Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Does Stephen Wolfram's Theory of Everything Work?

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Does Stephen Wolfram's Theory of Everything Work? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, how can you tell the difference between a
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: physicist and a crack pot? Is this one of those
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Internet memes like can you tell which picture is a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: homeless man and which one is a physics professor? Well,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you usually can, but I guess. I mean, you know,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: if someone has a crazy new idea, how do you
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: know whether to take them seriously or just ignore them? Well?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: The truth is mostly you can't tell. I mean, some
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: crazy ideas about the universe turn out to be true,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: like look at quantum mechanics. Wow. So does that mean
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: that you read every theory that people send you over
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the internet. I try to, but you know, there are
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: just too many. There's so many people out there with
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: fun and silly and crazy ideas, so honestly, most people
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: in physics just ignore them. Oh man, does that mean
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that the theory of everything could be right now buried
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: in a spam folder? What a tragedy selected for the
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: junk mail pile by some Ai. Hi am poor Hammy
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist. I'm always on the hunt for
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the theory of everything. But I don't expect it to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: show up in my inbox? Is that how you usually
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: get your research ideas through Emailsdam? That's right. I just
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: like looking there the slush pile. So like maybe somebody
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: emailed me exactly the idea I need right now. Oh man,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: it's called tenure sit around and wait for emails for it. No,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: but I do get messages some from our listeners suggesting
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: new ideas and even like grand theories that could describe
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: some of the open puzzles in physics. Wow, that's awesome.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: It's awesome that people are listening and getting you know,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: stimulated intellectually, and and they come up with their own
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: ideas about how the universe might work. Yeah, and it's
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: not just our listeners, and it's not just me. I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: think basically everybody who's a physicist gets a few random
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: suggestions for theories of everything in their inbox every week.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Do you think maybe that's sort of a basic human curiosity?
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: You know, we're all trying to figure out how to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: all work. We all are, and as we say on
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: this podcast all the time, wondering belongs to everybody, and
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: these questions about the universe are ones that everybody wants
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to know. The answer to and frankly, I love that
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: people are thinking about this and that they're imagining that
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: maybe they could come up with the idea they could
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: have that moment of insight, which explains deep questions about
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the universe. Well, speaking of everybody, Welcome to our podcast
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we examine all those big questions
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: about the universe and take you to the forefront of
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: what science knows and what it doesn't know, and what
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: it's hoping you will email it to it because you know,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I guess it turns out that science doesn't know everything.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: There's a lot we don't know. We know a timey amount.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: We've only recently learned how little we know about the universe.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: And so while it might feel like a lot of
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the stuff around you is understood, the fraction of the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: universe that we know is very small and big, crazy
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: new ideas awaits. So it's sort of like the universe
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: is still up for grabs. You know, anyone out there
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: could potentially come up with the theory of everything, because
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: we are pretty far away from it right now. We're
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: very far away from it. In fact, if you delivered
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: it to me today in complete form, I probably wouldn't understand.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: It would take like days, weeks, months to digest it.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: It might require whole new branches of mathematics, which I'm
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: totally not familiar with and nobody has even thought of.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: So even if aliens arrived and emailed me, or you know,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: delivered in golden engravings the theory of everything, it would
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: take a while to understand it. I might immediately dismiss it.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You mean, are you saying my handwriting is that bad?
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Are you an alien? Are you admitting that? Finally? I
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: am a doctor technically, so I think we're required to
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: have bad handwriting. Crypto I'm writing. But the point is
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: that the truth about the universe might be something which
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: is strange and weird and sounds wrong on the surface,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: which makes us think about the universe in a different way.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And that's the difficulty. But that's also the beauty of science,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: is that we follow the data, we follow the clues,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and eventually we get to the right answer. It's amazing
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: that the process works. Yeah, And so to be on
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the program will be tackling something, a new theory, a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: new clue about the universe, that just that it is
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: super recent, it's hot off the process. It just came out,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and physicists are still sort of scratching their heads and
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: trying to think about whether or not this is something
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: that's actually true and describes the universe, or maybe it's
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: something that's totally wrong. That's right. It sort of came
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: out of left field, and it's a bold claim from
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: a man famous for bold claims, and you know, dropped
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: like a nine d pages of stuff on the physics community,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: and it's fascinating that people are taking it seriously. He's
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: not a physics professor, but he's attracted the attention of
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of top physics Since it be on the program,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: we'll be asking the question, did Steven Wolfram come up
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: with the theory of everything? Well, he definitely came up
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: with a theory. The question is what the theory of him?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Does it describe our universe or and the universe or
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: does it even work at all? And some listeners actually
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: wrote in asking us to break this down for them. Hey,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge, this is Cure from Chicago, and I
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: recently read about Stephen wolf from his physics project where
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: he's trying to come up with a fundamental theory of
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: physics that I know a lot of people have been
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: searching for for a long time, and it sounded really
