Seth Lloyd - How Much More to Physical Reality?

What is the farthest extent of the physical world, not only cosmologically across the universe but also conceptually across laws of nature? Can there be radical new discoveries in the 21st century as relativity and quantum mechanics were in the 20th century? Some speculate that a true understanding of consciousness will require laws as yet unknown.

Seth Lloyd is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He refers to himself as a “quantum mechanic”.

Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[katherinestone]

The 2016 sci-fi movie "Arrival" is food for thought in terms of science from such a distant "vantage point".

[incoprea]

The roadblock to self driving cars was that computers see differently than humans, meaning there are other ways of seeing. A file on a computer desktop is, in reality, a series of electrical and magnetic particles in different parts of the computer. The Amoeba doesn't need to understand the rules of the game of basketball to live a full happy life.

[Earthad]

The question is, WHO is asking the questions?

[sntk]

The things that are most important for us are hidden from us by their simplicity and familiarity.

~Wittgenstein

What we see depends on light entering the eye. Furthermore we do not even perceive what enters the eye. The things transmitted are waves or — as Newton thought — minute particles, and the things seen are colors. Locke met this difficulty by a theory of primary and secondary qualities. Namely, there are some attributes of the matter which we do perceive. These are the primary qualities, and there are other things which we perceive, such as colors, which are not attributes of matter, but are perceived by us as if they were such attributes. These are the secondary qualities of matter.

Why should we perceive secondary qualities? It seems an unfortunate arrangement that we should perceive a lot of things that are not there. Yet this is what the theory of secondary qualities in fact comes to. There is now reigning in philosophy and in science an apathetic acquiescence in the conclusion that no coherent account can be given of nature as it is disclosed to us in sense-awareness, without dragging in its relation to mind.

~Whitehead

[JPVanderbuilt]

I love how he mentions that we don't know how life originated because many scientists talk as if we *basically* know, but we just have a few more tiny details to add to the story. WRONG!

[Free_Will_Awareness_Unit]

Wow. What an absolutely magnificent attitude to have for a scientist. We don't hear from that many who are aware enough to have this completely logical view about our understanding of our reality. I think it actually made Kuhn a little uncomfortable.

[PaulHoward]

There are no physical objects. We can only physically experience properties (adjectives) and their changes (verbs). Nouns are souls.

[ravichanana]

Conductivity in solids is one area where meyer-neldel rule doesn't quite work to explain.

[TheTroofSayer]

At 2:59 "... if there will be some big advance in the future, some breakthrough..." And at 6:20 "... no way are the laws of biology derivable just from the laws of chemistry."
The final frontier, imho, is cube root scaling and the phenomenology of the very small. The materialists have failed us in their physicalist interpretations inclined towards billiard-balls popping into and out of existence. They should step aside to encourage alternative narratives to take root. My hunch is in the direction of information and meaning as central to top-down causation - the "knowing how to be" of ontology and phenomenology (at 7:29 phenomenology gets a mention - yay!).To this end, Giulio Tononi's integrated information theory might be a step in the right direction, especially if meaning (semiotic) is factored in, and here, Lee Smolin's references to Peirce's semiotics will be relevant.

[pazitor]

The nature of spacetime itself remains a mystery. Is there a fabric? During early inflation, was it quantum fields that expanded (meaning what?) or some sort of scaffolding as well?

[mitchellhayman]

I remember a show about IQ on cable years ago. This guy was on there and had an IQ over 180

[stephenzhao]

3:10 ... string theory should be in the right track anyway, ... 4:31 well first of all, ... in every level of a reality exists a mysterious starting point there, e.g. chemistry, biology, and so on. 5:35 Here is the question is it a matter of knowing sufficiently much about the more fundamental laws that will enable us to predict accurately what happens on the next level and we just have to learn more and study more maybe it'll take time but it's in principle doable, or is it such that there are other kinds of llaws that some people talk about that are needed on each different level of chemistry or biology or the level of life as you know some people think that there's some other laws operating in those dimensions which in a sense are as fundamental as the laws of physics but on that level that are needed or is it derivable from what you find just with a lot of hard work. 6:19 NO WAy, strongly suggesting No Way for a theory of everything.

[-by-_Publishing_LLC]

(4:20) *SL: **_"You've now solved this fundamental question about the nature of reality, yet it still tells you nothing about the origin of life."_* ... Mr. Lloyd is spot-on! It's like physicists expect to uncover some type of vibrating string, a new dimension, or the tiniest possible particle that suddenly waves back at them saying, _"Well crap! You finally found me!"_

What I find amazing is that CNC machinists and 3D animators already have their fingers on the foundational pulse of Existence, yet physicists can't seem to grasp that they have. You can only reduce physical structure down to a certain point (no pun intended) and then you have to start considering "other arenas" of existence.

*Example:* Darwin took "Life" down to a single-celled prokaryote, and that's as far as it goes. Anything prior is just physical structure. Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig took the physical structure of the universe down to fundamental quarks, and that's as far as it goes. Lemaître and Einstein took the entire universe that holds all of life and every quark down to an immeasurable point of singularity. ... So, what's left for us to explore?

*Answer:* "Mathematics!" ... Where "Existence" is first logically conceived and by which everything is orchestrated.

