Will Constructor Theory REWRITE Physics?
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- čas přidán 19. 10. 2021
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The people behind the greatest leaps in physics - Einstein, Newton, Heisenberg, all had the uncanny ability to see the fundamentals - see the deepest, underlying facts about the world, and from simple statements about reality they built up their incredible theories. Well what if we all had a recipe book for doing exactly this. Well, one might be just around the corner and it’s called Constructor Theory.
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Teaching bleeding-edge science to a general audience (me) without making it feel watered down is done nowhere else as well as here. Thanks to all involved.
Veritasium
@@camcroy2984 I love Veritasium! I would even give him the edge for clarity of communication. However, his topics tend toward well-established theories rather than the "bleeding-edge" here on Space Time. In the end they occupy different niches brilliantly, and I have no unkind words to say about either one.
Although for me it takes two or three replays of certain parts to understand, i fully support your opinion.
@@riveradam I couldn’t agree more
@@Vrozkrokop as do I
So if I understand Constructor Theory correctly...
"In this world there are only two laws that matter. What a man can do, and what a man can't."
- Captain Jack Sparrow, a physicist ahead of his time.
I’m weak 😂👏
Bahahaha
But, you have heard of me
This seems quite applicable as a _shorthand_ methodology to determine what is within the realm of Possibilianism, and what is counter, by using this 'cited' _shorthand_ as part of the equation to create the theory.
A bit of a double edged sword, but our civilization tends to build knowledge _vertically_ and not _integrated_ .
_Integrated knowledge_ would not unlike using Obsidian notes to see _all_ Wikipedia data IRT by a self hosted Wikipedia 'Docker' container. ~82 GB. Then one could add real time analysts for color coding of edits and views visually on the Wiki Brain vault overlay, and some AI forecasting. AI self comparative analysis and Mathmatica integration for 'filter and view options' on the framework in an Obsidian Mind Vault, it could lead to unseen correlation to root causes or factors becoming AR vision clear. *color, sound, image, filter slider settings, for cues of what is being seen.
Specific and generally applicable algorithms may be realized with relation to; efficiency, accuracy, view accuracy stability, against a varied data reference scoring matrices.
A 3D reference source to map beyond 3D, the point of Possibilianism.
Ahoy Mates... something is _that_ way!!
What do Constructor Theory and Rastafarian Pirates have in common?
They’re both Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiieeeee!!!
Years ago, I was a physics major. Life didn't turn out the way I initially expected and now I'm in CS classes, including Theory of Computation. This video is very much the intersection of stuff I've studied/studying and hits hard.
I know that feel. I've always been a CS guy, but (astro)physics has always been a passion of mine that I lack the math to pursue.
did u faced too much gravity?
Then you might be able to combine the two, which most people who studied only one of those fields cannot. And it gives you an advantage, if you were to pursue something related to this intersection. I think you should be thrilled?
I am a film grad. Haven't done physics since 16 😂 but this is so interesting to me !
Did you find the antimatter? 😉
7:45
We've had an "algebra of possibility" for over 70 years. It's called modal logic, and the standardly used semantics for it is possible worlds semantics (also known as Kripke semantics).
It has it's own operators, theorems, etc, and is used extensively in philosophy
"Be careful! The devs WILL notice." - This has got to be the funniest yet most existentially disturbing reply ever made on this channel.
Thought the same!
Yeah
Now time to walk into a wall & measure frames I suppose. Bonus points if I teleport
Yeah! I laughed yet at the same time I shuddered. Imagining an entity pulling up a command prompt and editing out specific annoyances.
So the religious nuts may be right after all? I never doubted you Devgod! Please don‘t call my destructor!
Rough shade on Newton with that whole "you can't transmute apples into gold" line
Only without adding energy into the system. Do that and you can make gold apples in principle.
No statement was made on the mass of the apple after the transformation, so it's possible, the apple would just have to be way lighter from the energy lost by putting it into fusing elements beyond iron.
@@MisakaMikotoDesu How do you think we could go about doing this though?
RIP. Just proves even the greatest minds of the whole humanity can be fundamentally wrong sometimes
@@grilledsausage5236 rearrange every proton, neutron and electron in a configuration that forms gold
I sleep with your astrophysics theories & videos. Well, this has been my Naptime channel. Whenever I feel stressed or a need for nap, I watch this. Love from India 🇮🇳
I’m the same. This & quantum physics focused videos. I’m hoping that the theory of Conditioning is true 👍🏻🇬🇧
Wouldn't constructor theory fundamentally be assuming we know all the base sets of rules in order to be correct? Otherwise it could rule out things that are possible, but they just don't have a truth statement for in the base set of rules.
that's where the algebra comes in
"A task is only possible if a constructor capable of carrying it out exists, otherwise it is impossible.' We would require knowing all possible constructors to prove this theory true. So yes, constructor theory doesn't solve or help with anything.
I think it’s more like an attitude about science to help people think from a different perspective than something that would be useful for re-deriving everything.
Who is to say what is possible and impossible? QFT hinges on impossible virtual particles doing impossible things on impossibly short timescales.
@@D4narchy THATS WHAT I WAS THINKING. If we abandoned formulas then there would be nothing proving all of our laws we are using for constructor theory
The Devs already noticed, and they're literally making things up for us to measure.
Maybe this is our underdog story of a creation outsmarting it's creator at some point?
TierZoo might say we're in for a balance patch.
Devs = God lol
@@alysdexia *laughs in God
@@TekniCaliSpeakin God(s)(plural, not singular), clearly the system conflicts imply many forces at work. For the flawed ‘singular-God’(hypothesis) to have any basis, God is either hyper-multiple personality syndrome schizophrenic…
I watched a lecture right here on CZcams about this topic, and while the idea of counterfactuals were discussed at length I walked away from the conversation feeling that the whole thing sounded kind of dumb. But I don't think it was idea of Constructor Theory itself, but instead how the participants danced around the topic, delving into philosophy debates instead of explaining existing ideas behind it. Like they were discussing the meta of Chess without ever explaining what the game even was. But here in just 8 minutes I was able to go, "Oh that's what they meant!"
The difference between just meandering around and getting to the point.
With fundamental physics it often goes the etheric route, when in fact they should try and stick to reality.
Yeah, thus far the explanations of CT have been very opaque. Glad that Matt got to it and made it at least partly comprehensible.
This channel is very good at really telling you what all this is about instead of a bunch of popsci philosophical stuff
@@AdelaeR I don't know why you say, "In fact" when you not only have no idea what you're talking about, but don't even have any current way of knowing or figuring out what physicists involved in the deepest and most complex mysteries humanity has ever faced "should" be doing.
