I subbed to your Patreon and was patiently awaiting a voicemail back. It never came. That being said. I will sub again because of all the talking heads I see on any given issue, you exude the most reasonableness, fairness, kindness, curiosity, and as much humility as an ambitious human possibly can. I hope that never changes. 🙏
If you are starting from scratch it is worth it to switch to Kofi. Instead of taking a cut of every transaction like paetron you pay a flat 5ish USD to kofi to set up your page and get to keep all the revenue. Cheers
Man, quantum theory arguably being way over the head of your audience and your way of tying the results of this to consequentialism and moral relativism is such a good angle for your viewers. Good fucking job on this.
“Hi Alex. I think you are one of the most free thinking individuals there is out in the RUclips world. If I could have the temerity to suggest an interesting line of thought. “Each orb is floating around in a void”. How about the multiverse is each one of us? …Einstein relativity to the max. We are each our orb… of consciousness. Now we’re at Buddhism. Floating around in the void of awareness. Now one step further alex if you’re still with me .That multiplicity of awareness is actually an illusion. Or an aspect of the one true reality. Multiplicity appearing from The single Source. Now we’re at non-dualism. .. Hinduism The gods are just handy ways about anthropomorphizing understanding concepts. The big secret Alex to why you’ve never found god out there…is because god isn’t out there…. God is the one doing the looking. And who else is doing the looking? You. That’s the big secret Alex. You’re GOD just playing a big bloody game of peek a boo hide and seek with yourself. When you wake up and say “im hungry”. That “I” is the same “I” as every other creature that has ever lived. That is the universal divine consciousness that pervades all reality.. one self appearing as many. Your tue nature is that divine self. You are the GOD you’re looking for. Been on this path for a long time. It’s way wilder than you have any idea. Eat some mushrooms and materialism vanishes. There is a way deeper truth out there. You’re close. You just happen to be speaking to all the wrong people. Reach out if you find any of these thoughts interesting. I can show you definitive proof that Christianity was all about psychedelic mushrooms. Cheers. Edit 2 days later..: Boy sure sounds like I’m ranting in what I wrote. Haha. Wasn’t. Just smoked a joint and really wanted to share and spark some interesting convo lol
Came here from the universe where Mr. Deutsch got riled up at the question about copenhagen interpretation, accused Connor of inviting him under false pretenses and stormed off. Good thing Alex was able to discuss that event with his longstanding friend and idol, Peter Hitchens
Yes, a universe in which Peter Hitchens is Alex's longstanding friend and idol would be weird. However, I think that this universe is weirder: In this universe, Peter Hitchens is the brother of Christopher Hitchens.
@@breadfan7433 thank you. Very funny 😂! I had a tough day and you let me have hearty laugh! I read David’s book The Fabric of Reality back in the late 90’s/early 00’s. First I ever heard about the multi slit experiment. Awesome to see him here after all these years.
Personally, I'd like to visit the universe where Alex actually interviewed Hitchens on his views and didn't petulantly argue for marijuana legalisation on the basis that other harmful drugs are legal so it would be the right thing to do to add a third. Alas...
@@breadfan7433 none that I can say I've encountered. My point was that he shouldn't have been so stubborn and argumentative when conducting the interview
I'm not sure how your videos keep getting better like this. By far the best interview I've heard from him because of how you let him speak and asked questions that don't normally get aired.
You say you’re not sure why you think the videos are getting better, and yet in the very next sentence you explain the reasons why you think the video is better.
This is one of my favourite episodes so far. I liked how you rearticulated each point in a way that a person without much scientific background could understand it. Super interesting! If I may point out one thing to improve, it would be adding visuals of some kind to support and clarify the content in the more technical parts of the interview. But overall I really enjoyed this episode. Can't wait to see what comes next!
Good idea. Some form of basic visual aid, illustration would enhance the experience immensely, helping lay watchers no end. It need not be expensive animations either. Simple, standard diagrams of the sort we get in text books would be perfect.
💗💗💗💗 This was the best 90 minutes of media consumption I've made in a while. "Beginning of Infinity" is my favorite book of all time. It is a good explanation of how things are, you might say. Genuinely geeked to watch you two have this conversation, thank you so much for doing this!
loved this! Alex definitely needs to bring him on to talk, philosophy, epistemology, history, progress etc The fact that Alex ended the interview “optimistically” is so deliciously appropriate
None real care about the multiuniverse... those people just run here because atheim give them lonlyness, coldeness, and desperation... they lost God and so the dignity, that why they run to kiss a godless ass anytime they see it. They are just lier as any Goddenier, and the worst generetion and people we have ever had... We hope in a better generetion and people. Let's forget about this one and trhow into to the trash this empty BS worthelss cult and move on... No resepct fro you Godeless weak alone people. Your cult will be over soon as possible........
In the multiverse, whoever the other people that look like me are, they're not me. The boundaries of my identity are defined by, and extend to, what I can think and feel. Thoughts and feelings that exist outside of my awareness cannot belong to me and therefore, must belong to other people.
@@StuMas if ur other self has same similar family like parents and also married bt u r not married here means u just havent married her bt u cant marry other
Hello Alex. For the next time I'd like to suggest incorporating simple graphics to illustrate the experiments the guest describes. I'll admit personally I was getting lost at the photon/silver atom experiments already despite being somewhat familiar with them. And I do hope there is a next time because any similar topic is very dear to me and I can't wait to see your takes on it.
The Beginning of Infinity is such a great book! It directly inspired me to go back to school and study computer science. It had a greater impact on me than any other single book. Thanks for another great interview!
I am so glad to see so many people feel the same way I do about "Beginning of Infinity". I have spent my life dedicated to uncovering the best way to understand how things work (why is another question). David's brilliant prose gave us all the best tool thus far in human history to understand the world around us: Good explanations are the standard for anything that is real.
He's an arrogant horror show that supports illegal occupation, colonialism and slaughter. He also believes in the power of capital to solve the world's environmental problems, even though the environment was destroyed by these very same people. His physical theories are complete and utter nonsense and his guru (Hugh Everett) was a suicidal drunk who helped the Pentagon murder people more effectively.
He's never provided a good explanation for anything and his ideas on quantum computing are a fantasy. If ever there was a real life person depicted in cinema - the Mark Rylance character in Dont Look Up is this Deutsch guy.
Same man. It led me to starting my business. I figure someone who looks like me in the multiverse becomes a successful entrepeneur, I might as well dive in.
@@JohnnyComelately-eb5zvUnbelievably bad critique, no actual points made. You have not read the book and I suspect you didn't watch the video either if you think he's bad at explaining. Obviously you won't be taken seriously by those of us who enjoyed the book, so why even comment?
Here's an analogy. Imagine you saw some water on the road, and hypothesized that it was a puddle. Later you calculated that, given atmospheric conditions, there should be a mirage of water right in that spot. Now you have two interpretations of what you're seeing: it could be a mirage, or it could be a real puddle with a mirage on top. The latter double-explains the observation. The real puddle idea, even though it came first, is now a floating postulate that doesn't explain anything not already explained by everything else. It can be removed without changing what you see. MWI is the _simplest_ model of QM that agrees with the observations. You can propose hypothetical new physics principles that trim the worlds, but the underlying mathematical scaffolding for producing them will still be there, and since the added principles are motivated by aesthetics rather than observation, there is technically no evidence for them. Also, since they are set up so that there's no way to test whether they are true, they are unfalsifiable as well. You don't need a collapse postulate, for example, because the _appearance_ of collapse is already explained by the wave equation operating on the particles within the observer. Introducing new physics to explain the observation of collapse in a second way is like adding a real puddle on top of that mirage.
This ↑ A lot of people are getting Occam's razor completely wrong, they try to reduce the number of entities, instead of the number of kind of entities, or more generally the size of the theory. It would be like thinking the universe is more probably some small bubble surrounding our soral system, with some pattern of light on its surface, because it reduces the number of particles.
@@denisbaudouin5979 You can look up Sean Carroll's blog post on why the many worlds formulation is probably correct, to see essentially the argument I'm trying to make, better stated.
@@denisbaudouin5979 Of the bettter arguments against MWI, the preferred basis problem can (maybe) be solved with a definition based in quantum decoherence (I think this is Sean Carroll's method for understanding that problem), and the Born Rule has been derived a few different ways, either from symmetry arguments or using techniques from decision theory (Deutsch and Wallace have a proof).
In my multiverse Dr Deutsch is both the worst and the best guest - he was really bad at explaining things clearly (based on his last book) and the person who finally made the multiverse make sense to me (thanks to this interview)
What I get from Deutsch's views is that existence itself is eternal and infinite, and plays out in infinite manners. Which leads us to the inescapable conclusion that EVERY potential universe not only eventually comes into existence, but does so infinite times. We exist as who we are in infinite universes, and in every possible permutation in other universes. However, unless we can actually connect and examine these other realities, they mean absolutely nothing to us.
@@Novarcharesk Except for the fact that those realities are conneclable, and have been connected multiple times in countless experiments that are not controversial in the slightest. That's the entire point that Deutch is making here: if you actually ask "what is happening in quantum mechanic experiments?", instead of just using the result in your calculations (which we do, quantum computers are a thing), you can do nothing but accept the multiverse interpretation, because it is the only model that accounts for said result and actually predicts it accurately. What I think @Infideles was discussiong, were the logical implications that this model causes in things like ethics and morality, and they were suggesting that said implications are essentially non-existent, because, for now, the most complicated interacitons between different universes we can cause is limited to a couple of particles. But that deosn't in any way challenge the physical implications that this theory predicts, which do occur, and do influence our daily life because us humans, as with all physical phenomena, are trying to use them to our advantage (again, quantum computers exist), in the same way we've been doing since the day we discovered that fire cooks food.
I grabbed a copy of "The Fabric of Reality" back in '98 or '99. Left a weirdly shaped scar that I've carried ever since. So, thanks for this interview. Even as there is no way to heal this scar, at least in our current manifold.
@@ethan46199 Are you trolling? How can this be a reflection of a real personality? What's going on in your life that you think this is a relevant or sane thing to post?
@@ReadyPlayerPiano a "real" personality? That's very judgemental of you, and condescending. People believe in Jesus. In fact it's a fundamental part of western civilization, and could be attributed to the wests moral values. The belief in Christ is a personal one, and condemnation doesn't liberate it only oppresses
None real care about the multiuniverse... those people just run here because atheim give them lonlyness, coldeness, and desperation... they lost God and so the dignity, that why they run to kiss a godless ass anytime they see it. They are just lier as any Goddenier, and the worst generetion and people we have ever had... We hope in a better generetion and people. Let's forget about this one and trhow into to the trash this empty BS worthelss cult and move on... No resepct fro you Godeless weak alone people. Your cult will be over soon as possible............
Yeah.....the issue is when physicists start delving into philosophy rather than science, we end up with "multiverse" theories based on literally no evidence.
The whole conceptual idea of the multiverse seems to challenge the very definition of the universe itself. By labeling it a "multiverse," we inevitably redefine what we understand the universe to be. If we entertain the notion that what we once perceived as the universe could be just one of many similar or vastly different phenomena, then the very concept of the universe undergoes a profound transformation. It's as if our previous understanding has been overwritten or rendered obsolete by this new conceptual framework of a multiverse. Even if we were to accept the possibility of a multiverse as true, everything encompassed within this multitude of universes would still essentially constitute the universe. After all, the term "universe" implies the entirety of existence, the all-encompassing whole. So if there exist other universes, we are essentially redefining what our own universe, or our perceived universe, truly is. This shift in perspective echoes past discoveries in cosmology, where our understanding expanded to recognize that what we once thought were individual stars were actually entire galaxies. In a similar vein, the acceptance of a multiverse challenges us to broaden our understanding of the cosmos. The term "multiverse" prompts us to reconsider our linguistic and conceptual frameworks. It beckons us to explore the possibility that our universe might be just one facet of a much grander reality. In essence, by embracing the idea of a multiverse, we are forced to reimagine our understanding of the universe, inviting us to contemplate the vastness and complexity of existence beyond our conventional boundaries. Essentially, it's still a universe. We're just conceptualizing it in a different way.
Not sure if this image is helpful, but one way of thinking about the branching concept is by picturing a guitar string. Normally, when you look at it, you just see the one string, but when the string is plucked, suddenly you see multiple strings side by side, then eventually, you just see the one string again.
I'd love to hear David Deutsch in conversation with Stephan Wolfram. Wolfram's idea of a computational universe also includes the idea of a branching and re-unifiying set of what he calls rulios, very similar to what DD is speaking about here. Next time, Alex, have him talk about Constructor Theory.
Excellent guest! ‘Beginning of Infinity’ is one of the most interesting books I have read. I continue to think about the ideas in it to this day. I can recommend the podcast TOKcast which exists to examine all of David’s ideas in great detail and of course the Deutsch Files by Naval.
None real care about the multiuniverse... those people just run here because atheim give them lonlyness, coldeness, and desperation... they lost God and so the dignity, that why they run to kiss a godless ass anytime they see it. They are just lier as any Goddenier, and the worst generetion and people we have ever had... We hope in a better generetion and people. Let's forget about this one and trhow into to the trash this empty BS worthelss cult and move on... No resepct fro you Godeless weak alone people. Your cult will be over soon as possible...........
A video all about epistemology would be _interesting_ but probably the least popular Alex O'Connor video ever in terms of views. Most people wouldn't even understand what the subject of the video was, before they even got to its actual content.
@@crue-xx I didn't say it was difficult. I said that most people wouldn't understand what it was. Of course, I haven't tested that claim. But imagine going out into the street and stopping a hundred people completely at random and asking each one what "epistemology" was. How many of those hundred people do you think would be able to tell you?
@@omp199sure, it might not be most popular, but it would perhaps be most important. And that importance may become popular later, especially when epistemology is at the heart of much of the world’s conflicts and the masses are just catching up in understanding that
David Deutsch is a wonderful person and what he talks about makes logical sense. Time and locality are non linear, non finite and completely flexible. Things are in permanent quantum interaction. The ghosts in the Hadron Collider forming themselves into lava lamp type of formations show us in an actual experiment how the ether is in permanent interaction, motion and expression. Thoughts emit that type of energy.
