Episode 33: Unsolved Problems in Physics Part 4 - Possible Solutions and Criticisms

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Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.

Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.

Transcript

[00:00:10]  Sadia: So let's take before, I know that I kind of jumped into a little bit of what I feel like is needed, but let's take the current paradigm a little more seriously. A lot of times, I mean, I've always found that, I've always taken a conservative view. I really do take some of our best ideas as seriously as I can.

So this is what the current paradigm leads to. I'm going to call it the deterministic nightmare. And some people have, Chiara called it the deterministic nightmare in her book, Chiara Marletto.

And I'm also going to tell you why there's no need to lose sleep over this so-called deterministic nightmare. So let's talk about it again based on these time-symmetric laws and based on the second law of thermodynamics. All right.

This kind of goes back to what you were talking about earlier. All right. So if you look at the universe as a whole, and we say that it's based on time-symmetric laws.

And we also accept that second law of thermodynamics is true. Then our universe should be, and again, we're kind of thinking maybe some sort of a finite universe. I don't know.

I mean, it could be infinite. I don't know if that would make any difference. But if you look at the universe as a whole, you would think that the universe should be in more of a thermal equilibrium, that maximal entropy state that I was talking about, some sort of a thermal equilibrium where nothing interesting is happening.

[00:01:39]  Sadia: That should be the most probable state for the universe to be. And then if you were given an eternity, now, of course, we're thinking in terms of time, but we can always translate all of that into a timeless picture. But time appears to be a very useful way to talk about things.

So I'm going to talk in time, even though I'm talking about the current paradigm, which is suggesting timelessness. So even if we had an eternity, right? If we had an eternity, then here and there, you would see that certain, sometimes you will have these fluctuations where the universe, at least parts of like, imagine if just for simplicity’s sake, imagine the entire universe as some sort of gas, right?

Which is in thermal equilibrium. Then you will find these low entropy regions pop up just by chance, right? Because of the way things are moving, even though they're moving randomly, but they will.

So subsystems of the universe could cycle to low entropy states given an eternity, right? Given a long, long period of time. They're really improbable, so you would need a long period of time to see that.

Okay, so Poincaré kind of talked about this. You know, it's kind of, it's something called Poincaré recurrence theorem, which says that certain dynamical systems, this is from Wikipedia, where certain dynamical system will, after sufficiently long, but finite time, return to a state arbitrarily close, or exactly the same as their initial state.

[00:03:09]  Bruce: Yes.

[00:03:10]  Sadia: And you can see that this sort of stuff probably inspired, this wasn't the only thing, but it would probably inspire Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosophers, the eternal recurrence. So I don't want to get in too much into it, but if anybody knows about it.

You know, where it's kind of like, where over time, you know, it kind of just repeats through the same stuff. Obviously, if the universe is not creating any novelty, then whatever exists, you're just cycling through the same stuff, right?

[00:03:37]  Bruce: Yes.

[00:03:37]  Sadia: Over a long period of time, though.

[00:03:39]  Bruce: Yes. Right. This actually follows from just computational theory, right? If you're imagining a computer that's just doing a computation, it's not interacting with the real world in any way, it's got a finite amount of memory, right?

So at some point, if you're doing that computation and it's one that's not going to halt, it's going to run forever, there's no possibility it's not going to pass through a state that it's been in before. It has to at some point. So that would be kind of the same thing as, that's a simplified layman's version of Poincaré's recurrence theorem.

[00:04:17]  Sadia: Thank you. That complements nicely of what I said in terms of computation. So I really appreciate you actually saying that.

So now let's look at the universe around us. And what do we find? We find a really interesting universe.

Whether you want to look at a galaxy, whether you look at clusters of galaxies, you look at the large scale structure of the universe, and you go to the level of biosphere. The world is so interesting. It's anything but thermal equilibrium, right?

And not just that, from the memories and from the records we have, geological records, fossil records, we know that the universe has been doing interesting things, such as coming up with life, evolution of stars, stars die, they spew out all sorts of heavy elements, then that leads to the elements needed for life. So life has been anything but, sorry, the universe has been anything but boring when we actually study it. So then if we are in the current paradigm, then we ask ourselves, could this all this interesting stuff, could that just be that low entropy fluctuation in a much larger universe?

Maybe the universe is much larger and the observable universe that we're seeing is some sort of a fluctuation, that low entropy fluctuation that took place. Right. So let's take that idea again a little bit more seriously.

It's really fun when you really sometimes dive down into and take an idea more seriously. And so in this case, let's dive down deeper. So now imagine that there is a small fluctuation.

[00:05:45]  Sadia: Now, if there were these thermal fluctuations, these small fluctuations that were taking place, low entropy fluctuations that were taking place in the universe, then the first thing you realize is smaller fluctuations, smaller in the sense of you can think of smaller regions of fluctuations, they occur more often than larger fluctuations. And so a smaller region of fluctuation would also be more probable than a larger one. So you can also think in terms of probability, you can also think in terms of just fluctuations happening or a large region of space or whatever.

Okay, so then you ask yourself, how do I reconcile that with what I see, right? So when we look out in the universe, we see that our observable universe is about 96 billion light years across, okay? That's the diameter of the observable universe.

And it is rich, it's full of structure, it's interesting, and it's far from equilibrium. So first thing is, obviously, this is a highly improbable state, okay? So how do we explain.

This? Okay, so first of all, if a fluctuation that was the size of a galaxy would be way more probable than this entire universe, or go even smaller, right? A fluctuation the size of the world or solar system, a solar system would be much more probable than say the rich universe.

[00:07:19]  Bruce: Right, no, that makes perfect sense. Why should the whole universe be in this improbable state? If it's just a matter of fluctuations, then it should be just the galaxy.

And if it should be just the galaxy, then it should be just the solar system.

[00:07:32]  Sadia: As you take this more seriously, and the physicists who have taken this more seriously, then finally arrive at this conclusion. They said, okay, so how do we explain this experience we're having, right? Maybe we should just go down to the level of our experience instead of saying what's actually out there.

What we're seeing here is a really rich universe, right? How do we explain this observation? Well, isn't a brain just fluctuating with all sorts of consistent memories, fake memories of a rich universe, way more probable than a 96 billion light year across actual universe fluctuating?

[00:08:11]  Unidentified speaker: Of course it is, right?

[00:08:13]  Bruce: Yeah.

[00:08:14]  Sadia: We have arrived at something what people have called the Boltzmann brain, right? So then the question is, could we be Boltzmann brain or should I lose my sleep over it? Am I just about to fluctuate out of existence?

As I said before, there's no reason for us to lose sleep over it, because here's the thing. A brain, a Boltzmann brain with memories which don't make any sense, which aren't as consistent is way more probable than a one which has consistent memories. So then right away, we've kind of lost something in terms of explanatory power, right?

