Tim showed an unwillingness to grapple with big ideas, which made me question all the stances he took regardless of whether or not I had any ideas to counter them. He was literally explaining the process of choosing something as though that provided some kind of insight. Of course it seems obvious we’re making decisions. That’s the whole reason the question of free will is so fascinating.
Agreed! Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
@@irrelevant2235 right? his position is everything is in your past or future light cone. but nobody was ever questioning that. we all know the basic gist of relativity -- and even I know the very rudimentary math of special. the entire quetion is what it means philosophically. If all he's saying is it means just that there are directed light cones, why do we need a philosopher to repeat the basic facts of physics?
@@justin_5631 I'm not sure if you saw the recent Lex Fridman episode with Sam Harris but towards the end, Sam mentioned that he wanted to discuss these topics with someone. It's a shame that he picked Tim Maudlin for this discussion.
With respect - I think not reluctant, perhaps a more fitting word and because Harris is simewhat generous with his deployment of metaphor and analogy - so he is simply trying untangle all that - very politely and very considerately. Is this perhaps one of the differences between scientific praxis and philosophical praxis?
"But it is a wrong assumption to suppose universally that we have an adequate first principle in virtue of the fact that something always is so … Thus Democritus reduces the causes that explain nature to the fact that things happened in the past in the same way as they happen now: but he does not think fit to seek for a first principle to explain this 'always' … Let this conclude what we have to say in support of our contention that there never was a time when there was not motion, and never will be a time when there will not be motion." - Physics VIII, 2[23]
Tim Maudlin was both condescending and superficial. Locke and Hume are hardly the last word in deciding the question of free will. He appeared to be utterly unwilling or incapable of seeing beneath the most obvious aspects of our mental process of making choices. As it seems whenever I listen to a compatibilist it comes down to "I feel like I have free will therefore I do." But we know for certain that decisions are made in the brain before we're aware we've made them, actions initiated prior to us being conscious that we are about to act. The chain of causality is very complex, but it's unbroken, and there is no link of freedom in there manipulated by some unencumbered conscious emperor who objectively weighs all the factors and then tells the brain the final ruling. Sam has a far greater grasp of the actual process and did a very good job of exposing the apologist Maudlin.
What free will means for compatibilists is for example ''i signed this contract and wasn't forced by other people'', that's all that it means. Compatibilists don't disagree with you, so what is the point of your comment, you are arguing against a religious definition of free will.
@@1GTX1 You are describing a legal definition of free will. The concern being that a decision, agreement or choice may have been coerced or made under some pressure by an external agent, and without full consent. There are good reasons why this would be a concern in our social/legal affairs. But that's not the philosophical point that's being pondered. The question is what is the process by which we make our own choices to act, what is the internal causal chain? The concept of free will is bandied about, more rightly just taken for granted casually as the unquestioned reality. But it doesn't hold up under careful analysis. I don't care about religious beliefs except that they are the result and cause of so much delusion and suffering in the world.
Agreed! Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
Sam was aware of this, so why didn't he drill much? It may not have taken much. Some people just don't realize they've wandered away. I would like to have heard more. Maybe Sam didn't want to take any more time there, in order to make more space elsewhere in the conversion?
I think a 4-D "being" looking at our 3-D universe would likely see everything happening together. The direction and velocity of all the various interacting matter likely "determines" (quantum uncertainty) everything that happens at every point (vector) in 3D space.
In the discussions about (lack of) global simultaneity and the fact that that the order of events cannot be the same for different observers is one way to think about it i.e. form a perspective of or vantage point of one observer vs. the other observer. Sure. This is somewhat like the view one sees looking outside the moving train - the trees close by seem to be moving faster compared to trees farther away. But that is from our perspective riding on the train. But near and far trees are themselves stationary. But why should we think of time from the point of second and third observer? In physics we normally worry about from the event's perspective (first observer) itself. Why not from only the first observer perspective at every point in space? Presumably there is only one thing happening at every instant in space since the beginning (say big bang). And events have been occurring at every point in space one after the other. And with that, logically, there is latest event happening at every point in space, farthest away from the big bang. Should we not call that (hypersurface) some kind of absolute global now? And to me this first observer perspective based NOW is more important in some sense.
I've been reading Gibbon on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The key forces were not the barbarians at the gate, but the disfunction within the gates. The suspension of objective critical thinking by the people (the P in SPQR) was a crucial factor in allowing those forces to gain sway. If Carlson has an audience from here forward, I'd say America is done.
You let him off the hook there, @Sam Harris, at 2:13:00. Maudlin said that he created a list from the films he liked. The question did not ask him to do that. He could have used a list of films he hated or films with actors he liked and so on. He said earlier, using that particular list did not affect he free will but it does, hugely. He will have no idea why he choose to pick a film from a list of films he like and that, simply underlines the point of his lack of free will.
Frustrating to listen to a very intelligent person who is completely confused about free will. Tim totally missed the plot. "I'm free to choose between strawberry and chocolate, but I didn't choose my preferences to begin with." Oh boy...
Is this comment pro or con for free will? I can't tell. They didn't really ever get to free will in this discussion, so im wondering if you have listened to the entire podcast and are just commenting here as follow up.
16:10 I'm not sure this logic is correct. He is stating that if the underlying physics in universe A were different from the physics in universe B, we could still have the same economic laws. He concludes from this that "all scientific understanding reduces to physics...is just plain wrong". If he were arguing that you can't get to a single type of physics from economics...I think that makes sense. But his statement just requires that physics has explanatory power for all fields, which it does. You don't have to go backwards from economics. You can start at physics and explain everything else. And from that perspective it doesn't matter if multiple variations of physics point to the same result
Honestly, I'm not in any way qualified to measure the accuracy of Tim's positions (surprise), but I can say I really disliked his tendency to dismiss points of view he'd obviously never interacted with. Nice episode though
He dodged Sam's main point the entire convo - what if only the actual exists, and what is possible is only a story we tell? This point seems self evident to me, but those philosophers devoted to the existence of free will, however they choose to define it, tend to dislike this brute fact of reality. To deny it, Tim would need to prove a single timeline can branch and diverge, or that we can rewind time and move forward again with different results. Needless to say, neither of these proofs are permitted by reality.
Agreed! Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
I think the feeling of the commenters above are valid, but I understand Tim's confidence in his position. It strikes me that it is not intended to be arrogance, it is just that he leans much heavier into science than he does philosophy. Science is his root and that affects his views outward toward philosophy. Whereas for a philosopher, their root is the opposite and branches out toward science. Neither is wrong. But they will think in very distinct ways that sometimes don't overlap. My root is typically in science and it takes quite a lot of effort sometimes to shift to a philosophical "mode", we will call it. The ability of whimsy.
His entire point about time reversal was also terrible, CPT has nothing to do with what he claimed. Poor guy is way out of his depth. Remember - listen to the actual physicists when it comes to physics!
What Sam does not understand (or for some unknown reason refuses to understand) is the fact that only because you don’t know where a thought came from, this does not mean that it is beyond your decision making apparatus. We may just not know (YET!) why we behave this way. He regularity uses the word “mystery” to describe this and somehow spins an argument against free will out of it. How?? It’s like saying that a thunder is the voice of god or whatever, only because you don’t know the physics behind it (YET!) and now you are drawing unprovable conclusions. If every science would work that way, it would be called religion. Sam is drawing a conclusion in the middle of an experiment. There are no real evidence for the absence of free will. You always have to consider that you, as a human, are simply not sophisticated enough to fit trough the rabbit hole and find the reason. This does NOT mean that there IS no reason. Keep searching!!
Seems really attached to his thoughts. I never know what I’m going to decide and I always change my perspective on things. The fact that I’m always changing means I can’t really point to a reason, it was a derivative of me but I’m a function of time/karma, paradoxically in that I just named a reason 😅.
Trying to decide whether the comments are for or against free will. Not having a "pro or con" before each comment as a descriptor leads to a pretty fun game of discovery.
this debate on difference at 7 minutes 20 should be unpacked somewhere (not here but in philosophical terms elsewhere) in terms of WEIRD bias. It appears clear from the literature that at the extremes of hyper-individualism in the west the phenomena of agency is quite different to that of demographics in non-western, collectivist societies.
