118 - Slavoj Žižek & Sean Carroll: Quantum Physics, the Multiverse, and Time Travel

Slavoj Žižek is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University, and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana’s Department of Philosophy. He was also the guest for Robinson’s Podcast #109 on psychoanalysis, wokeness, racism, and a hundred other topics. 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 was one of the guests—along with David Albert of Columbia—on Robinson’s Podcast #106, which covers the Many-Worlds theory of quantum mechanics, entropy and Boltzmann Brains, and the fine-tuned universe. In this episode, Robinson, Sean, and Slavoj (though mostly Sean and Slavoj) talk about quantum mechanics, the indeterminacy of small-scale reality, cosmology and the big bang, major figures like Niels Bohr, Einstein, and Stephen Hawking, and the world of sci-fi, including movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once, Indian Jones, and the Avengers. If you’re interested in the foundations of physics—which you absolutely should be—then please check out the John Bell Institute (Sean is an Honorary Fellow at the JBI), which is devoted to providing a home for research and education in this important area. At this early stage any donations are immensely helpful.

Robinson's Podcast #109 | Slavoj Žižek: Wokeness, Psychoanalysis, and Quantum Mechanics: https://youtu.be/IxmZ4AVac7U

Robinson’s Podcast #106 | David Albert & Sean Carroll: Quantum Theory, Boltzmann Brains, & The Fine-Tuned Universe: https://youtu.be/U6ZtmGIhIhU

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

The John Bell Institute: https://www.johnbellinstitute.org

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:38 Introduction

04:40 Quantum Incompleteness

15:56 A Problem with Many-Worlds?

27:08 Niels Bohr and the Copenhagen Interpretation

40:30 Ontological Indeterminacy and Quantum Physics

47:23 On Superposition, History, and Art

01:02:10 What’s The Status of the Big Bang?

01:09:57 Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Indeterminacy

01:21:13 Will Quantum Mechanics Be in a Theory of Everything?

01:27:55 Everything Everywhere All at Once, Indiana Jones, and The Avengers

01:33:03 Time Travel and Killing Hitler

01:41:54 On Stephen Hawking

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.