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: interesting to me, but it was also a little bit
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: over my head. And you guys are really great at
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: explaining these kinds of things, So I was wondering if
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: you could maybe tell me a little bit about how
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: his theory works, how it's different from other theories that
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: are out there, and if you feel like it actually
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: has the potential to truly answer one of the great
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: mysteries of physics. Thank you, guys, and keep up a
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: great job. Thanks to everybody who wrote in with those questions. Well,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: let's talk about Stephen Wolfram, because you know, I know
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: the name from my college days when I used a
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: program called Mathematica. But tell me what you know about
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: this person, Stephen Wolfram. Yes, so Wolfirm is sort of
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: a Polly math. He's a really smart guy. He graduated
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: got his PhD at a really young age. He studied
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: particle physics, He worked with Richard Feynman. Really he's a physicist.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: He's a physicist for sure. Yeah, he was a professor
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: at cal Tech. Oh, he was a professor professor. Yeah, oh,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I see he made a time like maybe like he
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't a professor. No, I mean, the guy was really smart.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: He definitely has the chops. He's the youngest recipient of
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the MacArthur Genius Award. He got it at age twenty one,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: so it was pretty clear from a young age that
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: this guy had a brain on him. And he's known
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: for writing Mathematica, which is a software that engineers and
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: mathematicians used to simulate things right and crunch equations and numbers. Yeah,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Mathematica is a beautiful piece of software. It does a
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: lot of the really gorgeous physics animations you probably see
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: on Twitter and elsewhere, but it's also really good for
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: doing symbolic mathematics. Like there's lots of ways to get
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: computers to do numerical calculations add these two numbers, but
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: it's much harder to tell a computer like take this
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: equation and simplify it. And Mathematica is really powerful that
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: doing that kind of stuff, and so it's really the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: premier way to do math on the computer. Yeah, it's
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing, Yeah, because it can do symbolic math, which
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: is not just number crunching, but like manipulating you know,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the concepts and symbols and functions. That's right. And though
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: he's gone off into founding a company and becoming super
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: rich and writing this software, he's always had an interest
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: in theory and in physics because this is where he started.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: That's where his hardway. Yeah, that's where all of our
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: hearts are. That's not where his money was pocketbook was.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: But so he always had a sort of a passion
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: for and A and the chops in the background for
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: it to think about particle physics and things like the
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: theory of everything. Yeah, exactly. And there are a lot
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: of as people who started out in physics and ended up,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: you know, becoming super rich or started out with like
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: deep mathematics and went to Wall Street and became hedge
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: fund gazillionaires. You know. So these people do penetrate sort
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: of the water culture. They don't know, we just stay
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: in the white halls of academia. But you know, they're
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: always wondering, I think, you know, could I crack that
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: problem or you know, could I still contribute? And I
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: guess maybe you're saying he's unusual because he sort of
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: came up with this new theory of everything, not from
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: an office in a university I guess that's what's kind
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of unusual, or at a research center. It's like he
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: sort of did it on his own in his house. Yeah,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: he did it on his own, I mean, in his
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: company with a couple of other folks. But he's not
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: part of a mainstream research group, right, Like I see,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: he has a team, he's a small team. He attracted
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: some young students want at Cambridge and other places to
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: work with him. Is it getting more legit by the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: second thing? I have to say. I feel like we
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: started the episode talking about like a crack plot, but
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, mag I've see the difference between this
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: guy and Dannyl. Well he's a lot richer. That's difference
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: number one. But no, this is not like you know,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: sheets of paper you found under the homeless guy at
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the bus station. Right. This is a guy who everybody
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: respects as intelligent. But that doesn't mean necessarily that he's
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: always on the forefront of knowledge. I mean, the guy
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: is busy doing a lot of other things. It's difficult
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: to stay on the forefront of knowledge and to keep
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: up with academia and to understand the current ideas and
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: if you're not part of the community of academia, it's
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: difficult to contribute. You know, some people think of science
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: is like a single minded pursuit of truth. That's true,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: but it's also it's people, which means it's people having
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: a conversation and it's cocktail parties, it's hanging out on Twitter. Yeah,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: but it's it's also it's a big conversation and people
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: are talking about stuff. And if you're talking about things
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: nobody else is interested in or talking about, then even
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: if you're right, it's going to be hard to attract
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: their attention. So you have to speak the language and
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: you have to know how to talk to people in
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: order to get scientists to pay attention. So you can
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: be totally right and understand the universe, but if nobody
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: will hear you or talk to you or understand what
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you're saying, you can't really have any impact. So there's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: this human side of science that I think is underappreciating.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: It strikes me as a not a good thing though,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you know what you know what I mean, Like, I
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: feel like it strikes me as like, you know, people
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: at a cocktrol party not wanting to listen to somebody
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: else just because they're not in their little group. Yeah,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: it would be better if we had more people, so
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: we had more diverse ideas, we had more funding for science,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: if it was more accessible and more open. Absolutely, it
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: also be better if humans were like objective and in
