 1: other universes, are there better flavors of ice cream available?
43:43
Speaker 1: Are we missing out? Yeah? I went on Amazon and
43:47
Speaker 1: ordered a really powerful magnifying glass to see if I
43:50
Speaker 1: could try to find the tiny gnomes inside the electrons.
43:55
Speaker 1: But so we cannot observe other universes, right, because we're
43:59
Speaker 1: sort of like fish in a bowl. We're stuck in ours.
44:02
Speaker 1: But can we think about other universes? Like can we
44:06
Speaker 1: sort of project sort of what we see in this
44:09
Speaker 1: universe and think about other possibilities? We absolutely can, and
44:14
Speaker 1: that's something that we do all the time as we
44:16
Speaker 1: sort of unrolled the story of our universe, as we
44:19
Speaker 1: ask could it have been different at various points? Could
44:24
Speaker 1: other things have happened? And that's really the deep question
44:26
Speaker 1: we're trying to ask. And you know, we have made
44:28
Speaker 1: a lot of progress in understanding the universe. We have
44:30
Speaker 1: these basic fundamental particles, and we've even gone deeper. There
44:34
Speaker 1: are people, for example, who have developed string theory, which
44:37
Speaker 1: is this idea of where all these particles come from.
44:41
Speaker 1: They say, maybe all the particles we see are actually
44:44
Speaker 1: these tiny, vibrating one dimensional strings. And when they vibrate
44:48
Speaker 1: in one way, they look like an electron. When they
44:50
Speaker 1: vibrate in another way, they look like a muan. And
44:52
Speaker 1: this comes out of a beautiful mathematical structure. And everybody
44:55
Speaker 1: I know who does string theory is constantly calling it beautiful,
44:59
Speaker 1: like there's elegance to it, like there's something like when
45:02
Speaker 1: you see it, it's like wow, you're like looking at
45:05
Speaker 1: a work of art. It just sort of like clicks
45:06
Speaker 1: together for them to have a deep appreciation for it.
45:09
Speaker 1: Problem with string theory is that when they put it together,
45:12
Speaker 1: they realize there are some choices to make, Like when
45:15
Speaker 1: you put string theory together, you can put it together
45:18
Speaker 1: this way, and you can put it together that way,
45:20
Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of different choices to make. And
45:22
Speaker 1: they sat down to calculate, like how many different string
45:25
Speaker 1: theories are there? You know, it's not like it's just
45:28
Speaker 1: there's only one way to put it together. And so
45:30
Speaker 1: they came up with a number of different string theories
45:33
Speaker 1: that you could assemble. And the number is ten to
45:36
Speaker 1: the five hundred. So each of these represents like a
45:39
Speaker 1: different possible theory of a universe. I tried counting that
45:43
Speaker 1: on my fingers, but I think I ran out of fingers.
45:47
Speaker 1: It's a mind bogglingly big number. Like the number of
45:50
Speaker 1: years the universe has existed is only like ten to
45:53
Speaker 1: the twelve, The number of atoms in a mold is
45:56
Speaker 1: like ten to the twenty six. The number of particles
45:59
Speaker 1: in the U universes tend to be eight. We're talking
46:02
Speaker 1: about a number much, much, much bigger than any of
46:05
Speaker 1: those numbers, definitely more than the number of jelly beans
46:10
Speaker 1: that I got in this jar, don't get. And you
46:13
Speaker 1: might ask yourself, well, why is that important? Why is
46:15
Speaker 1: that relevant? Well, it's sort of like different configurations of
46:19
Speaker 1: the string landscape, and it sort of seems like when
46:21
Speaker 1: the universe started string theories correct, we rolled a big
46:24
Speaker 1: die and that die has ten to the five hundred
46:27
Speaker 1: sides to it, and we just happen to end up
46:30
Speaker 1: on this one. And so it makes people wonder like, well, geez,
46:33
Speaker 1: that seems pretty unlikely. Is there a reason why the
46:37
Speaker 1: universe ended up on this one spot out of ten
46:40
Speaker 1: to the five hundred? You know? Is there a deeper
46:43
Speaker 1: explanation like that's the only one that could work somehow?
