What If Physics IS NOT Describing Reality?
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- Опубликовано: 5 май 2024
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Neils Bohr said, “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.” Well it turns out that if we pay attention to this subtle difference, some of the most mysterious aspects of nature make a lot more sense.
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Heisenberg also wrote "what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning".
Everybody observes differently with a different amount of particles constructing things.
This quote needs context. Heisenberg is specifically referring to the double slit experiment and wave function uncertainty.
However, this does not apply to our macroscopic reality. If a car drives past you to your right, that isn't your question of which direction the car is going.
In the same way, the measured particles of the double slit experiment were always going to end up on those specified spots on the screen. Uncertainty and certainty cannot exist in the same Universe.
All the wave function is showing us, is that our Universe is fundamentally fields that encompass everything and everyone for all of time.
@Don't Read My Profile Photo
Didn't read it, thanks for the advice 👍🏻
his product is 99.6% chemically pure
I wish RUclips had a ‘save comment’ feature! Yours is a good one.
This is the kind of physics I understand. It makes sense that physics is a model of our perception of the world, and not the world itself. The map is not the territory.
This is precisely the kind of self-analysis I dig. The non-dogmatic approach is why I love Science. I have come to distain the dogma of scientism.
@@tensevo There is no "non-dogamtic" approach, to do anything, you need "dogmas". And I am against "dogmas".
"The map is not the territory," is also an analogy utterly useless for fundamental reality as are most macroscopic (higher level) analogies. The territory can only be a "map" at the end of the day.
@@ThePowerLover "I'm agains 'dogmas'" ist dogmatic ;-)
But the map is intended to the territory. So there are good maps, and there are wrong maps!
As a programmer, this was the most intuitively understandable episode in 7 years of PBS Spacetime.
I noticed the teashirt. Not sure of the reference but my noise preference when coding is stfu.
imagine getting variable undefined compile errors because your assignment is in a quantum superposition.
dude if that’s the case then you gotta check out Chris Langan talking about his Theory of Everything. It might come off as a bit too metaphysical for those of us who like to see measurements and data but he basically effortlessly describes Models, Views and Controllers as a way of describing the nature of reality.
And could be summarize a lot by the way
I think this video is relevant: ruclips.net/video/58VEmkWPOak/видео.html (The trouble with truth and reality | Hilary Lawson)
A fundamental thinking error i think is the idea that an "observer" must be a being. In my understanding an observation is made in the same way any other interactions or measurements are made and that qualifes even light from the sun interacting with the moon's surface as an observation, therefore it exists even when no person or entity is looking.
Yeah it's a common misconception but I think even restricting the observer to conscious beings the conclusion ends up being the same. Even if all of humanity where blind we'd still notice the tides, we'd still notice the warmth of the Sun. Eventually we'd find a way to measure that the Moon should exist just like Pluto was predicted to exist and where to look for it. For everything that we humans claim to exist it is because it interacts with the rest of the universe in some way that we can eventually perceive no matter how many layers of indirection. If something doesn't interact with the rest of the universe in any way we can eventually measure I think most scientists including Einstein are happy to say that said thing is imaginary until proven real, because there is an infinite amount scientifically unfalsifiable claims we can make.
This is true but I think its an error to swing too far the other way and think of it as purely a physical process, like measuring the distance to a beach ball in a swimming pool by throwing something at it. Based on the delayed choice quantum eraser, the ball can be untouched after the fact, so it's not about the physical act of measuring - it's about the information of the measurement persisting in the universe. That's weird because it means the truth is somewhere between just interaction, and woo woo consciousness.
@@R3LF13 That is nice of you to point out. I'm learning.
@@R3LF13 Kind of like the tree falling in the forest, but with particles
the universe doesn't know who is a conscious being and who's not.
only Santa Claus "sees you when you're sleeping" and "knows when you're awake".
consciousness is a trait of a system that's only perceiveable when you are that system.
This is exactly what the philosophy of science is actually very important: those who study epistemology to any degree are already familiar with our limits, yet those only familiar with science perpetually conflate the map for the territory and are surprised when it’s information that constitutes our models for reality - even suggesting the universe is a simulation, because they literally forget we are doing the simulating, and the information is the only thing we CAN understand.
Truth is so close to our noses we forget to notice, let alone discuss its nuance.
I was thinking... why has philosophy not been keeping up with physics? Physics is really pushing the boundaries about the relationship between epistemology and ontology, blurring the lines, and philosophy is too scared to follow. But most physicists are lacking the necessary conceptual (philosophical) instruments to really make sense of what they observe. Really, really sad.
@@manueljohn456 I disagree completely. What has been said in this video can be traced back to Plato vs Aristotle. Did we really require 1,000 years before Kant and many others explicitly laid out epistemological bounds? I think not; it's physics that's yet to catch up to philosophy.
Granted, and this is a big point with which you might agree, we need more philosophers speaking mathematics and physics. E.g., Karl Popper was the first to formulate information theory in terms of mathematics despite being primarily a philosopher -- from who's work stemmed Shannon, Kolmogorov, Boltzmann, Neumann, Godel, Turing, etc.,
I'm not a scientist. But I get the impression some scientists take the math too seriously. IMO they lose sight of the fact that the math is just a tool, made by us. The universe may not run on math, but our understanding of it does.
Map for the territory…I like that. Gonna take that
"Truth is so close to our noses we forget to notice" - I mean, is this really truth? Or just another perspective? Just cos this view could be the truth doesn't mean it is.
Can't help but quote Douglas Adams: "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
@Curiouser and Curiouser Well, that's based on the fact mathematics describes logic itself. If you have a logical, functioning, system, it must have mathematical laws/can be described by such. 4 is 2 + 2 and there is nothing we can do...
@Curiouser and Curiouser do you have a better tool tha math?
I have the same theory about my girlfriend
Male = female today and taught in schools. Yes we are in the most strangest of places
It has happened many many times.
Everyone is always asking: "What is physics?"
No one is ever asking: "How is physics doing?"
The Boolean fact is: there are only 2 types of people.
Those who adhere to binary reasoning. And those who don't exist.
The fact that everyone is asking what is physics demonstrates that physics is not doing well.
@Madolite also your English isn't doing well; since you can't put a useful sentence together!
Drax: Who is physics?
Hahahaha, awakening.. ufos… aliens… time travel..all real
Sooo…
How is physics doing?
This episode was such a pay off for those of us who have been on this journey of discovery with space time from the beginning. It feels like season finale of the 8th season of a show where it basically explains that everything you thought was important was actually meaningless, and that the acceptance of this fact is actually the point.
Not such a journey 'of discovery' then, is it? Now that you're done with the Pythagorean Cult of quantum / mathemagical entities, of zero-dimensional spirits and math formulas doing magic tricks, go behind the classroom, down the stairwell, knock three times, twirl around twice and ask for Bill Gaede's Rational Scientific Method.
Object: that with shape and location.
Concept: describes relations between objects
Math: quantitative description
Science: qualitative explanation
etc.
Prepare to get real.
I too really enjoyed this episode. Maybe its the horticultural encouragement, but the idea of framing all collisions, interactions, etc as binary yes/no answers to propositions really felt amazing. It feels like it draws information theory, computer science, physics, quantum systems, math and statistics together.
Also the point of the data is the connection between the observer and the observed is humbling.
I agree completely though I hope this more of a season premiere!
Been watching before Matthew had grey hear on his beard
@@ssgpentland8241 Been watching before Matthew..
Love that this channel not just teaches physics but contextualizes it with good philosophy of science.
It's just be grand of them to call it such, to dispel the common notion of the scientimist userbase that philosophy is nonsense.
I've been saying for years that physics and math aren't the laws that govern our reality, but languages we create to describe our understanding of them, whenever the subject comes up. Thanks for making me feel smart!
well you must be! Still thinking about this idea...
What is is not What should be. Bohr's argument is just stupid.
They still might be
@@zes3813 Hi.
He stated an idea that some physicists adhered to, not an unequivocal truth that has no counter arguments
I love PBS Space Time so much - it is one of the few channels that I have to re-watch portions of the video more than once, and watch the whole video a couple times over with some time in between to digest all the information
What this all suggests to me is that the physical reality behind quantum mechanics is explicitly non-local (e.g. Bohmian mechanics), and it is the process of gathering information about a system that imposes locality. That is, gathering information is an inherently local process.