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: ways to measure these things, you know, objectively. But we
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: can't write human science is done by humans for humans,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: at least until the aliens come. You had to press
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the alien burn Thenner, Well, well, maybe Stephen Wolf from
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: is an alien. That seems very likely. This guy seems
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: too good to be true. Oh my gosh, maybe maybe
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: this is the aliens coming to give us the ideas. Right,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: you're saying, Stephen Wolf from down. He just went from
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: crack to respectable physicists, to alien to maybe the next
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: the second coming. Where will this end up? Danny? But
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: this is unusual. It's very weird to have somebody outside
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: of academia, even somebody who used to be a professor,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: come back and try to contribute. Often these ideas are
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: not given any attention, so it's unusual to happen, and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: it's unusual that it has gotten so much attention. Interesting.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: So okay, so he's sort of been working on this,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: apparently with the team for a while, and he came
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: up with a theory of everything, and he's sort of
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: so popped into the cocktail party of physicists and dropped
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a huge pile of paper saying I got it. Yeah.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: And there was a little bit of a hint that
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: this move was going to happen, because about twenty years
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: ago almost he wrote a mammoth tome called A New
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Kind of Science, in which he unveiled the way he
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: thinks about science. And you can tell from even just
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: the title of the book A New kind of Science,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: that he thinks very highly of himself and his own work.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And it's important. How would you have called it, Daniel,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a possible new kind of science, a suggestion for a
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: new kind of science? Well, you know, I I'm a
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: strong believer in humility. Um. I value that a lot
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: um And I think that's that's sort of the conclusion
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: you leave for other people to draw. You know that
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: that you've invented a new kind of science. And a
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: lot of criticisms of that book is that there's a
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: lot in there. It's like twelve hundred pages, but a
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: lot of it is not actually that new he's not
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: always either familiar with the existing work in the field
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and sort of reproduced it and claimed it as his own.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: And some of the stuff is actually wrong. So there's
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: a danger to working all on your own in your
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: own ivory tower and then delivering a twelve page tome
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: is that you know, you can make mistakes early on,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: and you could have benefited from some notes notes. Yeah,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and so he made sort of a splash last week.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: And so physicists, you were telling me, are still sort
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: of going over his theory. But there's been sort of
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: a big initial reaction. People on the internet have reacted
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: to this. Yeah, and so he's sort of a famous
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and people give him attention. And so he captured the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: world's attention, especially the attention of physicist when he announced
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: back on April thirteen that he had a model for
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: everything in the universe, space, matter and whatever and whatever
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and whatever his technical term. And he put out a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: really long blog post and a video and then submitted
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: a couple of sort of academic style papers to journals
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: full review. But in the meantime, physicists have been trying
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: to digest it. And you know, I'm part of this
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: community and everybody's been talking about it. If you read it,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: what do you think? And there's sort of, you know,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: the strong reactions to it. Yeah. So you collected a
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: couple of reactions from Twitter about physicists or well known
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: physicists who have sort of commented on this potential discovery. Yeah.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And so, for example, Sabine Haustin Felder, she's a physics theorist,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: and she's also famous for being sort of an alt
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: theory consultant. She's the one that runs that program where
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: you can email her your theory and you'll get like
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: half an hour with an actual particle physicist to give
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: you opinions on it. I don't think so, because she
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: says I looked at it and I don't think it's interesting. Wow,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I spent five minutes with it. I think she dug
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: into it. Then there are other folks like Sean Carroll's
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: famous science popularizer, and you know he's also a theorist
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: working at the forefront of knowledge. Yeah, so you have
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: here that Sean said, I'm in favor of taking swings
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: that fundamental physics with wildly non standard ideas and seeing
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: what happens. Most such efforts will inevitably fail. But the
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: payoff is huge if you hit the target. Yeah. All right,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Well it sounds like people are not embracing this right away,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: but keeping an open mind. Yeah, I think people are
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: sort of hopeful, like, wow, that would be awesome if
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: you came up with a grand new theory. At first glance,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like maybe it really accomplishes everything that
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Stephen Wolform claims, Like his claims are really broad and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: very grand, and I'm not sure he really delivers. But
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: it's going to take the community a little bit of
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: time to read these papers carefully and to digest them properly.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get into what this idea that
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Stephen Wolfram just dropped in the physics community and talk
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: about how that describes the universe. But first let's take
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, Daniel, Stephen Wolfram, famous millionaire philanthropist, mathematica,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: code writing genius, just dropped on the phitnist community a
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: theory of everything. And so let's first talk about what
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: this theory is because I'm super curious, and then we'll
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: talk about whether it actually describes the universe. We limit, So,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: what's the basic idea Daniel here? So The basic idea
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: is one that I like. It says, let's look at
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: this really complex, vast universe with all these different kinds
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: of things in it at different scales, you know, from
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: little particles up to galaxy superclusters, and let's try to
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: explain all that using a simple set of rules. You know,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: that's the sort of basic principle behind in particle physics. Right.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: You could just describe the universe as like it is,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: this is what it is, but we're seeking a reductionist answer.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: We want to pull it apart and explain everything in
