Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | July 2024

Welcome to the July 2024 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

[Attila_Beregi]

we just had an election to pick a mew mayor in a city of 2 miilion. at the end, after 740.000 votes counted, the difference was 41. so even though it's not one vote but still shows i think that "every little counts" when it comes to voting

[Raptorel]

I think the mistake that Sean is making in the teleportation example is that the classical world is only what we can observe about what really is. So just because I create a brain that classically looks like Sean's brain doesn't mean that I have re-instantiated Sean's first person perspective. After all, if you have a qubit and you observe it, you only observe one bit of information out of it, even though the qubit was much more than that.

Not to mention that Sean insists to be copied exactly. But why? What if I misplace just one neuron of Sean's brain, would that be "someone else" than him? After all, if I kill one neuron from his brain right now, there won't be any difference in his first person experience, so why would it matter if it's completely, 100% identical when he's replicated?

Oh, and one more thing: we can find frames of reference where he is destroyed first then re-instantiated somewhere else or re-instantiated somewhere else and then destroyed, due to how relativity works - we can't say which of these was "first".

So there's a bunch of funky things going on with that example.

[michaelkahama]

Whenever Sean speaks about politics does he think in the back of his mind that these values on constitutions are emergent?

[wkittils]

The press argument defending focus on Biden’s age while Trump's baked-in bad behavior is given a pass as yesterday’s news is a classic example of not seeing the forest through the trees. Furthermore, the end result leads to a misleading comparison which is not as shocking as the need to spell out the need for basic non-misleading integrity.

[georgewaters]

One does not just sit down to listen to 3 hours of Sean without comment!

[mw-thov]

As an empirical fact biological age and date of birth age are not the same. Dates of birth do not predict biological age. Since everything involves entropy, that theoretical fact can't be used to equate birth date age and biological age.

[rozaepareza]

I have a comment about the question at 1:37:45. As someone with similar views to you, Sean, about this kind of hypothetical, I was surprised by your answer. I actually would be ok with the copy being made first and then being "killed" a second later, since I wouldn't really be getting killed at all - it would be similar to just losing a second of memory. (Assuming the disassembly process was painless of course, but that goes for any teleportation device no matter whether the copy was created before or after.)

You could extend the question, and say what if a duplicate was accidentally created during teleportation and the mistake was discovered the next day? In that case, I would actually still be ok with being disassembled, assuming nothing particularly profound had happened in the intervening time, as it would be a similar loss to losing the last day's memories. (Since I would volunteer, that means my copy would volunteer as well, so we'd have to sit down and work out which one had had the more valuable experiences over the last day.) Of course, if weeks or months had gone by I wouldn't want to do that, any more than I'd want to lose the last weeks or months of memories. We would be starting to become significantly different people at that point.

[jcamacho]

Sean can you timestamp the audio by section and question(s) so we can identify and then choose which question(s) we want to listen to?

[OOL-UV]

Doc, you’re doing politics now, not science. Politics is about power. It is about who gets to use the government’s power of coercion on others. It gets ugly. It is about who gets to control the soldiers and the cops and the regional water supply. Please don’t be surprised that people exercise their absolute right to oppose your opinions on matters so near to them. And please don’t be surprised that people do not trust your solemn assurances that you know what is in their best interests. Power people always assure the peasants of such - just before the soldiers take your cow.

[Games_and_Music]

2:22:22 (awesome timing btw) I have the same thought, because the pollution clearly adds a lot of color to the sunsets, which looks amazing, ironically.
I remember my favorite sunset about 15 years ago, i was walking home from work and suddenly the sky started turning orange, then deep orange, until the streets looked bright red.
I took a bunch of pictures on my phone, but sadly only one of them survived, which was a profile shot of myself against the sun, but i lost the red street shots.
But yeah, i think it was because of Saharan sand blowing over, so it wasn't actually pollution in that sense, but in general i do like me some orange sunsets.