Unimpressed with loquacious Maudlin. I struggled with the word soup Tim throws out (somewhat condescendingly) by changing the context at every logical constraint Sam proposes. Sam plants a logical flag and Maudlin pulls it out of the ground and walks away...WTF? I struggled with the framing and the replies. The discussion about "free will" went the same way. The cause and effect discourse was happening on two different levels of discourse. Tim seems incapable of following the logic that normally disambiguates the context. He jumps the context right back to where he wants to drag the discourse. If one were to ask why the guy robbed the bank, Maudlin would say, "because he was a bad guy" and Sam would say, "it was determined by the particles in his brain, within the environment at the time". The reason free will is incompatible with determinism is that the degree of "freedom" of any "choice" is limited by the constituent matter thereof. That one makes any particular choice is constrained by the particular arrangement of their particles....nothing more. Maudlin's argument against this is that he can't explain why he does things...seems to miss the point. I am frequently perplexed by how some "intelligent" people can still fall short on such simple things...like I frequently do when arguing with my wife. To Maudlin's credit, he did correctly elucidate the (often misused, "Copenhagen Interpretation") by disassociating an observation from consciousness. An observation in the context of the Einstein (PDR) vs. Copenhagen has only to do with some sort of interaction in the physical sense. All observations in this sense require an interaction while a conscious observer can do so purely passively.
Exactly. If you could somehow expand your size to 100 times the size of our current universe (as we understand it) and held the universe in your left hand and snapped your fingers on your right hand, that snap happened across the entire universe you're holding "now" in your perception of it in real time. Time is a 'perception' quality of consciousness, not a 'scale' quality of physics.
Unless we change the meaning of the word 'exist', which implicitly means exists now, the block universe does not make sense. And even the growing block universe does not make sense. Presentism only makes sense. If we think in terms of what was and is real and existed then and exists now, the growing block universe makes sense. But the future part of the block universe makes sense in the sense that it will be block shaped in some sense of 3d of space and 1d of time but is not realized yet. In any case, people confuse the model with the reality. The block is just a model, but the universe exists and is real only NOW.
The whole reality is hidden by the limits of our ability to uptake data that describes it, we want to perceive the data in order to internalize it, in order to take part in it, to see its implications on your probability that you are safe
Really? Pedantic nitpick, but rocket countdowns are actually not counting down but are counting up. Up. It's called t-10 for a reason because it's in the negatives counting up towards zero and then if you pay attention, the clock continues to climb upwards in the positives... This is the mission timer
Any time Sam gets very specific about the human brain and its wiring goes right over this poor philosophers head. Then Tim contradicts himself saying because he is living according to preferences he has no part in tuning he is 'free'. The guy's not a real scientist, why is he allowed to talk about these things professionally?
At 13:25, I disagree with Tim that physicist, unless s/he is required to give one final answer in only one sentence, would be able to say in a descriptive fashion that in the interim, before the screen burns out, the system seems to be in some kind of oscillation between two states. I do agree with Tim that a computer scientist's answer may be more useful and interesting to what the intent of Tim's question was. Sure. But that difference is more about the nature of answers and not about the computer and its internal state and dynamics and reductionism of that.
yeah I didn't get what he was going on about with all that. We all know there are multiple levels of abstraction of a topic. That's why we have hierarchies in the physical sciences. There are even multiple levels of abstraction in the single field of computer science. But what is his point? To state to the obvious?
@@mathieuguillet4036 Correct, but not without scientific findings. Metaphysics is not purely mathematical, but a model-theoretic hybridization of scientific and axiomatic methods.
Even though we can’t recognize a certain combination of subatomic particles that makes up a “cocktail party”, can’t we still explain everything happening in a cocktail party at that molecular level (by the laws of physics)?
@@anewman So is Sam, and even he was surprised at how obstinate some people can be on the topic of free will, hence his disclaimer at the beginning of the podcast at around the 6:50 mark. Listen to the full-length version of this episode if you can, there's an extra 1hr40m of conversation, during which they go back and forth on this topic; Tim's not as open minded or meditative as you seem to think he is.
So frustrating to listen to. We don't punish the carnivorous bear not because it didn't deliberate----we'd punish a human that killed without deliberation---but because punishing it won't affect the behavior of other bears! Why is this consistently missed?
I'm assuming this comment is from someone that listened to the whole podcast (as i did not), and they're pointing out one or the other's inability to grapple with determinism alongside consequence. It's Sam that believes in free will, right?
@@Rave.- Sam's a determinist. And every once in a while he seems to understand that you don't need free will to justify a system of punishment (even if one puts aside incapacitation). But more often he slides back into the same mistake the "free will" crowd makes. [Edit: Dawkins does too. He says, in substance, a killer is someone with a defective brain circuit. No, killing makes perfect sense and is rational. Punishment just raises the cost of killing to where the killer, considering the costs and benefits, "can't help" but not to kill. That's the idea; it doesn't always work, but you can't say it never works. (Look at SF Cal, CHAZ in Seattle, e.g., when we go with the brain damage model of criminality. ). ]
I'm going to note down Tim's 42 minutes quote as I've been using the reference of "counting up" for some time, and the orthogonal index for a number line to involve then "looking across". The psychological importance is generally neglected, but we don't generally care what the time points mean, for instance, on recent inflation graphs, only what the index is indicating: are things getting better or worse for us materially. Besides this, the conscious agent is creating the act of counting up, and those points otherwise are identical without an indexical association. It isn't a person's age in numbers that generally freaks them out, it is the indexical association of everything they haven't achieved or won't be able to. Finally, people use "time" colloquially to indicate clock time, but many other times they don't mean an x axis number line but the material effects of the actual orthogonal index as we count up.
The subjective feelings and experiences can only be had if the brain of the experiencer is in the right working state. Intoxicated, damaged, under general anesthesia or dead brain cannot feel the subject feelings to varying degree. Thus it is likely that the mechanisms that detect, record and report subjective experience themselves are in the brain. Which suggests that the subjective experience has physical basis. And it is not as if we have some other non-brain mechanism to have subjective feelings and experiences. I am not sure why this simple fact is not discussed when discussing subjective experience.
I'm not sure if anyone saw the recent Lex Fridman episode with Sam Harris but towards the end, Sam mentioned that he wanted to discuss these topics with someone. It's a shame that he picked Tim Maudlin for this discussion. Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on light cones and the direction of time.
Physics and computers and causation!? Jesus H Christ!!! A 1959 IBM computer was used to design the core columns for a couple of New York skyscrapers but you can't wonder about the amount of steel on each level. Is the effect of the Conservation of Momentum on causation in sequential impacts too complicated? Or is that not pseudo-intellectual enough?
