The Intersection of Science and Meaning | Dr. Brian Greene | EP 486

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with physicist and author, Dr. Brian Greene. They discuss the strange conceptualization of “before” the Big Bang, how time might be a microscopic phenomenon, how order existed at the point of the universe's creation, what would happen if you fell into a black hole, and the process of going from understanding to harnessing new insights.

Dr. Brian Greene is an American physicist known for his research on string theory. He is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University and the chairman of the World Science Festival, which he co-founded in 2008. Dr. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds (concretely relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point.

This episode was recorded on September 9th, 2024

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(0:00) Coming up
(0:37) Intro
(3:13) What was before the Big Bang?
(9:52) Psychological and numerical entropy as it relates to a goal
(17:48) Time might be microscopic, the evolution of complex systems
(20:13) The physical definition of order, how to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
(25:09) Order at the moment of creation
(28:20) Stephen Hawking’s arrow of time, how gravity collects particles
(37:42) The double slit experiment, the speed of light, and our frame of reference
(46:58) Quantum physics is a living interpretation
(50:04) The field of possibility, utilizing story to gain relevant insight
(55:21) How the microscopic affects the macroscopic realm
(58:27) Free will is incoherent within quantum physics
(1:03:53) Personal accountability in a deterministic world
(1:07:02) Conceptual absurdities: what happens when you enter a black hole
(1:16:24) String theory: what the “strings” are and how they work
(1:19:58) From understanding to harnessing, “there are no experimental observations”
(1:26:57) Competing theories might have been describing the same phenomenon

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[lailaknight]

Oh my God, Brian Greene, as guest ! Two people so dear to my heart! Two people who shaped my perspective of the world. Such a treat!

[beatsbysam-e]

These are my some of my favorite types of podcasts!! And just in time for the drive home from work

[mommaboombam]

Followed Dr Greene for few years. Nice to see science and psychology coming together. Fantastic

[EelInggard]

Thank you so much, Dr. Peterson, for being a light in the darkness for us all.

[LackeysVinyls]

Didn't think I'd see J.B. Peterson discussing quantum mechanichs but hyped to see it

[Bethany-Natasha]

this video’s take really clicks with some of the things I've been reading in the book Magnetic Aura from Borlest

[rocketproductions]

These are two of the most articulate teachers on Earth, gaining insight through their respective fields, for free in front of all of us. I LOVE IT

[rezadaneshi]

I'm 73. I have been a particle physics enthusiast for 40+ years. String theory was invented from the work of Gabriele Veneziano in 1968 as he was researching for his Dissertation and run into a 200 year old math book with a function written over 200 years ago by Euler, called the Gamma function that looked a lot like our existing theory's formulation for strong force. Fast forward, I have followed professor Green for over 30 years, but didn't become prisoner to string theory. I know nothing at all compare to Bryan green and Dr Susskind's math ... but it all came to a sudden stop in my know nothing brain when I concluded there are no singularities and I can forever tell you why and how... no quantum gravity and 40 years of funding renewed every ten years with a side note promise to give them 10 more years of funding and they'll prove there is a graviton. Respectfully and thank you for reading. I admire Bryan Greene 💜

[TheGavameck]

When I woke up today, I really hoped to find something entertaining to watch, but I didn't have high hopes. Then I saw Dr. Brian Greene and Dr. Peterson in the same photo. I couldn't believe it. YouTube didn't have to go that hard😂.

[jennifermommy]

Love that Brian Green is intelligent enough to see that Jordan isnt the monster the woke claim him to be and was able to come on the podcast and have a wonderful conversation

[MrHugemoth]

I want another "Elegant Universe" TV series with updated science.

[cahlendavidson]

Oh my God you finally had one of my favorite physicists on! Been waiting for years! ❤❤❤

[VNOMOUS]

Brian Greene is perhaps the greatest intellectual mind of our time. I absolutely admire this man to the highest degree imaginable.

[lauraquigley]

Love this man! Nothing like two intelligent people talking TRUTH 🙏🙏🙏Blessing’s

[itsgalf]

I just finished watching Tenet for the first time and now this comes up in the feed. Excited to watch

[kensears]

You inspired me to this meditation, which I posted on my Facebook page today:

Where is time?

To me that's a more interesting, even efficient, question than the more common "What is time?"

