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Speaker 1: So you're listening to this podcast, which means you're a

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Speaker 1: curious person. You want to stay on top of the

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Speaker 1: science news. You want to be along for the ride

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Speaker 1: when big discoveries are made, and you want to be

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Speaker 1: in the know when scientists reveal new insights into the

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Speaker 1: nature of the universe, about matter, about energy, space, time, fusion, parasites,

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Speaker 1: maybe even the occasion will step forward in chemistry. But

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Speaker 1: it's hard sometimes to soar through all of the science

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Speaker 1: headlines competing for your attention. What should you believe is

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Speaker 1: this latest breakthrough infusion technology gonna finally move the needle

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Speaker 1: to the James Webspace telescope, really discover a universe where

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Speaker 1: time goes backwards? How to know? Well? Today in the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we're going to help you with all that. We'll sort

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Speaker 1: through some recent misleading popular physics articles and and by

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Speaker 1: giving you some advice about how to critically read this

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Speaker 1: stuff on your own. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's responsibly

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Speaker 1: reported Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hello, this is Kelly Waiter Smith.

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Speaker 3: I study parasites and space, and boy do I get

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Speaker 3: frustrated with misleading titles.

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist and a professor

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Speaker 1: at UC Irvine. And the most frustrating thing for me

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Speaker 1: about space news is that it's usually accompanied by an

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Speaker 1: artist's impression rather than actual data from the paper.

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Speaker 3: Okay, all right, time out, time out, Daniel. I think

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Speaker 3: most of us want to see an artist impression and

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Speaker 3: not like.

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Speaker 2: A pile of data.

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Speaker 3: Like you're a science communicator, clearly this is and we

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Speaker 3: like collaborating with artists. I married one. You do this

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Speaker 3: all the time. Why are artist conceptions bad?

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Speaker 1: Artist inceptions aren't bad in and of themselves if you

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Speaker 1: know what you're seeing and you understand which part the

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Speaker 1: artist has filled in and which part we actually know.

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Speaker 1: But the crucial thing about science and these science articles

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Speaker 1: is understanding what we've learned and what remains unknown. And

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Speaker 1: usually these artist conceptions go way too far. Like there's

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Speaker 1: a discovery of some new planet, and then you see

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Speaker 1: a drawing of the planet with like you know, edges

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Speaker 1: of the continents and ice caps and whatever, adding all

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Speaker 1: this information that's just a guess and the reader has

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Speaker 1: no idea which part has the artist invented and which

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Speaker 1: part is the scientists actually learned about the universe. That's

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Speaker 1: where the data tells you, but the artists often go

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Speaker 1: too far. So I love artists. I'm pro artist artists

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Speaker 1: should definitely be collaborating with scientists, but you have to

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Speaker 1: be very careful about showing the edge of knowledge.

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Speaker 3: So I feel like I don't want to see artist

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Speaker 3: renderings go away. But I see your point, and I

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Speaker 3: think this idea is probably never going to fly. But

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Speaker 3: could we just have a box associated with every artistic

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Speaker 3: rendering of a finding that says, like, here's where the imagination,

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Speaker 3: the creativity was allowed to creep in, to like clarify

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Speaker 3: these things somehow.

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Speaker 1: It's not even always obvious that it is an artist's impression,

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Speaker 1: especially when you just see the headline and the picture

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Speaker 1: and you're like, ooh, look at that planet, and then

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Speaker 1: you scroll by, and then later you're telling your friend Al,

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Speaker 1: we've totally seen pictures of continents and ice caps on

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Speaker 1: other planets. And it's not your fault and it's not

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Speaker 1: the artist's fault, but something about the way it's put

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Speaker 1: together blurs the line between what we've learned and what

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Speaker 1: we haven't learned.

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Speaker 3: What is that famous photo that I think was from

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Speaker 3: James Web the Pillars of Creation or something like that

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Speaker 3: and they're like pink. I didn't realize that they weren't

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Speaker 3: actually those colors. And I realize that now because I like,

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Speaker 3: I have them on my shoes, and I try to

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Speaker 3: make sure that any fashion thing that I have on

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Speaker 3: my body I can explain in case I get cornered.

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Speaker 2: But you know what, like, how do you feel like

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Speaker 2: that should have been portrayed?

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Speaker 1: That's a great question and a slightly different one because

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Speaker 1: that is real data, right, Like we're looking at actual

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Speaker 1: image from space from a telescope. The only thing that's

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Speaker 1: been changed is the frequency of light shifted into the

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Speaker 1: frequency we could see it, because otherwise, if you're looking

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Speaker 1: at the life from James Web, it's just going to

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Speaker 1: be black on your screen, right, because James Web only

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Speaker 1: sees in wavelengths that we can't see. So it's like

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Speaker 1: night vision goggles, right. Its job is to shift it

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Speaker 1: into the visible spectrum so that we can see it

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Speaker 1: and analyze it. I mean otherwise you could just analyze

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Speaker 1: it on the computer. But yeah, this should be clarified

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Speaker 1: somewhere that this is shifted into our visible spectrum. I

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Speaker 1: don't think that needs to be printed on your shoes.

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Speaker 3: That's good That's good because I really like my shoes,

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Speaker 3: and I think I'd like them less if there was

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Speaker 3: an explanation on them.

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Speaker 1: But at least it's actual pictures of real data, right, Okay.

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Speaker 3: So somebody just like slid the color knob over and

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Speaker 3: so like the difference in the colors between everything is

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Speaker 3: like the same. Like, I guess I'm wondering were there

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Speaker 3: artistic choices made or it's just shifting it all over.

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Speaker 1: One hundred percent. There are choices made, and there are

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Speaker 1: different choices that could be made, and you'll sometimes see

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Speaker 1: people reanalyze old data make new images and and they

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Speaker 1: may just pop better or they look more interesting, and

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Speaker 1: that's because they're making different choices. Are they artistic choices

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Speaker 1: scientific choices? I don't know where the line is there,

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Speaker 1: but there's definitely an arbitrary mapping from one set of

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Speaker 1: wavelengths to another, and there are different choices that you

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Speaker 1: could make and reasonable ways to defend all of them.

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Speaker 1: So the bottom line is like, know what you're looking

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Speaker 1: at all?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 3: Well, So I think a point that we are sort

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Speaker 3: of skirting around here is that communicating science is hard.

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Speaker 3: It is, and trying to visualize science in a way

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Speaker 3: that makes sense to people who don't spend eight hours

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Speaker 3: of every day for the last decade of their lives

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Speaker 3: thinking about these sorts of things like how do you

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Speaker 3: get that message across?

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Speaker 2: Is difficult?

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Speaker 3: And today we're going to talk about ways that it

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Speaker 3: has been done spectacularly and correctly.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Today, we're going to go through a few

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Speaker 1: examples of science communication sent to us by listeners where

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Speaker 1: the headline and the picture are quite misleading, and they're

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Speaker 1: going to dig into the science, what it actually means,

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Speaker 1: what the scientists actually learned, what we know about the universe,

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Speaker 1: and what we don't know after this study, And at

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Speaker 1: the end we're going to try to give you some

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Speaker 1: tips for scientific literacy. How should you digest scientific information

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Speaker 1: on the internet when you don't have Daniel and Kelly

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Speaker 1: in your ear?

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Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, that's a sad world to live in,

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Speaker 2: I think.

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Speaker 3: And I'd just like to give a shout out to

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Speaker 3: the DKEU Discord community who helped us come up with

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Speaker 3: these topics to talk about today, and who always have

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Speaker 3: amazing insights and great questions and are just they're just

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Speaker 3: all lovely people.

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Speaker 1: If you enjoy listening to this podcast, and wish you

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Speaker 1: could chat with other people who have listened and are

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Speaker 1: curious about the universe. Come join the discord. Check out

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Speaker 1: the link on our website Daniel and Kelly dot org.

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Speaker 1: You'll find the invitation there. Everybody's friendly, everybody's interested in science,

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Speaker 1: and we have a lot of nerdy jokes.

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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, so many nerdy jokes. Love those people.

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Speaker 3: All right, so let's go ahead, and our first headline

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Speaker 3: today is is the Universe inside a black Hole?

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Speaker 1: No? No, no, that's not even the headline. That was my summary.

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Speaker 1: Actual headline on the article is quote the scientist says

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Speaker 1: he found evidence our entire universe is trapped inside a

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Speaker 1: black hole. That's the literal title the headline on this article.

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Speaker 3: All right, So I think that we should start by

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Speaker 3: saying that often the titles are not created by the

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Speaker 3: science communicator themselves, and editors often have final say on

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Speaker 3: the titles.

