In a given universe, e, you may not er find a particular perpetual motion machine, but that doesn't mean that it's not allowed. So i think the the term, the emphasis on counter factuals, is is con to say that among the things that we need to appeal to in order to explain particular features of objects that we encounter in the universe are these counter factual features. And just like with all laws of physics, they appeal to things that are not directly observable.
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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