WEBVTT - How to think like a physicist? 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:10.000 Andy Daniel, Did you always want to be a paid physicist? 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:13.960 Definitely not. When I was a kid, I did not 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:14.960 want to be a physicist. 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:17.840 Really, you knew what it was, but you knew you 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:18.640 didn't want to be one. 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:22.000 I don't think I understood what a scientist was well enough. 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:23.520 But when I was a kid, I wanted to be 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.280 an explorer. I wanted to get on a ship and 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.840 find some new island and name it after myself. 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:30.640 You just want to get out of Los Alamos. 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:35.000 Main purpose here, Yeah, though you can't really take a 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:37.279 ship out of Los Alamos because it's landlocked. So there 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:39.000 were some basic problems in my thinking. 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:40.800 Well, you could take a train and then a ship. 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:44.320 But don't they say everyone's a physicists, especially little kids. 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.239 Yeah, I think everybody is a scientist because they're curious 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.080 about the world. And in the end I discovered that 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:53.440 being a physicist it's kind of like being an explorer, 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:56.160 except instead of discovering new continents, we're trying to discover 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:57.840 new frontiers of knowledge. 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:01.720 Instead of surfing waves out there in the sea, you're 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:02.640 surfing the couch. 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:08.240 Mostly, I'm clickly clacking my way to new shores of knowledge. 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:11.760 Just don't get scurvy on your couch. 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:14.800 I got a bowl of limes here next to me. 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.560 Okay for with the tequila and the margaritas. That's for 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:40.039 after work, after work work these days? What's the difference. Hi, 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.440 I'm Hori. I'm a cartoonist and the author of Oliver's 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:43.399 Great Big Universe. 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:46.240 Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:48.680 at UC Irvine, and I want to teach people to 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:49.919 think like a physicist. 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:52.440 Wait, I'm confused. If everyone's a physicist, aren't just teaching 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:54.080 people to think like humans? 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:01.360 Yeah, basically, I'm done. I can retire. It's after work time, margarita. 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:03.120 I know, let's get the shots going. 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:07.200 No, I think everybody does have curiosity. But you know, 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:09.280 it took us a while to figure out some tips 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:13.320 and some tricks to effectively extract knowledge from the universe 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:16.080 rather than just like, you know, making up cute stories 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:17.400 to satisfy our curiosity. 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:19.720 Right, it probably took a while to get paid to 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:20.239 do it too. 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:22.760 Yeah, that's certainly true. A lot of the big names 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:25.520 in the history of science were men of leisure, you know, 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.480 operating on their trust funds or daddy's bank account. 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.000 Who do you think was the first professional physicists? 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:35.919 You know, science as a profession is not actually that old. 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.320 It's something like in the late eighteen hundreds that people 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.799 started to call themselves scientists and get paid to do it. 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:45.079 There are money to hire people to do this kind 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.160 of research. Until then, it was you know, natural philosophers 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:50.280 and people just sort of like curious, poking around in 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:54.000 their own laboratories. Yeah, but scientists as a job is 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:55.560 not much more than like one hundred years old. 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.280 WHOA. So even the word science is relatively new. 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:01.239 Yeah, exactly. If you ask like Gaos or Newton or 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.120 leading It or Aristotle, they certainly would not call themselves 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:06.280 a scientist. That's a new word. 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:09.640 Or maybe they did it on purpose. They're like science, 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:14.040 No thanks, it's a new fangled thing that all the 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:18.200 kids are talking about. I prefer to be a natural philosopher. 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:20.760 But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:23.560 the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:25.280 In which we do our best to demonstrate what it's 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.399 like to think like a physicist. We take a physicist 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:32.000 approach to dismantling the whole universe, understanding all of its 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.840 little bits, building mental mathematical models to try to explain it, 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.200 asking questions of those models, and then wondering what does 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:40.640 it all mean anyway? 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:43.440 Yeah, because, as we talked about before, the universe belongs 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:47.040 to everyone, and asking questions is everyone's job, but a 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.200 few people get to do it as a career. 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:54.600 Get to Yes, exactly. It's definitely a treat and a privilege. 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:59.280 Well, you get paid to do it, I guess, and 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:01.640 to do that, there's a certain mindset you have to have, 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:03.600 right in order to be part of the profession. 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:06.040 Yeah, there definitely is a way of thinking that's sort 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:09.000 of like a physicist way of thinking. And I see 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:11.720 this because people who are trained as physicists and then 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.280 go out into the world and work in other areas 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:19.320 chemistry or engineering or computer science still take with them 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.960 a certain mindset, a certain way of approaching problems, which 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:25.560 can be really really helpful and useful or also sometimes 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:26.960 frustrating for their colleagues. 