Your comment is literally the most arrogant thing I've ever read in my life.
Yeah they gotta add a big of showmanship to it I guess. It is a rather fascinating concept from the looks of this video.
Constructor Theory reminds me of fractal math, and especially the way the Mandelbrot set is built. You test a number through an equation and if it blows up toward infinity, it's out. If it stays within certain bounds, it's in.
oh my god, mobs tapping on walls and measuring frame rates had me rolling
This sounds reminiscent of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. He was able to abstract away the mathematical operations and describe any possible equation as a binary choice between it being true or false, much like how the counterfactuals are either possible or impossible and allow you to ignore the specific equations themselves.
@@estring123 Firstly I never said he invented it, I only said that the central approach of reducing any mathematical equation to either true or false and drawing conclusions from there is similar to how Goedell proved his theorem.
To your second question, Dr Dowd explains it best here using the equations for Newtonian gravity 5:06, i.e., it is either true that an apple can spontaneously turn into gold or it is false, which is what I mean by "binary choice"; it's one or the other, not both.
@@estring123 It is clear from you responses that you have either intentionally or otherwise failed to grasp the context of my comment. Your "joke" about the apple iphone leads me to suspect the former. Whilst you've been mildly entertaining, I doubt there's much useful substance to be gained by continuing along this tangent.
[Laughs in Beyond Church-Turing]
Its much more complicated than that though. 1:0 if 0=1. Demonstrates a flaw of unifying binary to information. Since math can not be exact. Atleast by your standards. You will never unify the fields... you literally have no idea what you are doing. Lol
@@2Sor2Fig have you proved now that youre more intelligent than him
Constructor theory seems to parallel David Hilbert's efforts to formalize all of mathematics before Kurt Gödel showed that such a task was impossible.
exactly, its nonsense at best and destructive to other efforts of unification at worst
This is exactly what I thought
I think this is a major misunderstanding. Using this analogy, a better way to think about it is that constructor theory would point out what can or can’t be formalized in principle!
@@aakksshhaayy Incorrect: Those especially familiar with Godel's work know that it remarks much more on the power of logical proof than it does on its limitations. A theory which is victim to incompleteness (all well-formed complex theories) is not "nonsense", it is simply that they cannot talk about themselves. So it is your implicit assumption that a GUT should be able to exist consistently and completely at all that is nonsense.
1) Who says you can't formalize all of math? Gödel only tells you that, for certain systems, you can't prove or disprove every sentence.
2) I'm always skeptical when I read handwaving about relations between Gödel's incompleteness theorems and physics. Who says that every mathematization of physics corresponds to an axiomatization (in the sense of mathematical logic)? And even if it was the case, who says the resulting system would satisfy the hypotheses of Gödel's theorems? [just a reminder: Euclidean Geometry is complete; also, Hartry Field claimed to have invented a formalization of classical mechanics (Idk if in the sense of mathematical logic or more losely as a mathematization) that didn't use numbers]
It would definitely revolutionize how science is taught in schools anyway. Whether it is the all in one thing that ties them together, or not. It could be incredibly useful as a learning tool.
They still teach in schools?
@@schwarg Hi.
I like to recommend science-youtuber to people who apparently like science.
Apparently, this includes you.
I don't think so. Advanced binary/predicate logic (which is very similar, almost identical, to this) is not taught in schools, although it is fundamental to computer science as a pure science. I suspect constructor theory suffers the same drawbacks: very useful to explain a simple statement of logic/physics to a computer (requires just a few bits and simple binary operations), often foolish to use on humans ("mechanistic" explanations are more intuitive), absolutely unworkable for large systems (exponential growth of matrixes sucks!). The only time you would hear about advanced binary logic (or just "logic") is when you study theoretical computer science - even for most of us CS grads it is just a few hours in a very long and busy CS curriculum.
CT could be of some limited use if you use it to design experiments in the absence of concrete theories. This is a severe limitation, since the only utility is to justify the experiment formally. So better not to over-hype it.
CT sounds counter-intuitive to the spirit of scientific inquiry. After all, the purpose of hypothesis and experimentation is, at its heart, to see what IS and IS NOT possible and reproducible. In seeking to prove or disprove an expected outcome, the experimenter is often confronted with unexpected results which may indeed have seemed “impossible” at the time.
To start from a position of branding a set of expectations as impossible (according to current science), would have long since closed the door to discoveries which would have been thought “impossible” in years past, based on the known science of the time. Intuitively, anyway, it comes off sounding like an archaic and prohibitive place from which to begin and develop scientific inquiry.
This is the best explanation of counterfactuals and Constructor Theory I've seen. I am sure a lot of good work went in to making it so simple to understand. Thank you.
The quantum realm, described by science, includes principles of,
wave-particle duality (Matt 10:20, John 15:26)
superposition (Luke 3:22, John 12:28)
uncertainty (John 5:37, Matt 11:27)
entanglement (John 15:5, John 17:23)
non-locality (Luke 6:40, Luke 12:12)
and Jesus Christ, is describing and demonstrating, the exact principles.
.
.
Quantum science was discovered in the 1900’s
The 4 gospels were written in 60-100 AD
@@marksavoia3687 No one asked.
Do equivalent forms of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and Turing’s Halting Problem exist within Constructor Theory?
Could something (say for example Quantum Gravity) be unprovable in Constructor Theory yet still be possible?
good question - I hope someone will answer it :)
The incompleteness theorem holds for all logical systems, no matter what axioms are used. Thus, it would apply here, too.
@@wasmic5z Not all logical systems. it must be a consistent, classical, effectively generatable formal theory which can encode arithmetic. Although I do think Constructor Theory meets these criteria.
@@wasmic5z no it only applies for systems which can model arithmetic
If you're asking if such a thing exists at all, yes, Godel's and Turing's work are elaborations of Tarski's truth theorem.
Therefore, constructor theory could not justify its own axioms, as no consistent model can.
However I personally have no idea about the relation to constructor theory.
I will say however, that the halting problem has been linked to Quantum theory already, see the first part of this video czcams.com/video/HL7DEkXV_60/video.html
Sounds like it should be called the Sherlock theory - “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
Pretty much. This seams to purely rely on logical deduction. Using intuitive reasoning to to move on in physics.
@Lord Methane Yes Exactly. Big bangers are presumably the same people giving us constructor theory.
In what way does the big bang propose the impossible?
I've studied extensively on this topic, so tell me the flaw you think exists, and I'll tell you the answer.
