Quantum Ontology (WHAT IS REAL?) Encore with Adam Becker

Summary

Ologies with Alie Ward: ENCORE Quantum Ontology (WHAT IS REAL?) with Adam Becker

Episode Theme:
A playful yet deep dive into quantum ontology—how quantum physics forces us to grapple with the question: “What is real?” Alie Ward interviews astrophysicist and science author Dr. Adam Becker, exploring the bizarre rules underpinning reality, the key paradoxes of quantum mechanics, and why not knowing everything is actually pretty wonderful.

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Episode Overview

• Host: Alie Ward
• Guest: Dr. Adam Becker, astrophysicist, philosopher, author
• Date: March 4, 2026
• Main Focus: The philosophical and scientific weirdness of quantum mechanics—its conflicting rules, the measurement problem, multiverse theories, and what it means for reality, existence, and being.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Childhood Curiosity and the Path to Quantum Ontology

• Timestamps: 06:13 – 10:14
• Adam’s initial passion for dinosaurs led to a fascination with space and physics.
  • “When I was a really little kid...I wanted to be a paleontologist because dinosaurs are awesome. And then I discovered space and decided, no, space is more awesome.” (06:49)
• Early confusions about quantum physics versus relativity, and how quantum physics only gets weirder the more you learn.
  • “I thought, oh, all that weird stuff seems a lot weirder. No, I bet when I get to college and I learn quantum physics, that's going to seem less weird, too. That is not what happened. Yeah, no.” (07:57)
• Adam double-majored in physics and philosophy to pursue questions about “what the heck is going on in quantum physics?” (09:11)

Quantum Ontology 101: Definitions & Basics

• Timestamps: 10:14 – 12:29
• Quantum: The physics of the ultra-tiny, and since tiny things make up everything, it's the physics of everything.
• Ontology: The philosophical study of being; “What is real?”
• Quantum ontology asks: What does quantum physics really say about what exists?

Relativity vs. Quantum Theory Summarized

• Timestamps: 11:02 – 12:29
• Relativity: Space and time are interdependent; what seems constant can change depending on motion.
  • “There are things that don’t change...but those things are not distances or time. They’re a combination of space and time. Spacetime.” (12:15)
• Quantum Theory: The world of the ultra-tiny behaves in ways that are “very, very unusual...and we don’t know what that is.” (12:40)

The Quantum Measurement Problem: Contradictory Rules

• Timestamps: 13:50 – 20:18
• The math of quantum physics works extremely well but doesn’t resemble the tangible world.
  • “It is hard to understand the relationship between the mathematics of quantum physics and the world that we live in, because the math works really well...” (13:50)
• Classic advice in the field: “Shut up and calculate,” dismissing conceptual concerns. Adam calls this approach “completely fucking ridiculous.” (15:41)
• The contradiction: Schrödinger’s equation (smooth, deterministic) vs. Born Rule (random, probabilistic and only triggered by “measurement”).
  • “The idea of measurement is really, really fucking vague.” (19:20)
• The measurement problem raises absurd questions, like: “Does quantum mechanics only apply to Adam Becker? Does it work when a dog looks at an electron?” (19:20)

Memorable Quote

Alie Ward: “Quantum ontology. It’s like the opera of the physics world.” (20:18)

Schrodinger’s Cat & Many-Worlds Interpretation

• Timestamps: 25:24 – 32:42
• Schrodinger’s Cat: The famous thought experiment highlighting quantum indefiniteness when not observed.
• Many-Worlds (Everettian) Interpretation: Every measurement splits the universe into different realities, each outcome realized somewhere.
  • “Everett said...when you open the box to look, you split into two copies...each copy of you only sees one cat.” (29:05)
  • “So then every time there is a decision, it splits and splits and splits.” (29:39)
• Adam doesn’t personally subscribe to many-worlds but views it as a reasonable option.

Memorable Exchange

Alie Ward: “So then every time there is a decision, it splits and splits and splits.”
Dr. Adam Becker: “Yeah, it’s this entanglement. Sort of contagious. And ends up going through the whole world.” (29:43)

Pilot Wave Theory & Other Leading Interpretations

• Timestamps: 35:10 – 41:31
• Pilot Wave (de Broglie–Bohm): Particles have a definite location, guided by an associated wave—the 'pilot wave'.
  • “Every particle has a wave associated with it that determines how it moves.” (36:05)
• Weird consequences: entanglement effects propagate faster than light but can’t be used for signalling.
• The theory’s history is marked by professional drama and even political trouble (e.g., David Bohm being exiled).

Crackpots, Simulation Theory, and Why "It's All a Simulation" Fails

• Timestamps: 41:31 – 47:12
• Adam gets many emails with grand new theories (“Crackpot Index” is real).
  • "Being an old, retired white male engineer must have some effect on the brain... because those people, I'm pretty sure they're sober and they send me all sorts of wacky stuff all the time..." (41:36)
• Adam strongly rejects simulation theory as currently discussed (“the simulation thing is fucking bullshit”). (43:58)
  • Its assumptions about technology, history, and the nature of life are “hopelessly myopic...a very western centric, male, centric, white, centric, rich centric argument.” (45:24)
• Even if this IS a simulation, suffering is real and must be addressed.

Memorable Quote:

Dr. Adam Becker: “Second, even if this is a simulation, the suffering is real. Yes, I am suffering. Yes, you are suffering. We gotta fix that shit.” (47:03)

Are We Real? Adam’s Emergent Property Analogy

• Timestamps: 47:18 – 50:16
• Technically, yes, we’re real! Even if there are ‘lower-level’ realities, emergent properties—like temperature—are still real.
  • “That wall is actually a temperature. And we are here and we are having this conversation. Even if...space and time...emerges out of some lower level of reality, there’s still a space and a time that we’re in, even if it’s not fundamental.” (49:28)

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Lightning Round: Audience (Patreon) Questions

Quantum Physics in Nature

• Timestamps: 55:45 – 56:50
• Quantum physics underpins all chemistry and thus all biochemistry and life.
  • “Without quantum physics we wouldn’t understand...the phenomenon of solidness...all of chemistry, and thus all of biochemistry and thus all of life.” (55:45)

Why Do Questions of Existence Matter?

• Timestamps: 56:53 – 59:18
• Human curiosity is fundamental; scientific worldviews shape art and society.
  • “Science is not a separate human activity from the rest of the human world...the pictures of the world that come from science not only go out into the other sciences, but out into the wider world...” (57:13)

Quantum Tunneling Explained

• Timestamps: 59:18 – 60:22
• Tunneling: Quantum objects can move through barriers classically impossible—vital for the sun shining!
  • “Tunneling is not more strange than the rest...if you can get a good picture of the world that comes with quantum physics, you get tunneling for free.” (59:26)

Quantum Computing

• Timestamps: 61:02 – 64:13
• Quantum computers harness properties like superposition/entanglement for some computations classical computers can’t.
  • “There are things that classical normal computers can do better than quantum computers and vice versa...” (61:13)

Scientist Proving God?

• Timestamps: 64:35 – 65:01
• Adam’s advice: “Get a new therapist.” (64:46)

Pop Culture Accuracy & Uncertainty Principle Joke

• Timestamps: 66:50 – 68:12
• Quantum Leap “has almost nothing to do with quantum physics, but I watched that show so much growing up.” (68:22)
• Uncertainty Principle Joke:
  • “Cop pulls Heisenberg over for speeding and says, ‘Sir, do you know how fast you were going?’ And he says, ‘No, but I know exactly where I am.’” (67:30)

String Theory, Consciousness, and Quantum Physics

• Timestamps: 69:34 – 73:05
• String theory seems like science, but “what the fuck?” is a reasonable response.
  • “Sure. Seems like science.” (70:45)
• Is consciousness special in quantum physics? Adam: “I do not see a compelling reason to invoke consciousness in quantum physics, given that there are alternatives.” (73:05)

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Adam Becker’s Writing Process & Life as an Author

• Timestamps: 73:05 – 78:54
• Adam outlines, writes “shitty first drafts,” follows 50 minutes on/10 off (no screens, only reading fiction in breaks).
  • “I can’t write 90,000 words, but I can write 600 words a day. And if I do that for a while, eventually I’ll have 90,000 words.” (73:35)
• His secret: embrace bad drafts and focus on narrative and people, not just abstract ideas.
  • “People care about ideas, but they generally care more about people than they care about ideas.” (77:13)
• There is no math in his book, except for “2 times 3 equals 3 times 2.” (78:38)

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Final Reflections: What’s the Best (and Worst) Thing About Quantum Ontology?

• Timestamps: 78:54 – 81:46
• Worst part: dealing with those who say the debate is over (“shut up and calculate”).
  • “There are so many of them. They are wrong.” (79:05)
• Best part: asking—and being allowed to ask—the biggest questions about reality.
  • “You get to ask the biggest questions...these really deep questions about the world...” (79:44)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “The real problem, the contradiction, right? The gap in logic is, okay, we have these two rules. They're not the same rule. When do we apply one and when do we apply the other?”
  — Dr. Adam Becker (19:20)

• “It is not clear how any of this works.”
  — Dr. Adam Becker (34:25)

• “But the idea that there are such fundamental things in the world that we do not understand...That is amazing.”
  — Dr. Adam Becker (32:42)

• “You get to ask the biggest questions. I know, right? Like, these are the biggest questions.”
  — Dr. Adam Becker (79:44)

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Resources and Follow-up

• Dr. Adam Becker’s Books:
  • What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics
  • More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
• Charity: TechBridge Girls (techbridgegirls.org)
• Follow Adam: @freelanceastro on Instagram; Bluesky: Adam Becker
• Show Notes, Merch, and Smallogies (kid-friendly episodes): alieward.com/ologies

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Summary Takeaways

• Quantum physics' math has unmatched predictive power, but its philosophical implications—what it says about what's actually real—remain unresolved and fascinatingly strange.
• Interpretations abound: Copenhagen (orthodox), Many-Worlds, Pilot Wave—none complete, none universally accepted.
• Scientists (and everyone else) are drawn by curiosity to face the weird fact: we might not ever fully know the nature of reality. But asking the questions is the point.
• Quantum ontology isn't just for physicists—it's about everyone’s place as “pieces of the world” in a universe stranger than fiction.

