Episode 4: What Makes a Good Explanation?
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Blue: The Theory of Anything podcast could use your help. We have a small but loyal audience, and we’d like to get the word out about the podcast to others so others can enjoy it as well. To the best of our knowledge, we’re the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutsch’s philosophy as well as other interesting subjects. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please give us a five -star rating on Apple Podcasts. This can usually be done right inside your podcast player, or you can Google the Theory of Anything podcast Apple or something like that. Some players have their own rating system and giving us a five -star rating on any rating system would be helpful. If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on Facebook or other social media to help get the word out. If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that. The first is via our podcast host site, Anchor. Just go to anchor.fm -4 -strands. There’s a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations. If you want to make a one -time donation, go to our blog, which is four strands.org. There is a donation button there that uses PayPal. Thank you. All right, welcome back to the Theory of Anything podcast. I’m Bruce Nielsen and we’ve got Kamiyo and Kerry here today. Kerry was out last time. How are you doing, Kerry? Fantastic. All right, good to have you back. Thank you. Where we left off last time on the podcast is we’re going to go into in -depth examples. So let me pull up.
[00:01:45] Blue: This was the slide that we kind of looked at the last time if you’re one of the people who’s looking at the slides, you don’t need to have that though. But it was what makes a good scientific explanation. And I was going to go into in -depth examples of what each of these were. So just to repeat them quickly, we should prefer theories that are explanations of the problems we’re trying to solve over ones that are not. Notice how each of these seems really self -intuitively obvious. And that’s intentional. I’ve written them to try to seem fairly obvious. But of course, you should prefer a theory that actually solves the problem you’re trying to solve over one that doesn’t. But it’s surprising how often people will go to theories that don’t actually solve the problem that they’re trying to solve. So we prefer explanations that are hard to vary and still solves the problem over ones that are easily adapted to account for anything. We should prefer explanations that do not conflict with other good explanations, that’s in all things being equal kind of statement. We should prefer explanations that explain why the previous competing theory worked well and predicts when it will not work. That last one is kind of the gold standard of they call them critical tests. And so it’s the gold standard. When that happens, that is when the paradigm starts to shift towards a new theory is because you now have a theory that actually makes predictions when the old theory will be wrong that you can go out and you can experimentally test.
[00:03:19] Blue: So what I’m going to do today and this might be a slightly longer episode because I don’t have a really good breaking point for this and this will wrap up the discussion on epistemology. But I’m going to go through kind of detailed examples and feel free to jump in and ask questions about these there’s a lot of interesting examples here and I’m being very careful to word everything in such a way that it seems obvious but I assure you there are cases where your intuitions will go strongly against some of these things that I’m saying even though they seem obvious there are cases that will come up where you’ll go I don’t know if I’m still okay with this. So and that’s one of the things that I’m going to hopefully make a point of. So let’s talk about corollaries to principle number one. So we should prefer theories that explanations of problems we’re trying to solve over ones that are not. Deutsch says the explanation must actually account for the explicanda. I’ve never even heard that term before but the thing you’re trying to explain and we should prefer actual explanations over pseudo explanations particularly explanation spoilers that are disguised as explanations and again that seems obvious. Why would you prefer a pseudo explanation over an actual explanation? If the explanatory power of a theory comes from referencing another theory then we prefer the other theory because that’s the one that actually explains things.
[00:04:38] Blue: So all of this comes down to the idea that we care about explanations there are various cameo asked me last time what are other philosophical theories out there there are ones that claim that explanation doesn’t matter and so I’m claiming very strongly it absolutely does matter in fact it’s the core of what makes science be able to make progress. I will go to some examples now. All right so here’s the one I was trying to find last time cameo according to medieval medicine laziness is caused by a build -up of flam in the body the reason flam is a vixen substance it’s oozing motion is analogous to sluggish disposition.
[00:05:17] Red: So what do you think about explanation?
[00:05:19] Blue: Okay well what’s wrong with that explanation? Okay I’ve already given you the answer to this but just kind of think about this for a sure okay and we know about modern medicine we’ve seen at work people bought this explanation for centuries okay there for centuries this is how doctors would think of flam and think about how it’s related to laziness okay by this analogy but what’s wrong with this explanation like really try to analyze besides the fact that it just seems silly to us now what’s what’s actually take it seriously as an explanation for a moment and then analyze it.
[00:05:59] Red: Well it’s correlation not causation so they’re they’re taking correlation they’re saying okay there’s something in your body which is viscous it seems sort of sluggish and therefore your disposition there’s nothing really directly saying this causes that.
[00:06:15] Blue: Okay there’s no cause and effect very very good example right there.
[00:06:18] Red: Which we fall prey to
[00:06:20] Blue: all of the time all of the time. Yeah the whole correlation versus causation thing yeah let me any any any other analysis anyone wants to make of this one because I’m going to actually reference this one again a couple times. Example of explanation versus a non -explanation so this is cameo I think you’ll enjoy this one so in the debate of creationism versus evolution this one gets referenced all the time and this quote is referenced all the time from William Paley. Now mind you he said this before Darwin published his book okay so this wasn’t actually a response to Darwin as it gets used today but people will famously use this explanation today to try to combat belief in evolution so let me let me read the actual quote he said William Paley says suppose I pitched my foot against a stone and we’re asked how the stone came to be there I might possibly answer that it had lain there forever but suppose I had found a watch upon the ground and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place the answer I had given before that had been there forever would not suffice there must have existed an artificer or artificers who formed the watch for the purpose which we find it have you heard this this quote before or some version of it before either of you
[00:07:47] Green: I haven’t but I but I don’t hang out with people who try and disprove evolution either as
[00:07:54] Blue: a rule I actually heard this one all the time growing up but yeah so this is this is a quote now what’s wrong with this argument you know no fair looking at the slide for a second what is it that’s wrong with this argument
[00:08:07] Green: my first reaction is I take issue even with the first point of if I asked how the stone could came to be there I might possibly answer that it lain there forever I think using that as a justification for the second part of the answer both are erroneous assumptions yeah I
[00:08:27] Blue: agree with you I think what he’s trying to say there is there’s no need for an explanation for how the stone got there that would be kind of an uninteresting thing to even ask based on their understanding of physics at the time they thought that the universe was eternal they had no concept of a big bang so for us that’s kind of a silly thing to say but for them the idea of it laying there forever was consistent with their understanding of physics in the universe and things like that
[00:08:57] Green: well and and and maybe that’s really my problem with it is the concept of the universe as a non -changing construct is a really lazy way to ever that in and of itself is a non -explanation
[00:09:12] Blue: yes it is and that is absolutely true and there are scientists today who champion that view as if it’s an explanation and in fact it’s not and so this would be an example of how even today very famous scientists like Stephen Hawking’s I believe I’ve seen him try explanations like this will use non -explanations as if they are explanations and it is really more common than you might think hopefully open your eyes to when people try to do something like this and you’ll go oh wait that was a non -explanation and we should always prefer an explanation over a non -explanation that’s intuitively obvious but people will do it all the time they will try to take a non -explanation and dress it up like an explanation so
