Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | June 2024

[@mih4743]

Your intelligence is therapeutic. Many will know what I mean. So, thank you for what you do. Just another human hoping to express the fraction of gratitude we all feel for you.

[@triqpham]

Hi Dr. Carroll, I believe you and Brien Greene are two of the foremost educators on social media today on the topic of quantum mechanics. I know you have said before that you cannot devote too much time on the podcast and the KZbin videos are a lot of work. I wish you would reconsider. Quantum mechanics is a self taught topic for me and it has changed my life. I have learned so much from yours and Dr. Greene’s videos especially Dr. Greene’s daily equations videos. I am a visual person and to see Einstein’s field equation fully explained, graphically, is amazing and easier to understand than a podcast. Anyway, the purpose of this comment is to thank you for your dedication to educating the public. Thank you!

[@alexbranton426]

The deepest Sean caroll quote of all time <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="130">2:10</a>:29 “France, like many other countries, is a whole country”

[@grixlipanda287]

Here's another; "there's nothing deep about the nature of infinity that is hard to understand". 2:17:30

[@michaelkahama3459]

I'm a lawyer by profession and here I am in the Mindscape family trying to understand quantum field theory. I find it so much fun and satisfying to know myself. I struggle to read through the equations but want to know more. And just listen to some pods to open my eyes then I go to read.

[@stephencaertkerjr6406]

Lawyer as well … love this stuff! Struggle with the math but enthralled by the concepts.

[@michaelkahama3459]

@@stephencaertkerjr6406 we will one day understand the equations. I am reading the books and fairs to Sean Caroll he breaks down the equations so well. I am glad to meet a lawyer in this platform.

[@michaelkahama3459]

​@@stephencaertkerjr6406wow. I feel at home now that we have lawyers around. Bayesian reasoning really does help our arguments in court and when analyzing law. Many lessons we can apply in our profession.

[@GYMSHIT]

Your comment got me to subscribe, Michael

[@markiefufu]

Not a lawyer, but worked in a law firm for 15 years and still friends with a lot of lawyers. I too love to learn, especially anything to do with cosmology and quantum physics.

[@coorz64]

I’m 70% through Quanta and Fields, so far I’m enjoying the content more than Space, Time, and Motion. Being able to share complex theory and equations to a general audience like myself is a treat, and I enjoy the deviation from the generic pop science books.

[@steliosp1770]

This is the worst work week of the year for me. Thank you so much for this episode, Sean. Gonna help get through it a lot! Keep 'em coming, Gonna be getting the audiobook for the new book soon as well, hope it's selling great!

[@vanhongle4048]

I hope you're well now, all shall pass.

[@steliosp1770]

​@@vanhongle4048indeed it did friend. worst is behind now. now i m just waiting for the elden ring dlc and having a leave of absence from work till July starting Friday. Thanks for your interest, you re very kind, hope you have a great day!

[@Mattt303]

Good muck out there

[@Im-just-Stardust]

4 hours ?! Wow thank you professor.

[@aryanak1989]

Always makes me happy to see an episode of mindscape coming out

[@NowhereMan789]

I'm working my way through space time and motion before getting into quanta and fields and as someone who's math education never reached precalc/calc I'm really excited by the idea that I can just learn what the math MEANS. So far is very doable and I hope more take this approach in the future

[@JB-fz1rv]

Dear Prof❤ 1st Thank you again for your free education 🥳🥳🥳 Please come to Berlin with loads of colleagues! I will put some money aside so I can buy all🙈 your books and also via audible🥰 I need both to keep up as possible ( I might have some difficulties on learning 🙈🙈🙈...like a snail🤣) Pretty please please please 🙏 🙏 🙏 Best Cleaning Lady Berlin, Germany

[@SallyBunBun]

Good luck with your book. love listening to you. Thank you.