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: terms of something underneath that drives it. Right, And you know,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: we've had success with stuff like that, Like you look
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: at the periodic table and you discover that all the
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: patterns in the periodic table come out of very simple
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: rules for how electrons fill their orbitals. So complex emergent
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: phenomena can come from a simple set of rules. That's
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: the motivation, right, right, I mean, isn't that sort of
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: how we've built all of our signs theories. I mean
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: it's all based on like simple particle interactions that then
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: you know, accumulate, and then that's how the universe exists.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: That's right, And Stephen Wolf from Likes the particular kind
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: of this theory. They're called cellular automata, and the idea
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: is just take a couple of basic objects and a
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: couple of basic rules for how they can interact, and
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: from that you can get really complex behavior. Yeah. Like,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: there's a guy who recently passed away named John Conway
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: who devised this thing called the Game of Life, who
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: showed that you can devise a really simple game based
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: on just like black and white squares and a few
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: simple rules, and really complex patterns emerge, patterns that look
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: a little bit like how life looks. Okay, so I'm
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: guessing that cellular automats that this concept that is not
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: related to cells, like human cells, like biological cells. It's
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: more like a mathematical term. Yeah, it's like a little
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: basic object. And you can also think of them as
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: like nodes and so, you know, like a little dot.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: And the idea is just like, have a little very
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: simple thing and write down simple rules for what it
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: can do, and then study the behavior as you go
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: to a zillion of these things, or you take them
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: azillion steps forward, and you discover that you can get
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: from very simple things emerge complex behaviors. That's what the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: game is, life is all about. I see. So is
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: the idea that he started approaching it from the bottom
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: up instead of the top down? You know, like you
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: know physicists, like what you do is you take regular
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: big stuff and you break it apart and you so
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to see what it's made out of. Is he saying
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that maybe a better way to approach the theory of
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: everything is to start like, let's let's let's see if
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: we can guess what the smallest thing does, and then
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: let's build it up to see if it works absolutely
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: And in that sense, it's very similar in motivation to
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: string theory. String theory says, maybe the whole universe is
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: a bunch of titsal vibrating strings, and here are the
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: rules for how those strings interact. Can we then build
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: up the universe that we know in the physics that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: we've discovered from those simple rules. Very similar motivation, very
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: similar approach. But it's not the same as string theory.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: It's not. Okay, So how is it different? How does that?
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: How does this theory describe the universe? Like, what's what's
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: he actually doing here? So what he's actually doing, is
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: he says, let's begin with a couple of nodes. So
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: he makes his graph where he says, I have a
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: couple of nodes and I connect them with lines of
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: what of space, of matter, of energy? Just mathematically pure. Right,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: so far we're just mathematically appeared. Just like draw a
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: dot in your mind and another dot and put a
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: line in doctor the man start start with like a
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: total abstraction. Just in the beginning. What is the thought?
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: In the beginning, there was nothing, And Stephen wolf from
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: created a dot, he said, and he just went from
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: alien to God, let there be created from the second
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Coming to the actual Father himself. Well, he's sort of imagined.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: That's the point, you know, not to be God, but
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to imagine from what is the universe originated? What is
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the basic element of it? You know, if you wanted
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: to build the universe, what is the essential source code?
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: And he would like if the essential source code of
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the universe was just two or three lines that you
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: just run a zillion times. So he's saying, let's build
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: up the universe from scratch, and let's start with this
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: a little bit of math and code and see what happens,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: and see if it ends up. If you pile it
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: on if it ends up into you know, funny and
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: interesting podcast about exactly. And he's hoping that if you
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: start from very simple rules and you build up a structure,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: then you could then recognize in that structure familiar rules
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: of physics the things in our universe, because that would
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: tell you that maybe those are then the simple rules
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: of our universe. So he starts with, you know, a
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: couple of dots and a line, and he says, all right,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: just pick a random graph, it doesn't really matter. Make
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: four dots and draw some lines between them. He just
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: know how it begins, and then make up with some
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: rules like say, well, if two things are connected to
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the same thing, then you know, you can add a
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: line between them, or you can add a new node,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: or you can add a thing whatever. Just make up
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: some simple rule rule. It's kind of like a simple
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: game like go or Othello or checkers. Yes, exactly. You
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: need a basic starting point and then you need an
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: update rule that says how you can change the graph,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: how you can grow it. And so that's the whole
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: idea is, you know, maybe the universe starts from a
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: structure like that, And then he takes it And what
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: he did with his team was make of some of
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: these simple graphs and develop them, you know, a million times,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a billion times with his very powerful mathematical language, and
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: visualize them. And then he looked at them and he asked,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: do I recognize in here things from physics? I see?
