YouSaid · the spoken record

Edward Frenkel

lines on the record: 257
first: 2023-04-10
most recent: 2023-04-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Popular science. The idea that somehow there is this world out there, but it has nothing to do with me. So I can revel in the intricacies of these particles and their interactions. But completely ignore what implications this has for my own relationship to physical reality, to my own life, you know, because it's kind of scary, I guess.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, a lot of people are not aware of it through no fault of their own because they were never properly taught that because our system is broken, education system is broken, especially in math. And then our, so where do we get information? You get information from our scientists who actually write popular books and so on, which is a great thing that they do. But a lot of scientists somehow when it comes to explaining the laws of physics, they're doing a fantastic job. Talking about this phenomenon, for instance, double split experiment and things like that. But then interviewed by Science Magazine about free will and so on, they revert back to 19th century physics as if those developments actually never happened. So to me, this is single most Important sort of issue in our”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a self imposed limitation when we pretend that That, for instance, that this naive ideas of 19th century physics are still valid and then start applying them to our lives and then also derive conclusions from it. And for instance, people say there is no free will. Why? Oh, because the world is just a bunch of billiard balls. Where is the free will? But excuse me, didn't you get the memo that this has been debunked thoroughly by the so-called quantum mechanics, which is our best scientific theory? This is not some kind of bullshit or some kind of concoction of a madman. This is our scientific theory, which has been confirmed by experiment. So we should pay attention to that. But of course, it's not just self-imposed limitation. Unfortunately,”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Properly. I tried in a bunch of talks and so on. So now I'm talking about this again. Our psyche kind of is lagging behind. Even though our science has progressed so much from the certainty and the determinism and all of that, of the 19th century, our psyche is somehow still attached to those ideas, the ideas of causality, of this naive determinism that the world has a bunch of billiard balls hitching each other, driven by some blind forces. You know, that's not at all like this. And we've known this for, well, for about 100 years at least, you know?”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has the audacity to interfere with itself, where at some points to Crest would amplify and at some points a crest in the trough would cancel each other. Yet, so that suggests okay, so the electron is a wave, not so fast because if you put a detector behind one of the slits and you say, I'm going to capture you, I'm going to find out which slit you went through. The pattern will change and it will look like the particles. So that's a very concrete realization of the idea that depending on how we set up an experiment, we will see different results. And the problem is that our psyche, I feel, kind of lagging is lagging behind, in part because maybe our scientists are not doing such a great job. So I take responsibility for this, that why haven't I explained this?”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I talk about electrons, for instance, so that there is a very specific way in which this is realized. There is a so-called double-slit experiment, right? So for those who don't know, you have a screen and you have an emitter from which you kind of shoot electrons. And in between, you put another screen which has two vertical slates parallel to each other. If we were shooting tennis balls, each ball would go through one slit or another and then hit the screen behind this or that slit. So you would have, and let's say they colored, they're painted. So there will be sort of bumps or spots of paint behind this or that. But that's not what happens when we shoot electrons. We see an interference pattern as if we were actually sending a wave so that each electron, it seems like each electron goes through both slits at once.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we know that our best physical theories tell us that unambiguously in quantum mechanics, actually Heisenberg, I think, captured the best when he said what we observe is not reality itself, but reality subjected to our method of questioning.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We understand that it's neither, but both projections reveal something, reveal different sides of it. A paradox is like that. It's only paradoxical if we are confined in a particular vision, if we are wedded to a particular point of view. A harbinger, if you will, of a possibility of seeing things in as they are, more sophisticated than we thought before, you see.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He said the opposite of a simple truth is a falsity. But the opposite of a great truth is another great truth. In other words, Things are not black and white. And I would even venture to say the most interesting things in life. Like that, the ones which are ambiguous. An electron, a particle, or a wave. It depends how you set up an experiment, it will reveal itself as this or that, depending on how you set up an experiment. This bottle, if you project it down onto the table, Will see more or less a square. If we project it onto a wall, you will see a different shape. And a naive question would be, is it this or that?”