[00:09:57] Green: there’s a lot in the day -to -day of people interactions um just in my job you know why did this thing happen well here’s this non -explanation well that that didn’t explain anything yes
[00:10:09] Blue: yeah you know and we need to do like a an episode on software development maybe more than one episode on software development there are so many things that people say in software development to get repeated over and over again like the term scope creep
[00:10:23] Green: i mean
[00:10:24] Blue: like i’m not even sure scope creeps a real thing but people talk about it like it’s a real thing right
[00:10:29] Green: i i know i believe it is not but yes like
[00:10:32] Blue: it’s a well -defined thing it’s vague enough maybe it’s a real thing under some definition but what people mean by it is never clear and i could give you tons of those that people say over and over again that are passed off as wisdom um and yet they i’m not sure they mean anything you know it’s so one of the things that like agile development tried to do is try to get down to a real explanation of what was going on and that’s why agile is more effective than a lot of its competitors so we should
[00:11:01] Green: we should definitely have that be um something that we do because i think i think it would be very enjoyable for all three of us because oh i agree
[00:11:08] Blue: yes um we will definitely have to make that like a top of the schedule and talk about that i actually feel like agile development ties in really well with the theory of knowledge that we’re talking about here yeah agreed yeah so it’s of course they probably weren’t aware of it of popper specific theory but it’s interesting that we can actually assess is agile on the right track right you know and what what is actually wrong with traditional methodologies and traditional methodologies aren’t valueless but what is specifically wrong with them having a good theory of knowledge really helps us understand what is wrong with it and how we know agile is on the right track things like that
[00:11:46] Green: yeah let’s let’s let’s schedule that i think that’ll be enjoyable
[00:11:49] Blue: okay okay so the first thing that i want to point out is but we talked about what the actual scientific method was i said it started with problems that needed to be solved not with observations and what is the problem that we’re trying to solve here we have to actually know that okay and the problem is how is it that animals came to look like they’re designed animals have a hard to bury nature okay just like a good explanation animals themselves are hard to bury you know the the lion has this this was an example that comes from darman himself the lion’s claws are adapted for exactly the type of prey it needs to kill to eat and the prey you know a gazelle or something is adapted to try to escape you know and and it is very much looks like it was designed for a purpose there is purpose in it okay so how is it it came to be that way is really the problem that we’re trying to solve okay and evolution is an attempt to solve that problem of adaption and it does it through this explanation of survival of the fittest okay and we could probably do a separate podcast on evolution and some of the gaps that exist you know the creationists aren’t entirely wrong they’re they often point out real gaps that exist but that isn’t the problem with their arguments okay the problem with their arguments is that creationism does not even attempt to solve the problem it just declares it a non -problem and the easiest way to show this is with this example i’ve got here typically with a creationist they’ll say oh it’s the animals look like they’re designed because they are designed because god designed them or something along those lines all you have to really do is substitute a watchmaking machine in place of god okay so a watchmaking machine you know has made laid here forever and it is what made the watch okay the moment i put it in those terms you know even a creationist would say oh that’s ridiculous you haven’t explained anything because you need to now explain where the watchmaking machine came from this is actually what creationism is doing in its kind of most naive forms is it’s trying to simply declare the problem non -problem it’s trying to say oh there is no need for an explanation because it’s not a problem in the first place well that’s why we prefer evolution that’s why evolution is a scientific theory and creationism isn’t is because evolution is the only known current theory hard to vary explanation for how animals came to be seem to be designed right it’s it actually attempts to solve the problem and there isn’t really a competing theory out there creationism isn’t a competing theory because it’s not a competing explanation at all okay does that make sense
[00:14:29] Green: absolutely okay
[00:14:31] Blue: so now let’s talk about realism versus solipsism are you guys familiar with salt the term solipsism you are familiar with what okay good good good so solipsism is the idea that that that there is no real world out there that in fact you’re the only person and the only mind that there is and everything else is just a dream and you can kind of see why people might try to advance this as a possible explanation because all of us have had the experience of being in dreams and meeting people in dreams that for a moment we thought were real or something along those lines right so you can kind of see why this one caught up but it nobody really takes solipsism seriously it’s it’s more of a well how do you disprove solipsism they’re trying to show you can’t really eliminate it as a possibility okay however as if you remember from our past podcasts you can’t disprove anything that the fact that solipsism can’t be definitively disproven is completely meaningless statement because nothing can be mean can be definitively disproven so this is actually an uninteresting point and this is this is an example taken from David Deutch from the fabric of reality but this is I’m actually going to lay out for you now the actual philosophical proper response to people who bring up solipsism as if it’s a real possibility there is a response to it there is a proper philosophical response that makes good sense that eliminates it from the running okay so what’s the problem we’re trying to explain and this is where solipsism starts to fall down so we want to explain why the world is not under our control why it kicks back at us and acts to depend independent of us in inconsistent ways okay so we’ve all had that experience we know the world does behave in such a way we don’t really control it it might hurt us it might harm us it might help us things are out there that don’t seem to be under our control why is that and why is there great consistency in the way it behaves you know things that are predictable um so that’s a problem that we might want to solve and so we might trying to solve that theory we might theorize a theory called realism which is the theory that there is an objective reality out there that is independent of us okay so that is you can see how that attempts to solve the problem and in fact does solve the problem okay that since there is an objective reality out there that’s why it’s not under our control because it’s independent of us okay so that’s theory one now let’s take a look at theory two which is solipsism the theory that there is only one mind or own and the rest is just a dream okay so yes it’s true that solipsism can’t be disproven okay but theory two doesn’t actually explain the problem that we set out to explain okay so we’re right back to now asking okay great so the world’s actually just a dream but hey you know I’ve lucid dreamed before I why is it that it doesn’t actually explain why there’s an independent reality out there separate from us because if it’s just a dream maybe it shouldn’t be independent from us so it doesn’t actually solve the problem at all it doesn’t even attempt to solve the problem
[00:17:39] Blue: in a way it’s a lot like the creationist answer you know it it just says oh don’t you worry about that it it it pushes it up the next level yes okay
[00:17:51] Blue: now here’s the thing that’s interesting about it solipsism is essentially it’s crypto utilizing realism the theory of realism to explain this it’s saying yeah it’s all a dream but in this dream it just so happens to be that you’re dreaming about an independent world that is out there and that kicks back against you and acts independent of you well that is the theory of realism so solipsism is using the theory of realism as its explanation as to why there’s an independent world therefore we should prefer the theory of realism not the theory of solipsism are you guys familiar with Occam’s razor certainly yeah so Occam’s razor this in this case we’re actually talking about kind of the real use of Occam’s razor where since realism solipsism both explain the same thing in exactly the same way with solipsism utilizing realism then there’s no reason for solipsism to exist the thing that would make solipsism a true theory would be if you had to conjecture it to explain something that realism couldn’t explain okay if there was a problem that existed that required you to conjecture solipsism because realism couldn’t explain it at that point we would start to take solipsism seriously but there’s no need there is no problem that is trying to solve it’s just extra baggage so we chop it off and we’re done okay we don’t there’s no reason to go and even if it were true there’s no reason to take it anymore seriously because it doesn’t solve any problem Occam’s razor is used in this way a lot but Occam’s razor is one of the most abused things I’ve ever seen in my life it gets used in so many ridiculous ways and it’s kind of onto something that’s true and I just gave an example of where it actually is true but like just for example Occam’s razor is used in machine learning as an explanation of a trade -off between