@Lord Methane Let me guess, "there must be a creator"
@@shipwreck9146 I reckon the big bang is analogous to an astrophysical jet, like those from pulsars and active galactic cores. These jets come in pairs. We live in one jet, so it's natural to ask where the opposite jet is. I suggest that it's jetting away into the pre-big-bang past, and it's where, or rather when, all the missing antimatter is. CPT symmetry: think about it.
It is always interesting that with every new methodology, we continuously think that now we've got, and thereby can explain everything.
But the only thing we can explain is what we know, by what we think we know and actually know, we are just talking about new ways to connect that knowledge to understand what we don't understand, we know and the more we know the more questions arise and by answering those we find new questions and thereby understanding how much more we still don't know. I love this journey, may it never end.
Soon on "intelligent design" websites:
"PHYSICISTS CONFIRMED THE UNIVERSE HAS ITS CONSTRUCTOR!"
Criminally underrated comment.
@@Vamavid :) thx
This sounds an awful lot like an approach to leaning geometry through construction. In fact, Constructor Theory seems to have a lot in common with how we do mathematical proofs in the first place. I'm surprised it took this long for it to be applied to physics.
Maybe we've come far enough in physics to start calling it "maths" ?
Well to be fair, physics kind of exists already and we have to work out the "axioms" from that. With mathematics, we define the axioms and build up.
What's really obnoxious is that with the axiomatic approach, Gödel's theorems come into play .__.
@@ZedaZ80 That's what I'm most excited for when physics and mathematics really coalesce, the physical equivalent to Gödel's theorem. Perhaps it grounds Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle?
Meh. Its just a pretty distraction, like Quantum Holonomy, which serves only to distract from real physics. I'll wait patiently while they come up with a prediction, as opposed to struggling valiantly to match what QFT and the standard model have already done.
Most science is just taking already known approaches and applying them to new frameworks. It often takes long to happen when there's an already powerful approach being used that is yielding a lot of results and new approaches spawn as the limitations of the current approach become more inescapable.
Plus constructor theory is already like 10 years old. There probably were and still are a number of different approaches being spearheaded much like constructor theory 5-10 years ago which we don't hear about because they end up not being that useful.
This feels a lot like what Gödel did but in the context of physics. Mathematics is extremely rigorously formalised and consistent across all areas of study and as much pain as that brings me in my maths lectures, I think a similar level of purity and formality in our language and axioms could really benefit physicists.
But mathematics does not describe anything!
I'd actually believe that it does.
Many times in the past, physicist have found physical processes that are already described by existing math.
It's actually very possible that math itself is the basis for what is and isn't possible throughout all spaces, including multiverses.
Wow
@@shipwreck9146 That's simply not true..all the processes are approximately described by mathematics..ask any physicist about the symmetires in the standard model...they're approximate
@@shipwreck9146 But Math have it's own "problems"...
czcams.com/video/HeQX2HjkcNo/video.html<
:P
I like a lot that part at around 13 minute mark. Showing us how the world works very differently from what we intuitively expect, what we expect by using what some would call common sense. I feel lucky to live in the age where I can hear the answers to these questions, as opposed to the age of ancient Greece, where philosophers had to make guesses and essentially make stuff up. These philosophers never stood a chance of predicting how reality actually works, because it is so different from what we experience on our scales. This is a great channel which answers the questions which we all head as kids, and which all people asked themselves during thousands of years (if not way more than that). Even without the theory of quantum mechanics and gravity, and without knowing why mass pressure etc. cause gravity, or whether time and space are emerging properties or not, just presenting things that we know is so fascinating to hear. I am actually excited about the fact that on the smallest scale universe doesn't work the way we would imagine. It only makes it more interesting.
The big stuff is misbehaving too, hence dark energy
Hey Matt, have you read David Deutsch's book? The Beginning of Infinity? It's absolutely amazing. The most influential book I've ever read, by far.
Q: How is Construtor Theory different from creating formulae to describe a system? Coming up with principles to determine valid vs invalid paths sounds very much like creating equations.
To put it into the framework of the falling apple. Constructor theory is simply saying the apple will fall down, creating formulae would say the apple is gonna fall down at 9.81m/s^2. In that sense using constructor theory to narrow down which parts of formulae space are still valid as a quantitative description of reality is useful, it won't replace quantitative descriptions of reality, it'll simply serve as a sort of filter for which descriptions could possibly be true and which couldn't. Or at least, that's my understanding of it.
try thinking of it from the perspective of a person who has been working on the same problem for 100 years. I'm sure we all had moments when we were working on something, we couldn't figure it out, and someone comes along and say "oh that's easy, just look at it this way" and you go "oh I didn't think to look at it that way". Well that's what constructor theory is, it's a tool to help physicists look at the same problems in different ways and hopefully that new perspective will allow them to see some underlying fact of nature which they can then use to build up a theory. Like Matt said at the beginning of the video, its essentially a recipe book for thinking like Einstein or Newton.
@@jasonbentley439 Very well put.
I would like to add another viewpoint as elaboration on this.
Say you observe (through vision, particle accelerator etc.) something is causing something. The second something in this case may be the apple falling from the tree, but you have no idea what causes the apple to fall.
There is an infinite space of mathematical functions that could describe this action of the apple falling down (one of which would be what Newton published) but you have no idea which would be correct.
There is also an infinite space of mathematical functions that can describe the complete physics of any possible universe.
Constructor theory does not try to find one specific mathematical function to describe the apple falling down.
Instead the space of functions that can be used to describe the apple falling down are narrowed down to those consistent with what we observe.
This may still result in infinitly many functions, but all of those functions output the same result given our restriction of the apple falling down.
Similarly constructor theory tries to restrict the space of all functions that can describe the physics of any universe until we are left with functions consistent with all applied restrictions.
By choosing restrictions based on observables from our own universe (the apple falling down) it is possible to narrow down this space of mathematical functions to those describing universes that are comparable to our own universe.
Again, this might leave us with infinitly many functions, but all of them describing our universe as far as possible given the restrictions.
With each added restriction based on observations from our own universe we can further narrow down this space of functions.
After each added restriction the result can theoretically be:
1. One function perfectly describing everything happening in our universe. Physics is completely solved and we can apply this knowledge to all of science and reach the full potential of what is possible within our universe.
2. Infinitly many functions perfectly describing all universes where the same restrictions hold true. We need to go on and find further restrictions to apply.
With each iteration it becomes harder to find new restrictions, but also the space of functions describing universes is narrowed down.
At some point any single one of these infinitly many functions consistent with all added restrictions will be more precise than any current model of physics.