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:30.239 Yeah, no, I can totally relate. I think that also 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:32.360 the same is for engineers. You know, anyone who studied 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:34.960 engineering definitely thinks like an engineer is trying to think 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:38.720 it a certain way and a certain mindset about tackling 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:39.599 problems for sure. 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.400 Yeah, absolutely take an engineering approach to cartooning. 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:45.640 For example, Yeah, whenever I draw a bridge, I mean 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:50.200 I really put some calculations behind it, why to make 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:51.000 sure it doesn't fall down? 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.560 Yeah, I know all those cartoons could be injured. I mean, 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:54.720 think about their families. 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:57.800 Yeah. I usually build in a safety factor of like 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:02.000 two or three to every cartoon, just in case. But yeah, 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:05.080 but professional physicists do think about things in a very 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.279 different way than the rest of us. And so that's 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:10.640 the question we'll be exploring today. So to the on 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:19.160 the podcast, we'll be taggling how to think like a physicist? 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:21.280 And I'm not sure if this should be like an 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:22.960 instruction manual or like. 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.119 A warning, Oh why what can happen? 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:28.200 You know, like watch out for these signs that you're 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.320 thinking like a physicist, or like, hey, would you like 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:33.680 to think like a physicist? Here's steps one, two, five. 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:36.440 Well, I guess if it was the former, we should 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:38.839 title the eposite, hard to Not Think like a Physicist? 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:40.920 How to avoid thinking like a physicist. 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:43.000 We're going to get into the positives, I'm sure, but 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:46.320 you know, there is this lore that sometimes physicists oversimplify things. 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.560 They're like, come into a new field, They're like, oh, 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:51.040 these can just approximate this with a sphere, maybe a 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:53.960 line on it or whatever. There's this urban legend that 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:57.200 physicists being too simplistic or the cause of the two 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:00.400 thousand and eight financial collapse, for example. So you know, 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.080 there are potentially some dangers to applying physics thinking to 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:03.920 the broader world. 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:06.880 Daniel, I wonder if you're overestimating how much people think 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:07.719 about physicists. 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:10.920 Probably I definitely don't have a clear view of that. 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:13.280 I mean, I think for an urban legend to exist, 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:16.120 do you sort of need urban people talking. 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:22.200 About Maybe that's just an urban legend within physics, maybe 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:22.800 nobody else. 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:27.839 It's like a yeah, just have issues. 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:29.720 We definitely do. 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.160 But it's an interesting question to ask if you're thinking 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:36.760 about following a career in physics, or wondering what is 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:38.880 the job entail and what kind of mindset do you 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.000 have to have in order to do it at a 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:44.279 research university or to become one, or to get a 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:44.800 degree in. 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:47.160 It, or if you're just an armchair physicist, if you 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:49.880 like thinking about the nature of the universe and making 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:53.600 progress and over the years, maybe while listening to this podcast, 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.640 you've been putting together your own personal mental model of 0:06:56.800 --> 0:07:00.279 the universe, asking questions, trying to click it together, coming 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:04.200 to a holistic understanding of how things work. In that case, 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:05.640 you might have picked up a few of the tricks 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:07.000 of thinking like a physicist. 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:08.960 Well, as usually, we were wondering how many people out 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.840 there had thought about this question, had maybe wondered what 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.360 it's like to be a professional physicist and what kind 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.560 of mental skills you need to be one. 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.920 Thanks very much to everybody who answers these random questions. 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:23.000 Love hearing your thoughts. Please don't be shy if you 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:24.760 want to join the group, just write to me to 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:27.480 Questions at Danielandjorge dot com. 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.160 So think about it for a second. What do you 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.160 think it takes to think like a physicist? Here's what 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:32.880 people have to say. 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:39.080 A physicist must think of small and apply it to 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:43.360 the infinitely large universe, and that's not easy to do. 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:46.680 Hence the podcast for the rest of us. 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.080 What if that's an expression? I haven't heard of it before, 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:53.520 so it's value. I think it probably would refer to 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:58.800 someone being very practical, someone following the scientific method very dogmatic, accurate. 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.679 But then some theoretical physicists that are a bit wacky 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:04.720 in what they come up with, so possibly a little 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:05.240 bit of that too. 