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Speaker 2: I've had a couple titles where I've been like, all right,

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Speaker 2: I guess we're going with that.

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Speaker 3: I hope they read the whole thing, but anyway, still,

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Speaker 3: they can be quite misleading.

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Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, And a lot of people don't read past

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Speaker 1: the headline, right or the headlines is the thing that

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Speaker 1: gets them to read it, and so we understand this

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Speaker 1: is a marketplace for retention, and people got to ramp

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Speaker 1: up the excitement level of the headline to get people

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Speaker 1: to read it. But still this is quite misleading.

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Speaker 2: So where do we start with the debunking Daniel.

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Speaker 1: First, let's talk about the science that was actually done

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Speaker 1: by the person who did the actual science that underline

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Speaker 1: this article. Then we'll talk about the claims made in

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Speaker 1: the article, and then clarify what we actually knew and

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Speaker 1: don't know because there is a lot of interesting science

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Speaker 1: going on here. Okay, so what actually happened here, Well,

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Speaker 1: there was a scientist who looked at a bunch of

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Speaker 1: galaxies and tried to measure their spin. And this is

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Speaker 1: a cool thing to do because we expect the galaxies

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Speaker 1: to be evenly split. Some should spin clockwise and some

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Speaker 1: should spin counterclockwise, and there's no reason why we should

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Speaker 1: have more of one or the other. So if you

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Speaker 1: look at a bunch of them, you can measure the

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Speaker 1: clockwise versus counterclockwise and it should be close to fifty

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Speaker 1: to fifty. And it's the standard thing to do in

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Speaker 1: science to be like, well, this is what we expect.

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Speaker 1: Let's go out and measure and maybe there's a discrepancy. Right.

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Speaker 1: This happens all the time and usually comes up yet

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Speaker 1: it's split evenly, yawn, move on, but sometimes it isn't.

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Speaker 3: And am I remembering correctly that in so, we previously

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Speaker 3: did an episode something to the effect of does the

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Speaker 3: universe show handedness? And I think you referenced a study

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Speaker 3: that suggested that galaxies do show some evidence of handedness,

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Speaker 3: So like a preference for in a certain direction.

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Speaker 2: Is this related? And building on that finding.

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Speaker 1: It's similar. That was a different study where they looked

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Speaker 1: at quadruplets of galaxies. So you make like a little

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Speaker 1: pyramid of galaxies and you order them by the biggest

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Speaker 1: to smallest, and you ask, are there more left handed

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Speaker 1: versus right handed? Where you define left and right handed

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Speaker 1: in a certain way? Dig into that episode do you

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Speaker 1: want more details? But the basic question was the same, like,

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Speaker 1: if we define left handed and right handed in this way,

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Speaker 1: we should still expect to see fifty to fifty. And

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Speaker 1: they also didn't see fifty to fifty. They saw more

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Speaker 1: left handed arrangements of galaxies than right handed, which was

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Speaker 1: fascinating and connected to the question of that episode, which

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Speaker 1: is is the universe left handed or right handed? In

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Speaker 1: this fascinating connections in biology and in particle physics that

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Speaker 1: suggest a preference for left handedness. But here it's not

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Speaker 1: about being left or right handed, because whether galaxy spins

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Speaker 1: clockwise or counterclockwise also depends on our view relative to

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Speaker 1: the galaxy. Like if you're looking at a galaxy and

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Speaker 1: you see it spinning clockwise, then if you're looking from

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Speaker 1: the other side, it would be counterclockwise. So in some

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Speaker 1: sense this also depends on your relationship to the galaxy.

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Speaker 1: So it's not a fundamental thing in that sense, but

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Speaker 1: still it should be evenly split. People out there might

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Speaker 1: be asking, well, why should it be evenly split? You

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Speaker 1: know what's the argument there, So let's make it explicit.

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Speaker 1: You know, why do galaxies spin at all? Galaxies spin

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Speaker 1: at all because the original blob of stuff that formed

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Speaker 1: the galaxy was spinning. So go way way back to

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Speaker 1: the very early universe. Imagine the universe filled with gas

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Speaker 1: and it's mostly smooth, but there's little lumpy bits. Right.

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Speaker 1: This bit is a little denser, and that bit is

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Speaker 1: a little denser. The bits that are denser have more gravity.

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Speaker 1: They pull in more stuff, so they get denser, so

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Speaker 1: they have more gravity, so they pull in more stuff.

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Speaker 1: Runaway effect, you get clumps. Right, So you go from

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Speaker 1: smooth with very small clumps to a much more clumpy universe.

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Speaker 1: And that's the formation of galaxies. And actually dark matter

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Speaker 1: plays a big role in that because it provides a

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Speaker 1: lot of the gravity. So that explains the clumps. But

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Speaker 1: where does the spin come from? Right, you have these

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Speaker 1: big clumps, why do they spin? Well, any of the

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Speaker 1: those individual clumps, if you measure their overall spin, it's

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Speaker 1: going to be closed to zero, but it's never exactly zero.

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Speaker 1: Like take a random scoop of gas. If a bunch

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Speaker 1: of particles flying around, this one's going this way, this

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Speaker 1: one's going that way. They got up the effective spin

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Speaker 1: contribution from all of those particles, it's going to be

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Speaker 1: close to zero, but not exactly zero. The big clump

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Speaker 1: of gas is going to have an overall slightly positive

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Speaker 1: or negative spin, and the one next to it is

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Speaker 1: going to have another spin overall positive and negative. On balance,

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Speaker 1: it's all going to add up to nothing. But there

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Speaker 1: are little fluctuations, just like there were fluctuations that led

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Speaker 1: to the formation of galaxies, there are little fluctuations that

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Speaker 1: make it very unlikely that it all adds up to zero.

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Speaker 1: And so each clump of gas is a spin, and

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Speaker 1: then as it collapses into a galaxy, it has to

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Speaker 1: keep spinning because of conservation of angular momentum, and as

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Speaker 1: it collapses it spins faster and faster. So that's where

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Speaker 1: the spin of the galaxy comes from. And the same

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Speaker 1: story is true for spin of solar systems, which are

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Speaker 1: like little mini galaxies inside a galaxy.

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Speaker 2: That's fascinating. I don't think i'd ever of that before.

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Speaker 3: I guess I just kind of assumed that all of

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Speaker 3: the stuff that was in the universe was already kind

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Speaker 3: of spinning in the same direction, and maybe you would

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Speaker 3: expect it to all be spinning in the same direction,

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Speaker 3: at least within a small area.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, now I understand that was wrong. Okay. Thanks.

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Speaker 1: Another way to think about it is like, say you

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Speaker 1: flip a million coins, right, you expect roughly fifty to fifty, right,

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Speaker 1: fifty percent heads, fifty percent tails. But do you expect

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Speaker 1: exactly fifty to fifty That would be pretty unusual. Most

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Speaker 1: likely you're not going to get exactly fifty to fifty

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Speaker 1: and so you're going to get little imbalances. And each

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Speaker 1: clump of gas that forms a galaxy has all those

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Speaker 1: particles in it, some which contribute to its spinning clockwise,

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Speaker 1: some contribute to its spinning counterclockwise, but never actually bouncing

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Speaker 1: out all right, anyway, So what did this scientist do.

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Speaker 1: He looked at a bunch of galaxies and tried to measure

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Speaker 1: their spin. Turns out, this is hard because most of

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Speaker 1: the galaxies we know about, and there are lots of them,

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Speaker 1: are too far away for us to measure their spin.

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Speaker 1: To measure the spin of a galaxy, you have to

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Speaker 1: see different stars in the galaxy and measure, like blue

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Speaker 1: ship to this one and read shift to that one.

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Speaker 1: You need to measure the relative velocity of stars inside

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Speaker 1: the galaxy. It's not something we can do for super

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Speaker 1: distant galaxies where we're barely observing them, or even with

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Speaker 1: ones that are not that distant, but we can't resolve

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Speaker 1: the individual stars inside them. So he was only able

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Speaker 1: to do this for two hundred and sixty three galaxies

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Speaker 1: that were like close enough and were arranged in the

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Speaker 1: right way, and so not a huge sample, not tiny,

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Speaker 1: but like relatively small compared to the number of galaxies

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Speaker 1: in the universe, and what he saw is two thirds

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Speaker 1: of them are going clockwise, one third of them are

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Speaker 1: going counterclockwise. That's weird. That's a science that was actually done.

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Speaker 3: Okay, but it also seems easy to imagine there could

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Speaker 3: be a bias based on like stuff that's close by

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Speaker 3: doing something different than if you look at another part

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Speaker 3: of the Solar system or exactly.