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: So he started. He took a whiteboard with this team
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: there in his compound and drew four dots, therew lines
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: between them, and then did he did he guess what
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: these rules might be or did he have you know,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: powerful computers say all right, try to come up with
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: a Brasilian rules and see if any of them come
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: up to the universe. Yeah, he just guessed a few rules.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And the kicker is he didn't find a rule. It
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: works like he has a few examples, and in those
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: examples he shows, oh, there's some things in here that
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: look like physics, and that's what motivates him to think, oh,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm on the right track and we can dig
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: into it a little bit more. But he hasn't actually
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: found a rule that describes our universe. He's more like saying,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: maybe this approach will work. Oh, I see, So he
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: hasn't he doesn't actually have a theory yet of the universe.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: He just has what he thinks might be a way
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: to get to the theory of everything. Yeah, it's sort
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: of like a recipe for a theory, and his theory
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: is also a recipe for building a universe, So sort
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: of a recipe for a theory for a recipe for
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the universe. To a cook as well, he's a chef
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: in addition to being God. He's cooking up universes. Man,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I see has a recipe for a theory that might
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: result in the universe. That's right, And you know, it's
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: more than just like, hey, maybe this will work. He
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: sees some cool stuff in these things that he built up.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: You know, for example, you take these graphs and you
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: have a few rules and you let them run and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: they build up interesting things, Like some of them build
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: up what looked like three D space, you know, like
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: a mesh, a mesh, you know, a nicely organized mesh
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: that you could say, hey, maybe spaces quantized. And we've
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: talked about how maybe space is just an emergent phenomena
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: and it's you know a bunch of dots connected together. Yeah,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: we have an episode about quantum foam. Yeah, quantum foam
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: and and you know, the pixelated universe. And so that's
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: sort of the leap to physics. He's saying, I'm coming
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: up with this math, thematical construct, and then without building
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: it in, without saying please build space, just letting it run.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: He sees that from it emerge things he recognizes, like
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: a structure you could identify with space. How can you, boy,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: how can you get three dimensions three dimensional space out
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of some dots? I guess that's my question. Yeah, And
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: actually his space is not three dimensions, which is one
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: of the problems. He makes a space which is two
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: point seven dimensions, which is pretty weird. Actually that's pretty
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: cool if you think about it. Fractional dimensions. Fractional dimensions
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: are cool, but I mean a little inconvenient, Like where
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: you're gonna put your stuff. You know, you have three
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: D stuff, it doesn't fit in two point seven D space.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Well that you Jesus describe my closet and everybody's closet.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Feel like my closet is made out of two points.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I know. I'm like, if you're gonna do fractional dimensions
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: to three and a half, at least you know, give
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: us some extra, don't just you know, lose point three dimensions.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: These days everybody needs more room of us need a
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: little extra space. You know, that would have been nice,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: That would be a good selling point for the theory.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: So he he runs this idea and he you know,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: grows it, sort of lets it grow itself, right, that's
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: kind of the idea. And you're saying, he's gets some
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: things that maybe look like what might be space and
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: also other things, right, and so he identifies, you know,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: this mesh with a higher dimensionality space, and I encourage
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: you to look at his blog post. It's some really
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: nice visualizations there. You can understand how he goes from
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: like a mesh of points to imagining the dimensionality of
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: that points. Essentially, he's thinking about like the density of
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: points as you move away from a central point, Like
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: in three dimensions, the density of points, you know, drops
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: in a certain way, and two dimensions, the density points
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: drops in another way. So just by measuring like how
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: many points there are as you take five or six
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: steps away, then you can sort of measure the dimensionality
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: of the space. But it's a leap, you know, Like
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: this is a mathematical construct. It has some relationship to
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: some things we see in the universe. Does that mean
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: it is how the universe works? Like that's a kind
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: of a deep philosophical question, right. I guess my question
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: maybe at this point is how does it differ from
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: some of the other theories that we've talked about, like
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: quantum foam And is he coming at it totally from
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the left field or is he start of saying, maybe
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: these ideas have some validity to them, but I have
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: my own spin on it. Yeah, And that's one of
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: the problems with his work is that he doesn't really
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: put it into the context of existing ideas. And as
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: you say, people have been thinking about quantized space as
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: a building block of the universe and trying to go
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: from there to recovering Einstein's equations, for example, and that's
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: tricky people who been working on for ten twenty years
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and they haven't quite gotten there yet. Whereas he's starting
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: from a slightly different point. He's not saying, let's start
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: from building blocks of space. He's like, let's just start
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: from these nodes from which we get space and then
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: from which we also get time and general relativity and
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics and all this stuff. He's going a level
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: deeper just of my mind. He's claiming to have gone
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: even further than everybody else has gone. You know, he's
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: starting deeper and he's claiming to have gone further. So
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: you understand why there's a little bit of skepticism that
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: he could have accomplished all of this by himself with
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: a couple other people while also running a big company. Right, Well,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: if he's an alien chef second coming, it's totally possible. Um.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: But yeah, he just made me realize, Like it's like
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: he's trying to go from the thoughts in a white
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: board to time itself and pays itself the time itself. Yeah,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: and a lot of this stuff is interpretation. Right. You
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: look at this structure in the graph that comes out,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and you say, oh, that looks to me like time.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: All right, it looks to you like time, But maybe
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: you were looking for time. You know. Would you have
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: deduced this just from looking at it? Would you have