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get the answer. It is incredibly hard. What's possible? And it is liberating, it's recovering addict to knowledge. Let me say. You gain from it. For instance, I understand the value of paradoxes. I appreciate paradoxes more. And to use another philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, said. Think or without paradox, he's like a lover without passion. A paltry med”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We should do that. Do we really need the urge to say the world is like that? The world can be explained this way or that way. And I'm saying it, you know, it's a personal question for me because I am addicted to knowledge myself. Hi, my name is Edward. And I'm a knowledge addict. Okay, I'm being serious, I'm not being facetious. Up until very recently, maybe a couple of years ago, I simply did not feel comfortable if I could not say, I give an answer, explanation. It's like, oh, there has to be some explanation. And I tried to frantically search for it. Just for somebody like me. left brainac and that's kind of typical for scientists for mathematicians it is incredibly hard Just allow the possibility that it's a mystery and not to feel the urge.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which never uses the letter E, which is the most used, widely used letter of the French language. So in other words, he set these parameters for himself. I'm going to write a book where I don't use this letter, which is a great experiment. And I upload it. But it's one thing to do that and to kind of show his... Gamesmanship, if you will, and his proclivity and his ability as a writer. But it's another thing if at the end of writing this book, when you finish the book, he would say letter E actually doesn't exist You try to convince us that, in fact, French language does not have that letter simply because he was able to go so far without using it, you see. So self-imposed limitation. That's how I see it. And I wonder why.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm kind of playing Devil's Advocate a little bit because I don't see the other side, so represented that much. And I'm saying, okay, could it be also that if you believe in that, that that becomes your reality? You can kind of put yourself in the box. Where everything is computation, and then you start seeing things as being such, it's confirmation bias, if you will, you know. This also reminds me, you know, I think a good analogy is a friend of mine, Philippe Coshen, told me that in France there is this literary movement, which is called Olipo. OUL IPO. It's a bunch of writers and mathematicians who create works of literature in which they basically impose certain constraints. A good example of this. A novel which is called a void or disappearance by a writer named George Pirek, which is a 300 page novel in French.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was saying that is my question. I'm not taking sides. What I'm trying to do is to shake a little bit the debate because most mathematicians that I know and computer scientists even more so, they're kind of already sold on this. We are just, it reminds me of this famous Lord Kelvin's quote from the end of 19th century. There's some debate whether he actually said that, but never let a good story of truth. He said physics is basically finished. All that remains is more precise measurement. So I find a lot of my colleagues are happy to say everything's finished. We got it. We got it. Maybe a little tweaks in our large language models. So now here's my question.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we are from the outset denying to ourselves the possibility that yes, there is a side of me which is not faking it. Yes, there is a side of me which cannot be captured by logic and reason. And you know what another great scientist said, bless Pascal? Said the heart has its reasons of which the reason knows nothing. And then he also said the last step of reason is to grasp that there are infinitely many things beyond reason. Interesting. This was not a theologian. This was not a priest. This was not a spiritual guru. It was a hardcore scientist who actually developed, I think, one of the very first calculators. Interesting that this guy also was able to impart on us that wisdom. Now, you can always say that's not the case. But why should we? The outset Exclude this possibility that there is something to what”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thinking maybe it's a hint that I should take my first person perspective seriously as well and not just rely on kind of objective phenomena, things that can be proved in a traditional sort of objective way by setting up an experiment that can be repeated many times. Maybe I fall in love in the deepest love of my life, perhaps hasn't happened yet. Perhaps I will fall in love, but it's unique event. You can't reproduce it necessarily, you see. So in that sense, you see how these things are closely connected. I think that if we are declaring from the outset that all there is to life is computation in the form of neural networks or something like this, however sophisticated they might be.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, science of 19th century had the modern perspective, and I don't want to offend anybody, had the delusion that somehow you could analyze the world being completely detached from it. We now know after the landmark achievements of the first half of the 20th century that this is nonsense, that is simply not true. And this has been experimentally proved time and time again. So to me,”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can talk about this in more detail. Likewise, Einstein's relativity where time is relative to the observer, for instance.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A certainty of it. And that's a subjective certainty. Now, I am, as a scientist, I'm also trained to give more credibility to objective arguments that and other things that can be reproduced, things that I can demonstrate that I can show. But as I get older, there we go. As I get more mature, so hopefully, you know. I'm starting to question why I am not giving as much. Credibility with you to my subjective understanding of the world the kind of the first person perspective when actually modern science has already solved on that you know quantum mechanics Has shown unambiguously that the observer is always involved in the observation. Likewise, Yodel's incompleteness theorems to me. Show how essential Is the observer of a mathematical theory? For one thing, that's the one who chooses the axioms.