Is There a Third Way Out?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

We expect that by taking these statements about possibley impossible as mental, you can somehow er see a possible resolution between this oconflict between the microscopic and reversibl laws. Because all of the dynamica las we know that are fundamental are a can we expect it to be time reverses metric. So in this sense, er, we are somehow proposing a third way out, er from this notorious clash. E.g., rather than trajectories of isolated systems not being reversible, which are obviously in conflict with the understanding of the microscopic physics that we currently have at the moment.

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.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.