Why science is not always right | Edward Frenkel and Lex Fridman
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Edward Frenkel: Realit...
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GUEST BIO:
Edward Frenkel is a mathematician at UC Berkeley working on the interface of mathematics and quantum physics. He is the author of Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality.
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Guest bio: Edward Frenkel is a mathematician at UC Berkeley working on the interface of mathematics and quantum physics. He is the author of Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality.
Why did you use the false notion/model of a flat earth as the thumbnail? This is not at all what true earthers believe...
@Lex you should invite some MDs to your podcast!!!
One of your best guests ever.
this man is one of the most engaging and interesting guests ever on this podcast
This guy is such a breath of fresh air in our logical, cold, calculating, computerized, hyper optimized world. What a relief to see an interview with a person like this.
More people like him should be given a voice, rather than some greedy "AI" CEO or whatever.
It seems as though you might say he is not rational
@@DarkskiesSiren just a warm person, very rational, strikes a nice alance between showing humanity and being a sort of robot.
This guy is a genuine scientist and philosopher. His understanding and self awareness of left v right brain is amazing
I'm watching this and cannot stop smiling. Thank you so much for this!
Thats what Vodka does.
Wonderful discussion. Thank you. As a mechanical engineer, I was taught/trained to distrust my intuition. When I later became a physician, I discovered intuition was essential to doing my job of diagnosis and treatment. Thus, I started the journey of reviving that stunted part of my intelligence.
How interesting, did u finish your mechanical engineering degree before moving to the medical field? If so, then I'm really impressed 👌
You might enjoy reading Gary Klein's book, "Streetlights and Shadows"...
I wish I had a math professor as passionate and full of life as him
This guy, his character, his mood, it makes me incredibly happy, it's like a breath of fresh air. I'm curious why, being so well spoken, after all this time, he still has that THICK accent?) This is fascinating. Чудесный гость у вас, Лекс, спасибо большое. Никогда не слышал о нем.
wind whit no new message
He first left Russia for the US at 21. Some things are inseparable beyond that age .
Your accent won’t change in adulthood unless you want it to. There was no reason for him to want to change it. Makes perfect sense.
Thick accent?
Try hearing try harder
There is something magically captivating about his authentic child-like excitement for this domain that invigorates the mind and inspires hope...it literally brings tears to my eyes. Thank you Lex!
Wholesome 😊
And i genuinely thought it was only me and i must be wierd.
Well actually i know im wierd but at least its not just me x
Lex, this is maybe the ultimate example of Dual Objectives, where there is an objective reality that will function like a formula when subjectivity supplies the possible variables.
This represents best what I actually think as a whole. The interviewee's eloquence and the correct use of every term, as well as the richness in the tonality of his voice and body language. What a nutritious content for the mind.
See guys, you can't fake passion. This is how you can easily see through jokers 🃏.
This guy is the real deal
A fantastic interview! I have come to believe that the nature of the universe and reality is fractal, implying that the closer we look, the more we magnify, the "picture" doe not become simplier, it remains complex, generating and endless list of more questions and wonders (e.g., the Mandelbrot set). I find the concept that we will discover a "theory of everything" to be absurd -- by definition you can not put a fence around infinity. It is also interesting that all great minds (Einstein, Bohr, etc.) seem to gravitate towards philopsophy at the height and end of their careers. As I understand things, science grew out of philosophy, not vice-versa. Maybe it's high time to rediscover that.
the synchronicity on this video is nuts
That is the most influential video on my personal philosophy and life I have seen in many months, if not years. Thank you 💚🙏
Gosh
Wow. My hope for the world just expanded hearing the joy and childlike wonder in this guys exploration of mathematics. Something once declared as boring, given new life through imagination. 🔥❤️🔥⚡️
Incredibly intelligent yet humble. Amazing 👏🏽
1) the electron does not look like a particle when you detect which slit it passed through. It looks like a wave that went through one slit....otherwise: there would be no diffraction pattern, and there would be no overlap in pattern from from each slit, and thus no interference to see, and there would be no double slit experiment.
2) In QFT, the electron doesn't just go through both slits. It also emits a virtual photon that turns into and electron positron pair, and 3 particles go through both slits and 2 annihilate on the other side into a virtual photon that is absorbed by the electron and then it hits the screen like nothing happened. And that photon could have also been a Z-boson....but those amplitudes re too small to observer, at the point^1 in time.