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.960 I think like a physicist is to be asking questions 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:12.240 and be relentless in your quest for an answer. I'd 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:16.480 say thinking like a physicist means being curious and searching 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:21.280 for answers through trial and error and experiments. 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:25.360 This means there's our podcast about physicists, and to do 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:27.040 it with your cartoonist friend. 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:32.960 Basically, to think like a physicist means if you discover something, 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:38.520 you get to really terrible name that doesn't make sense. 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.840 I think it means to contemplate matter and energy and 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:44.480 their interactions with one another. 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:48.160 Well, from the episodes that I have listened to so far, 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:52.600 I would that to think like a physicist means to 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:57.560 be inquisitive, to try to make connections between different aspects 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.400 facets of life, and wondering why and. 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:03.880 Trying to. 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.400 Better understand and explain the phenomena we see throughout our 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:10.080 daily lives. 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:13.040 All right, I like some of these answers. I guess 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:16.520 we're done because one of them said, we just need 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:18.720 to start on a podcast about physics. 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:24.080 And then give everything you discover a terrible name. These 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:25.120 are some juicy answers. 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.360 I guess people have been listening to our podcast. 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.040 I love these answers because there's so meta. They tell 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:34.560 me basically what people have learned from listening to the 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.040 podcast for all these years. It's fantastic. 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.480 Well, hopefully people are thinking a little bit more like scientists, 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.920 like rational thinkers because of this podcast, and also maybe 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:46.080 learning a little bit more about the universe and how 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.120 it all works down to the atomic level and the 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:49.959 galactic level. 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:53.920 Yeah, and not just absorbing facts and little bits of knowledge, 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:58.080 pieces of information, but also training yourself into how to 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:01.560 accumulate more information, how to fit those pieces of information together, 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.280 how to think about them. Science is more than just 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:06.640 what we've learned. It's how we're going to learn more. 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:09.880 How are we driving the distinction here between physicis and 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.400 just a regular scientist or do you mean how to 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:13.400 think like a scientist? 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:15.760 Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know the answer 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:17.800 to that. I'm probably not even the right person to 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:20.400 answer the question of how do physicists think because I'm 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:24.040 stuck in that mindset. I can't really see outside of 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:26.640 it to understand how other people think. But when I 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.920 mean chemists or biologists or economists, I do notice that 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:33.080 answer and ask questions in a different way. There's something 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:36.080 I have more in common with other physicists than I 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:39.000 have with other scientists. So there's something to it. 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:41.840 All, right, Well, let's dig into it. What do you 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:44.440 think is specific about how physicists think. 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.480 I think some of it comes from the fundamental motivation 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:50.960 and the assumptions that underlie physics. Like the goal is big. 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:53.720 We want to understand the universe. We want to figure 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:57.200 it out. And the assumptions are pretty basic. They're like, look, 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:00.680 the universe is understand a bull, and we can't describe 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.160 it with mathematical laws. We can build a mental model. 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.679 The model should follow those laws, and we can use 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:08.920 it to like predict the future and to understand the 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.880 nature of the universe. You know, inherent in that is 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:15.000 that we are simplifying the universe. We're taking all these 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:17.800 observations and the weaving them together into a story. That's 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.880 what the mathematical model is. We're saying, here's how this works, 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:23.880 here's what's really happening behind the scene. So there's sort 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:25.719 of like an ambition there to say, like we can 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:29.480 describe the basic elements of the universe, whereas, and again 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:31.800 I'm not an expert in other fields, you know, they 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.000 feel a little bit more zoomed out, so they're not 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:38.119 always as ambitious about like the fundamental understanding. They're describing 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:40.520 things as sort of a higher level, which again still 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.920 requires mathematical modeling and great precision. It's not a question 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.800 of like precision or rigors, just a question of like 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.640 the ambition the context of the questions you're asking. 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:52.640 Well, well, are you saying that other scientists are not 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:53.400 as ambitious? 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.760 I think maybe philosophically, physics and at least fundamental physics 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:04.840 and particle physics is asking more ambitious questions than other fields. Yeah, 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:09.400 I think they have deeper and broader implications again philosophically. 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.120 Right, right, So you think your topic of research is 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:15.760 more important than other scientists because you're a physicist. I'm 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:16.959 just saying there might be a little bit of a 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:18.520 bias here at Daniel. 