Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas AMA | May 2022
May 12, 2022
Listeners delve into the fascinating realms of extraterrestrial life and the intricacies of informed voting. The complexities of moral decision-making and the collaborative essence of scientific progress are explored, linking physics with philosophy. Discussions touch on the emergence of artificial general intelligence and the challenges of screenplay writing. Additionally, the podcast scrutinizes the fragility of democracy, the nature of quantum mysteries, and the art of effectively communicating complex ideas in a rapidly changing world.
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Convincing Arguments for Voting
- If you are uninformed, don't abstain from voting.
- Develop skills to distinguish good information from bad; discuss opinions with different people.
Entropy and Time's Arrow
- Contradiction exists in a time-reversed agent remembering the future and changing the past, explained by entropy.
- The entropic arrow of time, where entropy increases, underlies macroscopic universe asymmetries between past and future.
CMB Smoothness and Past Hypothesis
- Cosmic microwave background smoothness depends on the past hypothesis, assuming low entropy at the start.
- Without this, the smoothness would be a massive, unlikely conspiracy of different effects canceling out.
