The Multiverse: A Disadvantaged Perspective

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The multiverse is not something that just came out of physicists saying, wow, wouldn't it be cool that there was like a multiverse? If there were all these universes, that's never been the motivation. There is still an ambition that string theory will actually explain something about the real world. People don't like to be told that they're ignoring the real world and so that's a tricky thing to get into.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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