46:45
Speaker 1: Is there some other rule we haven't yet figured out
46:48
Speaker 1: or are there ten to the five hundred universes out there,
46:52
Speaker 1: and we are just in this one. So to answer
46:55
Speaker 1: your question, like, this is the kind of thing that
46:57
Speaker 1: helps us think about maybe are there other you universes
47:00
Speaker 1: out there that have different values? If we can't figure
47:03
Speaker 1: out a reason why the universe chooses one value and
47:06
Speaker 1: now another, makes us wonder if there are other universes
47:10
Speaker 1: out there where those other values have been chosen. So
47:12
Speaker 1: when we talk about other universes being out there, I
47:16
Speaker 1: think that can be hard to visualize, because one way
47:19
Speaker 1: for me to think about it is so this universe
47:23
Speaker 1: plays out over billions of years and then at some
47:26
Speaker 1: point spreads apart completely and then somehow dies and then
47:32
Speaker 1: restarts into a new universe. Or the other way I
47:35
Speaker 1: think about it is like we're sort of in a
47:38
Speaker 1: bubble amongst a bunch of bubbles of other universes. But
47:42
Speaker 1: I realize this is probably not accurate ways of thinking
47:46
Speaker 1: about it. How does someone like me try to conceive
47:50
Speaker 1: of there being multiple universes? It's difficult to sort of
47:53
Speaker 1: hold this in your mind. The easiest way is the
47:57
Speaker 1: second description that you gave, which is to imagine that
47:59
Speaker 1: there other universes sort of really far out there, so
48:03
Speaker 1: far away we could probably never travel to them, but
48:05
Speaker 1: sort of in the same space where we live. There's
48:09
Speaker 1: one view of how the universe started that it began
48:12
Speaker 1: as infinite, and it started with a sort of like
48:14
Speaker 1: primeval universe material, which is even before like the kind
48:18
Speaker 1: of stuff that makes up our universes, and then little
48:21
Speaker 1: bubble universe is sort of popped out of that and
48:24
Speaker 1: in one spot you've got our universe, another spot you've
48:26
Speaker 1: got another universe. Another spot you've got another universe, and
48:29
Speaker 1: that maybe if the laws of physics do have some
48:32
Speaker 1: randomness to them, that maybe those different bubbles like got
48:36
Speaker 1: different roles of the die and ended up with different
48:39
Speaker 1: you know, effective laws of physics that an electron is
48:43
Speaker 1: more massive over here and less massive over there. And
48:45
Speaker 1: you know, stretchy tella has more chocolate in it in
48:48
Speaker 1: that universe and less chocolate in it in this universe.
48:51
Speaker 1: Coors aps exactly, and so that's one way to imagine
48:54
Speaker 1: it that you can sort of fit them in the
48:56
Speaker 1: same space as our universe. That's a bit tricky because
49:00
Speaker 1: it requires you to have some moment in the universe
49:03
Speaker 1: when like these decisions happen, when those big bangs begin
49:07
Speaker 1: that those numbers are somehow set into stone. That's so
49:10
Speaker 1: strange to me. I mean, first of all, it seems
49:12
Speaker 1: like the beginning of life or the beginning of the universe.
49:16
Speaker 1: The beginnings of things are always sort of a soup
49:18
Speaker 1: for some reason. And the second thing, I mean, so
49:23
Speaker 1: you how much could we because you're saying there's ten
49:28
Speaker 1: to the five potential possible multiverses, right, how much could
49:32
Speaker 1: we tweak the rules of our universe and like create
49:38
Speaker 1: a universe that could potentially support some form of life
49:42
Speaker 1: or consciousness or is is like it's something like in
49:46
Speaker 1: computer programming, where you just move one decimal point, you
49:49
Speaker 1: ruin the whole thing. It's a super awesome question. And
49:52
Speaker 1: people have looked at these numbers and tried to think
49:55
Speaker 1: about that exact thing. And you know, it's hard when
49:57
Speaker 1: you start from the ten to the five hundred string
50:00
Speaker 1: theory landscapes because we don't really know how to do
50:02
Speaker 1: string theory yet. We just sort of like have discovered
50:05
Speaker 1: the framework and we see its beauty and we seems cool,
50:08
Speaker 1: but we don't really know how to go from string
50:10
Speaker 1: theory to like predicting a universe. So we start from
50:13
Speaker 1: another level, we say, well, let's look at the standard model.