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: found Einstein's equations on your own without Einstein? Or you
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: just sort of like looking at a room full of
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: typing monkeys and saying, hey, look at this one's typing Shakespeare. Therefore,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: typing monkeys is the way to write great literature. Right, Well,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: that strikes me as a little bit of what you
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: guys do in a way, right, like theories, just like
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: you know, not to equate physicists theories with monkeys, but
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: you know, you guys started throwing out theories and and
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: and then the experimentalis have to see which ones work. Yeah,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: experimentalists have to see which one's work. That's the critical
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: test here. You know, there's a lot of these different
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: spaces and the fact that some of them can reproduce
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: theories we already have and they have been tested, doesn't
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: necessarily mean that this is the fundamental structure of the universe. Right,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: There's lots of ways to reproduce physics theories. I could
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: just have monkeys type and occasionally they would reproduce physics theories.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that the universe is a bunch of monkeys.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: And remember, Daniel, keep an open mind, and maybe it is. Yeah, yeah,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: maybe it's a monkey. Maybe it is right, it's monkeys
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: all the way down. All right, let's get into whether
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: people think this theory actually works or whether it's so
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: out there that nobody is taking it seriously. But first
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel talk to
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: me about two point seven dimensional space. That is still
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: blowing my mind. How can you have to like frac
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: tionnel dimensions? Is it that like one of them is
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: not quite a dimension. Well, he doesn't really have any
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: spatial dimensions at all, right, it's just points and lines.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: He just connects the points with lines, and he tries
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: to make an analogy two dimensions. He says, if you
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: take a point and I walk four points away, right,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I walk four points win in every direction, then I
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: can count sort of how many points are in that object.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: You can take paths away from that point in every direction.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: You can ask how many points are within four steps away,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and how many points are within ten steps away and
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: fifteen steps away. And that grows differently if you're in
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: three dimensional space or two dimensional space or four dimensional space.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: So he's taking that as a measure of dimension, right,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: it doesn't have any dimensions built in. You could take
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: his whole hypergraphs and just lay them flat on a
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: piece of paper, or you could spread them out in
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: three D. It's totally arbitrary. There's no place to hang
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: these things, right. They don't have locations, They just have relationships.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: But he's contending that from these relationships there is a structure,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and that structure is very similar to dimensionality, to the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: relationship that things have in actual space physically, yes, yes, exactly.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: So you know, volume grows with our cubed for a spear,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: area grows like are squared for a circle. Right in
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: four dimensions, things grow with a different dependence. And so
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: he just asks, as I take steps away from a
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: single point, what's the density of points? And that's my
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: measure of the dimensionality of my space. And he doesn't
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: get a number of two or three. He gets this
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: weird two point seven, and so you're like, what what
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: does that even mean? You get three, so that you
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: know that's not you know, physics is like hand grenades
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: and horseshoes as long as you get close. Well, you
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: make an interesting point, which is that you know, if
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: just because something does something the way that you see
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that it's how things are kind of like,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: you know, just because you can build an artificial intelligence,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: for example, or like a function that spits out or
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: happens to simulate how a ball gets tossed up in
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: the air, doesn't mean that that's how the universe works,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: that the balls float through the air according to an Ai. Yeah,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and I think there's two different issues here. One is
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: exactly what you just said. You know, you can't just
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: identify similar behavior and say that's the truth. But that's
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: actually a really hard philosophical problem. Like, if you have
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: a theory of strings that completely describes the universe, does
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: that mean that strings are real? I mean, and somebody
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: asked us this question over Twitter just yesterday. They said,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: what if I had an alternative theory of bananas and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: it also described the universe and you could never tell
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the difference between strings and bananas, would that mean that
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: bananas are also a valid theory of the universe? And
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: which would be true? Oh? I see, if you have
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: two theories that both describe the universe, how do you
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: tell which one's true or the right one? Yeah? And
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: if you can't tell the difference, if they're like both
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: make exactly the same predictions, but they have very different
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: descriptions of what's really happening, then which one is what's
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: really happening? Well, the answer is, we can't tell. And
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: so it depends on what you think true means. You know,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: is there some untestable actual truths in the external universe
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: or is it really just about describing what we see?
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: So that's sort of a deep, unanswerable philosophy question. But
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a more practical angle to it, which is,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: can you do more than just describe what we already see?
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Can you predict something we haven't yet seen? Right, It's
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: very easy to look in a sea of garbage and
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: pick out something sparkling. It's like, look, I produced one
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: diamond or something like, my theory, my simulation, my code
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: predicts how this ball will what this ball will do
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: if I toss it up in the air. But that's
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: sort of not interesting to physicists. Yeah, like we have
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: all these everything that he's derived we already have. We
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: have Einstein's equations, we have special relativity, we have quantum mechanics. Right,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the question is has he revealed any new insights and
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: he made any predictions? If his theory is really true,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: it should predict something you should say on the universe
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: also works in this other way that you hadn't yet realized,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: and then we can go out and verify that and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, well then maybe your theory is true. Right.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: It's not just enough to say to describe the universe,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: because my hundred typing monkeys will eventually do that also,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: but they will generate nonsense predictions. So tell me anything
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: about the universe I don't already know. You just have
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: to give those monkeys more bananas. I mean that that
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: would make it all. But it sort of sounds like
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: maybe what he's doing that's new and interesting is he's
