The Ultimate Dynamical Law and the Ultimate Theory of the Initial Conditions

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The idea here is to say that a, this spacific statement, the one that fixes the dynamical laws and h initial conditions, is really just a state twhat happens in a given universe. A, so it cuts out all the other accountof actls, because they're not happening. This could be regarded as a er, in a way, a kind of a caricature version of the traditional way of formulating physics. But ultimately, i think i would say er, this is the ultimate goal of the trad o physics program,.

Traditional physics works within the “Laplacian paradigm”: you give me the state of the universe (or some closed system), some equations of motion, then I use those equations to evolve the system through time. Constructor theory proposes an alternative paradigm: to think of physical systems in terms of counterfactuals — the set of rules governing what can and cannot happen. Originally proposed by David Deutsch, constructor theory has been developed by today’s guest, Chiara Marletto, and others. It might shed new light on quantum gravity and fundamental physics, as well as having applications to higher-level processes of thermodynamics and biology.

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Chiara Marletto received her DPhil in physics from the University of Oxford. She is currently a research fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Her new book is The Science of Can and Can’t: A Physicist’s Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals.

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