Why do we need to ask in the first place? Why cannot we only observe without an answer?
@@arijoutsilastname5665 because observation is only possible via interaction. To gain the knowledge about the system you NEED to make this system somehow interact and change state of your measurement device of choice.
It's call meditation@@arijoutsilastname5665
I've been thinking about this as well... the whole "world of forms" debate in philosophy was always hilariously naive to me, but maybe particle physics and fundamental properties is when that sort of speculation is actually reasonable, rather than asking whether a _tree_ contains the "form of a tree" or if it resides somewhere else.
The reason Quantum Mechanics is inherently non-local is because the quantum wave function is defined in an inherently non-local domain called Configuration Space. Unlike the relativistic 4D spacetime realm we inhabit, Configuration Space is a complex-valued domain of potentially limitless numbers of dimensions. The quantum state of the entire universe at any point in time is defined by the location of a single point in multi-dimensional Configuration Space. It is inherently non-local because a single point can by definition only occupy a single multi-dimensional location at a time.
The reason 4D spacetime is relativistically local is because quantum events in Configuration Space are not deterministically mapped into spacetime. Deterministic solutions of the quantum wave function are instead probabilistically projected into spacetime in accordance with Born's Rule, which describes the likelihood of observing a particle at any particular point in spacetime as the conjugate square of that particular solution of the quantum wave function. Discrete particles manifest only in 4D spacetime because in Configuration Space, there is only a single point that encompasses the entire quantum state of the universe at any point in time.
Bohmian Mechanics makes sense once you realize that the pilot wave described by the theory propagates not in relativistic spacetime but instead in Configuration Space. Likewise, BM's "hidden variable" is not the observed location of a particle in spacetime, but the actual positon of the point that defines the quantum state of the universe in Configuration Space. If you knew that "hidden" position precisely, you could indeed deterministically calculate its location in Configuration Space at any point in the past or future (via Schrodinger's Equation). However, this would not enable you to predict how that quantum state will manifest in relativistic spacetime because the deterministic evolution of the quantum wave function is only probabilistically projected into observable particle locations in spacetime.
I really appreciate this humble view on how physics try to model just our observations of reality and try to see if according to our models, we can make further predictions. Sometimes they are right. But interestingly, the gap created when they don't, is where the scientific model can bring something new to the table. So you start merging observations with rigor and creativity to find better explanations, and thus, better models. It's very fun!
I love physics
There is one better model, which is explaining the mystery of particles' superposition and uncertainty. It is in the book - "Theory of Everything in Physics and The Universe"
... so... iterated observation i.e. truth probing of a system, can somehow get beyond the restrictions inherent to iterated observation i.e. truth probing of a system? That's your hypothesis?
There are many reasons I abandoned the sciences and went to mathematics. Not least is this one.
@@Alalea17 gravity and quantum mechanics both deal with reality very well yet fail in certain cenarios. We don't throw them out because of that we simple say there is more to learn. As much as you may not like it when people say male and female they are using a model that fits almost every scenario they are ever likely to experience. There is no scientific definition of male and female beyond compatible genitals and cromasomes and there is no 3rd human sex defined by anything other than cultural values that I have ever seen. The small number of people born intersex can make these decisions for them selves for what they want to be but it doesn't mean we have to redefine sex for everyone else.
"The autogeneration polarity amplifier in the multiadaptive root command compensates with audio electroplasma decryption. Tuning the planck vibrational tetrahedrons with hyper-dimensional fun converter assemblies will vibrate a descriptive rubber ducky between the lines."
---Albert Einstein
This is one of the most lucid, lens-expanding descriptions of this that I've ever seen. Thanks for this, Dr. O'Dowd!
@danny supersell So, let me get this straight. You watched this video, saw that I'd posted a completely unremarkable comment specifically about the video's content, went back to my page, looked at the handful of random songs I'd put up as jokes between friends, and came back here, to Dr. O'Dowd's video, to tell me here that it sucks, in a way that's neither clever nor funny?
I mean, you do you, I guess, but if I had that kind of time, finding random people on the internet and trying to make their experience of learning about physics just a tiny bit worse than it has to be isn't what I'd choose, that's all I'm saying.
@danny supersell music is cool, cyberpunk mistery
@@mickdundee346 I like the cut of your jib.
Absolutely. I think this might be the first explanation of quantum uncertainty that makes any sense to me. And I think the first Spacetime that didn't leave me completely confused about half way through.
Although of course, it raises as many questions as it answers.
@@mickdundee346 ✨
_"What we model is not the reality but our experience of reality."_
that's very deep!
I was literally just describing this concept to a friend of mine and he introduced me to you. I look forward to watching!
These videos, along with those by David Butler, Fermilab, and Arvin Ash, have taught me more about physics than I ever learned in school. They are so much better at transferring knowledge and making physics fun!
A lot of it is also only stuff you see at university, which is a pity. They have completely removed Modern Physics from school, which is pity because it is the most interesting.
@@svendkorsgaard9599 The reason is probably, that you cant use it in your life : /
Physics Explained does better job if you have background in maths
@@yourguard4 Ah, and you can use everything else they teach in high school? Probably not.
@@svendkorsgaard9599 most things, yes. High school math is very applicable to everyday life. Even physics 1&2 are applicable in the intuition you gain from them. You want to build a TV stand and decide to run a piece of dimensional lumber like a 2x4 under the top surface for support; introductory physics should have given you the knowledge to run it underneath the tall way as opposed to the flat way due to the differing moments of inertia. No one ever needed to consider the electron’s wave like nature when wiring up a new light in their house.
Okay, but there really was a pygmy mammoth, called the Channel Islands Mammoth. It's actually one of the most used examples of Insular Dwarfism
therefore, matter is shrinking
Stop confusing the issue with facts.
Yep, and PBS Eons did a video on the Pygmy Mammoths. So, who is lying to us here, PBS or PBS?
@@felironmaden1429 It's definitely PBS
@@felironmaden1429 That Eons video is actually where I heard about both the pygmy mammoth and insular dwarfism
The best description I have seen that resolves the “observer/knowledge” problem is a talk at Google called something like “what quantum physicists don’t want you to know”. Basically observation is entanglement, and it works out mathematically that if you consider the act of measurement as entangling the measured system the interference pattern in the 2 slit experiment disappears just as you would expect
I am with Einstein here, the informational interpretation of reality while compelling, still points to the same thing that the traditional interpretation hints at, which is that our understanding of reality is not complete given the units of information we can see/understand (not literally with our senses alone here, but scientifically) & therefore the knowledge we build around it. It does not describe anything about 'fundamental reality' but merely points us to the idea that our traditional descriptions of reality are limited to the underlying informational limitations that we currently have & therefore that we only currently describe our understanding of the reality (informationally) & not reality itself...
It's just too bad that Einstein got it wrong. ;-)
I do not think we could overcome the "relativism X realism" debate that has been going on around out there ever since as far as in Ancient Greek Philosophical lines of thought 2500+ years ago, which eventually led to Pyrrhonist Skepticisms, that states that we do not know whether or not we know or will ever know anything, by the end of the historical period named Antiquity, as if the long search for knowledge just reached back to point zero.
Later on, the modern philosopher named Immanuel Kant pointed out something along the lines that the limits of our humanity are the limits of our knowledge, in the sense that our human brains cannot understand reality as truly is, something that skepticist line of thoughts way back in the Antiquity already had in mind.
@@ws6778 Physicists have overcome this "debate" a century ago. Too bad that everybody else is on the intellectual slow lane. ;-)
@@schmetterling4477 Existence implies that *some* reality must exist. And whatever that reality may be, simulation or no simulation, it would ultimately contain the hidden variable. So Einstein wouldn't be wrong. Sorry Mr. Pseudointellectual.
@@dpakj989 The only guy with a PhD in physics here is me, kid. Get a grip. :-)
So like when everyone keeps saying "UAPs defy the laws of physics!" and Michio Kaku said "No, they defy our understanding of the laws of physics."
I'm definitely a philosopher, but I fully have faith in the scientific method. You cannot describe what something is without fully exploring what it is not, even if ultimately if that "is" remains not understood.
We're very much looking at a system far bigger than ourselves, and we should be humble in that.
Of course, that's assuming that if the image/video evidence was any clearer the UAPs don't become EPs, which is much more likely.
Bob Lazar is not a liar.
@@EnglishMike
How often do You forget to Vote?