[1] point means: _your_ hyperplane of simultaneity.
1) No single electron has been proved isolated and detected.
2) Photons do not exist. Nothing you wrote has been proven.
Great guest! Refreshing.
1. As a an Industrial Designer, I find I am most creative when there is a well defined set of constraints. This may seem contradictory, but the most important part of my Design Methodology I employ.
2. Reason: will AI ever be able to “reason” without actually living life? The duck/rabbit example was a great example…maybe that should be the new Touring (prob spelled wrong) test?
Reasoning and consciousness are logarithmic grey-scales, where a rock at absolute zero is zero, Life in its temp range definitely non-zero. We and AI will be exponential if we're aligned, and probably like the rock if not. Think of Buzz . . . 😎
@@tonyduncan9852 I am quite skeptical AI will ever develop consciousness alone; it’s not a 1 or 0. But that also seems like it will be impossible to test…Is that what you are implying?
I had never seen the Duck/Rabbit and heard a physics/mathematics person speak about “reasoning” in that context. I’m sure they have maybe not. But the fact there are actual images (duck/rabbit, positive/negative space examples) maybe that’s a testable limit for AI.
I know there is “generative” AI on the horizon/here, curious to see how that works. As impressive as Chat GPT is, it is still just harvesting/stealing human ideas and without novel human idea injection won’t AI eventually stagnate? Also curious about copy write laws, which are obviously being broken…
Any thoughts? Thanks for the input✌🏼😊
@@brandonb5075 Maybe you didn't quite catch my meaning. Not in order:
By "grey-scale" I mean that there is an abstract point at which _any_ attribute becomes _meaningful in its context,_ rather than having some externally observed or applied total value, whether this is applicable to Life or Consciousness. (Just enough is sufficient).
This informs both the original formation of Life, and the assessment of the consciousnesses of, say, dolphins and elephants, Man and AI.
When a large AI can explain the thought processes behind its conclusions simply enough for humans to follow we will eventually discover rapid and adaptible pathways to solutions to security, politics, health, and education.
I have seen enough good developments to feel positive in this field. Human thinking has already been improved. Exponentially . . .
P.S. I'm a retired industrial designer, and believe 'copyright' is the default and anti-progressive default behaviour in the absence of complex analysis. It will be 'trumped' by the future, I'm sure. It won't be relevant.
@@tonyduncan9852 cool, I’ll have to ponder that for a while.
Maybe this will help me:
Do you think consciousness is computational and AI is already conscious, just can’t explain it to us yet?
I’ve even had the thought; maybe the internet (a sea of ideas) is conscious and AI is just the diagnostic translators. Similarly, I tend to believe consciousness and the realm of ideas are ethereal and we (as humans raised in the environment of earth/universe) are able to tune in or poke through the collective conscious substrate and extract novelty from it… not sure how 1’s and 0’s accomplish that; but that was once just an “idea” as well.
I understand we maybe able to be fooled something is conscious by computation and the compiling of data through language.
I tend think all living organisms are conscious because the are products of this conscious environment, maybe that makes AI conscious by proxy and lived experiences aren’t important.
Who knows; just hope it stays on a positive track✌🏼
@@brandonb5075 Answers:
Yes. The Net is a dimly semi-conscious multiple schizophrenic cyborg with Man.
No ether. The mechanisms we have been talking about actually create our practical and workable hallucinations about all 'externality'. That's the point! Novelty becomes emergence and vice versa. It's not what you do but the way that you do it.
_"We may be fooled"_ - it's hard not to be sarcastic here. Humans fool each other too . . .
Consciousness has emerged by degrees, and not by fact. I suspect that 100% consciousness is no different from INFINITY. Everything, in particular, seems to result from more local relationships. Generality explosion!
“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.”
― Soren Kierkegaard
I am a knowledge addict too. I think we are designed to crave the answer
Keep'em coming, Lex. Cheers.
“Everyone is within the domain of pursuing objectively, a certain set of commitments that they have determined subjectively.”
Pascal might not be a religious person but religious people truly understand his statement. Also if the final conclusion of reason is simply that there are a n infinite number of things beyond it, then would it be nice to assume that set of things as just “One”?
Also it seems to me that edward does not know that the hardcore scientists of the past were also philosophers…and its clear that edward is one too….except he doesnt speak in the dry tone that most philosophers do. Which is really refreshing.