We were trying to explain the richness of the world within the current paradigm. We took it seriously. And I still see people talking about Boltzmann brain.

But obviously, if you're in this paradigm, then you're going to take those Boltzmann brain seriously. So we've kind of arrived at sort of like a paradox, right? That we are not, even if somebody said that I'm a Boltzmann brain, the fact that I have consistent memories of such a highly structured world where there are laws at all sorts of levels, you know, that's somewhat of a paradox because I really shouldn't be experiencing anything consistent if I was to be a Boltzmann brain.

[00:09:23]  Bruce: So I have to tell you, I had a conversation with your husband about a variant of this and he wasn't getting it. I was struggling to try to explain it to him, but what I was trying to get at was Penrose explained this. This is like a variant of the Boltzmann brain where he said the state of the universe in terms of its low entropy state is so improbable that there's no need for biological evolution because you could have atoms smashed together and form the world as it is, if necessary, complete with memories of our past.

And that would be less improbable, that would be more probable than the state of the universe trying to measure its probability in terms of the entropy state it's in, that it's such a low entropy state that that's way less probable. So there's no need for evolution at all. We shouldn't even be in a universe that has biological evolution because that's a completely unnecessary aspect of a universe that just by chance happened that way.

His point he's trying to make is that people are ignoring, they kind of just accept the universe is in a low entropy state. That's like a given. He's trying to say, that's a genuine mystery, it needs an explanation.

[00:10:53]  Sadia: Exactly. This is again one of those things we just assume that it just is. But if you really take the current paradigm seriously as what you just mentioned and the Boltzmann brain sort of thing is again, it's basically the same idea what you just said.

It's just really taking this seriously and seeing what are the implications. But then not just that, the idea just destroys itself because we shouldn't just be Boltzmann brain with all the structured memories, all these, you know, there is a consistency and stuff. It should really just doesn't make sense at all.

So there is a sort of a paradox here. And, you know, I mean, if you're a physicist, when you come up with paradox, you don't think that that paradox is out there in the universe. You're thinking the paradox is usually considered as something where our theories, there's something wrong with our ideas.

There's some inconsistency in our theories or ideas, right? So again, this is an example where you take this paradigm seriously. You come across something which leads into a paradox.

And we're definitely not Boltzmann brains, and there is no need for us to lose sleep over it. Earlier, we also talked about the heat death of the universe. Again, looking at the universe, looking at the history of the universe that is available to us through, whether it's through astronomy, astrophysics, through geological records, through fossil records, all of that consistently gives a view of the universe having evolved novelty.

[00:12:15]  Sadia: It's become more and more interesting, right? When you look at the history starting at the Big Bang and all the way to life and the present moment, it's been anything but boring. It's actually become more and more interesting, okay?

So, again, this requires an explanation. And so I don't feel like I have to, again, no one is saying the second law of thermodynamics is wrong. It's just that we only have the partial picture.

With the second law, of course, there is this second law in operation that if you have an isolated, almost, you know, I mean, even though it's really hard to get, there's no such thing as a perfectly isolated system. Because even if you try to isolate everything, you're always going to have gravity. Gravity is everywhere.

You can't really isolate anything. If you tried to, you would actually end up with a black hole. Lee Smolin actually kind of solved that problem, too, and he kind of beautifully talks about it in his book.

Now, look, you can't really have an isolated system. But let's say if you think of some idealization, then yeah, in an idealized way, which seems like has nothing to do with reality, you can say that there's going to be a heat death if the entire universe was an isolated system. But we can't even have such an isolated system in our universe, let alone the whole universe.

[00:13:31]  Sadia: So why should I lose my sleep or this heat death? But at the same time, there's something to be said about the second law. But what we're missing right now, that what we really need to take seriously, is how is the novelty being created?

There's something novel that the universe is creating.

[00:13:51]  Bruce: Before you move on, I actually have a question about this one. I actually don't think I followed the logic that you just mentioned from Lee Smolin on that. I agree that inside the universe, you can never have an isolated system.

But the word universe by definition is an isolated system. So it does seem like that's different to me. So I just maybe just throw that out there.

I don't know if you want to comment on that or not.

[00:14:16]  Sadia: Okay. So you could assume that the universe is an isolated system. But I guess what I'm saying is-

[00:14:21]  Bruce: It's not an assumption that it's an isolated system. The word universe means isolated system. To say that the universe isn't an isolated system is to say it's not a universe.

[00:14:31]  Sadia: So again, that would be, the assumption would be that the universe is in some sort of a way, like finite.

[00:14:41]  Bruce: It's making some assumptions. You're right about that.

[00:14:44]  Sadia: Exactly. So what we have to realize is that all of that goes with a certain assumption about the universe, that the universe is not an open system, right? That it's, and if it is, then sure.

Yes. And if it is working under time-symmetric laws, then yes. Yeah.

Heat death. Sure. But the thing is that everything that this is based on, when we look at the universe, this highly improbable state, it's nothing short of a miracle.

It's actually in the current paradigm. And I hate to say this, when I do physics, I don't want my physics theories, physical theories to be based on things that seem kind of miraculous. Like I want to explain the world.

So something is wrong there. So I'm not losing my sleep over something that is based on some sort of, you know, almost such an improbable thing that it is pretty much like a miracle. So when I look around the universe, I see growth of novelty.

I, you know, I see an interesting universe. So that's what I'm going to focus on explaining. And there doesn't has to be, I don't think there's any problem with the second law.

The problem is the heat, the heat death part is something that is very much laden with all sorts of assumptions about the universe. And that's the part where I'm saying like, I really don't see any reason to be worried about it. Or I don't see any clash with the second law either.

[00:16:03]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:16:06]  Sadia: So, so, so anyway, so that leads me to the proposal. I think the best explanation I can think of right now, in novelty generation that comes from having looked at life, you know, the evolution of life where we've seen how new organisms, if you even, there's actually a beautiful documentary.

It shouldn't be that difficult to look up. It's actually about the evolution of the eye. So when, even if you look at the life itself, it's an interesting phenomena.

As a matter of fact, the more I've kind of dived into theoretical biology and looked at how biologists talk about, it is interesting that when you're studying life, you don't study it in the way physicists study the physical phenomena, non-living physical phenomena. That whole dichotomy that physicists can make with the law versus the state vanishes. Life is best understood.

The evolution of life can be best understood if you're thinking in terms of, again, we talked about that there is an appearance of design. So you can almost think as if certain things like an eye has some purpose and, I'm not saying that's how we should think about it. That's just, it sounds anthropomorphic, but what I'm trying to say is that there is an element of design there that is fully understood when making the differentiation between law and the state seems to vanish when it comes to life.

