David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and Director of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics program at Columbia. David is a prior guest of the Robinson’s Podcast multiverse, having appeared on episodes #23 (with Justin Clarke-Doane), #30, and #67 (with Tim Maudlin). Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also host of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape, a terrific show (that influenced the birth of Robinson’s Podcast ) about science, society, philosophy, culture, arts, and ideas. Sean also had a great conversation with David on Mindscape, linked below. Both David and Sean are rare breeds—philosophers who are physicists, and physicists who are philosophers—and in this episode Robinson, David, and Sean speak about some of the philosophical concerns at the foundations of physics. They first discuss the Many-Worlds theory of quantum mechanics before turning to the apparent fine-tuning of our universe for life and the possibility of Boltzmann Brains, or complex observers in the universe that arise spontaneously due to quantum fluctuations or the random motion of matter.
Preorder David’s A Guess at the Riddle: https://a.co/d/4MUEJZN
Sean’s Website: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com
Sean’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: https://a.co/d/dPKZ40X
David Albert on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape: https://youtu.be/AglOFx6eySE
OUTLINE
00:00 In This Episode…
00:59 Introduction
08:11 Superposition and The Many-Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics
22:34 Decoherence
27:20 Probability
41:32 Some Thought Experiments Concerning Probability
01:08:35 Parsimony
01:12:03 The Fine-Tuned Universe and Quantum Theory
01:14:52 Entropy
01:45:37 Intelligent Design
01:47:22 Boltzmann Brains Galore
Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com
Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.