The whole presentism /eternalism dilema comes down to the question is there a single paramount NOW moment and everything outside is not "real" , or not? It seems that for Sam's interlocutor the answer is yes despite the fact that all our current models and all the emperical phisical experiment results seems to prove the opposite. You can do that and go against the evidence but I don't understand what even the benefits would be of such a presentist universe
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 01:25 🤔 *Introduction to Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Robustness* - Nassim Nicholas Taleb's background and career in risk engineering, trading, and academia. - Taleb's expertise in probability and uncertainty. - Taleb introduces the concept of robustness and its importance in dealing with complex systems. 05:30 📚 *Fragility, Robustness, and Black Swans* - Taleb explains the fragility introduced by technology and optimization. - Comparison of the fragility of a Kindle (technology) and a book (traditional). - Introduction of the idea that complexity leads to fragility, especially in the face of Black Swan events. 08:42 🌐 *Globalization, Complexity, and Operational Leverage* - Taleb discusses the impact of globalization on clustering and reduced diversity. - The rise of complexity exacerbated by the internet and its effects on systems. - Introduction to operational leverage and its role in making systems more fragile. 14:34 💻 *Moore's Law, Complexity, and Collective Wisdom* - Taleb presents the idea that every 10 years, collective wisdom degrades by half. - Discussion on how the increase in computational power (Moore's Law) correlates with the decline in collective wisdom. - Reflection on the challenges posed by the rise of complexity over the past 25 years. 17:35 🔄 *Optimization, Redundancy, and Consequences of Globalization* - Taleb illustrates the problems of optimization and lack of redundancies using personal experiences. - Discusses the consequences of globalization, including reduced diversity in languages and ideas. - Emphasis on the importance of understanding the consequences that percolate through complex systems. 21:11 🌋 *Understanding the 2007 Financial Crisis* - Taleb discusses the unraveling of events in 2007 leading to the financial crisis. - Complexity degradation and the lack of understanding in Washington were fundamental causes. 23:14 📉 *Specialization and Fragility* - Taleb explores how specialization increases fragility and reduces robustness. - Critiques the economic theory of comparative advantage, emphasizing the importance of robustness in facing environmental changes. - Highlights the negative impact of utopian ideals on societal robustness. 25:42 🌐 *Challenges in Disseminating Truth* - Taleb discusses the difficulty in convincing individuals of truths that are collectively denied. - Mentions the clustering of opinion in academia, and the challenge of translating truths to the collective. 27:56 💼 *Institutional Stickiness and Forecasting Challenges* - Taleb criticizes institutional stickiness, drawing parallels between the medical profession's slow adoption of new practices and economic forecasting challenges. - Highlights the unreliability of long-term forecasts and the inherent problems with economic forecasting. 30:26 🌍 *Responsibility for Future Generations* - Taleb addresses the irresponsibility of making future generations pay for present mistakes. - Advocates for reducing debt, improving environmental awareness, and questioning government deficit policies. 32:17 📚 *Blueprint for a Black Swan Robust Society* - Taleb outlines key principles for a Black Swan robust society, emphasizing factors like no bailouts, no government intervention, and minimal debt. 34:52 🏡 *Social Breakdown and Robustness in Societal Structures* - Taleb discusses the importance of societal structures in times of crisis, comparing the robustness of suburbia in the U.S. to Russia's more interconnected communities. - Mentions how inefficient systems can sometimes be more robust, using Russia as an example. 38:15 🔗 *Belt Tightening and Potential Social Riots* - Taleb predicts potential social unrest due to necessary belt-tightening measures, especially in Europe. - Discusses the challenge of implementing measures that may be perceived as unfair, leading to riots and social breakdown. 39:25 🌐 *Global Fragility and Unpredictability* - Taleb warns about the global fragility, citing the unpredictability of the internet and potential worldwide consequences of regional breakdowns. - Emphasizes the need for a quick and effective response to prevent widespread chaos. 41:06 🌍 *David Cameron's Awareness of the Problem* - Taleb praises David Cameron for being one of the few individuals aware of the economic problem and advocating for corrective measures. - Expresses concerns about the lack of awareness and effective actions in addressing the challenges discussed. 41:58 📊 *Identifying Robustness in Strategy* - Robustness is achieved by perturbing parameters, considering changes in tail distributions. 43:22 🧠 *Focus on Rare Events and Tail Events* - Taleb's expertise lies in rare and tail events, discovered during his time as a trader in 1987. - He introduces the concept of four quadrants to classify domains and exposures based on sensitivity to fat tails. 45:14 🛡️ *Getting Out of the Fourth Quadrant* - Exiting the fourth quadrant involves reducing exposure to events sensitive to fat tails. - Taleb suggests moving to assets like cash or gold, insensitive to probability distribution changes. 47:01 💰 *Limitations of Government Regulation* - Government regulations may not be a panacea, and Taleb criticizes the ineffectiveness of certain regulations in the financial sector. - He emphasizes the need to remove advantages for big entities rather than relying solely on regulations. 49:21 🚫 *Avoiding Bailouts and Collusion* - Taleb advocates against bailouts, stating that letting companies go bust can prevent future problems. - He highlights the dangers of collusion between the state and large companies, using examples like the automotive industry. Made with HARPA AI
I was hoping this would be more interesting but it was surprisingly not. As a physicist I think you’d get more out of Sabine Hossenfelser’s UA-cam channel. I don’t agree with her on the notion of a purely deterministic universe but she does a good job of laying out the real issues in physics and how they impact various aspects of philosophy. I would also like to hear discussion of the interface of free will and randomness. If you think the universe has an aspect of randomness that manifests itself in our physical world then any entity they depends on survival for reproduction is going to have to have something we might call free will in order to navigate that randomness. This is an obvious point that Sam seems to misunderstand or at least hasn’t actually thought of.
Reification is a fallacy in science. Time flies. Love moves mountains. Energy is transferred. Space is curved. Time dilates. A particle is an excitation in a field. ... These expressions can't ever be taken literally. You're treating concepts like objects (reification) when you claim a CONCEPT can perform actions. Only OBJECTS can perform actions! What sense would it make to say that LOVE can ROTATE? Or MOTION can MOVE? 150% irrational. You can only apply verbs to OBJECTS: a horse moves, a planet rotates, a bulldozer moves mountains.. .. So can time EXIST? .. NO! Only OBJECTS can exist! .. Exist: object with location. Look up Bill Gaede if you want your mind unscrambled from the neverending irrational mathphyz nonsense.
I am not a philospher, but Sam's whole trouble with "possible" seems just a result of picking bad sciences. If we leave quantum mechanics aside, where "possible" really manifests itself as fundamental force, we live in a completely deterministic world. However, we don't have good enough models to determine precise state of a system. So, we revert back to approximations, which are inherently prone to error. Even more than that, most of our "possible" comes from field of statistics, which is basiically looking at N observations and predicting the N+1th observation. This is not even a science. There is no reason the N+1 should even remotely follow a combination of past N events. But if modern advances in machine learning prove anything, such analysis are unreasonably effective in modelling large systems, even the most complex ones. So, as a conclusion, the "possible" comes as an output of computation and narrative limitation of finite resources and intellect. That does not mean reality deals in "possibles", but we have no way of knowing what that exact outcome would be. So when I say that outcome is going to be X with p% certainity, that is just a narrative framework to describe what my model predicts, and how many times among 100, that prediction can be wrong. The whole exercise becomes useless if I want to make just 1 prediction, and it will be whatever universe deems it so. But if you are intereseted in understanding on a crude level what outcomes will be, you rely on large number of repeated predictions, since in universe, large overwrites small outliers. We are generally always more interested in flow of river, not the minor backflow that happens because of eddies. We don't throw our model which can predict direction of river away because it cannot measure how many backflows are happening.
I feel like "we don't have good enough models to predict, but if we did, we could" was all Tim was trying to say here, which strikes me as not only reasonable, but obvious. The comments here seem to not be ok with that notion, for which I am confused. Maybe I'm listening to too much Alex O'Connor and Steven Woodford and so Sam's audience have a different upbringing.
@@Rave.- He was, but I found Tim many times not addressing the whole premise effectively. He needed more to emphasize on the practical effectiveness & functional need of probability analysis, and also agree with Sam's assertion that whatever probability we get a-priori, doesn't manifest itself in actual reality. It is a figment of our narrative framework, and only the real exists. But this guy is also a philosopher, and I am getting increasingly convinced philosophers love to haggle about epistemology
There is weak emergence and strong emergence. Most scientists seem to reject strong emergence, because that can't be explained simply by causes from the past. I believe that there is strong emergence! And that it is the driving force behind evolution into more complexity on a cosmic scale. Maybe similar to Wolfgang Smith's idea of vertical causation.
Are we supposed to believe that literally everything a newsreader says must be something they seriously believe or it's 'fraudulent'? Or does this just apply to Fox?
@@memoryhero the guest was clearly speaking from his ego. He was all about being in control of his mind so much so that he was blind to see that he had no idea where his thoughts were coming from. At multiple points he even proved sam's point without realizing it by say he has no idea why he made the choice he made. He just kept clinging to the idea that he thinks he chose it. If he is the bar for a highly educated person in our society then we are more in trouble than I previously thought.
@@dyhppyx i'm kind of with you. i found him at times insufferable and at other times fine, as he ought be given his education. we always have to remember that the ability to learn at depth does not translate the equal ability to learn at breadth.
@@memoryhero I don't know you but I feel impressed by your words. Respect. Do you happen to have a channel or blog yourself? I'd be interested to hear more commentary of yours.
@@dyhppyx homie, i'm just another wiseguy on the internet, but thx for the kind words. we bros on the internet have to stick together! one love. (bro fist)
Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
Yea, that was a weird discussion, especially when Tim was laughing at his own "jokes". Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
He hasn't. But Sam always talks about big current events in the intro of his episodes. That just so happened to be one of the biggest stories that week.
I love Sam Harris.... but, when a human form, such as myself, takes on these concepts, embracing the revelations as described could swallow you into a vortex of unending psudo-reality. Call me crazy.
I love your podcast. But did you seriously interview a philosopher NAMED Maudlin? Am I the only one who found this coincidence amusing? Just me?..(sigh)...ok
Sam starts out by saying that he and TM have a long disagreement on free will… why would I want to listen to anything TM has to say if he can’t understand such a basic fact of life!
@@ashjaymohsin5583 I would say it is a fact but still wouldn’t write off what a philosopher says simply because he doesn’t believe free will is illusory. That’s strangely and unjustifiably dismissive.
@@motorhead48067 Well the best arguments for the reality of free will go beyond mere unjustified belief. I invite you to take a look at Iain McGilchrist's book 'The Matter with Things', which changed my view about free will (and a whole lot of other issues) Cheers !
@@motorhead48067 I am not writing off everything he has say. I’m sure he knows a thing or two… I just don’t think he knows much! My point was Sam should not have told us that upfront because it will turn off some viewers… unless of course they want to hear a discussion on free will.