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Speaker 1: And the scientist in you is like looking for prosaic explanations. Right,

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Speaker 1: You're not immediately jumping to maybe we live in a

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Speaker 1: black hole. Right, every time you see weird data, You're

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Speaker 1: not like, maybe I live in a black hole.

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Speaker 3: You know, that's my explanation for like everything, like oh

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Speaker 3: where did the apple go?

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Speaker 2: Maybe we live in a black hole? Why is the

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Speaker 2: house not clean?

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Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, I put this piece of cake in the

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Speaker 1: fridge yesterday and now it's gone. You know, this frosting

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Speaker 1: on my husband's mustache. But maybe we live in a

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Speaker 1: black hole.

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Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.

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Speaker 3: I think you're usually a zach who's like, no, no, no,

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Speaker 3: it's because we live in a black hole.

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Speaker 1: No, wow, And you know this is a fine piece

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Speaker 1: of science, but you're right, there are questions about it,

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Speaker 1: Like number one, we don't know how accurate this measurement

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Speaker 1: is because there could be a bias. Like you start

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Speaker 1: with a huge nomber of galaxies, you filter for the

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Speaker 1: ones where you can make a measurement. That filter removes

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Speaker 1: most of the galaxies. You have to be very concerned

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Speaker 1: about whether that filter has introduced a bias. Maybe you're

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Speaker 1: somehow better at seeing galaxies that rotate clockwise relative to

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Speaker 1: you than counterclockwise. Right, there's lots of ways to introduce

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Speaker 1: a bias that you can't expect, and it could be

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Speaker 1: like third order effects. But if you're reducing from zillions

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Speaker 1: of galaxies to two hundred and fifty third fourth order effects,

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Speaker 1: these can dominate. And it's not even that hard to

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Speaker 1: imagine mechanisms that could introduce that. Because you know our

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Speaker 1: galaxy is spinning, we're in a certain arm on that galaxy,

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Speaker 1: and so it certainly could be easier to make measurements

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Speaker 1: of stars in a certain red shift or blue shift range,

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Speaker 1: because otherwise they move out of our range to be

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Speaker 1: able to measure them. So anyway, it's not that hard

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Speaker 1: to imagine. But the claims in the articles are amazing.

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Speaker 1: They suggest that this imbalanced the rotation means we live

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Speaker 1: inside a black hole? How do they get there?

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Speaker 3: And by claims in the article, do you mean in

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Speaker 3: the original scientific paper or in the futurism article.

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Speaker 1: So both the actual scientific paper made these connections. So

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Speaker 1: it wasn't just like somebody to to study said what

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Speaker 1: this is interesting, and then futurism was like dot dot

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Speaker 1: dot black hole. The paper itself did the dot dot

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Speaker 1: dot black hole part, and you know it has more

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Speaker 1: qualified claims than the article itself. And this is a

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Speaker 1: paper done by a computer scientist and not a physicist.

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Speaker 1: So you know, take this for a grain of salt.

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Speaker 1: Not that people who don't have a physics speachd you

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Speaker 1: can't do physics, but you should be cautious when you

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Speaker 1: read a paper from somebody who's writing far outside their expertise.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't mean they're wrong, right, but be cautious about it.

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Speaker 3: Well, if I can just go on a very short tangent,

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Speaker 3: you know, I feel like in papers it's good to

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Speaker 3: like start by saying like, here are all of the

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Speaker 3: boring things that could explain these data, and boring could

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Speaker 3: be like a bias by looking at things that are nearby,

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Speaker 3: and I feel like you need to frontload the boring

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Speaker 3: things because quite often the boring things are what explains it.

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Speaker 2: And there's nothing.

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Speaker 3: Wrong with saying like, also, it's consistent with living inside

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Speaker 3: of a black hole, but like, clearly we need more

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Speaker 3: data to be honest. The reason that I most frequently

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Speaker 3: reject papers that I review is because they pick the

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Speaker 3: most interesting interpretation and front load, like the introduction is

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Speaker 3: about how maybe we live inside a black hole or something,

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Speaker 3: and science has this problem where I think we try

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Speaker 3: to incentivize, like the most interesting interpretation is going to

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Speaker 3: get you in the best journal. Yeah, but it's so

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Speaker 3: important to be like, the most interesting interpretation is also

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Speaker 3: often the one that's least likely, and so you need

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Speaker 3: to like couch it appropriately. But anyway, so you're saying

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Speaker 3: that this article maybe couched things appropriately, but did mention

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Speaker 3: this black hole possibility and that's what got clung too

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Speaker 3: in the popular media.

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Speaker 2: Is that right?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? I think the scientific article put it reasonably, but

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Speaker 1: the popular article stretched it out. So what are the

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Speaker 1: connections here? You know, this is a common concept, the

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Speaker 1: idea that we might live inside a black hole, and

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Speaker 1: it comes from two sort of ideas. One is there

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Speaker 1: are some superficial parallels between a black hole where you

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Speaker 1: think about a singularity and an event horizon, and the

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Speaker 1: Big Bang. The Big Bang, people talk about a singularity

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Speaker 1: in the early universe, and we also talk about a

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Speaker 1: cosmic horizon, a region past which we cannot see, so

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Speaker 1: to hear singularity to hear horizon. They're like, that seems

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Speaker 1: black hole, right, and there is a superficial relationship there,

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Speaker 1: Like people imagine maybe we're living inside a black hole

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Speaker 1: and the Big Bang. Singularity was sort of like the

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Speaker 1: singularity the start of a black hole. But it doesn't

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Speaker 1: really stand up to much scrutiny because the singularity at

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Speaker 1: the start of the universe, if there even was one.

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Speaker 1: The Big Bang doesn't explicitly predict a singularity. It just

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Speaker 1: takes you back in time to when the universe was

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Speaker 1: super duper dense, not all the way to a singularity,

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Speaker 1: because we can't extrapolate past a certain density. We need

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Speaker 1: quantum gravity for that.

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Speaker 2: Can we define singularity? What is a singularity?

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Speaker 1: M Yeah, great question. So a singularity at the heart

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Speaker 1: of a black hole is a location in space with

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Speaker 1: infinite density, so you have finite mass and zero volume

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Speaker 1: infinite density, So that's a singularity the heart of a

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Speaker 1: black hole. The singularity in early universe theories before the

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Speaker 1: Big Bang, right as an origin and Stephen Hawking had

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Speaker 1: these ideas, is a moment in time where the whole

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Speaker 1: universe had infinite density. So in the center of a

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Speaker 1: black hole you have a singularity which should last forever

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Speaker 1: and is a location in space right, a dot in

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Speaker 1: space that lasts forever. Singularity the beginning of the universe

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Speaker 1: is a moment in time. It doesn't last forever, and

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Speaker 1: it's everywhere. So black hole has a singularity in space.

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Speaker 1: Big bang has a singularity in time. Ok So they're

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Speaker 1: both infinite densities, but they're quite different or like fundamentally

403
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Speaker 1: really very very different. And the cosmic horizon is not

404
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Speaker 1: really like an event horizon. The cosmic horizon is how

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Speaker 1: far we can see, but that's growing, you know, as

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Speaker 1: time goes on, we can see further and further into

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Speaker 1: the universe. It's quite different from an event horizon.

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Speaker 3: Okay, and so the similarities kind of in these ideas

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Speaker 3: led I'm confused.

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Speaker 1: So there's this trope out there that maybe we live

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Speaker 1: inside a black hole and black holes are often spinning.

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Speaker 1: Black Holes spin in the universe for the same reason

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Speaker 1: that galaxy spin. They start from a big chunk of

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Speaker 1: mass which then gets condensed down. If that mass was

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Speaker 1: originally spinning even slightly, then that spin gets exaggerated as

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Speaker 1: it collapses into a black hole. So black holes in

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Speaker 1: the universe often spinning. So the idea is, so, maybe

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Speaker 1: our universe is inside a black hole and that black

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Speaker 1: hole is spinning, and that spin somehow trickles down to

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Speaker 1: causes galaxies to spin, and therefore there's an imbalance in

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Speaker 1: the spin. And that's what he saw. That's the threat

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Speaker 1: of the connection.

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Speaker 2: Shouldn't that make everything spin the same way?

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Speaker 3: Then?

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Speaker 1: Well, you still expect some sort of chaos inside of it, right,

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Speaker 1: You still expect the distribution of spin from the galaxy.

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Speaker 1: So what you would expect in that scenario is a

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Speaker 1: bias towards one direction rather than the other. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: it's not impossible that we live inside a black hole.