I'm sure they'd say something in alien like "well, it's not breaking our understanding of the laws of physics, that seems like a you problem" I totally agree, we really have no idea what the whole picture is and should remember that
Given that humans are bending the rules of physics today, metamaterials etc., it seems likely that there are levels of tech far beyond the oldsmobile.
Such a relief that the most brilliant among physicists grasp the limits of the our capacity as animals to, uh, "know reality."
Knowledge of physics doesn't allow us to grasp the limits of our conscious capacity to know anything.
We can know everything, just not all at the same time.
@@matthewdavies2057 I get what you're saying, but what I hope people understand is that we can only know the things a primate can know.
@@agabrielrose You underestimate our creative side. We can build machines that can translate concepts too hard to grasp as a whole into smaller bits we can understand. Simplified but still true. If you mean we will never grasp the glory of the whole.. maybe not until we join with our machines.
@@matthewdavies2057 Hey I agree that we're an incredibly clever kind of primate, and that our capacity for abstraction is pretty deep - but there's no way to perceive things we can't perceive with our senses: no way to even know what we're missing in order to design machines that might "sense" it for us - no way to communicate it to each other, to interpret or use the information in any way, without language - something that is socially and culturally formed and transmitted. We can't escape the influence of our inbuilt "biases" - i.e. our senses. We are a limited apparatus. But yes, you're right, we're quite clever and good at using technology and processes like science to find hints of things we can't directly sense.
Is it possible that the reason why we can't answer the two questions "Are you a particle?" at the same time as "are you a wave?" is because we are not asking the question correctly? Perhaps when we find the singular question that captures both of those questions, we will understand that it isn't a duality, but something else.
We can only question what we can see and feel from our perspective.
"Commendation from NASA for research work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the Earth's atmosphere and the Moon's surface for navigation of the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon..
Dr. Milo Wolff has found the structure of the electron consisting of two spherical quantum waves, one moving radially outward and another moving radially inward. The center of the waves is the nominal location of the electron 'particle'. These waves extend infinitely, like charge force. All 'particle' waves mix and contribute to each other, thus all matter of the universe is interrelated by this intimate connection between the fundamental 'particles' and the universe. The natural laws are a direct consequence of this Wave Structure of Matter (WSM), thus WSM underlies all of science." spaceandmotion
"is because we are not asking the question correctly?"
Yes. I believe you are supposed to ask in French language.
But particles ARE waves. There is no such thing as just a particle
@@thomasmaughan4798 I'm sure most the trouble it's cuz we asked it in German for way too long...
sending the electron through a magnetic field doesn't seem like asking "are you spin up or down", but rather "will you orient yourself up or down when subjected to this field" - and it seems logical that the left-right alignment would be random after that since then you're asking "will you orient yourself left of right when subjected to this orthogonal field".
anyway, taking this sort of observer centric view probably often leads one to boltzmann brains and other rather useless hyper-simplified things
That part is clear. The surprising part is that if the electron goes through the same 1st field again, it will act as if its spin changed 50% of the time.
Nice to see that Kant's take on epistemology (that our knowledge of reality can be defined only as "phenomenal" or relating to our experiences, senses, and how our mind organizes information as opposed to "noumenal" or relating to fundamentally direct knowledge about reality itself) still seems to be floating on gracefully.
For anything dealing with the actual nature of reality, time to visit your local metaphysician... unfortunately, any statement from a metaphysician can only really be speculation and language games, so alas...
Get thee to a zen master!
@@bobaldo2339 Tis why I said "statement" :) I'm a Zen Buddhist, as well, but emptiness is a nonconceptual way of understanding reality. After all, reality isn't made out of words, so how could words describe reality?
Okay now I want a collab between PBS Spacetime and Philosophy Tube
@@NethDugan Pls no, Philosophy Tube is more like Ideology Tube!
@@dialaskisel5929 wrong reality include word as a structure, but their integer meaning is different for everyone
"Whose information?"
Imagine every particle has its own copy of the wave function of the rest of the universe, from its unique perspective, with as much information as can be represented on the surface area of its boundary, at any given instant (ie it wouldn't be cumulative, particles don't have memory). Its boundary might as well be defined by the amount of information required to describe it, (4 plank areas per qubit), since what can a particle communicate to the universe other than what it is?
Then every interaction is just particles asking each other to define some aspect of themself in exchange for defining something about itself. Using virtual particles as the communications protocol.
Ask me about quantum philosophy ⚡
Universal blockchain
Thought provoking comment, especially the part about a particle perceiving the wavefunction of the rest of the universe at its boundary. However, particles generally don't have a precise boundary, and also can overlap with other particles.
@@dennisestenson7820 The mind doesn't have a precise boundary, and also can overlap with other minds:)
Look at the language you just used as well, "it has a copy" it "asks" ... all just models, not what actually happens. Particles don't have copies of anything, they don't ask questions of anything, they don't communicate with their entangled partners at all, even virtual particles are not a real thing, they are just a model one man made up to cope with the lack of ability to know what is really going on.
My favorite episode yet. Would be great if we can get a follow up video on what can possibly be reality for other types of observers. Is it possible that some light does travel faster but we simply cannot see it? Do we think the universe has a speed limit simply because we are not able to observe anything that moves faster??
I admire your humility in the questions part. Thank you again for great content!
So the Universe knows everything and runs the show regardless of what we know but it will give us all the answers we seek on request. Physics is the language we use to converse with the universe but first you need to know what to ask it. Theoretical physicists are the ones coming up with the questions and experimental physicists ask the universe. If the question was good you get an answer, but our physics only represents our question not the universe its self, simple 😉.
Perfect summary
the question is is the answer
@@petevenuti7355 If the question is proven it becomes the answer.
@@supra1981 no,
answers are defined by the questions asked. true or not , proved or disproven.
also, value, meanings , understanding can't happen without questioning. to question requires emotion.
There are many ways to take my statement , but in all the ways I was expressing, the question is what is important, not proof or answer..
@@supra1981 have you read any Douglass Hofstetter books?
If Science were taught in schools to children and teenagers as "This is how we experience everything", I think Science would make more sense and be more interesting to more children and teenagers than just those who can memorize everything easily.
Too bad that 'joy' and 'understanding' are not part of the curricular. :(
I always loved Science, a lot more than any of my other subjects anyway. I'm not someone who can "memorise everything" though, I mean maths was by far my worst subject in school and memorisation is literally the beginning and end of mathematics lol.
Really isn't the ability to memorise things the basis of all school subjects? How do you teach without people needing to memorise what is taught?
Actual scientific work is really grueling and boring. People try to make science 'fun' too much but they forget behind all the wonderous results lies thousands of hours of grueling, boring work. Read a scientific paper or two and you'll realize how boring actual science is.
@@Gohka No, modern teaching methods don't focus on rote memorization.
@@ThatCrazyKid0007 There has to be a way to get more people into the "boring" somehow than those who just easily remember things.
Seems like this is a fundamental flaw in our assumption that we can separate a part of the whole from the rest of the whole. Meaning everything in the universe is being acted on to varying degrees by the universe, that includes the observer but it also includes everything else. Science relies on being able to isolate an aspect of something and then measure how that aspect behaves under various stimuli but maybe nothing in the universe is ever truly isolated, particularly at the quantum level.
An observer (such us us, a bacterium, an electron or an AI) is part of the universe as observation is simply interaction. Our separation of systems is arbitrary as we try to describe various aspects of the whole system. We are forced to, as our horizon (our range and compexity of interaction) is very small compared to the whole. Thus our understanding can only be an ever finer approximation of actual reality (at least that's the way I see it).
Fantastic video. Thank you again for another meaningful deep dive into the fabric of reality that makes up the physical capability for our conception of the fabric itself. :P There was a really meaningful moment toward the end where it was described that we cannot prove an observer-independent world, given that we are observers within the system itself. I can't recall at the moment, but it reminded me of a line from some media about a pencil drawing itself, on itself... In any case, it spurred me on to the thought about the propensity for faith in the concepts of scientific provings. The Einstein Moon analogy was perfect for this, and it speaks to a sincere insecurity about human fallibility, being made of matter and subject to entropy as well (in this case through memory and biological information storage systems). I don't intend to imply faith in the notion of a deity or other cosmic consciousness, but more a propensity for faith that what is not immediately observable may yet still be valid and worthwhile.