I was genuinely frustrated by Tim's inability to explore concepts beyond his own intuition, or beyond those views presented by others (sometimes long dead) that he seems to take as gospel, on topics that would seem to be things he would be interested in exploring. Tim almost seemed combative, as if, how could Sam think any different than himself. He seemed so stuck in quoting and referencing other long lost physicists and philosophers, almost like he was coming from the far right. And he insisted on getting stuck in the semantics regarding the difference between real and actual, as if he was unable to address the actual topic being presented.
I agree. I haven't been this frustrated listening to a podcast in a long time. Tim laughing off everything Sam was saying and simply failing to grasp, or at least seeming to fail to grasp the concepts left me at a loss. Now I'm forced, against my will, to make this response. And even if he read this, I'm still not sure he'd truly understand that statement, or he's just grossly disingenuous.
It's one phenomenon many phenomena. Americans usually screw it up the other way (one phenomena two phenomena) but Sam Harris uses phenomenon for many. You guys drive me nuts. Learn English.😉
How in the world does someone with as many credentials as this guy has in philosophy struggle this hard with understanding Harris’s concept of free will? It baffles me.
@@NoFeckingNamesLeft so Tim does? That seems odd, given his statement in this podcast about knowing exactly what will happen if we were capable of calculating it.
This guy talks a lot and does as little as possible to give any idea of what he means. He goes on metaphors and analogies but never really says anything at all. It's frustrating how empty all his statements are. Even if he's not a physicist at least Sam is constantly trying to bring things back to what he actually means - and what he means is always very clear - and this guy just says all those words are too vague or nontechnical or something. It's a completely empty conversation.
Gah. then he goes off on teleology and evolution as if he's talking to 10 year olds. like.. who is he talking to? sam knows all of that. just about everyone knows those concepts. certainly anyone listening to the podcast.
Good opening...wish you delved into politics more often :). It is funny how much Tucker Carlson agrees with you. I don't hear anyone saying he had TDS. Oh god...queue the conservative listeners coming in with their deranged views ***shudders***
Sam Harris logic- If everything was different right, I would not be wrong right, and since eveything could be different right, I am correct right. Somone suffering from NPD is incapable of admitting when they are wrong.
You're wrong on Tucker Carlson. He has learned we all have learned a lot over time. He's taken an anti war stance and been consistent on them, called out corruption in business and wallstreet and the fed. He's been right about vaccines and January 6th. Tucker is a true progressive
He said “I’ve been waiting for this for the past 4 years” in reference to Trump losing in 2020. That means he was anti-Trump from the start but pretended otherwise for 4 years. It’s not that he learned and grew intellectually and realized Trump was a problem. He knew it all along and pretended otherwise to pander to his audience. Surely you see the problem with that.
@@BestCosmologist I agree with most of Sam’s criticism of Trump. Qualities that I admire in a person; Trump has the polar opposite qualities. Just an awful person and leader.
Why would somebody explore philosophy under any motivation except seeking entertainment? Just a lot of words. The effectiveness is in managing relationships with other people, and knowing oneself, for whatever that's worth. Philosophy commenting on physics is like morbid obesity commenting on peak athleticism.
@@Bronco541 One of the deep values of philosophy is its intimate look at language; I develop that skill so that I can ask you, "Where did I say philosophy has nothing of value to add to the discussion of science?" (I assume you mis-keyed, but the mistake leaves quite an ambiguity.) We can ask whether some discovery is "good" or "bad" for people, but that's not about the science; it's about the words "good" and "bad". Got it? If not, come back when you develop some chops in philosophy.
@@Laocoon283 There's something else that studying language has taught me. When we use the word "important...", we usually mean to follow it with "...to me and my friends and family". Look around, HM, and see the multitudes to whom "knowing oneself" is irrelevant. So now you can make it into a badge that says "look how special I am, knowing myself is important to me". Don't take it badly. I don't expect to encounter students of language in YT comment threads, although I do expect to encounter sophists. People study philosophy because somebody else tells them we can use it to know ourselves better, and they believe it. Anyway, how do we show we know ourselves? It's there (or not) in our discourse.
@@PrestoJacobson because when he describes Tucker‘s show, he cannot tell the difference between “riling up trumps base” and populist sentiments like distrust of CIA, congress, Covid origins, lockdowns, mandates, CDC, Russiagate, the use of coded language like “misinformation”, etc. To Sam these are all backdoors to Trumpism. I’ve heard many people come on this podcast and ask Sam this exact question - don’t you see the difference? And Sam always deflects, changes subject, or has no response. Sam is literally missing the part of the brain which understands anti-authoritarian populism
For those of you whole-heartedly in Sam's ideological corner, here is a podcast chock full of counter-narratives to Sam's from Russell Brand (regarding Tucker): (with video receipts) ua-cam.com/video/JS_BwXqAiYw/v-deo.html
Hey Bob, can you actually provide an example of Sam being dishonest? Like actually lying? It’s easy to summarize valid criticisms of Trump and his endless lies as (orange man bad), but if you’re going to call Sam dishonest, are you prepared to back it up? Or are you just gonna spam shit like “orange man bad” and slink into the shadows?
It's like telling Lebron to shutup and dribble. It's a bullshit tactic to silence people who all ought to be weighing in on such big questions. Ask your plumber some time and get a broader perspective.
Good to hear Sam express his uncertainty about determinism. Being uncertain is extremely under rated, and necessary.
Well it was determined he would say that so...
@@Laocoon283 But was it determined by random chance, inevitability, or Joe Pesci?
@@Ixnatifual Do you think I'm funny? Funny how huh? Funny like a clown, funny? 👊👊
@@Laocoon283you're here to amuse me.
yes, given that otherwise things happen because they must, because everything that can happen happens. And you've explained absolutely nothing lol
Tim showed an unwillingness to grapple with big ideas, which made me question all the stances he took regardless of whether or not I had any ideas to counter them. He was literally explaining the process of choosing something as though that provided some kind of insight. Of course it seems obvious we’re making decisions. That’s the whole reason the question of free will is so fascinating.
Agreed! Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
@@irrelevant2235 right? his position is everything is in your past or future light cone. but nobody was ever questioning that. we all know the basic gist of relativity -- and even I know the very rudimentary math of special. the entire quetion is what it means philosophically.
If all he's saying is it means just that there are directed light cones, why do we need a philosopher to repeat the basic facts of physics?
@@justin_5631 I'm not sure if you saw the recent Lex Fridman episode with Sam Harris but towards the end, Sam mentioned that he wanted to discuss these topics with someone. It's a shame that he picked Tim Maudlin for this discussion.
With respect - I think not reluctant, perhaps a more fitting word and because Harris is simewhat generous with his deployment of metaphor and analogy - so he is simply trying untangle all that - very politely and very considerately. Is this perhaps one of the differences between scientific praxis and philosophical praxis?
"But it is a wrong assumption to suppose universally that we have an adequate first principle in virtue of the fact that something always is so … Thus Democritus reduces the causes that explain nature to the fact that things happened in the past in the same way as they happen now: but he does not think fit to seek for a first principle to explain this 'always' … Let this conclude what we have to say in support of our contention that there never was a time when there was not motion, and never will be a time when there will not be motion."
- Physics VIII, 2[23]
One of the best discussions/debate in the long time. Happy to see Sam getting into challenging topics and ideas
Bring back the free subscriptions
Still does half price. send an email
Loved this, more podcasts about physics.
Tim Maudlin was both condescending and superficial. Locke and Hume are hardly the last word in deciding the question of free will. He appeared to be utterly unwilling or incapable of seeing beneath the most obvious aspects of our mental process of making choices. As it seems whenever I listen to a compatibilist it comes down to "I feel like I have free will therefore I do." But we know for certain that decisions are made in the brain before we're aware we've made them, actions initiated prior to us being conscious that we are about to act. The chain of causality is very complex, but it's unbroken, and there is no link of freedom in there manipulated by some unencumbered conscious emperor who objectively weighs all the factors and then tells the brain the final ruling. Sam has a far greater grasp of the actual process and did a very good job of exposing the apologist Maudlin.
What free will means for compatibilists is for example ''i signed this contract and wasn't forced by other people'', that's all that it means. Compatibilists don't disagree with you, so what is the point of your comment, you are arguing against a religious definition of free will.
@@1GTX1 You are describing a legal definition of free will. The concern being that a decision, agreement or choice may have been coerced or made under some pressure by an external agent, and without full consent. There are good reasons why this would be a concern in our social/legal affairs. But that's not the philosophical point that's being pondered. The question is what is the process by which we make our own choices to act, what is the internal causal chain? The concept of free will is bandied about, more rightly just taken for granted casually as the unquestioned reality. But it doesn't hold up under careful analysis. I don't care about religious beliefs except that they are the result and cause of so much delusion and suffering in the world.
