Chaos, COVID and Climate Change with Tim Palmer (267)

#ClimateChange #ChaosTheory #StrangeAttractors
In his acclaimed latest book, The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World, Professor Timothy Palmer argues that embracing the mathematics of uncertainty is vital to understanding ourselves and the universe around us. Whether we want to predict climate change or market crashes, understand how the brain is able to outpace supercomputers or find a theory that links quantum and cosmological physics, Palmer shows how his vision of mathematical uncertainty provides new insights into some of the deepest problems in science. The result is a revolution—one that shows that power begins by embracing what we don’t know.

Timothy Palmer is the Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics, and a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Martin Institute at the University of Oxford. He is a mathematical physicist who has spent most of his career working on the dynamics and predictability of weather and climate. He pioneered the development of probabilistic ensemble forecasting techniques for weather and climate prediction, techniques that are now standard in weather and climate forecasting around the world. In 2021 Professor Palmer was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Institute of Physics.

Professor Palmer was involved in the first five IPCC assessment reports, and was co-chair of the international scientific steering group of the World Climate Research Programme project (CLIVAR) on climate variability and predictability.

00:00:00 Intro
00:10:22 The origin story of the book and cover art
00:12:08 The Strange Attractor and Lorenz’s equations
00:15:41 Counterfactual Worlds
00:16:06 The great storm of 1987 and its role in the book
00:17:56 What is the role of doubt in science?
00:22:38 Re-forecasting the 1987 storm using ensemble methods and what was learned
00:36:08 ​​Three body problem example.
00:38:18 Predicting climate and COVID. The challenges of ensemble modeling.
00:42:31 Tim's proposal for A "CERN" climate change and global climate forecasting.
00:58:13 How do we get governments to listen?
01:05:47 What is Bell's inequaltity and what can we learn from it?
01:29:02 Will quantum computing help with complex forecasting?
01:32:56 Final Existential Questions.

Join this channel to get access to perks:

📺 Watch my most popular videos:📺

Follow me to ask questions of my guests:

-~-~~-~~~-~~-~-
Please watch: "Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Plays the Race Card!"
-~-~~-~~~-~~-~-

[TheoriesofEverything]

​Remember to share and like ;) ​Each share helps in a direct manner, more than you know. Keep up the great work Brian

[gluonone]

I'm not sure if this is coincidence, but I'm halfway through the book Chaos by Gleick. I've owned the book for like 20 years and I'm finally reading it.

[xchazz]

Amazing how quickly the illusion of control collapses when reality knocks on the door.

[NellMckay]

I haven't got a sweeping intellectual statement, or any diatribe on this topic at the moment. I just wanted to say I like your graphic. Clever it made me laugh. On a cold Monday morning it's good to be reminded of the beautiful absurdity of our world. Maybe a laugh given to another and thanks to our sun and world would go some way to making Tuesday a better day. X

[polymathpark]

@ 1:20:30, discussing the concept of eureka moments coming to us when we're relaxing, there are a few theories on this. My favorite is that of 4E cognitive science, the concept involves small world networks, and relevance realization (vervaeke's take) a combinatorial associative process in which ideas assemble around each other to a certain point, then disperse, searching for more information, then recombines. This occurs when we're focusing on a more regulated level, but when we take breaks it increase the dynamics of the process. the brain+body connection is shaken up and a focused line of thinking is broken up, the recombining process is far wider and takes longer between each recombination, resulting in the bigger ideas vs. focused thinking chains. this runs counter to randomness, and noise.

[BlackHoleForge]

You have so many instruments on the wall behind you, I'm surprised you're not into string theory. 😂

[scarter]

Where does the Mandelbrot pattern emerge from? I say it's quantisation of a boundary condition.
It's quantisation pattern 'noise' like a moire pattern.
Patterns emerge from state quantisation.. now transpose this onto the quantised states of atoms and subatomic particles. And macro patterning emerging from this...

[lianemarie]

A fascinating interview (as usual) on a timely and important topic. The only claim that I believe he got quite wrong is the claim that insight is due to the random injection of noise.

There is extensive evidence that even when ideas appear to come from ‘out of the blue, ’ we have actually been working away at them subconsciously (Bowers et al, 1995; Scotney et al, 2020). They only come to conscious awareness when they have been sufficiently processed that they merit conscious attention.

We often get ideas when we put the work away and do something else (‘incubation’) not because of an injection of noise, but because when we were consciously working on it we were using the executive network of the brain, which is (long story short) prone to getting stuck in a rut. When we put the work away and do something else (put it on the ‘back burner’), we turn it over to the default network, which uses a different kind of ‘logic, ’ one based on correlation rather than causation. It notices patterns and abstract similarities, and makes use of them to solve problems.

