YouSaid · the spoken record

Lee Smolin

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63
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2020-03-07
most recent
2020-03-07
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1
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podcast

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  1. “All of, I mean, electrical technology was being developed slowly with this. And in fact, there's a close relation between the development of electricity and Electrification of cities in the United States and Europe and so forth. The development of this science. The fundamental physics Since the early 1970s doesn't have a story like that so far, there's not a series of triumphs and progresses, and there's not any practical application.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I think it's important to get the time places right. There was a scientific revolution that partly succeeded between about 1900 or late 1890s and into the 1930s, 1940s. And maybe some, if you stretched it into the 1970s. And the technology, this was the discovery of relativity, and that included a lot of developments of electromagnetism. confirmation, which wasn't really well confirmed into the 20th century that matter was made of atoms. And the whole picture of nuclei with electrons going around, and this is early 20th century. And then quantum mechanics. Was from 1905 took a long time to develop till the late 1920s and then it was basically in final form. And the basis of this Partial revolution, and we can come back to why it's only a partial revolution, is the basis of the technologies that you mentioned”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “and work hard to line up and explain. It took centuries to make the transition from Aristotelian physics to the new physics. It wasn't done until Newton in 1680 something, 1687”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Right, but there's not a simple relationship between experiment and hypothesis or theory. For example, Galileo did this experiment of dropping a ball from the top of a tower. And it falls right at the base of the tower. And an Aristotelian would say, wow, of course it falls right to the base of the tower. That shows that the earth isn't moving while the ball is falling. And Galileo says, no weight is a principle of inertia and it has an inertia in a direction with the earth isn't moving and the tower and the ball in the earth all move together and the principle of inertia tells you it hits the bottom. It does look, therefore, my principle of inertia is right. Aristotelian says no. Peristile sciences, right? The earth is stationary. And so you've got to get an interconnected bunch of cases.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Answers to all those things, or you don't get taken seriously. And when you get to the point where you can produce that kind of defense and argument, then they give you a PhD. And you're kind of licensed, you're still going to be questioned, and you still may propose or publish mistakes. But the community is going to have to waste less time fixing your mistakes.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Don't lie, report all your results, whether they agree or don't agree with your hypothesis. Check the training of a scientist mostly consists of methods of checking because again we make lots of mistakes. We're very error prone. But there are tools both on the mathematics side and the experimental side to check and double check and triple check. And a scientist goes through a training. And I think this is part of it. You can't just walk off the street and say, yo, I'm a scientist. You have to go through the training and the training, the test that lets you be done with the training is can you form a convincing case for something that your colleagues will not be able to shout down because the last did you check this and did you check that and did you check this? And what about seeming contradiction with this? And you've got to have.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Sure, Paul Farabin, he was a student of Popper who taught. Karl Popper and Farav and argued both by logic and by historical example that you name anything that should be part of the practice of science. Say you should always make sure that your theories agree with all the data that's always been taken. And he'll prove to you that there have to be times when science contradicts, when some scientist contradicts that advice For science to progress overall. So it's not a simple matter. I think that I think of science as a community. People and as a community of people bound by certain ethical precepts, whatever that is.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “No on two counts. First of all, I don't believe there's a scientific method. I was very influenced when I was in graduate school by the writings of Paul Fireband, who was an important philosopher of science who argued that there isn't a scientific method.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “That's an excellent question. To be right. Well, since I believe that there is a real world, I believe that you can challenge me on this if you're not a realist. A realist is somebody who believes in this real objective world, which is independent of our perception. If I'm a realist, I think that to be right. Is to come closer. I think, first of all, there's a relative scale. More right and less right. And you're more right if you come closer to an exact true description of that real world. Now, can we know that for sure? No.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “We make judgments fast because we have to. We're to survive. Is that a tiger or is that not a tiger? And we go. We have to act fast and incomplete information. So we judge quickly and we're often wrong, or at least sometimes wrong, which is all I need for this. We're often wrong. So we fool ourselves and we fool other people. And so there's lots of stories that get told in some of them. Result in a concrete benefit, and some of them don't.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Let's talk about what tools they are, what you say are the tools of math and physics. I mean, I think we're in the same position as our ancestors in the caves or before the caves or whatever we find ourselves in this world and we're curious. We also Important to be able to explain what happens when there are fires, when there are not fires, wet animals and plants are good to eat, and all that stuff. But we're also just curious. We look up in the sky and we see the sun and the moon and the stars and we see some of those move. And we're very curious about that. And I think we're just naturally curious. So this is my version of how we work. We make up stories and explanations. And where there are two things which I think are just true of being human.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “That crazy idea to you? There's a version of that that is not crazy at all. What we experience is constructed by our brains. And buy our brains in an active mode. So we don't see the raw world. We see a very processed world. We feel something was very processed through our brains. And our brains are incredible. But I still believe that behind that experience, that mirror or veil or whatever you want to call it, there is a real world. And I'm curious about it.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “We don't know. We don't know. This is science. I presume we're talking about science. And we believe or I believe That there is a world that is independent of my existence and my experience about it and my knowledge of it. And this I call the real world.”

    2020-03-07 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source