[@Simmo87]

As always, thank you Sean. Appreciate your work

[@PaulMooney-y3l]

Top notch content as always 👌

[@dosesandmimoses]

Critical thinking I think is an esoteric concept I believe you are super qualified to teach.. just presenting the board and other concepts that echo situations that may point people in directions to offer perspective- your voice is very important.. gratitude

[@mut8inG]

I don’t pretend perfection but the idea that we live in a multidimensional multiverse is the most exciting, since consciousness creates materiality. The energy of thought, belief, action allows reality of wanted or wanted human awareness. Therefore, the delightful is fundamentally possible and probable as a way of viewing possibility. So, Whatyagonnado dear creator of your deserved and chosen reality. 🐝kind Thank you. 🎶💥🎯🌸

[@jamesragsdale8202]

Nonsense.

[@user-target4AGI]

Imagine Sean Carroll with his team leading The United States of America

[@davegrundgeiger9063]

I like to think that he is. 😁

[@victorialindstrom1522]

This is my fantasy.

[@captainzappbrannagan]

Please have Neil Turok back on the show and focus on all you disagree on. He says there's been no experiment to show many worlds, thinks Schrodinger's equation predicts nothing since wavefunction doesn't collapse really, and I'd love to see your rebuttals to his ideas to these and his new model of a simplistic model of the universe which proposes to insert the fewest unknowns and gives the best explanations.

[@B33t_R007]

In two days i receive both "Biggest ideas" books. Happy and scared 😅

[@gwgiantbass]

Tbh came here after Lex Fridman. Love the content, thanks a bunch. Im a math and stats guy, but lovvveeee physics

[@melissamoore521]

Lex has the best kind or friends!

[@antonybassham2331]

Me too.

[@shazmunchdylbertoid]

you know what I'd love in a book with mathematical formulas? long variable names.. I get it's very standard for physics to have a symbol for everything, but in software we give everything a descriptive name. It really helps understanding complex statements! I loved your first book but I found it really difficult to process a complex formula with lots of symbols, and sometimes I'd have to go back half a chapter to remind myself what the fancy d means. totally worth the effort however, these are the books I've been wishing for for years, thank you for writing them

[@hatt_man]

Yes! I rarely need more than a word or two in order to get a perfectly understandable variable name. These days, my code reads more like a story than anything. I learned from comp-sci guys who favored short, math-y variable names, and it was always a struggle keeping those straight in my head.

[@shazmunchdylbertoid]

@@hatt_man right! your PR would be immediately rejected if you tried to merge something with one letter variable names. "what is X, don't be lazy" 😁

[@98danielray]

very very impractical. any big enough equation would look asful and be even harder to interpret. We do that in software because it is supposed to be read like a sequence of statements, not a single one or a few. also, variables tend to have way less meaning attached to them. the variable "objectA", which is likely a pointer to an address of memory is much easier to understand than "the action of a given trajectory".

[@98danielray]

also, you are supposed to go back and recall the symbols. that is part of getting used to the "syntax" of a given theory

[@98danielray]

that becomes even more complicated when the statements are not "formulas" about physical quantities per se, but placeholders for more complicated structures, like an irreducible representation of a group for example.

[@gmccall14]

I'm not a lawyer but just a 27 year old man with not much in my life becides of the curiosity of the universe. I'm not just curious but love trying to figure out the equations. Got an answer wrong and honestly didn't mind cause it meant that i understood I did not get it, so where did i mess up, and once i figure that out. I will understand, not the universe, but some aspects of that!

[@johncarter1150]

Have to listen later, when fully awake!

[@huepix]

Id live to ask about my idea of intergalactic voids being giant moving energy fields. When they collide, where the collision velocity approaches speed of light (SOL), time dilation and space contraction happen, collapsing the space into tiny spinning fields. When we observe these fields, we need to acceptbwe are also moving. Where our movement synchronizes with the spining field, we will "see" only that part. I.e. it will appear as a "particle" that appears to move around the field. As thebidea developes, it explains the double slit phenomenon, expansion, why galaxies rotate they way they do etc.

