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When I was a kid, I did not 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:37.760 want to be a physicist. 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:40.640 Really, you knew what it was, but you knew you 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:41.720 didn't want to be one. 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.800 I don't think I understood what a scientist was well enough. 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:46.320 But when I was a kid, I wanted to be 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.040 an explorer. I wanted to get on a ship and 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:51.639 find some new island and name it after myself. 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:54.040 You just about to get out of Los Alamos, said 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:56.160 the main purpose here. 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:58.360 Yeah, though you can't really take a ship out of 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:00.760 Los Alamos because it's landlocked. So there were some basic 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:01.799 problems in my thinking. 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:04.000 Well, you could take a train and then aship. But 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.119 don't they say everyone's a physicists, especially little kids. 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:10.440 Yeah. I think everybody is a scientist because they are 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:13.760 curious about the world. And in the end I discovered 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:16.239 that being a physicist it's kind of like being an explorer, 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.000 except instead of discovering new continents, we're trying to discover 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:20.720 new frontiers of knowledge. 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.239 Instead of surfing the waves out there and the sea, 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:27.400 you're surfing the couch. Mostly. 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.840 I'm clickly clacking my way to new shores of knowledge. 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:34.560 Just don't get scurvy on your couch. 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:37.480 I got a bowl of limes here next to. 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:41.400 Me, Okay, with the tequila and the margaritas. That's for 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:47.160 after work, After work work these days? What's the difference. 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.240 Hi'm Hori. I'm a cartoonist and the author of Oliver's 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:06.200 Great Big Universe. 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:09.040 Hi I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:11.440 at UC Irvine, and I want to teach people to 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:12.720 think like a physicist. 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:15.240 Wait, I'm confused. If everyone's a physicist, aren't just teaching 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:16.880 people to think like humans? 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:22.320 Yeah, basically, I'm done. I can retire. It's after work time. 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:23.680 Where's margarita? 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:25.920 I know, let's get the shots going. 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.000 No, I think everybody does have curiosity, but you know, 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.080 it took us a while to figure out some tips 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:36.120 and some tricks to effectively extract knowledge from the universe 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:38.880 rather than just like you know, making up cute stories 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:40.200 to satisfy our curiosity. 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:42.520 Right, it probably took a while to get paid to 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:43.039 do it too. 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:45.600 Yeah, that's certainly true. A lot of the big names 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.320 in the history of science were men of leisure, you know, 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:52.279 operating on their trust funds or daddy's bank account. 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:55.760 Who do you think was the first professional physicist? 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:58.719 You know, science as a profession is not actually that old. 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.120 It's something like in the late eighteen hundreds that people 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:05.600 started to call themselves scientists and get paid to do it. 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:07.880 There are money to hire people to do this kind 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:10.960 of research. Until then, it was you know, natural philosophers 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:13.080 and people just sort of like curious poking around in 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:16.800 their own laboratories. Yeah, but scientists as a job is 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:18.360 not much more than like one hundred years old. 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:21.080 WHOA. So even the word science is relatively new. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.040 Yeah, exactly. If you ask like Gauss or Newton or 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.920 leading It or Aristotle, they certainly would not call themselves 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:29.080 a scientist. That's a new word. 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.839 Or maybe they did it on purpose. They're like science, No, thanks, 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:37.240 it's a new fangled thing that all the kids are 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:41.720 talking about. I prefer to be a natural philosopher. But anyways, 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:44.120 welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:46.360 a production of iHeartRadio. 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.080 In which we do our best to demonstrate what it's 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.200 like to think like a physicist. We take a physicist 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.800 approach to dismantling the whole universe, understanding all of its 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:58.640 little bits, building mental mathematical models to try to explain it, 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.000 asking questions of those models, and then wondering what does 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:03.479 it all mean anyway? 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:06.240 Yeah, because, as we talked about before, the universe belongs 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.840 to everyone, and asking questions is everyone's job, but a 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:14.200 few people get to do it as a career, get. 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:17.400 To Yes, exactly. It's definitely a treat and a privilege. 