They're not very complicated, the multiverse theory has no evidence behind it. It's largely regarded as junk science as it's a "theory of anything" claim. The ONLY thing they have is theoretical math
Very interesting but I would love a discussion where someone pushes against him a bit. I wonder if he is so sure of the interpretation because he is taking some metaphysical assumptions for granted.
@@mrmr-qx4jq most scientists dont believe in a multiverse, though some do. Most scientists dont believe in god, though some do. There is no contradiction here
@smilloww209he'll. Speakin in general obviously. show me a scientist that is being interviewed that speaks of god as true I'm not aware of a famous one besides like Einstein. They only interview these type of fellows. So all the atheists I know believe in these ridiculous theories. An they wanna smoke dmt 😂 I've spoken to a demon or a evil spirit so it's pretty clear to me that it's a good chance of heaven and hell. no dmt was needed.
very interesting thank you Alex... i like how thoughtful and deliberate David is with the words he chooses in talking about a cutting edge of science. also like how the same is true of you Alex in the questions and observations you bring to the interaction
Futurama is based on the concept of a real microverse within our universe... hilarious... they are way advanced than we are. I was reading many worlds approach it's a objective philosophy in modern philosophy of the mind, they don't like it. It's awfully unprofessional.
for a person opposed to the views of David Deutsch while still advocating for a view that is even more unpopular than many worlds (Bohmian mechanics) you should invite Tim Maudlin, he is without a doubt the clearest thinker when it comes to quantum physics, and he in my opinion absolutely demolished the many worlds theory in his writing, while making a strong case for Bohmian Mechanics and other theories like GRW.
I recently saw an episode of "PBS Space Time", explaining the point of view that Pilot Wave Theory is merely "Many Worlds in disguise". Under Pilot Wave Theory, the wavefunction still doesn't collapse, which means it would naturally produce the multiverse in itself, no matter what the corpuscles do.
@@СергейМакеев-ж2н that's cuz many worlds theorists are arrogant and claim monopoly on all non-collapse theories, declaring they all produce a multiverse. But similarly Pilot Wave Theory could just declare that all many worlds theories naturally produce pilot waves.
I agree, this video needs the other side. What Deutsch is proposing here, in my opinion, is not even close to dinosaurs and fossils. We can touch fossils, the "not-answer" for the collapse of the wave-function cannot, by definition, be seen. This is why it is an interpretation --> it is not science, it is not measurable. It is very easy to explain the difficulty. A particle in quantum mechanics has a 50% of being spin up and a 50% chance of being spin down. The measurement is taken, it is spin up. People, like Deutsch, assume that this cannot be "a roll of the dice". The reason it has chosen spin up is because in another universe it is spin-down. This is, in a weird sense, determinism. Both answers (spin up and spin down) exist if you include plural universes. But this is an interpretation, all we can verify is what happened in our universe. We can assume nothing about things outside our universe. Alternate opinions, that Deutsch briefly discussed, call quantum mechanics an "effective theory", thus it does not need to have real philosophical implications. Also, more importantly, there is no need to justify the non-chosen answer (the spin-down). Why does Deutsch (and others) feel the need to explain what happens to the non-chosen result? There may never be a good reason for why the wave-function collapses as it does. Deutsch is a brilliant person but he knows that the evidence for multiverses is not the same as fossils. Our science speaks only to our own universe and not other universes.
@@stephenweppner7433 The multiverse conclusion is still less crazy than the idea that the waveform collapses because ... uh.. particles get observed, or sumthin'. Deutsch is right in pointing out that it makes no sense whatsoever. It is way more logical that the wavefuction simply _always_ describes _all_ of reality. No collapse needed.
Consciousness is hardly mentioned. Can’t have ANY of this without awareness of, experience of. As Max Planck stated: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
@@DenysBuryi Well, there’s the famous “Double Slit” experiment. With its “Observer” effect. There are numerous videos on RUclips explaining this experiment in detail. Check out the “ Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics. Take a look at some of the work of Dr. Donald Hoffman and Dr. Robert Lanza
The universe was around long before consciousness and will be long after. It’s completely irrelevant. It doesn’t have to be observed by a conscious being to exist.
I’m only halfway through so far. But as with all good podcasts where I wish I was there to ask questions, I have a burning thing I hope you are going to ask: Physics at its heart is about creating models that describe what we encounter. For example Hooke’s law is very useful at describing the behavior of springs in some normal cases. We don’t stop there, but equally it’s not necessary for us to know the underlying cause for the model to be useful. Hooke doesn’t need to know why springs behave that way, he describes what is and that it shows predictive power. Physics then goes on to look for underlying reasons that cause these models we have to be the way they are. For example we modeled electricity and magnetism and then found a model which explained them both. But in order for us to take on the entailments of an underlying cause it has to have some predictive power before we can do that. We don’t just say “electricity and magnetism are be two facets of the same thing” we say “electricity and magnetism are two facets of the same thing *because this phenomena can only happen because that is true*” So in order to go from “quantum behavior is like this because that’s the way it is and there’s nothing below it” to “quantum behavior is like that because underneath it there are many alternate universes” we don’t just need something that fits the data, we need something that must be true to fit some new data. Does he have that? Because without that physics in general won’t accept it as anything other than a hypothetical maybe. And since it has more entailments that the prevailing theory it should be rejected as less likely.
The simplest explanation of the double slit experiment is that our current methods of measurement must be having some effect on the OUTCOME of the MEASUREMENT itself, NOT that there *must* be an invisible other world(s) in which the measurements were different. Any explanation not rooted in the rational and measurable world is spiritual speculation, not science. Folks have the right to believe in whatever they want, but you can’t claim your views are authoritative if they aren’t.
Consciousness causes the effect. We are entangled as the observer with the quantum system. Decoherence then occurs and we observe a single material outcome
1) Simplest does not imply ‘more likely.’ Occam’s Razor is not a scientific explanation of anything. 2) The Mach-Zehdner Interferometer is a testable experiment, a crucial experiment, of the highest scientific standards with measurable results. It is unpredictable in that you don’t know what path the photon takes, but predictable in that it always strikes the end mirror. It is measurable and repeatable. 3) David is not spiritually speculating when he wrote the “Deutsch-Turing Conjecture” - every physically realizable process can be simulated by a universal quantum computer - but rather merging the field of computation as a branch of physics. 4) David is a fallibilist. Justified true belief is not what knowledge creation or scientific explanation is about. There is a possibility that the Everett interpretation is incorrect. Scientists expect to make errors in order to rule out false theories. And instead of the term “theories”, the term “misconceptions” would be more appropriate, as error-correction is how science makes progress…not be believing in theories. 5) David never claims his views are authoritative - it shows you are probably hearing or reading David Deutsch for the first time. Knowledge is not authoritative. His book “The Beginning of Infinity” is worth the read.
Yes. The simplest explanation is to just _accept quantum mechanics._ For some reason many physicists are scared of its implications so they try to mathematically modify the theory to make it more desirable. MWI adds extra complexity by trying to invent some sort of underlying mathematical story to explain the origin of the Born rule. It is like adding angels that press down on spacetime to curve it to general relativity. Since there is no evidence of such a thing, it is impossible for there to be agreement. There are an enormous numbers of different mathematical stories MWI proponents have added to quantum mechanics to try and derive the Born rule from and no possibility of ever deciding between any of them.
David, I imagine you have been an instructor and teacher of many because you have such great teaching skills. I am not very far educated in physics, (and probably won't ever be, because I'm 76 ), but even I could understand very much farther into this this and the many other thoughts involved. I really enjoyed this exciting conversation.
People need to get the definitions correct. The multiverse theory suggests that there are multiple universes existing simultaneously, each potentially with its own laws of physics, constants, and even different histories. This concept arises from various branches of theoretical physics, including string theory and cosmology. On the other hand, the Many Worlds Interpretation is not reality, it is just an interpretation of quantum mechanics. As Sean Caroll states, it is just a mathematical convenience, proposed in quantum mechanics, suggests that every quantum event that could have multiple outcomes actually results in all possible outcomes occurring, each in its own separate "branch" of reality. This means that every possible outcome of a quantum event actually happens, but in a different universe.
42:50 Suddenly I'm (relieved) getting that the multiverse is not as we imagine it to be ie. loads of different universes like in Dr. Strange and the multiverse of madness, but rather that this universe includes loads of mini-universes that arise and propagate and finally integrate with reality - this universe is a multiverse.
That’s one idea. The other is that our system that compromises all space, time, matter, laws or physics etc… is simply 1 system in a larger meta system of many universes. String theory has a unique twist on it. But most of these if not all are not functional and are a philosophy which can help elaborate an explanation for current scientific consensus, and not in and of themselves actually true science
@@stompthedragon4010 Infinite universe usually refers to size - here we are referring to different occurences of the same circumstances that affect the universe that we can observe.
This was amazing. Thank you! Grad Student here. I'm actually learning about Deutsch's algorithm in Quantum Computing right now. This was such a cool interview for me specifically.
Two things are paramount in a theory. Falsifiability and utility. He did not tell us (he was not asked) to say which experiment would make his theory false. And he did not tell us what unexplainable phenomenon his theory does explain, or maybe it is merely that it makes calculations easier on some known phenomenon. Whatever utility it has, he did not say.
I’m the same. It’s odd that something incredibly complicated can feel soothing and soporific same time. If I can absorb this stuff via dream state osmosis, one morning I’ll wake up a genius!
I too believe that AI had potential upsides beyond our current comprehension. But the downsides are even more severe. I'm so glad I made it into my late 30s before this came into existence.
I had a vision once, that our space-time emerged from a two dimensional infinite plane, like the film of a soap bubble, which contained all the fields (electro-magnetic, gravitational, etc.) and which suddenly folded like a complex piece of origami to produce the third dimension. This video leads me to imagine our reality is on one side of the film, while the other universe is on the other side of the film, always closer than a planck length away, yet never within reach. Fascinating stuff, really!
The folding origami may be caused by the existence of the interaction between quarks (3 in each proton and neutron - one for each dimension) rotating and revolving in order to create the strong nuclear force - wrapping two dimensional energy into a three dimensional material, and in the process creating time as a result of the now curved fabric of space? Just a thought
This is the good stuff. Great guest. I'm unsure of whether I'm more convinced by the multiverse explantion for quantum phenomena or the more standard wave function version. I think still the wave function idea, but either way I'm absolutely fine with being unsure. One thing is for sure, and this blows my mind: there is absolutely, 100% some really insane sh** going on in reality. Like, whatever the true nature of things, it's definitely really, really, REALLY weird. I love how certain we can be of that. It blows my mind, in a good way.
I’m SO GLAD this ridiculous interpretation of the double slit experiment is getting widely debunked. Professor Dave debunked it as well. You may want to have him on SINGULARLY to address the incorrect teaching of the double slit experiment.
Just maximize the number of universes where you do good, and minimize the number of universes where you do bad. It's the same logic as with one universe.
My headcannon is that when the probability of an outcome is being "calculated" its not actually happening and only the outcome actually happens so only one universe actually exist and there isn't an evil you in some alternate universe at all. So we aint even really talking about universes or lines or what ever , we just looking into probability's of the mechanic's that make up the underlying processes that create reality as we experience it.
I really appreciate this guy trying to explain this extraordinary stuff to us mere mortals in a way that we can attempt to understand. We can see him straining at the leash to try to speak on his own terms, but he consistently (and clearly quite frustratingly) keeps himself in check. It's like watching a formula one car trying to drive through London traffic.
i think it is a bit too strong to say that this is the only possible view, that is the proper many worlds picture. in my kind of view, what happens is that you only coexist with one version of the experimental setup to which the specific outcomes you see belong, and the reason we do not predict the outcomes for each detection from the wave-function, is because the description in terms of the wave-function is an average over possible configurations. this is still a viable view to hold, and i just want to make that clear, it is not mandatory or exclusively sensible to take the many worlds position with respect to the origin of outcomes. although as i outlined in my earlier comment, it is in some ways plausible that this view also has some partial equivalence with many world, with the exception that the substructure lost in the averaging process that leads to the wave function descriptions are still there in the multiverse of almost identical experiments belonging to the ensemble or statistical interpretation of the underlying physics of quantum mechanics. by interpretation i simply mean, that i prefer to think of the theory as a theory of dynamical averages, and the theory that describes the states summed over to get the wave function is not about interpretation at all, it is just a normal physical theory. the issue with interpretations of quantum mechanics is the gap between instrumentalism and ontology, what you want is the say "i think quantum mechanics says this about dynamics and outcomes, and i think this is the proper theory of the origin of those dynamics and outcomes", that is a good version of interpretation, it is akin to interpreting Newtonian mechanics as hinting at a broader theory such as general relativity or its own successor theories, the goal is to improve the theory and to arrive at a new theory that quantum mechanics can be derived from, in a purely instrumentalist sense, the distributions of quantum mechanics speak for themselves, they are clear about what to expect in an experiment once you consider the born rule, which is simply a rule that says that a detector can go of with a probability related to the intensity of the amplitudes, it is not so important what the detail of that rule is, it is basically the square of the magnitude of the amplitudes summed up at any point in space roughly speaking. the point of writing these comments is basically because i thought David went a little to hard on the inevitability of many worlds, or that parallel worlds are the only viable or consistent explanations, i don't think so, the virtue of many worlds is essentially the same as with the statistical view, it is that the origins of the information in the outcomes are clear, although personally i think you have to have a description of the processes summed over in a distribution, for the distribution to be well defined, outcomes are all well and good in themselves, but they can't explain the structure of their own origin. that is my opinion anyway, it is always fun to disagree with David, so i hope neither of you feel offended by my disagreeing.
What Dr Deutsch leaves out is that the Many Worlds Interpretation has already been debunked. Quantum mechanics assumes the Born rule as an axiom when you interact with a particle, if you throw out the nonlinear "jump" when you interact with the system, you necessarily throw out the Born rule as well. Aurélien Drezet published a proof in his paper _"Collapse of the many-worlds interpretation: Why Everett's theory is typically wrong"_ showing that it is impossible consistently recover the Born rule within MWI. We now also have two no-go theorems which show that all psi-ontic interpretations of quantum mechanics must violate the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics, see Tung Ten Yong's paper _"A no-go theorem for Quantum theory ontological models"_ and Robert Spekkens' et all paper _"Einstein, incompleteness, and the epistemic view of quantum states"_ where the later proves that all psi-ontic interpretations inherently imply nonlocality. Aurélien Drezet wrote an additional proof showing that any consistent attempt to recover the Born rule in MWI must necessarily violate nonlocality in his paper _"An Elementary Proof That Everett's Quantum Multiverse Is Nonlocal: Bell-Locality and Branch-Symmetry in the Many-Worlds Interpretation."_ The fact is MWI is debunked but sci-fi loving academics pretend otherwise.