[@PugetSoundFlyer]

Sean - Please bring your book tour to SEATTLE! The weather will be stunning this summer..you'll love it! :)

[@ryanrutledge922]

♥️from🇨🇦 . Thank u sincerely for your hard work . The episode is great . ( Far from a colossal letdown . Lol sheesh, some people's children , eh ? )

[@dosesandmimoses]

Congratulations on your book - I’m late per usual lol. I think when I show up lol- you finish my statement lol

[@wkittils]

Is it just me, but the question about whether to include a chapter on Causation hits in Vol 3 hits my ironic/funny bone.

[@Topphat-l1f]

A question for Sean Carroll. Ask yourself how old you are and how old you will be on your next birthday. This is not a trick question, but make sure you recheck your figures before you answer.

[@kroyhevia]

These are great.

[@dosesandmimoses]

Please prove us wrong!

[@iansmith8783]

"You who build these altars now/to sacrifice these children/you must not do it anymore/a scheme is not a vision/you never have been tempted/by a demon or a god" -Leonard Cohen, The Story of Isaac

[@WimBorsboomSir]

I will try your "cast iron skillet pizza with Whole Foods pizza dough" sort of recipe...

[@bryandraughn9830]

Just wait for all the reviews from people who haven't read a word from the book. They are usually the most critical.

[@dosesandmimoses]

And it would be so interesting to invite those first opinions for a discussion on how they arrived at their conclusion.. I wonder what evidence they use to support their position.. or not. Your choice..

[@ajsmith7619]

Thanks Sean❤

[@RinkuJha-wy6xs]

The space is not empty, it is full of energy

[@invincirick]

Saving up to buy book one, almost there😊

[@tcuisix]

It hasn't been determined if there will be a chapter on causation. Sounds like quite the conundrum

[@steliosp1770]

2nd comment on this episode from me. i dont think i heard sean say he s pro the block universe perspective, before this episode. i thought i was missing something or it seemed too basic/simple as a concept when i first heard about it (while learning about einsteins relativity theories) and that while an elegant idea it was most likely incomplete.. but this makes me feel less stupid i guess to hear sean basically be on my team and kind of vindicates my initial intuition about it, nice! ;D brilliant!

[@jackpatterson8389]

book review was awesome 😁

[@tomanderson8169]

In book 3 I think Sean is going to have to get into category theory and not just group theory.

[@doreestrada9987]

Iam a lawyer 2, but I like dero ideas, I don't know much math. But regardless, I like to think about deep ideas..can You explain tge I libations about turning off the Edron cholider?

[@dosesandmimoses]

Diversity of information authors, publishers, universities, libraries, etc may offer insight

[@miamivice5706]

I really like your vibe...link uo Saint Lucia

[@dosesandmimoses]

I hear, “Are you ready to RUMBLE?!!”

[@julioguardado]

Sean, you should contact Adam Curry of the No Agenda podcast. All of his podcasts are searchable. He can probably give you some tips and perhaps point you to the tool he used. Good luck!

[@TheCosmicGuy0111]

Nice!

[@reidakted4416]

I went to Paris once and accidentally dropped by phone in the river. It was in Seine.

[@from_fresno2443]

Ok I'm back 4 and a half hours later, had to pause to watch Hancock Dibble on rogan

[@3dlabs99]

100 emails every day ... wow.. We need a message assistant based on large language models to at least group the mails a bit.

[@robertjennings397]

I lived in Santa Fe for seven years.

[@smashu2]

I have no information at all about your book but 1 way would have been to put all the heavy stuff at the end of the book as reference and stream line the lecture with link to the end for those who want to go deep. That someone could read the book then reread it later taking is time with the equation on the second pass while skipping it on the first lecture. 😜

[@lukeskydropper]

Why did you make that silly emote face?