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, yes, we do that, but we also do other things. We can't be truly in love. We can be truly inspired when it's not fake. I do believe, call me romantic, okay? But I do believe. And this is very good. I'm glad you're putting it in these terms because I've had conversations like that, that, yeah, fake it till you make it, but that's like that's what humans do. Yes, we do that, but not all the time. And that is debatable because also I speak from my own experience. And that's where the first person perspective comes in, the subjective view. I cannot prove to you, for instance, or anyone else, that there are certain moments in my life where I am genuine. I am pure, so to speak, when it's not faking it. But I do have a tremendous...”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have this urge, I suppose, to explain and to know and to dissect and to analyze and to conceptualize, which is a wonderful quality that we have. And we should definitely pursue that. But I find it a little bit unlikely. That the universe is just exactly what I have learned. Not something that I don't know. You see?”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The question is whether as a child you carry that in the form of the kind of computational algorithms that we are aware today. You see, what strikes me as unlikely. Should I put it? How interesting that you are a computer scientist and there are other people coming. I have studied computer science, so I know a little bit. And so it's tempting to say, oh, the whole world. Computer science or is based can be explained by computer science Why? Because it makes me feel good. Because I have mastered it. I have learned it. Ego is very happy. And people come to me and they look up to me and they revere me kind of like priests in old days when the religion was paramount, when you would tend to explain things in theological, religious terms. Today science has progressed. There are fewer people who kind of buy into official religion”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To present a particular point of view, I'm trying to question any theory that starts out by saying Life is this, or consciousness is this. Because when you look more closely, you recognize that there are some other things at play which do not quite fit the narrative”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For this capacity to create as an adult, you see. That's kind of weird if we take the point of view that everything is computation, everything is accumulation of knowledge, that just bigger and bigger data sets, finer and finer neural networks, and then we will be able to replicate human consciousness. If we take that point of view, then what I just said kind of doesn't fit. Because obviously a child has not been fed any training data as far as we know. Yet they're perfectly capable of distinguishing between cats and dogs, for instance, and stuff like that, but much more than that. They are also capable of that. Wide eyed, you know, sort of perspective. So can it really be captured? That perspective, that sense of awe, can it really be captured by computation alone? I don't know the answer. So I'm not sort of trying to”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I know that you are an expert in the subject, and we are living now in this very interesting times of new AI systems coming online, pretty much every couple of weeks. So I kind of, to me, that whole debate about what is it? What is artificial intelligence? Where is it going? What should we do about it needs an influx of this type of considerations that we've just been talking about that for instance the idea that Inspiration, creativity doesn't come from accumulation of knowledge. Because obviously, child has not yet accumulated knowledge. And yet, the great ones are on record saying that a child has a capacity. To create. And an adult credits the inner child.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We could look up to the great ones who have In the sense that they have shown and they have proved that they have done something that other humans appreciate, our civilization appreciates, say, Isaac Newton or Alexander Grotendik or Pablo Picasso. So they have established their right to speak about these matters. And we cannot dismiss them as mere madmen. They say, okay, well, if the same thing was said by somebody who never achieved anything in their field of endeavor, it would be easy for us to dismiss it. But when it comes from someone like Isaac Newton, We take notice. So, I think that's something important that they teach us. And especially today, in this age of AI, Of course, there's a big elephant in the room always, which is called A”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wants to look like an idiot, you know, once you start growing up or you think you're growing up. The beginning, you don't even think in these terms. Just lay, you're just playing, and you are open to possibilities, to this infinite possibilities that this world presents to us. So how do we, I'm not saying that... Education system should not be also kind of taming that a little bit. Obviously, the goal is balance, that acquiring knowledge. So that we can be more mature and more discerning, more discriminating in terms of our approach to the world, in terms of our connections to the world and people and so on. But how do we do that while also preserving that innocence of a child? And my guess is that there is no formula for this. It is Life is an answer, every life, every human being is one particular answer to how do we find balance.