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: actually sort of making that connection between a really simple
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: set of things to the complex things you know, Like,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: you know, string theory has been around for a long time,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: but nobody has tried to build up the universe using strings,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: have they, And but it sounds like maybe he's sort
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: of done that and is seeing things that are promising. Well,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: that's one problem with string theory is that you can
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: take strings and build up universes, but you get like
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: ten to the five different kinds of universes, and ours
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: is one of them, but it doesn't necessarily predict ours, right,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: So then you ask, well, if the universe is just strings,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: how can we end up in this universe? And he
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: has basically the same problem, right, He has a lot
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: of potential possible rules for building up the universe using
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: his hypercrafts. Some of them lead to universes sort of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: like ours, so you know, wrong number dimensions, etcetera. But
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: some of them don't, and so you know, sort of
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: in this vast sea of outcomes. It would be much
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: more compelling if he had a basic set of rules
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: that necessarily led to our universe that there was nothing
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: else that could predict, like it had to only be
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: this way. That would be much more compelling. That would
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: be better maybe, but maybe not even true or possible,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Like maybe the universe is just a random set of rules.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Oh man, that what are we even doing? Right? If
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the universe is not understandable? But I know, I hope
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: it is. Yet I don't give up. I don't give up.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I'm still hoping. Um, And so it's totally valid to
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: look for a new way to build things up from scratch.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: And maybe he's right, and it would be deep insights
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: if he was, But you know, it hasn't really shown
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: in new insights yet, hasn't really shown us anything new
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: that can come from it. And there's also a lot
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of questions about the sort of the connections he's made
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: between what his theory can do and what we've already discovered.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I see well, maybe it's stepped me through some examples
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: of what you mean here, because you know you're telling
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: me earlier that in some ways his model, his theory
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: of the universe sort of predicts clsality and things like
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: special relativity and particles. Is that not sort of interesting
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: or it's interesting and it's a good idea, but it's
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: not clear that it predicts it, or if he's just
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: sort of like identifying something in his structures which looks
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: a little bit like it, and it's sort of wishful connections. Right,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of leaps here where he's like, oh,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: look at this sort of structure that dot dot, here's
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Einstein's equation, And you're like, well, a whole lot of second.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: You know, I can write down Einstein's equation on a chalkboard.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that it's a necessary consequence of what I've
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: just done. But there are some cool connections, for example, causality.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: He takes his little hypergraphs and his little rules for
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: updating them, and his picture those rules for updating them.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: That's time. Every time you change your hypergraph by following
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: these rules, that's like a step forward in time. And
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: he shows that for some simple examples. It doesn't really
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: matter which order you apply these rules in, Like maybe
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: you apply them first to this node and then to
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: that note, and the other time you do another direction.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you end up in the same place no matter what.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Start from the same initial conditions. Do things in a
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: different order end up in the same place. And so him,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: that's causality that says, look, this first place has to
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: come before this other place, because in these graphs you
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: always start with one and end up at the other.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: So that's where causality coming from. He sees behavior in
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: this graph, you know, he sees shades of what might
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: if maybe you look into it, or if you sort
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: of maybe keep going with this, you might sort of
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: rediscover or or create causality and special relativity and particles. Yeah,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: exactly the way. You know. I sometimes listen to my
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: children's random thoughts and say, like, oh, wow, look, you
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: you're a genius. You just had some great idea. You
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: know you can recognize in random babbling. Uh, you know,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: great ideas if you're hopeful, right, And so there's a
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: little bit of that, like, well, yeah, you could have
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: said that, but are you just imposing on very complex
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: structures the things you wanted to see. So that's one example.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Another is he tries to describe particles and he says, Okay,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: in this case, if space is this mesh of points, right,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: then what is matter? How do you get matter in
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: this measure points? And so what he does is he says, well,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: maybe matter. Maybe particles are these special connections between these points,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: these arrangements between these points. Like every time you have
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: three nodes with these particular connections between them, you call
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: that a particle. And he's tried to show that sometimes
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: these particles are stable configurations, like if they exist, they
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: will continue to exist, and they will move across the graph.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: So they're like patterns in these connections. The relationship between
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: nodes sort of moves in the way that maybe a
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: particle would move through space. Yeah, exactly, recognize the relationship
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: and see that relationship sort of translate itself across the graph.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: That would be what a particle would be. I'm getting
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: the picture of, you know, having the matrix. At the end,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Neo sees the code behind the universe. I wonder if
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: this is how he was feeling. He's like, oh, I
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: can see the whole universe. It's just a whole bunch
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: of notes. I am Kiana reeves again if it worked,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: he hasn't actually made that work. He hasn't seen that
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: happen on his graphs. He's just sort of like, hey,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: that would be cool. And he's mentioned that, you know,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: they're going to follow up on that in a couple
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: of weeks and hope to figure that out. And I'm like, yeah,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I'd like to figure out particle physics in a couple
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: of weeks too. Yeah, why didn't he just wait a
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks before publishing this? Yeah, there's a lot
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: of that. There's like, Okay, well you have some cool ideas,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: you have some notions here, you haven't really quite figured
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: it out, so why now we Maybe a question is
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: he's seen all these things time, causality, particles in his
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: you know, mesh of nodes. So is this you know,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: the mesh, from one simple set of rules, or is
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: he like tweaking the rules every time and like, if
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I tweak it this way, you get castality, If I
