The Second Law of Thermodynamics

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The second law of thermodynamics is a principle of physics that says things tend to get more random over time. People first paid attention to this back in the 1820s, when steam engines were a big thing. It was an idea that mechanical energy tends to get dissipated as heat and you end up going from sort of systematic motion to this kind of random thing. And then that quickly becamesort of a global principle about how things work.

Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, theoretical physicist, and the founder of Wolfram Research, a company behind Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the Wolfram Physics and Metamathematics projects. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:45) – WolframAlpha and ChatGPT
(26:26) – Computation and nature of reality
(53:18) – How ChatGPT works
(1:53:01) – Human and animal cognition
(2:06:20) – Dangers of AI
(2:14:39) – Nature of truth
(2:36:01) – Future of education
(3:12:03) – Consciousness
(3:21:02) – Second Law of Thermodynamics
(3:44:36) – Entropy
(3:57:36) – Observers in physics
(4:14:27) – Mortality