Carlo Rovelli interview: "Reality is not things, but connections"
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- Опубліковано 12 жов 2022
- Inspired by the art of Cornelia Parker, physicist Carlo Rovelli explains the idea of relational quantum mechanics - and how it could resolve some key problems concerning the nature of reality.
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Very interesting discussion. The whole idea of spirit as something separate from materiality is a dualistic model. If talk about phenomenological experience then there is no separation - there is just unity of experience which different discernible qualities which do exist independently but in relationship. The idea of a reality ‘out there’ is itself a mental concept, a useful but limited model of what we experience. The early Buddhist texts use quite specific terms for describing experience, in terms of khandas or aggregates of experience. The purpose of such a model is specifically for solving the problem of suffering/ happiness which is central to human experience. The idea that there are no objects out there, like atomic particles, but simply relationships between events is actually pertinent to the Buddhist project as it applies to the problem of suffering (dukkha). Here the relationship is framed in terms of suffering, cause, cessation and method, which is known as the four noble truths. It is also expressed in the process of dependent causation, which is a description of the causal relationships between the components or activities of experience. The most basic level can split into form or materiality and name which includes: feeling tone, perceptions, mental fabrications (thoughts etc) and consciousness. These are all activities which are directly experienced - there is no doubt about the reality of these aspects of experience. But they can’t be really considered to have a separate reality or be things out there just like atomic particles - there is only the relationships between these activities of experience. This kind of model is central in a Buddhism for solving the problem dukkha or pain. The relevance for physics is probably not very useful but it is interesting to hear the discussion moving to relationships between qualities rather than the idea of a ultimate reality out there.
Carlo Rovelli is both a high-flying physicist and a deep thinker. He calculates but refuses to shut up! And good on him for that. Bravo Carlo, forza!
A professor of quantum physics confessed to me recently: we really don’t understand what’s going on down there. It works (our theory works) but we don’t know why it works. “Shut up and calculate” means use the theory and don’t worry about what it means or why it works, as long as it works. - When you think of it, isn’t that what almost all of us do all the time with technology? I use my iPhone, my computer, the electronics of my car, etc. etc. even though I don’t know how any of that works! I press a button and voilà, it works. I don’t know to build it and I don’t know how to repair it. But it doesn’t stop me living my life. Fine for most people, but to some this state of affairs is frustrating, even infuriating. And so some do not shut up, and kudos to them!
Rovelli is such a great and impactful teacher. I may actually become one of those little fans of his, and go look up his former department in Bologna. 🥰
In the end, reality appears as connections, rather than objects - physics, philosophy, spirituality. Beautiful video, thank you. What a time to exist. Enjoy the journey all 🙏
Sprituality is within the domains of physics
well people do what the spirit commands.
@@HoodGrownGenius hmmm
Yeah, nah, not really.
No, there is zero spirituality in physics. Physics measures real things, what is the measure of spirit? There is none.
@@christopherlee627 you are right, lol. As if mere human physics could begin to touch the true nature of reality and metaphysics
I've had that idea for a long time, so I'm studying Graph Theory, which is all about connections. There are no objects. There are Only connections. A group of connections forms a Node, but the node is Only the connections. This is the basic idea, but there is an enclosing level where objects on our level are only nodes in the enclosing level, and the connections between those nodes are dynamic, based on feedback from our level.
If "there are no objects, only coNnecTionS", what are those connections connecting? You want to throw away the vertices in the node. Try doing that and see if there are any "conNecTioNs" left
E.M. Forster was onto something.
Category Theory.
A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?
What we call reality is essentially a manifestation of purely abstract relations.
Take observers A and B. If B defines A by it’s relation to A and vice versa, what can be said about A or B in isolation?
Each has internal relations( constant flux) which gives rise to a field of potentiality.
When A and B come together the potentialities become interaction.
It’s essentially about flux fields and the path integral or Sum Over Histories principle and constraints that form in the dynamic.
YES 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏I LOVE THIS
Feynman said the same thing more or less, that those hoping for an 'ultimate answer' may be disappointed in that endeavour and that he himself had no such ambition and wanted only at each moment to find out more about the world.
something exists only when interacted, that's quantum mechanics. Objects have meaning only when it is related to other, that's classical mechanics. So, which one come first? Whether meaning makes something to interact, to get that meaning, OR, the interaction itself brings objects to relate to get that meaning.