[00:19:38] Blue: trying to make a model that makes general predictions versus one that over explains just the training set I can see how Occam’s razor applies to that but it’s got nothing to do with science at this point right I mean it’s it gets it gets used in drastically drastically different ways that are frankly kind of unrelated to each other except by analogy and I think that’s one of the problems with Occam’s razor is that it doesn’t have a well -defined
[00:20:04] Blue: explanation of what it is right so people will throw it out there and they’ll use it like it it actually is some sort of scientific principle but really it only becomes a scientific principle in exactly the sense I just gave you which you don’t even need Occam’s razor to be able to explain it so in some ways it’s probably best you just drop Occam’s razor out of the discussion because it’s it’s just too vague in most cases so principle two we should prefer explanations that are hard to vary and still solve the problem over ones that are easily easily adapted to account for anything so sub points to that we should prefer explanations that have survived all criticism or tests that we have currently been able to devise over ones that have not okay so that makes sense if you’ve got multiple multiple possible explanations or theories and you’ve tried to come up with tests and criticisms and one theory has failed tests and criticisms and one hasn’t of course you should prefer the one that hasn’t failed anything yet explanation that can be easily adjusted to fit any observation explains every possible world and thus explains nothing in the actual world thus we prefer ones that can’t be easily adjusted to any possible observation think about like the problem of how do you explain the season cycle okay so um there are mythologies around the world that offered various myths that purport to explain the season cycle and there’s a great deal of similarity between all these different myths right so for example in kind of the greek one that we’re probably most familiar with um Persephone I can’t pronounce her name she comes home from the summer go ahead and say it again Persephone Persephone sorry thank you comes home for summer to visit her mother and that’s why you know while that’s happening at summer and um otherwise she’s in hell and then it’s winter various myths that have different takes on that right but they’re all um there’s there’s often a great deal of similarity between them which is kind of interesting is this a testable theory well actually it is okay you you can do it points this out you can go take this theory and you can say well i’m going to go check to see if it’s winter in australia at the same time it’s winter in europe because if this theory is true it predicts that it’s when it will be winter the entire world not just the upper half of the world or the bottom half of the world one part of time okay so you go to australia and it’s summer while it’s winter in europe and you go oh well we just tested this theory didn’t test out okay so dutch points out how easy it is to take a myth like this and adapt it to whatever observations you have so you say oh well what’s really going on is that when persephone comes home that that her mother sucks the the heat out of the southern hemisphere and puts it into the northern hemisphere where she lives and that’s why it gets cold in australia when it’s summer in europe and it’s so easy to change the myth to just fit any observation so the fact that it’s testable is meaningless right and and this is something that people will talk about science being about testability that’s not strictly true okay there has to be more to it because myths are very very testable it’s just they’re very easy to vary so that you can rewrite them to match whatever observations you want actually the problem with myths not that they’re not testable and then just by comparison the idea of a spherical earth that’s a very hard to vary explanation it makes a prediction i mean once you realize the earth is spherical and that the seasons are caused by which which part of the world is tipped towards the sun at the moment and is therefore closer to the sun it makes all sorts of predictions that you maybe didn’t even originally intend to set out to test sure and then you then you can go and you can test every single one of those and if any of them turn out to be wrong your whole theory is just gone right i mean you you’re going to be going back to the drawing board coming with an entirely different theory because there’s just no way to adapt it anymore
[00:24:05] Red: okay so number
[00:24:07] Blue: three corollary three we should prefer explanations that do not conflict with other good explanations or in other words all else being equal if our proposed explanation introduces new problems even with other theories in other fields that the current competing explanation does not we should prefer the previous explanation because it’s more constrained harder to vary than the new one and this is something that i’ve made a point to people explanations have consequences okay so the explanation of a spherical earth has a consequence that there should be different seasons in different parts of the world it also has consequences about how the sun shouldn’t set in the north pole during certain parts of the year things like that these all just follow from the hard to vary explanation we have lots of different theories out there and we don’t necessarily even treat them as interrelated but reality is all interrelated so if you come up with some theory and it violates a theory in a different field that’s actually a strike against your theory you that your theory now needs to not only replace the theory that you had set out to try to replace but it now needs to replace the theory in the other field as well so if you have some theory in it and it’s in physics but it would be a problem for biological evolution that theory has a lot to explain now those are problems for the theory and would probably be a good reason to start to consider maybe just abandoning the theory unless you really could come up with some way to explain every single thing it it goes against and if it did that then that might be a good strong reason to say look i’ve got this new theory and it destroys all these other theories and it replaces them but if you can’t actually come the way to have it deal with every theory it touches then it’s a weaker theory and it may be not time to move on to a new one
[00:25:52] Green: my uh my dad got in with the zero point energy crowd for a little while oh yeah you know and and and they’re definitely like on the edge of this where they they consider themselves scientists but everything that they’re proposing violates the second law of thermodynamics and they spend a lot of time like trying to get around that fact i don’t know exactly what their theories are and how they can justify them you know other than it’s a lot of people spending time trying to violate the second law of thermodynamics
[00:26:22] Blue: right you know and again and that’s interesting the second law of thermodynamics you know this is like anything else we have no way of proving it’s true you can’t prove anything is true so from a certain point of view you might take the standpoint that hey who cares that it violates the second law of thermodynamics because that’s just a theory but there’s a good reason why you don’t do that this is a theory that has survived criticism incredibly well and experimental testing and at this point there’s a saying that if your theory disproves the second law of thermodynamics what you you didn’t actually disprove the second law of thermodynamics you disproved your theory and of course and we could we could imagine something coming up where that might not be true but it just is so much to explain second law of thermodynamics ties into all sorts of things it’s a it’s a deep theory trying to come up with explanations that don’t cause lots and lots and lots and lots of other problems because now we’re violating the second law of thermodynamics is really hard to do and that’s what the zero point energy crowd doesn’t do is they they don’t really have a way of trying to explain everything they’re trying to explain one thing and not worry about the other consequences yeah
[00:27:35] Green: exactly we
[00:27:36] Blue: should prefer explanations that explain why the competing theory worked previously and predicts when it will not work or in other words we should prefer explanations that explain more than their competitors okay can you see the connection between those two is this is actually a a really important point yeah the obvious example here is Newtonian physics versus Einstein’s general theory of relativity and this is the example that gets used in you know high school physics classes or college physics classes and it gets used in reason it’s an awesome example Newtonian physics is somewhat more intuitive than general relativity you imagine a 3d space and you imagine gravity and there’s these trajectories and that’s based on certain formula as to how they’re going to be affected and I think that’s in motion stays in motion unless something stops it and if it’s at rest then it stays at rest unless some sort of force moves it it goes along really well with our kind of built in intuitions as to how things behave not entirely because as as it’s been pointed out we don’t have any real experience with something in motion staying in motion so that actually violates our intuitions a little but