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:22.080 Well you get paid to do it, I guess, and 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:24.440 to do that, there's a certain mindset you have to have, 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:26.400 right in order to be part of the profession. 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:28.800 Yeah, there definitely is a way of thinking that's sort 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:31.799 of like a physicist way of thinking. And I see 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:34.520 this because people who are trained as physicists and then 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:37.080 go out into the world and work in other areas 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:42.120 chemistry or engineering or computer science still take with them 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:45.760 a certain mindset, a certain way of approaching problems, which 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:48.360 can be really really helpful and useful or also sometimes 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:49.760 frustrating for their colleagues. 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:53.039 Yeah, no, I can totally relate. I think that also 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.160 the same is for engineers. You know, anyone who studied 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:57.760 engineering definitely thinks like an engineer is trying to think 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.640 it a certain way and a certain mind. Said about 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:02.719 tackling problems for sure. 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.719 Yeah, absolutely take an engineering approach to cartooning. For example. 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:08.760 Yeah, whenever I draw a bridge, I mean I really 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:13.200 put some calculations behind it. Why to make sure it 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:13.800 doesn't fall down? 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.200 Yeah, I know all those cartoons could be injured. I 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:17.520 mean think about their families. 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:20.600 Yeah. I usually build in a safety factor of like 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.119 two or three to every cartoon I draw, just in case. 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:27.440 But yeah, but professional physicists do think about things in 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.680 a very different way than the rest of us. And 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:33.240 so that's the question we'll be exploring today. So to 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:40.360 the end the podcast will be tagling I to think 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:42.200 like a physicist. 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:44.080 And I'm not sure if this should be like an 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:45.760 instruction manual or like. 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.920 A warning, Oh why what can happen? 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.000 You know, like watch out for these signs that you're 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:54.120 thinking like a physicist, or like, hey, would you like 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:56.480 to think like a physicist? Here's steps one, two, five. 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.880 Well, I guess if it was the former, which titled 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:02.600 how to Not Think Like a Physicist, How to Avoid 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:03.640 Thinking like a Physicist. 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:05.800 We're going to get into the positives, I'm sure, but 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.119 you know, there is this lore that sometimes physicists oversimplify things. 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:11.360 They're like, come into a new field, They're like, oh, 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:13.840 these can just approximate this with a sphere, maybe a 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:16.760 line on it or whatever. There's this urban legend that 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:20.000 physicists being too simplistic, or the cause of the two 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.160 thousand and eight financial collapse, for example. So you know, 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:25.880 there are potentially some dangers to applying physics thinking to 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:26.679 the broader world. 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:29.640 Daniel, I wonder if you're overestimating how much people think 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:30.520 about physicists. 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:33.719 Probably I definitely don't have a clear view of that. 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:36.080 I mean, I think for an urban legend to exist, 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.920 you sort of need urban people talking about it. 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:45.600 Maybe that's just an urban legend within physics, maybe nobody else. 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:50.600 Yeah, just have issues. 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:52.520 We definitely do. 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.000 But it's an interesting question to ask if you're thinking 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:59.560 about following a career in physics or wondering what is 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:01.480 the job up and tail and what kind of mindset 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.480 do you have to have in order to do it? 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:06.839 At a research university or to become one, or to 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:07.600 get a degree in. 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:09.960 It, or if you're just an armchair physicist, if you 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:13.240 like thinking about the nature of the universe and making progress, 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.400 and over the years, maybe while listening to this podcast, 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:19.440 you've been putting together your own personal mental model of 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.040 the universe, asking questions, trying to click it together, coming 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:27.000 to a holistic understanding of how things work. In that case, 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:28.440 you might have picked up a few of the tricks 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:29.800 of thinking like a physicist. 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:31.760 Well, as usually, we were wondering how many people out 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.640 there had thought about this question, had maybe wondered what 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.160 it's like to be a professional physicist and what kind 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.400 of mental skills you need to be one. 