[@GoatOfTheWoods]

@@lukeskydropperdo you have a problem with emoticons? 😮

[@pancaked7777777]

PLEASE PEOPLE WE REALLY REALLY NEED to hear Sean Carroll respond to/ debunk/ describe what might be interesting or true about Terrance Howards theories

[@victorialindstrom1522]

You should try to actually listen to the episode because he actually does answer a question regarding Terrance Howard. If some of TH's concepts intrigued you, I highly recommend listening to this podcast. Sean describes strange aspects of physics which will leave you in awe, but are grounded in the rigor of science. His AMA episodes are the best. Good Luck!

[@pancaked7777777]

@@victorialindstrom1522 lol I know, I've listened to all of Sean Carroll's episodes. I just think it would be interesting to hear someone like him explicitly pick everything apart but I understand there is a tradeoff of giving too much attention/ platforming of bad ideas as well. Also just to be clear, not bc I agree with anything TH was claiming just as an exercise in critical thinking especially around an area Sean is such an authority on

[@pancaked7777777]

@@OOL-UV2 lol I know a guy can make a lil wish tho

[@victorialindstrom1522]

@@pancaked7777777 I like the way you think. I kind of went down a TH rabbit hole out of shock of the people who thought his ideas were genius and I was amused by the attempts to challenge the notion of 1x1=2. In the end I felt guilty that I spent so much time just gawking at people who are so easily led into pseudoscience.

[@dosesandmimoses]

We bother because we give a shit. No worries if you don’t agree… but Paul revere was the messenger. Don’t shoot the messenger!

[@symmetrie_bruch]

culinerily speaking i could go with america for if you can afford it. but on a per dollar basis, the us is certainly terrible. try japan especcially now with the weak yen. it´s god tier on all price levels

[@mnabdelghani1526]

i love the book plz more mathy books

[@RinkuJha-wy6xs]

Check out this paper 'the origin of mass and nature of gravity' you will get all answers

[@RinkuJha-wy6xs]

See the paper' origin of mass and nature of gravity'

[@ALavin-en1kr]

My question is: What is consciousness and does mind emerge with quantum events?

[@RinkuJha-wy6xs]

No

[@ALavin-en1kr]

The question was rhetorical. My take is: consciousness is fundamental. Mind emerges with quantum events. Neither originated in biology or a Darwinian muddy pond. That is 19th Century materialism which was clueless about consciousness, the three forces, kinds of electricity, electromagnetism, and magnetism, not to mention DNA and the cell.

[@victorialindstrom1522]

We do not know. However if you are curious more about this, look up Roger Penrose's theories about consciousness and quantum tunneling.

[@davidcameronharbord1054]

Sean really needs to brush up on Searle's Chinese room thought experiment. It's not about consciousness. It's about syntax and semantics.

[@apopescu002]

It is common among some philosophers of mind to identify phenomenal states with intentional states. In fact, Searle himself assumes that understanding and consciousness are linked, and he inferred from the CR conclusion that functionalism/computationalist theories of consciousness are false.

[@davidcameronharbord1054]

@@apopescu002 I would have said computationalist theories of mind rather than consciousness. The point is, he did not conclude that there is anything non physical about it, which Sean seems to believe. He really meant to talk about Mary's room I think, but got them confused.

[@whb2218]

Commensurable is not a word is it?

[@melissamoore521]

Word

[@povilaskimutis1409]

How can such a smart man be so ignorant of first person experience, if you teleport - clone an individual, you will see the other - without experiencing it, your first person experience would not be there. Scientist need to take some phenomenology courses.

[@AndreluisMachadoloboesilva]

To make the world a better place make beef more expensive. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life. Sean wants poor people to starve to death. Has he never read a book by someone who didn't have money to eat ?! To make the world a better place we should have peoples lifes in front of money.

[@charlievane]

ultimately, the problem is corruption

[@danieldavidisson9906]

@@charlievane It is capitalism. There are economic systems that render corruption , exploitation and the hoarding of wealth impossible.