🤮
Ah yes, my weekly existential crisis
Here we go!
On the contrary, realizing how strange and meaningless everything is somehow sets me free and works as a stress-buster. It's like nothing really matters so nothing can be bad too.
It's often asked, "What is the Universe expanding into?". What if space is expanding information, and in space taking up information, entropy increases. That is, space expanding into information is entropy itself.
Whoa, that's deep... Also, complete nonsense
It’s not expanding into space time is all we know & is could be an illusion if holographic principle is correct & we are really not sure how large the universe is as we can only see how far light has travelled since the Big Bang unless some of Penrose ideas pan out regarding the fingerprints of previous big bangs
Immanuel Kant was saying something similar too, when he described the categories of knowledge or understanding. Without them we can't make any sense of anything, but at the same time with them we can't really see the object as it is.
In this situation, awareness is the key to understanding both. By being aware of the differences between the object and our knowledge and understanding of said object. We can add to our knowledge without causing confusing to ourselves
As a man who has devoted his entire life to the most clear headed science, I can conclude from the results of my research this much, there is no matter as such. -Max Planck
Materialism died 100 years ago, mathematical idealism is new paradigm, once science converts to scientific rationalism and Idealism, there is no turning back.
Well it's kind of hard to be a materialist when "nothing is material"
@@dindindundun8211 no real scientist nor student actually believes that lol that’s not what any of this says. Waves are material. Not mystical woo-woo that you want to use as a blank sheet to project your beliefs upon 😂
@@K0wface huh? I meant literally immaterial, as in any "material" thing is a sensory illusion due to the forces that hold solids and liquids in shape. It's all forces and points in space producing and acting on those forces.
Why the hostility? You just assumed you knew who I was and what I meant by my words.
Planck also said he thought matter was derivative of consciousness, which I find more helpful.
@@K0wface Any real scientist or student knows that "belief" belongs not to science, but to religion.
Coming from a computer science background, the fact that this idea is intuitive to me sets off alarm bells that it can't possibly be this simple.
Same, this makes a scary amount of sense. Really want to write a program with objects that mimic elementary particles now
@@TheSkyrimNinja Search for a video called "Understanding fluid Simulation: Starting At Quantum Mechanics"
So... tell me when you crack the simulation code so we get to use some exploits!
Good thinking on your part.
@@jarirepo1172
God:
You dare oppose me mortal?
one of the most interesting points given in this video in my opinion is that there's a *limit* on how many yes/no bits we can extract from a given wavefunction
how is that limit different from wavefunction to wavefunction? how many more bits can we extract from probing a helium atom compared to hydrogen atom compared to double slit experiment with single photons?
I would say that the bits are observables which are defined by the operators we use. When dealing with multiple/infinite discrete observable states (e.g. energy states) or even continues states (e.g. position) probabilities come into play. So the number of possible states depends on what property of the system you measure. From experience observables with a limited number of states (e.g. spin up/down) are actually quite rare. But I'm no expert.
@@TOXIN543 hmmm... from the video, what i can grasp is that the limitation on the "bits" we can obtain is reflected in an uncertainty principle. now would the amount of information be different when we try to probe position (as limited by the precision in momentum, a continuous variable) compared to up/down spin (as limited by precision in left/right spin)?
i really don't know
That is, until we map cross-dimensional adhesion.
It will be then that we note fractional conditions by the trans-dimensional wave functions that qualify said bit. ;O)-
@@Corvaire can't be harder than doing fourier decomposition on a mobius strip to figure out time travel
@@GeoffryGifari The Möbius Strip won’t work. Try inverting the Möbius Strip. See what happens.
The book "a case against reality" compliments this video in a great way, it's a great read.
"What We Cannot Know" by Marcus du Sautoy is a similar and very enjoyable book too
@@alxleiva awesome, I'll definitely be reading that one, thank you for the recommendation.
Is the universe analogue or digital? BOTH! At a macro scale, we live in an analogue world - if you roll a ball around in a bowl you'd find that the ball does not move in individual discrete increments of motion, it rolls smoothly - analogue motion. But the universe itself is digital. Planck distance and Planck time mean that at its core, all motion in the universe is in digital steps. It's as you zoom out and the resolution of reality gets finer and finer that the digital foundation smooths out to the analogue curvature that is the world we live in.
I theorize that THIS is why we have a gap between General relativity and Quantum Physics - Quantum is a description of the universe at the micro level, where it is digital, and it makes sense; General Relativity is a description at the macro level, where it is analogue, and it makes sense.
While you can indeed describe discrete systems with continuous math (as is done is statistical physics), you can't say that reality is discrete on small scales and continuous at large scales. If it is discrete on small scales than it is fundamentally discrete, no matter how far you "zoom out"
@@hagarbebado Yes, I was struggling with this, thank you! I agree with what you said about it being discrete even if you zoom out, but the thing is the farther you zoom out, the less apparent the 'discrete-ness' is - like looking very closely at the pixels of a monitor vs. viewing at a distance.
actually it's the stochastic (quantum) "noise" of micro-scales - the impossibility of obtaining precise measurements - that strikes me as the equivalent of analogue here. so i see it the other way round
Reminds me of how often video games will only render & simulate whatever the player is looking at or interacting with. The player would never know the difference - only the computer does
Your brain is only rendering the photons your retinas catch.
That's only true with rasterization. But there are strong limits because of this. Reflections, global illumination. Screen reflections show their cheats.
Thank you for this! I have been requesting for an information theory based video for years. To me, it feels like this is where the next great leap in physics will come from...
0:35 Thank you for making that important point. I have long believed that Physicists tend to believe that the solutions to equations (or the relationships expressed in the equations) are the driving forces of the universe.
2:00 I also appreciate the fact that you used the expression, "down the rabbit hole" correctly, i.e., a trip into a fantasy land where nothing makes logical sense, like what happened to Alice.
People generally have a very poor understanding of what the word 'infinite' actually means.. This is not any kind of 'fault', but just that we have evolved within the confines of what appears to be a finite environment, and we thus try to look at things in finite ways, also justifying those 'finite' thoughts. When I first approached the 'problem' I had the same difficulties, so it takes our minds a lot of effort to reach another perspective of understanding, but it IS achievable..
Firstly, there cannot be more than one 'instance' of infinitude, otherwise a secondary 'thing' would render them both 'finite'. So we are describing a 'oneness'.. Also, it can have no 'beginning' nor 'ending' as these would also necessitate a secondary 'thing' (or the utter nonsense of a 'nothing'!), so we are describing 'eternity' when we apply 'time' concepts. Then, we have to admit that it can only be the one thing that interconnects all other 'things', and we deduce this to be 'Space', necessarily..
All references to 'size' or 'direction' do not apply to the nature of infinitude, and thus have no relevance to our understanding of the true nature of existence. 'Measurement' has limitations.. When we point to any position in Space, we effectively create a 'beginning' to any subsequent forms of measurement, which only has relevance to the entity desiring to understand said 'measurement'. Measuring things does not make them a feature of the nature of reality, only a desire of 'measurement' from a Human perspective.
Within infinitude everything appears to be at the 'centre' of that which it finds detectable ('observable').. So, the moment you create the perspective of a 'centre', you become that centre..Here we can find the real problem with using 'mathematics' as a tool for understanding infinite nature. We have to firstly posit the 'points' to be 'measured' in order for the measurement to take place.. And this is why we end up inventing 'things' that do not exist in reality from mathematical constructs that do not describe the truth about nature..
spaceandmotion
The problem with the rotated apparatus is that whether it's rotated up/down or left/right, you're actually asking it (essentially) the same question: toward the red plate or the blue plate. There would be slight differences: in the up/down vs left/right, you'd also be asking the electron to interact with the earth's gravitational field. if an "up" particle is slightly heavier, maybe they're energetically favorable in a gravity well, though that seems unlikely. At any rate, in the depicted aparattus, we're asking the electron, "are you deflected toward the red plate or the blue plate?" and labeling that 'spin".
People have said beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it also seems that reality itself is in the eye of the beholder.
Ah, but what is the 'eye' and who and/or what is the 'beholder'?
That makes sense. We may never know or touch "the reality", but can only know or get "information on the reality". So basically information layer of reality is the closest layer we can come close to the reality. So informational universe is the only real universe for observer like us to interact with.