50:16
Speaker 1: Let's look at the particles we know and the numbers
50:19
Speaker 1: that seem to control the universe as we see it,
50:22
Speaker 1: as we talked about earlier, like the cosmological constant that
50:25
Speaker 1: controls the expansion of the universe, or also like the
50:28
Speaker 1: strength of gravity, or the strength of the various forces,
50:31
Speaker 1: or the mass the electron. These are things we don't
50:33
Speaker 1: have explanations for, and we can wonder about, as you say,
50:37
Speaker 1: if the universe would be really different inhospitable to life
50:40
Speaker 1: if they were changed. And how do we discover these
50:43
Speaker 1: constants in the first place, right, Because we don't look
50:45
Speaker 1: up at the sky, and there's not a constellation that
50:48
Speaker 1: tells us, you know, what the gravitational constant is, So
50:51
Speaker 1: we discover these through some other means. Yeah, well, actually
50:55
Speaker 1: we do discover them by looking at motions of things
50:58
Speaker 1: in the sky, or by caning at chemistry and understanding
51:01
Speaker 1: the strength of the electromagnetic force. This is the product of,
51:04
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of years of investigation is assembling these
51:08
Speaker 1: explanations of the universe, boiling down our ideas into the
51:11
Speaker 1: simplest equations possible, and then noticing in those equations that
51:14
Speaker 1: there are these numbers, and we don't have an explanation
51:17
Speaker 1: for why these numbers are what they are. Why is
51:19
Speaker 1: the speed of light what it is and not twice
51:22
Speaker 1: what it is or a quarter of what it is.
51:23
Speaker 1: Now we have noticed that if you change some of
51:26
Speaker 1: these numbers, the universe seems suddenly very inhospitable to life.
51:31
Speaker 1: You know, if you make, for example, the electron much heavier,
51:34
Speaker 1: then you don't get atoms in the same way. Right,
51:36
Speaker 1: you don't get chemistry the same way, because chemistry is
51:40
Speaker 1: dependent a lot on the ratio of the masses of
51:43
Speaker 1: the electrons to the nuclei. For the electrons to do
51:46
Speaker 1: all the things they do that let chemistry happen, you know,
51:49
Speaker 1: to interact with other nuclei and have their various atomic levels.
51:52
Speaker 1: Things suddenly shift and you can't really get chemistry the
51:55
Speaker 1: way we expected in life, the way we know it now.
51:58
Speaker 1: Of Course, the really hard question is doesn't lead to
52:02
Speaker 1: other interesting forms of life as we don't know it. Certainly,
52:06
Speaker 1: it's true that if you tweak these parameters, you don't
52:08
Speaker 1: get our universe and it might not be hospitable to
52:10
Speaker 1: our life. But what it's really hard to do. As
52:12
Speaker 1: you said earlier, is imagine that there might be other interesting,
52:16
Speaker 1: complex phenomena that emerge in that universe that are so
52:20
Speaker 1: different from ours that it's impossible to even imagine. And
52:23
Speaker 1: maybe those folks wonder, you know, like, are we in
52:25
Speaker 1: the best universe with the best ice cream? That's really difficult.
52:29
Speaker 1: So we've got our universe, and we've put it in
52:31
Speaker 1: the Character Creator, and we've got all of these sliders
52:34
Speaker 1: where we can change these aspects about the universe. How
52:39
Speaker 1: messed up can we make our universe? Like, if we
52:42
Speaker 1: start playing around with these sliders, what is the extent
52:46
Speaker 1: to which we can create something completely different from our universe? Well,
52:51
Speaker 1: if you have your fingers on those sliders, please lift
52:54
Speaker 1: them up very gently and step away, because our universe
52:58
Speaker 1: is very sensitive to those values. Like if you change
53:02
Speaker 1: the massive electron even a tiny little bit, all of
53:05
Speaker 1: chemistry changes. If you make gravity even a little bit weaker,
53:08
Speaker 1: then you don't get things like stars and planets. Right,
53:12
Speaker 1: If you make gravity a little bit stronger, then you
53:15
Speaker 1: get a lot more black holes, and you get stars
53:18
Speaker 1: that are formed, but they're much smaller and they're colder.
53:21
Speaker 1: They don't haven't had a chance to accumulate as much
53:23
Speaker 1: stuff before they collapse, and so you don't get life
53:26
Speaker 1: as you know it. If you tweak the value of
53:28
Speaker 1: the strong force, then you change how fusion operates at
53:31
Speaker 1: the heart of stars, and you might not get like nucleosynthesis.
53:35
Speaker 1: You might not burn and fuse and create things like
53:38
Speaker 1: carbon and oxygen that are essential for life. And so
53:41
Speaker 1: really it seems quite sensitive. We know that if you
53:44
Speaker 1: change the values these parameters even a tiny little bit.