What Dr Deutsch leaves out is that the Many Worlds Interpretation has already been shown to be false. Quantum mechanics assumes the Born rule as an axiom when you interact with a particle, if you throw out the nonlinear "jump" when you interact with the system, you necessarily throw out the Born rule as well. Aurélien Drezet published a proof in his paper "Collapse of the many-worlds interpretation: Why Everett's theory is typically wrong" showing that it is impossible consistently recover the Born rule within MWI. We now also have two no-go theorems which show that all psi-ontic interpretations of quantum mechanics must violate the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics, see Tung Ten Yong's paper "A no-go theorem for Quantum theory ontological models" and Robert Spekkens' et all paper "Einstein, incompleteness, and the epistemic view of quantum states" where the later proves that all psi-ontic interpretations inherently imply nonlocality. Aurélien Drezet wrote an additional proof showing that any consistent attempt to recover the Born rule in MWI must necessarily violate nonlocality in his paper "An Elementary Proof That Everett's Quantum Multiverse Is Nonlocal: Bell-Locality and Branch-Symmetry in the Many-Worlds Interpretation."
This has helped my understand the multiverse a little more thank you. I hope you have move physicists on, although its not your field you are smart enough to ask the right questions to get a better understanding & that works well for all of us.
… so, why do we sometimes see “blips“ BETWEEN the main line of interference patterns in the double slit experiment? Why do most photons arrive according to the double slit idea, but sometimes there is a blip in between the stripes? And why is it so blurry?
Fascinating interview. Cleared up some misconceptions I had about the branching nature of reality. I found the discussion at the end regarding the brains ability to create abstract geometric models that can be manipulated mentally to be extremely important. I dont know the exact term for it but it sounds like a type of rationalist idealism. Seems like what Tesla was describing when he explained how he constructed his inventions in his mind and was able to work things out before actually constructing the device. I want more information on this.
@cunnylicious well the way David describes it, visual mind doesn't seem to express the full nature of it. Having a visual mind indicates being able to "see" an image of a cube in your minds eye in the same way you see a physical cube sitting on a table or something. But David is talking about being able to perceive or "grok" the totality of the cube in a holistic way in the minds eye that transcends its physical manifestation in reality. Having no trouble perceiving the backward facing surfaces that don't appear visually in any single view in 3 dimensions, for example.
His interpretation of evidence for the existence of a Multiverse is severely lacking. Based on what he is proposing, it would be a large leap to arrive at the conclusion that there is a Multiverse.
@@JackMyersPhotography if you were well versed in physics and quantum mechanics you would not be belly laughing but instead recognizing obscurantism and philosophical ideas being stated as if they were concrete evidence for multiverse existence. Slow the video to .5 speed and rewatch. Then check his statements against published and accepted scientific literature. It’s nonsensical.
I haven't finished the video yet but I will soon. I just wanted to dispel some misinformation at the beginning of this video. The many worlds hypothesis is an interpretation of some quantum phenomena, but unlike how it's stated in the video, it is NOT the only explanation and doesn't have near the same amount of support that fossil evidence does. Archeology, especially fossil archeology supports its evidence through multiple venues, this allowing multiple venues for falsification in case a production is made without enough evidence. The many worlds hypothesis does not take the same precautions, which means that in its essence as of our current understanding, it is unfalsifiable. We know how fossils form, where they form, and what it means when they form in certain ways. We do not know nearly as much about anything pertaining to the possibility of other worlds, much less a multiverse. It is not yet known if this hypothesis can even be tested, though scientists all around the world are certainly working in hopes of finding a way. As of right now, the many worlds hypothesis, hints its title, is in the hypothesis stage of the scientific process. This means that a phenomenon has been observed, and due to everything we know about the phenomenon and the field of evidence we have, we have made a prediction. Where this video has fallen short so far is the fact that we have made many predictions for why the phenomenon occurs, and a multiverse is simply the most eye catching one. There are other well supported hypotheses such as waves of causality that work like the gravitational waves we can now observe, or perhaps some sort of nested preference in the world similar to the principle of least action that determines the outcomes of our tests. The problem I have with this video so far, is that David does not seem to see any other hypotheses with the same validity even though they are all supported by similar amounts of evidence, which unfortunately leads me to believe that he is cought up in the hype just like string theory was back in the day, before it was made testably implausible. EDIT: This doesn't mean it will go the way of string theory, but we really just don't know which way it'll go. Thus it's irresponsible to make such sweeping claims about it, especially since the hypothesis is being used to promote scams and pseudoscience which create misinformation and cause societal distrust of science which as all sorts of ill effects from people not taking vaccines or wearing masks to people still believing the earth is flat despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary just because they "don't trust science".
Quantum theory states that things exist in multiple (classically incompatible) different versions at the same time. That is what's called "many worlds". It's quantum theory, not a "hypothesis" or an "interpretation". Some people try to do away with the other worlds naturally present in the mathematical description, by postulating ad hoc processes that are equivalent to wave function collapse, but by occam's razor these competing theories should not be taken seriously.
So quantum theory is a theory where everything exists in multiple versions. Due to the wealth of experimental evidence for quantum theory in the microscopic world, nobody can deny that microscopic objects definitely exist in multiple versions at the same time. (The best they can do is call these microscopic objects "waves" instead of "particles", but the end result - a multiplicity of versions - is the same.) Only way to escape the reality of multiple versions is to deny the existence of objective reality altogether, and indeed many take that path. For macroscopic objects the situation is a bit different as it's much harder to gain experimental evidence of quantum theory in the macroscopic realm. So one can still deny the existence of a multiplicity of versions of macroscopic objects, but then one ends up in a single-version rival to quantum theory, with necessary additional processes that would lead to the termination of all the other versions of macroscopic objects - or in other words something like wave function collapse. Such a theory is different from quantum theory, and it can be put to an experimental test against quantum theory, as David outlines in the video. But until there is no evidence for any additional processes like that, occam's razor decides the question in favor of quantum theory, and the necessary implication of a multiplicity of coexisting versions of everything.
Alex! I'm smart, but not this smart! I can follow enough for this to be interesting. And it is amazing how much you understand. You can ask amazing questions!
when it comes to the double slit experiment i don't quite agree, but for the reasons of distinction i outlined in my first comment. basically there are two ways to think about it, either you think of amplitudes propagating corresponding to many version of the photons that interfere, in which case there is a case to be made for parallel worlds, although i do not agree with this view and is perhaps not the best person to ask to defend it, or you can view the amplitudes as heuristic, and not describing particles at all, in which case you have to view the particle nature of light as simply what happens at detectors exposed to light, this second view in this form with no detail, belongs to every possible description or intepretation of what the wavefunction is representing, that is at the detectors, we always see incriments of energy ariving, these are the single photons, not viewed as particles that travel through space or that make up light, but that simply is the impulses of energy at the detectors. the fact that the light arrives in these lumps of energy at a single photo multiplier, in one piece is invariant to all versions of explainations of the experiment, it is these basic impusles of light that result from interference in the amplitudes making up the wavefunction, in simple cases you can view the wavefunction as pretty much just a normal wave in space and the amplitudes are like normal amplitudes of waves, in more complicated cases it works the same for small parts of the amplitudes at a time, but they add together into very complicated arrangements of waves that result in intensities of amplitude over time at any given detector, this is difficult to imagine properly, but the key is to think about a single detector and imagine it being exposed to some sinusoidal wave or something like that, the intensity of the wave gives you a probability of absorption in a given time period, these waves can interfere like water waves more or less, but they are higher dimensional generally than regular water waves. the view i would argue for when it comes to light is that in simple cases where the waves are more of less just coherent waves traveling in space, is that the light is actuall waves, not particles that travel through both slits, then they interfere such that when they hit a detector such that the waves from one slit and the other slit cancel out there is no detections there, and when they arrive in such a timing that they add together instead of canceling the detection rate is higher there. like the internsity of normal waves. this is essentially like classical wave theory, except that the detection can only come in lumps, this is a very complicated kind of dynamic to create consistently while keeping the light in the form of a real physical wave in space, especially for complicated situations, luckily quantum mechanics is linear, and so solutions add, which makes it easier, at least for light. the difference in this view is that you need to think of light not as particles at all, but as waves, all the time, even at detection, but when the light hits the photo-multipliers they must be absorbed in chunks that correspond to the wavelength, which complicated the dynamics a lot. this is still a perfectly good view to maintain, and it has no need for parallel worlds to explain itself, other than in the sense i outlined a bit in my previous comments on the three approaches to quantum mechanics. this sort of view is a statistical view where the spesific outcomes of which photo multiplier that goes of and so on, are down to extra variables not described directly by the quantum mechanical description in terms of wavefunctions, and it has to therefor justify itself by providing a rigorous and realistic account of what these variables are and how they work, this has sort of been done with pilot wave theory, but it is a rather incomplete version of the same thing, encoding the bundle of trajectories according to the wavefunction in some smooth distribution of initial positions of particles that are guided by the wave function, it is not surprising that a guiding equation can exist, beacuse the wavefunction is a distribution of outcomes, where the likley outcomes are the ones with the highest intensity, you simply have to make the particles land according to the distributions given by the interfering amplitude to get the right distribution, the proceedure is rather circular with pilotwave theory in my opinion, but it is essentially onto the right idea as well, also in my opinion:P. I don't agree with David on everything, but i respect him, he is a smart guy, and an honest broker, and if i thought the statistical view of what quantum mechanics is was impossible i would probably agree a whole lot more with him. in the end i think the wavefunctions give the distributions and interactions no hidden by them, of the underlying physical states which are more complicated and that has a more complete description in which the wavefunctions are averages over many possible microstates of the system of an experiement, in that i think we agree in a way, but in opposite directions, many worlds sort of does what pilot wave theory does but the other way around, it takes the outcomes seriously, that is without considering what kind of states the amplitudes describe distributions of it takes all the possible outcomes as all being real, not all being real in some sense and one of them actually unfolding in a single experiment, but all of them being real all the time, and only one of the outcomes being observable at a time through detections. ultimately i think a more rigorous version of what pilot wave theory is attempting is true, my opinion ofc, but to my mind there has to be states over which a distribution can be put together, and each of those must be a single physical situation that can happen in an experiment. if we think of this in our dice throwing analogy, we can say that many worlds is like all possible dice throws happing at once and you observing a single outcome, and my way is more like not knowing which dice throw is occouring exactly and so you have to sum in a weighted way over all the possible throws, with all the possible bounces and twists and turns of the dice before it lands, such that the distribution of outcomes comes out right, it is perfectly obvious both that the outcomes of each dice throw can be predetermined and that the distribution that is appropriate considers all the possible dice throws when you think of it this way, but i do not think that considering all the possible dice throws as happing at once adds anything spesific, it seems like an unnecessary complication conceptually, at least to me, there is nothing wrong with the view that everything is really happening at once and there are observers corresponding to all the observed outcomes, but then i wonder about the origin of the probabilities, what does it mean to have a fair dice if the processes summed over have no content except the outcomes? enjoyed the conversation, David is a guy it is fun to disagree with, and i agree with him on a lot of points as well, so it isn't as frustrating to be obsessive about detail in his case as when i disagree with most other people.. :P
@@MT-ln8xb I would discourage intellectual gate keeping like that. There are people with his qualifications who reject what he says entirely and there are people with none that agree with him (myself being the latter). So his qualifications are not an indication that he is correct or that his opinion is worth more as a result. Credentials may add assurances that someone knows what they are talking about ideas really need to be explored and scrutinised for themselves, rather than based on who is expressing them.
Better to think of it as a subculture; a small collection of people who within that specific group get to think about/act on ideas which they normally wouldn't in the larger culture of society as a whole. This isn't an uncommon phenomenon: most professions (think dentists, doctors, plumbers etc.) have professional comnunities that differ from that of the average culture.