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I mean, this part of being human because when we grow up, I mean, all of these great scientists, I think they were so great in part because they were able, they maintain that connection And that fascination, that vulnerability, that spontaneity, you know, and Kind of looking at the world through the eyes of a child, but it's difficult because you go through education system. And for many of us, It's not especially helpful for maintaining that connection that we kind of like we are being told certain things that we accept take for granted and so on and little by little and also we get hit every time we act different okay every time we act that doesn't in a way that doesn't fit sort of the pattern Get punished by the teachers, get punished by Parents, and so on”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A child who is not afraid, who has not yet been told that it cannot be done. That was essential to a scientific pursuit, to scientific discovery. And now also compared to Pablo Picasso, a great artist, right? So who said every child is an artist? The question is how to preserve that as we grow up.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not just humans. And you know, I'm glad you mentioned that because what I find fascinating is that the greatest scientists are on record saying that when they were making their discoveries, they felt like children So, Isaac Newton said to myself, I only appeared as a child playing on the seashore, and every once in a while finding a prettier pebble. A prettier shell whilst I think he said something like the infinite ocean of knowledge was lying before me. Alexander Grotik. Who probably was the greatest mathematician of the second half of the 20th century, the French mathematician Alexander Grotintik wrote that discovery is a privilege of a child. Child who is not afraid to be wrong once again, to look like an idiot, to try this and that, and I'm paraphrasing and go through trial and error. In other words, for them. That innocence”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think we like to play with time. I think we like to play with these experiences, with all the drama of it, with all the memories, with all the tribulations.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And imagine that to make it really catch 22. Imagine that our minds are set up in such a way They can't approach the world or experience otherwise. So, in other words, to understand, to see that from a more Kind of all encompassing point of view, we have to step out of the mind.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, yes, so then there is a point of view that this is where we are at the We are who we are At our sort of fundamental, at our fundamental level. And after that, the mind comes in and tries to conceptualize it. It's like, oh, because I was writing something. I was writing a book. I was painting this painting. Or maybe I was watching this painting and got totally absorbed in it. I fell in love with this person. That's what happened. But in the moment when it's happening, you're not thinking about it. You're just”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, messing with time, but not necessarily messing with time because one point of view is that, you know, I think who was it? I think William Blake. who wrote that eternity loves time production. So one point of view is that it is eternity which is fundamental, where time stands still, which our mind conceptualizes as the time. But in fact, you know, it's not something mystical. If you think about, when you're really absorbed in something. You look at the clock and it's like, oh my God, two hours have passed. And it felt like a couple of seconds. When you are absorbed, when you're in love, when you are passionate about something, when you are creating something. We lose ourselves and we lose the sense of time and space for that matter. You see, so there is only that which is happening. Creative process.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And perilous crisp into space. I can't imagine it, but I can write Math Michael formula expressing that curvature. And that's, in fact, that curvature is responsible for the force of gravity attraction between the sort of simplest instantiation of it, attraction between two planets or between two human beings.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ray of light bends around a star as if being attracted by the force of gravity. But in fact, the force of gravity is the bending. It's just that it's not only the bending on the space, it's also the bending of spacetime. There is a curvature, not only between spatial dimensions, the way parallels and meridians come together. In a small scale, they look like perpendicular lines. But if you zoom out, you see that the space are they curving the space. They are sort of the tracks along which the space gets curved. That would be the curvature of spatial dimensions. But in fact, now throwing time. And one time, imagine a sphere which has one of the meridians correspond to time.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is much harder to imagine that a band three dimensional or four-dimensional space or four-dimensional spacetime because this idea that the space around us is flat, is so deeply entrenched. And yet we know from this theory and from the experiments that have confirmed”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Math, you could say, is a way to discern patterns, to find regularities in the universe. And both physical and mental universe, mathematics explores the mind as much as it explores the physical world around us. And it helps us to find those patterns, which kind of which makes our perception more sophisticated, our ability to perceive things such as beauty. It sharpens our ability to see beauty, to understand beauty. So our world becomes more complex from thinking that earth is flat, we go to realizing that it is round, that it's shaped as a sphere, so that we can actually travel around the Earth, you know, so there isn't a place where we hit the end, so to speak. And then Proceeding in the same vein, then Einstein's general relativity theory tells us that our spacetime is not flat either.