The open question is now:
Is there a limit such that we will at some point be left with one single function, or is the cycle infinite and we are able to always find new restrictions?
@@hyperduality2838 As an SQL pro - I never forget the third possibility besides TRUE and FALSE - the (in)famous NULL. Stop thinking in binary logic, maybe ternarity or quatrority is the real state of things, we just dont understand how.
If you have discovered an equation, you have discovered a pattern. This is immensely powerful for generalizations and understanding. Constructor theory doesn't offer such power, instead offering a truistic thought experiment framework.
Now I want a T-shirt that only says:
"Be quiet everyone. The Devs will notice."
😁
Yes. Yes please.
I second THIS
Great channel,
but not big enough! C'mon, grow! Me recommending you to others cant be your only way to grow!
Collabs can make you grow; to your info!
I'm doing my best but you have to do your part, BDS-ST!
This is why Bible say "Do not test God" :>
I did notice ;)
OK, so only part way through but seems to me, there's a possible 'bump' in the constructor road. Who or what decides what tasks are 'possible' and what constructor is needed to make them happen?
If we don't already know of a specific constructor, wouldn't this lead to a task being called impossible even though it is just our lack of knowledge?
I was about to say something very similair to this.
You've found the fundamental flaw of this theory.
Yes, my cute little Mortals:
Yes, you should rethink stuff.
I completely agree - how can we make a shortlist of the "right" and "wrong" possibilities if we don't know the rules by which to judge them? I feel like this isn't going to replace the "mechanical" approach, but instead, the two will end up working together
@@slevinchannel7589 I got a shiver just reading that. Incredibly cringey
Dev coming home from school:
" Mom, I told you NEVER SHUT MY COMPUTER O....."
I'm not sure I understand how this theory can predict how a system will behave, wouldn't it need some external definition of what is possible or not?
As far as I understand it, this is a formalization of the process of using the external information of what is and what is not possible. This seems like (if it turns out to be successful) it will "cut down" more of the possibility space of theories. I expect it would be used in conjunction with a more traditional approach to essentially work at the problem from two directions.
How I understand it is that this theory can rely on a Base os information that consists of every proven physical law so far, an algorithm, a rather complex one, could be made to analyze the input information and try to connect it to a law that would define the given scenario to its best abillity, finally creating a TRUE/FALSE output
You're right, it does require an external definition of what's possible/ not possible. But that's already baked into it: Einstein considered what the logical conclusions were based off of the fact that 1. Light has a constant speed through a vaccum regardless of an observers motion and 2. Being motionless in deep space is exactly equivalent to being in free fall within a "gravitational field". This is literally how we make new theories and systems, just formalized.
You're right, it does require an external definition of what's possible/ not possible. But that's already baked into it: Einstein considered what the logical conclusions were based off of the fact that 1. Light has a constant speed through a vaccum regardless of an observers motion and 2. Being motionless in deep space is exactly equivalent to being in free fall within a "gravitational field". This is literally how we make new theories and predict systems, just formalized.
Professor Stephen Wolfram coined the term, Ruliology. The Meta Study of simple rules yielding vast complexity.
Constructor Theory reminds me of the Sieve of Eratosthenes, except this is a Sieve for the models of reality.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes
It is very much like it indeed! Definitely a similar principle. Also, that video on the wiki page that shows an example of using the sieve to show off how it works is excellent; I think that it could have even been in the video as a related example, because it really helps to express the usefulness of exclusion.
But sieves are a slow and tedious process if done by hand, and given a large number will also take a long time to complete on a computer. Constructir theory seems , at least from whay I understand from it, like a very un-optimized way to do things. Eliminating elements one by one untol only the correct ones remain
@@hyperduality2838
Everything and Nothing
Positive and Negative
Inside and Outside
Light and Darkness
Before and After
Always and Never
Input and Output
Local and Global
Above and Below
Order and Chaos
Macro and Micro
Open and Closed
Time and Space
Full and Empty
Life and Death
True and False
Mind and Body
Yin and Yang
Hot and Cold
On and Off
1 and 0
I feel like I'm missing the part where Constructor Theory is a theory, and not just a process..?
At the moment, it's a process that's in the process of being turned into a theory, as far as I see it. I think it has potential to be basically a "binding factor" on other theories that lets them tie themselves together into something more comprehensive than any individual theory can be on its own.
Mathematical theory or physics theory?
So an off topic(for the vid) question:
If heat(energy) is nothing else than the speed at which molecules vibrate
and if moving faster mean slowing time down in your frame of reference
does that mean that the hotter someone is the slower time passes for them?
Isn't this more of an epistemological framework than a theory? Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think everything would be better if physicists and philosophers of science collaborated more or if more physicists were more philosophically inclined (like Sean Carroll, for instance)
Yeah, I completely agree. I guess you could sort of call it a theory, but it is very much not a theory of physics. Maybe a theory of epistemology regarding physics?
I totally agree with this as well!!
Not really. It's more like having a full-size functional Lego space shuttle and reverse-engineering it. We've figured out how things like the guidance and propulsion systems work, even down to some of their sub-components - but we don't have the technology see the individual Legos. At that point there are two techniques - keep trying to break the components down into smaller pieces as they become more and more difficult to experiment with... or hypothesize what the Legos might look like and how they might connect with each other. Then you do the maths, run simulations, and see if there's any possible way to come up with a Lego set that can be built up enough to ultimately align with the pieces that you ARE able to observe.
Unfortunately particles and forces are far more complex than even the most diverse box of interlocking plastic bricks, but that's the idea behind it.
I second this motion-science has become dogmatic. Similarly, if we strive to comprehensively explain reality, we need holistic approaches. Science is fantastic, but it is severely limited in what it can describe and/or ultimately deduce.
@@romanholder5621 If you think science is "too dogmatic", you're more than welcome to step up to the plate to show them how they're wrong. Dogma is a religious term, where heretics were burned at the stake. I don't see how that even remotely applies in the modern era of science. Every decent scientist on the planet would be giddy with excitement if anyone on earth came up with a working theory for dark matter or dark energy or quantum gravity... as opposed to trying to torture and kill them.
So what are you even going on about? If you are some genius or know some genius who can "break the mold", there's literally nothing stopping you. But I'll bet by first born that rather you're just a lazy armchair critic whose only "contributions" to science are lazy, unenlightened internet smears against the community who are actively engaged and contributing, and the countless nerds, geniuses, and labcoat miracle workers before them that helped give you the technology to tell everyone all about their supposed intellectual shortcomings. And in the true spirit of "science" - you posted a statement as fact but with no numbers, facts, or even a shred of evidence to back it up- and the mere thought of you having any ideas on how to improve such failings even if they DID exist is so preposterous that it makes me see why you might think that people who don't take you seriously and who aren't ridiculous all day every day might be "dogmatic" from your point of view.
