Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | March 2023

Welcome to the March 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!

Also -- thanks to Patreon supporter Siddhartha, we now have a Google Doc that includes all of the AMA questions ever asked, and their answers. It will remain linked at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar of the podcast website. So now you can search for past questions and answers!

#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

[graceelliot]

anyone else here after sean mentioned how this blew up in the most recent ama

[BrianFedirko]

Yay, new AMA... I love these, and listen to them over and over all the time.

[jayx]

YouTube randomly loaded this a few days ago and I am hooked. I can't sleep well and am not a big fan of visual content. These AMA seasions are entertaining and informative, while playing long enough to relax.

[steliosp]

3 hour AMA video.. Sean is a professional high level professor and author and he s still doing this pod and AMA for us. THANK YOU!

[suyapajimenez]

My take:
I like your podcast bc I’m an avid learner for life and also bc your harmonious voice is just a bonus.
I don’t support YT channels bc I don’t feel is a safe place for my plastic. May someone can enlighten me how.
And last Professor Caroll TVM for taking the time and effort for sharing a life of knowledge with us.

[marcelotemer]

I love your long format podcast! I listen to each of them repeatedly until you publish the new one.

[jonathon]

So funny that this episode went viral Sean. Hope it gets more people aware of you and this podcast because it's one of the most intellectually stimulating ones of them out there!

Thanks for sharing your perspective sir!

[isedairi]

Please, if you can, do make time stamps for these "Ask Me ANything" episodes.

[cIeetz]

it was trippy. I was sleeping and this video autoplayed. and Your speech was basically feeding the creation of my dream partially. It was like You were putting what You wanted into the A.I. randomizer and it was partially building the scenario that was playing out

[kinleydorji]

Thanks Sean, as always an amazing conversation.

[Im-just-Stardust]

Very good episode. Once again marsh is completely messed up this year here in Canada. Its supposed to be -10 C., but it will be 10 degree celcius for 2 weeks. Never experienced anything like that in my entire life. When I was young we had snowy Christmas every years, now its rare to have snow on Christmas.

[lovefeelsbest]

I love how mind expanding your attitude and recordings are. Thanks for balancing out the sensationalism and melodrama.

[kadourimdou]

What if two entangled particles were sent billions of Light Years without ever interacting with another particle.
How would they know what branch of the wave function they are on, to interact with anything. How would anything on the other side of the universe know if they’re on the same branch?

[davegrundgeiger]

Sean is at once utterly careful in his wording yet utterly not pedantic. It's thrilling!

[klumaverik]

I always imagine the expansion of the universe is caused by extremely large black holes outside of our visibility and just pulling space like a table cloth being pulled at all sides by sumo wrestlers. Lol

[Rastlov]

The example of throwing a book into a Black Hole to represent information always confused me and it took forever to get past the distraction of trying to figure out what the definition of "information" was. Perhaps I was just in the donut hole of the target audience at the time. You are a great communicator and I enjoy your lectures.

[GaborRevesz_kittenhuffer]

i'm pretty sure oil is hydrophobic. as per everyday experience, oil and water repel each other. as molecules, they energetically favor being in the company of their own kind. as fluids, they favor minimizing the surface area of the interface between the two. so oil globs submerged in water favor a spherical shape. and oil spherules favor merging to form bigger spherules, because the resulting surface area is sub-additive. in a vessel an oil glob will especially favor merging with an oil layer where the sub-additivity is maximized. still, i'm at a loss as to how to explain all this from the viewpoint of maximizing entropy. halp?

[MissJewels]

Wiki says “ Ed Witten attended the Park School of Baltimore (class of 1968), and received his Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in history and minor in linguistics from Brandeis University in 1971.[14]” WHY did this PhD in math and String theory proponent get a bachelor of Arts! History major as undergraduate?? Witten is considered foremost math and physics theirust in the world!

[robotaholic]

I love the way you tackled the question equating light waves as simply probability waves with the Everett response lol BAM!

[uku]

I think your explanation on fusion bombs was off. We already use fusion bombs. MOST of our nuclear weapons are probably fusion bombs. But as the asker said, they use a smaller fission bomb to activate the fusion bomb. We don't have problems creating fusion bombs, we have problems with controlled fusion. I may have just misunderstood your answer.