And it is! Most modern scientists (of the 20th and 21st century) are in fact high priests of the "religion" of scientism. It's not science anymore, it's the religion of scientism. And nobody dare question their dogmas and high authority on the modern world. Sounds like more than a religion actually... more like a total cult 😏
@kwame9053 It's OK by now, I realise now that I, myself, in another multiverse, have already paid for youtube premium and enjoyed this video without ads, as I won the lottery. It's probably most likely something like that, so I'll continue my life in this universe. ✌🏻🧘🏻♂️ 👌🏻
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 🪨 Philosophical Wordplay: Some downplay the multiverse as 'just an interpretation', much like creationists do with evolution, minimizing the strength of the evidence. 🧪 Tight Connection: The link between quantum theory phenomena and the multiverse is extremely strong, not loose speculation. 🧫 Sociology, Not Science: Resistance to the multiverse is likely a sociological phenomenon within the 20th-century physics community, not rooted in scientific arguments. 🤫 Anti-Realism: Efforts to suppress 'why' questions about quantum mechanics, framing it as only about what we can see, stifled deeper understanding. 🎓 Generational Impact: Early leaders in quantum theory potentially trained their students to avoid thinking about certain foundational issues. 💔 Einstein vs. the Quantum Consensus: Einstein rejected not the core of quantum theory, but the excuses for avoiding its realist implications. 🧪 Physics Phenomena Pointing to the Multiverse: Deutsch is about to elaborate on the specific quantum experiments and effects that support the multiverse. 💡 Laser Demo: You can demonstrate the effect at home using a laser and a barrier with two slits, projecting the result. 🔴 One Photon at a Time: Even when firing photons individually, the interference pattern *still* builds up over time, showing it's not due to photons interacting. 🙅♂️ Not What You Expect: This is deeply counterintuitive; the classical view of the world offers no explanation. 🔴 One at a Time: The pattern builds even with single photons, separated by vast distances in time, meaning they can't be interacting with each other. 🖇️ Recombining the Split: Using magnets, they could split, then recombine the atom beams. The recombined atom retains its original 'spin' direction, like it never split at all. 🤝 Early Quantum Computing: Analyzing two interacting spin-based particles shows each is 'aware' of both states of the other, which maps directly onto quantum computing concepts years before they were formalized. 🤫 Bohr's Arbitrary Divide: Bohr said quantum oddities only apply to the microscopic, normal rules to everyday objects, which is both unappealing and contradicts how the math works. 👋 It's What You're Taught: The interviewer confirms this "wavefunction collapse" idea is the common intro to quantum weirdness, making it seem like the only option. 🤯 Not Just Weird, Wrong: Deutsch asserts collapse isn't just hard to grasp, it's fundamentally nonsensical when scrutinized. 🧠 Thought Experiment, Step 1: Your friend observes the particle, putting them in superposition (both 'saw up' and 'saw down' exist until YOU observe). 🔎 Check, but Gently: You could observe your friend in a way that reveals if their consciousness registered ANY result, without learning the result itself. 🤯 Collapse Problem: Under Copenhagen, this 'gentle' observation should still collapse the superposition for your friend, yet they functioned well enough to do the experiment. 📐 Memory Manipulation: The computer then 'forgets' which it saw, but keeps the record that it did indeed see a definite result. 🤔 Conclusion: Since the computer can note the particle's state yet the wave function persists, some event inside a person's brain can't be the magical collapse trigger. 🤔 Listener's Concern: The interviewer connects the dots - if decisions split universes, why focus on this particle experiment? 🔬 It's Not Just the Collapse: Deutsch emphasizes they're testing the Everett view against ANY theory positing only one outcome per experiment exists. 🤔 Trillions of 'Mes'? Not Exactly: While decisions DO split universes, this experiment isn't about that kind of split. It's about whether the particle took one path or was somehow in both. 🪨 It's in the Details: Universes aren't 'splitting' so much as starting identical and then diverging due to some difference in the outcome of a quantum event. 🕸️ Interwoven, Not Isolated: Think of it as one vast space with multiple potential histories entwined, interacting where their paths cross momentarily. 🤔 Terminology Struggle: Words like "universe" and even "branch" don't fully capture the complicated relationship between these potential realities. 🧪 Photon's Journey: In all the relevant ones, the photon heads for the slits, but exists in multiple versions. 📐 Cones of Light: In each 'branch' the photon exits the slits in a slightly spread shape. Each 'cone' is displaced from its counterpart in the other branch. 🌌 Interaction is the Norm: Deutsch stresses these 'copies' are constantly interacting. Usually, those effects cancel out, but in setups like this they become obvious. ⚛️ Not Just Motion: Like the atom going 'up' and 'down' at once, an atom in a solid can be in multiple places simultaneously. This is why it maintains its position. 🧱 Solidity as Proof: This lower energy state is why solids hold their shape, which wouldn't work with only classical forces between atoms. 🚧 Fragile Computations: The big hurdle is any disturbance to the system ruins the intricate multi-universe calculation, either by outright preventing it or making the results useless. 🩹 Error Correction: They're working on ways to fix errors in the quantum computer mid-calculation, but it's incredibly tricky due to the next point... 🔧 Quantum Fix, No Peeking: Error correction in quantum computers can fix the 'odd' computation out, but the process can't reveal to us WHICH one was wrong without collapsing everything. 🪞 Oxygen Splits Too: Now there are multiple 'versions' of the oxygen molecule, entangled with the qubit states, unless... 🩹 Undoing Decoherence: In theory, you could reverse this interaction, but in practice, it's incredibly difficult for complex systems. 🚦 Everyday Multiverse: Our actions mean we 'survive' in some universes and 'die' in others, from car accidents to meteor strikes. ☠️ Quantum Suicide Fallacy: This thought experiment misuses probability. If you set up a death machine based on random chance, there's always a universe where it goes off, you're just selecting for the universe where you were lucky. 🌌 Quantum Theory to the Rescue: The physics of the multiverse, surprisingly, has implications for decision theory (how we choose under uncertainty). ⚖️ ...It Shouldn't Matter: Rigorous analysis shows that knowing about the multiverse should have the SAME effect on your choices as if you lived in one universe where things were simply random. 🚪 Sealed Hotel Thought Experiment: If you're copied, one copy dies, but you're 'trapped' in your branch with no way to find out the outcome, you SHOULD act as if it's a 50/50 chance of dying. 📚 Bostrom's Paper: The interviewer recalls a paper on how the multiverse complicates consequentialism, an ethical theory based on actions resulting in good/bad outcomes. ⚖️ Undermined? If EVERY possibility happens across the multiverse anyway, doesn't this erase the moral impact of what we choose in this universe? ➕ Pleasure Branch Exists: If there's a universe where you cause joy, is there one to 'cancel that out' where you cause equivalent suffering, and vice-versa? 📈 Optimizing the "Expected Good": In a utilitarian view, the goal would then be to maximize good across the multiverse, taking the 'likelihood'/importance of branches into account. ⚖️ Converting Bad to Good: Moral reasoning involves trying to shift 'bad' outcome universes into 'good' ones by our actions. 🌌 Probability Shifts: Where it applies, probability would be calculated across a changing set of branches, with weights shifting due to our choices. 🔮 Marbles Analogy: In the thought experiment with drawing marbles representing doom, he argues the same 'rigging' applies. Each draw changes the odds. 🧮 Not Truly Infinite: If universes weren't truly infinite, that count would be meaningful. He again brings up 'thickness' as a stand-in for probability. 🎲 Randomness as a Model: In situations where the decision process is effectively chaotic, branch 'thickness' may be a reasonable approximation of probability. 🧠 Self-Correcting Values: In the cosmic-ray example, your ingrained values would likely override the 'evil' impulse in most branches, a kind of informal error correction. 💥 Atom Collisions: Deutsch points out the vast number of collisions in something as mundane as the air in a room, each of which splits trajectories. 🤯 Beyond Comprehension: Our minds just don't intuitively grasp numbers like those in the 'universes' calculation, even if we understand them technically. 🌌 Math vs. Feeling: There's a difference between knowing the size of a galaxy, and truly comprehending that vastness on an emotional level. 🧠 Mathematicians Can 'See' It: People like Roger Penrose, through work with geometry, can intuit these shapes even in high dimensions. 🤔 Far Side IS Tricky: The interviewer is struck by how readily we assume we 'see' the whole cube in our mind, when we don't really handle the back faces correctly. 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The multiverse is a fractal; every single subatomic particle in our universe contains an entire universe within it. In turn, our universe is a subatomic particle within a larger universe. "The nature of eality is not only stranger than suppose but stranger than we can suppose" Terrence Mackenna.
I know right...lol...either provide an experiment to at least make the statement hold a little more water, but as you stated, even then...even then...so or now what...can we go there?, can we take a picture of it? If the answer, and most certainly probably is, no...then again...as you say...now what?....great point...I agree completely.
I heard a proposed test of Everett's Quantum Mechanics that could be done, but did not hear Deutsch mention anything about anyone having conducted such a test, yet, Deutsch admits that such a test is needed in order to know whether Everett's view is accurate. There are ways to explain everything else Deutsch mentioned that do not require a multiverse, and from the standpoint of parsimonious assumptions, "It's a MULTIVERSE!" is a gigantic assumption absent sufficient evidence.
Because everything they are discovering is pointing to intelligence in the design. Besides as infinite as the universe is and it's just as infinite in the opposite direction dealing with particles. Way beyond our comprehension. Kinda naive to say there isn't a higher intelligence behind it all
@@NoLefTurnUnStoned. i mean they say they dont believe in God so why do these theories sound so much like religion? nothing said here can be proven..so what does that leave us with? religious talk about some other reality or dimensions or whatever..that sounds religious and in my eyes is hypocritical
A civilisation billions of years more advanced than us would be Gods as far as we are concerned. It would be similar evolutionary gap between us and chimpanzees . Chimpanzees sees us talking on cellphone and they don't have a clue what is going or what we are doing lol so the intelligence that terraformed earth and seeded life are so far beyond our understanding. Sir Francis crick even said life didn't appear on earth by random chance. DNA is biological computer program. If this and this then that.
Incredible as always. If you do get a chance to have David Deutsch on again, it would be even more insightful if you brought Popper's epistemology to the forefront. Your conversation segment on Modern Wisdom around "criticisms" reminded me of it. Criticisms may not be the bad destructive thing we take it to be. At least, can be reframed a bit.
This podcast has helped me to finalize understanding Deutschs amazing book about this subject that came out in the late 90s. A part 2 where Deutsch has time to talk about virtual* particles may shed some light about these interactions happening within these 'branches.' [* A short lived particle in one branch based on the interactions of other particles in other branches.]
If there isn't an experiment proving multiverses, I'm gonna be salty. All we have right now to my knowledge is a, "It's certainly possible." but that doesn't mean we know.
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I'll chuck you a few quid when you finally get Bernardo Kastrup on!
Love the channel, though, keep it up.
I subbed to your Patreon and was patiently awaiting a voicemail back. It never came. That being said. I will sub again because of all the talking heads I see on any given issue, you exude the most reasonableness, fairness, kindness, curiosity, and as much humility as an ambitious human possibly can. I hope that never changes. 🙏
If you are starting from scratch it is worth it to switch to Kofi. Instead of taking a cut of every transaction like paetron you pay a flat 5ish USD to kofi to set up your page and get to keep all the revenue. Cheers
Man, quantum theory arguably being way over the head of your audience and your way of tying the results of this to consequentialism and moral relativism is such a good angle for your viewers. Good fucking job on this.
“Hi Alex. I think you are one of the most free thinking individuals there is out in the RUclips world. If I could have the temerity to suggest an interesting line of thought.
“Each orb is floating around in a void”. How about the multiverse is each one of us? …Einstein relativity to the max. We are each our orb… of consciousness. Now we’re at Buddhism. Floating around in the void of awareness. Now one step further alex if you’re still with me .That multiplicity of awareness is actually an illusion. Or an aspect of the one true reality. Multiplicity appearing from The single Source. Now we’re at non-dualism. .. Hinduism The gods are just handy ways about anthropomorphizing understanding concepts. The big secret Alex to why you’ve never found god out there…is because god isn’t out there…. God is the one doing the looking. And who else is doing the looking? You. That’s the big secret Alex. You’re GOD just playing a big bloody game of peek a boo hide and seek with yourself. When you wake up and say “im hungry”. That “I” is the same “I” as every other creature that has ever lived. That is the universal divine consciousness that pervades all reality.. one self appearing as many. Your tue nature is that divine self. You are the GOD you’re looking for. Been on this path for a long time. It’s way wilder than you have any idea. Eat some mushrooms and materialism vanishes. There is a way deeper truth out there. You’re close. You just happen to be speaking to all the wrong people. Reach out if you find any of these thoughts interesting. I can show you definitive proof that Christianity was all about psychedelic mushrooms. Cheers.
Edit 2 days later..: Boy sure sounds like I’m ranting in what I wrote. Haha. Wasn’t. Just smoked a joint and really wanted to share and spark some interesting convo lol
The worse the haircut the smarter the man
What about no hair?
😂😂😂😂😂 🙏🤣🤣🤣
Grandmagrandad
no need to point it out man, but yeah smart man.
theres a multiverse where he has a cool cut
Came here from the universe where Mr. Deutsch got riled up at the question about copenhagen interpretation, accused Connor of inviting him under false pretenses and stormed off. Good thing Alex was able to discuss that event with his longstanding friend and idol, Peter Hitchens
Yes, a universe in which Peter Hitchens is Alex's longstanding friend and idol would be weird.
However, I think that this universe is weirder: In this universe, Peter Hitchens is the brother of Christopher Hitchens.
@@breadfan7433 thank you. Very funny 😂! I had a tough day and you let me have hearty laugh!
I read David’s book The Fabric of Reality back in the late 90’s/early 00’s. First I ever heard about the multi slit experiment. Awesome to see him here after all these years.
Personally, I'd like to visit the universe where Alex actually interviewed Hitchens on his views and didn't petulantly argue for marijuana legalisation on the basis that other harmful drugs are legal so it would be the right thing to do to add a third. Alas...
@@EilfylijokulI agree. There are far better arguments for the legalisation of marijuana.
@@breadfan7433 none that I can say I've encountered. My point was that he shouldn't have been so stubborn and argumentative when conducting the interview
Might sound odd, but the way this guy is always so articulate while having discussions is almost therapeutic, or at the very least satisfying.
Idk how to explain it either 😂 the English accent helps for sure
That quote atributed to Einstein, where "if you cant explain the topic to a child you dont actually understand the topic", or whatever it was
Agreed
Wait till you read his book. He has organised definition of every key term and uses them fittingly. Brain of a rigorous physicist, my friend.
I just love him
I'm not sure how your videos keep getting better like this. By far the best interview I've heard from him because of how you let him speak and asked questions that don't normally get aired.
You say you’re not sure why you think the videos are getting better, and yet in the very next sentence you explain the reasons why you think the video is better.
@@LordOfThePancakesim changing my name to, Doe Tohlan Wollonclocky the queen of farts and filth
This is one of my favourite episodes so far. I liked how you rearticulated each point in a way that a person without much scientific background could understand it. Super interesting! If I may point out one thing to improve, it would be adding visuals of some kind to support and clarify the content in the more technical parts of the interview. But overall I really enjoyed this episode. Can't wait to see what comes next!
Good idea. Some form of basic visual aid, illustration would enhance the experience immensely, helping lay watchers no end. It need not be expensive animations either. Simple, standard diagrams of the sort we get in text books would be perfect.
Yes I appreciated the help in understanding him.
It was an interesting interview. Thanks for inviting David.
💗💗💗💗 This was the best 90 minutes of media consumption I've made in a while. "Beginning of Infinity" is my favorite book of all time. It is a good explanation of how things are, you might say. Genuinely geeked to watch you two have this conversation, thank you so much for doing this!