[00:28:48] Green: that’s interesting I’ve never thought about that but yeah that’s true
[00:28:50] Blue: okay and so the fact that Newton actually predicted that and then it turned out to be true in outer space when you had nothing stopping things is actually an example of how his explanation had really strong consequences that were testable okay and this is what Deutsch calls reach where explanations have a reach they the consequences of the explanation you maybe you were only trying to solve one problem but when you make that explanation it always it applies all the way right an explanation that says well but it only applies to stuff in outer space now you now it’s a bad explanation again now it’s an easy explanation again right so um but for the most part Newtonian physics seems somewhat intuitive maybe to some degree that’s because we get taught it in school at a young age but it matches our intuitions well general relativity doesn’t general relativity is based around the idea that there is no force of gravity per se but that instead mass causes 3d space to curve let’s say cameo and carry both have a compass that’s pointing north and you’re standing 100 feet apart and you both start walking north even though you’re in parallel with each other you’ll end up eventually coming together and touching that’s obvious why it’s because the world is curved and you’re headed towards a single point that’s at the top and so eventually the two of you will come together even though you’re in theory parallel to each other which violates our understandings of euclidean geometry that you get taught in high school right now you might say as you’re doing this and as you’re moving forward and you keep getting drawn together you try this experiment a few times you might say it’s like there’s some sort of force that’s like pulling us together and in fact it’s very as much like there is some sort of force that’s pulling you together and so you might call that force gravity okay but there’s no real force at all it’s actually just a matter of the fact that you happen to be moving and there happens to be curvature right so general relativity is based around that same idea with the with the big change being that when there’s more mass there’s more curvature and therefore the perception of force becomes stronger general relativity solved problems and I need to like look into this more in terms of its actual history because I don’t think that the problem that I most hear that it solved I don’t even think Einstein was aware of at the time there’s this experiment that took place where some scientists said hey look let’s let’s measure the speed of light when we know that the earth is moving towards the sun and then measure it again when we know the earth is moving away from the sun the planet orbits and so at part of the orbit you’re moving towards the sun and another part of the orbit you’re actually moving away from the sun therefore under Newtonian physics the speed of light should be different speeds depending on which direction you’re moving at the time okay so they measure it and it’s the exact same speed no matter which direction you’re moving
[00:31:44] Blue: this was a problem for Newtonian physics you might at this point if you believed in naive falsification you would say oh well we just disproved Newtonian physics but of course nobody’s going to believe that they’re going to say well what if there’s something wrong with the instrument but what if you know there’s some other explanation Einstein’s theory explains this once you understand this idea of curvature of space and mass warping things and there’s a bunch of other things that kind of follow from this that I won’t get into and not even sure I can explain them entirely but one of the things that comes out of it is is that the speed of light is the maximum speed as you approach the speed of light
[00:32:21] Blue: space actually contracts around you or you can think of yourself as lengthening out in the direction you’re moving as a kid maybe you had friends that would say okay what if you’re in a car moving at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights what happens and then the kids will say oh maybe the light collects in front you know of the of the headlights well that’s not what happens what happens under general relativity is that the light moves forward from your car as if it’s just the speed of light so from your frame of reference light speed is still light speed and you’re standing still so then you have to work out okay well why is it then that someone who’s watching you from the outside would see both of you the light and you moving at the speed of light the rest of the explanation follows from that right just just accepting those as true all of einstein’s theory kind of falls out of that and it’s this wacky explanation that just seems so wild and initially people didn’t believe in it it was crackpot science einstein is actually the one who said well one of the things that comes from my theory is that if you have an eclipse you can see the stars around the sun sun’s a really big massive body of gravity so if you are looking at those stars and it’s not an eclipse they’ll be in one place in the sky but if you’re looking at the stars and it’s during an eclipse and it’s next to the the sun then they’ll be in a different spot in the sky because the light has been has been bent by the gravity okay that follows from his theory it’s just a natural part of his theory arthur ennington goes out finds an eclipse looks at it sure enough that’s exactly what’s happened okay and the stars have moved positions because the light from those stars has to curve around the sun instead of how they would normally come straight towards us so they look like they’re in a different place in the sky once that experiment was done people started to accept general relativity because now it had an experiment that newtonian physics made a totally different prediction about no one even knew to make to go out and test this right right this until you had the explanation you didn’t even know to do the experiment okay no one was in theory you could imagine someone noticing that during an eclipse the stars are in different locations and then that becoming a problem and then right but that isn’t how it happened right it happened that first the theory came it was trying to solve some other problem and then it and then they suddenly realized well that would mean this also go test it boom good enough
[00:34:48] Green: that’s fascinating i i i’ve never thought about it that way
[00:34:52] Blue: what this means though is that general relativity explains more than newton’s theory it explains everything newton’s theory does and then explains things that newton’s theory can’t and then it even explains why newton’s theory was correct for so many years and we didn’t know it was wrong and basically the the explanation is that general relativity only differs from newton’s theory when there’s massive bodies of gravity or if you’re moving close to the speed of light well in our regular life here on earth neither of those happens very often and so that would be why it seemed like for centuries newtonian physics was just true and then all at once suddenly collapsed and was falsified as a theory and general relativity took over by the way side note on this einstein won a Nobel prize for his work in physics but it wasn’t for general relativity even though it is by far the most important theory that he ever produced and the reason why was because back then it was considered controversial oh
[00:35:53] Green: really yes did they give it to him for something legit or did was it like one group saying well we’ll just give it to him for this and then it’ll be
[00:36:01] Blue: it was for something legit he did a number of discoveries and i i’d have to look this up but i think it was for discovering brownie in motion which led to light wave like particle theory and eventually quantum mechanics wow so it was he made he made multiple gigantic discoveries and so they he did get the Nobel prize for a very legitimate discovery but not for one that was as important as general relativity because it was just too wacky people couldn’t accept it and it was hard to understand i mean it’s not that hard to understand today we’ve got ways of explaining it and i’m not doing a great job but there are ways to explain it that make fairly good sense it’s just a counter -intuitive is all right like back then very few people understood it at all right i mean usually it takes a while for us to get good at explaining things
[00:36:52] Green: sure i would say even today if you were to pull people on the street and have them try and even describe or choose from multiple choices that that describes general relativity most people couldn’t
[00:37:05] Blue: yeah i agree in any case this is why we now use Newtonian physics as an approximation for general relativity general relativity and really don’t believe in it as a premier theory anymore