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For First-Time Listeners

Expect a heady, humorous, and ultimately liberating ride through one of science’s biggest mysteries—served with clarity, storytelling, and a reminder: you don’t have to know it all to be awe-struck by what we don’t know.

Transcript

[Alie Ward]

This podcast is brought to you by Hotels.com make your next trip work for you. Hotels.com's new save your Way feature lets you choose between Instant Savings now or Banking Rewards for later. It's a flexible rewards program that puts you in control with no confusing math or blackout dates. Book [e-mail] Save Your Way is available to loyalty members in the US and UK on hotels with member prices. Other terms apply. CSITE for details Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

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[Alie Ward]

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[Dr. Adam Becker]

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[Alie Ward]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3

[Dr. Adam Becker]

month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only,

[Alie Ward]

then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee full [e-mail] hello, hello, this is 2026 Ally and I'd like to toss us down a wormhole with one of my favorite episodes. But before we get into it, a little Update. This ologist, Dr. Adam Becker has recently released a new book. It's titled More Everything Forever AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. It's about the ideology of technological salvation, where this religious belief comes from, who's pushing it by pretending it's science instead of religion, and how it's taken over Silicon Valley and also how it threatens to take over the world again. His book, More Everything Forever, that's his new one and he told me by email I'm pretty hopeful that we can successfully fight back against this stuff. So you'll hear more about his book what is Real but also just an update. More Everything Forever is now out. Okay, onward. Oh hey, it's your old Internet Uncle Dad Ward Vaughn podcast here with another episode of Ologies Alie Ward hi. So do you remember your first real existential crisis? Also, if you clicked on this and don't know jack or shit about quantum physics, you're in the right place. You're in good company. Okay, before we spiral into deep, deep space and dark matter, let's shine a little light on some business. So first off, thank you to everyone on Patreon.com Ologies for supporting the show, sending in your questions. Thanks to everyone strutting about on planet Earth in Ologies Merch from ologies merch merch.com and thank you to everyone who leaves reviews which help the show so much. And here is a very fresh 2026 one from Glowing Jellybean555 who wrote I love this podcast so much and it's a phenomenal way to stay light hearted and informed on all sorts of things through trying times. Glowing Jellybean thanks for the glowing review. We do our best. Okay, Quantum Ontology. So many syllables. What do they mean? Quantum, in terms of physics, deals with matter and energy at its most fundamental level. And quantum comes from the Latin meaning how much, how far, how great an extent already. So many questions just to the definition of this. Also, ontology comes from the root ont meaning being, and it is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. So Quantum Ontology Matter. What the hell is it? What are we made of? What is real? Just tuck a bib under your brain kiddos. Cause this week's episode is just a hearty It's a feast of information. It's dense, it's like a bucket of mashed potatoes, and it's filling. Like drinking a pint of gravy. It's gonna make you question everything about life itself. What is reality? What exists? Why are we here? But first, will we cover everything about this topic? Hell no. Will we have to leave out a bunch? Hell yes. Consider this like a warm welcome, an entree into some of the basic concepts of about the hiccups in observing and understanding existence. So this ologist has a BA in Philosophy and in Physics from Cornell and a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Michigan, is a celebrated science writer and the author of the new book what Is the Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics? Which, by the way, the Wall Street Journal calls fascinating, the New York Times calls a thorough, illuminating exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science. Splendid, says the Washington Post. Science magazine calls it riveting. So the book, it's good. I met this ologist about four years ago at scicom camp and he handed me his business card which read Freelance Astrophysicist. I was like, I like this guy. And then the next year he mentioned he was pitching a book. And then the following year he said he had a book deal and was writing it. And now here we are. His book, it recounts a lot of the drama in the quantum physics world. Boy, howdy, is there some not only are you gonna walk away with an excite exciting overview of what the hell the universe may be all about. But you'll also hear about some academic infighting and why it's exciting that there are so many mysteries in the universe. So in between seminars and panels at scicom Camp, we pulled up a couch, we got to talking. So settle in for philosophical physics Fun times, wherein we discuss what matter is made of and how many universes there could be and why what we think we know just does not add up. And how someone could say you're wrong, but maybe you're righter than everyone realizes. And also how an inbox can be a lot like a crackpot. And how to tackle your dreams when they seem too big to fathom. And Einstein and string theory and gravity and tunneling and wormholes and cats. And more with astrophysicist, author, and quantum ontologist Dr. Adam Becker.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Well, that'll be fun.

[Alie Ward]

Yes.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Okay, so is this good?

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Let me check your levels.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Okay. Hi. How's this?

[Alie Ward]

It's great. You have a good radio voice. Let's go back in time. Yeah, if you will.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Sure.

[Alie Ward]

Would it be a wormhole that I could go back in time to ask you about your childhood?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I guess you could? Sure, why not?

[Alie Ward]

Would a wormhole do it? Or is it a different type of tunnel in time?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I mean, there's no known way that would definitely work to go back in time, but wormholes are one of the better theories about how you could maybe do it.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so let's go through a wormhole. Now, going back, did you always like physics, Astrophysics? How do you. How does someone decide that they're into something so complex?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Oh, wow, that's a good question. So, yeah, see, I didn't think that I was going to sit on a couch and talk about my childhood, but here we are. Yeah, you. You trapped me. Yeah. So when I was a really little kid, like a lot of other kids, I wanted to be a paleontologist because dinosaurs are awesome. I love dinosaurs. And then I discovered space and decided, no, no, space is more awesome. And so I got really into space and astronomy and astrophysics, and then sort of slowly slid from astrophysics just to physics. And so by the time I was in high school, I thought, okay, yeah, I think physics is the direction I want to go in. This seems really interesting. And I read a lot of pop physics books, and they said some confusing things, and in particular, they talked about two theories that said really wild and strange things about the world. One of them was Einstein's relativity, and the other one was quantum physics, and, you know, really, really weird things in both of Those theories. But turns out relativity doesn't require more than, like, early high school math. Okay, you don't need calculus. You don't even need pre calculus. Like, it's just geometry and algebra. And so I learned relativity in high school. And I thought, oh, all that weird stuff seems a lot weird. No, I bet when I get to college and I learn quantum physics, that's going to seem less weird, too. That is not what happened. Yeah, no. So instead, I got to college and I started learning quantum physics. And it didn't get better. It got worse. And so I was. I was in this class where the professor was talking about one of the weird things in quantum physics. I don't remember exactly what, because it was a long time ago. But, you know, he was saying something about how when you're not looking at things, you can't talk about what's going on. But. But then when you look, things change. And I probably asked something like, okay, but what do you mean by looking? What does that mean? And we kind of got into it. And I don't remember exactly how the fight went down. But I just remember that at the end, he said in this really haughty, disdainful voice, he said, well, if that's the kind of question that you're interested in. Then why don't you go to the philosophy department?

[Alie Ward]

Burn.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, but. But joke was on him. I'd already gone to the philosophy department. And so I did double major in physics and philosophy. Oh, God. A lot of that was trying to wrap my head around, like, what the heck is going on in quantum physics? Because, like, this is. This is a really. It's a really weird area. But it's also supposed to be this really fundamental theory about, you know, the fundamental constituents of the world. Right? Like, the tiniest things, the things that. The things that make us up are made of. Right. Subatomic particles. And yet it wasn't at all clear what was going on. And so I started digging into that. And the more I dug into it, the weirder it got. And I just did that more and more. And eventually thought, you know, I want to write a book about this. Because this is just so strange. And I don't understand why this isn't more widely known.

[Alie Ward]

Am I going to feel like I'm on mushrooms?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I mean, look at the COVID of my book. It says, what is real? And it's got, like, wavy rainbow lines. Yeah. So, yeah, the answer is probably yes. Yes.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Don't you feel funny?

[Alie Ward]

Why should I feel funny? Well, let's go Back first and define what is quantum ontology?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah. So quantum, I mean, quantum physics is the physics of the ultra tiny, except that we think that ultra tiny things make up the world around us. So although it's the physics of the ultra tiny, there's also reason to think it's. It's just the physics of everything. Ontology is the study of what there is, of what stuff is in the world. So quantum ontology is the study of. Okay, what does quantum physics tell us is in the world? Or. You know the title of my book, right. What is real? And it is not clear what quantum physics tells us about the world. It's just not clear at all. Even though it's not a new theory, it's been around for almost 100 years.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, well, let's start with the theory of relativity, which someone with high school math could understand.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Sure.

[Alie Ward]

Can you give that to me in, like, a nutshell?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Sure.