This sounds too similar to Formal Proofs in CS, and I sense a halting problem in the making. Something along the lines of "A true system of everything will be able to solve the halting problem, and thus cannot exist". That's not to say it's a bad thing, it's some conclusion to say the least.
I got a very similar feeling. As soon as it was posited that investigation state space could be constrained I immediately thought "there's going to be an incompleteness-like barrier in there somewhere".
There are intrinsic limitations to all theories, as I'm sure you're aware. Yet you must realize that the Halting problem serves as a scaffold of sorts for all of CS: all of its derivatives are the ultimate aims of perfecting each computational task, motivating us forward.
I think the fact that physics contains the uncertainty principle means that we never even get to encounter the halting problem because you can't even evaluate the halting problem if you can't read the current state of the system.
Why would it be able to predict that? A true theory of everything would accurately describe the individual steps, but meta-knowledge of processes is not implied? I mean, you accurately simulate every process, but to see the outcome you would still need to let it run through to it's conclusion
...counter strike?
Matt this is great, I can envision using principles of constructor theory and counterfactual assertions you break down to apply in innovations when "greenhousing" new ideation; the essence in this is a developer can practice thinking creatively outside any particular mechanistic rigid means before resolving logic that a task is potentially possible or not.
Basically the physical application of Sherlock Holmes truism saying, “eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
That's the Doyle Fallacy. We can't know all possibilities. Doyle was the author of Holmes, and was an idiot loll. He even used this argument to "prove" Oudini really had magic powers loll
@@askani21 this, it's a first year students philosophy error which proves how astray our civilization has gone from Hume's bullacrap on.
@@lorefox201 Hahahaha!
@@lorefox201 could you elaborate on why Humes ideas can be considered bullshit?
@@gamen8209 he divorces European philosophy from its origins by "disproving" Aquinas.
In particular to disprove his proof of God from first causes he says that you can never demonstrate a cause and effect relation only Intuit it.
By doing so, he disproved philosophy, and his own argument. Since then things have been effed.
Isn't finding what is possible and impossible just physics?
I've gotten into a conversation with someone trying to explain the constructor theory, but I just kept hearing "physics with extra steps"
Because it is, at least judging from this video. It's not about bulldozing all physics away to replace it. It's about adding one more "layer of abstraction" so that relativity and quantum physics can be derived from the constructor theory.
Nobody will abandon Newtonian physics and start using constructor for every calculation, unless those working in a field where it would be important, i.e. at the Hadron collider and maybe for computer chip production
@@thenasadude6878 ah OK. So it's more like adding more layers on top of physics than throwing the physics book out. Is that accurate?
@@TheIronicRaven Yes. It's a bit like saying a physical possibility such as one thing and another thing both joining/effecting/being noticed even by another distinct and independent physical concept/object/thing whose presence allows a distinct a physical processes to take place (such as shouting the word two) and that thing that allowed the process to happen remains identical to it's original state (i.e. completely unchanged) then that thing is considered a constructor and the process has been proven possible by constructor theory.
That's my best guess so far. Please correct me in any way possible as I'm very keen to understand why it is considered so powerful a technique
@@DeneSimpson that makes a lot of sense, I guess I'm just trying to figure why it's special or helpful as well.
To me it keeps feeling like the way I taught the scientific method to kids. I would give them a phenomenon (usually an apple falling from a tree) then have them give me all the reasons of how it could have happened. Usually get a collection of about 5 or 6. Then we go through testing each idea to see which one is right.
Constructor Theory feels the same way so I'm trying to figure out how it is different. Or if not different, how it's useful. I am actually pretty interested in seeing if it is useful, the discussion I was having with someone on the topic was using it for some really big ideas.
It's not about finding what is possible or not, it's about finding 'the thing' that determines what is possible or not: 'the constructor' of the laws of physics.
Imagine you are in a 3D simulation. Your task is to figure out the base computer and the source code of the simulation. You know that there are rules like gravity, which you can describe with formulas, but that's not the source code and/or the computer you're after.
As somebody mentioned, constructor theory is a layer of abstraction.
To me, constructor theory always sounded like a more complicated way to say things we already know. The kind of topic that gets some philosophers excited and most physicists shrugging, yawning, or raising eyebrows.
I may well be missing something, but I don't even think that the thought experiment that Matt gave, of gravity mediating entanglement, is pointing us in any direction we haven't already been looking for a long time already. We already know a fair bit about Quantum Field Theory on curved spacetimes, e.g. Hawking radiation and the Unruh effect, that is stuff from what, 40 or 50 years ago?
It all sounds like an answer in search of a question.
Sounds about right.
Its really more like a Book in search of someone to buy it. CT has the biggest smell of Snake oil I have ever seen to be honest.
From what I understand it is a way to limit the possibilities needed to traverse to get to an answer. Mostly since we have other theories that already work it doesn't do anything except state the obvious but what it does is allow you to apply the results from "unrelated" theories or results that are, under Constructor Theory, related to new areas. So if you can prove that two tasks are equivalent in Constructor Theory then you can use things you know about one to limit the other.
But we don't actually know if gravity is a force and is carried by particles like the fundamental forces, or if it's just an illusion caused by the curvature of spacetime (basically to pseudoforces such as the centrifugal force). The experiment given in the video could answer this question.
It's from Oxford. Watch some of their old Symposia on Cosmology, dominated by the Philosopher Physicists.
It's unbelievable. Carlo went one year and OMG, the concepts were mind-boggling.
Have you ever noticed someone else bringing up something that you already know, but because they brought it up it somehow made you see it from a new and perhaps groundbreaking angle? But yeah you're probably right, this constructor thing doesn't give anything new most likely.
December 24, 2022
Matt, you gave an example of differences pertaining to possible/impossible in quantum vs. classical theory - namely, the entanglement…
Well, how about this:
1) It is the colder part of the year, so I’ll describe it the following way: I set my air conditioning to a certain temperature to be maintained, and device starts the heating process. When the temperature is reached, thermostat turns the heating off. After a while, temperature drops, so the device turns on again… To an observer, these two physical “variables” (high-low room temperature and air conditioning ON-OFF status) are correlated (with a slight delay), aren’t they?