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.720 Thanks very much to everybody who answers these random questions. 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:45.800 Love hearing your thoughts. Please don't be shy. If you 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:47.559 want to join the group, just write to me to 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:50.240 Questions at Danielandjorge dot com. 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:51.960 So think about it for a second. What do you 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:54.960 think it takes to think like a physicist. Here's what 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:55.680 people have to say. 0:09:56.320 --> 0:10:01.600 A physicist must think of at least are and apply 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.840 it to the infinitely large universe, and that's not easy 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.480 to do. Hence the podcast for the rest of us. 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:12.880 What if that's an expression. I haven't heard of it before, 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.320 so it's value. I think it probably would refer to 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:21.600 someone being very practical, someone following the scientific method, very dogmatic, accurate, 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.480 but then some theoretical physicists that are a bit wacky 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:27.520 in what they come up with, so possibly a little 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:28.040 bit of that too. 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:31.760 I think like a physicist is to be asking questions 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.400 and be relentless in your quest for an answer. 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.199 I'd say thinking like a physicist means being curious and 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:44.080 searching for answers through trial and error and experiments. 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:48.360 Means there's our podcast about physicists, and to do it 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:49.839 with your cartoonist friend. 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:55.800 Basically, to think like a physicist means if you discover something, 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:01.319 you get to really terrible name that doesn't make sense. 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:05.640 I think it means to contemplate matter and energy and 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:07.280 their interactions with one another. 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.960 Well, from the episodes that I have listened to so far, 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:15.320 I would say that to think like a physicist means 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:19.640 to be inquisitive, to try to make connections between different 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:24.240 aspects facets of life, and wondering why and. 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:26.679 Trying to. 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.200 Better understand and explain the phenomena we see throughout our 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:32.880 daily lives. 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:35.839 All right, I like some of these answers. I guess 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:39.360 we're done because one of them said, we just need 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:42.120 to start on a podcast about physics. 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.920 And then give everything you discover a terrible name. These 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:47.920 are some juicy answers. 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:51.160 I guess people have been listening to our podcast. 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:54.840 I love these answers because there's so meta. They tell 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:57.360 me basically what people have learned from listening to the 0:11:57.400 --> 0:11:59.839 podcast for all these years. It's fantastic. 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.280 Well, hopefully people are thinking a little bit more like scientists, 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.680 like rational thinkers because of this podcast, and also maybe 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:08.880 learning a little bit more about the universe and how 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.920 it all works down to the atomic level and the 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:12.760 galactic level. 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.720 Yeah, and not just absorbing facts and little bits of knowledge, 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:20.880 pieces of information, but also training yourself into how to 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:24.360 accumulate more information, how to fit those pieces of information together, 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:27.080 how to think about them. Science is more than just 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:29.439 what we've learned. It's how we're going to learn more. 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:32.679 How are we driving the distinction here between physicis and 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:35.199 just a regular scientist or do you mean how to 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:36.160 think like a scientist? 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:38.560 Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know the answer 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:40.599 to that. I'm probably not even the right person to 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:43.200 answer the question of how do physicists think? Because I'm 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:46.880 stuck in that mindset. I can't really see outside of 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:49.440 it to understand how other people think. But when I 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.719 mean chemists or biologists or economists, I do notice that 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.880 answer and ask questions in a different way. There's something 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.880 I have more in common with other physicists than I 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:01.800 have with other side scientists. So there's something to it. 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:04.640 All right, Well, let's dig into it. What do you 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.240 think is specific about how physicists think. 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:10.280 I think some of it comes from the fundamental motivation 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.760 and the assumptions that underlie physics. Like the goal is big. 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:16.520 We want to understand the universe. We want to figure 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.000 it out. And the assumptions are pretty basic. They're like, look, 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:23.479 the universe is understand a bull, and we can describe 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.000 it with mathematical laws. We can build a mental model. 