Absolutely agree
@@lyoness11k nobody really cares that you agree with somebody else’s comment, be original write your own comment
@LordOfThePancakes I couldn't agree with you more
@LordOfThePancakes
I totally also agree
@@TheFloridaBroLMFAO
loved this! Alex definitely needs to bring him on to talk, philosophy, epistemology, history, progress etc
The fact that Alex ended the interview “optimistically” is so deliciously appropriate
None real care about the multiuniverse... those people just run here because atheim give them lonlyness, coldeness, and desperation... they lost God and so the dignity, that why they run to kiss a godless ass anytime they see it. They are just lier as any Goddenier, and the worst generetion and people we have ever had... We hope in a better generetion and people. Let's forget about this one and trhow into to the trash this empty BS worthelss cult and move on... No resepct fro you Godeless weak alone people. Your cult will be over soon as possible........
I was trying to find some optimism.
In the multiverse, whoever the other people that look like me are, they're not me.
The boundaries of my identity are defined by, and extend to, what I can think and feel. Thoughts and feelings that exist outside of my awareness cannot belong to me and therefore, must belong to other people.
no they will have experience similar to urs then?
@sachin2842 Similar doesn't mean one and the same.
@@StuMas if ur other self has same similar family like parents and also married bt u r not married here means u just havent married her bt u cant marry other
Excellent job redirecting his articulations on this complex topic. Stellar interview 🙏
Alex: the *Cope* nhagen interpreation.
David: nice.
Greatest moment in RUclips history.
timestamp please
@@fallingintofilm 32:30
Noice*
Wow
Hello Alex. For the next time I'd like to suggest incorporating simple graphics to illustrate the experiments the guest describes. I'll admit personally I was getting lost at the photon/silver atom experiments already despite being somewhat familiar with them.
And I do hope there is a next time because any similar topic is very dear to me and I can't wait to see your takes on it.
Yeah, the experiment descriptions totally lost me. I was checked out for the first half of the interview.
Good idea
Google it 😴
I agree.
Took the words right outta my mouth 😅😅😅
The Beginning of Infinity is such a great book! It directly inspired me to go back to school and study computer science. It had a greater impact on me than any other single book. Thanks for another great interview!
I am so glad to see so many people feel the same way I do about "Beginning of Infinity". I have spent my life dedicated to uncovering the best way to understand how things work (why is another question). David's brilliant prose gave us all the best tool thus far in human history to understand the world around us: Good explanations are the standard for anything that is real.
He's an arrogant horror show that supports illegal occupation, colonialism and slaughter. He also believes in the power of capital to solve the world's environmental problems, even though the environment was destroyed by these very same people. His physical theories are complete and utter nonsense and his guru (Hugh Everett) was a suicidal drunk who helped the Pentagon murder people more effectively.
He's never provided a good explanation for anything and his ideas on quantum computing are a fantasy. If ever there was a real life person depicted in cinema - the Mark Rylance character in Dont Look Up is this Deutsch guy.
Same man. It led me to starting my business. I figure someone who looks like me in the multiverse becomes a successful entrepeneur, I might as well dive in.
@@JohnnyComelately-eb5zvUnbelievably bad critique, no actual points made. You have not read the book and I suspect you didn't watch the video either if you think he's bad at explaining. Obviously you won't be taken seriously by those of us who enjoyed the book, so why even comment?
I’ve seen several interviewers tackle deutsch on the multiverse, but this had the most engaging questions. Nicely done!
Here's an analogy. Imagine you saw some water on the road, and hypothesized that it was a puddle. Later you calculated that, given atmospheric conditions, there should be a mirage of water right in that spot. Now you have two interpretations of what you're seeing: it could be a mirage, or it could be a real puddle with a mirage on top. The latter double-explains the observation. The real puddle idea, even though it came first, is now a floating postulate that doesn't explain anything not already explained by everything else. It can be removed without changing what you see.
MWI is the _simplest_ model of QM that agrees with the observations. You can propose hypothetical new physics principles that trim the worlds, but the underlying mathematical scaffolding for producing them will still be there, and since the added principles are motivated by aesthetics rather than observation, there is technically no evidence for them. Also, since they are set up so that there's no way to test whether they are true, they are unfalsifiable as well. You don't need a collapse postulate, for example, because the _appearance_ of collapse is already explained by the wave equation operating on the particles within the observer. Introducing new physics to explain the observation of collapse in a second way is like adding a real puddle on top of that mirage.
This ↑
A lot of people are getting Occam's razor completely wrong, they try to reduce the number of entities, instead of the number of kind of entities, or more generally the size of the theory.
It would be like thinking the universe is more probably some small bubble surrounding our soral system, with some pattern of light on its surface, because it reduces the number of particles.
Anyway, I remember there are better arguments against MWI than these incorrectly applied epistemological principle of unfalsifiability or simplicity.
@@denisbaudouin5979 You can look up Sean Carroll's blog post on why the many worlds formulation is probably correct, to see essentially the argument I'm trying to make, better stated.
@@denisbaudouin5979 Of the bettter arguments against MWI, the preferred basis problem can (maybe) be solved with a definition based in quantum decoherence (I think this is Sean Carroll's method for understanding that problem), and the Born Rule has been derived a few different ways, either from symmetry arguments or using techniques from decision theory (Deutsch and Wallace have a proof).
So Occam's Razor favours MWI?
OMG David Deutsch! Alex you keep getting better and better guests!!!
I know what you mean, and I totally agree, yet I did get a chuckle about how easy that is after that horrendously pathetic Hitchens character!
Yeah, but in order to keep it balanced, he now has to interview Sabine Hossenfelder about it, cos she says no
Or Roger Penrose or someone else on the other side. And if he doesn't interview them, he's totally biased. Lol
I don't like the idea of a better or bigger guest, but if we're going to play that game, David is a poor mans Sean Carroll on his best day.
In my multiverse Dr Deutsch is both the worst and the best guest - he was really bad at explaining things clearly (based on his last book) and the person who finally made the multiverse make sense to me (thanks to this interview)
What I get from Deutsch's views is that existence itself is eternal and infinite, and plays out in infinite manners. Which leads us to the inescapable conclusion that EVERY potential universe not only eventually comes into existence, but does so infinite times. We exist as who we are in infinite universes, and in every possible permutation in other universes. However, unless we can actually connect and examine these other realities, they mean absolutely nothing to us.
“inescapable conclusion” ??? The faith of atheists is stronger than that of Christians!
Entirely baseless metaphysics that is indistinguishable from a religious belief. It isn't scientific whatsoever.
@@Novarcharesk Except for the fact that those realities are conneclable, and have been connected multiple times in countless experiments that are not controversial in the slightest. That's the entire point that Deutch is making here: if you actually ask "what is happening in quantum mechanic experiments?", instead of just using the result in your calculations (which we do, quantum computers are a thing), you can do nothing but accept the multiverse interpretation, because it is the only model that accounts for said result and actually predicts it accurately. What I think @Infideles was discussiong, were the logical implications that this model causes in things like ethics and morality, and they were suggesting that said implications are essentially non-existent, because, for now, the most complicated interacitons between different universes we can cause is limited to a couple of particles. But that deosn't in any way challenge the physical implications that this theory predicts, which do occur, and do influence our daily life because us humans, as with all physical phenomena, are trying to use them to our advantage (again, quantum computers exist), in the same way we've been doing since the day we discovered that fire cooks food.
@@Novarcharesk for now
@@comq01 non-scientific theories don't magically transform into scientific theories with time. They're either falsifiable (in theory) or they're not.
Mind blowing! Thanks Alex for giving us the opportunity to listen to David!
Wow! This is one of the most interesting interviews I've ever listened to! I think I'll have to listen again a few times to understand it all.
You already have an infinitesimal amount of times so don’t bother wasting your time
Such an inspiring conversation. I'm so grateful to have been introduced to these amazing thoughts.
I grabbed a copy of "The Fabric of Reality" back in '98 or '99. Left a weirdly shaped scar that I've carried ever since. So, thanks for this interview. Even as there is no way to heal this scar, at least in our current manifold.
Get his second book, problems are soluble, mental scars heal with knowing
Jesus heals all scars. You just need to trust Him and accept Him into your heart. There is still time, brother.
@@ethan46199 Are you trolling? How can this be a reflection of a real personality? What's going on in your life that you think this is a relevant or sane thing to post?
@ethan46199: Awful trolling. 🤣
@@ReadyPlayerPiano a "real" personality? That's very judgemental of you, and condescending. People believe in Jesus. In fact it's a fundamental part of western civilization, and could be attributed to the wests moral values. The belief in Christ is a personal one, and condemnation doesn't liberate it only oppresses
Damn good stuff. David is the greatest physicist and philosopher of our era. Thanks for diving into the multiverse with him.
None real care about the multiuniverse... those people just run here because atheim give them lonlyness, coldeness, and desperation... they lost God and so the dignity, that why they run to kiss a godless ass anytime they see it. They are just lier as any Goddenier, and the worst generetion and people we have ever had... We hope in a better generetion and people. Let's forget about this one and trhow into to the trash this empty BS worthelss cult and move on... No resepct fro you Godeless weak alone people. Your cult will be over soon as possible............
Yeah.....the issue is when physicists start delving into philosophy rather than science, we end up with "multiverse" theories based on literally no evidence.
@@souran1321 The Many World’s Interpretation is physics, not philosophy.
@@El_Diablo_12 its both
@@billyjoelbeans sure why not
The whole conceptual idea of the multiverse seems to challenge the very definition of the universe itself. By labeling it a "multiverse," we inevitably redefine what we understand the universe to be. If we entertain the notion that what we once perceived as the universe could be just one of many similar or vastly different phenomena, then the very concept of the universe undergoes a profound transformation. It's as if our previous understanding has been overwritten or rendered obsolete by this new conceptual framework of a multiverse.
Even if we were to accept the possibility of a multiverse as true, everything encompassed within this multitude of universes would still essentially constitute the universe. After all, the term "universe" implies the entirety of existence, the all-encompassing whole. So if there exist other universes, we are essentially redefining what our own universe, or our perceived universe, truly is.
This shift in perspective echoes past discoveries in cosmology, where our understanding expanded to recognize that what we once thought were individual stars were actually entire galaxies. In a similar vein, the acceptance of a multiverse challenges us to broaden our understanding of the cosmos.
The term "multiverse" prompts us to reconsider our linguistic and conceptual frameworks. It beckons us to explore the possibility that our universe might be just one facet of a much grander reality. In essence, by embracing the idea of a multiverse, we are forced to reimagine our understanding of the universe, inviting us to contemplate the vastness and complexity of existence beyond our conventional boundaries.
Essentially, it's still a universe. We're just conceptualizing it in a different way.
Are you Danish by any chance?
Jokes aside very poignant comment
Not sure if this image is helpful, but one way of thinking about the branching concept is by picturing a guitar string. Normally, when you look at it, you just see the one string, but when the string is plucked, suddenly you see multiple strings side by side, then eventually, you just see the one string again.
I'd love to hear David Deutsch in conversation with Stephan Wolfram. Wolfram's idea of a computational universe also includes the idea of a branching and re-unifiying set of what he calls rulios, very similar to what DD is speaking about here.
Next time, Alex, have him talk about Constructor Theory.
Excellent guest! ‘Beginning of Infinity’ is one of the most interesting books I have read. I continue to think about the ideas in it to this day.
I can recommend the podcast TOKcast which exists to examine all of David’s ideas in great detail and of course the Deutsch Files by Naval.
Great tip, thanks
None real care about the multiuniverse... those people just run here because atheim give them lonlyness, coldeness, and desperation... they lost God and so the dignity, that why they run to kiss a godless ass anytime they see it. They are just lier as any Goddenier, and the worst generetion and people we have ever had... We hope in a better generetion and people. Let's forget about this one and trhow into to the trash this empty BS worthelss cult and move on... No resepct fro you Godeless weak alone people. Your cult will be over soon as possible...........
It's crazy seeing you interview someone I only knew as an important name in a quantum information textbook from my bsc.
You never mentioned you had a back.
Please bring him back on to discuss epistemology. This is his and your most interesting and overlapping expertise imo
A video all about epistemology would be _interesting_ but probably the least popular Alex O'Connor video ever in terms of views. Most people wouldn't even understand what the subject of the video was, before they even got to its actual content.
@@omp199Why? Whats so difficult about epistemology?
@@crue-xx I didn't say it was difficult. I said that most people wouldn't understand what it was.
Of course, I haven't tested that claim. But imagine going out into the street and stopping a hundred people completely at random and asking each one what "epistemology" was. How many of those hundred people do you think would be able to tell you?
@@omp199sure, it might not be most popular, but it would perhaps be most important. And that importance may become popular later, especially when epistemology is at the heart of much of the world’s conflicts and the masses are just catching up in understanding that
Nicely put. It would be a great conversation to apply further rigour to David’s ideas
David Deutsch is a wonderful person and what he talks about makes logical sense. Time and locality are non linear, non finite and completely flexible. Things are in permanent quantum interaction. The ghosts in the Hadron Collider forming themselves into lava lamp type of formations show us in an actual experiment how the ether is in permanent interaction, motion and expression. Thoughts emit that type of energy.
What ghosts lol
Really enjoyed this talk, hope Alex does more of this sort of content. Always found the double slit experiment fascinating.
Love David's genuine effort in trying to explain these very complicated things in simple terms
They're not very complicated, the multiverse theory has no evidence behind it. It's largely regarded as junk science as it's a "theory of anything" claim. The ONLY thing they have is theoretical math
Very interesting but I would love a discussion where someone pushes against him a bit. I wonder if he is so sure of the interpretation because he is taking some metaphysical assumptions for granted.
Atheists making metaphysical assumptions?!... Noooooo
What @@crushtheserpent
Lol 😆 scientists believe in this stuff vr reality all sorts of weird theories but can't seem to contemplate God or demons... what's up with that
@@mrmr-qx4jq most scientists dont believe in a multiverse, though some do. Most scientists dont believe in god, though some do. There is no contradiction here
@smilloww209he'll. Speakin in general obviously. show me a scientist that is being interviewed that speaks of god as true I'm not aware of a famous one besides like Einstein. They only interview these type of fellows. So all the atheists I know believe in these ridiculous theories. An they wanna smoke dmt 😂 I've spoken to a demon or a evil spirit so it's pretty clear to me that it's a good chance of heaven and hell. no dmt was needed.