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Speaker 1: But the theory that connects the Big Bang and black

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Speaker 1: holes has some issues. I mean, there's really just superficial

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Speaker 1: simulators there, and there are lots of other ways you

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Speaker 1: can explain galaxy spinning clockwise versus counterclockwise. You don't have

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Speaker 1: to go all the way to a black hole. And

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Speaker 1: there's no positive, definitive evidence at all that suggests a

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Speaker 1: black hole, just these sort of suggestive things, right, There's

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Speaker 1: nothing here which requires a black hole and eliminates other possibilities.

438
00:20:42,240 --> 00:20:44,880
Speaker 1: So you know, it's a cool study, and I'm glad

439
00:20:44,880 --> 00:20:46,720
Speaker 1: that people didn't. I'm glad this paper was written. And

440
00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:51,160
Speaker 1: the paper itself is fine, but the science communication interpretation

441
00:20:51,320 --> 00:20:54,840
Speaker 1: of it is definitely way too heavy on the connections.

442
00:20:54,880 --> 00:20:59,080
Speaker 1: Remember the title was scientists found evidence our entire universe

443
00:20:59,280 --> 00:21:01,639
Speaker 1: is trapped in a black hole. Like that title is

444
00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:02,560
Speaker 1: definitely not true.

445
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:05,840
Speaker 3: Yes, And was the article a bit better at describing

446
00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:08,640
Speaker 3: the nuances or was the article pretty much leading off

447
00:21:08,640 --> 00:21:09,920
Speaker 3: from the title as usual?

448
00:21:09,920 --> 00:21:12,600
Speaker 1: It's a gradation. The scientific paper behind it is fine,

449
00:21:12,800 --> 00:21:15,760
Speaker 1: the article is a little bit too excited, and the

450
00:21:15,800 --> 00:21:17,720
Speaker 1: title is just flat out lying to you.

451
00:21:18,119 --> 00:21:20,560
Speaker 3: All right, let's take a break and get to another

452
00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:22,639
Speaker 3: flat out lion title when we get back.

453
00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:45,760
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back today.

454
00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:49,719
Speaker 3: We're talking about science articles that way oversell the results

455
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:50,520
Speaker 3: they're talking about.

456
00:21:50,760 --> 00:21:52,400
Speaker 2: And Daniel, can I read the next headline?

457
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:52,919
Speaker 1: Please do?

458
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:57,000
Speaker 3: Okay, here we go gravity maybe key evidence that our

459
00:21:57,119 --> 00:21:59,600
Speaker 3: universe is a simulation, groundbreaking.

460
00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:02,760
Speaker 2: New Search suggests, well, fun.

461
00:22:02,600 --> 00:22:04,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know this title is not nearly as

462
00:22:04,400 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 1: bad as the other one because they use the word

463
00:22:06,600 --> 00:22:10,880
Speaker 1: may and suggests okay, right, so gravity may be key evidence.

464
00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:15,760
Speaker 1: Research suggests like, kudos to this writer, this editor whoever

465
00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:18,680
Speaker 1: wrote this title for like keeping some of the qualifiers

466
00:22:18,680 --> 00:22:21,679
Speaker 1: in there, so you don't go running after your grandma saying, see,

467
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:24,600
Speaker 1: I told you scientists have proven we live in the matrix.

468
00:22:24,840 --> 00:22:27,120
Speaker 2: That's right. I used to fight with my grandma about

469
00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:27,760
Speaker 2: that all the time.

470
00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:35,360
Speaker 1: So what's the science here? What do people actually do? Well,

471
00:22:35,400 --> 00:22:37,879
Speaker 1: you know, we don't understand gravity. For gravity, we have

472
00:22:37,920 --> 00:22:41,600
Speaker 1: Einstein's theory of general relativity, which is awesome and suggests

473
00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:44,720
Speaker 1: that gravity isn't a force, but instead it's the curvature

474
00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:48,200
Speaker 1: of space time. Crucially, the invisible curvature of space time.

475
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:51,479
Speaker 1: You cannot see the curvature, You just notice its effects,

476
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:54,639
Speaker 1: and its effects mimic the effects of a force. Things

477
00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:56,920
Speaker 1: follow the curvature of space time. If you can't see

478
00:22:56,960 --> 00:22:59,440
Speaker 1: that curvature, it looks like something is applying a force

479
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:02,280
Speaker 1: to it. But we don't fully understand gravity there's lots

480
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:04,920
Speaker 1: of questions about it. We can't marry it with quantum mechanics.

481
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:08,080
Speaker 1: We know that Einstein's general relativity needs an upgrade. So

482
00:23:08,119 --> 00:23:10,399
Speaker 1: people are still working on gravity, and they should be,

483
00:23:10,800 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 1: and they're exploring all sorts of crazy and fascinating ideas

484
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:17,719
Speaker 1: string theory, loop, quantum gravity, gravitons, all sorts of stuff.

485
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:20,040
Speaker 1: And there's an idea in the last couple of decades

486
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 1: that's sort of out of left field, which is my

487
00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:26,080
Speaker 1: favorite kind of idea that suggests that gravity is not

488
00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:28,399
Speaker 1: the bending of space time, and it's not a force

489
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:32,240
Speaker 1: like Newton, but it's some illusion that comes out of

490
00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:36,680
Speaker 1: entropy of information in a two dimensional universe, and our

491
00:23:36,760 --> 00:23:40,000
Speaker 1: three D universe is an illusion, a hologram from that

492
00:23:40,080 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: two D universe.

493
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 3: All right, So it sounds like you are portraying this

494
00:23:44,359 --> 00:23:47,840
Speaker 3: idea as something that isn't totally nuts, not totally nuts,

495
00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:53,240
Speaker 3: not totally nuts. Question Mark, Maybe we should have a

496
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:55,720
Speaker 3: whole episode on why it's not totally nuts, because it

497
00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:57,760
Speaker 3: does kind of sound totally nuts.

498
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:00,239
Speaker 1: Well, you know what, the universe could be totally nuts, right,

499
00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:02,879
Speaker 1: We have no guaranteed to the universe isn't insane or

500
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:05,479
Speaker 1: isn't crazy. In fact, I kind of hope that it is.

501
00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:07,960
Speaker 1: That's much more fun. And this is an idea that

502
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,640
Speaker 1: cropped up in the last few decades. It's called holography,

503
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 1: and the idea is that we seem to live in

504
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:16,520
Speaker 1: a three dimensional space and we have gravity. But people

505
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:20,320
Speaker 1: noticed that if you build a two dimensional universe, right,

506
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:23,400
Speaker 1: so like just X and Y no z, but then

507
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:26,879
Speaker 1: you add quantum fuzziness to that universe, that that quantum

508
00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:30,160
Speaker 1: fuzziness can act like a third dimension. It's like enough

509
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:33,800
Speaker 1: fuzziness there to encode what you would need to describe

510
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:35,639
Speaker 1: a third dimension. And then you can build a map

511
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 1: from two D plus quantum information two three D. You

512
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:42,240
Speaker 1: can make arrows back and forth, like this location in

513
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:44,320
Speaker 1: my two D universe maps to that location in my

514
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:46,800
Speaker 1: three D universe. Why would you want to do that?

515
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,440
Speaker 1: This seems like, you know, something fun for a math

516
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: nerved on a Saturday afternoon, But why would anybody who

517
00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:54,440
Speaker 1: cares about the universe want to do this? Because remember,

518
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 1: we don't have a quantum theory of gravity. We don't

519
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: understand quantum mechanics and gravity. So any way you can

520
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 1: connect quant theories with gravity is exciting. So people showed

521
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: that in a two D plus quantum stuff universe, you

522
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: can just do quantum theories and then you can map

523
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:11,520
Speaker 1: them to the three D universe and you get gravity. Whoa,

524
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:15,120
Speaker 1: so there is some weird connection. There's some hint between

525
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:19,440
Speaker 1: gravity and quantum mechanics. So that's holography. These guys are

526
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,639
Speaker 1: doing something slightly different. They're saying, think about that two

527
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:26,200
Speaker 1: D universe with quantum stuff, think about how energy flows

528
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:29,399
Speaker 1: in that quantum universe, and think about entropy. Remember we

529
00:25:29,400 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 1: had a whole episode about entropy and talked about how

530
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:34,760
Speaker 1: entropy is like the reason cold milk spreads out in

531
00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 1: your hot coffee or the reason that ice melts on

532
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:40,760
Speaker 1: a hot day is not just because energy flows. Energy

533
00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:44,560
Speaker 1: flows to increase entropy, to increase the number of available

534
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: microscopic states to a system. So people were thinking about

535
00:25:48,359 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: energy flowing in this weird two D universe and we

536
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:54,120
Speaker 1: might actually be living in, and then map that back

537
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:56,439
Speaker 1: to three dimensions and they discovered, oh, actually all you

538
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 1: need is entropy. If you map entropy in this two

539
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:02,400
Speaker 1: D world two to three D world, you get gravity.