You can't really talk about life in that way. And it's been kind of highlighted by this argument. This has been brought up by quite a few biologists that I’ve read.

[00:17:39]  Sadia: So if that's the case, you know, it seems like that whole idea of thinking in terms of law, initial conditions and a state, it seems to be pretty surface level that some physicists have started thinking about it. There's really no reason even within the current paradigm, as I explained with how clocks emerge to make that distinction. All we need to think about is, okay, how is the universe actually evolving?

And then really, that is the question. But to answer that question, I think that we do need a global notion of time, because without time, there is no evolution, because otherwise, you're just again back in that thing, that everything that you can possibly imagine, and every novelty that somehow exists in a timeless way. But that's just not a good explanation.

If you want a good explanation, a theory which makes testable predictions, then we have to take it as a process that, an ongoing process in the universe, how is the universe evolving, and then we can hope to make progress. For that, I think we will need a global notion of time. Going back to Barbour’s theory, the Barbour’s reformulation does suggest that there, I think I may be repeating myself here, that there might be a global notion.

[00:18:53]  Sadia: There might be, so who knows, maybe that, I don't know if that's a hint there, that what we're seeing in general relativity, but basically we need to take time seriously. I really don't know what to say beyond that, that we really need to take this asymmetry of the universe, this idea of the evolution seriously. And one of the biggest challenge, I think right now that we have is, how does novelty actually, how is the novelty actually created?

So that's the push, that's the whole idea why I talked about it. I hope maybe you can ask questions to see if I've, if I've missed out anything. But we need the concept of some sort of a global time, if the evolution of the universe is to make sense.

Because we can study the evolution of life with some external time, right, that's given to us by physics. But when it comes to the universe as a whole, we don't have anything outside of it. So what type of, so we have to really think about something and then there has to be some way that it generates novelty.

It can't be kind of like the current paradigm, where clocks just emerge and time [unclear], because otherwise we're back in the timeless realm.

[00:20:05]  Bruce: Let me, related to that, let me ask you a question, one that's been bothering me for long before I knew you. There is, I think it was Lee Smolin in one of his books. He has this idea of, that we may be able to someday create a universe.

Like scientists in a lab in our world could create a universe. Am I wrong about this? Is it that Lee Smolin or is it somebody else I'm thinking of?

[00:20:32]  Sadia: That I don't know about. I mean, his current ideas have now changed because he's saying that there is just a singular universe, a single universe.

[00:20:40]  Bruce: So I think it was Lee Smolin, but I might be wrong, but it was a legitimate scientist. He was talking about this idea of humans creating a universe in a lab.

[00:20:50]  Sadia: But I guess if he could create black holes and if black holes really are creating universes.

[00:20:54]  Bruce: Yes, it was related to that. It was related to that. Now, according to and I, I've never actually read the whole book.

I just read this part of it. And what I recall was that, first of all, we wouldn't be able to in any way interact with that universe, other than we might have a say over like how the laws of physics were designed in that universe. And they may actually be designed in that case, because it was the scientists in the lab that designed it.

Okay. But we wouldn't have any way to interact with it. It's not like we could see this universe.

It's not like it would displace our world or something like that. It would, for all intents and purposes, we just can't interact with it at all. The laws of physics keep us from doing so.

This idea led to some later, and this is, of course, obviously a very speculative idea. This led to an even more speculative idea of maybe we could create a universe and then find a way that we could interact with it such that we could move into it. And it was one of the proposals for how to overcome heat death that pops around the internet.

It's not a true scientific proposal. I've got to tell you that it's so speculative that it's just almost to the point of silly. Okay?

And yet, usually when you're trying to deal with things like that, you're not worried about silly. You're just trying to float ideas out there. So there's nothing wrong with that.

[00:22:13]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:22:16]  Bruce: But the first part of the proposal, the idea that you could create a universe based on the idea of being able to create a black hole, that first part at least is somewhat rooted in real physics, certain physical ideas. If you were to do that though, that would effectively mean that time in that other universe is disconnected from time in our universe. Wouldn't that be the case?

Like they would have their own time separate from ours. They would literally be a different timeline.

[00:22:48]  Sadia: So in terms of the current paradigms, where clocks or what is called time in the current paradigm, that arises with the dynamic laws. So yeah, in that case, yes. But here we're talking about [unclear] theory.

This is actually pretty novel. Here I could literally put, I wish I could just call time as some, because I'm using the same term when I talk about current paradigm and what I'm calling time. But they're really different beasts.

It's like this time that I'm talking about is a completely different beast.

[00:23:25]  Bruce: The reason why I brought this up as an example, because when you create this other universe in this theoretical, this hypothesized way of doing this, you're effectively creating a Big Bang. And time starts with the Big Bang. There's no time before the Big Bang.

And yet there is, in a sense, in this case. Because you could meaningfully say, at such and such a time in our universe, this other universe began. But from the point of view of that other universe, its start was outside of time.

[00:23:59]  Sadia: Yeah, to be honest with you, I'm not even sure how to understand this idea of saying that there was this other disconnected universe. You know, I mean, once you start to go down that route, you know, we are really getting into this thing that how do we even test an idea like this? Like, can we even do science, right?

So that's why, even though it sounds kind of interesting that I would [unclear] love to watch a sci-fi with something like that, but then it would be a sci-fi, right?

[00:24:27]  Bruce: Okay, let me offer some feedback and criticisms on what you've said up to this point.

[00:24:32]  Sadia: Actually, could I first comment on one other thing you said right there before you go into that? Before I forget what I was going to say. So, you know, it's not just Lee Smolin, actually Barbour, Julian Barbour, and then Roger Penrose.

They've kind of talked about, there are multiple people who are kind of talking about this, that the time may not, so people who are kind of thinking outside of this current paradigm and saying that time may not, even though the clocks might start at the point, at some point that we call Big Bang, but the time that I'm sort of talking about might extend further back. In other words, there may not be a Big Bang singularity. Like what we think of singularity may not exist in a slightly different paradigm.

[00:25:22]  Bruce: Right. No, I agree. I agree that's the case. I was actually—

[00:25:25]  Sadia: In Barbour’s theory, there isn't really a Big Bang singularity.

[00:25:29]  Bruce: I was actually asking that question because I wanted to understand if we could think of, when you talk about taking time seriously, if this was an alternate possible way of thinking of it, but maybe not. I was unsure if it was or not.

[00:25:46]  Sadia: But anyways, so I'll let you ask. I mean, there are a few things I was going to say later on, but we can get into those. Go ahead.

[00:25:55]  Bruce: Do you want to go ahead and finish out?

And then I'll make some comments.

[00:25:59]  Sadia: Either way is fine with me.