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:29.480 The model should follow those laws, and we can use 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:31.719 it to like predict the future and to understand the 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.680 nature of the universe. You know, inherent in that is 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:37.800 that we are simplifying the universe. We're taking all these 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:40.640 observations and the weaving them together into a story. That's 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.679 what the mathematical model is. We're saying, here's how this works, 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.679 here's what's really happening behind the scene. So there's sort 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:48.520 of like an ambition there to say, like we can 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:52.280 describe the basic elements of the universe, whereas, and again 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:54.600 I'm not an expert in other fields, you know, they 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:56.800 feel a little bit more zoomed out, so they're not 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:00.920 always as ambitious about like the fundamental understanding. They're describing 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:03.319 things as sort of a higher level, which again still 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:06.720 requires mathematical modeling and great precision. It's not a question 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.600 of like precision or rigor just a question of like 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:12.720 the ambition the context of the questions you're asking. 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:15.440 Well, well, are you saying that other scientists are not 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:16.199 as ambitious? 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:21.560 I think maybe philosophically, physics and at least fundamental physics 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:27.520 and particle physics is asking more ambitious questions than other fields. Yeah, 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:32.200 I think they have deeper and broader implications again, philosophically. 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:33.920 Right, right, So you think your topic of research is 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:38.560 more important than other scientists because you're a physicist. I'm 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.000 just saying there might be a little bit of bias here. 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.400 A Daniel, No, it's totally reasonable to dig into that. 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.840 I wouldn't say more important. You know, somebody who's developing 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.080 new techniques to develop green energy, for example, they're not 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:54.080 answering deep and fundamental questions about the nature of reality, 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.120 but they're improving people's lives and maybe saving the planet, 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.960 So that's arguably much more important. I think in terms 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.960 of the philosophical context of our lives, particle physics and 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:08.760 fundamental physics is answering those questions. Whether that's important or 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:11.520 not is totally subjective, you know, whether it has value. 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.120 Every kind of science is answering different kinds of questions, 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:17.400 giving different kinds of insight into how the universe works. 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:20.240 For me, at least one of the appeals of fundamental 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:22.800 physics are these philosophical implications of it. 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:25.680 Right, Well, I think, you know, most scientists would agree 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:27.920 that what they're doing is also trying to understand and 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:30.160 explain the world. I wonder if maybe a lot of 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.000 the difference is just in the topic and the kinds 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:36.160 of things that you're looking at the scope of it, 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.520 or the kinds of phenomena you're looking at. 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:41.800 Yeah, I think that everybody is doing the thing they 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:45.560 think is most interesting and most exciting, And that's very personal, right. 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.080 The person who's like crouching in a rainforest watching spiders 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:52.400 crawl up twigs for hours and hours a day is 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.160 deeply fascinated by that and chose to do that instead 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.360 of economics or psychiatry or whatever for a reason, And 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:01.280 that's totally cool. You're right, and the choice of topic 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:03.560 is very very personal. But I think the choice of 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:06.360 topic also sometimes leads to a different way of thinking. 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:10.000 Like I think, because we're trying to ask fundamental questions 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.600 and deep questions about the universe, we feel like we 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:15.840 can touch onto some sort of mathematical purity, that there 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:19.760 is maybe mathematics that describes this that we can drill 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:23.640 down into and reveal. You know, somebody who's studying like hurricanes. 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:26.480 You know, we don't have any mathematics that describes hurricanes. 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:28.920 So we can do some simulations, but we're sort of 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.280 at a loss because of all the chaos and the details. 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:34.440 But when you zoom down into the fundamental firmament of 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.280 the universe, we hope maybe there is some mathematics there 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:39.960 that can describe what's going on. And so that's I 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.360 think why physicists tend to build these mental mathematical models 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:46.800 sometimes too simplified, you know, hence the famous spherical cowjoke, 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:48.720 which I don't know, maybe that's only a famous joke 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:49.840 within physics, you tell me. 