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: tweaked them this way, you get space. He identifies all
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: these things from one simple set of rules, but he's
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: tried a few different rules, and he's tried this rule
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: and that rule and the other rule. And he notices
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: similar behaviors in a lot of these meshes, which is
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: cool and makes it more compelling. But again, he hasn't
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: found the rule that he thinks is convincing and so one,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: and he'd like is for everybody to participate. He has
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: a website where you can go and build a graph
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: and enter a rule and see what universe it builds.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: And he wants to sort of like crowdsource, the crowdsourcing
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: making universes exactly. We are all God, it sounds like
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: a smart god. He's like, God's like, I'm tired, I'm
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I'm out of ideas. I'll just get one of my
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: creations to help me create more creations. Right, I'm just
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: going to leave the recipe on the counter here, and
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I want you to actually make the cookies. All right. Well,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: it sounds sort of like, you know, he's he's sort
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: of a bit of an outsider, and he's sort of
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: maybe taking a huge leap forward without bringing the rest
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: of the community along. And there's some skepticism, and but
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: it sort of sounds like his idea is not too
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: far off from what people are thinking or we're looking
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: for it sounds like maybe he's just sort of skipped
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: a few steps, you know, in the procedures of physics. Yeah,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: he skipped a few steps in the procedures, which is okay.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you deliver a five page treatise on
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the universe, it's a lot to swallow. But hey, if
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: it's true, thank you, thank you. But he's also skipped
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: a few steps in his treatise, Like you read it
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: and you're like, well, well, how do you get from
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: here to there exactly? You know, And in this case,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: he knows all the results in advance, and so he's
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: sort of like dot dot dot general relativity. You know,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: you have to really show that it's the only consequence,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and I don't think he's really compellingly done that. The
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: way to do that, really compelling lee would be to
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: come up with a new theory. They're like, okay, and
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: here's dark matter or here's the dark energy, or this
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: explains that, you know, what happened before the Big Bang
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: or something, and then we could probe that and see
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: that it's true, and wow, okay, maybe then the universe
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: is just four lines of mathematic Well, it sounds like
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: maybe he is not quite there yet, but he's saying, Look,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: it's promising. You can start to see space, you can
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: sort of see time totally, and sounds like maybe the
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: real answer is to be determined. In a couple of weeks,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: will out, Daniel, everything. Everyone will be stuck at home,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: but we'll know how everything works. Yeah, and he had
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: made a prediction or two. You know, he thinks that
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: the size of these hypergraphs is something like ten to
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: the minus ninety three meters, mean the size of the
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: little bananasm makeup the unit. Yeah, the distance between these
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: points in the node. Right, the minimum distance, the basic
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: unit of distance in his universe is ten to the
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: minus ninety three ms, which is like almost impossibly small
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and hard to think about because remember, the smallest distance
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: we've ever seen is like tend to the minus twenty meters,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: which is already like you know, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: of a proton. And other people think the universe like
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: the quantum loop theory, people think the universe is like
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: ten of the minus thirty five meters is like the
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: size of a space pixel. So this guy's like sixty
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: orders of magnitude smaller, and so that's a that's a
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: prediction that's almost impossible to test, but so so as
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: drink theory kind of yeah, so strength theory. Strength theory,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: we think operates on the plunk scale. So it's only
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: fifteen orders of magnitude away, you know, instead of being
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: sixty or seventy orders in magnet. It's uh, it might
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: be difficult to prove this. Ever, you're saying yes, yes,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: And you know, he imagines that there might be particles
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: down at that little scale, and maybe those particles are
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: even dark matter, right, so saying earlier he should make predictions,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: All right, Well he has made this one, but it's
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: sort of out of reaching. This is not something we're
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: going to test in a couple of weeks. But at
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: the same time, it could be that the real nature
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: of the universe will never be able to grow. Man,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: you're really hoping for that, aren't you. It's just like Daniel,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: you're wasting your life. No, it's true. It's true that
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: it's true that the universe might not be understandable to humanity.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: It's true the universe might not be understandable, but for
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: some weird reasons. So far, we've been making pretty good progress,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: which suggests that this method of science and our way
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: of thinking is somehow aligned with the way the universe works,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: or can be aligned, and so yeah, we'd like to
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: keep doing it. We're all wishful thinkers. Not everybody thinks
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: that we're wasting our time. All right, Well, that's pretty interesting.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: I guess we'll find out in the future whether he's
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: right or not. And in the meantime, I guess you
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: can go online and read more about it and even
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: make up your own universe. That's right. And you know,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: he's down a bit of an unusual pr campaign with
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: his blog post and his videos and his announcements, but
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: he's physics. Yeah, but he's also submitted some papers to
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: journals and so they're being vetted by other physicists taking
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: them seriously, you know, peer review, and so that takes
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: a little while. And so you know, stay tuned. He
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: learned his lesson from two thousand two where he just
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: brought a book. Well, no, he's also writing a nine
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: page book which we have very soon I see, but
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: he he learned to post it on Twitter, So stay tuned.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: You know, the top minds in the fields are thinking
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: about this, and they will critique it and criticize it
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: and find what's good and what remains to be worked on.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: But you're right, it could be the theory of everything.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: We just don't know yet and we might never know,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: or it might come from somebody and not him, but
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: somebody who's maybe listening to this podcast. That's right. So
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: if you're working on your theory of everything, take heart.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: You know, Stephen Wolfram might not be right. All right, Well,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks so much for listening.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: See you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production I
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast for my Heart Radio, visit
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,