[Alie Ward]

He sounds unsure, but that's okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Right. So here's one way of looking at what the theory of relativity tells us. So we sort of think from our everyday lives that if I'm standing still or if I'm in a car going at, like, 20 miles an hour, there are some things that just don't change between those two situations. Like how fast my car watch runs shouldn't change between those two situations. Or how far it is between my house and the movie theater down the street that shouldn't change either. It turns out, though, that these things that we think of as not changing between those two situations, we call those things invariant because they don't vary. The invariance between those two situations aren't what we think they are. It turns out that actually the rate that my watch runs at does change between those two situations. And the distance between my apartment and the movie theater down the street does change. There are things that don't change, but those things are not distances or time. They're a combination of space and time. Space, time.

[Alie Ward]

Okay. Is time the fourth dimension?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Sure. Yeah. In relativity, it is.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

And now quantum theory.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah. Oh, you want me to do the same thing for quantum theory?

[Alie Ward]

Just in a nutshell, Just let us know what we're working with.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yes. So quantum theory says that there is something very, very unusual going on in the world of the very tiny.

[Alie Ward]

Really?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yes. And we don't know what that is.

[Alie Ward]

What's happening now is this a lot about dark matter. And it doesn't make sense that there's so much space between atoms. Holy shit. I just realized, writing this, that Adam's name is Adam. Adam, what is life? Also, real quick, the matter all around you, the stuff that makes up everything you see and touch and smell and lick. All that matter in the universe is 5% of what exists. And according to NASA, dark matter is something that we can calculate, but we can't see or detect. And it interacts with gravity, but it doesn't emit or reflect light, hence it's dark. And it makes up about 27% of the universe. Something called dark energy makes up 68% of the universe. And we know it's strong and it's getting stronger, but we don't get what it is. So just know. The wisest minds alive don't know shit. And it frustrates them enough to keep getting out of bed every morning just to figure it out.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Dark matter, sure, we don't really know what's going on there. We know it's around, but we don't know what it's made of. There is a lot of empty space inside of atoms, but that's not. That's not really what's going on here either. That's not why we don't understand this. What's going on instead is it is hard to understand the relationship between the mathematics of quantum physics and the world that we live in, because the math works really well. We can use it to predict and explain all kinds of things, but it also doesn't really look like the world around us. And that's fine. You know, things can be weird. It's a big world. There's plenty of room for weirdness.

[Alie Ward]

You're weird. Thank you.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

But it's. It's not. There should be a story, even if it's a weird story that quantum physics tells us about the world. And it needs to be a story that. That makes internal sense, even if it's a really, really weird story. Right. There's a difference between being bizarre and being internally contradictory. Right.

[Alie Ward]

So what he's saying is that the universe, kind of like a huge restaurant tab at a friend's birthday dinner where no one has accounted for tax or tip. Are there three beverages? Things just don't add up, and everyone is testy about it.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

The weird thing is that the standard way of answering questions like what does quantum physics tell us about the world around us? Is to say, shut up. That's a stupid question. There's actually a saying in physics to summarize this attitude. Shut up and calculate.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, boy.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Because no, no one. That. That was originally coined by the physicist David Merman as as, like a pejorative. Like, he was describing an attitude that other people have.

[Alie Ward]

Right.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

He. No one actually should say that in earnest, but some people do. And, yeah, it's. It's completely fucking ridiculous.

[Alie Ward]

Well, what are. Where are these logic gaps? Like, I know that it's so bizarre, and at least if you could understand the bizarreness, but what is it that's so contradictory? Like, what do we think? What don't we get?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, so. So there's this. There's this thing in quantum physics, this sort of fundamental role that the idea of measurement plays. Say that I want to describe. I'm holding a pen. Say I want to describe where this pen is, you know, or where I'm going to find this pen using the physics that had before quantum physics, like Isaac Newton's physics.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, quick, aside. Newtonian physics is also called classical mechanics, and it deals with objects that aren't at a tiny, tiny scale and how they move and rest and such. So apples falling on our heads, tossing your socks in the hamper from across the room, the inertia that causes you to spill hot tea on your crotch in the car. All of those things exist in space and behave in predictable ways.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I can do that with three numbers. I can say, okay, this pen is this height above the ground, and it's this far off to the right, and it's this far in front of me. That's three numbers. That's all I need. If I want to take all the information I have about where I'm going to find an electron or some subatomic particle in quantum physics, it's not going to require three numbers. It's going to require an infinity of numbers scattered across all of space. And this set of numbers is called a wave function, okay? And as the name implies, it kind of waves. It undulates smoothly, right? And that, that wavy motion is described by this very nice, pretty equation called the Schrodinger equation. And the Schrodinger equation kind of smells like a law of physics, okay? It looks like a good candidate for a fundamental law of physics. And it says that wave functions, you know, they wave, they. They move smoothly, and they. They move in a completely determined fashion. There's nothing random or.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so when we zoom all the way into an atom or the elements that make up an atom, instead of having three dimensions, X, Y, Z, we have an infinity of numbers to describe its location. And those infinity of numbers make up a wave. Got it. Look, we understand everything makes sense. We're pretty much quantum physicists now. All of Us. Just kidding. But we can still celebrate it.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

But the standard way of using quantum physics says, okay, wave functions obey the Schrodinger equation. Except when you look. When you actually look for the electron, the Schrodinger equation is temporarily suspended. At which point this entire other law of physics that is completely different and contradictory comes in. It's called the Born Rule. This is Jason Born.

[Alie Ward]

Okay. It's actually named for German mathematician and physicist Max Born, who helped develop quantum mechanics and was nominated for a Nobel Prize by Einstein himself. But most importantly, Max Born is the grandpa of Greece's Olivia Newton John. When I read that, I had chills. Like multiplying. But, yeah. The Born Rule measures probability of a particle's position. And it came on the quantum scene in 1926.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

And that says, oh, yeah, that wave function that moves smoothly. It stops moving smoothly, it goes to zero everywhere except in the spot where you found the electron. What? Yeah. And so this leads to a couple of questions. First of all, that's weird.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Why does that happen?

[Alie Ward]

I don't know.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, weirdness, though, is fine. The real problem, the contradiction, right? The gap in logic is, okay, we have these two rules. They're not the same rule. When do we apply one and when do we apply the other? Because we need to know that. Because they're not the same rule. The usual answer is, oh, we use the Schrodinger equation when we're not looking, when we're not making the measurement, and we use the Born Rule when we do. The problem is that the. The idea of measurement is really, really fucking vague. Like, is it when I make a measurement, does quantum mechanics only apply to me? Adam Becker. Like, that can't be right. Right. Does it work when a dog looks at an electron? Right. Or, you know, do you need to be, like, better qualified?

[Alie Ward]

This is bananas.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

It's completely nuts. And the other thing is, like I said, electrons aren't the only things that have wave functions. This pen has a wave function. You have a wave function. I have a wave function. The universe has a wave function.

[Alie Ward]

You get a wave function, you get a wave function, you get a wave function. Quantum ontology. It's like the opera of the physics

[Dr. Adam Becker]

world was the wave function of the universe just waiting for billions and billions of years for someone to come along and suddenly collapse it and, you know, have the Schrodinger equation not apply. Like, it's just not clear when one equation applies and when another applies. There are people who would say that I am wrong about that. These are the same people. Who tell you to shut up and calculate if you ask them. If you pin them down and try to ask them. Okay, fine, hotshot. When do you use one and when do you use the other? They're going to give you something that's either internally contradictory or that contradicts the idea that quantum physics is more fundamental than Newton's physics.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

And now. Oy vey. There's a lot going on there.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

There is a lot going on.

[Alie Ward]

And so the notion of. Do you remember Snuffalupagus from Sesame?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I remember Snuffleupagus.

[Alie Ward]

Is there a Snuffleupagus rule?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

He's only there when people who aren't Big Bird aren't looking.

[Alie Ward]

Yes.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah. Oh, man. Big Bird is definitely not the prime observer of quantum mechanics, I can tell you that. Right. Carol Spinney does not have, like, special quantum power. Big Bird.

[Alie Ward]

Big Bird.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Big Bird. It's all right. It's all right. No, it's not.

[Alie Ward]

Just side note, Carol Spinney is the actor and puppeteer who played Big Bird until his retirement last year. And also, did everyone else know his name and that he also voiced Oscar the Grouch? Or do astrophysicists just have large brain buckets full of trivia? Where were we? Yes. Okay, so the wave function that describes the place of a tiny particle collapses to a point when it's observed. This is wave function collapse. Does observing something make it exist differently? Okay, so then what does that mean for us? Like, if I am a wave function until someone looks at me and then I'm not, what does that mean for ontology, for the science and the study of being? What is anyone?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, it means that there's something we don't understand here. It means that the story is clearly not complete. It means that shutting up and calculating is good practical advice if you want to calculate stuff, but it means it can't be the real story about the world. It is good to ask these questions because there must be something else going on. So the problem then is, okay, what is that story of the world? And the answer is, we have multiple candidates for a possible story of the world. An interpretation of quantum physics. There are multiple interpretations running around. There isn't a consensus about which one is the right one.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so when it comes to quantum ontology, are we real? What are we? What is reality? How does it work? Why don't things add up between points versus waves? And why can't we detect or describe dark matter or dark energy? Nobody knows. But there have been scratch paper pads and whiteboards just chock a block filled with theories. Let's hear a few. Give me some of the top ones. Like is multiverses one?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, that's one of them. That's probably the most popular one. Other than, you know, the non answer of Shut up. That's a stupid question. So the many worlds interpretation, which was developed by this joker named Hugh Everett III in 19, in the mid-1950s while he was a grad student in physics, he basically got drunk on sherry one night with a couple of other physicists and then basically develop this interpretation in part to stick it to the guy he was drunkenly arguing with, who was an assistant of this guy Niels Bohr, who's a big famous physicist.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so Hugh Everett, who as a child wrote a letter to Einstein and got a nice response and then later in his life sat in on some of Einstein's lectures, ran with his posse. So this Hugh Everett, oh, he loved booze and smoking and quantum theory and he got his PhD in it in the quantum theory at least. And Niels Bohr, who by the by was a big deal, Nobel prize winning quantum physicist and one of like the folks who proposed the structure of an atom with the electrons spinning around it and parts of what became known as the Copenhagen interpretation that a particle exists in every position of the wave function until it's observed. Okay, so Everett, he was gently schmammard and arguing with someone from Neil Bohr's lab about Schrodinger's equation, which tries to find the probability of a particle at a certain point, surfing that wave function when we look at it. Okay, so they're arguing.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Everett basically said, look, what if it's just all Schrodinger all the time? Like what if that's the only thing that plays on the quantum physics radio station? It's just 100% Schrodinger. What if that other thing, the born rule never comes in, wave functions never collapse.