I'd go one further and say that the information layer is the only layer that any particle can grasp about another. Is any particle really experiencing another "directly". I don't think so. Direct action may be a fiction. When I try to think how any two particles could "touch", I end up with a whole slew of Eleatic paradoxes.
@pyropulse You know, the weird thing is I *want* to agree with you (and people like you that have made similar claims) as time goes on and, partly from stuff like discussed here and in the video, my metaphysics become more phenomenalist, but unfortunately I'm hesitant to agree with you because when most people say "consciousness _is_ reality" they often use it to support mystical woo rather than the scientific method.
@@thek2despot426 So test that "mystical woo" with the scientific method.
@@ThePowerLover Yeah, but at that point it isn't really "mystical" anymore, it's just some kind of exotic physics. That's kinda the issue with "natural" and "supernatural" as metaphysical terms, because they really _aren't_ metaphysical but rather epistemic in character. Both are observable, but only one is regarded as being able to have the scientific method applied to it despite both being observable and therefore irreducibly empirical. "Supernatural" seems to mean things that may or may not be able to be experienced, but which is not able to be systematically studied or rationally modeled in its behaviors with predictive precision. The second it can be, it's no longer mystical, supernatural woo but instead physical, natural science.
@@thek2despot426 People generally have a very poor understanding of what the word 'infinite' actually means.. This is not any kind of 'fault', but just that we have evolved within the confines of what appears to be a finite environment, and we thus try to look at things in finite ways, also justifying those 'finite' thoughts. When I first approached the 'problem' I had the same difficulties, so it takes our minds a lot of effort to reach another perspective of understanding, but it IS achievable..
Firstly, there cannot be more than one 'instance' of infinitude, otherwise a secondary 'thing' would render them both 'finite'. So we are describing a 'oneness'.. Also, it can have no 'beginning' nor 'ending' as these would also necessitate a secondary 'thing' (or the utter nonsense of a 'nothing'!), so we are describing 'eternity' when we apply 'time' concepts. Then, we have to admit that it can only be the one thing that interconnects all other 'things', and we deduce this to be 'Space', necessarily..
All references to 'size' or 'direction' do not apply to the nature of infinitude, and thus have no relevance to our understanding of the true nature of existence. 'Measurement' has limitations.. When we point to any position in Space, we effectively create a 'beginning' to any subsequent forms of measurement, which only has relevance to the entity desiring to understand said 'measurement'. Measuring things does not make them a feature of the nature of reality, only a desire of 'measurement' from a Human perspective.
Within infinitude everything appears to be at the 'centre' of that which it finds detectable ('observable').. So, the moment you create the perspective of a 'centre', you become that centre..Here we can find the real problem with using 'mathematics' as a tool for understanding infinite nature. We have to firstly posit the 'points' to be 'measured' in order for the measurement to take place.. And this is why we end up inventing 'things' that do not exist in reality from mathematical constructs that do not describe the truth about nature..
spaceandmotion
Matt’s description of the question which has the fewest possible answers, could be something like, “does [this bit] exist?” And it’s random. And that randomness computed to the arbitrary scale of everything in our universe and maybe even in the set of stuff outside our universe ends up our universe. Our existence, lives, etc.
This statement refers specifically to an individual whose physical, neurological and mental state is free of defects and can register, experience and learn continuously, the physical world as it is. From our moment of consciousness we are experiencing and learning as an individual. As we grow older we begin putting our experiences and learning together in a way that forms our individual understanding. Once we have firmly established the validity and constancy of our physical surroundings we can ultimately say in moments of turmoil, "I need to ground myself", and then do just that. This means, when we are consciously aware of and connected to our present physical surroundings, we are consciously present in the here and now. Nothing in the past or the future can exist in that moment of groundedness. For many people, the ability to ground themselves can be overshadowed by the past or present or both. The power and freedom held in the here and now releasing us from our debilitating states of mind should never be underestimated because not everyone has the ability to do this. For those that can, it will prove to be an invaluable source of relaxation. It isn't going to fix debts, bad relationships, crimes etc. What it will do is put you in a more relaxed frame of mind to think things through with more clarity. If this is something that is unfamiliar to you, get in touch with this physical world and practice practice practice.
I'm just gonna come out and say it. This was the most important episode of Space Time ever produced. TY Matt et al.
Totally agree! I feel like the channel has been building to this for many episodes now!
Amen.
I wonder if you could ask coercive questions like "if I asked if your spin was up, would your answer to that question be the same as the answer to this one?"
and if the informational way of describing quantum mechanics makes it easier to solve particular questions.
My response to such a question would be: "My spin is down."
What if there were 2 entangled particles-one who always lied and one that always told the truth?
This implies that the questioned object has the capacity to hold hypothetical states in addition to its actual state. It might work if there existed a multiverse where those hypothetical states existed and you could query the multiverse, but otherwise, the object just doesn't have the capacity to answer the question you're trying to ask. It's like asking your toaster what love is.
@@Duiker36 see, I’d already figured that elements of Star Trek made it into a “hidden variables” quantum universe, such as their computer only taking a few hours to figure-out a pattern from quantum randomness. But your comment here made me realise the sheer existence of the “heisenberg compensator” necessitates a hidden variables universe too!
Out of all your videos this one really changed my perspective about physics and the universe. A bit sobering that we may never truly know.
"History abundantly shows that people's views of the universe are bound up with their views of themselves and of their society. The debate in cosmology has implications far beyond the realm of science, for it is a question of how truth is known. How these questions are answered will shape not only the history of science, but the history of humanity." (Eric Lerner, 1992)
"History abundantly shows that people's views of the universe are bound up with their views of themselves and of their society. The debate in cosmology has implications far beyond the realm of science, for it is a question of how truth is known. How these questions are answered will shape not only the history of science, but the history of humanity." (Eric Lerner, 1992)
One of the main reasons 'big bang' is pushed so ferociously is that it has been endorsed by the vatican..
"In fact, it seems that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial 'Fiat lux' (Let there be light) uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of the chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore, there is a Creator, God exists!" (Pope Pius XII, 1951)
300 years before this, 'the church' had Giordano Bruno publicly murdered for saying that space is infinite..
You 'do the math'.. NO! Please don't! This is why the erroneous ideas of 'infinity' are used in mathematics, specifically to confuse people into a misunderstanding of what infinitude actually means.. If space is infinite, 'god' cannot be..
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair
I've always found no-communication theorem to be unintuitive but through this lens i feel like i grok it. Thank you ❤️
This is a great video on how scientific inquiry and what it tells us helps humanity understand the world. Especially in this time of "interpreted" truths. Bravo!!
How we detect a result and then describe it using language does seem to confound how we use it to inform our mental picture of reality.
I always ask " how do things know how to interact with other things?" like how do atoms know how to atom - quarks to quark - and so on.
Thats true, usually.
Because they do
Yes!! I always ask that question. How do things know how to interact the way that they do? Just WHAT is forcing them to act that way?
@@peterhodson452 the ancient Stoics would have said "God". By which they meant that everything in the Cosmos is but one organism, ruled by laws, and that the substance of the universe was truly these laws (that could be characterized as "rational", or ""logical"). They used words like "Zeus", "universal reason", "logos", "Nature" and "God" pretty much interchangeably. It's probably not the answer you were looking for, but I personnaly find the idea elegant (it's very similar to Spinoza's pantheism, btw)
@@mathieuL2204 i feel like it's linked to the Pythagorean idea of numbers.
the question is, does a given number - let's say, Pi - exist or not?
where is Pi "stored" exactly?
how is it imprinted in the fabric of reality?
This episode is great. So many physicist say statements about nature based on our maths such as “this rigid body flips because its unstable about the 2nd principle axis” or the wavefunction collapses because we disturb it. No! Well yes, but in reality it is flipping because that is the lower energy state. Thats it. The worst is when we physicist say objective statements, in times where we are discussing the philosophy of nature.
No serious physicist says anything about wave function collapse. Only the RUclipsr physics wannabes say idiotic stuff like that. Systems don't automatically "flip" into the lower energy state. That takes dissipation, otherwise they can't shed the energy.
@@schmetterling4477 thats the entire point. By flipping I meant theres a probability with each eigenstate thats my bad
@@marfmarfalot5193 No, it doesn't mean that. Yes, you are extremely bad at physics. :-)
@@schmetterling4477 whaaaat? I just used the wrong word. Obviously it’s not flipping unless it lowers its energy god damn you are the worst type of person. Put down others due to your inferiority complex.