I'm in a kitchen right now. It's a space, an environment, an enclosure. I can stand at the sink, oven or fridge, or sit at the table and have my morning tea, but in all these spots I'm still enclosed by the kitchen, I'm *in* it. The kitchen is neatly defined by its four walls, so that I'm either in it or outside it. You might say that everything I do in the kitchen is happening "in kitchen, " just like we say that absolutely everything that happens anywhere in the universe is happening "in time."

But where *is* this thing called time? I know where the kitchen is, but where's the Time-room everything's supposed to be happening inside of? How is it enclosing us?

Has anybody ever observed its walls, put them under a microscope? Maybe changed the wallpaper? 😏 Has anybody photographed it from the inside and out? It seems to me, not.

What if there is no such room?

Which is not to suggest that Time doesn't exist. Just that it's not the sort of enclosure-space we imagine. Perhaps it's not even remotely a place *in which* things happen, move, change, develop while the place itself statically remains an enclosure... like a kitchen.

"Space-time" is famously recognized as the dimension that makes our 3D universe actually a 4D one. Isn't that an interesting term, space-time? The way that physics tantalizingly unites the two notions without committing to either their identity or distinction? The term is more a question than a definition, isn't it, i.e., what are space and time and how are they inextricable from each other yet different? Definitions have a way of revealing how much we don't know as much as what we do.

In that vein it's telling how we use space to define (extrapolate, metaphorize) time. How long does it take for me to move the tip of my index finger from one ear to the other? Well, let's measure it--go get a watch. Okay, go. I'm moving my finger now a-a-and, stop! Ah, it took four seconds.

But what are four seconds? Four seconds are the distance (space) covered by the watch's second hand.

You may in fact, precisely as logically say that the second hand's movement was timed by my hand as vice versa. How long does it take for a second hand to move across four second marks on a watch face? Let's time it--go. Okay, I'm moving my finger from one ear toward the other--stop. It takes that long.

Both are the same thing, the movement of an object between two points. One we arbitrarilty call "motion" and the other "time, " when really both are just motion.

Or... both are just time.

By an arbitrary calibration of distance and speed, i.e., distance covered by the hands of a clock at a certain speed across a field of marks, we've standardized this phenomenon of distance and velocity as Time, or at least the closest thing to an "enclosure" as we can dream up. So that now we find ourselves "within" the space of one hour as opposed to the next. Moreover we extrapolate this sense of enclosure and objectify it as a Time-room, --say, a tunnel or corridor--inside which everything that ever happens happens.

Yet, stil, nobody has ever seen the room. All we SEE is distance, velocity, motion, change, development.

I have a compelling sense the room isn't there at all. What we call Time is indeed the combined manifestation of distance, velocity, motion, development, change. At root, Time is change. Change doesn't happen "in time, " rather change spawns time. No change, no Time. What time is ever measured, anywhere ever, in isolation from motion/change? So what, then, are you really measuring?

Which is why a watch is the perfect metaphor, since we look at the motion and change going on there and name it Time: "Oh, look at the time! I have no time! It's time to go!"

Which is subtly humorous, isn't it: because nothing is happening there that we humans haven't rigged to happen by our own devices, this prosaic, rudimentary turning of gears compelling a tiny metal bar to rotate. Yet we gaze at this creation of our hands (*on* our hands 😏) and it's a kind of hierarch--if not a god itself then summoning us to the altar of a Power transcending yet enclosing us in a merciless, frequently suffocating embrace: Time. And we hop at its bark...even though we programmed it to bark at us. 😄

We've objectified the combined phenomenon of motion, distance, speed and development into a thing, a place, greater than the sum of its parts. But maybe the parts really are just "parts, " not a place enclosing them.

Perhaps "Time" isn't the "unknown god" conferring on the parts their ultimate instantiation. Perhaps the "unknown god" is Another. "Time" isn't our environment. Our environment is Another.

"For in him we live and move and have our being...."

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together...."

"...sustaining all things by his powerful word...."

[Venator]

Thank you both for the invigorating conversation, thank you Daily Wire for hosting.

[paykm]

Great to see Brian speak without interruptions.

[GeraldBaltimore-ss]

Centuries from now Historians will use this as an example of one of the greatest comedy teams of the 21st Century, Peterson deftly setting up every punch line and Greene delivering with stone cold resolve. For right now a fantastic conversation between two of the smartest men alive.

[KirbyTheKirb]

Yay Brian Greene, love him glad seeing him on the podcast.