[Alie Ward]

What does it mean to be wall to wall Schrodinger? Is that like boxed in by Schrodinger? Is a dead cat involved?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Well, to explain that, I need to bring in the most famous thought experiment in all of quantum physics. Schrodinger's cat.

[Alie Ward]

Yes.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Right. So Schrodinger came up with this way before Hugh Everett, he came up with his cat in the 1930s to explain why he thought there was a big problem here. Because Schrodinger and Einstein and a couple of the other founders of quantum physics were really bothered by this problem. It got a special name later on the measurement problem, they were really, really concerned about this. They thought there was something missing from the theory. Schrodinger illustrated this by saying, look, maybe quantum particles are weird, maybe they can perform strange tricks. That wave function describing where you're going to find an electron, it's sort of smeared out over all of space. That kind of suggests that maybe the electron is in mult places at once until you look.

[Alie Ward]

But who's looking and what counts? Nobody actually knows.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Anyway, so he said, imagine that you have a box, a sealed box, and in that box you have a very slightly radioactive lump of metal and you have a radiation detector pointed at it. And you have this contraption set up so that when the detector detects radiation, it drops a little hammer that smashes a glass vial of cyanide and there's a cat in there with this whole thing. So basically, if the lump of metal emits any radiation, the cat will die.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, okay, right.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

So you put this all together, you seal the box and you wait like 30 minutes. And at this point the Schrodinger equation says, okay, look, the chunk of radiation that could be emitted by this metal, it, it either has or has not been emitted. And so the wave function sort of says, well, it's been emitted and not emitted, which means that the detector has and hasn't been tripped, which means that the glass vial has and has not broken. So the cat in there is, according to the Schrodinger equation, is sort of part dead and part alive, or both dead and alive. It's in this state called a superposition, which is sort of generally the state that most things are in most of the time, according to the Schrodinger equation. But according to the usual way of thinking about quantum physics, this sort of very unsatisfying and incomplete idea that you just shut up and don't think about what it means to measure when you open the box, then the cat is either dead or alive. And somehow opening the box made that happen. And that's ridiculous. Schrodinger said, maybe particles can be in one place or more than one place at a time, but cats are either dead or alive. And if you open the box and find a dead cat, then the minute before you open the box, the cat was either dead or died. And if you open it and find a living cat, it's not like it was not entirely living before you opened the box.

[Alie Ward]

Right? All right, so remember our Sherry shithammered, fun loving physicist Hugh Everett arguing with the biggest fish in the physics pond that their Copenhagen interpretation was bullcock a horse pucky.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Everett solved this problem a different way.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Everett said. No, no, no, no, no. It's all Schrodinger all the time. So when you open the box, what's in the box? You know, the cat's both dead and alive before you open the box. And then when you open the box, you get entangled with the stuff in the box.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, heads up on this next part. Entanglement sounds like a boundary issue in an unhealthy relationship, but it's actually quantum physics, and it's cool as hell.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

So Everett said, sure. So what that means is, you know, the box split according to the Schrodinger equation. And then when you open the box to look, you split into two copies. Hello, John.

[Alie Ward]

Hello, John.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

And the reason that you don't see both a living and a dead cat is because you split. And so each copy of you only sees one cat. One of you sees a living cat.

[Alie Ward]

Thank God.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

And one of you sees a dead cat, but both copies only see one cat.

[Alie Ward]

So then every time there is a decision, it splits and splits and splits and splits.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, it's this entanglement. Sort of contagious. And ends up going through the whole world. And so the whole world eventually splits into the dead cat, and the living cat branches. And this happens over and over again all the time. And so you end up with this massive collection of universes, a multiverse.

[Alie Ward]

What if there's three options? Because not everything's on a binary.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

That's right. Yeah. So then you get three copies. Or what if you left the cat in there for 15 minutes? Right. So instead of leaving it in there long enough that you had a 50, 50 shot of finding a dead cat, you. You've probably got a living cat.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Right. Sweet. So then there's two copies, but somehow you're more likely to be the copy that sees the living cat. And this is another part of the problem, right, because quantum physics famously only gives you answers in terms of probabilities almost all of the time. But the Schrodinger equation isn't a random equation. It's completely determined. So where do the probabilities come from? Well, they come in when you use this other rule, the born rule.

[Alie Ward]

Born rule, to refresh. Calculates the probability of measuring or observing a particle at a particular spot on the wave.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

One way of thinking about this is to say, oh, well, sure, you know that when you open the box, you're gonna split, but you don't know which universe you're gonna be in when you open the box, you don't know which branch of the wave function that you're gonna be in. And so, you know, this. This rule is about figuring out the probability that you're going to be in the branch with a living cat or a dead cat. It gets really trippy.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, well, so this is the many worlds theory, which is one of the ways that you could try to explain the inconsistency. What about your own life? Do you think about that when you are about to make a decision?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

You know, I don't go through my life assuming that there are multiple copies of me. Well, so part of the reason is that I don't subscribe to the many worlds interpretation. I think it's a reasonable option, but I don't know that it's the right answer. I don't know what the right answer is. And I don't think anybody can say for sure that they know what the right answer is here because we don't have a good scientific consensus on this debate. But, I mean, in my everyday life, I mean, I don't know, I think I'm a pretty regular guy. I just do things the way I do.

[Alie Ward]

You wouldn't be like, well, I might as well make this risky choice because somewhere there's someone making the less risky choice. I'll have the puffer fish.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, that's not. That's definitely not how I approach my life. I do not recommend that anybody do that. Do not try that at home.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Does it ever. You're. You're a young guy. Does it ever. Does it ever trip you out that, like, in our lifetime, you may not figure out what's up?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is frustrating, right? Because, like, you asked me again, we're on a couch talking about my childhood. But you asked me about, you know, what got me interested in this stuff in the first place. I wanted to know what was going on. Right. I wanted to know what was up. This is why I keep saying, you know, it's fine if our theories are weird. We live in a weird place. There are so many weird things about the world. Have you seen a platypus? Have you seen. This is one of my favorite examples of just a weird thing in physics that has nothing to do with quantum anything. Have you done that demo at a science museum where you sit in a spinny chair and you're holding a bicycle wheel and then you flip it upside down, all of a sudden you start spinning? That's weird. And the wheel feels like it's fighting you? What the Fuck is going on? Like, there's a good answer there, right? So this is just a strange place, and I want to know what's going on in it. So on the one hand, yeah, it's frustrating that we might not know. But on the other hand, it's kind of amazing that we don't know, right? Like, we have been doing science, we have been thinking about this stuff for a long time. And. And every time we discover something new, we find more interesting questions. And this is a complete cliche, and I'm not the first person to say this, but the idea that there are such fundamental things in the world that we do not understand, that we don't know why these things happen. We don't know what the nature of the world is. And we are in it. We are of it. One of the great illusions that being human, and especially being human here and now in this culture, like, sort of fosters is this idea that somehow we are separate from the world. We are of the world. We are pieces of the world. This is one of the things that's so frustrating about this idea that, oh, the rules are different when you measure what's. I'm not special. I'm of the world. There are not different rules for me than there are for anyone else. I'm a piece of the world. I'm part of the world. So are you, so is everyone. We are all of a part with this strange and wonderful place that we live in. And it is not clear how any of this works.

[Alie Ward]

Well, what are some other theories? Okay, so we got multiverses, multi many worlds. What are some other leading theories of what the hell's going on?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Okay, so another one. And this is really gonna piss some people off if I describe this as a leading theory. But it totally is, and they're wrong. There's so much controversy, controversy here. There's so much drama. This is a lot of what drew me to this. Once I realized there's so much weird stuff in this area. And this unresolved debate, I started wondering, okay, why is it unresolved? And it turns out a lot of it has to do with just debate and interpersonal drama between really interesting people. And then I tried to find a book about it, and I couldn't find one, so I wrote one again.