2) Two people in love [oh, isn’t it delightfully charming] pretty much “behave” as a correlated system (of two otherwise independent humanoid units) when it comes to choosing social activities… (E.g. “Shall we go to the movies?” - “Yes, of course!” | “Should we split the cheesecake?” - “Oh, that’s exactly what I’ve been meaning to ask you!” [So pathetic! Just kidding…]) | So the probability that these “two particles” are entangled with each other [and, please keep it decent] at the same space & time violates Bell’s inequality - which means their whereabouts are statistically correlated…
3) When I play your video on CZcams, the progress indicator is not independent but rather correlated with the frames of the video file in hand; that’s by design. When I or anyone else watching the video “observes” either one - the progress bar or the current video frame - we will immediately know the “state” (i.e. relative position) of the other. Even more: when the indicator is dragged to a certain position, the playing video will reflect that; likewise, when Google A.I. is told to seek certain position - the progress bar will follow. Entanglement.
4) At the start, (that is, when the file is blank) all cells in Excel spreadsheet are “independent”; one sets their value as one wishes… But, if we allow the concept of “simplex entanglement” [I just “invented” this virtual mechanism] to be interpreted as “entanglement, period”, then when I put formula in a cell referencing some other cell’s value, the former cell is no longer “independent”: it’s value (interpreted as state) is entangled… Now, as I’ve said, this has to be one-directional, otherwise Excel will object to “circular reference”- but the idea is there. However, I’m sure the “true duplex entanglement” can be simulated with software (and I mean in classical programming).
There are many variations on all four examples. These cover technical systems with a feedback loop, visual controls in software, human societal interactions and, probably, biological processes, too… Maybe I overextended it, but the principle is there, isn’t it?
One more thing (and this may or may not be trivial)… When we measure some quantum property of two entangled particles, these measurements’ outcomes will always be correlated; one “snaps out” the other, and it works both ways… What happens when we do the measurement simultaneously?
(P.S. “E.R.” is NOT equal to “E.P.R.”)
Are the "laws of physics" as we know them now then just the observation of what tasks are and are not possible? So in the math of constructor theory they'd be a sort of boundary conditions?
If constructor theory is the more fundamental approach, how does it tell us the laws of physics, or the possible tasks, without knowing them beforehand?
I suspect that answering this question involves getting into the math of quantum information theory.
@@hyperduality2838 It is just your human brain thinking in two.
It sounds like constructor theory is an interesting way of generating thought experiments which might lead to actual discoveries, but I don't see how it can serve as an underpinning of physics in general. Perhaps more information about quantum information theory would be helpful.
I agree. As I now understand it constructor theory seems to rely on other theories to enable its possible/impossible tests. This seems to imply that making progress beyond our current understanding will require more than just constructor theory. At the very least a refinement of current theories seems to be required. If constructor theory is truly the most fundamental theory it should be able to derive the other theories without any help, but that does not seem to be the case based on the given examples.
If I understand correctly, it's not that constructor theory is really a novel way of doing anything at all, it's just an attempt to formalize the process which has already been the underpinning of the study of physics? Every single discovery has required some initial understanding that predates the mathematical/mechanical understanding. It's inherently "more fundamental" because the more detailed models are always derived from it.
@@TripleOmega Constructor Theory itself could be used to revise and reexamine our current understanding of physics, and once that process is complete it will open doors to groundbreaking research.
It's not so much that it's a new thing, but rather its the composition of a new method by which we can find the trail again so to speak and dig even deeper into the fine fibers of reality.
most physics concerns themself with the hypothesis to experiment step in the scientific method, construction "theory" aims at improving the quality of our hypothesis
@@hereisyoursign6750 Word salad
Its crazy when you hear theories like this thinking, how has this not be thought of before? Its like a back to basic approach.
Well, you see, most people are really stupid. Even most physicists. They can copy the coursework and give correct answers, but they have no insight or wisdom whatsoever. Once you understand this basic fact about people, its obvious most are waiting for a messiah to guide them to paradise.
"you don't need to know what is inside to know everything about the thing, only the boundaries are enough"
-The Fundamental theorem of calculus
What do u mean by that ?
@@mariamorales8659 evaluating the antidrivative at the "end points" of a function and taking difference between them gives the value of the integral over the function. The same pattern can be found in vector calculus when dealing with surfaces and volumes, you can find the values by integration over the edge or suface
One of the first videos where I don't feel like things were explained properly. I don't understand how can new knowledge be extracted if we only rely on known facts.
The idea with equations is they make predictions you can then try to observe or contradict.
But suppose I start with the "fact" nothing travels faster than light, how could I apply this constructor theory to be like "actually neutrinos might be moving faster, go and take a look."
Wdym by the last part?
You extract new knowledge from a set of facts using logical deduction. As explained in the video, that's exactly how Einstein formulated GR and how Heisenberg pioneered the field of QM. The point of constructor theory is not to itself be a theory of everything, it's to apply the formalisms of some advanced mathematical structure (set theory, category theory, whatever) to the deductive process of hypothesis generation and (ideally) scientific revolution. Problem with a 15 minute video is that it can't teach you everything you need to know about set theory and constructor theory to understand why this is actually potentially useful, so the comments mostly seem to be people confused and/or disparaging the usefulness of constructor theory. Maybe it will be useful and maybe it won't, but at least they're trying to come up with new stuff rather than generating more statistically non-falsifiable hypotheses with string theory or whatever.
This was one of the first videos I found to be not very well made/scripted etc. as well :/
I agree that with you that this left me with lots of questions. I haven't looked into the theory itself but I believe this is is being used as a method for figuring out which types of things may not be possible to do no matter how hard we look. Specifically, the theory should allow you to formally prove things that are impossible and therefore no physics would allow for it. Maybe take a look at Veritasium's "Math Has a Fatal Flaw", it shows a similar concept for determining things that are just not knowable within mathematics.
@@alybearrrful straight up im in the comments halfway through trying to figure out what happened... All the graphic design is gone, all the headlines are in like Ariel Pro and lime green.... No director it sounds like, nobody to say "give that ending a go again a bit higher" etc.... wtf, is Matt doing this whole thing himself out of a basement at this point???
I’d like to see all of the non-possible mathematics, that are carved off…that’s the “No formula left behind!” list!!
Yes am very curious about that
ha ha lol thats called a proof checking alogorithm
Not possible, if you could make a complete list of impossible mathematics you could make a list of possible mathematics, which would contradict Gödel. My prediction is that constructor falls victim to a similar paradox, the ability to create an experiment that could disprove constructor theory in such a way that if it were true then it wouldn’t be, making the entire theory inconsistent.
Sure.