@24:00 Math realm couldn’t be independent of physical realm- numbers as concepts don’t exist until someone has a perception of a physical thing.
Tim Maudlin talked in circles and failed to address the implications of Sam's main points.
Agreed! Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
Sam was aware of this, so why didn't he drill much? It may not have taken much. Some people just don't realize they've wandered away.
I would like to have heard more. Maybe Sam didn't want to take any more time there, in order to make more space elsewhere in the conversion?
I really enjoyed that conversation.
Yes, more stuff like this. Going back to your roots.
Excelente Sam
Excellent Sam
Mr Sam Harris, you are very wise man 🙏🌞
Thats some sharp sarcasm, Antbreeder.
@@CP-nl2zb His name is Antibreeder, not Antbreeder. He does not breed ants!
Antibreeder, I take it that you're an antinatalist as am I so good for you for being wise! 👍
@@irrelevant2235 ants are cute tho 😅
It says 2013 in description should be May 1 2023
Wasn't this same on last video?
Episode 317 has the same typo. I don't know if he reads his comments.
No it relates to the episode. Time is illusory.
Brain damage
Thank you.. love you all
I think a 4-D "being" looking at our 3-D universe would likely see everything happening together. The direction and velocity of all the various interacting matter likely "determines" (quantum uncertainty) everything that happens at every point (vector) in 3D space.
In the discussions about (lack of) global simultaneity and the fact that that the order of events cannot be the same for different observers is one way to think about it i.e. form a perspective of or vantage point of one observer vs. the other observer. Sure. This is somewhat like the view one sees looking outside the moving train - the trees close by seem to be moving faster compared to trees farther away. But that is from our perspective riding on the train. But near and far trees are themselves stationary. But why should we think of time from the point of second and third observer? In physics we normally worry about from the event's perspective (first observer) itself. Why not from only the first observer perspective at every point in space? Presumably there is only one thing happening at every instant in space since the beginning (say big bang). And events have been occurring at every point in space one after the other. And with that, logically, there is latest event happening at every point in space, farthest away from the big bang. Should we not call that (hypersurface) some kind of absolute global now? And to me this first observer perspective based NOW is more important in some sense.
I've been reading Gibbon on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The key forces were not the barbarians at the gate, but the disfunction within the gates.
The suspension of objective critical thinking by the people (the P in SPQR) was a crucial factor in allowing those forces to gain sway.
If Carlson has an audience from here forward, I'd say America is done.
You let him off the hook there, @Sam Harris, at 2:13:00. Maudlin said that he created a list from the films he liked. The question did not ask him to do that. He could have used a list of films he hated or films with actors he liked and so on. He said earlier, using that particular list did not affect he free will but it does, hugely. He will have no idea why he choose to pick a film from a list of films he like and that, simply underlines the point of his lack of free will.
Exhaustingly dense guest.
I just realized I'm not currently on Sam's subscriber feed.
Frustrating to listen to a very intelligent person who is completely confused about free will. Tim totally missed the plot. "I'm free to choose between strawberry and chocolate, but I didn't choose my preferences to begin with." Oh boy...
Came for this
Is this comment pro or con for free will? I can't tell.
They didn't really ever get to free will in this discussion, so im wondering if you have listened to the entire podcast and are just commenting here as follow up.
Yeah, it's definitely not his cup of tea. I'd rather listen to him talking about the Bell's theorem.
16:10 I'm not sure this logic is correct. He is stating that if the underlying physics in universe A were different from the physics in universe B, we could still have the same economic laws. He concludes from this that "all scientific understanding reduces to physics...is just plain wrong".
If he were arguing that you can't get to a single type of physics from economics...I think that makes sense. But his statement just requires that physics has explanatory power for all fields, which it does. You don't have to go backwards from economics. You can start at physics and explain everything else. And from that perspective it doesn't matter if multiple variations of physics point to the same result
Your missing the point, Physics is fundamental and Economics is emergent from the fundamental, complexity.
Sam you are the best!🎉
Honestly, I'm not in any way qualified to measure the accuracy of Tim's positions (surprise), but I can say I really disliked his tendency to dismiss points of view he'd obviously never interacted with. Nice episode though
He dodged Sam's main point the entire convo - what if only the actual exists, and what is possible is only a story we tell? This point seems self evident to me, but those philosophers devoted to the existence of free will, however they choose to define it, tend to dislike this brute fact of reality. To deny it, Tim would need to prove a single timeline can branch and diverge, or that we can rewind time and move forward again with different results. Needless to say, neither of these proofs are permitted by reality.
Agreed! Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
I think the feeling of the commenters above are valid, but I understand Tim's confidence in his position. It strikes me that it is not intended to be arrogance, it is just that he leans much heavier into science than he does philosophy.
Science is his root and that affects his views outward toward philosophy. Whereas for a philosopher, their root is the opposite and branches out toward science. Neither is wrong. But they will think in very distinct ways that sometimes don't overlap.
My root is typically in science and it takes quite a lot of effort sometimes to shift to a philosophical "mode", we will call it. The ability of whimsy.
His entire point about time reversal was also terrible, CPT has nothing to do with what he claimed. Poor guy is way out of his depth. Remember - listen to the actual physicists when it comes to physics!
What Sam does not understand (or for some unknown reason refuses to understand) is the fact that only because you don’t know where a thought came from, this does not mean that it is beyond your decision making apparatus. We may just not know (YET!) why we behave this way.
He regularity uses the word “mystery” to describe this and somehow spins an argument against free will out of it. How?? It’s like saying that a thunder is the voice of god or whatever, only because you don’t know the physics behind it (YET!) and now you are drawing unprovable conclusions.
If every science would work that way, it would be called religion.
Sam is drawing a conclusion in the middle of an experiment.
There are no real evidence for the absence of free will. You always have to consider that you, as a human, are simply not sophisticated enough to fit trough the rabbit hole and find the reason. This does NOT mean that there IS no reason. Keep searching!!
Seems really attached to his thoughts. I never know what I’m going to decide and I always change my perspective on things. The fact that I’m always changing means I can’t really point to a reason, it was a derivative of me but I’m a function of time/karma, paradoxically in that I just named a reason 😅.
Great Making Sense
Trying to decide whether the comments are for or against free will. Not having a "pro or con" before each comment as a descriptor leads to a pretty fun game of discovery.
Interesting , but it seemed all concrete physics orthodoxy rather than philosophy
this debate on difference at 7 minutes 20 should be unpacked somewhere (not here but in philosophical terms elsewhere) in terms of WEIRD bias. It appears clear from the literature that at the extremes of hyper-individualism in the west the phenomena of agency is quite different to that of demographics in non-western, collectivist societies.
Unimpressed with loquacious Maudlin. I struggled with the word soup Tim throws out (somewhat condescendingly) by changing the context at every logical constraint Sam proposes. Sam plants a logical flag and Maudlin pulls it out of the ground and walks away...WTF? I struggled with the framing and the replies. The discussion about "free will" went the same way. The cause and effect discourse was happening on two different levels of discourse. Tim seems incapable of following the logic that normally disambiguates the context. He jumps the context right back to where he wants to drag the discourse. If one were to ask why the guy robbed the bank, Maudlin would say, "because he was a bad guy" and Sam would say, "it was determined by the particles in his brain, within the environment at the time". The reason free will is incompatible with determinism is that the degree of "freedom" of any "choice" is limited by the constituent matter thereof. That one makes any particular choice is constrained by the particular arrangement of their particles....nothing more. Maudlin's argument against this is that he can't explain why he does things...seems to miss the point. I am frequently perplexed by how some "intelligent" people can still fall short on such simple things...like I frequently do when arguing with my wife. To Maudlin's credit, he did correctly elucidate the (often misused, "Copenhagen Interpretation") by disassociating an observation from consciousness. An observation in the context of the Einstein (PDR) vs. Copenhagen has only to do with some sort of interaction in the physical sense. All observations in this sense require an interaction while a conscious observer can do so purely passively.
In a block universe now is NOW.
Exactly. If you could somehow expand your size to 100 times the size of our current universe (as we understand it) and held the universe in your left hand and snapped your fingers on your right hand, that snap happened across the entire universe you're holding "now" in your perception of it in real time. Time is a 'perception' quality of consciousness, not a 'scale' quality of physics.
Now when you wrote it, or now when I'm reading it?
Yes.
@@Reclusive247 whenever you say now.