For example, during the period when Wilbur Wright was working on the problem of how to control the direction of a ‘flying machine, ’ he one day absentmindedly picked up a long, skinny bicycle tire box, and bent it. At that moment, he realized that he could solve the problem of controlled flight by using a long, skinny pulley that bent the right wing tip to turn right and the left wing tip to turn left. (Others had invented machines that could fly, but had fallen to their death because their machines could not be controlled.)

A highlights of my own research career was when I realized that creative insight can be explained at the neural level (Gabora, 2010). Ideas and mental representations are distributed across ensembles of neurons, each of which responds to some attribute of some possible experience. The feature can be something concrete like a specific shade of red, or something abstract like ‘beauty.’ Thus, Wilbur Wright’s mental representation of the bicycle tire box simultaneously activated neurons that responded to the fact that it was made of carboard, neurons that responded to its skinny shape, and neurons that responds to the fact that it could bend (and others). The connection between the bicycle wheel box and the flying machine could not be figured out through logical analysis as it was based on correlation; they both involved bending something long and skinny. Realizing that birds alter the shape of their wings when they want to alter their direction, he realized that by bending the wings of his plane he could solve the problem of flight. His mental representations of the bicycle tire box, and bird flight, now overlapped with his mental representation of ‘flying machine, ’ and the bridge that united them was the neurons that respond to the feature, ‘bending.’ All these representations now became bound together (through processes referred to as neural synchrony and binding).

In short, the idea didn’t come about through random chance, but by entering an associative mode of thought in which the seemingly illogical yet extremely useful connection between ‘bent box’ and ‘bent wing’ could be made, which is possible because of the distributed nature of memory. I’ve used this example because I find it particularly striking but in general I think most creative insights emerge through a process of this sort.

Bowers, K. S., Farvolden, P., & Mermigis, L. (1995). Intuitive antecedents of insight. In S. M. Smith, T. B. Ward, & R. A. Finke (Eds.), The creative cognition approach (pp. 27-52). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.’

[sandrocavali]

It's not about more supercomputers, it's about less politicians less campaign-driven media and less hype-fueled science

[pressurechangerecord]

Anyone who thinks that when someone says ‘ignorance’ in something is complete ignorance in something is miss quoting. The person they are quoting would say ‘complete ignorance’ and not just ‘ignorance’ if that is what they meant. It would suggest a type of ignorance (probably of common sense or the English language) to suggest such a thing.
Of course I realise that ‘complete ignorance’ is an oxymoron but still, one should believe another’s words, especially when they are Feynman’s.

[gregoryhead]

The are initial conditions for atmospheric column resistance for (m_e) times x & y to equal g. If mass electrons' are bound to 9.80665 m^3 conditions' then volume % light has a limit.

[jamesruscheinski]

what science is used for climate change? is chemistry mainly used for climate change? does the general public have an understanding of the science used to describe and deal with climate change?

[redred]

The worlds wealth is based on fossil fuels, until a viable alternative is developed we cant cut back without doing massive damage to our economies. A strong economy will allow scientific advancements. We dont know how dangerous climate change will be, and we wont in the near future but we do know fossil fuels will run out so at some point we will transition. Over reacting wont help.

[kristianhoiland]

How is Pakistan going to adapt? If there was a retorichal question in this video thats the one. Have you ever heard of the Netherlands? Also what do we know of Pakistans past climate? I know nothing, anyone?

[jamesruscheinski]

In quantum field mechanics, might time stretch out energy into wave function? Maybe energy of quantum field is or has consciousness?

[jamesruscheinski]

Could randomness be produced by uncertainty in quantum field / wave function, as in time / energy uncertainty?

[slidestrings]

I'd like to know more about his musical instruments and thoughts about music and physics.

[neIntangible]

So many smart intelligent people on earth, now as well as in the past... and so many more poor choices in decision-making... sigh.

[jamesruscheinski]

does uncertainty have two variables or components, such as position / momentum or time / energy?

[dl]

I love how you had Freeman Dyson as your fist guest. His heretical views still resonate in my mind. As for this guest; also very interesting and even important in calling for great care when it comes to our environment and its future, but when it comes to the physics of our atmosphere I think it would be of great interest to your audience to invite Dr. William Happer, one of Dyson's friends and a respected fellow from Dyson's own Institute of Advanced Studies and like Dyson, he is one who was instrumental in the creation of the models on which so much climate anxiety has been based. Keep up the great interviews. Cheerio.