540
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:07,080
Speaker 1: So that's the entropic theory of gravity, which Eric Verlinda

541
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: and other folks are exploring and it's not totally insane.

542
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:12,959
Speaker 1: There's problems with it and unsolved issues, like with any

543
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:15,679
Speaker 1: Nissan theory, but it's totally a reasonable thing to be

544
00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:18,120
Speaker 1: exploring and a fascinating idea.

545
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 2: Like with physics in general.

546
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, like with physics in general. Hey, the whole thing

547
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:23,280
Speaker 1: is the work in progress, right, or like with your kitchen,

548
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:25,719
Speaker 1: who knows that's that ever gonna get finished?

549
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:27,160
Speaker 2: Never gonna get finished.

550
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: The entropic theory of Kelly's home improvement projects.

551
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably never gonna get finished.

552
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:35,199
Speaker 1: Let's have a race. Let's see if we figure out

553
00:26:35,280 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 1: quantum gravity before Kelly finishes her kitchen.

554
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, well my marriage is on the line. I

555
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 2: think we've got to We've got to get the kitchen

556
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 2: figured out sooner.

557
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:46,200
Speaker 3: So I started my career as an animal behaviorist, and

558
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:49,360
Speaker 3: I'm really interested in the like culture of certain fields.

559
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 3: Do the people who study whether or not the universe

560
00:26:53,359 --> 00:26:54,080
Speaker 3: is a simulation?

561
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 2: Like do those people act.

562
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:58,600
Speaker 3: Differently in their day to day lives? Like does it

563
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 3: impact their behavior? Yeah?

564
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: Good question. I'm not one of those people, right, So

565
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wonder if it's really changes that.

566
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: That's a great question because it measures whether they really

567
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: believe it. Does it impact the way you live your life?

568
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: I'm not sure?

569
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 2: All right, anyway, let's get back to the science.

570
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 1: All right, So so far we've explained entropic gravity. Now

571
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 1: this paper is not about vanilla entropic gravity, which isn't

572
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 1: weird enough. There's a guy who's built a version of

573
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: entropic gravity, not using the normal entropy ideas, but information entropy.

574
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: This is based on Shannon's theory of information and it

575
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:37,440
Speaker 1: measures like how much information can be stored in a message, etc.

576
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: And then the entropy of that information. And in this

577
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 1: paper he showed that if you think about the information

578
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 1: stored in that two D universe and then you try

579
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:52,639
Speaker 1: to minimize the computational expense of simulating that universe, that

580
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:56,640
Speaker 1: those requirements translate into gravity in the three D universe.

581
00:27:56,960 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 1: So take your two D universe and say, boy, this

582
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 1: is complicated for me to simulate. What if I required

583
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: entropy to act in a certain way that minimize that computation.

584
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 1: And what he discovered is doing that effectively requires things

585
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: to clump together, like as if matter was moving to

586
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:17,199
Speaker 1: reduce the computational the informational cost in this universe. So

587
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 1: he's playing with his two D universe. He imposes some

588
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:24,119
Speaker 1: computational constraints he discovers, and imposing those constraints requires gravity

589
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 1: in the three D version of that universe. And he says, ooh,

590
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. Maybe our gravity is a consequence of people

591
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 1: who are programming the simulation having a limitation on their

592
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: computing and so they decided the only kind of the

593
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 1: universe they can simulate is one that has to have

594
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: this rule because they have a limit on their computers.

595
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 1: And that's why we have gravity.

596
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:47,760
Speaker 3: I'll admit that it sounds like we are like skipping

597
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:51,000
Speaker 3: over some big black boxes, and I'm not quite following

598
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 3: all of the steps, but I see the general picture.

599
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 3: And so he published this and it was given a

600
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 3: lot more credit than it deserved.

601
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he publishes this, and this is a fine

602
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: thing to research, and the work is itself solid, and

603
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 1: it's cool that he shows the universe works in a

604
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: way that might make it easier to represent inside a computer.

605
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:15,640
Speaker 1: Does that suggest we live in a simulation? M that's

606
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:19,120
Speaker 1: a really big leap. I mean, even think about this question,

607
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:20,920
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a lot of coverage of this

608
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: in popular media that skips over a lot of important details,

609
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: like remember that if our universe is a simulation, then

610
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 1: what is the computer it's running on. It's running on

611
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: a computer that's not in our universe. Our universe is

612
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: in that computer, And what are the rules of physics

613
00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:41,160
Speaker 1: that that universe has that that computer is following. We

614
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 1: have no idea any more than like super Mario can

615
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 1: do experiments to measure laws of physics in our universe. Right,

616
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 1: he's living in an artificial universe. There's no way he

617
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: can measure anything or deduce anything about the computing platform

618
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: he is on. So, like, what is computationally expensive for

619
00:29:57,360 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: these folks encoding the universe simulation? We have no i

620
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 1: idea because we don't know how their computer works. Even

621
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: in our universe, we have different kinds of computers, right, analog,

622
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:10,120
Speaker 1: digital quantum, on which different things are expensive and different

623
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 1: things are cheap. So how can we possibly speculate about

624
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: what could be cheap or expensive on a computer that

625
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 1: can simulate the universe following laws of physics from another

626
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: universe we have no access to. It's totally impossible. It's

627
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: really just popular science clickbait. And if you hear folks

628
00:30:27,360 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: on podcasts talking about how like it's more likely we

629
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 1: live in a simulation than not, then you know they're

630
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: saying exciting things to get you to listen to podcasts.

631
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: They're not really digging into the details.

632
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 3: So lots of banana peels being smoked is what I'm coming.

633
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: Away with here, exactly, And really cool ideas, really fun

634
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 1: to think about. Don't want to be negative about exploring

635
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 1: crazy ideas, but like, let's be careful about what we've

636
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,840
Speaker 1: actually learned and what's just like exciting to think about.

637
00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, so all right, so we've got this idea here

638
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 3: that's kind of out there but is totally reasonable to explore,

639
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 3: and you want to get people excited about it. Absolutely,

640
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 3: it feels almost inevitable to me that people are kind

641
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 3: of going to oversell it and get sort of hooked

642
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 3: on the like kind of you know, smoking banana peals

643
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 3: aspects of it. So do you think this result gets

644
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 3: shared with the general public in any other way than

645
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 3: like a kind of overblown way, Like.

646
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 2: Do you think there's an appetite?

647
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, amongst the general public, I mean clearly there is

648
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 3: for our listeners, because like They ask very good, deep

649
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 3: in depth questions, but like, how would you present this

650
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:30,920
Speaker 3: paper if you were writing the article?

651
00:31:31,080 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, right, We can't just criticize here.

652
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: We should give some positive constructive tips. I think the

653
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:42,360
Speaker 1: options are either explain the caveats right like sure, pull

654
00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:44,840
Speaker 1: people in with the excitement of the possibility, and again

655
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: kudos to these writers are saying maybe suggests rather than

656
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 1: explicitly claiming, like in the previous article, but then also

657
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 1: be like, well that's exciting, but also you should know

658
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 1: or here's the work that needs to be done to

659
00:31:56,840 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: actually connect the dots between these ideas, or go deep

660
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 1: enough like we do, or like we try to do

661
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: to give people the understanding so that they can make

662
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 1: those connections themselves and they can be like, Okay, yeah,

663
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: I mean I see that, but I don't buy this

664
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,720
Speaker 1: step or that piece didn't really convince me or whatever,

665
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 1: and like equip people with what they need to know

666
00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: because I think, and I know you think, which is

667
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 1: why we're doing this project. That's possible for folks outside

668
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,080
Speaker 1: of academia to understand this stuff. It can be explained

669
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 1: in a way that's deep and insightful and accessible and

670
00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: so I'd like to see much more of that because

671
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 1: then people can draw their own conclusions rather than just

672
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: being told you should accept X or you should accept why.

673
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 1: They'd be like, well, I think this, but I want

674
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: to wait for that study or whatever. So either you

675
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: got to do a deep dive or you got to

676
00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:44,200
Speaker 1: include the caveats. And I think this article is not

677
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: the worst, but it definitely didn't include enough caveats for

678
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: my taste.

679
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 2: Yeah.