Unless we change the meaning of the word 'exist', which implicitly means exists now, the block universe does not make sense. And even the growing block universe does not make sense. Presentism only makes sense. If we think in terms of what was and is real and existed then and exists now, the growing block universe makes sense. But the future part of the block universe makes sense in the sense that it will be block shaped in some sense of 3d of space and 1d of time but is not realized yet. In any case, people confuse the model with the reality. The block is just a model, but the universe exists and is real only NOW.
The whole reality is hidden by the limits of our ability to uptake data that describes it, we want to perceive the data in order to internalize it, in order to take part in it, to see its implications on your probability that you are safe
Really? Pedantic nitpick, but rocket countdowns are actually not counting down but are counting up. Up. It's called t-10 for a reason because it's in the negatives counting up towards zero and then if you pay attention, the clock continues to climb upwards in the positives... This is the mission timer
A most excellent observation. I wish I thought of it. :) cheers, from Chicago.
He probably only pays attention to when they start count down from positive 10. Maybe they should start saying minus 10 instead.
You should invite Slavoj Zizek to the podcast
Any time Sam gets very specific about the human brain and its wiring goes right over this poor philosophers head. Then Tim contradicts himself saying because he is living according to preferences he has no part in tuning he is 'free'. The guy's not a real scientist, why is he allowed to talk about these things professionally?
At 13:25, I disagree with Tim that physicist, unless s/he is required to give one final answer in only one sentence, would be able to say in a descriptive fashion that in the interim, before the screen burns out, the system seems to be in some kind of oscillation between two states. I do agree with Tim that a computer scientist's answer may be more useful and interesting to what the intent of Tim's question was. Sure. But that difference is more about the nature of answers and not about the computer and its internal state and dynamics and reductionism of that.
yeah I didn't get what he was going on about with all that. We all know there are multiple levels of abstraction of a topic. That's why we have hierarchies in the physical sciences. There are even multiple levels of abstraction in the single field of computer science. But what is his point? To state to the obvious?
Physics + Philosophy = Mathematical Metaphysics
So : nonsense
Mathematics is metaphysics.
@@mathieuguillet4036 Correct, but not without scientific findings. Metaphysics is not purely mathematical, but a model-theoretic hybridization of scientific and axiomatic methods.
Didn't expect to find you here
The arrogance of side post man was brutal.
Thanks Sam
Yikes, the point is going over my head for the first 20min.
Did anyone understand Sam's first question?
Even though we can’t recognize a certain combination of subatomic particles that makes up a “cocktail party”, can’t we still explain everything happening in a cocktail party at that molecular level (by the laws of physics)?
This guest is insufferably closed minded, he needs meditation
He's a philosopher
@@anewman So is Sam, and even he was surprised at how obstinate some people can be on the topic of free will, hence his disclaimer at the beginning of the podcast at around the 6:50 mark. Listen to the full-length version of this episode if you can, there's an extra 1hr40m of conversation, during which they go back and forth on this topic; Tim's not as open minded or meditative as you seem to think he is.
So frustrating to listen to. We don't punish the carnivorous bear not because it didn't deliberate----we'd punish a human that killed without deliberation---but because punishing it won't affect the behavior of other bears! Why is this consistently missed?
I'm assuming this comment is from someone that listened to the whole podcast (as i did not), and they're pointing out one or the other's inability to grapple with determinism alongside consequence. It's Sam that believes in free will, right?
@@Rave.- Sam's a determinist. And every once in a while he seems to understand that you don't need free will to justify a system of punishment (even if one puts aside incapacitation). But more often he slides back into the same mistake the "free will" crowd makes. [Edit: Dawkins does too. He says, in substance, a killer is someone with a defective brain circuit. No, killing makes perfect sense and is rational. Punishment just raises the cost of killing to where the killer, considering the costs and benefits, "can't help" but not to kill. That's the idea; it doesn't always work, but you can't say it never works. (Look at SF Cal, CHAZ in Seattle, e.g., when we go with the brain damage model of criminality. ). ]
My brain hurts!!!!!!
I'm going to note down Tim's 42 minutes quote as I've been using the reference of "counting up" for some time, and the orthogonal index for a number line to involve then "looking across". The psychological importance is generally neglected, but we don't generally care what the time points mean, for instance, on recent inflation graphs, only what the index is indicating: are things getting better or worse for us materially. Besides this, the conscious agent is creating the act of counting up, and those points otherwise are identical without an indexical association. It isn't a person's age in numbers that generally freaks them out, it is the indexical association of everything they haven't achieved or won't be able to. Finally, people use "time" colloquially to indicate clock time, but many other times they don't mean an x axis number line but the material effects of the actual orthogonal index as we count up.
In case you did not know, you can use 42:00 to hyperlink it to that time the video.
The subjective feelings and experiences can only be had if the brain of the experiencer is in the right working state. Intoxicated, damaged, under general anesthesia or dead brain cannot feel the subject feelings to varying degree. Thus it is likely that the mechanisms that detect, record and report subjective experience themselves are in the brain. Which suggests that the subjective experience has physical basis. And it is not as if we have some other non-brain mechanism to have subjective feelings and experiences. I am not sure why this simple fact is not discussed when discussing subjective experience.
I'm not sure if anyone saw the recent Lex Fridman episode with Sam Harris but towards the end, Sam mentioned that he wanted to discuss these topics with someone. It's a shame that he picked Tim Maudlin for this discussion. Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on light cones and the direction of time.
Physics and computers and causation!?
Jesus H Christ!!!
A 1959 IBM computer was used to design the core columns for a couple of New York skyscrapers but you can't wonder about the amount of steel on each level. Is the effect of the Conservation of Momentum on causation in sequential impacts too complicated?
Or is that not pseudo-intellectual enough?
The whole presentism /eternalism dilema comes down to the question is there a single paramount NOW moment and everything outside is not "real" , or not? It seems that for Sam's interlocutor the answer is yes despite the fact that all our current models and all the emperical phisical experiment results seems to prove the opposite. You can do that and go against the evidence but I don't understand what even the benefits would be of such a presentist universe
Word salad without meat, cheese, or anything else tasty . . .
What a stupid comment
Tim's arguments were that way not Sam's
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
01:25 🤔 *Introduction to Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Robustness*
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb's background and career in risk engineering, trading, and academia.
- Taleb's expertise in probability and uncertainty.
- Taleb introduces the concept of robustness and its importance in dealing with complex systems.
05:30 📚 *Fragility, Robustness, and Black Swans*
- Taleb explains the fragility introduced by technology and optimization.
- Comparison of the fragility of a Kindle (technology) and a book (traditional).
- Introduction of the idea that complexity leads to fragility, especially in the face of Black Swan events.
08:42 🌐 *Globalization, Complexity, and Operational Leverage*
- Taleb discusses the impact of globalization on clustering and reduced diversity.
- The rise of complexity exacerbated by the internet and its effects on systems.
- Introduction to operational leverage and its role in making systems more fragile.
14:34 💻 *Moore's Law, Complexity, and Collective Wisdom*
- Taleb presents the idea that every 10 years, collective wisdom degrades by half.
- Discussion on how the increase in computational power (Moore's Law) correlates with the decline in collective wisdom.
- Reflection on the challenges posed by the rise of complexity over the past 25 years.
17:35 🔄 *Optimization, Redundancy, and Consequences of Globalization*
- Taleb illustrates the problems of optimization and lack of redundancies using personal experiences.
- Discusses the consequences of globalization, including reduced diversity in languages and ideas.
- Emphasis on the importance of understanding the consequences that percolate through complex systems.
21:11 🌋 *Understanding the 2007 Financial Crisis*
- Taleb discusses the unraveling of events in 2007 leading to the financial crisis.
- Complexity degradation and the lack of understanding in Washington were fundamental causes.
23:14 📉 *Specialization and Fragility*
- Taleb explores how specialization increases fragility and reduces robustness.
- Critiques the economic theory of comparative advantage, emphasizing the importance of robustness in facing environmental changes.
- Highlights the negative impact of utopian ideals on societal robustness.
25:42 🌐 *Challenges in Disseminating Truth*
- Taleb discusses the difficulty in convincing individuals of truths that are collectively denied.
- Mentions the clustering of opinion in academia, and the challenge of translating truths to the collective.
27:56 💼 *Institutional Stickiness and Forecasting Challenges*
- Taleb criticizes institutional stickiness, drawing parallels between the medical profession's slow adoption of new practices and economic forecasting challenges.
- Highlights the unreliability of long-term forecasts and the inherent problems with economic forecasting.
30:26 🌍 *Responsibility for Future Generations*
- Taleb addresses the irresponsibility of making future generations pay for present mistakes.
- Advocates for reducing debt, improving environmental awareness, and questioning government deficit policies.
32:17 📚 *Blueprint for a Black Swan Robust Society*
- Taleb outlines key principles for a Black Swan robust society, emphasizing factors like no bailouts, no government intervention, and minimal debt.