[Alie Ward]

The title is what Is the Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum physics by Dr. Adam Becker. Available wherever you get books. It makes a great holiday gift. He did not ask me to say that, but it is legit, a very good book.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Another leading theory is this. It's this thing. It goes by several different names, but I like to call it pilot wave theory. It's this idea that when you're talking about where is that electron? It is in a place before you look, and when you look, you find it. Here it is. But there's a wave that's associated with each particle, and these waves sort of guide the motion of those particles. And that wave is sort of associated with that wave function that we were talking about before. And one of the things that really clued physicists in in the early 20th century to something really profoundly strange going on was that they found that things that they thought were waves sometimes acted like particles, and things that they thought were particles sometimes acted like waves. Yeah. So like, something that you thought was in one place suddenly, like, started rippling outward like a wave. Something that you thought propagated like a wave and could ripple out and do all those weird wave things suddenly was acting like a baseball. Like, it just really weird. So this is sort of a puzzle, like, how can particles act like waves and vice versa? What's going on? Why does everything seem to have both a particle and a wave nature? And the answer in this theory, the pilot wave theory, is, oh, that's because there are particles and waves, and every particle has a wave associated with it that determines how it moves. And so that sounds really simple and really cool. There are problems, Right. There's problems with everything. Right. Otherwise there'd be no controversy. The first issue, though I hesitate to call it a problem, is, remember entanglement. When things interact, they start sharing a wave. So when you have two entangled particles, one particle, say that they're entangled, and they go flying off in different directions. One of them is way over here, and one of them is way over there. Right? Like, one of them's in Mississippi and one of them is in Calgary. Right? Okay. Then the one in Mississippi, if it moves a little bit, that's going to affect the pilot wave that guides the particle in Calgary instantaneously, immediately. It happens faster than the speed of flight. So that's weird, especially because, you know, we can prove in the math of the theory that that's what happens. But you can also prove that you can't use it for signaling. You can't send messages faster than the speed of light this way.

[Alie Ward]

Okay?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

So somehow there's this subtle connection that we don't see direct evidence of. When I say we don't see direct evidence, we do see evidence, but it's indirect evidence. It's evidence that they are connected. You can't use that connection. You know, like, no one would dispute that they were connected if you could use one to instantly make the other one, you know, send a message. But that's not how this works.

[Alie Ward]

So in the pilot wave theory, there's not a wave or a particle. There's a wave that the particle is kind of surfing. And it can affect the particles in numerous superpositions, but it would be faster than light, which really irks some people because old Albee Einstein's relativity said nothing is faster than light. So he didn't like that.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Also, Adams says this was developed, basic idea was developed by one of the founders of quantum mechanics, a guy named Louis de Broglie in the late 1920s. But then he was convinced by some other physicists that it couldn't be right. He dropped it. It was independently rediscovered by another physicist, David Bohm, in the early 1950s. And he sort of fixed up the problems that were with it that Dubois had sort of left and like, sort of made it a fully fledged theory and published it. And then his life, like descended into a living nightmare for mostly unrelated reasons. Like he. Yeah, he got caught up in the red scare in the 1950s. Yeah, he got blacklisted. He ended up being effectively exiled to Brazil. Then the US government confiscated his passport. So he. So he's trapped in Brazil. There's a whole. It's like a movie. It's like a frigging spy thriller. Oh, my God. Like, dude got the fucking short end of the stick.

[Alie Ward]

Okay. Whew. Now this guy's life, my word. He had his own work at Berkeley confiscated and then classified, so he didn't have access to it so that it could be used on the Manhattan Project. And he eventually, in his 70s, had to have electroconvulsive therapy for depression. And just the saga and the drama of his life and political affiliations affected the reception of his work, sadly. Okay, but one hiccup is that the particle surfing a pilot wave doesn't work with other theories, like the relativistic quantum field theory that explains what happens when you smash particles together in a nearly 17 mile particle accelerator tube underground, which, as discussed in the cosmology episode with Dr. Katie Mack, is not coughing the hard on collider.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

No one has found a way to unequivocally take that theory and reframe it. In terms of this pilot wave stuff. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that if it's right, the job isn't finished. But there are a lot of physicists who don't like this stuff for that reason and because it's got this weird, tangled history. So, yeah, so that's another option. Is this pilot wave theory? There are lots of other options.

[Alie Ward]

How often do you think people get stoned and come up with their own theories and email physicists?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Oh, well, I can tell you that that happens a lot because I get a lot of those emails. Some of those people, by the way, I think are not stoned. I think that there could be, like, an interesting psychology paper done here. Oh, man, I'm going to get some hate mail for this. That, like, being an old, retired white male engineer must have some effect on the brain. That that is similar to, like, cannabis or alcohol or something. Because those people, I'm pretty sure they're sober and they send me all sorts of wacky stuff all the time, and it's not correct.

[Alie Ward]

Do you have a favorite?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Oh, my God.

[Alie Ward]

Any simulation theories?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, I definitely get those. I also get, you know, Einstein was wrong and complete fraud, and here's why. And I'm the only one who found it. And I'm like Galileo. I've been persecuted, right? There's this thing called the Crackpot Index online, which basically you assign more and more points to a crackpot email depending on what kinds of claims they make.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, side note, this Crackpot Index is indeed a real thing, and it was published in 1998 by mathematical physicist John Bias. And one score is determined by point points, with infractions being 5 points for each word in all caps. 10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it for fear that your ideas will be stolen. 10 points for each statement along the lines of, I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to just express it in terms of equations. 10 points for each comparison of yourself to Einstein. 20 points for emailing to complain about the crackpot index. 20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel Prize. 30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization. And.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

And I think the worst thing on that index that you can do is compare yourself to Galileo.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, no. In that vein, either we're going to

[Dr. Adam Becker]

create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality,

[Alie Ward]

or civilization will cease to exist. Those are the two options. And now what about a simulation?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Okay.

[Alie Ward]

What if the reason why we cannot reconcile the wave versus the particle and the bourne versus the schrodinger what if that is because it's all fake, Right?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

So, couple of things there. First of all, you'd still need to have rules. Like if it's a simulation in a computer, like any computer we know there's still rules that the simulation runs on, right? So, and that, that means that there still has to be some internal logical coherence, right? It can't contradict itself, even if it's weird. So there's that. But more, more importantly, and I don't know, I don't know if you're gonna like this answer, I think that the simulation thing is kind of not. No, I'm not gonna mince words. Simulation thing is fucking bullshit. Okay? Is fucking bullshit. And here's what. And, and this is gonna take like a sharp left turn, okay? It assumes that that's something that. It assumes that that's a thing that you can do, which we still don't know that you can do that. And it also assumes that. And I guess what I'm really talking about here is this argument that, that we almost definitely live in a simulation, right? Like there are those people who say, no, no, no, no, we definitely live in one. Like, almost certainly there's almost no chance that this is like the base reality, whatever that means. I really think that's wrong because it assumes that technology, it assumes a lot about the future progression of technology, but it also assumes that technology always progresses through the same inevitable stages. It assumes a lot about history and culture and, and the nature of life and intelligent life and intelligence itself. And I think that basically all of those assumptions that go into that argument that fuel that argument are hopelessly myopic. They're just like completely blinkered and narrow minded about the wide variety of ways that things in the world can be and that technology and civilization and culture can be even in this world here and now. It's a very very, it's a very western centric, male, centric, white, centric, rich centric argument that, you know, basically. Yeah, no, the inevitable progression of any intelligent being in any logically possible universe is basically gonna be like a rich white dude born between 1970 and 1990.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Like, and that's some fucking bullshit.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, that is bullshit.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

So. And also I've been using maybe everything's a simulation as an excuse for why things are bad. But I shouldn't do that, right?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, I think, I think like two things. First of all, you shouldn't do that.

[Alie Ward]

Okay? So yes, clearly we can't look at global warming and agonizing political situations and forests burning. And that time you farted in 9th grade history class. And people having cancer and being driven from their homelands because of Greek just as a video game gone wrong. And that we should give up and fold our hands in our laps and just wait for the apocalypse or the game over screen.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Second, even if this is a simulation, the suffering is real. Yes, I am suffering. Yes, you are suffering. We gotta fix that shit. Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

A lot of people out there. Real suffering. Yeah. We can't just shrug it off as it's all a video game.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, exactly right.

[Alie Ward]

Do you think that we're real?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I mean. Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by real, but for any, like, good meaning of that word, sure, we're real. Yeah. I mean, say that it is a simulation. Say that everything I said was wrong. Say that there's some other universe with other laws of physics and other beings, and for whatever reason they decided to build this simulation, like to build a computer. And inside that computer, like, there's a simulation going on, and we're in there. We're real. We're in that simulator. We're really in that simulation in that scenario. Like, there are. There are real entities in that simulation that are you and me and all the things around us, even if that's not how the programmers think about it. Like, I am having experiences here in this simulation and I have a hand over here and I'm waving it around and I'm banging it on the edge of the sofa, like that's all happening. Does the. The actual structure of the world at its most fundamental level look anything like the way we think it looks? Probably not. Whether or not we're in a simulation, I think that's wrong. Okay, but does that mean that we're not real? Absolutely not. You know. Okay, so. So here's the thing. I think everyone, I hope everyone can agree that temperature is a real thing. Like, things have temperatures. You know, I can. I can take my. My cool, nerdy infrared thermometer and point it at the wall and it will tell me that the wall is 74.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Because we live in a country that doesn't know how to measure temperature. But the thing is temperature, according to our best understanding of temperature in physics, it comes out of thermodynamics, which is itself something that comes out of statistical physics, a really, really interesting field of physics. Temperature is an emergent property. It's not a property that individual subatomic particles can have. It's something that only aggregate collections of stuff have.