@@schmetterling4477 AND secondly this is false! Systems do spontaneously tend to the lowest energy state by dissipating their energy by any means possible. You sir are bad at physics!
awesome episode and a super intuitive explanation!
Where can I go to learn more about this?
For as many of these episodes as I've seen, I still have no idea when those wacky-looking animated scientists appeared. I feel like they're some in-joke I've missed out on and now simply must accept :-)
I think one of them is British Actor/Comedian Richard Ayoade.
As for his continued appearances, I suspect PBS owns a licence to his face or something.. 🤷♀
@@TheYahmez Maybe it's just because Richard Ayoade somehow improves everything he appears in.
@@TheYahmez that's definitely not Richard Ayoade
@@frankn89 No? Nor is it, without question or singular doubt, potentially, with the tiniest of possibilities, a projected emination of a file containing an animated charicature of his likeness, I suppose?
@@TheYahmez I'm afraid not, at least not in our current version... of space time
I like the idea that everything is information. It’s like, if you found something that is not information then what is it even? Makes you think 🤔
How would you be able to find "it"?
@@stefanb6539 I was phrasing it like a proof by contradiction. If you assume you found “it” then it would be absurd, so you can’t find it.
@@CrusaderTube so it's nothing? But nothing is information so it's something?
Or we just created the concept of information in a way, that it applies to everything.
I have a degree in economics and I study the philosophy of economics. There's a thing called "physics envy", in which economists try to base economic theories the further close to physics, but it's Newtonian physics. The concepts exposed in this video show how physics envy is meaningless because it's not what physicists are doing. But how to translate these things to economists is complicated.
You're probably talking about the "mainstream" economics. But the Austrian School of economics is more compatible with modern Physics. Luwdig Von Mises book "Human Action" brings a view that economics is essentially a subjective system (in concepts like value) functioning over an objective reality (material goods and services), and that's why econometrics is essentially an approximation of past observations.
@@N73B60 Hahahahaha
In addition to the Wheeler hypothesis you might want to take a look at the Pauli/Jung conjecture on dual-aspect monism. The best source material is from Harald Atmanspacher at the ETH in Zurich.
Before watching: I've always kind of thought this. Mathematics is perfectly logical and self-consistent, but there's not necessarily any reason that reality should always be the same, at its core.
"Nature's imagination is better than yours, and she is under no obligation to make herself comprehensible." - Exurb1a, paraphrasing Feynman (or maybe NDT)
Alrighty. This one was amazing. They usually are, but this was my favorite of 2022 so far.
I find your videos very informative. But one of the reasons why I stay tuned to your channel is because of your humour. I understand that you have to explain everything correctly and not confuse people. And I think you do a really good job at explaining the physics in your videos. But please continue to have your little jokes. Surely all the seriousness in the universe needs to be balanced out with a small amount of humour. Even Stephen Hawking said, "Without humour, the space -time continuum would implode". He didn't really, but I bet he thought it.
1:56
Using information as building blocks
4:00
Doesn't asking an electron "are you a particle?" automatically answer "are you a wave?" (making them the same question)? My guess is that this isn't the exact questions we ask, but the ones Matt mentions just before this above statement.
The electron is both a particle and a wave at any point in time, but those properties are independent of one another, so they would not be able to be answered in one question.
@@JohnDoe-jh5yr I think what Yash is saying is that, for example in the delayed choice experiment, the choice of which question we ask also can answer other questions, in this case about whether an electron is a wave or particle. If there is a second splitter, asking if it is a wave and getting yes, we automatically from this information know it must have taken both paths and is not a particle. Thus, we get two answers: wave = yes and particle = no. If we stick to the single one, it's seemingly the opposite due to the equal chances of either requiring the electron to be taking a single path rather than multiple.
Perhaps this points to an extension of the negative 20 questions reasoning, where different questions can be said to encompass other questions such that when 1 is answered, the encompassed ones are answered too. For example, if I ask if someone is alive, I also know (depending on what you think is encompassed by "alive") whether their brain is functioning, whether they will be able to get up tomorrow, whether their cells will continue to be able to metabolize etc. Contained in the complex concepts used to ask the question are multiple smaller concepts contained in the larger complex one. "Life" contains things like "metabolism" and "brain function". "Wave" may contain "particle" and vice versa in this game of negative 20 questions, they may be mutually encompassing.
Answering 'are you a particle' answers 'are you a wave' in the same way asking 'is your spin up' answers 'is your spin not down'. It provides 1 bit of information because it distinguishes from exactly 2 possibilities.
Are you a particle or are you a wave? "Yes" - Photon
@@nitswaa1935 If that were the only thing learned from the experiment, then that would be true, but we must also include the actual measurements at the devices. What's really answered are questions about two pairs of states: particle or wave? + both detectors or top detector? By answering the second question, we automatically answer the first, giving us a "free bit" seemingly.
One can categorise people who consider 'reality' in to one of two camps:
-Those who see our models of 'reality' as representations of reality itself
-Those who see our models as tools that only mimic observed behaviour
I fall firmly in to the latter camp - the proof would be if one could come up with a completely different model that did an equally or more useful job.
If possibly the latter view that does not in any way invalidate scientific enquiry or what has been achieved so far, but it does beg a question:
Should the scientific method formally include actively perusing multiple models rather than only (re)building on what we have?
To put it another way - It is absolutely fine to build your bridges out of stone, especially so the better you get at it. But what spans might be achievable should you choose use other materials too?
We're doomed by nature to only repeat this process, so it doesn't matter what we do, we will always try to defend our beliefs from anything that threatens it to downgrade it from truth to ideology. This is human history in the making.
Einstein has proven science to be just another finite theory with many holes in it, yet people still pretend there should be a "theory of everything", if only we dig hard enough and put all our minds together, we will discover it just like God would reveal himself to those kind faithful souls - yet most of them only had visions of the virgin Mary. Ironically, the answer is already in its name. A theory can never replace reality. This is why people with an actual mind of their own never cared about what could be considered scientific theology (scientology?) like string theory, and focused on tangible physics, like the LHC, instead. Science has proven to be a very practical instrument, just like religion has proven to be a very spiritual instrument. They both have fields where they operate optimally, yet they don't span the entire territory that constitutes reality. A multipolar truth is the only way to approach what we consider said reality.
That being said, whatever comes next as the great big field of discovery, people will pretend it's the truth, and then they will find out it isn't. And so the wheel keeps spinning. So yeah, have fun figuring out bridges while the smart people just float on to the other side.
My dad (a professor of quantum physics) would often say that the purpose of quantum mechanics is to predict the outcomes of experiments and that the different interpretations (e.g. Copenhagen, Many Worlds, de Broglie-Bohm) were "philosophy" because unfalsifiable. I once mentioned "quantum weirdness" to him and he replied, "I guess you could call it 'weirdness...." This video really reminds me of his attitude.
An important part of this idea is that it's impossible to prove something using the scientific method, only to disprove it.
Something I latched onto when I was studying biology is how everything we know about life exists to serve the purpose of acquiring energy and continuing the species (whatever form that replication takes). Anything that doesn't serve that purpose in some way nature tends to atrophy or ignore. There absolutely must be a great number of things which we are fundamentally NOT equipped to even detect because it doesn't serve those purposes.
I just want to say thank you for making these shows. After my stroke a few months ago, the doctors wanted be to relax, and take it easy, to reduce my stress while I recover. I decided to do this by watching all these again, from the beginning. It’s a great way to pass the time recovering, and I’ve learned quite a bit from these. So, thank you again.
Hope you're doing well, stranger.
Our knowledge of, anything really, is just our interpretation. Hence, objective truth is impossible for us to grasp. It is not because of some metaphysical rule, but pure mechanics of epistemology. Even if we use instruments to measure, the results will be instruments interpretation of observed part of reality, never the reality itself. We indeed create our reality, but maybe not in some magical manner as some people would suggest (but we should not rule anything out just yet...)
You basically just summarized critique of pure reason by Immanuel Kant
"Magic" is just anything we accept we don't truly understand.
@Curiouser and Curiouser Why? And why we have to trust your grading scale?
@@tamiloreolufemi9685 Have not read it, but hopefully will.