Was not expecting you to have David Deutsch on... Perfect, thanks
Thanks for a great conversation, gentlemen.
very interesting thank you Alex... i like how thoughtful and deliberate David is with the words he chooses in talking about a cutting edge of science. also like how the same is true of you Alex in the questions and observations you bring to the interaction
Complicated but utterly fascinating 😊
Not complicated, just science fiction masquerading as actual science so it only sounds complicated because it's complete nonsense.
I'm no expert but I think Multiverse and Many World's, which are different, seem to be being used interchangeably. Which is slightly confusing.
Many worlds is more accurate because it comes from Everett I think.
The entire natural language as a medium of communication is confusing because of lots of short comings of the medium.
@@adamfilmmaker lmfao 150 iq joke
It's all in false BS used to sell books to people who aren't smart enough to challenge the ideas.
Futurama is based on the concept of a real microverse within our universe... hilarious... they are way advanced than we are. I was reading many worlds approach it's a objective philosophy in modern philosophy of the mind, they don't like it. It's awfully unprofessional.
for a person opposed to the views of David Deutsch while still advocating for a view that is even more unpopular than many worlds (Bohmian mechanics) you should invite Tim Maudlin, he is without a doubt the clearest thinker when it comes to quantum physics, and he in my opinion absolutely demolished the many worlds theory in his writing, while making a strong case for Bohmian Mechanics and other theories like GRW.
I recently saw an episode of "PBS Space Time", explaining the point of view that Pilot Wave Theory is merely "Many Worlds in disguise". Under Pilot Wave Theory, the wavefunction still doesn't collapse, which means it would naturally produce the multiverse in itself, no matter what the corpuscles do.
@@СергейМакеев-ж2н that's cuz many worlds theorists are arrogant and claim monopoly on all non-collapse theories, declaring they all produce a multiverse. But similarly Pilot Wave Theory could just declare that all many worlds theories naturally produce pilot waves.
I agree, this video needs the other side. What Deutsch is proposing here, in my opinion, is not even close to dinosaurs and fossils. We can touch fossils, the "not-answer" for the collapse of the wave-function cannot, by definition, be seen. This is why it is an interpretation --> it is not science, it is not measurable.
It is very easy to explain the difficulty. A particle in quantum mechanics has a 50% of being spin up and a 50% chance of being spin down. The measurement is taken, it is spin up. People, like Deutsch, assume that this cannot be "a roll of the dice". The reason it has chosen spin up is because in another universe it is spin-down. This is, in a weird sense, determinism. Both answers (spin up and spin down) exist if you include plural universes. But this is an interpretation, all we can verify is what happened in our universe. We can assume nothing about things outside our universe.
Alternate opinions, that Deutsch briefly discussed, call quantum mechanics an "effective theory", thus it does not need to have real philosophical implications. Also, more importantly, there is no need to justify the non-chosen answer (the spin-down). Why does Deutsch (and others) feel the need to explain what happens to the non-chosen result? There may never be a good reason for why the wave-function collapses as it does.
Deutsch is a brilliant person but he knows that the evidence for multiverses is not the same as fossils. Our science speaks only to our own universe and not other universes.
david is typical physicalist psychosis.
maudlin is coherent and highly rational.
@@stephenweppner7433
The multiverse conclusion is still less crazy than the idea that the waveform collapses because ... uh.. particles get observed, or sumthin'. Deutsch is right in pointing out that it makes no sense whatsoever. It is way more logical that the wavefuction simply _always_ describes _all_ of reality. No collapse needed.
Consciousness is hardly mentioned. Can’t have ANY of this without awareness of, experience of. As Max Planck stated: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Exactly; I was waiting for this to come up
@@AG-vw9vmsure you were, leech
I'm woefully under qualified to evaluate either interpretation, and I fail to see how consciousness is relevant to any of it, could you explain?
@@DenysBuryi Well, there’s the famous “Double Slit” experiment. With its “Observer” effect. There are numerous videos on RUclips explaining this experiment in detail. Check out the “ Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics. Take a look at some of the work of Dr. Donald Hoffman and Dr. Robert Lanza
The universe was around long before consciousness and will be long after. It’s completely irrelevant. It doesn’t have to be observed by a conscious being to exist.
I’m only halfway through so far. But as with all good podcasts where I wish I was there to ask questions, I have a burning thing I hope you are going to ask:
Physics at its heart is about creating models that describe what we encounter. For example Hooke’s law is very useful at describing the behavior of springs in some normal cases. We don’t stop there, but equally it’s not necessary for us to know the underlying cause for the model to be useful. Hooke doesn’t need to know why springs behave that way, he describes what is and that it shows predictive power.
Physics then goes on to look for underlying reasons that cause these models we have to be the way they are. For example we modeled electricity and magnetism and then found a model which explained them both.
But in order for us to take on the entailments of an underlying cause it has to have some predictive power before we can do that.
We don’t just say “electricity and magnetism are be two facets of the same thing” we say “electricity and magnetism are two facets of the same thing *because this phenomena can only happen because that is true*”
So in order to go from “quantum behavior is like this because that’s the way it is and there’s nothing below it” to “quantum behavior is like that because underneath it there are many alternate universes” we don’t just need something that fits the data, we need something that must be true to fit some new data.
Does he have that? Because without that physics in general won’t accept it as anything other than a hypothetical maybe. And since it has more entailments that the prevailing theory it should be rejected as less likely.
The simplest explanation of the double slit experiment is that our current methods of measurement must be having some effect on the OUTCOME of the MEASUREMENT itself, NOT that there *must* be an invisible other world(s) in which the measurements were different. Any explanation not rooted in the rational and measurable world is spiritual speculation, not science. Folks have the right to believe in whatever they want, but you can’t claim your views are authoritative if they aren’t.
Correct, I 100% agree with you.
Consciousness causes the effect. We are entangled as the observer with the quantum system. Decoherence then occurs and we observe a single material outcome
How can you explain Shor’s algorithm then?
1) Simplest does not imply ‘more likely.’ Occam’s Razor is not a scientific explanation of anything.
2) The Mach-Zehdner Interferometer is a testable experiment, a crucial experiment, of the highest scientific standards with measurable results. It is unpredictable in that you don’t know what path the photon takes, but predictable in that it always strikes the end mirror. It is measurable and repeatable.
3) David is not spiritually speculating when he wrote the “Deutsch-Turing Conjecture” - every physically realizable process can be simulated by a universal quantum computer - but rather merging the field of computation as a branch of physics.
4) David is a fallibilist. Justified true belief is not what knowledge creation or scientific explanation is about. There is a possibility that the Everett interpretation is incorrect. Scientists expect to make errors in order to rule out false theories. And instead of the term “theories”, the term “misconceptions” would be more appropriate, as error-correction is how science makes progress…not be believing in theories.
5) David never claims his views are authoritative - it shows you are probably hearing or reading David Deutsch for the first time. Knowledge is not authoritative.
His book “The Beginning of Infinity” is worth the read.
Yes. The simplest explanation is to just _accept quantum mechanics._ For some reason many physicists are scared of its implications so they try to mathematically modify the theory to make it more desirable. MWI adds extra complexity by trying to invent some sort of underlying mathematical story to explain the origin of the Born rule. It is like adding angels that press down on spacetime to curve it to general relativity. Since there is no evidence of such a thing, it is impossible for there to be agreement. There are an enormous numbers of different mathematical stories MWI proponents have added to quantum mechanics to try and derive the Born rule from and no possibility of ever deciding between any of them.
David, I imagine you have been an instructor and teacher of many because you have such great teaching skills. I am not very far educated in physics, (and probably won't ever be, because I'm 76 ), but even I could understand very much farther into this this and the many other thoughts involved. I really enjoyed this exciting conversation.
One of my favorite living minds. Thank you
What about the rest of us. Seems a bit insulting
😂@@LordOfThePancakes
@@LordOfThePancakes 😂😂😂
That awkward “Hi” at the beginning, almost had Alex.
People need to get the definitions correct. The multiverse theory suggests that there are multiple universes existing simultaneously, each potentially with its own laws of physics, constants, and even different histories. This concept arises from various branches of theoretical physics, including string theory and cosmology.
On the other hand, the Many Worlds Interpretation is not reality, it is just an interpretation of quantum mechanics. As Sean Caroll states, it is just a mathematical convenience, proposed in quantum mechanics, suggests that every quantum event that could have multiple outcomes actually results in all possible outcomes occurring, each in its own separate "branch" of reality. This means that every possible outcome of a quantum event actually happens, but in a different universe.
It would help if you tried to get Sabine Hossenfelder to the podcast. Her outlook is very different. This would make a nice counterbalance.
She makes much more sense tbh
42:50 Suddenly I'm (relieved) getting that the multiverse is not as we imagine it to be ie. loads of different universes like in Dr. Strange and the multiverse of madness, but rather that this universe includes loads of mini-universes that arise and propagate and finally integrate with reality - this universe is a multiverse.
That’s one idea.
The other is that our system that compromises all space, time, matter, laws or physics etc… is simply 1 system in a larger meta system of many universes.
String theory has a unique twist on it.
But most of these if not all are not functional and are a philosophy which can help elaborate an explanation for current scientific consensus, and not in and of themselves actually true science
except there's zero evidence for these theories. None.
Why not just an infinite universe? How are they defining a universe?
Why not just an infinite universe? How are they defining a universe?
@@stompthedragon4010 Infinite universe usually refers to size - here we are referring to different occurences of the same circumstances that affect the universe that we can observe.
This was amazing. Thank you! Grad Student here. I'm actually learning about Deutsch's algorithm in Quantum Computing right now. This was such a cool interview for me specifically.
Do you have documentation that shows proof of a degree? Otherwise anyone can just say that, no offense m8
This is the best discussion on point, or "particle," as it were, I've heard, rather "observed," likewise. And, thank you, both!
Two things are paramount in a theory. Falsifiability and utility. He did not tell us (he was not asked) to say which experiment would make his theory false. And he did not tell us what unexplainable phenomenon his theory does explain, or maybe it is merely that it makes calculations easier on some known phenomenon. Whatever utility it has, he did not say.
Great interview Alex. Sorry to hear you lost you Patreon.
I have no idea what’s going on but Alex’s videos always help me go to sleep easier. Not that they are boring or anything, just soothing.
I’m the same. It’s odd that something incredibly complicated can feel soothing and soporific same time. If I can absorb this stuff via dream state osmosis, one morning I’ll wake up a genius!
I too believe that AI had potential upsides beyond our current comprehension. But the downsides are even more severe. I'm so glad I made it into my late 30s before this came into existence.
I had a vision once, that our space-time emerged from a two dimensional infinite plane, like the film of a soap bubble, which contained all the fields (electro-magnetic, gravitational, etc.) and which suddenly folded like a complex piece of origami to produce the third dimension. This video leads me to imagine our reality is on one side of the film, while the other universe is on the other side of the film, always closer than a planck length away, yet never within reach. Fascinating stuff, really!
The folding origami may be caused by the existence of the interaction between quarks (3 in each proton and neutron - one for each dimension) rotating and revolving in order to create the strong nuclear force - wrapping two dimensional energy into a three dimensional material, and in the process creating time as a result of the now curved fabric of space? Just a thought
This is the good stuff. Great guest. I'm unsure of whether I'm more convinced by the multiverse explantion for quantum phenomena or the more standard wave function version. I think still the wave function idea, but either way I'm absolutely fine with being unsure.
One thing is for sure, and this blows my mind: there is absolutely, 100% some really insane sh** going on in reality. Like, whatever the true nature of things, it's definitely really, really, REALLY weird. I love how certain we can be of that. It blows my mind, in a good way.
Would like to listen more of David's lecture. 🥰
I’m SO GLAD this ridiculous interpretation of the double slit experiment is getting widely debunked. Professor Dave debunked it as well. You may want to have him on SINGULARLY to address the incorrect teaching of the double slit experiment.
Just maximize the number of universes where you do good, and minimize the number of universes where you do bad. It's the same logic as with one universe.
Maybe I’m just stupid. But, what is a universe? How is it defined?
Yes, any multiverse is the same universe and there is only one universe.
Roughly, a classical universe -- one which obeys classical mechanics.
@@benjamindees no, study the word: universe.
I dont know
@@Braun09tvyou're answering a definition question with "yes?"
My headcannon is that when the probability of an outcome is being "calculated" its not actually happening and only the outcome actually happens so only one universe actually exist and there isn't an evil you in some alternate universe at all.
So we aint even really talking about universes or lines or what ever , we just looking into probability's of the mechanic's that make up the underlying processes that create reality as we experience it.
Or the universe could simulate every single possibility at the same time and you’re only experiencing one.
I really appreciate this guy trying to explain this extraordinary stuff to us mere mortals in a way that we can attempt to understand. We can see him straining at the leash to try to speak on his own terms, but he consistently (and clearly quite frustratingly) keeps himself in check. It's like watching a formula one car trying to drive through London traffic.
I'm so glad you got David Deutsch on your podcast. His work is absolutely fascinating!
i think it is a bit too strong to say that this is the only possible view, that is the proper many worlds picture. in my kind of view, what happens is that you only coexist with one version of the experimental setup to which the specific outcomes you see belong, and the reason we do not predict the outcomes for each detection from the wave-function, is because the description in terms of the wave-function is an average over possible configurations. this is still a viable view to hold, and i just want to make that clear, it is not mandatory or exclusively sensible to take the many worlds position with respect to the origin of outcomes. although as i outlined in my earlier comment, it is in some ways plausible that this view also has some partial equivalence with many world, with the exception that the substructure lost in the averaging process that leads to the wave function descriptions are still there in the multiverse of almost identical experiments belonging to the ensemble or statistical interpretation of the underlying physics of quantum mechanics. by interpretation i simply mean, that i prefer to think of the theory as a theory of dynamical averages, and the theory that describes the states summed over to get the wave function is not about interpretation at all, it is just a normal physical theory. the issue with interpretations of quantum mechanics is the gap between instrumentalism and ontology, what you want is the say "i think quantum mechanics says this about dynamics and outcomes, and i think this is the proper theory of the origin of those dynamics and outcomes", that is a good version of interpretation, it is akin to interpreting Newtonian mechanics as hinting at a broader theory such as general relativity or its own successor theories, the goal is to improve the theory and to arrive at a new theory that quantum mechanics can be derived from, in a purely instrumentalist sense, the distributions of quantum mechanics speak for themselves, they are clear about what to expect in an experiment once you consider the born rule, which is simply a rule that says that a detector can go of with a probability related to the intensity of the amplitudes, it is not so important what the detail of that rule is, it is basically the square of the magnitude of the amplitudes summed up at any point in space roughly speaking.
the point of writing these comments is basically because i thought David went a little to hard on the inevitability of many worlds, or that parallel worlds are the only viable or consistent explanations, i don't think so, the virtue of many worlds is essentially the same as with the statistical view, it is that the origins of the information in the outcomes are clear, although personally i think you have to have a description of the processes summed over in a distribution, for the distribution to be well defined, outcomes are all well and good in themselves, but they can't explain the structure of their own origin. that is my opinion anyway, it is always fun to disagree with David, so i hope neither of you feel offended by my disagreeing.