Part of a comprehensive art education will inculcate in the aspiring artist a sensitivity to relations, be they color, line, surface or scale. To create coherence and believability is an essential aspect of art, and science is on a quest for that as well. The biggest difference is that science seeks repeatability of results. The fine artist seeks the unique. Although an artist's painting may resembles others of his/hers in aspects, it is hopefully always new in its particularity. In science, something that occurs but once is an anomaly. It's just written off.
You are right on the money.
Very Buddhistic. Reality we experience are chains of dependently arisen point-moments translated into phenomena of impressions, ideas, and conceptions by collective, yet subjective mind.
I know the philosopher Michel Bitbol has specifically pulled on the Buddhist concept of dependent arising before, but it is not exclusively Buddhistic. The dialectical materialist philosophy going back to Marx and Engels rejects the notion of things existing in isolation independent of their surroundings, this concept was coined as "overdetermination" in by Althusser, which is a similar concept to dependent arising as all things are (over)determined by all other things simultaneously, and any essential cause is merely an approximation. This has been part of materialist philosophy since the 1800s, but a school that is just not particularly popular in western academia. The Soviet physicist Dmitry Blokhinstev specifically pulled on this concept of holistic inseparability to explain quantum mechanics, and the Marxist physicist David Bohm also became convinced that quantum mechanics could not be explained without an appeal to holistic inseparability, stating that any aspect of the universe 'implicates" the rest.
Gold
I am interested in the computer simulation of quantum mechanics making use of a random number generator. This will enable me to explore situations involving antimatter. Any hints on how to proceed?
Start exploring cellular automata like Conway's Game of Life
@@petermartin5030 How would playing Game of Life produce the destructive interference of probability distributions?
@@david_porthouse Well you can incorporate a random number generator into the update rules of cellular automata. My suggestion would be that stepping into this simulation via cellular automata (discretised time and space and simple update rules) may be more tractable (easier to implement and to interpret what is going on) than simulating partial differential equations (Schrodinger's equation).
@@petermartin5030 The hard part is that an RNG is potentially equivalent to adding a diffusion term so now we have a different differential equation. You might produce a set of rules for cellular automata which incorporate an RNG and get something quite interesting to happen, but it is veering away from quantum mechanics.
I liked the interview next to the amazing art, especially the Plato's cave at the end
Carlo is onto something!
Yes, marxism! lol
@@halkieria7581 no man!
This exhibition reminds me of a certain episode from twilight zone.
I see! A cod is only a cod when it is walloping. (native english idiom)
This whole Physics thing, rather like Art, seems to rely an awful lot on the human eye - what we can see. To some extent what we can hear. Little to do with taste, touch and smell. If we were all blind, could we know about Light, Electricity, Magnetism, Gravity, waves and fields? Perhaps we need a new Sense to “sniff out” Dark Matter and Quantum Black Holes?
My whole life was a lie 😢
Connections made of what?
"philosophical" means an insult for most people:weird
Science is about "directly testable things". I adore physics and cosmology and all things empirical but here Rovelli sounds a bit like Chopra without all the word salad.
I agree with Carlo that all this is real or, to be more precise, that "there is only the Real" (10:00); a very important realization. However and this is where I differ with Carlo; there is definitely a (one) meaning for all this however (11:38 does the universe have a meaning or purpose?). He is very very close however and the answer is related to the beginning of his talk but he still makes the erroneous distinction between living- and non living whereas "there is only one consciousness". So in that regard he still needs to grow in his understanding. That being said. One day he will understand the why of John 15 12. Again... he is super close... just a matter of time and when he realizes what it's all about I will look forward to hearing his talks even more than I do now. So far so very good. It took me a while to figure it out as well. So thank you Carlo and have a very Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year everyone.
Well the art would look good in a dumpster. Not sure about the author's books. If they reflect this video then it's too bad a tree had to be sacrificed for the books. What is not jiberish but wrong as well. Science is about testable things. That is science. I agree other things that are not testable may have value. Still don't go to a poet for a physical illness or an artist to determine the structural safety of a building, find an engineer, a doctor, that is a scientist.
Engineers and doctors are not usually scientists... they are much more pragmatic, and necessarily so to function with real world complexity.
Sounds like a bunch of BS influenced by postmodernism. The very concept of interaction implies there are "interacting things". Also, interactions have been the focus of physics since Newton. Not a new thing, not a new "discovery". Last but not least, the "artist" he uses as an example is pure BS too.
Something does not exist for you if you do not interact with it in any way.