[mitrabuddhi]

Nothingness and infinity are two sides of the same coin. existence is the change and nothingness is fixed and unborn and uncaused. Nothingness is potential and infinity is actualization. Illusion is the whole of the coin of nothingness-infinity. There is a path from nothingness to infinity. and this path can be seen in a specific point of view. From this specific point of view, from nothingness to infinity, you can see the path in different resolution. Nothingness is resolution zero of illusion and infinity is illusion resolusion infinty. So like an image by increasing the resolution super-impositions will fade away and image will be sharper. At resolution zero, infinite changes is needed to go from resolution 0 to resolution 1. but at resolution 1 it needs infinity/2 changes for going to resolution 2. and at resolution 2 you need infinity/3 changes to go to resolution 3 and so on. at resolution (infinity/2)-1 it needs 2 changes to go to resolution (infinity/2). and at resolution infinity-1 it needs one change and the last change to go to resolution infinity. So each point of view in resolution infinity represent nothingness, because only nothingness can not be discerned more. So illusion at resolution infinity consist of infinite points of view at resolution zero. and no change left after it. All changes have taken place and no changes remained and there is no superimposition and no more discernment can be done. But anything except nothingness can be discerned. So paradoxically at resolution infinity what is left is nothingness. illusion can be seen as these parallel point of views at infinite resolutions from zero to infinity like a parallel block universes. in this sense every moment is real and present in its proper time. and each moment of you is present and think that that particular moment is present time. topdown view: in this view reality is continues and this view is in favoure of endurantism, Eternalism. You can see reality (as illusion) as a whole. Illusion has symmetry and self-similarity. 1-there is illusion. illusion is consist of branches. iluusion is all aspects of reality from zero to infinity. Iluusion is the only paradox that exists. 2-there is branch. each branch describe a unique concept or property or quality or quantity or relations or changes or anything else. each branch is unique in its own way but it can be seen as an interaction of infinite branches. in other way each branch is entangled with illusion. Some interactions between branches are stronger and some are weaker. each branch has an effect on illusion. These interactions creates physics. All branches are emergent from illusion. branches converges toward resolution zero and diverge toward resolution infinity. branch exists in different resolutions. 3-there is resolution. resolution determines how many branches there is in that specific resolution of illusion. resolution can be any number from zero to infinity. resolusion 0 of all branches are literally the same and it is potentiality itself. There is R branches of Illusion at resolution R, each branch represent a unique configuration of illusion at that resolution. downtop view: in this view reality is quantized and it is related to perdurantism and Presentism. In this view you can see how reality is created by itself. “causation” and “Change” is the process of adding new illusion to previous resolution and create new resolution and new facts. 1-there is resoulution 0. illusion resolution 0 is resoulution 0 of all branches. illusion resolution 0 is illusion itself at resolution 0. resolution 0 contain no branches. The only simple in the world is illusion resolution 0. illusion resolution 0 is nothingness. 2-there is resoulution 1. next resolution is created when one illusion is added to previous resolution. so in resolution 1, one illusion is added to illusion resolution 0 in previous resolution and create one branch. There is only one configuration at resolution 1, and it is the product of superimposition of 2 branches at resolution 2. 3-there is resolution infinity.

[smailhamza]

Without going through dizzying theories to understand the origin of life, it's very simple you just have to understand water and its origin,

[TheDeepening]

I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to not exist, but I can't because if I know I don't exist, I exist. Thus, the idea of no after-life/existence is absurd and absurdly far fetched.

[OUallday]

Neo-Protagorean. To get away from that infection, we discover principles that we once did not see. It doesn't always equate to things constantly "changing." It's our own understanding that is capable of seeing more and more.

[simonhibbs]

As a scientist you have to live with uncertainty. Quite right.
Lets say you have a belief that you have always had and have never truly questioned. How sure can you be that it is true? If others have differing beliefs there must be a chance you are actually wrong. On the other hand if you have changed your mind about a belief, that is you used to think otherwise but you have been persuaded by evidence and argument that you were wrong, your new position has been battle tested. We are all resistant to changing our beliefs, so the evidence and argument to change your view must have been very persuasive, and you know that you have honestly looked at the problem from another viewpoint. So the beliefs that you have where you changed your mind are actually the beliefs that you can have the most confidence about.

Furthermore if you rarely if ever change your mind about anything substantive, and once you have fixed on a belief that it, unless you are an incredible genius of historically unprecedented insight, it's almost certain that you have many false beliefs. Nobody is that perfect, and rarely adopting new ideas is a reasonable sign of an inflexible and shallow intuition.

That doesn't mean we should be changing our minds all the time, but we should be actively seeking out differing viewpoints and cherish the differing views of others as valuable. People who think otherwise are not your enemy. We should allow space for our beliefs to be genuinely challenged and willing to accept limits to our levels of certainty. Don't just say what you believe, but why you believe it. Acknowledge and respect the strongest arguments against you.

I don't always live up to these ideals, we're all only human, but I look forward to meeting up with you and debating with you in this channel's comments.

[MelonHead]

I salute science and those that dedicate their lives to the pursuit of truth and beauty. That said, I await the arrival of the Monkeymen of Delmak-0 ...

[browngreen]

The big advance will be the general populace accepting reason and science and not superstition and magical thinking. Doubtful it will happen though.