[00:37:18] Red: you know it’s kind of a fascinating idea that even though it’s not accepted as true quote unquote it’s still very useful yes so theories don’t have to be 100 true for them to have a value yes
[00:37:32] Blue: okay so there’s this is actually a very interesting point that you’re making and let me state it in a slightly different way newton’s theory was a false theory but it contained truth and at the time prior to the discovery of general relativity it was the most true theory which is why it was the best theory when we create a better theory that doesn’t mean and that does falsify the previous theory but it doesn’t mean the stuff that was true in that theory is still true that theory continues to be useful even though it’s a falsified
[00:38:08] Red: theory and it could be as we get better and better theories that the differences between them are smaller and smaller so we might say we falsified the previous one but in fact it’s it’s fairly close in terms of how valuable it is
[00:38:23] Blue: so let me let me restate that one too so consider how different newton’s theory is compared to general relativity in terms of how it feels okay it honestly feels like a total up -ended right because suddenly there’s no force of gravity which was the single most important thing in newton’s theory and it caused us to rethink how we thought of reality almost entirely right and yet at the end of the day there’s very little difference between the predictions that the two theories make except under some really specific circumstances
[00:38:53] Red: it’s quite fascinating
[00:38:56] Blue: okay so now let’s go back to this example and um carry you weren’t here for this this example but i brought this up with cameo and i said okay we’ve got three theories so you you’ve paid a milkman to bring you milk and after you paid this milkman to bring you milk milk starts to arrive on your doorstep every single day so what you want to do is you want to explain where that milk is coming from okay and so we’ve got three competing theories as to where the milk is coming from 31 is that the milkman you paid the milk brought it to you 32 the milkman pocketed the money in left town but your nice neighbor is now leaving milk for you because they can see you need it in theory three angels saw the milkman pocket the money and they started bringing you milk okay so the question i asked cameo was which of
[00:39:47] Red: these three theories is the best theory so one because it makes sense that it’s causal you gave person x some money in person x is doing something in return okay
[00:39:59] Blue: i’m going to argue with you isn’t number two also actually number two and three are both causal so you gave money to the milk you gave money to the milkman and then he pocketed it and your nice neighbor saw that happen felt bad for you and that is the cause or the reason why they’re now
[00:40:16] Red: bringing you milk i would say it’s a more indirect causal i’m assuming that you the neighbor actually saw it i would say it’s much more indirect it’s definitely more indirect it involves more complexity right so you paid someone some money but it’s this other person who’s unrelated to that transaction that actually is providing the milk yes okay it’s without any purpose okay what about theory three i would say the same thing it’s more complex without any reason okay theory three
[00:40:47] Blue: has an additional problem so let’s let’s talk about each of these so now based on the examples i just gave you the principles that we just talked about theory one is the best theory because it’s not just that it happens to be causal it fits dozens or even hundreds of related theories that you hold about how people behave how the economy works things like that it’s not a simple theory it’s actually ties into lots and lots of other theories explicit or implicit or explicit that you hold okay so for instance we know that a milkman that pockets the money and leaves town isn’t going to be in business for long and so there are consequences for this extra thing that we’re adding in that needs to now be explained so that’s actually what makes three one the best theory is how well it’s constrained by lots of other theories it’s a hard to vary theory okay now theory two it actually could be true it’s actually a somewhat hard to vary theory but it has consequences it’s fairly easy to test you go across the street you ask your neighbor hey are you leaving the milk no i’m not you know or you see the milkman show up the next day well apparently he didn’t leave town okay so even though theory two is also a hard to vary theory like theory one it’s also easy to test and easy to falsify and like you said it’s more indirect it’s it seems like a milkman that leaves milk is just a much more straightforward explanation than this kind of roundabout thing that we’re coming up with and notice also it doesn’t solve a problem okay if you found out the milkman left town and then you started to wonder where the milk was coming from at that point theory two becomes the better theory because now you have a problem with theory one that means to be solved and theory two solves it when i’m just presenting it like this it doesn’t even solve a problem okay there’s no reason to even come up with theory two because theory one’s already the best theory and you don’t have a problem that requires some other theory to explain it exactly um theory three isn’t is the quintessential example of an easily adapted theory why angels why not elves why not miss america why not gandalf you could throw anything in there and it becomes you know an equally good theory at this point
[00:43:09] Red: superheroes yeah
[00:43:11] Blue: it could be superheroes okay that are staying secret and behind the scenes and again it doesn’t solve a problem there’s no reason why you need to start postulating about angels or superheroes or anything else when you’ve got a perfectly good theory that’s on the table a perfectly good explanation as to where the milk’s coming from okay so let’s let’s talk about now famous examples this is the this is actually kind of my favorite part you hear about stuff like this all the time and it gets bandered around as if it’s it’s serious and yet it’s stupid so this the first one do we live in a simulation i mean like elon musk takes this one seriously there are tons of scientists out there that take seriously the question of do we live in a simulation they even have various explanations that they offer that say well you know someday we’re going to be able to build computer simulations that are indistinguishable from reality and then you know there’ll be way more simulations than there are realities so the odds that we’re in a simulation would be much higher than the odds that we would be in reality therefore we should take seriously the idea that we live in a simulation have you heard other people mention this elon musk is probably one most famous for taking it seriously there was that movie about it matrix
[00:44:22] Red: actually i was thinking of jim carrey oh it’s it’s not exactly a simulation oh right the the one what
[00:44:32] Blue: truman show yeah
[00:44:34] Red: the truman
[00:44:34] Blue: show right all right so let’s talk about what’s wrong with this right how right here what problem are we solving so it’s maybe fun to bring up the idea that we live in a simulation and certainly that can’t be falsified in any way but why are we postulating this at all what problem does it solve for that we’re trying to that just assuming a reality doesn’t take care of in theory there could be such a problem okay let’s say we really were living in a simulation that simulation so just using existing technology imagine that you’re actually your consciousness is inside some sort of you know vr video game there are all sorts of problems that would come up that would require you to to postulate that you’re actually in a simulation for example inside of a video game you can’t use a microsoft microscope to look at atoms right because there aren’t any inside of a video game in fact if you get close enough to a wall it probably pixelates right i mean there’s there are all sorts of things inside of simulations that would force you to postulate you’re in a simulation if you really were in one unless the simulation was completely perfect in some way which is what happens to truman the simulation start to show right and so and that’s also what happened in the matrix also so if there were such problems we would conjecture we were in a simulation and that would become our best theory no such problems exist in reality as of today and these people who say these things are just having fun basically yeah
[00:46:11] Red: they’re