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.160 No, it's totally reasonable to dig into that. I wouldn't 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:25.360 say more important. You know, somebody who's developing new techniques 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:29.000 to develop green energy, for example, they're not answering deep 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:31.880 and fundamental questions about the nature of reality. But they're 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:34.680 improving people's lives and maybe saving the planet, so that's 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:38.199 arguably much more important. But I think in terms of 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:42.640 the philosophical context of our lives, particle physics and fundamental 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:46.080 physics is answering those questions. Whether that's important or not 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.000 is totally subjective, you know, whether it has value. Every 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.000 kind of science is answering different kinds of questions, giving 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.880 different kinds of insight into how the universe works. For me, 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:58.199 at least one of the appeals of fundamental physics are 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:00.000 these philosophical implications of it. 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:02.880 Right, Well, I think, you know, most scientists would agree 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:05.120 that what they're doing is also trying to understand and 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:07.360 explain the world. I wonder if maybe a lot of 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.199 the difference is just in the topic and the kinds 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:13.360 of things that you're looking at the scope of it, 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:16.719 or the kinds of phenomena you're looking at. 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.040 Yeah, I think that everybody is doing the thing they 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:22.400 think is most interesting and most exciting, and that's very personal. 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:25.720 Right the person who's like crouching in a rainforest watching 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:29.200 spiders crawl up twigs for hours and hours a day, 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:31.559 is deeply fascinated by that and chose to do that 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.440 instead of economics or psychiatry or whatever for a reason. 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.079 And that's totally cool. So you're right, and the choice 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:40.319 of topic is very, very personal. But I think the 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.080 choice of topic also sometimes leads to a different way 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.040 of thinking. Like I think, because we're trying to ask 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.559 fundamental questions and deep questions about the universe, we feel 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:52.320 like we can touch onto some sort of mathematical purity, 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.360 that there is maybe mathematics that describes this that we 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:59.440 can drill down into and reveal, you know, somebody who's 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.560 studying like hurricanes. You know, we don't have any mathematics 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:05.600 that describes hurricanes. So we can do some simulations, but 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:07.240 we're sort of at a loss because of all the 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.280 chaos and the details. But when you zoom down into 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.280 the fundamental firmament of the universe, we hope maybe there 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:15.880 is some mathematics there that can describe what's going on. 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:18.720 And so that's I think why physicists tend to build 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:22.640 these mental mathematical models, sometimes too simplified, you know, hence 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:25.120 the famous spherical cowjoke, which I don't know, maybe that's 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:26.520 only a famous joke within physics. 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:31.239 You tell me, I've never heard of that before. But 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:33.160 you know, I think all scientists would say that what 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:35.800 they're doing is fundamental as well. Like, if you're studying spiders, 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:39.160 you're probably thinking about the different ways that life can form, 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:42.400 or the different factors that go into creating life and 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.600 the factors that shape live That seems pretty fundamental as well. Yeah, 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:46.320 and ambitious. 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:48.560 M h. And if anything, I think you probably have 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.280 a lot more insight into this than I do, or 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.120 than most people, because you interact with so many different 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.760 kinds of scientists and obviously you've been spending a lot 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:01.000 of time learning about physics and decoding the brains of 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:04.400 physicists but also other scientists, And so from your perspective, 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:06.560 I'd be very curious to hear, like, do you think 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:09.480 physicists think differently? Is the mind of physicists trained at 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.200 different skills? Do they take a different approach or all 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:13.760 scientists just one category? 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.680 For you? You know, I think that if you're a scientist, 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:19.600 you're probably trying to figure out how the world and 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:24.040 the universe works. You're just asking questions about different phenomena 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:27.400 in it. You know, if you're someone who studies hurricanes. 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:33.800 You're trying to understand how certain physical processes work and 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:37.200 how they can come together to create large effects. For example, 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:40.480 that seems pretty fundamental as well or as fundamental as 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:42.840 asking you know what an atom is made of of? 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:46.360 Yeah, can spiders come together to make hurricanes? Wouldn't that 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:48.440 be awesome? And shouldn't we pitch that show to the 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:49.280 Discovery Channel? 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:50.600 Spider NATO's. 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:53.120 Spider Cane. 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.400 So I don't know, Sorry, science Spider NATO's sounds like 0:15:58.440 --> 0:15:58.840 a winner. 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.120 Yeah, well, I can't tell you whether it's fundamentally different 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:04.920 from the way other scientists think, because I'm not other scientists. 