[Alie Ward]

So one molecule can't have a temperature, but a group of them can because they're all moving around. So Adam likens temperature to existence and asking the question, are we real?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

These things in this world around us can emerge out of that lower level in the same way that temperature is a property that emerges out of the lower level. You know, little jostling of tiny things, because that's where temperature comes from. It's, you know, tiny object. A tiny piece of that wall is moving around a little bit, and all that jiggling together comes out and looks to us like temperature. That's a real thing. That wall is actually a temperature. And we are here and we are having this conversation. Even if, you know, the perception that there is such a thing as, as space and time is something that emerges out of some lower level of reality, there's still a space and a time that we're in, even if it's not fundamental.

[Alie Ward]

All right, you've not let me get off the hook about existing, and I still have to, like, do all my bullshit and get through my to do list. Like, I can't. Okay. Can I ask you Patreon questions?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

[Alie Ward]

Are you ready?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I mean, I'm never going to be completely ready, right. For the weirdness that is Patreon.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Hi, Patreon.

[Alie Ward]

That's the right answer. But before we get to your genius and weird and dry and perfect questions submitted on Patreon, each episode we donate to a charity of the olongist choosing. This week, Dr. Becker chose TechBridge Girls, which excites, educates, and equips girls from low income communities by delivering high quality STEM programming that empowers a girl to to achieve economic mobility and better life chances. And techbridge Girls was one of the earliest organizations to focus on introducing girls and marginalized communities to the STEM fields. And it's based in Oakland, California, where Adam lives. So that's techbridgegirls.org that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, and so you may hear some words about them right now. If you've listened to the Kalology episode about beauty standards, you know that my approach to cosmetics is always a little weary. I don't approve of makeup brands on this show because I don't like messaging that you need to wear a mask in order to feel or look beautiful. So I'm really choosy about what kind of makeup I wear and definitely about what I endorse. And Jones Road beauty. I love Them, they were created as kind of a skin first makeup brand. They enhance what you got instead of making you feel like you need a new face. Every formula is clean. It's high performing. I love the way it feels on my skin. They make this stuff called Miracle Balm that I have and I saw it online for a while and I was like, I want to try it. I tried. It was like, yep, this is something I love. You can use it on your cheeks, you can use it on your lips, your eyes. You can apply it with your fingers. Warms up. They have it in different tones. I love a multitasker. That's the kind of cosmetic I'm talking about. So if you want a makeup that brings out your natural glow instead of hiding it, Jones Road is the way to go. And for a limited time, our listeners are getting a free shimmer face oil on their first purchase when they use the code code ologies at checkout. So just head to Jonesroadbeauty.com and use the code ologies at checkout and then after your purchase they will ask you where you heard about them. So please support our show and tell them our show sent you. My face sent you. We love to have a balanced diet. Does it always happen? Of course not. Human beings and nutrient gaps occur for so many reasons. Genetics, dietary preferences, even modern farming practices. But Ritual has a team of scientists. I love them. They've poured over thousands of studies to figure out what the common gaps between what people need for nutrients and what people are actually consuming over different life stages. And using their brains and science, they created the essential for women. 18 plus multi. And it has nine key nutrients. They're in two delayed release capsules. I always say this, they look like little lava lamps. But they are designed for the best absorption per day. I take Ritual every day. I personally notice that I feel better when I'm making sure I have B vitamins. And sometimes my diet is not great. Popcorn for breakfast, waffle for dinner. Maybe. Other days I'm more on top of it. But every day I take Ritual Plus. All of Ritual's products are vegan. They're tested for heavy metals and allergens. It's high quality stuff. So instead of striving for perfect health, aim for supporting foundational health. Save 25% on your first month at ritual.com auto ologies. That's ritual.com ologies for 25 off your first month. Look at that. Y' all have heard me talking about quints for years and so many times. I'M like I'm wearing quints right now. Wouldn't you know it, I'm wearing quints right now. When it comes to clothes, I like quality over quantity. There is so much fast fashion in the world and I love classic pieces that are worth having, that are worth hanging on to. And that's why so many people love quints, including my friends who are fast fashion designers. The fabrics feel great, the cuts are thoughtful. I have friends who have gotten their Mongolian cashmere sweaters for gifts for every birthday of every friend that they know because it's like who doesn't love wearing a cashmere sweater? And the pricing actually makes sense. Quince works directly with safe, ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're not paying for brand markup or really fancy retail stores, just quality clothing without a lot of markup Right now go to quince.com/ologies for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to wear and love it. And you will now available in Canada too, so don't keep settling. For clothes that don't last, go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com ologies for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's quince.com ologies quick choose a meal deal with McValue, the five dollar McChicken

[Dr. Adam Becker]

meal deal, the $6 McDouble meal deal, or the new seven dollar Daily Double meal deal, each with its own small FR and four piece McNuggets.

[Alie Ward]

There's actually no rush.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I'm just excited for McDonald's for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Not to Alder McDelivery Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone. Paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try.

[Alie Ward]

@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for

[Dr. Adam Becker]

three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months

[Alie Ward]

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[Dr. Adam Becker]

taxes and fees extra.

[Alie Ward]

See full [e-mail] okay, back to your questions. Travis D' Mello wants to know how does quantum stuff relate to nature? What is its role beyond technology?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Oh, I mean, that's a great question. Quantum physics explains a huge variety of natural phenomena. Like without quantum physics we wouldn't understand why the sun we wouldn't understand how our eyes can see that the sun shines. We wouldn't understand, and I mean this in the most general way possible, the phenomenon of solidness. Like, we wouldn't understand not only why I'm not passing through this couch right now, but why my bones are solid at all in the first place.

[Alie Ward]

For more on that topic, you can see the osteology episode about Bones. Just saying.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Quantum physics is necessary for understanding where the periodic table of the elements comes from and the idea of molecular structure. So all of chemistry, and thus all of biochemistry and thus all of life. So quantum physics explains, you know, or has a really important role in explaining almost every single possible natural phenomenon.

[Alie Ward]

So it's important.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, just a little bit.

[Alie Ward]

So a bunch of folks asked about existence and what it really means and why, such as Wendy Lockhart, Sarah Piet, Matthew Thomas Hill, and Sam Gordon. Who wants to know, how do you deal knowing what you know about existence? And Kristy Stewart wants to know, why does it matter if we exist or not?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Humans are curious. If we're going to try to engage in the dangerous game of coming up with fundamental human behaviors that are true across cultures. I do think that curiosity is a really good candidate for one. And also more generally, and this is me stealing from my book. So the ideas that we get from science, the picture of the world that comes with our best scientific theories, it filters out into the wider culture. Science is not a separate human activity from the rest of the human world. It is of a piece with the rest of human activity, with art and politics and music and the social sciences and the physical sciences and the biological sciences. These all form a unified whole. And so the pictures of the world that come from science not only go out into the other sciences, but out into the wider world like a really, really simple and fascinating and total white dude. Example. If Copernicus and company had not uncentered the Earth and shown us that, no, the Earth is not at the center of the universe. It seems hard to imagine that Charles Darwin or Chucky D to his friends and company would have had the audacity to suggest that humans are not at the center of biological creatures, right? And instead that we're just another ape, just another organism in a giant tree of organisms. And without both of those changes in the way that we think about the world. I mean, first of all, you can probably come up with your own examples here. But without both of those changes, Stanley Kubrick wouldn't have been able to film 2001, right? All those apes at the beginning and, you know, the like. Come on. That wouldn't have happened. And there's lots of other art and culture and. And just important things that have happened because of our scientific theories and vice versa. Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Samuel Ball wants to know, has the impossible issue of tunneling been solved yet, or are there any good theories out there? What is tunneling?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

What is tunneling? So, tunneling. So the short answer is, in classical physics, if I put my hand on this table and leave it here, then it will just sort of stay on top of this table. But in quantum physics, there's a small chance that my hand will suddenly pass through the table. But it's phenomenally unlikely because my hand is quite large. And the probability of that kind of tunneling has to do with, among other things, the size of the object involved. For tiny objects. Objects. Tunneling happens all the time. In fact, if tunneling didn't happen, the sun would not shine. So we know that tunneling happens. Tunneling is not more strange than the rest or unexplained than the rest of quantum physics. So if you can get a good picture of the world that comes with quantum physics, you get tunneling for free.

[Alie Ward]

I didn't know what tunneling was until right now. I thought it was maybe something that college kids did at parties.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

It does. It does kind of sound like that.

[Alie Ward]

This next question about something that we keep in our pants pocket was asked by patrons. Julie Bear, Will Matlack, Jess CJ Stuart Hodges, Mike Rotch, Courtney Markham, Ewan Monroe, Michael Preston, who wanted to know why we should give a rat's left ear about the topic. Philip Whrey. And Spencer wants to know, no matter how much I research, I don't understand quantum computing. Is there an easy way to understand it? Also will all. Also, will quantum computers replace all computers eventually, like our phones or just supercomputers?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna take the second part first. Okay. I don't think that anyone who works seriously in that field thinks that quantum computers will ultimately replace all computers.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I don't even think that they're gonna replace all supercomputers. There are things that classical normal computers can do better than quantum computers and vice versa, okay. And I don't think that that's going to change.