[00:46:12] Red: bad theories because they solve no problems okay now another one that this one you probably haven’t heard of but you can like look it up and it’s it’s actually a really interesting example the integrated information theory of consciousness so we don’t have any really good theories of consciousness right now in fact i would argue that our best theory of consciousness is in fact poppers theory of knowledge and if you want to make progress in agi or study of consciousness paying attention to his theory is probably a really good starting point most people don’t know that right and so they’ve postulated all sorts of really crazy kinds of theories and the integrated information theory of consciousness is one in particular that is really caught on amongst a lot of scientists and i can’t explain it in great detail but the bottom line is you have to have under the theory you have to have a special sort of network of information that’s a certain amount of closeness together to cause consciousness okay and so under that theory it makes predictions like the fact that you can never use a computer today to create consciousness that real consciousness requires something more like the brain where the network is physically close together and of a certain level of complexity and max tigmark takes this theory very seriously he’s a scientist that i followed i really like there’s other scientists who take it take it very seriously it it’s got complex math behind it it looks like a serious theory it’s actually a phlegm theory it doesn’t really explain anything it says oh consciousness will be there if there is this phlegm -like structure in the brain right doesn’t explain why there’s any connection between the structure they’re postulating and consciousness so it’s it’s literally a phlegm theory it also violates one of our deepest theories the church -turing thesis and i’d have to do like a separate podcast on this but the church -turing thesis is computational theory which basically at a nutshell says we can simulate anything using math right and this theory says you can’t so it would cause a giant problem for one of our deepest theories the theory of computation if it were actually true now of course that doesn’t mean that we know for certain it’s false but there’s just a lot of good reason to take it seriously at this point it doesn’t explain anything so
[00:48:30] Green: that’s fascinating we should we should put that on our on our future podcast okay great i think it’s a great conversation point all right
[00:48:38] Blue: okay so now i used this in an earlier podcast the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has before this is like the quintessential example of of inductivism which was prior to popper’s theory of knowledge was generally understood as the theory of knowledge the correct theory of knowledge and most scientists today still claim it’s the correct theory of knowledge and they’ll often use this an example that you see the sun rise you see it set so you have lots of observations of it happening and as it happens more and more you become more certain the sun will rise the next day and a lot of you know when i say it it’s it’s kind of seductive you might even think that that makes sense i want to suggest that it doesn’t that in fact that’s not the reason why you think the sun will rise tomorrow it’s because you have an explanation as to why the sun rises that earth
[00:49:27] Blue: is spherical that we go around the sun that the earth turns and in fact the reason why i would suggest that’s the real reason why you believe the sun will rise and not because you’ve seen it before by observation is because the sun does not rise at the same time every day your real observations can greatly differ from day to day depending on what season it is and if you were to go like to the arctic circle or something like that you would see the sun either never rise or never set right and and your explanation as to why that is because the earth is spherical and it’s turning matches what you would expect to see and it’s a good explanation the idea that you you’re doing it based on observation just isn’t true right i mean you i don’t know i think i’m gonna have to disagree on this one because sure the sun comes up at different times every day but it changes so little over time i mean it’s a minute from one day to the next or much less even and before people had the idea of a spherical earth i would think that they still believe the sun would rise in the morning okay fair enough
[00:50:31] Blue: um i wonder though if that is perhaps from a certain point of view i can see where you’re coming from look we’re just used to it happening and so we think it will but we don’t really have an explanation right there is no explanation here if the sun happens to rise and set in um in marcopolo he talks about this myth that there’s a place where the sun doesn’t set and that it just stays up all the time and we know today that he’s talking about the arctic arctic circle right but that was just this weird myth back then myth that had gone around that he was traveling he came across and he believed it you know he had no reason to disbelieve it and he writes about it but to him it’s just this weird myth he’s never actually seen it but people have said that it’s true that they’ve been there they’ve seen that the sun doesn’t set so even in the ancient world i’m not sure that they necessarily had a problem with the idea that there could be a place in the world that the sun doesn’t set i guess i’m thinking of
[00:51:29] Green: it from just the average person’s perspective
[00:51:32] Red: so you know what a philosopher thinks about this point is going to be much different than the average person who just plans on getting up when the sun rises and going out to farm yeah then
[00:51:44] Blue: they
[00:51:44] Red: may
[00:51:44] Blue: not be
[00:51:44] Red: thinking of it
[00:51:45] Blue: much at all
[00:51:46] Red: right i
[00:51:46] Green: don’t know i’m i’m going to interject that people have always made up stories to explain why the sun will rise tomorrow always and that alone the fact that we always wanted to make up a better story to represent why the sun was going to rise is because the explanation that it will rise because it always has is actually an unhappy explanation for us it’s not good enough for us as a species we want to know why it’s going to do it
[00:52:15] Blue: so so instead we say maybe it’s because it’s the the wheels on apollos
[00:52:19] Green: right right we will come up with myth to answer it because an explanation of something happening because it has is insufficient for us generally for a truly curious mind if what yeah
[00:52:33] Blue: okay so now let’s talk about it’s just a coincidence so now this one’s interesting because this one often is actually a good explanation but there’s a really good reason why we generally don’t accept it’s just a coincidence as a as a good explanation and it’s because it’s easy to vary right and now i’m explaining to you why for the first time straightforwardly why you dislike coincidences as explanations okay so and the reason why is it’s easy to vary if you have an explanation and somebody says well maybe it’s just a coincidence you immediately feel really doubtful about the idea it’s a coincidence and prefer your other explanation because a coincidence is an easy to vary explanation it’s a bad explanation there are cases where you will accept it where it becomes the best explanation and i kind of give an example here this is a famous example so you’ve got some sort of holy site and there are people who go to see this holy site and they get cured of cancer okay so they go and to them they’ve only got the one example to them it was the holy site that cured them right it’s one of the odds in their mind that it wasn’t the holy site i went there it caused me to be cured okay and to some degree that’s maybe even you know that’s not a great explanation obviously because nothing’s really being explained but you can kind of see why people would believe that and maybe that even makes some sense now let’s say that you you move back a little and you say okay look i’m a scientist i want to know if this holy site’s actually curing people or not so what what they do is they go and they look at of all the people who go there to the holy site with cancer how many of them actually get cured and it turns out it’s you know one percent okay which just happens to match the remission rate of cancer in the general population okay at this point if you’re the scientist it’s a coincidence is the best explanation and you’re probably done you probably don’t have any reason to dig in deeper into if the holy site is actually causing the healing or not so this is an interesting case it explains both why we dislike coincidence as explanation and under what circumstances we will accept it as explanation and in this case it’s because it ties into another explanation the remission rate of cancer in the general population that’s known known to exist does that make sense
[00:54:53] Red: yes in fact we still do that today you know we look at syndromes in a collection of symptoms that go along with each other well let’s say that we have a syndrome and the doctor notices that quite a number of these people are overweight well if the percentage of that population is overweight matches the percentage of the population that is overweight in the general population then like you said there’s no reason to think it’s anything more than coincidence yeah and you know critical for us
[00:55:24] Blue: there’s a lot of cases like this that have come up and i’m going to be speaking about things i don’t really know about but think about like accutane and the idea that it might cause suicides are you guys familiar with that no do you guys know what accutane is yes okay so accutane is this acne medicine and someone noticed that there was a high correlation between accutane and suicide so to this day there are government laws around this and if if you take your child to go be on accutane or try to be on it yourself you have to do all sorts of things and take blood tests and they monitor you really carefully because of the fear that it might cause suicides the thing that’s difficult about this claim though is that people who take accutane aren’t the general population they’re teenagers which is the most at -risk group of committing suicide so the mere fact that there’s a correlation doesn’t mean anything necessarily well plus they have a heavy case of acne if they’re taking accutane right