Possibly white holes, magnet with ony a north or south pole, and unobtanium from avatar be on That list.
thanks for that, interesting. known about this for a while but not really sure "how" it could be formalised. on that topic, the way maths is going, one has to wonder whether a REALLY formal system like a Type Theory-based computer system might be best suited (like Lean in maths), as we would be kinda starting "over" almost.
Haven’t even watched the vid yet but thank u pbs space time and Matt for ur work! Incredible! A young me couldn’t have dreamed of a better source to fuel my interest in the universe!
It strikes me that -- as a layman -- typically in physics there's only one or two right answers about how a system can evolve. Seeing as this is something of an epistemological framework (I like epistemology and they're important for getting new perspectives), and there's a functionally infinite expansion of the number of ways a complex system can evolve, I'm struggling to see how we're going to find this needle in a haystack of can's and can't's. That is, without lots and lots of ways to generate new ideas about how the system will evolve and new razors for eliminating impossible actions.
Me I don't like big words, It gets in the way of thinking and communication.
What do you mean there are only one or two right answers, quantum mechanical description always gives us multiple answers, albeit most of them are gibberish.
It sounds to me like you believe that we need to list all of the possible ways that a complex system can evolve. But it sounds to me like Constructor Theory is saying we don't need to know that. In the example given about determining whether gravity is quantum, no information about how the system can evolve is required.
You literally just look at the system to see what it does. I think you're misunderstanding
Constructor "Theory" feels too meta of a take on the process of physics and mathematical modeling. I don't really see how moving the question back one step to understanding what's "impossible" versus what's "possible" is supposed to help us make progress. If we knew a priori what events were possible and which ones weren't, wouldn't we already be done with physics?
I was to say the same thing.
But did you understood the relation between entanglement and gravity?how they are related?
@@legender576 look up Raamsdonk's papers on entanglement and Susskind/Maldacena's paper on the ER=EPR conjecture if you want to read more on the subject.
The punchline is, string theory plus AdS/CFT duality implies that quantum entanglement somehow builds spacetime itself. This is a hypothesis based on the rabbit hole that black hole information paradoxes have dragged physicists down into.
"Constructor" theory is just boolean logic applied to quantum computing and physics. Kinda disappointed in the video for not seeing that.
@@projectnemesi5950 maybe because you don't understand it udk
@@hyperduality2838 zzzzz
Ao ver isso, me sinto impressionado e extremamente burro ao mesmo tempo, enquanto tem gente pensando em como funciona o universo, eu estou aqui pensando no que vou almoçar e quando vai chegar a hora de ir embora do expediente. De qualquer modo, muito obrigado por esse ótimo vídeo.
I wish I could remember the details of a tale I heard, but I found it interesting and kinda relevant here. I will paraphrase wildly: A sculptor was asked how he made a statue. His reply was that he took away everything that wasn't the statue. (I seem to recall this was said of Michelangelo.. but... ???)
It wasn't me for sure 🤭
Interesting how physics is taking a page from computer science. When you start describing phenomenon as abstract concepts, you have to shift from measuring data directly to describing how that phenomenon alters data.
I think it contributes to the conspiracy theory that we live in a simulation. Because everything in the universe can be boiled down to numbers we’d see in a program. Things like Fractals, to how even the seemingly random isn’t as random as we think when framed into a numbers game (a grid, some dice and and pencil and Chaos becomes patterns of triangles) to how the universe seems to function on a fundamental level. It’s almost algorithmic.
I think the best case scenario is if some of these problems can be formatted and organized by a sat solver, or some complex problem can be reduced to an easier problem. But with what little experience I have in applying information theory, I've found it's far too easy to just create equally or more difficult problems without addressing the fundamental road blocks of physics.
@@fist-of-doom487 Alternatively, which no one really ever seems to mention, computers and programs work like that because of the universe we live in. Not vice versa.
The funny thing is that spiritist societies also think we live in a simulation. People reanimated from death explain this is not reality, but more like a dream. Other realities await us., way more real than this one. Also, the copenhague interpretation of quantum physics states that everything is waves, just becoming real, collapsing into particle appearance, when observed. Just like a videogame which just renders what you can see at the moment.
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 to be clear I don’t believe in that conspiracy theory I just think it’s interesting
Thank you! It's amazing how your previous videos led me to look for research and about 10 months ago discover Constructor Theory. I certainly see this Theory as helpful in describing what will be quantum gravity or relativity.
This is how I solve problems in my hyperphantasia. My mind's eye is like a holodeck, and I can access a lot of memories and visualise anything. Easier to do it this way than pay attention to someone else's ideas with my executive disfunction.
I have lots of relatives with Aspergers and ADHD...
Someone should really investigating that SIRT1 gene, endocannabinoid system, and epigenetic repair btw. That math and chem wasn't even hard. Everyone in my family has a very good memory, so sometimes I check to see if the science has enough data to support the theories, and observations.
Mr. Space Time: Direct question about space/time: If we believe that space is not really empty, but made up of some sort of "vibration field" or fundamental "fabric" - and we believe that ALL space is expanding in all directions, including the space we currently occupy, then it stands to reason that field would have to continually generate new field "material" or create new vibrations to fill in the gaps in space caused by the expansion. If this were not true, then we would have gaps or "holes" in space - which we do not detect - although our primitive technology may not be able to detect such a thing. Is anyone looking for holes in space?
If new vibrations are being created, where does the energy come from to create them?
Alternatively, if new vibrations are NOT being created and the fundamental vibrations/fabric is simply expanding, per the theory, might that explain the red shift of astronomical objects? This would imply that distant galaxies are not "necessarily" moving at such great speeds, but that space itself is distorting our perceptions of what we see.
Do you have insights to this concept?
Anyone else?
Isn't this just Expert System style knowledge engineering and constraint satisfaction applied to Physics? I didn't understand what was novel about this approach other than maybe physicists don't regularly use those tools? Is "Constructor Theory" just the name for the CSP domain or knowledge graph for physics?
its nonsense
@@aakksshhaayy nicely evidenced. qed?
@@rabokarabekian409 disclaimer, not a physicist here, just a programmer.
you can't compute a function without set parameters.
the set parameters of constructor theory would be our combined physical knowledge, to determine what is possible and what is not.
the problem is, our combined physical knowledge isn't objectively the entirety of physical knowledge to be derived from reality, hence set parameters will be inherently erroneous, or at least uncertain, hence predictions/judgements made by constructor theory will always be questionable at best.
you *could* use it to cut down on far-out bullshit that will obviously be impossible (stuff that contradicts observations being made, like the flying apple being discussed in this clip), hence limit research to questions that have at least a chance of being possible, but that will likely be used as tool to unite our current understanding of physics, in an easily applicable decision making process to determine if research in a field seems to be worth it or not.
