Sam Kuypers is a theoretical physicist who specialises in the physics of time. If you have the time, Sam can take up as much of it as you like telling you about how our ideas of time have changed…over time. As Sam will reveals: times, they are not a-changing. But there is change! Newtonian physics has a notion of time (or at least Newton himself did), Relativity as discovered by Einstein in the early 1900s radically transformed our notion of what time is and now, in the 21st Century, Sam Kuypers and others are beginning to develop a quantum theory of time. And this is why Sam joins me for this episode as we unpack time as a quantum concept: the very topic of Chapter 11 of “The Fabric of Reality” and go deep on Sam’s more recent contributions to our understanding of the reality of time. Appropriately, time stamps are below.
You may have to take your time with some of this.
00:00 - Introduction to this episode
05:04 - Introduction to Sam Kuypers
06:30 - The day-to-day of a theoretical physicist
10:30 - What led Sam to Oxford University
12:10 - What was Sam’s doctoral thesis about?
15:20 - The importance of Everett
16:30 - “Classical” Time and “universal time”.
27:00 - Julian Barbour and time as a series of instants
30:35 - Spacetime and the timeless view of physical reality.
33:35 - The clash of General Relativity and Quantum Theory I
37:20 - The clash of General Relativity and Quantum Theory II
40:40 - c-numbers and q-numbers
42:30 - The significance of (non) commutability (i.e the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle).
46:05 - The Page-Wooters Construction (Quantum Time I).
53:15 - Can there be change if nothing is ever changing? (Quantum Time II)
55:31 - The Heisenberg vs Schrödinger “Pictures” of Quantum Theory.
57:35 - What is “locality” in physics?
58:40 - Entanglement and: "Does Quantum Theory allows for faster than light communication?”
1:00:48 - Unitary Quantum Theory (vs: Everettian Quantum Theory)
1:05:33 - Philosophical Realism, Physics
1:06:40 - Does Time Exist?
1:07:58 - Is Time Travel Possible?
1:11:30 - How did Sam find his way into physics?
1:14:30 - The Dutch Enlightenment vs The British Enlightenment
1:20:50 - The Netherlands, international trade, tolerance and specialisation
1:23:08 - The Invention of Free Trade and misconceptions with long lifetimes.
1:16:30 - The peculiar rivalry between European Allies
1:28:40 - Prosperity and Pessimism: Are both on the ascendency?
1:32:19: Why are people special?
1:37:14: Liberalism, Authoritarianism and Climate Change
1:40:25: Science, Morality and (eg: Dutch) Innovation
1:43:30 - Concluding Remarks
Ep 107: What is a good explanation?
Ep 106: David Deutsch’s ”The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 4 “Criteria for Reality” Part 2
Ep 105: David Deutsch’s “The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 4 “Criteria for Reality” Part 1
Ep 104: Are We Running Out Of Resources?
Ep 103: Ask Me Anything #2
Ep 102: The Thin Veneer
Ep 101 Ask Me Anything 1
Ep 100: David Deutsch
Ep: 99 David Deutsch‘s ”The Beginning of Infinity” - a retrospective in 99 minutes
Ep 98: ”Knowledge” Chiara Marletto‘s ”The Science of Can and Can‘t” Ch 5 Readings and discussion.
Ep 97: David Deutsch answers a question about dark energy. A question for David number 10.
Ep 96: Computational Universality: Yaron Brook vs Sam Harris response
Ep: 95 Steven Pinker‘s ”Rationality” Chapters 1 & 2 Remarks and Analysis
Ep 94: Wealth and the Conflict of Ideas
Ep 93: David Deutsch answers a question about the nature of mind. A question for David number 9.
Ep 92: David Deutsch answers a question about observations. A question for David number 8
Ep 91: David Deutsch‘s ”The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 3 “Problem Solving” Part 2
Ep 90: Fallibilism
Ep: 89 ”Quantum Information” Chiara Marletto‘s ”The Science of Can & Can‘t” Ch 4 readings and discussion
Ep: 88 Critically Creative (Critical and Creative Thinking 2.0).
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