That’s the magic part of life.💕 You need to let go of all your preconceived notions of what you need to be, what you need to do to be who you are. What parts are ego driven. It allows you to change your perception. Actively practicing that new perception every day. It’s an adventure. It allows us to enjoy the journey and not be so attached to the outcome. It’s so freeing.
amazing how much this guy resonates and radiate with his energy and explanations. joy to watch
This is the kind of scientist I love to listen to. Was a great guest
The water bottle being both, and neither, of the reflections completes the paradox... Love where the example was going. ❤
This clip is something different. Just wow.
There is something about the power of just hearing someone say “I Love You” I believe there’s value in the sound. I made two important videos to address this.
There was. "I love you''s meaning has been diluted by overuse in the media and entertainment and casual everyday use. It is only special at far rarer times.
Terrance McKenna defined these criticisms of science or reasoning more specific in 1986 in an Esalen lecture I believe. It's nice to see another intellectual come to the same conclusions independently.
I like this guy. Good guest!
This was fantastic!
Open thinking is intellectual thinking
Gotta love Edward Frenkel
Can’t get enough
Great interview.
I really really love this guy. Never met him, but Frenkel is very close to who I want to become as I get older.
Dear Lex Fridman, What a joy to hear you and Edward chuckling like young boys over your mathematical and scientific knowledge! If you have not done so, please have a conversation with Dr. Iain McGilchrist.
Thank you for this
Beautiful!
Fucking fantastic! I'll be watching the entire podcast. I love this guy!
Edward is extremely good at speaking to a crowd who aren't extreme geniuses.
Sadly, we are not taught how to think and use logic and reason but we are told what to believe and think to then regurgitate that information later...
Speak for yourself.
It's easier to control the masses like this. There will always be wildcards, however. I believe the wildcards will dictate the future of humanity for better or worse.
I grew up with a great libertarian teacher. The band Rush. The song Freewill was the first song I learned the lyrics from.
Works if it's true, but is genocidal if untrue.
@@Kenneth-ts7bp The opposite.
Soon We shall show them Our Signs on the horizons and in their own beings until it becomes clear to them that it is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord is a witness over everything? ~ Quran 41:53
Gödel, Einstein, Heisenberg, all show that objective truth cannot exist because indvidual truth cannot be determined within complete absolute accuracy.
For me this raises multiple questions but two very important ones:
- are we and will we ever be capable in determining absolute truth?
- is the universe capable in being absolutely true?
My issue is randomness from quatum mechanics doesn't equal free will. Also, do we truly know it is random or do we just not fully understand it?
We are real objects and therefore our real honest perspective of reality is objective at a level deeper than that reflected by peer-reviewed models even though it is not communicable/testable at the peer-review level we commonly define as objective even though it is clearly less real than our own observation of experiencing being reality.
God is spirit that created all things {John 4:24, 6:63}. Science is among His creation that comes from his powerful spirit. Imagine how water became water, and how can humans and animals live without air. Everything seen and unseen by the eye is from the creation of the spirit of the almighty. But there is no righteous man or scientist who does not sin {Ecclesiastes 7:20}. And his Word became human and dwelt among us {John 1:14, 3:16}, and was written by his chosen servants from Abraham to the Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. {1John 1:3}
This guy is just the absolute best.
Brilliant
a man worthy of love
my jaw kinda dropped while hearing this bcs i am amazed. and can't seem to pull it up anymore
It's not that people are afraid. It's that it has been ridiculed and stigmatized.
The subjective observer is part of the observation. I can buy that🤓🇸🇪
I wish Lex would interview Chris Langan the smartest man in the world. He has a theory of everything that I would love to have Lex review
He kind of hits on what I mean that market forces or whatever someone might call all these patterns in what seems like consumer behavior, might just be a fallacy, even though it seems like they play a role in how everything works and increasingly applied to more and more areas, I really wonder if it is human bias some how we don't understand. It is about at the 4:30 mark.
16.46 quoting Einstein 'imagination is greater than knowledge'.... he goes on to explain, as knowledge is limited whereas imagination embraces the entire world. giving birth to evolution". Let's highlight that last part again. Imagination gave birth to evolution. Imagination gave birth to evolution. Imagination gave birth to evolution. Let the truth of that sink in......