[00:56:25] Red: so actually i worked for a pharmaceutical company for about a year doing data management on phase three clinical trials and what happens when people record their side effects they are told to record everything right so what you’re going to find on that list of side effects is symptoms of the actual disease so for instance we were studying a bladder control drug and of course there’s all these symptoms that go along with people who need a bladder control drug and those are all going to be listed as side effects because after the the trial they don’t do another trial to say okay which ones were cause and which ones were just part of the actual disease so everything gets listed so on an anti -depression drug it’s going to list suicidal thoughts
[00:57:16] Blue: right um yeah because a person who’s depressed who needs the drug is going to be more likely to have those in the first place right so and i don’t mean to imply here that we that there isn’t a connection right i mean right there could be there could be it’s just that that isn’t by itself a strong reason why right a lot of times we’re more cautious than we probably need to be and again i don’t know this for sure maybe Accutane does cause suicidal thoughts or something along those lines it’s just that the mere fact that um they happen to correlate doesn’t mean much on its own
[00:57:52] Red: well it’s like the theory about cholesterol so the idea is that cholesterol is bad for you because it’s found in sites that are heavily damaged in your heart right so but there’s another theory that says well maybe cholesterol is there to try and heal those places so there’s a reason for cholesterol in both theories right one is that it’s there to help
[00:58:14] Blue: right
[00:58:15] Red: well sort of uh heal that place and the other is that it’s a result of damage it’s not always clear what’s cause and what is affected
[00:58:23] Green: so i’m i’m looking for an article i just recently read right now that was specifically about cholesterol but it was about how they had thought that cholesterol lowering drugs were causing in some people higher amounts of rage and as they started doing some of the initial testing that they started doing started to indicate that it wasn’t actually the drugs that were causing it but that having a lower level of cholesterol in your body made for more anger generally and and these were like super early tests but that was the results that they were getting back is that it had nothing to do with the drugs it had to do with the actual amount of cholesterol in your in your body and so i’m going to find that article because i think i think it’s an interesting interesting from here you
[00:59:18] Blue: know i think medical science in particular is one of the weakest sciences that we have and i don’t mean that in a bad way at all it just stands to reason that it would be because it’s so hard to do experiments with it
[00:59:30] Red: it is
[00:59:31] Blue: right and so and obviously we’ve made tons of progress using science with with medicine and so i’m in no way trying to say something bad about that but a lot of medical science is non -explanatory which is a problem because science is really about explanation yeah
[00:59:48] Green: and
[00:59:49] Blue: it’s just so hard to really come up with the necessary experiments and so they have to a lot of times rely on correlation instead of causation because there’s no way to set up the experiment as a causation study
[01:00:02] Red: well and there’s just so many problems with trying to do medical research one of the um when i was working in that field there was this uh idea that they thought people were actually filling out the forms about their results being on the drug before the week even started i think that was too much of a hassle to do it to keep up with it
[01:00:23] Blue: right
[01:00:23] Red: so they would just do it preemptively based on what they sort of thought would happen well you know we can do all the data management in the world to make sure we have clean data but if people aren’t even filling out the forms right you know just throw the whole thing in the garbage well
[01:00:38] Green: and self -evaluation is a fairly lousy scientific yes i mean it is not people aren’t really great at evaluating themselves always
[01:00:48] Red: yeah and you know that’s one of the reasons we have such difficulty in figuring out what kind of foods are the best for us to eat because to try and control a population well enough to make sure they eat exactly what you want them to eat is so difficult right those studies are so expensive because you basically have to force them to live in a place where they can’t get any outside food and you’re housing them and feeding them well those studies don’t really they’re too expensive right so what they do instead are fill out forms about this is what I ate and then that’s where you start thinking how accurate is that really it’s probably not very accurate at all
[01:01:26] Blue: right
[01:01:27] Red: the food studies in particular are very susceptible to inaccurate data
[01:01:32] Blue: by the way Deutsch in one of his books in the beginning of infinity he makes fun of um non -explanatory science by giving an example of imagine that you had some people standing next to a museum that are going to count how many people walk in and out of the museum so you put the bunch of people around all the different doors and then they all they count okay I saw three people go in I saw two people come out and at the end you add them all up and what you find is is that the number of people going in the museum and out of the museum don’t exactly match so you release your you release your your study and you say look we have evidence that people spontaneously disappear inside of museums right and so I mean of course this is a bad explanation but a lot of our kind of correlation studies are exactly like this right and you’ll hear things like oh you know 60 percent of happiness is defined by your genetics you
[01:02:30] Green: know or
[01:02:30] Blue: something like that which you know might be true in some sense but you’re imagining in a very different sense than what’s probably actually going to turn out to be one right actual explanation I’m not quite as down on these as Deutsch is I feel like a lot of these studies they’re a starting point you start somewhere you do the correlation study and you see if there’s something interesting right and I’m not against that and I think that’s an important part of science but we way too often then immediately try to use it as an explanation and
[01:03:00] Red: it’s not right you really need multiple studies in different populations you know it only takes one tiny error in how you gather your study group to screw up the whole thing
[01:03:13] Blue: right
[01:03:14] Red: you know another example would be let’s say there’s standing outside the museum and counting people that go in and saying okay a hundred percent of the people that we looked at were going to museums well that’s because you were standing outside of a museum so um you know when people want to quote one study especially if it’s a small study or if it’s a case study where it’s only one person um boy that is you know you can’t you can’t just take it as fact whatever is said do
[01:03:45] Blue: you know I I had so this is a Utah one I I have you know I grew up in California and there was some study that they had done numbers on uh use of uh antidepressants and Utah was like one of the highest in terms of use of antidepressants I had a friend from California actually send me a message on Facebook saying what is wrong with you guys that same year a study came out about which state was the happiest and of course we can question how do you measure happiness and maybe this is itself suspect but Utah was like the top one so it was in the same year in one study the highest use of antidepressants and also the happiest state in the country for the sake of argument let’s assume that both of these are true simultaneously and there’s nothing wrong with the studies which I’m not sure I agree that one of the studies let’s pretend like we just take them seriously these aren’t contradictions you know we have the happiest state also have the highest use of antidepressants either because you got people at the margins that are depressed that’s more common or because they’re happier because they are better at taking antidepressants absolutely
[01:05:01] Red: and then or maybe they’re you know happy but they want to be even happier or right or maybe you just have a bunch of gps it all got hit by pharmaceutical reps or something think about it it’s not
[01:05:16] Blue: really clear that use of antidepressants correlates with depression right it’s those aren’t the same thing and we are talking about some really small percentage vast majority of people don’t take antidepressants and so we’re talking about very different populations if you talk about the whole state happiness level some sort of survey versus those that are using antidepressants the other thing that’s interesting is that depression and suicide are really common in the Rockies so there’s actually reason to believe there may be some sort of connection with high altitude okay and in this one I don’t know is good science yet either it’s just an interesting possibility but there could be some sort of something going on that does lead to some people being more depressed but most people aren’t affected by it or something well