@@petermartin5030 what does that have to do with anything? You haven't discovered anything new by saying that random phrase. "tHe aiR is fREe"... Lol.
@@GuidoMauas Everything that enables you to believe an object exists is an interaction, not even with the object itself but with the relations within that supposed object. Even space and time are constructs derived from relations, not fundamental .
@@GuidoMauas Thanks for the advice to study. 1st class degree in maths from Oxford including a year of quantum mechanics, PhD in theoretical thermoelectrohydrodynamics. Tip of the day: it's 'whether' not 'weather'. Interaction over!
@@petermartin5030 learn Spanish before you dare correct me for one mistake. Degrees are nothing in a mathematical discussion, argumentation is everything. Don't you know the Authority Falacy? That is what you are using. Interaction is not over just because you say so. You are so dumb that you didn't even realize that what I was saying from the beginning is that in fact every science works studying interaction, that is nothing new and it is not something that Quantum physics invented. You're deaf, simple as that.
that isn't art to me. it's a pile of junk hung on strings
I see a pile of rubbish suspended by wires instead of being heaped up on the floor by gravity..............
No wonder AI art generators like Midjourney are killing it and winning art prizes : they are so much much better.
Art is subjective, not objective. Your interpretation is only that, your interpretation. This is literally exactly what Rovelli is saying about the sculpture.
@@henrymourland8379 No art is Objective, and this is a literal pile of trash.
See "The Romantic Manifesto" by Ayn Rand to learn more about Objective esthetics.
Your interpretation is meaningless, at most it shows that you like trash and hate good things if you like this photo, just as your interpretation of physics doesn't depend on your opinion, your interpretation of what is physically happens only tells people whether you are correct or incorrect. Your interpretation of physics doesn't change physics, and your interpretation of art doesn't make trash actual art.
The art is subjective it's a reflection of the people who like it, aka a pile of junk 🤣
Connections between what?
Objects!
A connection is formed between objects. Qua art in the video, you as a certain entity with certain values connects to an object with a certain form, which gives you a chance to create that connection.
Everything he says about Quantum is non-sense. Everything he says about reality is non-sense.
Your certainty is not very scientific. It seems like some aspect of your Generative Model is unable to accept that you might not know everything. Writing off things you don't fully understand as "non-sense" will ensure you stay that way, fixed in arrogant ignorance.
@@henrymourland8379 I have full certainty that what he is showing and saying is non-sense. It's called philosophy, it's where science gets it's ability to discover any *thing*.
I know quantum mechanics, obviously better than him or you, and I know reality.
If you want to defend him, answer the question: Reality is nothing but connections, connections between what?
Connection requires two or more objects interacting by/with their identities. You cannot have any connection without things connecting to each other.
You don't need to be so open minded that non-sense becomes something you take in as knowledge, that's how you end up making a fool of yourself by going around replying to comments that show certainty in there judgement of blatant contradictions.
Man you are so dumb. you didn't even understood what was being talked about. His is just the natural conclusion of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. reality can only exist as an emergent property of interaction. between what? that is still very difficult to define at this point and that is how you end up with more outlandish interpretations like the von Neumann and Wigner. but it seems the meaning of reality can only be extracted by a structure that is able to process information. objects themselves don't exist analogous to how the concept of "speed" does not exist, it only arises relative.
objects only take meaning at interactions and the values they take are only relative to the other system affected by the interaction; by themselves, it is meaningless to say something.
The interpretation has aspects in common with QBism and with the view of quantum theory discussed by Zeilinger, who by the way just won the nobel prize. So yeah, these people know what they are talking about.
@@officialguitartracks1689 You don't know what you are talking about. Zeilinger and the others won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating that quantum entanglement doesn't have hidden values, i.e., that quantum *objects* can act non-locally. It doesn't say objects don't exist lol it says certain types of objects can interact in a certain way others can't/don't/haven't been observed to.
Take your line "objects only take meaning at interactions". What does this mean? Before the interaction there were no objects, but if there are no objects, what is interacting? You have it backwards, Interactions only take meaning/form at objects. Without objects, there can be no interaction, thus by your interpretation nothing can ever exist, and therefore nothing can be proven, therefore the nobel prize proved proving things is impossible. Clear contradiction!
@TheSystem i was just explaining this interpretation; one of many. Sadly, there is little hope of proving correct the different interpretations. it seems we are getting at equivalences and you will have to choose your preferred onthology based on philosophy or religion