Talking about the Observer... We tend to think we are consciousness because we are the smartest most capable being we know in the universe so far. But really we are only a part of consciousness therefore we cannot fully understand the universe because the mysteries dont want to be found. Trying to find the deepest answers to how the universe works is like playing hide and seek with a ghost.
The deepest answers? We don't even know the deepest or most meaningful questions to ask.
This is not the right way to think if we want to find the answers. It's counter productive.
@@siddharthagarwal5756 Yes it is the right way to think. The original commenter said:
'we cannot fully understand the universe because the mysteries dont want to be found.'
That implies that the universe is conscious, knows what we know and what we don't know, and deliberately hiding what we don't know from us. That is utterly ridiculous.
And accepting this:
'Trying to find the deepest answers to how the universe works is like playing hide and seek with a ghost.'
as your springboard to find truth is just as ridiculous.
If you make those assumptions, and then kid yourself you are asking deep meaningful questions on the basis of those assumptions, then you are truly kidding yourself and finding no real truth but the outcome of your unfounded and silly assumptions.
Amazing
Sounds like Animism explained by a Math genius. It’s perfect!
People appeal to logic as long as it benefits them. When it doesn’t, they appeal to ethics. It’s interesting
What a beautiful person.
Love you Ed.
I don’t think the randomness of q.m mskes the case for free will any better, but it does take care of determinism
Its like lex is being told what being human is for the first time
Beutiful talk!!!
Ahhh full circle.
وَسَخَّرَ لَكُم مَّا فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَمَا فِي الْأَرْضِ جَمِيعًا مِّنْهُ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِّقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
"And He has subjected to you whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth - all from Him. Indeed in that are SIGNS for people who give THOUGHT"
(Surah Al-Jathiyah, 45:13)
Towards the end, Edward describes irrational concepts as foundations to new concepts. I think we're already doing that anyway. All of our physical theories are based on the core concept that you take a frozen snapshot of time and calculate subsequential outcomes, yet no such snapshot of frozen time could ever actually really exist. That concept is entirely imaginary.
Science is a human creation, a subjective interpretation of objective reality. Science is in the realm of epitemology, reality is in the realm of ontology.
I find it always frustrating how the notion that consciousness may be fundamental, gets conflated with the idea that free will fundamentally exists.
Even spiritual traditions like buddhism, ascribe tot he notion of a fundamental consciousness, while still seeing the world as the product of interdependent causality. Meditative self-observation serves exactly the purpose of noticing how every act, impulse, decision, thought happens within consciousness, and that we are ultimately not confined to any of the objects of consciousness. We are not our actions and thoughts. Nothing (and nobody) exists independently.
Be it probabilistic of deterministic, we are still bound by causality. Randomness does not grant us freedom, and the mix of randomness and determinism doesn't produce something that is neither.
My fear is that the clinging to such ideas such as that of fundamental free will, may push the stereotype that we pursue these ideas our of attachment rather than rigor, taking away from deeper notions such as that of fundamental consciousness, and
That said Frenkel is kind, absolutely brilliant and humble. I think this was one of the best interviews ever on the channel.
This makes me curious what Edward thinks of Kuhn's theory of science expressed in "The Structure of Scientific Revolution". Maybe his criticism of the scientific community might be mended by a paradigm shift?
How did I miss this guest
As issac newton said if we are created in the image of God, as the observer we would expect to see this.
If God turns his back on us we may collapse into wave function .
Of all the takes that could have been made biblically speaking this one is powerful.
What context you have about the ultimate observer thats pretty cool
300 new flat earthers were born because of this thumbnail 😂😅
🤣🤣
This guy rocks
afaik in most modern physicists' view, free will as we know it seems to be at odds with physics and likely just an illusion
I am not very educated on the subject, but isn't quantum theory essentially implying that every decision we were likely to make, we did?
I suppose it can be seen as if we both have it and don't have it. Even if our own universe is deterministic, our own capacity of decision is still at play, for every decision we could make was taken and none was.
@@andresprieto6554 yours is a many worlds interpretation. Anyway, doesn't what you said imply that quantum particles have free will as well, since their behaviour is stochastic and not "deterministic"?
Ancient minds always knew they could attribute a symbol or for every bit of atom or plank length matter in the universe. But this would require a library almost as big as the universe..
It was the alphabetical exodus unification of pagan complex world in simple packs of info easily to convey to one another that bright of simple theory and the scientific method.
We have been undoing this adding all that complexity and chaos back in to science now.