So anyways, kind of talking about, again, I kind of mentioned a little bit about the life that how in biology, biological evolution is best understood. It's understood in a very different way than we talk about in physics, where this law state, this differentiation kind of starts to disappear.

And you're just looking at the evolution of a phenomena. And we don't even know, I mean, so far in neo-Darwinian evolution, like we talked about that we've looked at how genes play, the mutation at the level of DNA is what drives evolution. So the idea is basic, but if you look at how when we look at the evolution of life up to humans, it seems like the evolution has taken a leap here, there is something novel, right?

Because here now the evolution is taking place at the ideas at the level of memes. So how do we even connect that, right? And in the old paradigm, how do we make sense of it?

I mean, to me, this is something novel that has come about in the universe, right? In this evolution. And it seems like history plays an important part in the evolution as well.

Kind of like what you mentioned that one could in the current paradigm think of how smashing all sorts of stuff together, you could come up with life. But see, again, if we go down that route, everything becomes kind of like a miraculous thing. We're hoping that, oh, well, some day, you know, something just smashed in the right way and, you know, loosely speaking.

[00:27:24]  Sadia: But actually, when you look at the theory of evolution, when you're trying to explain what an eye does, like an eye in an organism, then the history matters a lot. Like the evolution up to human beings, to understand what, you know, how humans came about, I think you would need to have the evolution of life. I remember Paul Davies mentioning that if you look around the universe, he said in one of his books that I read, he said that I don't think there is any phenomena that the universe couldn't come up with, that only life could actually make possible.

And it suddenly occurred to me, I'm like, you're so wrong. I'm like, I don't think you, I really don't think humans would have been around if life wasn't around first. So there you go.

There is a phenomena there that requires life to exist, right? We sometimes take ourselves too much for granted as if, oh, well, we're just humans, right? We need to explain ourselves.

This is really important. I think we see that novelty at play more than anywhere else, I think, in human phenomena, because humans look at the things we've created. I think that it isn't just what we're creating, things like art, whether you look at economics, culture, science, mathematics.

I think all of that should be viewed as evolution of laws, not an evolution under static laws. Like this should be looked upon as genuine evolution where laws are evolving, right? Do you see what I'm trying to say?

[00:28:59]  Sadia: Like I'm saying that instead of us thinking that a human is doing stuff, and we're bound by some sort of fixed laws, we need to start thinking of the whole human phenomenon, just like what I've said about the universe, is actually an evolution of laws itself. It's not just a phenomena that's unfolding under some constraints put by certain laws, which are static. So look at the biosphere, right?

Look at how much we've changed the entire biosphere. If you take the human element out, this world would be quite different. Now give it enough time.

We're actually already doing experiments in labs in the quantum realm, right? We're doing, there's all sorts of novel phenomena we study in condensed matter physics. There's been a lot of foundational research in condensed matter physics.

I actually developed more of an appreciation of it much later at graduate school level of what condensed matter physics was about. And then we have, you know, when we look at purely just quantum mechanics as we move towards quantum computers, we're making, we're getting towards higher and higher qubit states. We might be making all sorts of new novel phenomena that may not, maybe eventually we're going to get to the level where the things we're going to create, the states that we're going to come up with, may not actually exist anywhere in the universe.

[00:30:25]  Sadia: It's kind of hard to know if we've already reached that point or not, maybe not, but I think we're kind of almost at the cusp of where we might start doing that, particularly with qubits and stuff. That's, I think, I feel like this is where the time is going to be ripe to test out these ideas, that if there is novelty being generated, we're going to have to come up with theories how novelty is generated. Maybe we can test them in those ideas.

I think we're already testing that in AI research. Our move towards AGI is another place, right? Where we're testing these ideas.

Artificial life is another one. The recently I heard, you know, I was part of a conversation between Sara Walker and Lee Cronin, and they both really highlighted this, that how much the artificial life is not coming up with anything. Like, we don't understand life.

It's said that anytime we come up, we understand something, it's always because we've kind of snuck in life ourselves. But this whole idea of just putting together the raw ingredients and hoping that something just pops up, it really isn't just, it's not going anywhere. We're not understanding something.

We're not understanding how laws come about. We need to figure that out. And again, I'm kind of putting in the way laws come about as if some static law appears, but it has to be taken as more of a continual evolutionary process instead of thinking, oh, this rule popped up, that rule.

[00:31:41]  Sadia: And maybe sometimes some rules are that novel, that when they pop up, they're like, oh, wow, this is like kind of like how humans started using memes to the evolution of humanity is now based on evolution of memes rather than genes. And eventually, who knows, you know, we might use genes after a while and move on to something else. So I think we really need to take this seriously if we want to make progress in science.

I think honestly, I've come to call the universe another name for the universe is it's a novelty generator. It literally this is one of probably the most important properties of the universe. And we've only right now we've only focused on very limited phenomena and we've been very successful.

And all of that should emerge out of a more fundamental theory as a special case, right? So but there is something lurking that deep down because majority of what we see around us is just not explained by our current science. The biggest one, all these asymmetries, the novelty.

So I think I'll stop at this point and I'll let you ask questions.

[00:32:46]  Bruce: So obviously you've had a chance to think this through carefully so that you could present this. And you've done a good job of doing that over the last three or four podcasts, however much I decide to break it up into. And I haven't had a sufficient chance to put my thoughts together and to formulate them.

So I'm a little bit at a disadvantage here because of that.

[00:33:10]  Sadia: Exactly. I was going to say I have an unfair advantage here. Yeah.

[00:33:14]  Bruce: Let me try to explain a couple of things though that maybe criticisms of what you're saying, but maybe not even truly criticisms.

[00:33:25]  Sadia: Actually, I don't mind. You can criticize all you want. I have a pretty thick skin.

[00:33:29]  Bruce: Yeah. I'm not one to hold back.

[00:33:33]  Sadia: Don't even try to pretend it's like be nice or polite.

[00:33:36]  Unidentified speaker: Just throw it.

[00:33:37]  Bruce: Okay. Let me see if I can explain this from a critical rationalist standpoint.

There's a tension that seems to exist that I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about between this idea that we take our best theories seriously and the fact that you have to not take your best theories seriously to generate new theories. Now, obviously, I think the answer to that is, oh, no, you are taking your best theories seriously. You're taking the problem seriously.

Then you try to solve the problem, and that in turn leads to a new theory. But here's the real truth. When you start that process, you always start with a bad explanation.

When Einstein comes up with general relativity, how long did you say he spent working on that? It's like eight years or something before he came up with this theory. Maybe it was Bart that brought that up.

It's a very long period of time. He had this thought that was the happiest thought he had ever had that was based on this idea that the force of gravity was indistinguishable from the curvature of space. I can't remember exactly what the thought was.

But it's like if you're in an elevator, you can't tell whether there's a force of gravity or if you're just accelerating.

