Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | May 2022

Welcome to the May 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable size — 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

[Me-szyy]

English is not my native language, and each time I listen to something as wise, deep and well informed like this, I really believe the journey of learning is paying off, so Thank you very much for that :)

[PilsnerGrip]

I would really love timestamps on these Q&As

[weho_brian]

REALLY GREAT THAT THESE EPISODES ARE NOW ON SPOTIFY, THANK YOU

[Zubinator]

Instead of AMA, Sean ought to title this type of show, "You are not Laplace's demon W/ Sean Carroll."

[mrslave]

45:43 “ There can only be a finite number of things that can happen in any region of space“ sounds like an argument for the particles of the ancient aether.

[TheHelleri]

Regarding Igor's (don't know if I'm spelling that right) question about voting. Scale helps. There's nothing saying that if you vote, you have to vote on everything possible to vote on. You can choose say one local measure that will effect you personally and voice yourself of which way you want that to go. And if you feel like ticking a few more bubbles while you're at it, ballot information packets have arguments, rebuttals, and responses to those rebuttals that tend to cut through a lot of the bs and actually provide a rather balanced scale of information on which to make a decision on the spot.

[DaKoopaKing]

Sean, I recently read the "Nominalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics" SEP entry. Chapter 5 is called "Deflationary Nominalism" and I thought you might be interested in it:

"Despite the fact that quantification over mathematical objects and relations is indispensable to our best theories of the world, this fact offers no reason to believe in the existence of the corresponding entities. This is because, as Jody Azzouni points out, two kinds of commitment should be distinguished: quantifier commitment and ontological commitment. We incur a quantifier commitment whenever our theories imply existentially quantified statements. But existential quantification, Azzouni insists, is not sufficient for ontological commitment. After all, we often quantify over objects we have no reason to believe exist, such as fictional entities.

To incur an ontological commitment—that is, to be committed to the existence of a given object—a criterion for what exists needs to be satisfied. There are, of course, various possible criteria for what exists (such as causal efficacy, observability, possibility of detection, and so on). But the criterion Azzouni favors, and he takes it to be the one that has been collectively adopted, is ontological independence. What exist are the things that are ontologically independent of our linguistic practices and psychological processes. The point is that if we have just made something up through our linguistic practices or psychological processes, there's no need for us to be committed to the existence of the corresponding object. And typically, we would resist any such commitment."

The author covers some good points that you might be able to fire back at Justin Clarke-Doane. I also think the entry in general is really well-written - it has chapters on fictionalism and modal structuralism - but it's long as shit.

[ryanrutledge]

Lol " There are no bad bagels, only bad bagel eaters " quote from Sean Carroll famous physicist . ? Thnk u for the laugh, surely a true sign of intelligence is self deprecating humor . ❤ from 🇨🇦

[rickcygnusx]

1:13:19 "quantum state of the universe is a vector, and the different worlds are components of that vector"
1:17:57 "given an amount of thickness that is given by the Born rule"
Thank you so much Dr. Carroll, those two statements were a gigantic leap to understand the many worlds theory. I am currently watching Dr. Susskind's "modern physics quantum mechanics (stanford)" and those two statemsnts made all the difference in the world!!

[GerardDo]

5:45 - to develop your skill set, do not watch legacy media first. Put in effort doing your own research listening to varying opinions from independant sources. Then apply your new understanding with legacy media. Legacy media is truly the worst way to receive information and should never be your only source. We live in a world of information, some of it good and a lot of it bad. It is imperative one applies cumulative opinion and raw gut feeling on what to actually digest. "Be careful of the thought-seeds you plant in the garden of your mind..."

[Oliver-rwup]

"Let a thousand flowers bloom" You have a dark appreciation for cause and effect, it's poetic history and I relate to how you think, Sean. It's a phrase that should be used and live on until it becomes true.

[StaticBlaster]

Did you see the goosebump-inducing images of the EHT?

[pilotlc]

What do to make of Dr. Wubbo J. Ockels TED talk of Time created by Humans in Earth Gravity?

[frasert]

I’m so happy hearing Sean Carrol talk about Moral Constructivism given I just finished a 28 page research paper on the Constructivism of Hume and Sharon Street, focusing on part on Street’s Darwinian Dilemma for Realism. Really awesome stuff

[theWinterWalker]

. It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it, and the context in which you say it. Words are how you use them.

[MoshkitaTheCat]

Sean, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I came across your book “Something Deeply Hidden” and I must say that you blew my mind. I love how you think of time and entropy… i also enjoy listening to you delve into quantum entanglement. Makes me wonder if humans can experience entanglement in the same manner as electrons!

[Hal_McKinney]

How do we know proton synthesis isn’t simply when particle pairs produced in quantum foam do not always re-annihilate❓

[showmewhyiamwrong]

If at the smallest state that we can test, i.e. the Quantum State, we believe that there is no sign of a fixed Reality, over Time that is, does this not infer that Spacetime it self has no fixed state and that the expansion of Spacetime that we measure is just a result of the Positive Creation of Space over Time by the emergence of A Positive amount Space emerging from the creation of an excess Virtual Particles popping into existence and if so does this not infer the existence of a still deeper state than what we perceive as the fabric of our Reality?

[charlieb]

Laplace’s demon knowing everything fixes the demon as disconnected from the system. If the demon can act on the information about the system, then he is part of the system and those actions are already fully known and accounted for to the demon OR the actions of the demon are unaccounted for and any action will invalidate the completeness of the demon’s knowledge and thus the premise of the thought experiment. Either way, any debate of a demon with the ability to act on the system would reduce the nature of causality as you’re solely talking about what exactly the demon sees.

[lovefeelsbest]

I’m not sure how Sean is not your favorite public personality. The views and ideas he expresses are vastly superior to those shared by your politicians, entertainers, religious leaders and other bullshitters