15: Garrett Lisi - My Arch-nemesis, Myself: Difference between revisions
15: Garrett Lisi - My Arch-nemesis, Myself (edit)
Revision as of 14:15, 17 April 2020
, 17 April 2020→Transcript
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L - yeah, and it's stunning just to what degree that failed. | |||
W - Ok, so say more? | |||
well the the String Theory unification program - the idea that this description of all fundamental particles and gravity - in our entire universe - would come from a model based on strings vibrating and other higher dimensions. I mean that this unification program has failed. The vast majority of the high-energy physics community has been working on it for over 30 years and they've utterly failed to deliver on that promise despite the high hopes and promises | L - well the the String Theory unification program - the idea that this description of all fundamental particles and gravity - in our entire universe - would come from a model based on strings vibrating and other higher dimensions. I mean that this unification program has failed. The vast majority of the high-energy physics community has been working on it for over 30 years and they've utterly failed to deliver on that promise despite the high hopes and promises | ||
W - well, and this has to do - and again we can sort of do a small synopsis of the field - the idea was the original hopes had been built around an idealized point particle concept where hard little balls were kind of the naive model of particles then you had to smear them out and do waves on waves from that point particle concept called second quantization or quantum field theory and string theory said no the fundamental unit should never have been a hard little ball to begin with it should have been modelled by something that was an "as if string" obviously and it wasn't string made out of atoms it was some sort of mathematical version of | W - well, and this has to do - and again we can sort of do a small synopsis of the field - the idea was the original hopes had been built around an idealized point particle concept where hard little balls were kind of the naive model of particles then you had to smear them out and do waves on waves from that point particle concept called second quantization or quantum field theory and string theory said no the fundamental unit should never have been a hard little ball to begin with it should have been modelled by something that was an "as if string" obviously and it wasn't string made out of atoms it was some sort of mathematical version of | ||
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L - like agiant rolling what kind of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy Katamari Damacy] where it's just collecting everything that it touches and making it part of itself | L - like agiant rolling what kind of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy Katamari Damacy] where it's just collecting everything that it touches and making it part of itself | ||
W - that's right and in fact the claim was if we find something that isn't | W - that's right and in fact the claim was if we find something that isn't string theory we'll just find some way of including it and call it string theory | ||
L - right | L - right | ||
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L - I certainly encountered a lack of nourishment when I graduated in the 90s and I wasn't interested in strings but I was interested in high energy physics | L - I certainly encountered a lack of nourishment when I graduated in the 90s and I wasn't interested in strings but I was interested in high energy physics | ||
W - well I think almost everybody was in that position that that is really the | W - well I think almost everybody was in that position that that is really the founding crime for me in the string revolution. It was the desire to say that everyone who is not part of us as an idiot | ||
L - yeah yeah. That's above and beyond normal physicist arrogance | L - yeah yeah. That's above and beyond normal physicist arrogance | ||
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1) one is that this is the closest we get, responsibly, to asking why are we here what is it that we're made of. It is the thing that would best substitute for a religion if you were able to understand what it was. | 1) one is that this is the closest we get, responsibly, to asking why are we here what is it that we're made of. It is the thing that would best substitute for a religion if you were able to understand what it was. | ||
2) the second thing is is that it appears to be the secret powering our economy that very few people have really fully understood. It gave us the World Wide Web the semiconductor the electron shells the generated chemistry, (L - nuclear power), nuclear power, nuclear weapons, communications technology - electromagnetic, you know, Wi-Fi what have you. If you want | 2) the second thing is is that it appears to be the secret powering our economy that very few people have really fully understood. It gave us the World Wide Web the semiconductor the electron shells the generated chemistry, (L - nuclear power), nuclear power, nuclear weapons, communications technology - electromagnetic, you know, Wi-Fi what have you. If you want, and invented - theoretical physics - more or less created molecular biology. | ||
L - that's probably a bit of a stretch but the other certainly aren't so yeah | L - that's probably a bit of a stretch but the other certainly aren't so yeah | ||
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and I can also make a different case for mathematics which is that physics is but one example of a universe we don't know if there are other universes that can could be (conceived) | and I can also make a different case for mathematics which is that physics is but one example of a universe we don't know if there are other universes that can could be (conceived) | ||
L - so so biology I mean it's it's I I agree it's intricate and and it can be a pure pursuit but it's not pure in the sense that so much of the foundations of biology are somewhat arbitrary like whether it you know DNA | L - so so biology I mean it's it's I I agree it's intricate and and it can be a pure pursuit but it's not pure in the sense that so much of the foundations of biology are somewhat arbitrary like whether it you know DNA a helix is gonna spiral to the left or the right and and and what its chemical components are precisely that might vary other planets you know other civilizations' biologies could be different | ||
AD | AD | ||