[00:35:04]  Sadia: Basically, acceleration and gravity are indistinguishable. If you're in an elevator that's closed and you're accelerating versus you're in gravity, you won't be able to tell if you're accelerating or what you're experiencing is the gravity of a planet.

[00:35:20]  Bruce: So at that point, he has a kind of explanation in mind as to how to solve this problem of light, how to solve the... which experiment is that?

[00:35:35]  Sadia: Yeah, [Michelson–Morley] experiment.

[00:35:36]  Bruce: Yes, thank you. Okay.

But he doesn't really have a good explanation.

Yet. He's got a vague idea based on an analogy, and it's going to take eight years for him to turn it into a hard-to-vary explanation. So there is actually a tension between the need to take our best explanation seriously and the need to not take them too seriously so that we can generate new ideas.

And I see what you're saying in that light. That's how I would interpret it.

[00:36:10]  Sadia: Right now, we're clearly seeing some problems, and I hope that I made it clear that how the current paradigm, this asymmetry issue, I just don't see how the current paradigm with the time symmetric laws can solve.

[00:36:23]  Bruce: And I agree with you. I think that you've listed out completely legitimate problems with our current theories.

[00:36:31]  Sadia: And I think that also should make us take the idea seriously that maybe what we're calling novelty, the emergence is actually novelty, and not just something that's just [unclear].

[00:36:40]  Bruce: It may mean that, right? I don't want to say it doesn't mean that. Okay.

Here's what I can say, though. I can say that if I'm in the mode of taking our best theories seriously, then yes, they do say that the world is deterministic. They do say that eternalism, the way you described it, is true.

Okay. There are certain things that absolutely do follow from our best physical theories that we have right now. And us following those from those theories, you kind of used the idea that they weren't testable.

But the theory is testable. These are things that follow from the theory. Including, as you point out, some fairly serious problems, which means that there's problems that need to be solved.

[00:37:27]  Sadia: I guess the part that I'm saying that's not testable is the metaphysics that kind of follows from this whole. Like when you take it seriously and you look at the metaphysical implications for the universe as a whole, which physicists do think about, right? Because in a way, I'm saying that even if you don't spell it out, it's working at the back of your mind, right?

Because that is the view that's driving you.

[00:37:48]  Bruce: Yes. And you know what? If Popper's right that we should take— you know, I guess actually it was Deutsch that used this wording.

But if we should take our best theory seriously, that includes thinking about these things. That includes saying, yeah, according to our best theory, eternalism is true. According to our best theory, determinism is true.

According to our best theory. I mean, a lot of these things, we should admit they follow from our best theories. And even if they are a little bit out there at the moment.

Chiara talks about deterministic nightmare. Now, I personally don't see it as a nightmare. I actually agree with her deterministic nightmare.

She's trying to get around it. I accept it. I just don't see it as a nightmare.

To me, it's not a nightmare. But it does follow from our current best theories. It really does.

She was willing to give up on computational universality, possibly as a way of dealing with deterministic nightmare. I don't even feel a need to do that, because it doesn't strike me as a nightmare to begin with. But both of our points of views have some legitimacy.

We're exploring the implications of current theories. We're trying to figure out how to deal with potential problems. It's not always obvious if a problem is a real problem or a pseudo problem.

[00:39:06]  Bruce: In fact, I would even go so far as to say that a pseudo problem and a problem are indistinguishable at first. And therefore, we have to treat them all as problems. And it's only after we have a solution that we actually know if it was just a pseudo problem or if it was a real problem.

And that would be true for a lot of things that you brought up. I think that certain things I would definitely feel are real problems. There's no way for me to be absolutely positive of that.

But I would think that, you know, for example, the Penrose example with the entropy and the low entropy state and your example, the Boltzmann brains and trying to treat the Boltzmann brains, by the way, isn't really a problem with the current paradigm. It's a problem with a certain solution to a certain cosmology in the current paradigm. It's a way of saying, well, we've got these current physics that suggests a big bang.

And someone goes, oh, no, maybe it doesn't suggest a big bang. Maybe it suggests that it was just a fluctuation. You know, everything was at heat death.

And then there was this fluctuation and that's our universe. OK, that leads to a new problem, the Boltzmann brains, which makes us realize that was a very poor cosmology to try to deal with the implications of the current theory.

[00:40:19]  Sadia: The only thing is that no matter what, I think the low entropy, the highly improbable low entropy thing is kind of I mean, I don't I don't know what type of cosmology would lead to.

[00:40:32]  Bruce: And I agree. Right. It's there are some really big unanswered questions.

And maybe we will someday realize there's some way to answer that question with the current paradigm. Just let's just hypothesize for a second. I don't believe it either.

But let's say that there's some way to solve Penrose's problem of the fact that we're in a low entropy state that's so improbable that we don't even need evolution. OK, that's a legitimate question. Mystery.

[00:41:03]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:41:04]  Sadia: And that's why—can I just quickly interject? That's why the dogma is important too, right? You need some people who are going to just say not give up.

You know,

[00:41:12]  Unidentified speaker: yes.

[00:41:12]  Sadia: And then the then the people who are working on rival ideas, if they start getting results that other isn't.

[00:41:19]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[00:41:19]  Sadia: But the other thing just becomes boring. It's not like you can disprove anything. It just starts to become boring after a while.

[00:41:26]  Bruce: So let's say that somebody comes up with a solution to that problem, but they do it using entirely just general relativity. OK, they demonstrate through some mathematical formula. Oh, actually, we can explain the low entropy state of the universe because general relativity predicts it.

Just nobody realized that before. OK, I don't believe that's going to happen. I mean, I think that this is actually a legitimate problem that goes beyond general relativity and may even require new physics to solve.

OK, but I don't know that for sure. And somebody could come up with a solution that uses only general relativity, uses only existing theories and solves that problem. Until I see the solution, I don't know for sure.

[00:42:09]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:42:10]  Sadia: But you do realize, right, that once we're starting to do say stuff like that, I feel like this is as good or bad as me suggesting something new where I'm actually trying to address, you know, like I have at least I get it's almost like a what if like this could happen. What if that right? It's still kind of pretty open.

[00:42:30]  Bruce: I actually agree with you. I think that if I were to speculate, well, someday maybe we will solve the problem, the Penrose problem of low entropy state using only quantum physics and general relativity, our existing theories, and we won't need anything else. I don't think that's any better a speculation than what you're coming up with.

[00:42:53]  Sadia: Exactly. So in other words, just because right now our best explanation are those theories, we can't use that to validate any type of a new out there guess that we-

[00:43:03]  Bruce: Yes, and I agree. So if I'm assessing what you're- let's call what you're laying out here, and you've got some direction.