53:47
Speaker 1: We're talking about fractions of fractions of a percent, the
53:50
Speaker 1: universe is very very different. We're kind of a Souffle universe, right,
53:54
Speaker 1: We are very very particular, very hard to ba and
53:59
Speaker 1: so the inanthropical and so what looks at this and says, well,
54:01
Speaker 1: maybe there's just lots of universes and this is the
54:04
Speaker 1: one that we are in, and that's why we are
54:06
Speaker 1: asking this question. We have survived this firing squad, but
54:09
Speaker 1: we can't estimate the chances of surviving a firing squad
54:12
Speaker 1: because we're the only ones who have survived it, and
54:14
Speaker 1: that's all we can do. And to me, that's frustrating
54:17
Speaker 1: and I don't like that at all. I like thinking
54:19
Speaker 1: there is an explanation that in a hundred years physicists
54:21
Speaker 1: will have a better theory of the universe, and instead
54:24
Speaker 1: of having twenty six numbers, we don't have explanations for
54:27
Speaker 1: maybe we'll only have five numbers, and from those five
54:30
Speaker 1: numbers we can predict the twenty six right there, controlled
54:33
Speaker 1: by five deeper numbers. And in five hundred years, maybe
54:36
Speaker 1: we'll have a theory of physics with just one number
54:39
Speaker 1: in it or zero numbers. Right, we'll discover the logical
54:42
Speaker 1: principle that is the only way universe could be put together,
54:45
Speaker 1: And so it has to be this way. That's sort
54:47
Speaker 1: of my deep fantasy scientifically, So if you are to
54:52
Speaker 1: go up to the Great Council of the anthropic Principle
54:56
Speaker 1: and argue against them, what evidence do we have off
55:00
Speaker 1: if anything, that we may find deeper, further explanations other
55:05
Speaker 1: than life happens. You know, that's a great question. I
55:11
Speaker 1: think the answer is that so far we have that's
55:13
Speaker 1: so far when we have rejected the entropic explanation and
55:17
Speaker 1: said let's keep looking, that we have found deeper explanations,
55:21
Speaker 1: and we've peeled back layer upon layer of reality and
55:24
Speaker 1: found explanations for our current layer lying within the deeper one,
55:29
Speaker 1: that the mechanisms that emerge from the smaller chaos do
55:33
Speaker 1: explain the larger phenomena that we see, and so we
55:37
Speaker 1: should keep digging. It's like you found a huge vein
55:39
Speaker 1: of gold underground. Do you keep digging and keep minding
55:43
Speaker 1: or do you say, well, that was probably lucky, It's
55:45
Speaker 1: probably going to end there. Let's just stop digging. For me,
55:49
Speaker 1: I'd say keep investing and keep digging, and keep pulling
55:53
Speaker 1: that intellectual gold out of the ground. I mean I
55:55
Speaker 1: would be sipping my lemonade and going like, yes, keep digging,
55:59
Speaker 1: go for it. You'd be writing a comedy play about
56:03
Speaker 1: particle physicists trying to operate a mind to not so
56:05
Speaker 1: great effect, yeah, and be called Wow, that sure looks
56:09
Speaker 1: hard by Katie Golden subtitle I need a refill on
56:13
Speaker 1: my lemonade please. And So. One of the deepest questions
56:17
Speaker 1: in physics, and in philosophy, and in science and in
56:20
Speaker 1: the human experience is why is the universe this way
56:24
Speaker 1: and not some other way? And until we can operate
56:28
Speaker 1: the universe simulation machine and run a million other universes
56:33
Speaker 1: to see how many of them end up looking like ours,
56:36
Speaker 1: with biologists sipping lemonade while physicists do the real work.
56:39
Speaker 1: We can't really answer that question, but we can look
56:42
Speaker 1: at the patterns of the answers that we haven't covered,
56:44
Speaker 1: and we can ask ourselves, could have been another way?
56:47
Speaker 1: Is this the only way that the universe could be organized?
56:51
Speaker 1: Is there a deeper explanation waiting for us? Or have
56:54
Speaker 1: we run into the bedrock, the place where the universe
56:57
Speaker 1: is just random and there are no more explanations to
57:00
Speaker 1: be found. But Daniel, if we run that universe simulation machine,
57:05
Speaker 1: maybe that's what creates new universes. And what's the theory
57:11
Speaker 1: of the universe simulation machine and what explains that? See,
57:15
Speaker 1: there's an endless cycle of questions to be asked. Well,
57:18
Speaker 1: thanks Katie for joining us and asking such great questions
57:21
Speaker 1: about the nature of the universe. Thank you so much
57:23
Speaker 1: for having me and for answering them and refilling my limonade.
57:27
Speaker 1: And thanks to all of our listeners who supported us
57:29
Speaker 1: over these years and whose questions drive this podcast and
57:33
Speaker 1: all of science itself. Keep thinking deeply, keep asking questions,
57:38
Speaker 1: and keep listening. Thanks very much, Thanks for listening, and
57:48
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge explained the Universe is a
57:51
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcast for my
57:55
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
57:58
Speaker 1: or wherever less into your favorite hills.