[01:06:03] Green: it’s it’s our minds looking for for the the cause when all we can see is some sort of a correlation we see a correlation and it doesn’t make sense to us so let’s make up a bunch of different theories that that seem to answer that that that question
[01:06:18] Blue: what’s interesting is how quickly we do that one of the ones that I’ve heard the most common was oh the high use of antidepressants is because of the culture of Utah right the fact that you can use that as a weapon in some sort of ideological war you know right immediately where people go you know okay so let’s talk about the final example here Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics the way they teach quantum physics in schools today and the way most physicists are taught to believe is something called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics and it is the interpretation that cameo you were bringing up with the idea that we don’t really understand what’s going on with with quantum physics the Copenhagen interpretation it just talks about something called the wave function collapse when you make an observation the wave function collapses under the Copenhagen interpretation and it describes what that collapse looks like mathematically okay and it does not attempt to explain why the collapse happens at all in other words it’s a non -explanation the world of physics has put up with a non -explanation in one of our deepest theories for a very long time and this is the thing that’s actually interesting and this is why when we do a podcast on many worlds quantum physics many worlds is an actual attempt at an explanation and the other explanations that are offered are not attempts at explanations they don’t explain don’t try to explain it all and I’ve talked with people about this I pointed out to people who are into physics and a lot of times I’m told something like well you can’t hold against the Copenhagen interpretation the fact that it’s not an explanation when it’s not even trying to be an explanation to which I respond no that’s exactly what I’m holding against it and this is why I feel very comfortable in the prediction that it’s just a matter of time before many worlds takes over there’s always a few scientists who get taught Copenhagen and go you know what that’s a non -explanation I’m going to go look and see what other possible explanations are out there and when the scientist bothers to do that they come across many worlds fairly quickly and suddenly realize oh that explains and I would have to go into detail as to how it explains that explains wave function collapse that’s an explanation of wave function collapse and when that happens that scientist gets converted to many worlds and every generation of scientists we have more many worlds ones it’s still a minority position but it’s in a fairly short order gone from total complete crackpot science to like at least in one informal survey done by max teedmark it was the like the second highest explanation that scientists accepted about quantum physics after the much larger I have no idea I mean even Copenhagen didn’t even make the list anymore right people are starting to just not care about Copenhagen it’s not taken seriously as an explanation because it’s not trying to be an explanation many worlds is our only explanation of quantum physics it’s got no competitors and that’s the reason why scientists are slowly starting to take it seriously and I suspect you know within a couple generations it will just be taught in schools you know our children will be taught many worlds because it’s just the only explanation that currently exists and this is one that I think is a lot harder for people to accept that’s why I put this one as the last one there are so many things so wacky about many worlds and it’s almost offensive in some ways the the idea the way the way it plays with our concept of identity and things like that are very difficult to accept but if you do and this is Deutch’s point if you do accept everything we’ve set up to this point you are forced to many worlds the only way you can avoid many worlds is by not accepting what seems like intuitive obvious understanding of when an explanation is better
[01:10:12] Green: well I think you’ll need something like you had with Einstein and the theory of relativity you need something that makes it that makes people have to really reconsider it in a new way and they don’t think your wave function collapse thing is going to be strong enough because it is so wacky for people’s minds to wrap around
[01:10:33] Blue: yes there’s something that we could do like a podcast on this that I read a book where I talked about something called the construction principle and the idea was this is not a true scientific principle but it certainly has a long has strong psychological value the guy in the book he he was talking to the Dalai Lama and he’s the scientist and he says well under science the brain is you know I mean it’s this thing that the mind arises from the brain there is no consciousness that gets reincarnated he’s like talking to a lot about this dialogue by the way despite being a religious leader is very knowledgeable of science right he’s a very knowledgeable guy just in general and then he goes on to say what if we actually do invent agi what if we actually do invent a living thing that’s intelligent and it’s on a computer says how is your how are you going to adapt your doctrines to deal with that and Dalai Lama bursts out laughing he goes when you actually make such a thing on a computer then I will adapt my doctrines and um you know I don’t I don’t blame him for saying that right if if you’re a scientist and this is going to be part of the difference between being a scientist and being a religious leader if you’re a scientist of course you take seriously the um the theories of science which includes the idea that we are going to be able to create an agi on a computer if you’re a
[01:11:58] Blue: religious leader maybe it doesn’t matter so much to you but there is a point where where you actually create it where even the religious leader is going to start to take it seriously and that’s what he calls the construction principle the idea that once we actually know how to know the theory so well that we can construct examples of it you on a computer with simulation then suddenly things change and there’s so many things out there like that and again I’m not trying to suggest this is a true scientific principle because it really isn’t but like think about creationism versus evolution one of the main reasons why there are creationists still today I live in a very religious culture and very few religious people have problems with evolution today but you still do have a contingent of people that are just really hardcore creationists and I think one of the reasons why they’re so hard to stamp out entirely is because evolution has never passed the construction principle right we don’t have examples of experiments where we started off with a fish and then we ended up with a cow and we can show that generation to generation it changed and it’s because evolution happens so slowly and because there are things we just don’t understand about it we can’t even simulate it well on a computer to be perfectly honest because we the theory we don’t understand it well enough to do that yet it’s somewhat understandable that these creationists are like well come on show me I think that that is at least at a minimum a true psychological principle that many worlds maybe in a lot of people’s minds hasn’t passed the construction principle it hasn’t come up with something that is so convincing that even a layman kind of just has to say oh yeah okay I will show you in a future podcast that there are some startling startlingly strong examples on it ones that I don’t think you would think exist and so I think I would argue that it maybe has already partially passed the construction principle and there will be other things in the future where it gets stronger.
[01:13:55] Blue: Deutsch gives examples of like when we know how to create an AGI and you create an AGI using our quantum computer that quantum computer is going to be aware of multiple universes okay so in principle we can come up with experiments that will pass that line at some point
[01:14:12] Green: right
[01:14:13] Blue: however a lot of things that are well accepted evolution for example hasn’t passed that line and yet it is the best theory and it is the only theory and it’s taken seriously for exactly that reason which is why I think many worlds is going to get taken seriously for the same reason slowly but it will happen just people don’t know this but scientists didn’t accept evolution at first right the public didn’t accept it at first both the left and the right thought that it was wrong and it just slowly took over because it was the only explanation today um if you’re talking with people on the left politically they will actually see anyone doubting evolution as a sign that they are non -scientific
[01:14:55] Green: right the
[01:14:56] Blue: right is starting to accept evolution also but it’s been a little bit slower because of their stronger religious connections but even amongst the right they just largely accept evolution as true so
[01:15:07] Green: I’m going to suggest that we use this as a stopping point primarily because my computer’s about to die as
[01:15:15] Blue: a matter of fact that was the stopping point we are theory of knowledge
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