You're putting kind of a rough explanation, very rough admittedly, explanation together as to how we might go about solving some of these problems, where we take seriously the idea that the laws of physics themselves may change because they themselves are novel creations. Okay? And you're throwing other things out there.

We may need to take time seriously as actually existing and not being emergent, which means we have to give up on eternalism. You've got a rough direction that you're going with this, but I don't really have any reason to favor it over really any other speculation at this point.

[00:43:55]  Sadia: I agree. I agree. And I think my idea again, you know, this is how conjectures are.

I guess you could say my inspiration came from the Popper’s thing. All life is problem solving. And I'm thinking and I'm making this observation of the world that there is asymmetry.

There's novelty. So if there is novelty, how does that come about in the universe? And then there are these asymmetries in the physical world as well, not just in terms of life.

And I'm thinking maybe evolution goes deeper than just life.

[00:44:27]  Bruce: So, and I guess that's the way I'm looking at it. If I'm thinking of what you're laying out here as an early conjecture, I find it very interesting. And I want to strongly encourage you and I want to strongly encourage others to take it seriously enough that we get some people looking at it as a possible way of solving some of these known problems that exist.

[00:44:50]  Sadia: I think it also intersects with what you're trying to do because I think aren't we both trying to now, as of now, trying to figure out how learning takes place? So, if we could figure out the general principles behind it, like we have the rough idea, like what Popper gives us, but in biology, it happens a certain way with the genes being around, or like the DNA and stuff. But what is it that we're missing?

And I think you pointed out a little bit of how there are certain aspects of induction, right?

[00:45:23]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[00:45:24]  Sadia: So we need to address that. We really need to figure out how learning...

[00:45:28]  Bruce: So, actually, let's use that as an example. So I'm trying to figure out what learning is. I became interested in AGI.

I'm also interested in the narrow kind of artificial intelligence and machine learning. I understand that those are different areas. The reason why I did my podcasts on knowledge creation was to show that there actually was...

That both were a kind of a single thing, right? That there's actually a relationship between them. Maybe not a strong relationship, but there is.

They're both knowledge creating. At least in a certain sense of the word knowledge, the way Popper and Campbell use that term, a little less clear if it's true in the way Deutsch uses that term. I'm not trying to deny people who have a different opinion on what they want to define knowledge as.

I don't actually care to define words. I'm just trying to understand what Campbell and Popper were getting at, okay? How does Popper's theory...

How does it tie into artificial intelligence? That's the question I'm trying to ask. Whether we call it knowledge or not doesn't matter to me.

Based on that, I'm trying to take our best theories seriously. If you turn out to be right, then maybe I shouldn't have taken our best theories quite so seriously.

[00:46:41]  Sadia: Or there's something else, though. It is possible. I'm not denying that there isn't such a thing as emergence.

So again, we have clocks that emerge in the universe. But what we're saying is, is that the whole picture? So that's why I made that initial differentiation between novelty and emergence.

Could you see that there are certain, like, we might be able to figure out that life is just emergence? And, you know, but at the same time, I can't help but think that the jump to humans, where now we're using memes, does seem a little too like, it's not at the level of genes. So what has happened?

What allowed that?

[00:47:18]  Bruce: So, and now again, this goes back to maybe we solve that problem. There is a real mystery there. Not denying that.

Maybe we solve that problem by coming up with new laws of physics that, that new understanding of the laws of physics, maybe I should say, where the physics laws of physics themselves emerge as a novelty generating type of evolution. OK, that's that's a possible solution to the mysteries there. Another possible solution is that I don't need to do that, that I'm going to be able to think about just the current theories that I can just, in fact, I don't even need to think about the current physics theories.

Maybe I only need to think about Turing machines and think about computation, what the theory of computation and based on that, I will be able to come up with AGI and solve that problem within the current paradigms. I'm in many ways assuming I can, even though I don't know for sure that I can. OK, do you see what I'm saying here?

And that's not a bad bet. The fact that I'm willing to simply take the current theories, take them seriously, even though I know there's problems and use those as my starting point. In many ways, that's just a smart thing for me to do.

[00:48:35]  Sadia: I agree. And I always feel like sometimes taking again, taking our ideas really seriously and running into failure is something that we've actually learned. Like there is a learning there.

[00:48:44]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:48:46]  Sadia: Right. And also just a quick thing about that, that it is also possible that, you know, it has occurred to me, I've thought about it, that maybe the novelty was the jump in like non-human life to humans. But maybe life is more of an emergence rather than novelty.

But at the same time, and I'm also thinking, look, long time ago, we had myths. Now we have science, right? We do mathematics.

It seems like there seems to be an evolving law type thing going on in the human phenomena. So, you know, so again, this is kind of one of those things. The question is, are we dealing with emergence when it comes to humans?

And hence, you know, maybe we could create AGI and it's just emergence. Or are we actually looking at something that is novelty? Like every time we are thinking, we're actually generating.

[00:49:38]  Bruce: OK, so now let me explain to you, when you and I have have argued about this over the Internet, it's not that I've ever had a problem with the theory that you're coming up with or wanted to discourage you from it or was even truly disagreeing with it. What I'm really trying to say is there are implications of your theory. Even just now, even in its just nascent state, there are already implications that absolutely matter to what I'm trying to do.

[00:50:06]  Sadia: Yes, because if I'm right about the human creativity and you're wrong, then you're not going to get anywhere.

[00:50:12]  Bruce: I'm not.

[00:50:12]  Sadia: Right. And if you're right, hopefully you will see some results.

[00:50:16]  Bruce: Yeah, one of the things that follows from your theory, possibly, we'd have to wait to see what the final theory looks like. But one of the things that really does seem to follow from your theory is that I'm not going to be able to do AGI on a computer. It'll turn out to be physically impossible, because true novelty requires these changing laws of physics, which are—computational theory slices us away from the laws of physics.

[00:50:40]  Sadia: I hate to call them laws of physics, because when we're generating novelty in terms of humans, I hate to just make the differentiation between laws of physics and the ones that are not. I just want to call it law, laws of nature. Let's just call it that way.

Because when we say laws of physics, some people might specifically think that, oh, am I doing something magical here that doesn't go with the laws of electricity?

[00:51:04]  Bruce: Well, so I understand why you would say that, and that's fine. However, I do think laws of physics is the right thing in this case. And I agree that laws of nature also exist, and they're not the same as the laws of physics.

[00:51:15]  Sadia: I mean, the laws of physics are something, again, it's kind of like thinking in terms of the constructor theory, what are the possible and impossible, as long as our brains aren't doing anything that violates the laws of physics. There is plenty of freedom, right? We could see electrons doing stuff.

So we're not saying that somehow the electrons have now, but there is something else going on here, right?

