Tim Palmer: The Primacy of Doubt

Tim Palmer graduated from Oxford with a PhD in mathematical physics, working on general relativity, and got a postdoc to work with Stephen Hawking. He turned it down and moved into the field of meteorology, and then moved on to Climate Change studies, where he pioneered the development of what is called ‘ensemble forecasting’ to predict both long term climate change, as well as short term weather predictions. This technique has now become a standard in the field, and is necessary to properly account for possible chaotic behavior in atmospheric systems.

Even simple classical systems can be chaotic—implying that even minute changes in initial conditions can sometimes produce dramatic variations in their later evolution. The canonical hyperbolic example is a butterfly flapping its wings in Kansas might later cause a violent storm on the Eastern Seaboard.

On first glance, it may seem that this would imply all predictivity must go out the window, but over the past 40 years techniques have been developed for dealing with the so-called ‘fractal’ distributions that often result from chaotic dynamics, and as a result, it has become possible to constrain the range of possible long term outcomes of chaotic behavior.

Tim Palmer has recently written a new book, entitled The Primacy of Doubt, which provides a wonderful discussion about the importance of accounting for doubt and uncertainty in a wide variety of systems, from weather to medicine, and even includes discussions of there possible implications of his ideas for the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and gravity. While I am more skeptical of his nevertheless intriguing latter arguments, Tim and I had a fascinating and informative discussion about his own experiences as a scientist, and the importance of explicitly incorporating a range of initial conditions when exploring weather and climate predictions.

For many people, uncertainty is something to be avoided, but in physics, uncertainty is an inherent part of our understanding of the world, and it must be faced head-on. Being able to make quantitative predictions with likelihoods that have meaning requires it, and science is the only area of human inquiry where we can state with great quantitative accuracy what the likelihood is that a given prediction will be correct. This is a triumph of the scientific process and deserves to be better understood. In this regard, there are fewer better guides than Tim Palmer, and it was a delight to spend time with him on this podcast, which will enlighten and entertain.

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The Origins Podcast, a production of The Origins Project Foundation, features in-depth conversations with some of the most interesting people in the world about the issues that impact all of us in the 21st century. Host, theoretical physicist, lecturer, and author, Lawrence M. Krauss, will be joined by guests from a wide range of fields, including science, the arts, and journalism. The topics discussed on The Origins Podcast reflect the full range of the human experience - exploring science and culture in a way that seeks to entertain, educate, and inspire.

Full Episodes Playlist:

[EmergentUniverse]

Lawrence is awesome, but he gets so excited that he asks these long and winding questions and the interlocutor can hardly get a word in edge wise.

[Deepak-vcgd]

Would be nice hear more from the guest, that apart love the podcast.

[robertjulianoph.d.]

While I like this podcast very much and this episode in particular was of high quality, I think it is essential that the guest does most of the talking. In this case, an important part of this episode was Dr. Tim Palmer's recently published book "The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World." I think it would have been better for Dr. Palmer to offer his own views on a number of the (introductory/motivating) explanations given by the host as well as to have some input on the direction the discussions took.

[syedalishanzaidi]

Like so many other people who are fans of Dr. Krauss have commented, I too would have liked for him to speak less and ask questions that would allow the interviewee to speak. Otherwise why have them on the show? Why interview them at all?

[alovelytime]

why doesnt Krauss allow the guest to speak?

[maxwelldillon]

Palmer's strangely unpopular advocacy of determinism is refreshing.

[paultaylor]

I am more interested in the sum total instead of the world through the lense of a microscope

[HarryNicNicholas]

37:00 i was living in 'the avenue' surbiton (kingston, south london, uk) at the time - famous for a tv series called "the good life" about self sufficiency. several cars were crushed by trees just in that street, i remember watching silver birches in the house opposite swaying like palm trees in a hurricane the night before.

[zebmason]

Seven Oaks became Three or Four Oaks not No Oaks. There are a couple of errors in the pandemic chapter. The R is SIR does not include dead - at least as far as the standard SIR model and lots of others are concerned. If exponential growth were rapid I would be very happy with the balance of my savings account. Exponential growth of epidemics was debunked by Farr in 1840. In 1927 Kermack and McKendrick showed it to be logistic growth.

[JRH]

Why can't he just let his guests talk?

[TheWorldTeacher]

😇🇵🇭 Greetings from Manila, Everyone! 🇵🇭😇

[aminam]

Uncertainty! what will happen if humans survived for the next thousands of years and figured out how to control uncertainty in both weather forecasting and quantum mechanics? will they keep the same understanding of so-called uncertainty?!

[techteampxla]

I first saw Dr.Palm with TimMau a few weeks ago. Huge fan now, thank your for expanding my mind to actually understand the significance of “The moons of Jupiter”. Thanks for the great talk gents !!!

[HeyItsKora]

I adore Lawrence and could listen to just him talking for hours, but I felt awkward for Tim. Lawrence took up 90% of the speaking time, he kept just reading Tim’s book back to him and telling Tim his own beliefs/opinions. Lawrence shouldn’t be telling the audience Tim’s thoughts, he should be asking tim the right questions for him to tell us in his own words.

I felt Tim get kind of frustrated after a while… “right. Hmm. Yeah. Right. Right. Right, right. Yeah. Hmm” just so awkward

[GMC]

Is it possible that the three body problem on a universal scale could account for the fact that matter and anti matter did not destroy one another at the big bang?

[nedkelly]

interviewer > 90% of talking time, interviewee < 10% of talking time !!

[iggymendelson]

One man show. Why had the guest even been invited if he couldn’t speak?

[AmirBozorgmagham]

I wish the facilitator talks less and gives the time to Tim to tell more.

[roccococolombo]

Let your guest talk. Stop interrupting.

[PGB]

Lawrence, we like you a lot, now be quiet.