[KH]

Okay but relativistic star trek transporter right? Is it okay to create a clone of you such that your forward light cones don’t cross? What does instantaneous entail? Etc etc

[Destrolll]

A point about teleportation. Sean says that he doesn't mind to be killed by a teleporting machine if he gets reassembled at the same moment. Does this mean he should be ok with being killed at any moment, because at the same moment there will be a world where he avoids death.
And another point when he says, it is ok if and only if he gets reassembled at the same time. But there is no such thing as a same time.
While writing this I realised that you can ask for 0 spacetime interval instead of "same moment"

[INflamesRobbie]

Hello! Fan from Sweden here. Been listening to you since MS no 1. I realy like your calm voice and very knowledgable way of explaining everything. You´re teh main reason why I beleive in the "many worlds" - hyphotesy. I know it´s about your opnion on things on theese AMA`s but when you talk politics it´s hard for me to listen cause I dont know if thats really your opinion and you´re ignorant of reality and the truth or if you´re just talking a stand because thats what the sience community and the universities demands of you. We in Europe have suffered much more becusee of the far left leaning politics than you have obviously. But if you dont change direction it will come to you very soon. And I will tell you that we espacially here in sweden we ar every open to othwer cultures and religions. Racism ha snot been a problem here at all in many decades. And we have 20% of our population thats is from another country. With that said it´s hard for me to here someone as educated as you talking about Trump as if he is a criminal and how the supreme court has failed. When the reality is that your goverment has done everything in its power to go after this man, (wheher you likew him or not) a presidential candidate, to hinder him from even takiong part in the election. In sweden we have a long history of a well functioning demoacracy. If a political party would try to go after another party thw way tje Biden administration has done by gooing after Trump they would loose all support here. Spending million and millions of dollars trying to find (and even making up criminal offensives) even tha smallaest type of misconduct, is shamefull to the great country that I beleive you are. Simaltanosly you are having a prsident that clearly is not the one in charge in your country. Because it is not obvious that you He´s not capable of taking big dissicions? And thats not more worrying to you? That you have a commander in chief thats incappable. And you are not angry about that??? Biden isn´t the gong after Trump it is the whole administration. I dont like either of the candidates you have. Here in Sweden we hav emany parties and the govermnet is allweays a coallition. I´m sorry to say this but your not so objective thoughts on politics makes it hard for me to listen to this AMA´s anymore. So please dont talk politics on yor AMA´s. I think you´re one the best intellectualls when it comes to physics and cosmology and even philossophy. Thank you!

[Stadtpark]

That very first (priority) question about the Hubble Tension was actually helpful for my physical world view, which despite all your efforts still mostly is relying on (your) authority. - I know: it’s ironic - every scientist (especially you) is against arguments from authority; yet here we are / here I am… - that’s the beauty about your AMA episodes: you don’t hold back with your opinions. (Contrary to your more careful presentations.)

[johncarter]

Knuts are falling from the "tree" here today, must be the heat!!

[millatron]

For those who challenged the "transporter problem" solution presented, your conjectures about multiple copies is actually not allowed as part of the no cloning / no broadcasting theorem. That is to say that in order to gain the necessary information at the quantum level to completely replicate the person on the other end of the transporter, the existing person must be disassembled completely (preventing leaving a copy behind) and can only be created at the destination via quantum teleportation which prevents multiple copies from existing.

Though its all purely the fiction part of science fiction, there is nothing scientific that prohibits the view point of a continuum of consciousness through the transportation process. There's nothing that guarantees it either.

If you want a totally different terrifying possibility with teleportation I encourage you to read "The Jaunt" by Stephen King.

[ZootaAndrewMahera]

Shawn..Im a self taught audio editing and mastering hobbyist .And a musician.
I can remove the room reverb, add clarity to your voice and the overall audio cold sound like high end studio record production.
I'll be happy ho help you out for free .
I'll upload a sample of the audio to this... On my channel and post the link ...

[jonathanbyrdmusic]

Gotta love these guys who come here like “what this actual theoretical physicist is not understanding is…”

[davidmudry]

NIST has no other choice but to use the Newtonian context of gravity as a force argument. Can you imagine if NIST said the 3 towers collapsed 2 from the top down because gravity doesn't make things fall, gravity is not a force? LOL. It is total disinformation when gravity is said to be a downward force that it is not. And teachers should have a duty to remind students that this Newtonian concept of gravity as a force is not the truth.

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[kostoglotov]

Could be, that we are coming out of the last ice age