[@charlievane]

@@danieldavidisson9906 I agree there are very bad parts to capitalism, and exacerbated by corruption - but any system is corruptible for various reasons, and not only economic ones, and the corrupt usually blame something particular or other, so that we're discussing beef instead of the corruption that brought us here and won't stop no matter what we do with beef.

[@victorialindstrom1522]

What do you think poor people in India eat?

[@melissamoore521]

Perhaps his position would be more digestible, if rather, he had said that our government stop subsidizing (with our tax dollars) meat and dairy corporations. If we were paying for these products (and I DO love them) they would cost far, far more than they do now. If you think you are going to starve to death if beef and dairy prices go to a realistic price, may I suggest you are spending your time on the wrong podcast?

[@smashu2]

Did you ever thought that entangled particle might all be connected by worm holes ?

[@Initialgs]

“Fettled Grunt Buggly” out of interest is some Vogon poetry, the third worst poetry in the universe….

[@joseleon8235]

Dear Doctor, if the multiverse evolves naturally from the Schrodinger equation, as you believe, it seems that everything in the Mulltiuniverse is possible. If eternalism also applies, there seems to be a superderministic static universe that happens to be all at once. It reminds me of God's definition?

[@steliosp1770]

many worlds happens when a quantum event is observed, not when you decide to have pizza instead of Chinese food.

[@redmed10]

Theists always try to smuggle god into new cosmological theories. Your own books and evidence have been debunked so you try to modernise your god beliefs. Its so obvious.

[@GoatOfTheWoods]

​@@redmed10what is so obvious and what are you talking about?

[@bytefu]

Not everything. Everything obeying laws of physics constrained by initial conditions, both of which we don't know perfectly. Gods are irrelevant.

[@grixlipanda287]

"Make beef more expensive, to make less desirqble systematically for everyone in the world " except for rich people, like people who spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine... like yourself. Beef comes from cows, cows ARE the environment, they can't be bad for the environment. "But muh methane" already disproven.

[@victorialindstrom1522]

Going along with your reasoning, humans also come from the environment, therefore we could not be bad for the environment. So everything is part of the environment therefore nothing could change it? Your reasoning could use some work.

[@grixlipanda287]

@victorialindstrom1522 you could argue this and I think it would be a good idea not to make absolutist starements like "humans are bad for the environment", and for obvious reasons. Cows are animals. They are the environment and methane has been shown not to be an issue.

[@melissamoore521]

​@@grixlipanda287 Victoria might have been alluding to gluttonous humans (and scientific dilettantes...)

[@victorialindstrom1522]

@@grixlipanda287Do you have a source for your claim that methane has been proven to not be a problem? I’m honestly curious. I recently wrote a paper on thawing permafrost and methane emissions.

[@SuperAmazingAnt]

@@victorialindstrom1522 start by calculating how much gases grasses and plants that cow eats take and produce

[@danieldavidisson9906]

The future of mankind is not a question of technology, it is a question of who has control over the resources of the planet, as that determines how our technology is employed, and our access to what we need to survive. This is both my field of interest and study. However, the deciding factor is a psychological one, and our ability to break free of the current economic paradigm whereby the "the 1%" control all land and resources, and therefore decide how technology is used, and our access to what we need to live. capitalism is a suicidal death wish. A barell of a gun pointed at our heads, and the trigger has been pulled. I did not study political economy because I thought it would be interesting, I studied it begrudgingly, because there is nothing more important to understand, than how the economy works as it determines the distribution and use of natural resources, some of which take millions of years for the earth to reproduce, some of which can never be reproduced due to man's interfering with the environment, while population levels are critical and are well in excess of what can be sustained. Earth's population doubles every 24 years at 3% growth, while oil production reached peak in 2008, and is now in a permanent decline. How many people have any basic working knowledge of economics? I dot know if those figures exist, but it is certainly less than 1%