Could you not go as far to say that the instrument is interpreting an objective truth extrapolated to a subjective answer. Sure there maybe a bias in the question asked but parts of the answer is proven (like it exists)
What would I feast on without this channel? So thankful for PBS
If it is possible to develop the tech for simulating the Universe, then most universes would most likely simulated, including ours (heard this argument in a talk by a physicist, but I forget who). Also, quantization, Planck-scale limit, and speed-limit c all serve to make the simulation finite, which is a pretty important requirement for simulations.
Nick Bostrom made that argument, if i recall, but he's a philosopher rather than physicist.
he may not be the only one, though.
a very similar reasoning is behind the "Boltzmann brain" thought experiment, by the way.
to me the simulation hypothesis is religion in disguise.
God is the one who runs the simulation.
it's not really falsifiable - you can never prove it either way.
as a programmer i really like the argument about how the universe seems to be conservative on resources, and only generate small-scale data on demand (lazy evaluation), limiting the propagation speed of casual effects etc.
on the other hand, if our universe is simulated, our physics is simulated as well, and we know nothing about the physics of the "true" universe where the simulation was designed.
how do we know that the law of conservation of energy even exists there, for example?
maybe it doesn't. it could only be part of the simulation we live in.
perhaps "up there" there are no restrictions that require simulations to be designed as finite.
Yes, I agree with your last sentence especially. The universes limits, like the limits in a video game.
This only works if you have unlimited compute otherwise you get the degradation any time you make a copy of a copy, and also each layer will have less resources than the previous one due to entropy.
But what if you're just copying a finite set of bits, like cellular-automata states? Our Universe could be a finite state machine operating on a grid smaller than the Planck scale
How can we theorize that information is never destroyed when it seems like we can destroy information by asking another related question? Doesn't this clash?
I don't think it's destroyed cuz it cancels out. You lose one piece of information but gain another
@@lemonke8132 You could argue that you're not losing or gaining anything. If you're still asking questions that get binary responses, changing the question doesn't necessarily mean the content of the answer will change - it will still be binary and have a 50% chance of being "the same information".
I think that makes sense? lol
@@adraedin Nah you're wrong. You're acting like asking any question about the particle is randomized, which is not true. The fact is you can only know 1 bit of information about the particle. If it's spin up, I inherently can't know its horizontal spin. If i know it's spin left, I inherently can't know its vertical spin.
The following is a Hindu calculation for the age of the Universe, even if one considers it as imagination still what an imagination, must read to admire the time scale considered by Hindus: -
THE AGE OF BRAHMA (God of Creation) IS 311.04 TRILLION YEARS WHICH IS EQUIVALENT TO THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE. THE DETAILED CALCULATIONS ARE AS FOLLOWS
[I] YUG: Following are four YUGAS as per VEDAS
1 SATYUG = 17,28,000 years (17 Lakh 28 Thousand)
1 TRETA YUG = 12,96,000 years (12 Lakh 96 Thousand)
1 DWAAPAR YUG = 8,64,000 years (8 Lakh 64 Thousand)
1 KALIYUG = 4,32,000 years (4 Lakh 32 Thousand )
[2] MAHAAYUG
This is a collection of 4 YUGAS. The total is 4,320,000 (4.32 million)
[3] MANVANTARAS/MANU
1 MANU = 71 MAHAAYUG = 71 × 4,320,000 Years = 306,720,000 Years (306.72 Million)
[4] KALPA
A Kalpa is made up of BRAHMA’s one day which is equal to 1000 MAHAYUGAS. Universal dissolution happens after that during the night of Brahma, followed by the creation of a new universe।
1 KALPA= 1 DAY OF BRAHMA= 1,000 MAHA YUG= 1,000 x 4,320,000 Years = 4,320,000,000 Years( 4.32 billion)
___________________________________________
1 day of Brahma Consists of 14 MANU & There is a gap /Junction of 1,728,000 years in between every two manus
1 DAY OF BRAHMA= 14 MANU’s + 15 Junction points= 14 x 71 x 4,320,000 years+ 15 x 1,728,000 = 4,294,080,000+25,920,000 =4,320,000,000 years ( 4.32 billion )
___________________________________________
1 FULL DAY OF BRAHMA =2 KALPAS =Day + Night= 4,32,00,00,000 x 2= 8,640,000,000 years ( 8.64 Billion )
FULL AGE OF THE WHOLE UNIVERSE
Full Age Of whole Universe = 100 years of brahma with 360 days per year= 100 x 360 x 8,640,000,000 = 311,040,000,000,000 years
(311,040 billion human years. i.e. 311.04 trillion years)
@@lemonke8132 See also 'Beables' I suppose, as a special term coined by Lee Smolin and others. Used for some kinds of ontology, in physics.
My favourite Niels Bohr quote:
"Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language."
that thought is neither complete nor innocent
@@monnoo8221 innocent?
Thats literally a soup of words that doesnt mean anything
@@intimpulliber7376 not really... Yet I would agree that it is not anything special and could have been said much shorter
@@intimpulliber7376 Funny. To me, it's a pretty specific statement on his philosophy of physics
I can tell you're a video game officianado. The way you were sneaking definitely shows you've done some questing in your day
I totally agree with this perspective. All we have are our perceptions, and there is just no way for us to know how "literally" they tell us about "what's out there." Assuming it's "totally literally" just has no justification at all. The map is not the territory. Ultimately all science can address is what we expect our perceptions to be.
Man this was a good episode. Mind blow territory. Would love to adopt this yes-no philosophy and apply to other domains.
As a Quant, we often break down independent variables in an equation into binary(yes-no) variables in order to explain dependent variables. It's really fascinating to see how your result can change with just this simple Stat technique. When you apply this technique to more subjective concepts, you start seeing patterns and frameworks everywhere where you're not "supposed to" as you're looking at subjective things with objective techniques. But again, as mentioned in the episode, most important thing is what question you're asking while doing this process.
@@binacharya love it. Will definitely investigate. Really gives credence to the idea of the importance of “high quality questions.”
Do apply with your spouse
This is precisely the kind of self-analysis I dig. Non-dogmatic approach is why I love science. I have come to distain the dogma of scientism.
If Matt was a superhero his ability would be to be able to segue into the "spacetime" outro no matter the context
Reminds me of Vsauce.
That bait-and-switch at the very end was just... *chef's kiss *.
Matt - this video has me thinking about alternate approaches to describing the world. Here’s one worth considering.
If Comedy = Tragedy + Time, then Time = Comedy - Tragedy. Why aren’t we working on developing reliable physical models for comedy and tragedy?
A question about Einstein's moon question and Bohr's answer... doesn't the moon have to exist prior to anyone seeing it (detection)? If the light from the moon hits your eyes right as you go to look at it, it must have existed at least one second prior to you seeing it because it takes light about one second to travel from the moon to Earth.
Yes, what a silly thing to say by such an intelligent person. Prove it, he said. You just did that for him. He's welcome! The Moon's effects certainly existed before you glanced up and saw it. Really, all bodies effect each other, so there has to be something in order for it to BE where it is. We might not have a visual on it but we know that something's there.
@@palladium1083 Yes, however, this is where I'm getting confused. You could argue that any part of reality could just change at any moment because most of our knowledge is based on prior experience, rather than something deduced that must be true. Maybe copper just stops being conductive one day. Maybe the moon disappears. But the assumed consistency we expect in these things also forms the evidence for our understanding of quantum mechanics from which Bohr was arguing. Perhaps I am conflating the philosophy of science with this specific interpretation of the predictions of quantum mechanics, but it seems incoherent to undermine the notion of a consistent and "real" universe when it forms the basis of the evidence for the theory he's saying undermines it. Or perhaps I misunderstand the evidence for QM.
The universe doesn't need us in order to "be real" silly humans
Luckily, QM as currently formulated allows for a theory that maintains reality - that position just isn't mainstream due to characters like Bohr.
Bell's tests imply that there's no fundamental reason we can't form a theory that preserves the notion of an underlying reality so long as we allow for some form of instantaneous communication between quantum particles. Such a theory, preserving realism, would obey logical rules and thus would give us an actual understanding of the quantum nature of reality.
On the other hand, the current scientific orthodoxy assumes that locality is preserved (so that they don't have to scrap relativity, but funnily enough it's mathematically equivalent predecessor, Lorenz AEther Theory, allows for simultaneity and thus instant quantum communication). The consequence is that they must reject realism by default (Bell's theorem) and thus there is no way forward within this paradigm to understanding QM because by their interpretation "there's nothing to understand".