What Dr Deutsch leaves out is that the Many Worlds Interpretation has already been debunked. Quantum mechanics assumes the Born rule as an axiom when you interact with a particle, if you throw out the nonlinear "jump" when you interact with the system, you necessarily throw out the Born rule as well. Aurélien Drezet published a proof in his paper _"Collapse of the many-worlds interpretation: Why Everett's theory is typically wrong"_ showing that it is impossible consistently recover the Born rule within MWI. We now also have two no-go theorems which show that all psi-ontic interpretations of quantum mechanics must violate the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics, see Tung Ten Yong's paper _"A no-go theorem for Quantum theory ontological models"_ and Robert Spekkens' et all paper _"Einstein, incompleteness, and the epistemic view of quantum states"_ where the later proves that all psi-ontic interpretations inherently imply nonlocality. Aurélien Drezet wrote an additional proof showing that any consistent attempt to recover the Born rule in MWI must necessarily violate nonlocality in his paper _"An Elementary Proof That Everett's Quantum Multiverse Is Nonlocal: Bell-Locality and Branch-Symmetry in the Many-Worlds Interpretation."_ The fact is MWI is debunked but sci-fi loving academics pretend otherwise.
What Dr Deutsch leaves out is that the Many Worlds Interpretation has already been shown to be false. Quantum mechanics assumes the Born rule as an axiom when you interact with a particle, if you throw out the nonlinear "jump" when you interact with the system, you necessarily throw out the Born rule as well. Aurélien Drezet published a proof in his paper "Collapse of the many-worlds interpretation: Why Everett's theory is typically wrong" showing that it is impossible consistently recover the Born rule within MWI. We now also have two no-go theorems which show that all psi-ontic interpretations of quantum mechanics must violate the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics, see Tung Ten Yong's paper "A no-go theorem for Quantum theory ontological models" and Robert Spekkens' et all paper "Einstein, incompleteness, and the epistemic view of quantum states" where the later proves that all psi-ontic interpretations inherently imply nonlocality. Aurélien Drezet wrote an additional proof showing that any consistent attempt to recover the Born rule in MWI must necessarily violate nonlocality in his paper "An Elementary Proof That Everett's Quantum Multiverse Is Nonlocal: Bell-Locality and Branch-Symmetry in the Many-Worlds Interpretation."
So, the multiverse does exist but it's not as cool or as interesting as we thought.
This is just a theory of his thon
This has helped my understand the multiverse a little more thank you. I hope you have move physicists on, although its not your field you are smart enough to ask the right questions to get a better understanding & that works well for all of us.
… so, why do we sometimes see “blips“ BETWEEN the main line of interference patterns in the double slit experiment? Why do most photons arrive according to the double slit idea, but sometimes there is a blip in between the stripes? And why is it so blurry?
There is a universe where I completely understood this.
Me too😅😅
Fascinating interview. Cleared up some misconceptions I had about the branching nature of reality.
I found the discussion at the end regarding the brains ability to create abstract geometric models that can be manipulated mentally to be extremely important. I dont know the exact term for it but it sounds like a type of rationalist idealism. Seems like what Tesla was describing when he explained how he constructed his inventions in his mind and was able to work things out before actually constructing the device.
I want more information on this.
Something like a visual mind?
@cunnylicious well the way David describes it, visual mind doesn't seem to express the full nature of it. Having a visual mind indicates being able to "see" an image of a cube in your minds eye in the same way you see a physical cube sitting on a table or something. But David is talking about being able to perceive or "grok" the totality of the cube in a holistic way in the minds eye that transcends its physical manifestation in reality. Having no trouble perceiving the backward facing surfaces that don't appear visually in any single view in 3 dimensions, for example.
@@angryDAnerd To me that sounds a lot like the way architects conceive their buildings before they are drawn up and built.
@@angryDAnerd I'm not sure what it is you want to know exactly.. some people have innate intuition or instinct or wisdom. Most don't
The photon sit experiment is the most mind blowing thing I've ever seen in my life.. and I am an astral projection practitioner. It is just crazy.
Wtf..lol...have u ever really astro projected?
This a great fellow! Thanks for interview.
Brilliant discussion and extremely helpful-thanks!
His interpretation of evidence for the existence of a Multiverse is severely lacking. Based on what he is proposing, it would be a large leap to arrive at the conclusion that there is a Multiverse.
It's interesting how some people are hyper critical and skeptical of a God hypothesis, do not apply that same scrutiny to a multiverse hypothesis.
@@BradHoytMusic Some people? God has no evidence for existence, not a shred. There’s evidence for the rest.
David Deutsch is severely lacking? Thanks for the good belly laugh. But seriously, can you explain how in more detail?
@@JackMyersPhotography I make no claim regarding the evidence for God and there's not a shred of evidence for the multiverse. Only conjecture.
@@JackMyersPhotography if you were well versed in physics and quantum mechanics you would not be belly laughing but instead recognizing obscurantism and philosophical ideas being stated as if they were concrete evidence for multiverse existence. Slow the video to .5 speed and rewatch. Then check his statements against published and accepted scientific literature. It’s nonsensical.
I haven't finished the video yet but I will soon. I just wanted to dispel some misinformation at the beginning of this video.
The many worlds hypothesis is an interpretation of some quantum phenomena, but unlike how it's stated in the video, it is NOT the only explanation and doesn't have near the same amount of support that fossil evidence does.
Archeology, especially fossil archeology supports its evidence through multiple venues, this allowing multiple venues for falsification in case a production is made without enough evidence. The many worlds hypothesis does not take the same precautions, which means that in its essence as of our current understanding, it is unfalsifiable. We know how fossils form, where they form, and what it means when they form in certain ways. We do not know nearly as much about anything pertaining to the possibility of other worlds, much less a multiverse. It is not yet known if this hypothesis can even be tested, though scientists all around the world are certainly working in hopes of finding a way.
As of right now, the many worlds hypothesis, hints its title, is in the hypothesis stage of the scientific process. This means that a phenomenon has been observed, and due to everything we know about the phenomenon and the field of evidence we have, we have made a prediction. Where this video has fallen short so far is the fact that we have made many predictions for why the phenomenon occurs, and a multiverse is simply the most eye catching one. There are other well supported hypotheses such as waves of causality that work like the gravitational waves we can now observe, or perhaps some sort of nested preference in the world similar to the principle of least action that determines the outcomes of our tests. The problem I have with this video so far, is that David does not seem to see any other hypotheses with the same validity even though they are all supported by similar amounts of evidence, which unfortunately leads me to believe that he is cought up in the hype just like string theory was back in the day, before it was made testably implausible.
EDIT: This doesn't mean it will go the way of string theory, but we really just don't know which way it'll go. Thus it's irresponsible to make such sweeping claims about it, especially since the hypothesis is being used to promote scams and pseudoscience which create misinformation and cause societal distrust of science which as all sorts of ill effects from people not taking vaccines or wearing masks to people still believing the earth is flat despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary just because they "don't trust science".
Lol you think the world 🌎 is round 😅
@@maxhammer4067 🤣
Agree with you, and when such a huge blunder of false equivalence is made, that makes me highly skeptical of what comes next.
Quantum theory states that things exist in multiple (classically incompatible) different versions at the same time. That is what's called "many worlds". It's quantum theory, not a "hypothesis" or an "interpretation". Some people try to do away with the other worlds naturally present in the mathematical description, by postulating ad hoc processes that are equivalent to wave function collapse, but by occam's razor these competing theories should not be taken seriously.
So quantum theory is a theory where everything exists in multiple versions. Due to the wealth of experimental evidence for quantum theory in the microscopic world, nobody can deny that microscopic objects definitely exist in multiple versions at the same time. (The best they can do is call these microscopic objects "waves" instead of "particles", but the end result - a multiplicity of versions - is the same.) Only way to escape the reality of multiple versions is to deny the existence of objective reality altogether, and indeed many take that path.
For macroscopic objects the situation is a bit different as it's much harder to gain experimental evidence of quantum theory in the macroscopic realm. So one can still deny the existence of a multiplicity of versions of macroscopic objects, but then one ends up in a single-version rival to quantum theory, with necessary additional processes that would lead to the termination of all the other versions of macroscopic objects - or in other words something like wave function collapse.
Such a theory is different from quantum theory, and it can be put to an experimental test against quantum theory, as David outlines in the video. But until there is no evidence for any additional processes like that, occam's razor decides the question in favor of quantum theory, and the necessary implication of a multiplicity of coexisting versions of everything.
Do we have any hard evidence for the multiverse?
The evidence is discussed right here in this very video.
@@omp199Math that hints at the possibility is not hard evidence. Data from experiments that is reproducible is hard evidence.
No!
Nope!
@@omp199Math that hints at the possibility is not hard evidence. Data from experiments that is reproducible is hard evidence.
Congratulations- this is very good. I commend your interview technique.
Alex! I'm smart, but not this smart! I can follow enough for this to be interesting. And it is amazing how much you understand. You can ask amazing questions!
I really like David.
I found him a bit incoherent.
Even if I am too stupid , i have came across better explanations by far.
when it comes to the double slit experiment i don't quite agree, but for the reasons of distinction i outlined in my first comment. basically there are two ways to think about it, either you think of amplitudes propagating corresponding to many version of the photons that interfere, in which case there is a case to be made for parallel worlds, although i do not agree with this view and is perhaps not the best person to ask to defend it, or you can view the amplitudes as heuristic, and not describing particles at all, in which case you have to view the particle nature of light as simply what happens at detectors exposed to light, this second view in this form with no detail, belongs to every possible description or intepretation of what the wavefunction is representing, that is at the detectors, we always see incriments of energy ariving, these are the single photons, not viewed as particles that travel through space or that make up light, but that simply is the impulses of energy at the detectors. the fact that the light arrives in these lumps of energy at a single photo multiplier, in one piece is invariant to all versions of explainations of the experiment, it is these basic impusles of light that result from interference in the amplitudes making up the wavefunction, in simple cases you can view the wavefunction as pretty much just a normal wave in space and the amplitudes are like normal amplitudes of waves, in more complicated cases it works the same for small parts of the amplitudes at a time, but they add together into very complicated arrangements of waves that result in intensities of amplitude over time at any given detector, this is difficult to imagine properly, but the key is to think about a single detector and imagine it being exposed to some sinusoidal wave or something like that, the intensity of the wave gives you a probability of absorption in a given time period, these waves can interfere like water waves more or less, but they are higher dimensional generally than regular water waves.
the view i would argue for when it comes to light is that in simple cases where the waves are more of less just coherent waves traveling in space, is that the light is actuall waves, not particles that travel through both slits, then they interfere such that when they hit a detector such that the waves from one slit and the other slit cancel out there is no detections there, and when they arrive in such a timing that they add together instead of canceling the detection rate is higher there. like the internsity of normal waves. this is essentially like classical wave theory, except that the detection can only come in lumps, this is a very complicated kind of dynamic to create consistently while keeping the light in the form of a real physical wave in space, especially for complicated situations, luckily quantum mechanics is linear, and so solutions add, which makes it easier, at least for light. the difference in this view is that you need to think of light not as particles at all, but as waves, all the time, even at detection, but when the light hits the photo-multipliers they must be absorbed in chunks that correspond to the wavelength, which complicated the dynamics a lot. this is still a perfectly good view to maintain, and it has no need for parallel worlds to explain itself, other than in the sense i outlined a bit in my previous comments on the three approaches to quantum mechanics. this sort of view is a statistical view where the spesific outcomes of which photo multiplier that goes of and so on, are down to extra variables not described directly by the quantum mechanical description in terms of wavefunctions, and it has to therefor justify itself by providing a rigorous and realistic account of what these variables are and how they work, this has sort of been done with pilot wave theory, but it is a rather incomplete version of the same thing, encoding the bundle of trajectories according to the wavefunction in some smooth distribution of initial positions of particles that are guided by the wave function, it is not surprising that a guiding equation can exist, beacuse the wavefunction is a distribution of outcomes, where the likley outcomes are the ones with the highest intensity, you simply have to make the particles land according to the distributions given by the interfering amplitude to get the right distribution, the proceedure is rather circular with pilotwave theory in my opinion, but it is essentially onto the right idea as well, also in my opinion:P. I don't agree with David on everything, but i respect him, he is a smart guy, and an honest broker, and if i thought the statistical view of what quantum mechanics is was impossible i would probably agree a whole lot more with him. in the end i think the wavefunctions give the distributions and interactions no hidden by them, of the underlying physical states which are more complicated and that has a more complete description in which the wavefunctions are averages over many possible microstates of the system of an experiement, in that i think we agree in a way, but in opposite directions, many worlds sort of does what pilot wave theory does but the other way around, it takes the outcomes seriously, that is without considering what kind of states the amplitudes describe distributions of it takes all the possible outcomes as all being real, not all being real in some sense and one of them actually unfolding in a single experiment, but all of them being real all the time, and only one of the outcomes being observable at a time through detections. ultimately i think a more rigorous version of what pilot wave theory is attempting is true, my opinion ofc, but to my mind there has to be states over which a distribution can be put together, and each of those must be a single physical situation that can happen in an experiment. if we think of this in our dice throwing analogy, we can say that many worlds is like all possible dice throws happing at once and you observing a single outcome, and my way is more like not knowing which dice throw is occouring exactly and so you have to sum in a weighted way over all the possible throws, with all the possible bounces and twists and turns of the dice before it lands, such that the distribution of outcomes comes out right, it is perfectly obvious both that the outcomes of each dice throw can be predetermined and that the distribution that is appropriate considers all the possible dice throws when you think of it this way, but i do not think that considering all the possible dice throws as happing at once adds anything spesific, it seems like an unnecessary complication conceptually, at least to me, there is nothing wrong with the view that everything is really happening at once and there are observers corresponding to all the observed outcomes, but then i wonder about the origin of the probabilities, what does it mean to have a fair dice if the processes summed over have no content except the outcomes? enjoyed the conversation, David is a guy it is fun to disagree with, and i agree with him on a lot of points as well, so it isn't as frustrating to be obsessive about detail in his case as when i disagree with most other people.. :P
If you can't express whatever that is in feweR words it shall be ignored
@@MT-ln8xb you dont have to be a professor to know that accepting something as true based on WHO said it is fallacious
@@MT-ln8xb I would discourage intellectual gate keeping like that. There are people with his qualifications who reject what he says entirely and there are people with none that agree with him (myself being the latter). So his qualifications are not an indication that he is correct or that his opinion is worth more as a result. Credentials may add assurances that someone knows what they are talking about ideas really need to be explored and scrutinised for themselves, rather than based on who is expressing them.