[00:51:37]  Bruce: Let me use, like I put a series of thought experiments out on my blog. And so maybe let's just talk about those, because I think that helps explain what I'm trying to say better. So let's imagine that we do determine what the AGI algorithm is.

We don't know, like one of the things that I've debated with some Deutschians out there is, is all you needed the AGI algorithm, or do you need some sort of interaction with a world for it to be interesting enough to get the AGI to start to mature? I don't know the answer to that question, and it actually doesn't matter what the answer is for the sake of the thought experiment. If we need some sort of external world for the AGI to mature, then imagine a program, a self-contained program that consists of both a virtual world and one or more AGI's.

If we don't need a world for them to interact with, then imagine the program without the virtual world, and it's got one or more AGI's that can interact with themselves. But they have no ability to interact with our world, right? They have no inputs other than the initial ones we gave them, these initial conditions.

[00:52:44]  Bruce: And we just start to run this world of AGI's that exists inside this computer, and it's on a deterministic computer. And then we take that same program, we give it the same starting point with the exact same inputs, we run it on a slower computer, okay? One of the things that follows is the thought from this, is the thought experiment that I suggested to Chiara, is this idea of deterministic nightmare, right?

Now you suddenly have, there's just no way around it. In our current understanding of physics, in the current understanding of computational theory, which is always wholly deterministic, which means inputs plus program will always have the same outputs. Period, end of story.

There is no way around that under current theory, okay? You suddenly get what Chiara was calling the deterministic nightmare. You've got these AIs on the faster computer, and you can't predict what they're going to do, because they're moving the fastest.

There's no faster version of them to use as a predictor. And there is no, using Stephen Wolfram's theory here a little bit, although some of his theory is speculative, but some of it isn't. There is no known way to predict what those AGI's are going to do on the faster computer.

They do not exist in any sort of what Chiara was calling a deterministic nightmare. Not to us, not to themselves. Now, you've got the slower computer, though, that's the exact same AGI's with the exact same inputs.

[00:54:14]  Bruce: You can predict exactly what they're going to do, because they're going to do exactly whatever the faster computer was doing. And so suddenly, now, are they in a deterministic nightmare? Chiara, when I asked her that question, she said that they were.

I do agree that you can predict what they're going to do, but you can't interact with them. The moment you interact with them and say, you're about to do this, you can no longer predict what they're going to do, because now you've changed the inputs.

[00:54:40]  Sadia: Exactly.

[00:54:41]  Bruce: Okay, so I don't actually believe that from their point of view, they're in a deterministic nightmare either. Okay, to me, I just solved the problem of the deterministic nightmare without having to violate computational theory, without having to look for new laws of physics. Now, it's not that I know for sure that computational universality is true.

You know, it could be false. It's not that I know the laws of physics are true. You know, we basically know those are false because we got a lot of problems with them.

Okay, my point is only that this was, in my opinion, a pseudo problem to begin with. It never was a real problem. The deterministic nightmare doesn't matter.

It's an uninteresting problem because it's not a problem. That's my opinion. That doesn't inform me on whether the laws of physics are true or whether universality is going to hold or not.

I don't disagree with Chiara's answer. She's right. The laws of physics will determine whether universality holds or not.

That's completely true. That's a straightforward, apparent answer. It's just that I never saw this as a problem to begin with.

So that explains why I find it less interesting. Okay, you see where I'm coming from here? So based on all this, with this experiment that I was trying to use with Chiara, there's a simplified version which I used with you, which is, am I even able to make these AGI's in the first place?

[00:56:11]  Bruce: If I can, if this AGI algorithm exists, doesn't that show that novelty in the human sense can exist in a deterministic environment like a computer? Yes, it does. Because these AGI's in this computer, they are, for all intents and purposes, their laws of physics are eternalism.

[00:56:32]  Sadia: Well, I guess what I'm thinking is that we live in a world where there are deterministic laws, right? But when we're thinking about computational type of a thing, then we are restricting, we are really boiling it down to those laws, right? But when you're operating in a world as a human does, the world is much bigger and we're wondering how big is the world?

Like, you know, [what] else is there that's operating?

[00:56:58]  Bruce: Yes. So one of the things that possibly follows from your theory, therefore must be if eternalism is at odds with novelty in the human sense, then I won't be able to instantiate an AGI on a computer. It will turn out to be physically impossible.

Okay, that does follow from that line of thought.

[00:57:21]  Sadia: That is pretty much strictly from that. Yes. I am saying that the novelty is generated.

Yeah, there is something else. There is this global notion of time.

[00:57:32]  Bruce: Now, you might try to get around that by saying something like this. You might say, well, certain kinds of novelty require that, but other kinds don't. But the moment you make a weaker statement like that, then you have to ask the question, well, why do I even need this to solve the problem of novelty to begin with?

And I think that until there is actually a true theory, like when we talk about a true explanation in the full Popperian sense, we're talking about something with mathematical precision, right? And there's so many explanations that exist out there at kind of the intuitive level. And until you really take that explanation—

[00:58:12]  Sadia: Popperian epistemology being one of them, right?

[00:58:14]  Bruce: Yes. You know what?

[00:58:16]  Unidentified speaker: Epistemology.

[00:58:16]  Bruce: But that's part of what we're trying to solve. AGI will solve Popperian epistemology in a way that's mathematically precise. That's why like Ella Hoeppner has gone down the path of trying to come up with a theory where she formalizes Popperian epistemology as a computable theory.

Theories—evolution itself is not a computable theory yet. We don't know how to compute evolution in such a way that we can get the same types of results that biological evolution does. This is what Leslie Valiant raises in his book, Probably Approximately Correct, and led to the whole field of, I think it's called algorithmic evolutionary algorithmics or something like that.

And really interesting stuff comes out of that is they're trying to figure out how do we actually create a true evolutionary algorithm that is open-ended in the same way biology is, where our current evolutionary algorithms, which there's tons of them, based on the idea of AI being knowledge creating, all the knowledge creating algorithms that I kind of went over in AI, there was a few questions around the ones in the machine learning, but under AI, they're search algorithms and they're evolutionary, but they're super narrow. They're nothing like biological evolution. They're missing really important something.

[00:59:39]  Sadia: And can I also mention something else? So even though we're saying, okay, we're trying to, so we have this understanding of what Popperian epistemology is, we're trying to instantiate it. I think what Popperian epistemology is missing, which I'm going to say that now, that is the same thing that when we're saying, for example, you have the quantum theory, right?

But then the quantum theory itself, there are, you know, what exists in the world and the laws, like, for example, you have charges, electromagnetic waves, and there, that is a separate thing, right? And then quantum mechanics is more often kind of like overarching, kind of like you can say rules. You know, it talks about the discreteness of the world and stuff, but it doesn't have that specifics in there, right?