[Alie Ward]

Also, let's explain what a quantum computer.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Also, let's explain what a quantum computer is. Quantum computer is a computer that harnesses some of the strange and. No, that's not a good way of saying it. Right. Because the usual way that people say it is oh, quantum computer is a computer that runs in quantum physics. Everything runs on quantum physics. So all computers run on quantum physics. Then people say, oh, quantum computer is a computer that uses special properties of quantum physics to do, you know, certain computational tricks. That's not specific enough either, because semiconductors, which are what, like the computer in your lap are. And in my pocket. And like all computers are built on, basically semiconducting itself is a quantum property. Like, you can explain. You can't explain that without quantum physics. A better definition of a quantum computer is a computer that uses specific quantum properties like superposition and entanglement to perform certain computations that normal conventional computers cannot perform as quickly in that way.

[Alie Ward]

So it's using the superposition of, say, positive negative here, there, as kind of a replacement for the binary 1 0, 0, 1 0.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

And so it can go much faster because it's at an elemental level, sort of.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I mean, it can do some things more quickly. Basically, instead of having a bit that's either 1 or 0, you can have it in a superposition.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

And then you can take advantage of some of the wave properties of matter to give you a speed up for certain kinds of computational algorithms. The more specific you get about this, the more wonky and less cool it sounds. It is, I assure you, very cool. Okay.

[Alie Ward]

Also, if you've been seeing the words quantum supremacy lately, thank Google. So in late 2019, just a few weeks ago, Google announced that their quantum computer, which looks to be about the size of a small chandelier that dangles in a cryo chamber colder than outer space, is named Sycamore. Well, the processor at small chip is Sycamore, but it needs all those kind of sparkly golden wires to function. Anyway, a team out of University of California Santa Barbara's labs just published a paper revealing that Sycamore had solved a Math problem in 200 seconds. So way to go, Sycamore. Who cares? Well, a lot of people, because that same math problem, when beep booped by an existing supercomputer, would take years to solve. How many years, you wonder? 10,000 years. So what would take a supercomputer 10,000 years to calculate? Sycamore did it in 200 seconds, like three and a half minutes. So quantum computing, it might save us, it might kill us. Either way, get hype. But. So you don't think that it's going to replace all supercomputers?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I don't think anyone serious in the field thinks that. I mean, there are people who know a lot more about quantum computers than I do. My book is. I mentioned quantum computing. I talk about it briefly. It's not primarily about that. I do touch on it because it's important, but I have talked with a lot of people who work in that field. I don't think anyone thinks that. So unless everyone's wrong wrong, I don't think that's gonna happen.

[Alie Ward]

Okay. Jennifer Coyle wants to know. A therapist once suggested to me that one day a physicist will prove the existence of God. Thoughts?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Get a new therapist. Fire your friggin therapist. She. Is she on mushrooms? Yes. No. This is a safe space. You can tell us if you think her therapist is on mushrooms. Yeah, I. I know.

[Alie Ward]

Okay. That's gonna be a no from you, dog. Yeah, got it. Okay. Old Uncle Dad Ward here popping in to say everyone is entitled to their own spiritual beliefs just so long as it's not oppressing or screwing up other people's lives. But if you're wondering if scientists tend to be atheists at a higher rate than the general public, that's a yes. Rice University sociologist Dr. Elaine Howard Auckland had the same question. And in her 2010 paper, Science versus Religion, what scientists really Think, she crunched the numbers. So only 2% of the general U.S. population says, I don't believe in God. But over a third of what she describes as elite scientists are atheists. But Ackland continues, 22% of the scientists who identified themselves as spiritual also describe themselves as atheists. So wait. Huh? What is a spiritual atheist? Dr. Ackland interviewed one biologist who described spirituality this way, said that feeling you get by the seashore, looking over the endless expanse of water. Or the feeling you get considering the age of all things in existence and how long it could go on. Sort of an awe at the totality of things. If that's what spirituality is, then I get it, said the biologist. So while the narrative of what's controlling our existence. Is it a sentient shadowy figure in a cloud watching over us, getting pissed when we lie? Or. Or is it chaos mixed with chance mixed with logic and a heavy proportion of mystery? Those sources may change. They might be different for each individual. But in the end, perhaps what matters most is the awe that keeps you inspired and the respect that you show to the fellow lumps of molecules with whom you share the universe. Or maybe it's all a video game. Are we real? Probably. But nobody knows. And that is why quantum ontology is cool.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Favorite Uncertainty Principle joke.

[Alie Ward]

Yes. Hi. Me again. So the uncertainty principle was drafted by German physicist Werner Heisenberg. And yes, Breaking Bad's Walter White took his alter ego name after this very renowned physicist who, Adam explains in his book, had a deep loyalty to Germany and was the head of its World War II nuclear program. Gross. Anyway, the Uncertainty Principle theorizes that when it comes to a particle, its momentum and location cannot be known at the same time. And Adam remains on the spot for a good Uncertainty Principle joke per listener. Julie Bear. Julie Bear wants to know favorite Uncertainty Principle joke?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah. I mean, God, they're all just flying out of my head right now. Except for the most boring one. The most boring one is. This is. Yeah. I apologize to physicists who are listening. You've all heard this before, and probably the person who asked this cop pulls Heisenberg over for speeding and says, sir, do you know how fast you were going? And he says, no, but I know exactly where I am.

[Alie Ward]

Amazing.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Isabel B. Holper wants to know which movie or TV show gets it best.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Ooh, like just Quantum in general. Which movie or TV show gets it best?

[Alie Ward]

How does Quantum Leap do?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Oh, man. Quantum Leap. Quantum Leap has almost nothing to do with quantum physics. But I watched that show so much growing up.

[Alie Ward]

It was a good one.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, it was good.

[Alie Ward]

Theorizing that one could time travel within

[Dr. Adam Becker]

his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped

[Alie Ward]

into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. What about. What the bleep do we know? Julian Hopel wants to know, are people

[Dr. Adam Becker]

affecting the world of reality that they see? You betcha they are.

[Alie Ward]

What is reality? What is reality? Have you ever thought about what thoughts are made of?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

It is so misunderstood, mysterious, they can't explain it. Oh, really? What the bleep do we know is. Okay, so take it out of what computer you've got it, input it on, like, a thumb drive that you don't care about, set it on fire, bury it. What the bleep do we know is wrong about everything? And the people who made it are malicious. They tricked a friend of mine who is in that movie, they tricked him into participating, and then they. They misleadingly edited his contributions to make it sound like he supported their crazy stuff. Also, they are literally a cult.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, no. Okay, so you heard it here first. Okay, this next one is about string theory. And as patron Nick Reinders inquires. String theory? Come on. What the fuck? That's an excellent question, Nate. I will attempt to summarize it in the smallest, jankiest nutshell I can. String theory is that particles are actually teeny, tiny, tiny, tiny strings, which means that they're could be more Dimensions and also string theory may unify Einstein's theory of relativity about gravity with the other quantum physics that just do not comply. In his book, Adam writes, quote, string theory doesn't describe a single universe, but instead describes a string landscape, a phenomenally huge number of possible universes, 10 to the 500th power or more. Quote, so what is happening in all those universes? Is my dog there? Am I still wearing this yellow sweater? And does string theory finally reconcile the other theories that don't mesh together? Is string theory the dongle that all of science is waiting for? Kitty Halvorson also asked about it, as did Graham Tattersall wants to know string theory flim flam, or science?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Sure. Seems like science.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, Amanda J. Wants to know, does quantum physics have anything to do with our consciousness? Yeah, because it has something to do with everything.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah. So, so, so, so, yeah, on the one hand, sure. Right. So it was sort of like putting my cards on the table. I see no reason to think that consciousness is not something that arises purely out of the behavior of neurons in our brain.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I think there's a lot of good evidence for that. Our neurons are made of subatomic particles. Those subatomic particles are governed by quantum physics. So in one sense, yes, but there's often another sense that people have in mind when they ask this question.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, real quick. Remember Schrodinger's cat? So if you observe or measure it, it flips to one position. Meow, meow, or, oh, no, but what's measurement?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Right? What counts as measurement? Some people will say things like, well, maybe consciousness counts as measurement. Maybe it's when a conscious being interacts with a thing. Maybe that's what measurement is in quantum physics. A couple of things. First of all, that still leaves you with this problem of, okay, but does that mean that, like, the wave function of the universe was waiting for a conscious being to come along also? What is conscious? What do you mean by consciousness? What counts as conscious? You still have that problem. Yeah, it really seems like a very human centric view. And I am always really wary of human centric views. There is a mystery in human consciousness, right? Or there seems to be one. Like, you know, what is human consciousness? Where does it come from? Sure, you can have different views on how consciousness works and what it is and, like, whether or not there's even a mystery there. But I do not see a compelling reason to invoke consciousness in quantum physics, given that there are alternatives. And I do not see why we would say that it is more related to quantum physics than to any other issues in physics. Like, I don't think that consciousness plays a more special role in quantum physics than it does in any other area of physics. The question of consciousness, sure, whatever. That's a, that's a good question. We can have interesting conversations about it, But I don't see it as related to these questions about quantum physics.