@@MT-ln8xb well, you will be commiting a fallacy, most people are comfortable doing that
@@MT-ln8xb oh heck, a technical defence, how irredeemably cunty 😁
Comparing multiverse to evolution is very misleading hmmmm
Why?
Any day I get a chance to listen to David Deutsch is a good day. Thanks Alex.
Great questions, Alex!
This is bonkers
a little culture of physicists almost sounds like a religion
Better to think of it as a subculture; a small collection of people who within that specific group get to think about/act on ideas which they normally wouldn't in the larger culture of society as a whole. This isn't an uncommon phenomenon: most professions (think dentists, doctors, plumbers etc.) have professional comnunities that differ from that of the average culture.
Where's the physicists magical deity? 😮
And it is! Most modern scientists (of the 20th and 21st century) are in fact high priests of the "religion" of scientism. It's not science anymore, it's the religion of scientism. And nobody dare question their dogmas and high authority on the modern world. Sounds like more than a religion actually... more like a total cult 😏
There were so many ads. Sorry, but I could not enjoy it in peace and can not afford youtube premium.
Get youtube revanced
@kwame9053 It's OK by now, I realise now that I, myself, in another multiverse, have already paid for youtube premium and enjoyed this video without ads, as I won the lottery. It's probably most likely something like that, so I'll continue my life in this universe. ✌🏻🧘🏻♂️ 👌🏻
It won't be too hard to afford RUclips premium if you focus a little
@@xmathmanx I like ads. And Turtles.
RUclips premium is so cheap though…
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
🪨 Philosophical Wordplay: Some downplay the multiverse as 'just an interpretation', much like creationists do with evolution, minimizing the strength of the evidence.
🧪 Tight Connection: The link between quantum theory phenomena and the multiverse is extremely strong, not loose speculation.
🧫 Sociology, Not Science: Resistance to the multiverse is likely a sociological phenomenon within the 20th-century physics community, not rooted in scientific arguments.
🤫 Anti-Realism: Efforts to suppress 'why' questions about quantum mechanics, framing it as only about what we can see, stifled deeper understanding.
🎓 Generational Impact: Early leaders in quantum theory potentially trained their students to avoid thinking about certain foundational issues.
💔 Einstein vs. the Quantum Consensus: Einstein rejected not the core of quantum theory, but the excuses for avoiding its realist implications.
🧪 Physics Phenomena Pointing to the Multiverse: Deutsch is about to elaborate on the specific quantum experiments and effects that support the multiverse.
💡 Laser Demo: You can demonstrate the effect at home using a laser and a barrier with two slits, projecting the result.
🔴 One Photon at a Time: Even when firing photons individually, the interference pattern *still* builds up over time, showing it's not due to photons interacting.
🙅♂️ Not What You Expect: This is deeply counterintuitive; the classical view of the world offers no explanation.
🔴 One at a Time: The pattern builds even with single photons, separated by vast distances in time, meaning they can't be interacting with each other.
🖇️ Recombining the Split: Using magnets, they could split, then recombine the atom beams. The recombined atom retains its original 'spin' direction, like it never split at all.
🤝 Early Quantum Computing: Analyzing two interacting spin-based particles shows each is 'aware' of both states of the other, which maps directly onto quantum computing concepts years before they were formalized.
🤫 Bohr's Arbitrary Divide: Bohr said quantum oddities only apply to the microscopic, normal rules to everyday objects, which is both unappealing and contradicts how the math works.
👋 It's What You're Taught: The interviewer confirms this "wavefunction collapse" idea is the common intro to quantum weirdness, making it seem like the only option.
🤯 Not Just Weird, Wrong: Deutsch asserts collapse isn't just hard to grasp, it's fundamentally nonsensical when scrutinized.
🧠 Thought Experiment, Step 1: Your friend observes the particle, putting them in superposition (both 'saw up' and 'saw down' exist until YOU observe).
🔎 Check, but Gently: You could observe your friend in a way that reveals if their consciousness registered ANY result, without learning the result itself.
🤯 Collapse Problem: Under Copenhagen, this 'gentle' observation should still collapse the superposition for your friend, yet they functioned well enough to do the experiment.
📐 Memory Manipulation: The computer then 'forgets' which it saw, but keeps the record that it did indeed see a definite result.
🤔 Conclusion: Since the computer can note the particle's state yet the wave function persists, some event inside a person's brain can't be the magical collapse trigger.
🤔 Listener's Concern: The interviewer connects the dots - if decisions split universes, why focus on this particle experiment?
🔬 It's Not Just the Collapse: Deutsch emphasizes they're testing the Everett view against ANY theory positing only one outcome per experiment exists.
🤔 Trillions of 'Mes'? Not Exactly: While decisions DO split universes, this experiment isn't about that kind of split. It's about whether the particle took one path or was somehow in both.
🪨 It's in the Details: Universes aren't 'splitting' so much as starting identical and then diverging due to some difference in the outcome of a quantum event.
🕸️ Interwoven, Not Isolated: Think of it as one vast space with multiple potential histories entwined, interacting where their paths cross momentarily.
🤔 Terminology Struggle: Words like "universe" and even "branch" don't fully capture the complicated relationship between these potential realities.
🧪 Photon's Journey: In all the relevant ones, the photon heads for the slits, but exists in multiple versions.
📐 Cones of Light: In each 'branch' the photon exits the slits in a slightly spread shape. Each 'cone' is displaced from its counterpart in the other branch.
🌌 Interaction is the Norm: Deutsch stresses these 'copies' are constantly interacting. Usually, those effects cancel out, but in setups like this they become obvious.
⚛️ Not Just Motion: Like the atom going 'up' and 'down' at once, an atom in a solid can be in multiple places simultaneously. This is why it maintains its position.
🧱 Solidity as Proof: This lower energy state is why solids hold their shape, which wouldn't work with only classical forces between atoms.
🚧 Fragile Computations: The big hurdle is any disturbance to the system ruins the intricate multi-universe calculation, either by outright preventing it or making the results useless.
🩹 Error Correction: They're working on ways to fix errors in the quantum computer mid-calculation, but it's incredibly tricky due to the next point...
🔧 Quantum Fix, No Peeking: Error correction in quantum computers can fix the 'odd' computation out, but the process can't reveal to us WHICH one was wrong without collapsing everything.
🪞 Oxygen Splits Too: Now there are multiple 'versions' of the oxygen molecule, entangled with the qubit states, unless...
🩹 Undoing Decoherence: In theory, you could reverse this interaction, but in practice, it's incredibly difficult for complex systems.
🚦 Everyday Multiverse: Our actions mean we 'survive' in some universes and 'die' in others, from car accidents to meteor strikes.
☠️ Quantum Suicide Fallacy: This thought experiment misuses probability. If you set up a death machine based on random chance, there's always a universe where it goes off, you're just selecting for the universe where you were lucky.
🌌 Quantum Theory to the Rescue: The physics of the multiverse, surprisingly, has implications for decision theory (how we choose under uncertainty).
⚖️ ...It Shouldn't Matter: Rigorous analysis shows that knowing about the multiverse should have the SAME effect on your choices as if you lived in one universe where things were simply random.
🚪 Sealed Hotel Thought Experiment: If you're copied, one copy dies, but you're 'trapped' in your branch with no way to find out the outcome, you SHOULD act as if it's a 50/50 chance of dying.
📚 Bostrom's Paper: The interviewer recalls a paper on how the multiverse complicates consequentialism, an ethical theory based on actions resulting in good/bad outcomes.
⚖️ Undermined? If EVERY possibility happens across the multiverse anyway, doesn't this erase the moral impact of what we choose in this universe?
➕ Pleasure Branch Exists: If there's a universe where you cause joy, is there one to 'cancel that out' where you cause equivalent suffering, and vice-versa?
📈 Optimizing the "Expected Good": In a utilitarian view, the goal would then be to maximize good across the multiverse, taking the 'likelihood'/importance of branches into account.
⚖️ Converting Bad to Good: Moral reasoning involves trying to shift 'bad' outcome universes into 'good' ones by our actions.
🌌 Probability Shifts: Where it applies, probability would be calculated across a changing set of branches, with weights shifting due to our choices.
🔮 Marbles Analogy: In the thought experiment with drawing marbles representing doom, he argues the same 'rigging' applies. Each draw changes the odds.
🧮 Not Truly Infinite: If universes weren't truly infinite, that count would be meaningful. He again brings up 'thickness' as a stand-in for probability.
🎲 Randomness as a Model: In situations where the decision process is effectively chaotic, branch 'thickness' may be a reasonable approximation of probability.
🧠 Self-Correcting Values: In the cosmic-ray example, your ingrained values would likely override the 'evil' impulse in most branches, a kind of informal error correction.
💥 Atom Collisions: Deutsch points out the vast number of collisions in something as mundane as the air in a room, each of which splits trajectories.
🤯 Beyond Comprehension: Our minds just don't intuitively grasp numbers like those in the 'universes' calculation, even if we understand them technically.
🌌 Math vs. Feeling: There's a difference between knowing the size of a galaxy, and truly comprehending that vastness on an emotional level.
🧠 Mathematicians Can 'See' It: People like Roger Penrose, through work with geometry, can intuit these shapes even in high dimensions.
🤔 Far Side IS Tricky: The interviewer is struck by how readily we assume we 'see' the whole cube in our mind, when we don't really handle the back faces correctly.
Made with HARPA AI
Of coarse it exists
Dimensions are visable to those who open their third eye through advanced practices of yog
From someone who did it ...
You don’t need our money. You’ve got extended commercials every 3 minutes. 😂
Fackts
I can hear theists crying over their fine tuning argument thanks to David 😂
The multiverse is a fractal; every single subatomic particle in our universe contains an entire universe within it. In turn, our universe is a subatomic particle within a larger universe. "The nature of eality is not only stranger than suppose but stranger than we can suppose" Terrence Mackenna.
If anyone is struggling to understand this, I recommend David's book 'The Beginning of Infinity' where he goes to great length to explain it
Of course it's real why is this even controversial anymore? The double slit proved it, and other things indirectly hint at it.
Ok it’s real, now what
I know right...lol...either provide an experiment to at least make the statement hold a little more water, but as you stated, even then...even then...so or now what...can we go there?, can we take a picture of it? If the answer, and most certainly probably is, no...then again...as you say...now what?....great point...I agree completely.
@@Jackson09proving this is real opens up multiple possibilities to answer other scientific questions..you need to look beyond “taking a picture”
when is this brainy act going to tell me something
Do you mean brainiac?
@@AlexandriaTheGreat😂
@@thelouiebrand I am genuinely curious as to whether it was spelled incorrectly or if it was an attempt at a play on words.
@@AlexandriaTheGreati thought I'm the only one did not understand what brainy😂
@@AlexandriaTheGreatit was both until the the wave function collapsed 😂
The proposed "forgetting" test for falsifying many-worlds or dynamical collapse is a great addition to the conversation.
I heard a proposed test of Everett's Quantum Mechanics that could be done, but did not hear Deutsch mention anything about anyone having conducted such a test, yet, Deutsch admits that such a test is needed in order to know whether Everett's view is accurate. There are ways to explain everything else Deutsch mentioned that do not require a multiverse, and from the standpoint of parsimonious assumptions, "It's a MULTIVERSE!" is a gigantic assumption absent sufficient evidence.
Yeah, it's really weird to hear him say that all the other ones are coping, while this just seems like coping, haha.
hmm sounds a bit religious
Because everything they are discovering is pointing to intelligence in the design. Besides as infinite as the universe is and it's just as infinite in the opposite direction dealing with particles. Way beyond our comprehension. Kinda naive to say there isn't a higher intelligence behind it all
Ooh is that scary for you?
@@NoLefTurnUnStoned. i mean they say they dont believe in God so why do these theories sound so much like religion? nothing said here can be proven..so what does that leave us with? religious talk about some other reality or dimensions or whatever..that sounds religious and in my eyes is hypocritical
@@knarftrakiul3881thats not what he meant at all lol
A civilisation billions of years more advanced than us would be Gods as far as we are concerned. It would be similar evolutionary gap between us and chimpanzees . Chimpanzees sees us talking on cellphone and they don't have a clue what is going or what we are doing lol so the intelligence that terraformed earth and seeded life are so far beyond our understanding. Sir Francis crick even said life didn't appear on earth by random chance. DNA is biological computer program. If this and this then that.
That was absolutely fascinating. Thank you!
Incredible as always. If you do get a chance to have David Deutsch on again, it would be even more insightful if you brought Popper's epistemology to the forefront. Your conversation segment on Modern Wisdom around "criticisms" reminded me of it. Criticisms may not be the bad destructive thing we take it to be. At least, can be reframed a bit.
This podcast has helped me to finalize understanding Deutschs amazing book about this subject that came out in the late 90s.
A part 2 where Deutsch has time to talk about virtual* particles may shed some light about these interactions happening within these 'branches.'
[* A short lived particle in one branch based on the interactions of other particles in other branches.]
If there isn't an experiment proving multiverses, I'm gonna be salty.
All we have right now to my knowledge is a, "It's certainly possible." but that doesn't mean we know.