680
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean my personal strategy is I try to

681
00:32:51,360 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 3: include all the caveats, but then I try to, you know,

682
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 3: lean on Zach to tell jokes or something along the way,

683
00:32:56,760 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 3: like try to get people to stay with you, because

684
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 3: it's hard because when you start into the caveats, I

685
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 3: get that people lose interest, and there's so many of

686
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:06,400
Speaker 3: us that have short attention spans. But I think those

687
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 3: caveats for the right audience is the fascinating thing. And

688
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:12,520
Speaker 3: I feel like the hard job of a science communicator

689
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 3: is to make the caveats as interesting as they need

690
00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 3: to be to get people to stick with the explanations,

691
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 3: because otherwise otherwise you get headlines like the first one

692
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 3: we talked about. All right, let's move on to our

693
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 3: last amazing headline, which we will get to after the break.

694
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 3: All right, Daniel, do we have free will? Quantum experiments

695
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 3: may soon reveal the answer? Or so says this physics

696
00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 3: article that we are going to talk about, depending.

697
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 1: Of course, on what you mean by soon reveal answer

698
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 1: and quantum experiments.

699
00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Wow, that's a lot of caveat. So do

700
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,000
Speaker 3: we need to define free will or is that straightforward?

701
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 3: Because that doesn't sound straightforward to me.

702
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the subtitle of this headline says whether or

703
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:17,799
Speaker 1: not we have partial free will could soon be resolved

704
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: by experimenting quantum physics, with potential consequences for everything from

705
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 1: religion to quantum computers. Holy caw yeah, pay attention.

706
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:26,399
Speaker 2: Oh my god.

707
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 3: Although I'll note we've already downgraded from free will to

708
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 3: partial free will when you get to the subtitle.

709
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 2: But okay, so what's the science here?

710
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there is some really interesting stuff here in

711
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 1: quantum physics, on the edge of science and philosophy. It

712
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 1: has to do with something we talk about in the

713
00:34:43,640 --> 00:34:47,319
Speaker 1: podcast a lot, whether quantum mechanics really is random, weather,

714
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:51,280
Speaker 1: the universe is deterministic, and so like brief history context,

715
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: Newton and folks discover that the universe follows laws, and

716
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: the laws seem to be deterministic. Like you throw a

717
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: ball exactly the same way twice, it follows exactly the

718
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:04,399
Speaker 1: same trajectory. You fire a cue ball at an eight ball,

719
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: and you know exactly the angles and the masses. You

720
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:09,640
Speaker 1: can predict exactly what's gonna happen. And this leads to

721
00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 1: a view of the universe is like a clockwork universe.

722
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 1: Like given a moment in time, a snapshot in time,

723
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,560
Speaker 1: you can predict everything that happens. Where is there room

724
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 1: in that universe for people making decisions? For Zach deciding

725
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:23,120
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat Kelly's piece of cake or I'm gonna

726
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 1: leave it in the fridge.

727
00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:26,479
Speaker 2: Right, that's always a bad choice to eat my cake.

728
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:29,400
Speaker 1: But is he making a decision or is it just

729
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:32,920
Speaker 1: a consequence of a clockwork husband that you married.

730
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 3: Right, everyone's always given him excuses. Man, he made a choice.

731
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:39,280
Speaker 2: Leave my cake alone.

732
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 1: Quantum experiments may soon unravel Kelly's marriage.

733
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm getting mad at him for a

734
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 3: cake he didn't even eat.

735
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: I know, our hypothetical cake.

736
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:50,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.

737
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: So that's the pre quantum view of the universe. Quantum

738
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:55,600
Speaker 1: mechanics comes along says, oh, hold on a second, Actually,

739
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:59,359
Speaker 1: things are fundamentally random. You can have exactly the same

740
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 1: experiment shooting an electron at a target twice with the

741
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 1: same initial conditions and get different outcomes because at the

742
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 1: quantum level, the microscopic level, things are not determined. Only

743
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,040
Speaker 1: the probability is determined. So it's not like the universe

744
00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:16,839
Speaker 1: is totally random and chaotic, but like the universe predicts, oh,

745
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:18,920
Speaker 1: the electron has a seventy percent chance to do this

746
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:20,840
Speaker 1: and a thirty percent chance to do that, and what

747
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:23,960
Speaker 1: actually happens depends on a role that die when you

748
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 1: look right. So that's the quantum introduction of randomness, and

749
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 1: that gives people some relief because they imagine, Okay, the

750
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 1: universe is not totally deterministic. There's some fuzziness in there,

751
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:36,319
Speaker 1: and there that's where philosophically free will tries to creep in.

752
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:40,120
Speaker 3: Okay, and you, just like living in a simulation, you

753
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 3: feel like this is a reasonable connection between physics and

754
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 3: free will.

755
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go that far, but there are interesting angles

756
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:51,799
Speaker 1: about these experiments and loopholes that we should explore, and

757
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:54,799
Speaker 1: some of them do have potential implications for a free will.

758
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:57,720
Speaker 1: So like, the reason that we think that quantum mechanics

759
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:01,360
Speaker 1: is fundamentally random is because of a series of really incredible,

760
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:04,279
Speaker 1: ingenious experiments that go by the name of Bell's inequality

761
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:08,000
Speaker 1: or Bell's experiments, and these sought to answer the question,

762
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: which is really really difficult, how do we know that

763
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:13,640
Speaker 1: the universe is actually fundamentally random? Things are not determined

764
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:16,759
Speaker 1: until we measure, rather than things being determined before we

765
00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: measure and just unknown to us. You know, say, for example,

766
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 1: Zack has two bags and he puts a red ball

767
00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 1: in one and a blue ball in the other one,

768
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 1: and he gives you one of the bags, and you

769
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: haven't looked inside, and you go off and you run

770
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:29,920
Speaker 1: a bunch of errands. Then Zack opens the bag and

771
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 1: he sees, oh, he's got the blue one. You know

772
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: instantly that Kelly has the red one, right, But it

773
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:38,760
Speaker 1: was determined in advance, we just didn't know. So people

774
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 1: wanted to know that, Well, it is the universe like that,

775
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: where it really was determined, we just didn't know about it.

776
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:48,360
Speaker 1: These are called hidden variables, or is the ball really uncertain?

777
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:51,480
Speaker 1: Is it really red or blue? Until Zack opens it

778
00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 1: and then it decides okay, And that seems like a

779
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 1: really hard thing to distinguish, right, Like, how could you

780
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:57,880
Speaker 1: possibly know, because the only thing you can do is

781
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:00,080
Speaker 1: look at it, and you can just see red or blue.

782
00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:03,279
Speaker 1: So John Bell came up with this ingenious set of experiments,

783
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: and the experiments you can't tell from an individual run

784
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:08,520
Speaker 1: of the experiment. It's not like you see red, you

785
00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:10,680
Speaker 1: see blue. You know the answer, right, because both ideas

786
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 1: hidden variables or truly random predict the same thing. There.

787
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:15,880
Speaker 1: But he came up with a set of experiments that,

788
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 1: of course don't use marbles in Kelly's kitchen. They use

789
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 1: particles and particle spin and it's not red or blue,

790
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:25,120
Speaker 1: but it's spin up or spin down. And these experiments

791
00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:27,760
Speaker 1: take advantage of the fact the particles have three directions

792
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:30,400
Speaker 1: where you can measure the spin like three axes in space,

793
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:33,480
Speaker 1: and the quantum version of the universe predicts a difference

794
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: in the correlations between the measurements in different directions than

795
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: the hidden variables version. So Zach and Kelly have their

796
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: bags and they randomly decide, Okay, I'm going to measure

797
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: the spin in this direction, and Kelly decides randomly, I'm

798
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:48,279
Speaker 1: going to measure the spin in that direction. If we

799
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:51,720
Speaker 1: look at the correlation between their measurements, quantum mechanics predicts

800
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:54,839
Speaker 1: a different correlation than the hidden variables version, Like, if

801
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:56,719
Speaker 1: they both predict the same axis, they should get the

802
00:38:56,719 --> 00:38:59,120
Speaker 1: same answer. If they predict different axes, there should be

803
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: correlations in when theory that are different from correlations in

804
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 1: the other theory. Crucial step there, they're randomly deciding which access.

805
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 3: To choose, and the answer that got was not consistent

806
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 3: with the idea that it was a hidden variable, so

807
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 3: that you could have known all along but you only

808
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 3: found out when you opened it, but that it actually

809
00:39:15,200 --> 00:39:17,120
Speaker 3: is being determined the moment you open.