[Alie Ward]

Catherine W. Asked Adam, what does an average day of your life look like? So as an author, he took me through his process of writing the book, which is so, so, so helpful no matter what you're working on. And earlier off mic, he had mentioned that he has ADHD. You can see the molecular neurobiology episode with Dr. Crys Dilworth where we touch on that. And so these are his secret tips on how he accomplished these huge goals. This is earnestly life changing. I love this. What was the process of writing the book like?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

So, first it was abject terror after I got the contract, because after I finished partying, I realized I was on the hook for 90,000 words. And I'd never published anything longer than about 3,000. So that was completely fucking terrifying. I had a history earlier on in my career of having difficulty getting work done and getting it done on time or getting it finished. And I had by that point, you know, moved past that. I finished my, my degree and whatnot. But I still had this mental image of myself as someone who had difficulty getting work done on time. And so I was really extra scared. But I decided, okay, the only way that I'm going to get through this is if I plan it and then just only pay attention to whatever's in front of me. Because I can't write 90,000 words, but I can write 600 words a day. And if I do that for a while, eventually I'll have 90,000 words. So I outlined it and I went over the outline with my publisher and they liked the outline. Of course it changed, right? No, no plan survives contact with the editor. So for each chapter, I'd outline the chapter and then I just sort of work through that outline and write a really shitty first draft and try to do 600 words a day. And what I do is I would do 50 minutes on and 10 minutes off. And in the 10 minutes off, I wouldn't look at anything with a screen. And I wouldn't read any nonfiction.

[Alie Ward]

I would.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I read exclusively novels. And that really helped my brain work because I found that if I didn't read at all, I couldn't write because if there's nothing going in, nothing's going to come out, right? So I would write 600 words a day and then get this shitty first draft done and then walk away from it and then come back and clean it up and fill in all of the blank spots where I had, you know, where I knew I had a quote, but I had to find the quote and stuff like that, and things would change. And then eventually I'd have a chapter draft that I wasn't embarrassed about, and then I send it to my editor and move on to the next one. It was terrifying. There was a lot of research involved. There was a lot of running around and interviewing people, like a lot of people. If you look. If you look in the references there, the very beginning of the references of the book has the list of interviews I conducted. I think it's like 42 interviews or something like that, most of which were in person.

[Alie Ward]

Isn't 42, though, the answer to the universe? It is.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

I don't know if it's actually 42. I know. I know that it's like it's somewhere around 40.

[Alie Ward]

Okay. At this point in the interview, another ologist had stopped in to record, and I'm going to make you wait to find out who it was. But we counted his list of interviews in the back of his book, and

[Dr. Adam Becker]

it's like, I love Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[Alie Ward]

He's 42.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

He is 42. Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

So, yes, it was indeed 42 interviews. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is. 42. For more on why you can see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Oh, my God, Adams again. Adams. Is anything fucking real? But yes. Adam Becker says, don't be afraid to start something. Start writing. Just jump in. Shitty drafts are your bff?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, shitty drafts are really important. I also had. I had, like, a spare parts bin where if I had, like, one of my darlings that I couldn't kill, like, a sentence that I didn't want to get rid of, but it didn't fit, I'd put it in there and tell myself, like, I'd lie to myself and tell myself that it come back. It never came back. But more generally, I spent a lot of time thinking about narrative structure. My overall approach was this is a book about really abstract ideas. People care about ideas, but they generally care more about people than they care about ideas. And I wanted to make it compelling. I wanted to see if I could write a book about some of the most abstract and strange ideas in physics or in all of science, that was difficult to put down. And so I thought, okay, the way to do that is to wrap these ideas up in people and stories about people. So then it was a question of, okay, how do I build a narrative arc that. That will give me good excuses along the way to explain the ideas and introduce the new characters that are. That are going to come into the story? And that was a real learning process for me. And I spent a lot of time, like, watching YouTube videos about film editing to learn, like, what narrative structure looked like in other forms of stories.

[Alie Ward]

Also, Adam stuck to another edict to make a book about quantum ontology accessible.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Oh, and no math. That was the rule.

[Alie Ward]

No math in the book. No math in the book.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

No math. No math. There was one equation in the book, and I didn't want to have any math in the book, so I wrote it out in words. The equation was 2 times 3 equals 3 times 2.

[Alie Ward]

That's it.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

And that's it.

[Alie Ward]

Nice.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

And what's the shittiest thing about. About quantum ontology? Is it answering those maybe religious questions or too philosophical or. Or too loaded questions or what's the shittiest thing?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

The shittiest thing is definitely dealing with physicists who think that this was all resolved 90 years ago and we should just shut up and calculate. There are so many of them. They are wrong. There are so many good arguments about why they're wrong and why these questions are interesting and they're still out there. There. And. And it's just kind of astonishing. But it is getting better. And I really think that, you know, as. As, like a new generation comes into physics, we will see more and more acceptance of these questions as legitimate areas of scientific inquiry.

[Alie Ward]

Now, what's the best thing about quantum mythology? What do you love the most about it?

[Dr. Adam Becker]

You get to ask the biggest questions. I know, right? Like, these are the. These are the biggest questions.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, I thought you meant me. Right. Right now.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Oh, no, no. Well, you totally do. That's the best part about your job. The best part about thinking about quantum ontology is you get to ask questions like, what is real? Like, what's going on? Yeah, what's going on? And other Marvin Gaye songs. You get to ask these really deep questions about the world. You get to think about these wonderful things. And so, like, chemists have really good demos, right? They get to blow things up and, you know, put one liquid into another liquid, and suddenly it's foaming everywhere and stuff like that. And because for some reason, John, you're a 42 year old man who needs his attention sustained with tricks. Here's some fucking Mentos and a bottle of diet cream. And like biology, you get like creepy crawly things and like cute baby chickens and things like that. And like there's all sorts of fun stuff. Physics doesn't have cute baby chicks. I mean, you can have cool explosions, but chemistry really is really, really sweet for that kind of thing. But physics does have the truly pervasive on its side. Right. If you want me to talk about some of these questions in the foundations of quantum physics, I can point to literally any object and say, look, let's talk about the constituents of that object. Let's talk about that chair is solid. Let's talk about why this ring on my finger is yellowish instead of silvery. Right. All of these things come back to quantum physics and thus ultimately to foundations of quantum physics. And it's, it's just amazing. Like it goes after a lot of the reasons why I wanted to go into science in the first place.

[Alie Ward]

So it's everything and it's everywhere and we don't understand it. Yeah, it's what it comes down to.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, absolutely. I love it.

[Alie Ward]

Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm more confused about my existence.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Good. That means I did my job.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, good.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

There's a question mark at the end of the title of my book. Right.

[Alie Ward]

I love it. Thank you so much for doing this.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Absolutely. This is so much fun. Thank you for doing this with me.

[Alie Ward]

You're my favorite quantum ontologist.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Oh, thank you.

[Alie Ward]

So remember, ask smart people the big questions, even if it's about the littlest stuff. Because how else in the world would you discover that there was another you eating pufferfish and cutting bangs and texting your crying crush? Oh, also, if you're jealous of that person, then go do those things yourself. Except maybe the poisonous poisson. That means fish. Whatever. So more links are up in the show notes and [e-mail] ologies quantumontology. And you can get merch through that site [e-mail] and be sure to follow Dr. Adam Becker on Bluesky Adam Becker and on Instagram @freelanceastro. And once again get his book what is Real? Or his new one more Everything Forever about AI overlords. And for shorter kid friendly episodes, we have smallogies. They're in their own feed. Wherever you get podcasts, you can tell your friends or students. Also updates, editors. Thank you, Jake Chaffee and Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio for working on this updated one, as well as Susan Hale, who is our managing director. And of course Noelle Dilworth is our scheduling producer. And Erin Talbert for adminning the wonderful Facebook group. And to Jarrett Sleeper of mindjam Media for assistant editor. And of course to the wizard of awe, Steven Ray Morris, who edits all these pieces together and also hosts the Kitty Pod, the Percast and the Dino Centric See Jurassic Rite. And the theme song was written by Nick Thorburn of the Band Islands. Thank you also to Emily White and everyone in the Transcribers group, making Transcriptions [e-mail] Ologies Extras I'll link it in the show notes. Now if you stick around to the end of the episode, I'll tell you a secret. This week my friend Simone, yes was in town and I was telling her that I wish there was a word for when you try to improve something, but you make it way shittier. Essentially a word for one of those things where you want to make something good. And somehow it would have been so much better if you had just not in the etymology episode, I was talking to Helen Saltzman and I pitched maybe a bon malle, like French for good, bad, or Greek, like voivlap. Anyway, I told Simone I wish there was a word and she said there is. In Swedish it's called a bear favorite, and it's from a fable about a bear trying to help someone by shooing away a fly with a boulder on their face and kills them. So a bear favor, y'. All. There's a word for it. I'm thrilled. It's very exciting. Okay, bye bye. Pachydermatology, Homeology, Cryptozoology, Litology, Nanotechnology, Meteorology, Olfactology, Mapology, Cereal.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Yeah, Lois, that'll be about as much fun as a lecture on ontological empiricism.

[Alie Ward]

Hey everybody, it's Babs from brunch with Babs. And do I have a tip for you. If you share my passion for classic style and joyful living, you're gonna love Birch Lane. Their timeless furniture interior decor is carefully crafted to bring joy to your home for years to come, just like the memories you make there. Plus, it's delivered fast and free. Shop my hand picked Birch Lane collection and more classic [e-mail]

[Dr. Adam Becker]

Real talent is defined by what people can do, not where they learn to do it. So by stopping at the education section of a resume, you might throw away

[Alie Ward]

the perfect hire skills.

[Dr. Adam Becker]

First, hiring helps you see talent others maybe miss, like more than 70 million stars. Skilled through alternative routes, let their story unfold, and gain a competitive advantage because hiring managers who start with skills are 60% more likely to find a successful hire. Hire skills first. Learn why at tearthepaperceiling. Org, brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.