Hopf invariant 1 thm for the win!
Listening to Edward was like reviewing my own thoughts, it was amazing listening to him pointing out conclusions I have also previously found leading into mystery.
In a nutshell: the greatest thinkers and observers all come to conclude that we are limited in our ability to have certitude of all things. We can discover building blocks which have utility for possible improved technology and material usage to mankind, but we will likely never completely understand our place in the universe through science.
Science like reason has its limits. Those limits are all too obvious.
I would like to ask Ed a question about wave forms. And how they “logically” would interact with a slit. Ed is like an Energizer Bunny. Lex just asks a questions and Ed takes off for 10 minutes without more input from Lex. LOL
I'm not an incredibly inteligent person. still it sounds like what Ed is talking about in this clip in large part is "Lateral Thinking". (check out author; Edward de Bono)
Quantum mechanics doesn't support free will! Randomness in the equation isn't free will.
Quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the subjective experience of a human “observer.” Of course human intuition about what is logical or correct is central to human knowledge. That’s not the same thing.
Lex I need more knowledge
Please get him and Sabina together.
In my heart of heart I don't find Mystery, I find viscera. Quantum indeterminism doesn't do a thing to rescue free will. Random or determined libertarian free will is a useful illusion. Beliefs don't need to be true to have an evolutionary advantage. Life is mysterious enough without injecting spooky suppositions into it. Brilliant guy, very likeable but prone to sophistry.
We are merely leaves on a vine witness the wind make us move and wondering why
The internet has exposed science as a bunch of opinions treated as truth by arrogant proposers.
Hopefully AI will enable the next breakthroughs so we don't have to endure another 50 yrs of string theory, multiverse and quantum gravity
38 missed calls from Terrance Howard. . .
Science is never right, it's just the rightest thing we have, i.e. using scientific method produces the best predictive models. There is no mechanism in science to even know if you have arrived at some absolute truth simply because the 'laws' of science could change tomorrow. It's not our game; we're just trying to figure out the rules.
And it can never hope to cover all kinds of knowledge. That's just its limits. It is still incredibly useful, of course.
Most under- 30 years old cannot handle 90% of All the changing weekly discoveries regarding all of Our existence and how we can Process the universe/world everyone is born into.....massively complicated, or super simple.....someone help me here, let me know your thoughts
What 'All the changing weekly discoveries regarding all of Our existence'?? Such as?
WOW!
Science is not about Truth, it's as simple as that.
Unless math is not a science on formal systems
What you rejected from religion you get from science but in the end the goal is the same
Science is about world view and accumulating knowledge without coming to the knowledge of the truth.
@@NotReallyTho_ i don't see a conflict between science and religion from a philosophical perspective, science describes how does things work and this doesn't have anything to do with whether God exists or not.
@@NotReallyTho_The goal is the truth.
Georges Perec was not the best person to try and avoid the letter 'e'!
Pascal was a theologian…
Language is a thief, reasoning is a liar.
STS (SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES) IS A FIELD THAT LITERALLY WROTE ALL THESE BOOKS, not the Perec or Pascal obviously, but this whole conversation is not stealing anything but is acting like it's doing something NEW and FAR OUT and I can tell you that, as someone with 8 years of graduate education on the subject, 6 of them spent at RPI (if you know you know), I can tell you 100 more things on top of this guy realizing (good for him, seriously, like no worries at all, just saying) that science (lower case intentional) and technology (same) are HUMAN AND THE EARTH, WHICH MADE HUMANS -- you see what I mean? And that's literally such a shallow observation, people in my field DEFINED SCIENCE FOR THE SCIENTISTS WHO WERE TOO CONVINCED THEY HAD FIGURED OUT THE UNIVERSE (other than Karl Friston, he dont count). PLEASE!!!!!!! HAVE PEOPLE FROM THAT FIELD ONNNNNNNNNN. Alondra Nelson was literally acting head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, after her role (invented FOR her, an STS person) as the head of OST-Society (STS). That's it. We have it. And "it" is not an answer, its a question.... WHOA. Seriously, I'll come on blow your head wide open WAY more than this (obviously awesome) guy.
ok but edward frenkel shouldn't have punched jeff nippard in the throat like that. that was totally wrong and he needs to get help.
Jacques Lacan said it in his Seminars, and this man wisely reaffirms it: _'...The subject does not know that he knows what he knows...'_