810
00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:21,760
Speaker 1: It exactly conclusively. Over and over these experiments. Mind blowing

811
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:24,960
Speaker 1: conclusion is the universe really is fundamentally random, and these

812
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: things are not determined until you measure it, Like the

813
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:32,840
Speaker 1: universe can maintain an uncertainty really incredible, requires like a

814
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:36,840
Speaker 1: total upheaval of your understanding the natural reality. Really mind blowing.

815
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: But there is a potential loophole here, and the loophole is,

816
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:43,279
Speaker 1: how do we know that Zach and Kelly's choices really

817
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: are random?

818
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:44,440
Speaker 2: Oh?

819
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:47,319
Speaker 1: What if there's some like correlation there, so that they're

820
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 1: making choices that are not random. They're determined by something

821
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:54,279
Speaker 1: else that happened earlier. So they're correlated in a way

822
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 1: that confuses us, misleads us into thinking the quantum answer

823
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: is right, but really it's sooner determined.

824
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 3: The Wiener Smiths are entangled in some way.

825
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 1: So this is a theory called super determinism that says,

826
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 1: like something that happened early early on in the universe,

827
00:40:12,520 --> 00:40:16,160
Speaker 1: some structural formation or some super intelligent alien designed this

828
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 1: whole thing. So we would think that the universe is random,

829
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,759
Speaker 1: but really it is deterministic, and we've been confused. And

830
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 1: the way they're controlling us is by influencing the random choices. Right,

831
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,520
Speaker 1: Those random choices are not really random. It's all downstream

832
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 1: of something wow, okay, And so people explore these ideas,

833
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 1: and this article discusses some papers in philosophy about how

834
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:41,400
Speaker 1: you might be able to close these loopholes and figure

835
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 1: out is superdeterminism real? Can you test it? It's very

836
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: hard to test, And so it explores these concepts. It

837
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:51,040
Speaker 1: doesn't suggest that we're going to learn the answer to

838
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 1: free will, right. It's like maybe we could try to

839
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 1: close this superdeterminism loophole. But dot dot dot free will

840
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: is a much bigger question, right, And if you read

841
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:04,000
Speaker 1: the paper, philosophers don't even agree about what we mean

842
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:06,319
Speaker 1: by free will, Like what does free will even mean?

843
00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 1: Like let's start with defining that. You know, like some

844
00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: people think you're gonna have free will even if the

845
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:14,719
Speaker 1: universe is deterministic. You just like draw dotted line around

846
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 1: a certain set of processes and say, I'm calling this Daniel,

847
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: and these are Daniel's choices, and you know, we attribute

848
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:22,719
Speaker 1: those to him. And other people think the free will

849
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:27,800
Speaker 1: requires some like supernatural thing that's separate from the physical universe,

850
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 1: where you have like a mind realm that's influencing matter

851
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:33,759
Speaker 1: somehow in the physical universe. It's a whole set of

852
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:37,240
Speaker 1: ideas for what free will could even mean. So, yes,

853
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: this is a study in philosophy, not a set of

854
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 1: quantum experiments that touches on questions which are adjacent to

855
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: free will. But it certainly doesn't suggest a set of

856
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: experiments that are going to tell us conclusively do we

857
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 1: have free will or not?

858
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 3: So did the paper mention free will in passing? Like

859
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:56,279
Speaker 3: how how did this all become about free will? Was

860
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:58,400
Speaker 3: that completely on the part of the science communicator.

861
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:01,279
Speaker 1: Well, again, the paper is reasonable and talks about free

862
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:03,640
Speaker 1: will because you know, these questions do brush up against

863
00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:06,319
Speaker 1: these issues of free will. But this article in the

864
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 1: New Scientist, not my favorite source, definitely over sells it

865
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: and the title is like totally irresponsible in my view.

866
00:42:14,320 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 1: And you know, people have thought about this a lot already,

867
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: Like people go to great lengths to make these bells

868
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:24,320
Speaker 1: experiments not susceptible to super intelligent alien manipulation. Like the

869
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: lengths they go to to make these choices random is hilarious.

870
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 1: There were experiments done in twenty fifteen where the decisions

871
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:35,919
Speaker 1: were determined by taking a bunch of bits from three

872
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:39,800
Speaker 1: independent sources. One of them is the digits of pie.

873
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 1: Another are strings chosen at random from Mindy Python and

874
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:47,680
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail. The Back to the Future trilogy episodes

875
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 1: of Doctor Who Saved by the Bell and Star Trek.

876
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 2: How did Saved by the Bell get in there?

877
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 1: I think they were worried that they were only choosing

878
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:57,080
Speaker 1: nerdy things, and they were like, uh, oh, what if

879
00:42:57,120 --> 00:42:59,880
Speaker 1: the aliens are only manipulating? You know, the nerd culture.

880
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:02,919
Speaker 1: So they're like, let's this is like the nerd view

881
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 1: of what popular culture is, like, let's do saved by

882
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: the Bell amazing.

883
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 2: So if you.

884
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:12,360
Speaker 1: Want to affect these experiments and contrive some way to

885
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 1: make them non random, you have to manipulate the digits

886
00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:18,319
Speaker 1: of pie and somehow influence the people who wrote all

887
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: of those episodes of all of those shows, so that

888
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:24,080
Speaker 1: you can end up with a set of experiments which

889
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: seemed like they were random, but they weren't really.

890
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 3: Okay, So we have gone to great lengths to back

891
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 3: up Bell's experiments to solve the superdeterminism problem, but we

892
00:43:33,800 --> 00:43:35,399
Speaker 3: have not yet weighed in on free will.

893
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:38,240
Speaker 1: That's right, And let's say that we close this loophole.

894
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 1: We say, okay, superdeterminism, we've proven it's not true. We

895
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 1: know the universe is fundamentally quantum. That still does not

896
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:48,879
Speaker 1: prove free will right. Randomness is not free will right.

897
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: Even if we show the universe has some elements of randomness,

898
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: that doesn't give you control over it, right. That just

899
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 1: means that there's some parts of that are probabilistic instead

900
00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:59,319
Speaker 1: of deterministic. It's not even clear to me that has

901
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:03,720
Speaker 1: any relevant to free will. It's just like, seems intellectually

902
00:44:03,719 --> 00:44:06,359
Speaker 1: adjacent to it, but it's not actually a trapdoor in

903
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:08,799
Speaker 1: which you can sneak in free will in my view.

904
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 3: So this is only an audio podcast, so the video

905
00:44:12,520 --> 00:44:15,920
Speaker 3: people can't see that Daniel is gesticulating wildly and getting

906
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:16,840
Speaker 3: super worked.

907
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:18,800
Speaker 2: Up and almost knocked his coffee mug off the table.

908
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: So well, you know, one of the things I love

909
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: about physics is that it has philosophical implications that are exciting,

910
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 1: that are fascinating. You can learn about where the universe

911
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:29,879
Speaker 1: comes from and how it works and all that kind

912
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: of stuff, and so yeah, it's disappointing to me when

913
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:35,840
Speaker 1: people try to make those philosophical connections when they aren't

914
00:44:35,840 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: there yet, like, you know, let's reserve that f when

915
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:40,600
Speaker 1: we really do learn something deep about the universe.

916
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:43,280
Speaker 3: I also feel like every time a pop science article

917
00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:45,800
Speaker 3: over sells something and makes it sound like science is

918
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:48,080
Speaker 3: about to answer a big question that it's really not

919
00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:51,759
Speaker 3: even close to answering, you hurt the ability to communicate

920
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:54,080
Speaker 3: well with the public because they're like, oh, you guys

921
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:56,160
Speaker 3: have been promising answers to all this stuff and it's

922
00:44:56,160 --> 00:44:58,759
Speaker 3: not happening. And I get that like, to get your

923
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 3: articles published, you need to convince an editor that you

924
00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:04,839
Speaker 3: have the most exciting idea. But I feel like maybe

925
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:07,319
Speaker 3: it's the editor's job. Someone's job needs to be to

926
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 3: make sure that we're not over selling things and making

927
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 3: science feel like, you know, one, what are we even doing?

928
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: New? Breakthrough means fusion is just around the corner? How

929
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:17,120
Speaker 1: many times you read that article?

930
00:45:17,160 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's right, yes, over and over again,

931
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 3: and so anyway, it's very important. But okay, so I

932
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 3: think the field needs to be doing a slightly better job.

933
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 3: But Daniel, you promised us at the beginning that you

934
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 3: were going to give us tips to make sure that

935
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 3: we could be critical readers so that our BS detectors

936
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:34,919
Speaker 3: could go off when they needed to go off.