34:52 🏡 *Social Breakdown and Robustness in Societal Structures*
- Taleb discusses the importance of societal structures in times of crisis, comparing the robustness of suburbia in the U.S. to Russia's more interconnected communities.
- Mentions how inefficient systems can sometimes be more robust, using Russia as an example.
38:15 🔗 *Belt Tightening and Potential Social Riots*
- Taleb predicts potential social unrest due to necessary belt-tightening measures, especially in Europe.
- Discusses the challenge of implementing measures that may be perceived as unfair, leading to riots and social breakdown.
39:25 🌐 *Global Fragility and Unpredictability*
- Taleb warns about the global fragility, citing the unpredictability of the internet and potential worldwide consequences of regional breakdowns.
- Emphasizes the need for a quick and effective response to prevent widespread chaos.
41:06 🌍 *David Cameron's Awareness of the Problem*
- Taleb praises David Cameron for being one of the few individuals aware of the economic problem and advocating for corrective measures.
- Expresses concerns about the lack of awareness and effective actions in addressing the challenges discussed.
41:58 📊 *Identifying Robustness in Strategy*
- Robustness is achieved by perturbing parameters, considering changes in tail distributions.
43:22 🧠 *Focus on Rare Events and Tail Events*
- Taleb's expertise lies in rare and tail events, discovered during his time as a trader in 1987.
- He introduces the concept of four quadrants to classify domains and exposures based on sensitivity to fat tails.
45:14 🛡️ *Getting Out of the Fourth Quadrant*
- Exiting the fourth quadrant involves reducing exposure to events sensitive to fat tails.
- Taleb suggests moving to assets like cash or gold, insensitive to probability distribution changes.
47:01 💰 *Limitations of Government Regulation*
- Government regulations may not be a panacea, and Taleb criticizes the ineffectiveness of certain regulations in the financial sector.
- He emphasizes the need to remove advantages for big entities rather than relying solely on regulations.
49:21 🚫 *Avoiding Bailouts and Collusion*
- Taleb advocates against bailouts, stating that letting companies go bust can prevent future problems.
- He highlights the dangers of collusion between the state and large companies, using examples like the automotive industry.
Made with HARPA AI
I was hoping this would be more interesting but it was surprisingly not. As a physicist I think you’d get more out of Sabine Hossenfelser’s UA-cam channel. I don’t agree with her on the notion of a purely deterministic universe but she does a good job of laying out the real issues in physics and how they impact various aspects of philosophy. I would also like to hear discussion of the interface of free will and randomness. If you think the universe has an aspect of randomness that manifests itself in our physical world then any entity they depends on survival for reproduction is going to have to have something we might call free will in order to navigate that randomness. This is an obvious point that Sam seems to misunderstand or at least hasn’t actually thought of.
TIm Maudlin talked in circles.
Creamy milky sausages.
Uh…
This is'nt the google search bar.
Yuh
@@charlesrump5771 My full stop should have implied to you this was a statement, an impactful one at that. 👍
Reification is a fallacy in science.
Time flies.
Love moves mountains.
Energy is transferred.
Space is curved.
Time dilates.
A particle is an excitation in a field.
...
These expressions can't ever be taken literally.
You're treating concepts like objects (reification) when you claim a CONCEPT can perform actions.
Only OBJECTS can perform actions!
What sense would it make to say that LOVE can ROTATE?
Or MOTION can MOVE?
150% irrational.
You can only apply verbs to OBJECTS: a horse moves, a planet rotates, a bulldozer moves mountains..
..
So can time EXIST?
..
NO!
Only OBJECTS can exist!
..
Exist: object with location.
Look up Bill Gaede if you want your mind unscrambled from the neverending irrational mathphyz nonsense.
I am not a philospher, but Sam's whole trouble with "possible" seems just a result of picking bad sciences. If we leave quantum mechanics aside, where "possible" really manifests itself as fundamental force, we live in a completely deterministic world. However, we don't have good enough models to determine precise state of a system. So, we revert back to approximations, which are inherently prone to error.
Even more than that, most of our "possible" comes from field of statistics, which is basiically looking at N observations and predicting the N+1th observation. This is not even a science. There is no reason the N+1 should even remotely follow a combination of past N events. But if modern advances in machine learning prove anything, such analysis are unreasonably effective in modelling large systems, even the most complex ones.
So, as a conclusion, the "possible" comes as an output of computation and narrative limitation of finite resources and intellect. That does not mean reality deals in "possibles", but we have no way of knowing what that exact outcome would be. So when I say that outcome is going to be X with p% certainity, that is just a narrative framework to describe what my model predicts, and how many times among 100, that prediction can be wrong. The whole exercise becomes useless if I want to make just 1 prediction, and it will be whatever universe deems it so. But if you are intereseted in understanding on a crude level what outcomes will be, you rely on large number of repeated predictions, since in universe, large overwrites small outliers.
We are generally always more interested in flow of river, not the minor backflow that happens because of eddies. We don't throw our model which can predict direction of river away because it cannot measure how many backflows are happening.
I feel like "we don't have good enough models to predict, but if we did, we could" was all Tim was trying to say here, which strikes me as not only reasonable, but obvious.
The comments here seem to not be ok with that notion, for which I am confused. Maybe I'm listening to too much Alex O'Connor and Steven Woodford and so Sam's audience have a different upbringing.
@@Rave.- He was, but I found Tim many times not addressing the whole premise effectively. He needed more to emphasize on the practical effectiveness & functional need of probability analysis, and also agree with Sam's assertion that whatever probability we get a-priori, doesn't manifest itself in actual reality. It is a figment of our narrative framework, and only the real exists.
But this guy is also a philosopher, and I am getting increasingly convinced philosophers love to haggle about epistemology
There is weak emergence and strong emergence. Most scientists seem to reject strong emergence, because that can't be explained simply by causes from the past. I believe that there is strong emergence! And that it is the driving force behind evolution into more complexity on a cosmic scale. Maybe similar to Wolfgang Smith's idea of vertical causation.
Are we supposed to believe that literally everything a newsreader says must be something they seriously believe or it's 'fraudulent'? Or does this just apply to Fox?
Aren’t most intelligent people confused about free will?
No, not really. There are not very many intelligent people around, though. ;-)
He didn't mention The Third Policeman by Flann O Brien.
I never lost respect for a guest so fast
Say more about why, though.
@@memoryhero the guest was clearly speaking from his ego. He was all about being in control of his mind so much so that he was blind to see that he had no idea where his thoughts were coming from. At multiple points he even proved sam's point without realizing it by say he has no idea why he made the choice he made. He just kept clinging to the idea that he thinks he chose it. If he is the bar for a highly educated person in our society then we are more in trouble than I previously thought.
@@dyhppyx i'm kind of with you. i found him at times insufferable and at other times fine, as he ought be given his education. we always have to remember that the ability to learn at depth does not translate the equal ability to learn at breadth.
@@memoryhero I don't know you but I feel impressed by your words. Respect. Do you happen to have a channel or blog yourself? I'd be interested to hear more commentary of yours.
@@dyhppyx homie, i'm just another wiseguy on the internet, but thx for the kind words. we bros on the internet have to stick together! one love. (bro fist)
Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
Tim is just a semantic labelling academic he fails to acknowledge or tackle the scope of the problems Sam is raising
Absolutely right.
Yea, that was a weird discussion, especially when Tim was laughing at his own "jokes". Tim seemed to answer most of Sam's questions in an arrogant and condescending way. As with the presentism versus eternalism question, Tim really didn't seem to answer this question directly and was a bit too much focused on the direction of time.
What has Tucker Carlsen got to do with physics
He hasn't. But Sam always talks about big current events in the intro of his episodes. That just so happened to be one of the biggest stories that week.
I love Sam Harris.... but, when a human form, such as myself, takes on these concepts, embracing the revelations as described could swallow you into a vortex of unending psudo-reality. Call me crazy.
I love your podcast. But did you seriously interview a philosopher NAMED Maudlin? Am I the only one who found this coincidence amusing? Just me?..(sigh)...ok
These political statements before the podcast to kinda get into a little bit of ego mode for the people 😅😢
This is really "making sense" 😉
Sam starts out by saying that he and TM have a long disagreement on free will… why would I want to listen to anything TM has to say if he can’t understand such a basic fact of life!
Maybe because it's not so much a 'fact' as you think it is.
@@ashjaymohsin5583 I would say it is a fact but still wouldn’t write off what a philosopher says simply because he doesn’t believe free will is illusory. That’s strangely and unjustifiably dismissive.