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.160 Maybe you can comment, but I can try to keep 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:08.560 you a little bit of an insight into the way 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:11.320 I approach a problem with the way I think about problems, 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:15.120 and that's this reliance on building a model. You know. 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:17.160 I look at a science problem like where is that 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:19.240 ball going to land after it comes off the bat? 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.000 Try to predict that? And I think, well, to get 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.560 that exactly right is way too complicated, And there's so 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.280 many factors involved. There's the wind speed, there's that bird 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:30.120 flying by, there's tufts in the air, et cetera, and 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:32.360 so I build a simpler model of the universe. I say, 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.040 toss out the real universe. Can we come up with 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.920 a simpler version of the universe and ask the question 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.080 in that universe, but build a model in such a 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.120 way that the answer in the simpler universe is still 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.960 relevant to reality. So can we extract the crucial details 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:48.760 of the problem, put those into our model, and then 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:50.800 use that to answer the question. So you know, you 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:52.720 don't care, for example, about the color of the ball, 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:54.640 you don't care whether some kid in the stand is 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.960 eating ice cream. None of these details about glorious reality 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:00.640 matter to answering this question. So you build the simpler 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.520 model specific to that question because it's good at answering 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:06.199 that question, not every other question. And you use that 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:08.960 to answer the question. And you know, you can argue 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:11.280 philosophically like is that model real, what does it mean 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:13.320 about the universe if it works, et cetera, et cetera. 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:15.879 But that's sort of to me, the core of thinking 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:18.480 like a physicist is building a little mental model and 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:20.160 then using that to answer your questions. 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:23.399 Yeah, I think you're basically describing what any scientist does. 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:26.679 You know, chemists, biologists, they all work off models. I 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:29.440 mean probably the word model is the most used word 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.800 in all of science. Yeah, you know, biologists make models 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:39.199 about evolution, about gene interactions, about how molecules interact, or 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:42.000 how a species propagated, and things like that. But I 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:43.840 wonder if the difference with you is that you're making 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:48.400 models about the physical world or about baseballs, for example, 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:49.520 and not spiders. 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:53.919 Spiders are just way too complicated. There's no way for 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.040 me to build a model of a spider. I have 0:17:56.040 --> 0:18:00.440 no idea exactly, and I know how to make the 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.159 approximation so that I can describe a baseball. I know 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:06.760 what to ignore. Maybe that's just my physics intuition, but 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:08.280 I don't know how to do that for a spider, 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:10.480 and I want to push back a little bit. I 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:13.600 do think there's a difference between the models built by 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:17.280 physicists and those built biologists, for example. I mean, in biology, 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:21.240 we know that every model we build is effective. It's 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:26.680 not fundamental. It's describing some emerging phenomenon like butterflies or spiders. 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:30.240 Something we know is not an inherent object in the universe, 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:33.360 but made out of those bits. It comes together through 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.439 a special arrangement. So biology isn't describing something inherent to 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:41.280 the universe. It's just approximately describing how things work during 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:45.040 special conditions where like spiders and butterflies happen to emerge 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:47.399 because they don't always right. There's a long time in 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.720 the universe without spiders and butterflies, and so those rules 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:54.080 don't apply in those scenarios. But physics is trying to 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:58.080 figure out the fundamental laws, those that always apply in 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:02.919 all circumstances that are inherent to the universe. And that 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.160 difference in goal, I think leads to a different way 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.000 of thinking, you know, good or bad. It leads to 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.480 a hubrist that we can describe anything with simple laws, 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.920 and it leads to different approaches and in different scientific culture, 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:19.320 so that physicists are kind of recognizable to others and 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:20.680 also to each other. 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:24.280 Well, you're married to a biologist, how does your way 0:19:24.320 --> 0:19:26.880 of thinking different from your spouses? 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:29.480 Yeah, I think something that's different in between the way 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:31.679 that I think about things and the way biologists like 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:34.000 my wife think about things is we're definitely much more 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:38.160 focused on questions of like uncertainty and making things quantitative 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.760 in order to try to extract some knowledge. Sometimes the 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:45.320 things we're dealing with are abstract or indirect. You know, 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:47.800 we're talking about tiny particles or things we can't ever 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:51.520 see or even struggle to visualize. And so to help 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:55.080 us guide our thinking, we rely really heavily on the uncertainty. 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:56.960 How well do we know this? What can we say 0:19:57.000 --> 0:19:59.520 about this? Because we don't have much intuition, we can't 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:01.880