937
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:36,400
Speaker 2: So what should we be looking for?

938
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I read a lot of science that's outside

939
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 1: of my field of expertise. I mean, if there's an

940
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 1: article on particle physics, I can read it and tell

941
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: what's nonsense and what isn't. But I can't always in

942
00:45:45,080 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: other areas. So I have to learn to be a

943
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 1: critical reader. So Number one, I go to trusted sources.

944
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 1: I like the New York Times Science coverage. I like

945
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:55,720
Speaker 1: Quantum Magazine, and there are very very few other places

946
00:45:55,719 --> 00:45:57,759
Speaker 1: that I really really trust were if I'm reading something

947
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:00,160
Speaker 1: I don't understand, I'd be like, well, I think I'm

948
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:02,360
Speaker 1: going to believe this. And so you need to build

949
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:05,759
Speaker 1: up confidence with a source, like they need to repeatedly

950
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:07,960
Speaker 1: cover things in a level headed way. You need to

951
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:10,640
Speaker 1: see stuff that you understand covered wells that you can

952
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:13,400
Speaker 1: trust it when you don't understand it. And if your

953
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:16,400
Speaker 1: trusted source has not covered some big breakthrough in science,

954
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: there's probably a reason. So if you're only seeing this

955
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: in like sciencebuzz dot com, then it's probably overblown. That's

956
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 1: number one.

957
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:27,799
Speaker 3: I had the opportunity to write for The New York

958
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:30,160
Speaker 3: Times twice, and one thing that really impressed me about

959
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 3: that process was they had an independent fact checker go

960
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:36,400
Speaker 3: through and I had to provide citations for everything. They

961
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 3: made sure all of my citations were good, and there

962
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:40,799
Speaker 3: were a couple places where I had a citation that

963
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 3: was like twenty years old and they're like, we want

964
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 3: you to find a more more recent reference convince us

965
00:46:45,680 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 3: that this is still the case. And I was like,

966
00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:49,360
Speaker 3: oh nice. And I was able to do that, but

967
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:52,240
Speaker 3: I loved that. They were like making me defend every

968
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 3: single line of my article. So anyway, Yeah, I've been

969
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 3: impressed with how The New York Times does their science.

970
00:46:57,120 --> 00:46:59,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, I'm not going to speak

971
00:46:59,000 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: to their political coverage. And I know they've taken a

972
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 1: lot of hits, fairly or unfairly for all sorts of coverage.

973
00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:08,120
Speaker 1: But their science section is good. You know, their science

974
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:11,319
Speaker 1: writers know their science and do the work, and they're

975
00:47:11,360 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 1: not just like, hey, consumer, beware, it's up to you

976
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: to decide whether to believe this. They're doing the work

977
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 1: behind the scenes to try to make sure this stuff

978
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:20,800
Speaker 1: is legit, just like we try to do. A second

979
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,280
Speaker 1: piece of advice is ignore the headline. Usually the headline

980
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,560
Speaker 1: is not written by the person who wrote the article, right.

981
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:30,239
Speaker 1: It's written by some editor trying to get clicks. And

982
00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 1: often the author disagrees with the headline and was overruled, right,

983
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:37,840
Speaker 1: And so it's not the author article's fault, And it

984
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 1: doesn't say that anywhere on the page. It's like, you know,

985
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: crazy claim by you know, reputable writer, and you're like, oh,

986
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:48,960
Speaker 1: I feel bad for that guy, So be careful about that.

987
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:51,680
Speaker 1: Make sure you read the article, not the headline, and

988
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: also in the article, look for comments from uninvolved scientists.

989
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:01,799
Speaker 1: Some articles are just regurgitations of press releases from universities

990
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:05,239
Speaker 1: who listen to scientists few claims about their work. I

991
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:08,320
Speaker 1: discovered we all live in a black hole. Yay, reputable scientist.

992
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 1: But did they go off and find somebody else in

993
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 1: the field who knows what they're talking about, who is

994
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 1: not involved and therefore has nothing at stake and can say, well, yeah,

995
00:48:17,120 --> 00:48:19,320
Speaker 1: I read Daniel's paper and I think it's pretty solid.

996
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:21,720
Speaker 1: This is seminal work, or you know, I read Daniel's

997
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: paper and I think these are big leaps and there's

998
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: still a lot of work to be done. Look for

999
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:28,359
Speaker 1: those quotes, because number one, it means the journalists did

1000
00:48:28,400 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 1: their job and consulted with experts and listen what those

1001
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: other experts have to say. So I think that's an

1002
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 1: important part of any responsible bit of science journalism, and

1003
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:38,040
Speaker 1: you should look for it.

1004
00:48:38,239 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 3: Ed Young does such a great job with that. Often

1005
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 3: when my research gets covered by popular press, I don't

1006
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:46,960
Speaker 3: read it, partly because I'm going to get frustrated if

1007
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 3: it was wrong, or if my quote was taken out

1008
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:51,080
Speaker 3: of context or something. So I don't read it to

1009
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 3: avoid the frustration, but I read the articles that Ed

1010
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:56,439
Speaker 3: Young writes because I want to see like, oh, who

1011
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:59,680
Speaker 3: did he ask? And what is like a serious critique

1012
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 3: of the work. And every once in a while I

1013
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:03,000
Speaker 3: will see like, oh, that's such and such that I

1014
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:06,040
Speaker 3: oversold this a little bit, and yeah, maybe they're right.

1015
00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 3: And anyway, I feel like I learned something from his

1016
00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:13,120
Speaker 3: science reporting because he digs so deep into everything and anyway,

1017
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 3: that's yeah, it's just I just I never get tired

1018
00:49:15,719 --> 00:49:17,279
Speaker 3: of saying great things about Ed Young's work.

1019
00:49:18,560 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 1: Well, it's so admirable when people have built up a

1020
00:49:21,120 --> 00:49:24,279
Speaker 1: brand of being reputable. It's hard work, right, Yeah, he's

1021
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:26,360
Speaker 1: done all that hard work that you know, boots on

1022
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:28,959
Speaker 1: the ground reporting to understand is this right? Is this wrong?

1023
00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:31,319
Speaker 1: What is the nuance? What are the experts that say?

1024
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:33,799
Speaker 1: What are ways to disagree with this? And so he

1025
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 1: deserves that credibility and it's rare and so yeah, I

1026
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:39,320
Speaker 1: read everything Ed Young writes also for that same reason.

1027
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:41,520
Speaker 1: And there are science writers I know and I follow,

1028
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:44,120
Speaker 1: and I will read whatever they write because it's good.

1029
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:46,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, amen, all right, any other tips?

1030
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 1: Keep reading? You know, the more you read, the more

1031
00:49:49,280 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 1: you'll become literate in the topic, can you'll be able

1032
00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:53,000
Speaker 1: to spot boloney on your own.

1033
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:55,960
Speaker 3: My last tip is you should join our Discord community,

1034
00:49:56,080 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 3: where anytime you come across an article that lands on

1035
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:01,560
Speaker 3: your BS detector a little bit, you can pop it

1036
00:50:01,640 --> 00:50:03,239
Speaker 3: up on there and we'd be happy to tell you

1037
00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 3: what we think.

1038
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:04,440
Speaker 2: And there's a whole.

1039
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:07,840
Speaker 3: Community of people willing to critically read the articles and

1040
00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 3: way in. So find us at Daniel and Kelly dot

1041
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:13,799
Speaker 3: org and there's a link to our Discord community there.

1042
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:15,439
Speaker 1: And if you don't like Discord, you can just write

1043
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:18,720
Speaker 1: to us, send us an email to questions at Danielankelly

1044
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:20,839
Speaker 1: dot org and we will help you break it down

1045
00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 1: all right.

1046
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 2: Until next time.

1047
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:33,120
Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio.

1048
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:34,839
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you.

1049
00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:37,880
Speaker 1: We really would. We want to know what questions you

1050
00:50:38,120 --> 00:50:40,760
Speaker 1: have about this Extraordinary Universe.

1051
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:43,800
Speaker 3: We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions

1052
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 3: for future shows.

1053
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 2: If you contact us, we will get back to you.

1054
00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:51,040
Speaker 1: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

1055
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:54,279
Speaker 1: at questions at Danielankelly.

1056
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:55,440
Speaker 3: Dot org, or you can find us on social media.

1057
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:59,319
Speaker 3: We have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on

1058
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:00,360
Speaker 3: all of those plans platforms.

1059
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:03,320
Speaker 2: You can find us at D and K Universe.

1060
00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:05,080
Speaker 1: Don't be shy, write to us,