@@motorhead48067 Well the best arguments for the reality of free will go beyond mere unjustified belief. I invite you to take a look at Iain McGilchrist's book 'The Matter with Things', which changed my view about free will (and a whole lot of other issues)
Cheers !
@@motorhead48067 I am not writing off everything he has say. I’m sure he knows a thing or two… I just don’t think he knows much! My point was Sam should not have told us that upfront because it will turn off some viewers… unless of course they want to hear a discussion on free will.
@@sxsmith44 Indeed, I see your point !
I was genuinely frustrated by Tim's inability to explore concepts beyond his own intuition, or beyond those views presented by others (sometimes long dead) that he seems to take as gospel, on topics that would seem to be things he would be interested in exploring. Tim almost seemed combative, as if, how could Sam think any different than himself. He seemed so stuck in quoting and referencing other long lost physicists and philosophers, almost like he was coming from the far right. And he insisted on getting stuck in the semantics regarding the difference between real and actual, as if he was unable to address the actual topic being presented.
I agree. I haven't been this frustrated listening to a podcast in a long time. Tim laughing off everything Sam was saying and simply failing to grasp, or at least seeming to fail to grasp the concepts left me at a loss. Now I'm forced, against my will, to make this response. And even if he read this, I'm still not sure he'd truly understand that statement, or he's just grossly disingenuous.
It's one phenomenon many phenomena. Americans usually screw it up the other way (one phenomena two phenomena) but Sam Harris uses phenomenon for many. You guys drive me nuts. Learn English.😉
How in the world does someone with as many credentials as this guy has in philosophy struggle this hard with understanding Harris’s concept of free will? It baffles me.
They didn't get to it in this video. Can someone fill me in? Is Sam for or against free will?
@@Rave.- Sam firmly doesn't believe in free will, he has a ~50 page book about it.
@@NoFeckingNamesLeft so Tim does? That seems odd, given his statement in this podcast about knowing exactly what will happen if we were capable of calculating it.
This guy talks a lot and does as little as possible to give any idea of what he means. He goes on metaphors and analogies but never really says anything at all. It's frustrating how empty all his statements are. Even if he's not a physicist at least Sam is constantly trying to bring things back to what he actually means - and what he means is always very clear - and this guy just says all those words are too vague or nontechnical or something. It's a completely empty conversation.
ah I was wrong. at 45:00 mins he says something explicable. a long walk coming.
Gah. then he goes off on teleology and evolution as if he's talking to 10 year olds. like.. who is he talking to? sam knows all of that.
just about everyone knows those concepts. certainly anyone listening to the podcast.
Spoken like a true philosopher, 14 minutes in and he starts using hypothetical thought experiments. :D (no disrespect)
Good opening...wish you delved into politics more often :). It is funny how much Tucker Carlson agrees with you. I don't hear anyone saying he had TDS. Oh god...queue the conservative listeners coming in with their deranged views ***shudders***
You should get Tucker Carlson on the show
Still trying to legitimize that fascist? Ok comrade 🇷🇺
@@JackBirdbath fascist? Can you please explain how it feels to be brain dead.
Ok, calm down Hume..
Sam Harris logic-
If everything was different right, I would not be wrong right, and since eveything could be different right, I am correct right.
Somone suffering from NPD is incapable of admitting when they are wrong.
Ad hominems, eh? Nice
You're wrong on Tucker Carlson. He has learned we all have learned a lot over time. He's taken an anti war stance and been consistent on them, called out corruption in business and wallstreet and the fed. He's been right about vaccines and January 6th. Tucker is a true progressive
Lol! The ending - "right about January 6th - saves the best for last.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve read in a while
He misrepresented his views massively. He has zero integrity. What's more to say?
He said “I’ve been waiting for this for the past 4 years” in reference to Trump losing in 2020. That means he was anti-Trump from the start but pretended otherwise for 4 years. It’s not that he learned and grew intellectually and realized Trump was a problem. He knew it all along and pretended otherwise to pander to his audience. Surely you see the problem with that.
He really is a classical progressive
All Sam talks about is Trump.
Jesus...I honestly thought I'd try listening to Sam again since I used to enjoy him so much...just a few seconds in and the TDS had already started.
You must be really sensitive to criticism of Trump. You took the time to comment on such a small piece of what the podcast contains.
Lol, you're such a snowflake
@@MFink-oq5hy No, just disappointed that someone I once considered an intellectual heavyweight has been so thoroughly neutered.
@@MFink-oq5hy And you must have missed the last 7 years of Sam's appearances.
@@BestCosmologist
I agree with most of Sam’s criticism of Trump. Qualities that I admire in a person; Trump has the polar opposite qualities. Just an awful person and leader.
Why would somebody explore philosophy under any motivation except seeking entertainment? Just a lot of words. The effectiveness is in managing relationships with other people, and knowing oneself, for whatever that's worth. Philosophy commenting on physics is like morbid obesity commenting on peak athleticism.
I agree to a point, thought i think its a bit harsh. I dont think philosophy has nothing of value to add to the discussion or science
@@Bronco541 One of the deep values of philosophy is its intimate look at language; I develop that skill so that I can ask you, "Where did I say philosophy has nothing of value to add to the discussion of science?" (I assume you mis-keyed, but the mistake leaves quite an ambiguity.) We can ask whether some discovery is "good" or "bad" for people, but that's not about the science; it's about the words "good" and "bad". Got it? If not, come back when you develop some chops in philosophy.
Yes but managing ones relationships and knowing ones self isn't entertainment lol. That's very important stuff.
@@Laocoon283 There's something else that studying language has taught me. When we use the word "important...", we usually mean to follow it with "...to me and my friends and family". Look around, HM, and see the multitudes to whom "knowing oneself" is irrelevant. So now you can make it into a badge that says "look how special I am, knowing myself is important to me". Don't take it badly. I don't expect to encounter students of language in YT comment threads, although I do expect to encounter sophists. People study philosophy because somebody else tells them we can use it to know ourselves better, and they believe it. Anyway, how do we show we know ourselves? It's there (or not) in our discourse.
@@danieljulian4676 lol ok
Sam is such a weak minded little man. Breaks my heart.
So why bother listening to Sam Harris? Perhaps you're the _"weak minded little man"_ who can't understand him and won't admit it to yourself!
To Sam, populism = Trumpism
Tell that to Sanders
To Trumpers, Trumpism = populism.
How so?
Not really
@@PrestoJacobson because when he describes Tucker‘s show, he cannot tell the difference between “riling up trumps base” and populist sentiments like distrust of CIA, congress, Covid origins, lockdowns, mandates, CDC, Russiagate, the use of coded language like “misinformation”, etc. To Sam these are all backdoors to Trumpism. I’ve heard many people come on this podcast and ask Sam this exact question - don’t you see the difference? And Sam always deflects, changes subject, or has no response. Sam is literally missing the part of the brain which understands anti-authoritarian populism
For those of you whole-heartedly in Sam's ideological corner, here is a podcast chock full of counter-narratives to Sam's from Russell Brand (regarding Tucker):
(with video receipts)
ua-cam.com/video/JS_BwXqAiYw/v-deo.html
Orange man bad, Tucker bad. You talking about dishonesty makes me smile.
Hey Bob, can you actually provide an example of Sam being dishonest? Like actually lying? It’s easy to summarize valid criticisms of Trump and his endless lies as (orange man bad), but if you’re going to call Sam dishonest, are you prepared to back it up? Or are you just gonna spam shit like “orange man bad” and slink into the shadows?
Oh look, Sam talking about Trump for a change. These UA-cam numbers are lowwww
You guys always melt down when Sam even mentions Trump. It’s because he hurts your feelings with how right he is ❄️
@@JackBirdbath sure and as a result sam s popularity greatly improved ! He was perfect on covid as well and nothing he said aged badly at all 😂😂😂😂
@@chrisrevel2801 Harris' take on Hunter's laptop is peak TDS.
@@twntwrs oh yeah , that thing with the hidden dead children lol !!! you are right : peak TDS
Harris is the best.
Steven Crowder is the new Sam Harris
Hell no. How so?
What planet have you been living on.
No
few month later.. last time i checked he/tucker has an audience Zero surprise there
am i the only that tired of hearing scientist debate god and spirituality its liking asking my plumber about brain surgery.
It's like telling Lebron to shutup and dribble. It's a bullshit tactic to silence people who all ought to be weighing in on such big questions. Ask your plumber some time and get a broader perspective.
He’s a professor of philosophy at a prestigious university. It’s not at all like the example u mentioned
Ridiculous comment.
@@Drena2 philosophy is incompatible with faith
They’re both philosophers as well who are exactly the people who should be debating God and spirituality. Who else?