So I guess what I'm saying is that Popperian epistemology is that general idea, but that doesn't necessarily, but when you're bringing in AGI as on, you know, as some sort of theory of computation, that is something you're putting in as if we were putting in, using some specific theory of the world, whether it pertains to electromagnetic phenomena and then using it with quantum. So the question at hand really is, I think, at that level. When we say that what are those deeper laws, we're really questioning it.

So in other words, just taking the Popperian epistemology isn't in itself going to say, oh, well, computational universality. There is something else, like how is the world?

[01:01:05]  Bruce: You're right. Popperian epistemology does not by itself say anything about computational theory.

[01:01:11]  Sadia: Because you're using it right now in conjunction with saying that the theory of computation and saying that we can instantiate it that way. But what are the underlying laws? We really don't understand.

In other words, what is required to create the sort of novelty we're dealing with in the case of humans?

[01:01:31]  Bruce: So with this in mind, let me kind of back up. I see the problems that you raised. I think several of them, I would completely agree with you, are real problems.

I think some of them are pseudo problems. Specifically, I suspect that there is no actual problem of novelty. It's just something we don't understand yet and that it'll work just fine.

[01:01:52]  Sadia: Well, I mean, of course, from your point of view, I can see that. But to me, saying that there might be novelty is a byproduct of everything that I've said about why time needs to be taken seriously. That's not my starting point, in other words.

[01:02:11]  Bruce: Yeah, well, I wasn't quite done.

So what I was trying to say is that's how I would look at the problems. I see some of your problems as legitimate and some of them as I don't actually think they're going to turn out to be problems.

[01:02:21]  Sadia: Yeah.

[01:02:22]  Bruce: However, you have a specific speculation on how to go about solving these problems. That's why in your mind, they become connected. Because according to that speculation, they would be connected.

For me to turn out to be right, let's say that I'm right and you're wrong. Let's say that 25 years from now, we solve all these problems. That's not going to happen, but let's say we did.

We come back and we go, okay, which ones did Bruce turn out to be right? Were actual problems versus not real problems. Let's say I turned out to be entirely right.

I had guessed correctly across the board. One of the implications would be that for that to be the case, would be that your speculation would have to have turned out to have been wrong for some reason. And I admit that.

Again, I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't continue this line of thought. It's just that the speculation, the nascent theory itself that you are exploring, it's what creates the connection. There isn't necessarily a connection if I'm just looking at current best theories.

[01:03:25]  Sadia: I agree. And even though let's say that you solve the problem of AGI, right? That also won't necessarily say that what I'm thinking is wrong, because I'm actually thinking at the level of physics right now, trying to solve problems.

And I'm thinking that there may actually be a connection of the problems we're solving in physics and the problem of whether we have AGI or not.

[01:03:45]  Bruce: Right. It wouldn't necessarily make your theory wrong, but it would challenge one aspect of it. It would seem to give a solution to the problem of novelty without ever having to have gotten novelty from the laws of physics.

[01:04:00]  Sadia: First of all, I am saying that there are emergent phenomena too, right?

[01:04:04]  Bruce: Yes. That one would then become to the status of an emergent phenomenon, and other parts of your theory. Nascent theories are easy to vary, right?

And that's what I was trying to get at. So of course, you could slice off parts of it, and you could reformulate the nascent theory. Once it becomes a true theory, then that becomes impossible.

Everything starts to just fall from the theory. It's hard to vary at that point. We're not there yet, right?

I mean, we're probably a long ways off. Even if you're right, we're probably a long ways off. You'd have to first get enough people interested in it.

That'd have to be a program. You'd have to come up with testability. It would have to be turned into a mathematical formula of some sort so that we can make sense of it, unless your theory actually challenges that, Penrose has theories that challenge that.

There's a long way to go at this point. So it's understandable that on the one hand, I can agree with you on some of the problems, but not some of the other problems. That's really just me saying, well, I'm still skeptical of your theory.

I think it's interesting, but there could be a different answer.

[01:05:11]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:05:12]  Bruce: But you would be right to say, yeah, but you don't know what that answer is, Bruce. And you're right. If I knew what the answer was, I could go program AGI today.

[01:05:20]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, exactly.

[01:05:21]  Bruce: So I think that's...

[01:05:23]  Sadia: I think as science goes, and I see the value in both sides, I think we both have some legitimate thing that we're putting on the table for why we should pursue what we're pursuing. And I think that that is a good enough reason to say that, you know, we hope that some people will take one side seriously another, and then the future research will reveal like which ideas are more fruitful.

[01:05:47]  Unidentified speaker: That's right.

[01:05:47]  Sadia: The other ones will just become like, let's say if I started seeing more and more fruitful stuff coming out of mine, you start attracting more. It's again one of those things you really can't, you know, what does it mean you falsify something? Eventually, the better idea is just kind of...

[01:06:02]  Bruce: Yeah. So you know what? I want to make sure one of these days, we're going to do another podcast where I went through, had my first four, maybe second, third and fourth, you could say, three podcasts were on Popper's epistemology.

I need to do another one where we go through it again only with a completely new paradigm of how to look at it. One where we kind of talk through some of the things that have come up, some of the problems that have been solved since Popper originally formulated his epistemology. Some of the ways where Deutsch, although he always claims he's just footnotes to Popper, has actually maybe improved upon Popper's epistemology.

[01:06:44]  Sadia: Well, I've always felt that way. Like, you know, anytime if somebody asks me, like if I want to introduce them to Popper, I always go for Deutsch because I feel like Deutsch is giving me something different, which actually led to certain understanding that when I came back to Popper, I had tough times seeing where Popper was actually saying those. And it's, I don't know, I see differences and I feel like Deutsch has a grasp, which I find.

[01:07:09]  Bruce: One of the things that you and I have talked about though, just offline, is the fact that really falsification never happens.

[01:07:16]  Sadia: Exactly. I mean, and that's why I really don't have any problem with using the word testable versus falsifiable. Even today, the notes kind of I put together, I was like, do I do falsifiable, all the popperians are going to get pissed off.

And like, you know what, I'm just going to say, you know, I don't care.

[01:07:34]  Bruce: What really happens in real life is that theories collect problems. And eventually people can't figure out how to take a theory and make advances with it. In the meantime, there's some other theory out there that's really fruitful.

[01:07:49]  Sadia: Exactly. Yep. And I felt the same way, same thing happened to the idea of aether, right?

That Michelson–Morley experiment just became boring after a while. Like, what were they searching for when something so awesome came along and progress started happening? People wanted to do stuff, which is more exciting.

[01:08:06]  Bruce: Yes.

[01:08:06]  Unidentified speaker: So you just forget about it.

[01:08:07]  Sadia: It's not that we falsified it—

at some point, we were like, “Ha-ha, that's it. We just falsified it.”

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