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My view. In other words, you can't cover everything by math. So mathematics gives you tools, it gives you a Kind of a clear vision. But Mathematics by itself is not enough for one to have a harmonious and balanced life. So I am suspicious of any theory that... Declares that everything is mathemat”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. So mathematics is underpins physics, obviously. It's a language, the book of nature as Galileo famously said, is written in the language of mathematics and the letters in it are the circles triangles and squares and those who don't know the language, I'm paraphrasing, are left to wonder in the dark labyrinth. That's the famous quote from Galileo, which is very true and has become even more true more recently in theoretical physics in the most sort of... Far out parts of the theoretical physics that have to do with elementary particles as well as the structure of the cosmos at the large scale.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By an experiment, we don't yet play with big machines like LHC in Geneva, large adronider that recently discovered the Higgs boson and some other things. For us, it's all like a mental exercise in some sense. We prove things by using rules of logic. And that's our way of confirming, experimental confirmation, if you will. But I think I kind of envy a little bit my friend's physicist that they get to experience this sort of these big toys and play with them.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Allegedly Observed that we can observe today, right? So, of course, there are theories where there are some hidden dimensions as well. Let's just say observe to you, observe dimensions. So this tabletop has two dimensions because you can have two coordinate axes, x and y, but then there is also the third one to describe the space of this room. And then there is a time dimension. So realistic theories of physics have to be about spaces of three dimensions or space times of four dimensions. mathematically we are just as interested in theories in ten spacetime dimensions or 11 or 25 or whatever or infinite dimensional spaces you know so that's the difference on the other hand i have to give it to the physicists we don't have the same satisfaction that they have of having their theories confirmed”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is actually an essential difference, which is that physicists are interested in describing this universe. Mathematicians are interested in describing all possible mathematical universes, of which, you know, and some of our work, I still consider myself more of a mathematician than a physicist. My first love for physics notwithstanding, mathematicians are, in a way, More diversity, if you might say. So we are accepting, for instance, our universe has three spatial dimensions and one time dimension, right? So what I mean is that”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was in the Soviet Union in 1984, and so in many ways I see that it was prescient, the novel was prescient, but we still have not found a dictator who would actually say 2 plus 2 equals 5 and would demand their citizens to repeat that.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“x squared plus y squared equals z squared. We don't expect that next year suddenly it will be z cubed. And so that to me is actually even more, hence even more at how much we are connected to each other because Photographers theory, if you think about it or any other mathematical theorem, Means the same thing to anyone in the world today, regardless of their cultural upbringing, religion, ideas, ideology, gender, whatever, nationality, race, whatever, right? And it has meant the same. everyone everywhere and most likely will mean the same so that's to me kind of an antidote To the kind of Divisiveness that we sometimes observe these days, where it seems that we can't agree on anything.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we can agree on, kind of, you know, like even though for me at this point I always make an argument that our physical theories always change, they get updated. So you had Newton's theory of gravity. Then Einstein's theory superseded it. But in mathematics, it seems that theories don't change. Pythagoras theorem has been the same for the last 2500 years.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then they asked me what kind of research I do. And I mentioned that I work on the interface of math and quantum physics. Their eyes light up and say, Oh, quantum physics, or like Einstein's relativity. I'm really curious about it. I watch this podcast or I watch that podcast, you know, and I've learned this. It's like, what do you think about that? So, I actually find that actually physicists are doing a great job educating the public, so to speak, in terms of. Popular books and videos and so on. Mathematicians are behind. We are starting to catch up a little bit, have been starting the last 10 years. But we are still behind. But I think people are curious. Science is still very much something that people want to learn because that's our kind of the best way we know to establish some sort of objective reality, whatever that might be.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think there are so few, to be honest, because I think I find a lot of people are actually interested. If you talk to people, you know, like some people you wouldn't expect to be interested in this from all walks of life, from people Kinds of professions. I tell them I'm a mathematician and a mathematician okay, so that's a separate story. A lot of people, I think, have been traumatized by their experience in the math classes. We can talk about it later”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was a joy of discovery and the joy of going deeper into the kind of the To the root, to the deepest structures of the universe, to the secrets, the secrets. And we may not discover all of them. We may not be able to understand, but we're going to try and go as far and as deep as we can. I think that's what was the motivating factor in”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now I am looking back. So, whatever I say about Edward at 15. Is colored by all my experiences that happen in the meantime.”
2023-04-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source