This makes a lot of sense to me actually, when it comes to quantum mechanics. They maintain that a particle doesn't have certain properties until we observe/measure it, that it exists in a combination of states simultaneously. But this describes our knowledge/perception of the particle, not the particle itself.
Deep, but accessible. Thank you for this.
Information = position, charge and polarity. When talking about spin (turn - one of the ways of varying position), there is information that is being disregarded (it cannot be measured with current technology) and affects the "left or right" result... A minimum exit inclination , variations in angular velocity and how forces from surrounding elements affect the response. The quantum system is very sensitive and small pieces of information from smaller layers affect its response, but it is not subject to the "will" of the observer. So little "collapses" at the moment of observation... The result of the system is given by the difference in information between the observer's coordinate and the observed object. This happens on a macro scale too... For example, when we talk about the inversion of the Earth's magnetic poles, what occurs is an alternation of speed between the crust and the core. When the crust is faster than the core, the magnetosphere is in a direction so that it is under the crust. When the crust loses speed and rotates slower than the core, which is under the crust, it appears that it is rotating in reverse and the magnetosphere has inverted (position).
Left-handed particles have weak force because the field in which they are inserted is "harmonized" in the opposite direction... The weak force is the search for simplification of information processing.
This is precisely the kind of self-analysis I dig. The non-dogmatic approach is why I love Science. I have come to distain the dogma of scientism.
Disagreed.
I too have come to de-stain the dog men of scientology
I'm a bit skeptical of the argument about the bits of information in the quantum wave function. It kind of makes sense for spin 1/2 particles where there are only two outcomes, but what about a spin 1 particle where there are three outcomes? Also what if you do the second measurement at an arbitrary angle instead of exactly perpendicular to the first, then you get unequal probabilities for the two measurement outcomes and it doesn't seem obvious how you'd get the correct result just from this argument about information.
Also, Sabine Hossenfelder released a video just a few days ago about the connection between quantum mechanics and chaotic systems. She made a pretty convincing argument that for chaotic systems to behave correctly the quantum wavefunction needs to constantly be 'observed' by interactions with random particles in the environment. That would seem to disprove the interpretations where quantum mechanics is all just about our knowledge, do any of the people working on those have an alternative explanation of what is going on in these chaotic systems?
Anyway, its still interesting to think about. Great video as always!
I like your criticism, I think it’s useful to think about these questions.
My (somewhat uninformed) take on it would be this: 1st, information theory has no problem with systems that have for example 1.4 bits of information. It could mean that you need at least 2 binary questions or one question that reveals one of three possibilities (like in your example). I don’t see a reason why the binary question/answer should be the only one possible, just like 2/3 of electrical charge seem to be valid for quarks. As for the case of a non-perpendicular measurement direction, you also get partial bits. 10 degrees rotation of the SG apparatus will keep one outcome much more likely than another, so the information content of the measurement (given your previous measurement) will be only 0.05 bits or so. However, the total information about the spin direction is still only 1 bit, 0.95 that you already have about that question and 0.05 that you can gain.
2nd, on the chaotic system, the act of measurement does not need to include only us I guess, but also any mechanism that would in principle make the information available to the outside world. (or at least a somewhat larger system that you are interacting with).
We need Sabine to respond to this video!
Your video resolution/quality is amazing; content is pretty good to!
Stephen Wolfram addresses the same questions as Zeilinger in "A New Kind of Science", and in my opinion offers a more tractable path to an understandable answer. In the same way that a bit is the smallest unit of information, a fascinating world is opened by asking "What is the behavior of the smallest combination of bits?". This leads directly to the entire field of cellular automata.
More fundamentally, it is worth mentioning that physics and science tends to have a long-wave oscillation between induction and deduction. During a deductive period of the cycle, we seek simple solutions to the behavior we observe. During an inductive period, we seek to predict the data that emerges from our "simple" solutions. Each period's "solution" opens to reveal complexity as we induce outcomes from it.
Anyone who thinks that physics is close to understanding the simplest solution isn't familiar with string theory.
Physics may describe our perception of Reality, but our inventions based on physics also work.
That’s circular reasoning
Define “work” … if you mean that the inventions mimic the only characteristics of nature as we are capable of perceiving, then yes, they “work”
Well, they appear to work according to our perceptions...
You are bugs!
Bingo!
The question/answer at 14:23 reminds me of a science fiction short story that I read in an anthology from the 50s or 60s (i think), the premise of which is that the earth had moved from one galactic zone (in which life originated and evolved into humans) into another galactic zone which was less hospitable and was having the effect of making everyone either dumber or smarter (i can't remember which). Please if anyone knows what I'm talking about help me remember!
lmao love that you brought it back around to the pygmy mammoths. that was beautiful.
Thanks Matt you answered my question about matter shrinking vs universe expanding
The idea of randomness in these "quantum questions" coming from the reference frame of the question iself, is strikingly similar to low-level programming languages, where often if you do something you are not meant to you cause "undefined behaviour" in the program/machine. If the universe is written in C++ im going to lose it.
Though theoretically the entire universe could be programmed in C++, according to the theory of Turing completeness, I find it very unlikely that we would bother simulating ourselves such that the exact same programming language is built in our simulation.
I bet it's all built on top of the stl too
yeah the use of the word undefined made my brain think of ub errors from my compiler when i was trying my best to finish last minute assignments and I got the equivalent of nam flashbacks
You'd prefer Visual Basic?
(Just kidding. It's obviously written in Brainfuck.)
Perhaps entanglement is a bug caused by careless use of global variables.
Instead of matter shrinking, would expansion in the t direction rather than x, y, z be as valid a solution to what's happening? Perhaps time outside of gravity wells is expanding or speeding up, or spacetime otherwise appears to dissipate the energy of light over distance?
Simple question: math is an creation describing our observation of the universe. What is wrong with math vs the actual universe?
@PBSSpaceTime, great video, as usual! At 7:17, Matt mentions that Zeilinger derived an equivalent of the Schrodinger equation. Could anyone point me to the reference to this work?
It's fascinating how these one of reasoning in Physics lines up with new lines of thoughts from Neuroscience on consciousness. One of the more novel theories on consciousness now is Integrated Information Theory-it asks many similar questions.
if matter was shrinking instead of the universe expanding, then our measurement devices would shrink too, so photons would appear to have larger wavelengths.
unless photons are also shrink ...
If photons create matter upon collision then that implies photons also shrink in that observational model. That's why relativity is true, the equal and opposite model is just as true. It's just relative to the observer's model. In terms of comparison, mapping everything from negatives, as long as consistent, its true.
If you follow proving things false instead of true, you will eventually implicitly uncover truth from the pattern of negation. Following proofs of contradictions.
@Curiouser and Curiouser ?
If the universe is a simulation, restricting the amount of information per particle indeed makes sense. Combining it with having undefined states in unobserved particles makes a pretty good "compression" algorithm.
If we add the interpretation of the expanding universe as matter shrinking, couldn't we say we are living in a "space file" and are being compressed/zipped? ;)
maybe gravity is a compression artifact? :)
A quantum mechanical universe is harder to simulate than a classical one.
One might ask "how can one say that, without knowing the computational model in which the simulation is implemented?", and that's kind of a good point, but, seeing as you can reduce a classical simulation problem to a quantum one, but it is exponentially (in the size of the system) hard to simulate quantum stuff classically, uh,
yeah, no, the reason for quantum mechanics is not "because it uses less computational resources",
because it doesn't.
lololololololololol, a simulation
Shannon's measure of information should arguably never have been called "entropy". He wrote that "the form of H will be recognised as that of entropy as defined in certain formulations of statistical mechanics[Shannon, C.E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. Bell Syst. Tech. J., 27, 379-423.]," but that is has the same form does mean that it is that thing. Shannon later said "My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'[Tribus, M., & McIrvine, E.C. (1971). Energy and information. Scientific American, 225, 179-188.]"
Arieh Ben-Naim's works on the misunderstanding and misapplication of entropy (both informational and thermodynamic) are fascinating, and well worth a read. One such example is his book "Entropy, the Truth, the Whole Truth". I'd love an episode on this!
In Pilot Wave theory, it's understood that the wavefunction is merely epistemic--it's only a math tool to describe our current knowledge (our ignorance) of the system--and that instead the particle actually does always have a defined position at all times.