Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | June 2023

Welcome to the June 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

[thiagovalle]

Anyone else out there look forward to these like the next episode of your favorite TV show?!

[bryandraughn]

My meager budget allows me to join your Patreon next month!
I can't wait!
I have some good questions.😊

[danielpaulson]

Having access to this knowledge is the most wonderful thing. I’m so happy yt came around to replace tv.

[riggmeister]

How the hell do you get so much done Sean?!!
Especially at such a high mental level of energy...
I struggle to even do my 40 hours of work plus housework each week. 😅

[خالد_الشيباني]

Hi Dr. Carroll, your videos and first book of the series is absolutely amazing. I think you should include equations even if it’s a little bit demanding as it is a unique experience no one else can give.

[tau]

1:08:12 Stefan Milo's pov on this is interesting. He claims that if any sufficiently advanced prehistory civs existed there would be vast food / agriculture related fossil evidence (there isn't).

[IgoTpaynus]

This was so well worded. U won me over sir. i agree
With every word. Thank u for this. Very intriguing and enlightening

[tankydhg]

I get so excited every month for SCs AMAs! 🎉 Love it 😊

[alexprokachev]

Multiverse Level right away ❤ Hope I can share my solutions to the problems raised in this and previous shows, can’t wait 🙈

[derschutz]

1:20:00 I think you are right in a sense but there is more to think about. It is possible the ML-aided symbolic regression models could "discover" the underlying possible mathematical "laws" which govern a dataset (obviously the tech isn't that good yet, but nonetheless it will still be the same underlying tech we have today with maybe a new architecture or such). So, a hypothetical system like that won't be able explain conceptually "think of it this way" (maybe unless future LLM's get really good at explaining equations). But it will be able to output the equations which govern the data and maybe the human can look at those and think "oh, the system found some underlying novel math constructions which allude to spacetime being curved". But this only works because the system has quantitative observations fed to it. I think it is possible a future in which ML still doesn't "understand" but has vastly stronger statistical power than the models of today, will be able to find some novelties in the mathematical constructions of the same data that humans have.

[NaneuxPeeBrane]

BASS playing! Nice! Bass player here! What bassists do you listen to Sean!? Victor Wooten and Les Claypool !!

[paatricko]

Great podcast.
The employment situation in the United States should be that you receive more for non-tenured positions, not less. In most other developed countries job security is the norm.

[booJay]

2:35:05 if we can accept/internalize that observers moving at different speeds relative to us will have clocks that tick at different rates, but in their own reference frames experience time as ticking away at the usual rate of one second per second, the experience of Now consciously can be understood in a similar way.

Your Now and a distant observer's Now are personal in your own respective minds/experiences and may seem unique, but even if they don't necessarily align, both are equally Real. That also means there are other temporal versions of you that can also claim to be experiencing their respective Nows and are just as real, but the limits of your consciousness only allow you to experience (and exist in) your own personal notion of Now.

Bonus: Apply this to Many Worlds and it becomes easier to accept alternative versions of yourself that may also exist as completely separate entities of You, but your mind, existence, and the laws of physics only ever allow you to be in one of these.

[michaeljfigueroa]

Sorry for the silly question that time. Thanks for being here

[SAMPATHBABU-rxdq]

Hello sir, I have the following two questions
1. As per the time dilation concept if I am on Earth and my friend is on a planet near a black hole and if we have started to
watch a video then does it mean that I will complete watching the video before he does
2. If we have started a civilization both on Earth and on a planet near the black hole at the same time (given the same resources and same thoughts to develop a civilization) and suppose the 1 year on Earth = 10 years on that planet and if it is 70, 000 light years away from the black hole what exactly will happen after 10 years(as per earth time) on both the ends. Will the person on earth observe that (70010+time dilation) years into the past or will he observe and will the person on that planet observe (70001+time dilation) years into the past?

[trafyknits]

Does the destruction of information generate new information? Also, if the quantum "foam" is full of particles that appear, then annihilate, is that the loss of information?

[yannisvaroufakis]

H Sean. I have your book, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, and it is amazing. I was dying to ask the following question. As layperson, I’m having difficulty reconciling your teaching on what a field is with what other physicists say it is. You seem to state that fields are not made of anything at all, implying that they are mere mathematical constructs. But other physicists such as David Tong of Cambridge teach that fields are fluid-like substances filling the entire universe and that particles are but vibrations or disturbances of these fields. Professor John Spence gave a lecture in which he queried what an electric field or a magnetic field in a vacuum is made of, and answers that nobody knows, since it’s a vacuum and nothing seemingly is there, but in fact there is. Finally, Einstein himself commented in 1920 that an aether of some sort must exist, otherwise his teaching that space has properties would make no sense. Am I misconstruing what they say?

[Atheistbatman]

It has not happened this year yet but past two years just 1-2 nights warmer than days shut vegetable crop down. Days 75s but couple nights got to 80 and all the vegetables plants just halted in place and did not start back. It was a micro climate in town and farms were only stunted but in town they stopped completely. Okra tomatoes eggplant corn sat still.
And worms in county have been gone for two years.
See plant DIF for old growth control techniques used before hormones. This is not in any models not a thing expected. I’ve called directly every research horticulturist I can find on planet and we all see the SHTF now. We can see the asteroid now.
- Horticulturist in NW GA

[zbyszekz]

Gluons are massless charged particles, only with color charge. So massless, electric charge particles could have similar properties?

[riggmeister]

"ChatGPT please critique the essay you just wrote."