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.400 I've never heard of that before. But uh, but you know, 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.480 I think all scientists would say that what they're doing 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:58.760 is fundamental as well. Like, if you're studying spiders, you're 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.960 probably thinking about the different ways that life can form, 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:05.240 or the different factors that go into creating life and 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:07.920 the factors that shape live. That seems pretty fundamental as well. 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.320 Yeah, and ambitious, And if anything, I think you probably 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:13.840 have a lot more insight into this than I do, 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:16.600 or than most people, because you interact with so many 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:20.399 different kinds of scientists, and obviously you've been spending a 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.720 lot of time learning about physics and decoding the brains 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.200 of physicists but also other scientists, and so from your perspective, 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:29.360 I'd be very curious to hear, like, do you think 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:32.280 physicists think differently? Is the mind of physicists trained at 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.000 different skills? Do they take a different approach or all 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:36.560 scientists just one category? 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:40.480 For you? You know, I think that if you're a scientist, 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:42.399 you're probably trying to figure out how the world and 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:46.840 the universe works. You're just asking questions about different phenomena 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:50.200 in it. You know, if you're someone who studies hurricanes, 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:56.600 you're trying to understand how certain physical processes work and 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:00.000 how they can come together to create large effects. For example, 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:03.280 that seems pretty fundamental as well or as fundamental as 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:05.640 asking you know what an atom is made of? 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:09.159 Yeah, can spiders come together to make hurricanes? Wouldn't that 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:11.320 be awesome? And shouldn't we pitch that show to the. 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:13.400 Discovery Channel Spider Nado's. 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:15.560 Spider Cane. 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:21.200 So I don't know, sorry, Signce Spider Natos sounds like 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:21.639 a winner. 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.919 Yeah, Well, I can't tell you whether it's fundamentally different 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.720 from the way other scientists think, because I'm not other scientists. 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:29.959 Maybe you can comment, but I can try to keep 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:31.360 you a little bit of an insight into the way 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.119 I approach a problem or the way I think about problems. 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:37.879 And that's this reliance on building a model. You know, 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:39.959 I look at a science problem like where is that 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:42.640 ball gonna land after it comes off the bat? Try 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:44.919 to predict that? And I think, well to get that 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:47.680 exactly right is way too complicated, and there's so many 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:50.600 factors involved. There's the wind speed, there's that bird flying by, 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:53.199 there's tufts in the air, et cetera. And so I 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:55.520 build a simpler model of the universe. I say, toss 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.000 out the real universe. Can we come up with a 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:00.919 simpler version of the universe and ask the question in 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:03.120 that universe, but build a model in such a way 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:05.440 that the answer in the simple universe is still relevant 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:08.879 to reality. So can we extract the crucial details of 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:11.800 the problem, put those into our model, and then use 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:14.000 that to answer the question. So you know, you don't care, 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:15.920 for example, about the color of the ball, you don't 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:18.360 care whether some kid in the stand is eating ice cream. 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.560 None of these details about glorious reality matter to answering 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.679 this question. So you build a simpler model specific to 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:26.920 that question because it's good at answering that question, not 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:30.000 every other question, And you use that to answer the question. 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:32.919 And you know you can argue philosophically like is that 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:35.000 model real, what does it mean about the universe if 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:37.040 it works, et cetera, et cetera. But that's sort of 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:39.639 to me the core of thinking like a physicist is 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.040 building a little mental model and then using that to 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:42.960 answer your questions. 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:46.200 Yeah, I think you're basically describing what any scientist does. 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.480 You know, chemists, biologists, they all work off models. I 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:52.240 mean probably the word model is the most used word 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:56.600 in all of science. Yeah, you know, biologists make models 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:02.000 about evolution, about gene interactions, about how molecules interact, or 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:04.879 how a species propagate, and things like that. But I 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:06.639 wonder if the difference with you is that you're making 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:11.200