The problems of such a tool are being made immediately obvious, if you consider that often new research contradicts and invalidates previous theories, hence constructor theory could easily devolve the scientific process into a system of stagnancy and dogma, since the chance of constructor theory flagging something erroneously as impossible is never a statistical null sum, as long as our scientific knowledge isn't feature complete. It could easily block paths of research that could update / improve constructor theory itself, especially since constructor theory aims to be a process to ease the process of deciding where new discovers "could" be made, and where they can't.
The best-case scenario would be to create an innovative way of combining our physical current knowledge for easier / more comprehensive availability, but I object the idea of its "judgments" being given any form of influence on the decision making process what future researchers should look into. It can be useful as learning tool, tho, and maybe as momentary snapshot of our current physical knowledge. Nothing more. Any and all judgements being made by constructor theory must always be seen as fundamentally flawed, and be subjected to high levels of scrutiny.
tl;dr: a learning tool at best, a counter-productive brainfart at worst (especially in the hands of politicians when they have to decide on what research fields to fund; dangerous half-knowledge, etc).
Do we even understand what space itself is?
I thought the same thing. It's looks like just a giant graph where some inputs into the correct function give a result and so are possible and others don't. Rules could help shift things around so that the functions get what they need and even the functions could be rules themselves. I'm sure there's more too it but not read enough yet. The Begginings of Infinity by David Deutsch is a brilliant book regardless of anything else
kind of comes across as a pretty 'new' wrapper, aka formalism, for logical techniques that have long been well established. aside from some physicists using this theoretical framework to reframe their lack of progress in certain quantum or cosmology fields I don't know what you gain from placing poorly understood dynamical systems in a black box and then discuss output so generalized it's not relevant without understanding the black box in the first place, but as a software engineer that has to put up with new frameworks promising before impossible progress seemingly every few months I am skeptical this fits in that category as well
Ever notice the similarities between procedurally generated programming and physics?
Step 1: Define an algorithm.
Step 2: Input a seed for initial conditions.
Step 3: Grab popcorn, and get in your favorite gaming chair.
People scoff at Flat Earthers, and they don’t even realize everything could just be a one dimensional set of zeroes and ones.
I’m watching the video now, and “Constructor Theory” sounds like “Assembly Language.”
@@hyperduality2838 red quark, blue quark, green quark 3 colors
Up quark, charm quark, top quark 3 families
W plus, w minus, z 3 weak force carriers
Father, son, holy ghost. Holy trinity
HyperTRIviality. 🙄
I very often find myself not wondering what David Deutsch is up to these days, and I would be entirely happy to hear about constructor theory after it has accomplished some accomplishments or gathered some buy-in within the discipline, instead of (as currently seems to be the case) before.
I do know he's currently writing his third book. Tentatively titled Irrational, it's the continuation of The Beginning of Infinity.
Wow, prob top 3 vid on this channel so far! Im amazed, thanks for explaining and sharing
How can you decide which true or untrue statements are valid for describing an outcome without relying on classical physics and reasoning?
Like, this is cool, but it can't be more fundamental than the facts (and counterfactuals) we rely on to derive new truths.
This. 🙌🏻🔥
From what I understood from the content, I do not think the idea is to not rely on classical physics. Rather it is to combine information that is available to us via classical physics to try to get a grasp of what is possible and what is not. Using knowledge that we gathered for many years to anticipate knowledge that we do not yet fully understand . It is interesting but it feels lacking for some reason.
It sounds like something string theorists came up with to prove their theory without any data
Instead of the big breakthrough to heliocentrism, they come up with a meta theory foundation for why all we need is more epicycles.
On Wikipedia, they give as motivation for constructor theory the example of a drop of dye dissolving in water and the observation that the reverse process is effectively impossible. I do not see why we would need a new theory for that. As far as I know, we can perfectly explain it with the theories we already have. And to claim that it was absolutely impossible would even be wrong as far as I know. So far, this theory seems very artificial and little useful to me. But I am not a great expert. I will wait a few years and see if the scientifc consensus finds a good point in this.
If you wait on science youll wait a long time my friend id suggest you study some philosophy or read a book called the science of getting rich this same theory has been known forever just in different ways the laws of physics can be applied to our minds
I don't think we can explain the seemingly one way nature of thermodynamic systems as you seem to suggest here. The second law of thermodynamics would imply that the reverse of the process is effectively impossible, but it relies on the concept of entropy to do so. Our current models assume that there is nothing that enforces that time only moves forward hence the arrow of time paradox. Something appears to be off here obviously, but formally constructing a system governed by laws of conservations and interactions would be helpful at shedding light on the implications of the assumptions and models we currently use.
Seeing the quantum entanglement example reminded me of metronome synchronization. Is this how that works? He said that two entangled particles either need to directly interact or indirectly interact through a chain of interacting particles. This is how metronomes synchronize as well but the interaction occurs via a ground that can move with their beat.
7:15 what an insanely good way of putting things.
This seems more useful for creating computer simulations based on *known* mechanistic physics than a means of actually discovering any new physics. As a lot people here already said: how are you supposed figure out the "cans" and "can'ts" of the universe if you *don't* already have a working mechanistic approach?
Just going to point out, it would allow for extrapolation, eg the measured output of experiments and the mechanisms behind it could be expanded upon to fill in the gaps constituting missing structures.
I agree.
Science mostly progresses by following contradictions.
Events where the existing axioms/equations do not correctly predict a physical behavior.
Orbital Epicycles
Ultraviolet catastrophy
Michelson-Morley
Etc.
Many times what were taken for Facts and Laws turned out to be much more nuanced, often just special cases at best.
How does one find the grey areas of "Operations allowed by Law X" without running it through the "mechanistic" debugger of physical experimentation or observation?
The first thing I'm wondering is what about Gödel's incompleteness theorem?
His theory formally proves that some 'can do' or possible true facts are impossible to prove true. And this applies to ALL systems.
You must be a philosopher? 😉
Being impossible to prove doesn't mean they're impossible to apply. You just take them as axioms, and check if your reality conforms to the model that follows from taking them as truth.
All the people that you mention at the beginning arrived at their theories not by seeing them, but by working on them for years. It took several steps for all of them. This is the usual romanticized version of the story that is told years later, but it is not how the story went. The truth is that it takes hard work and a bit of luck.
I get off work installing windows and I spend my downtime watching stuff like this which I can barely grasp the concepts of. what a kick ass time to be alive
didn't expect you to talk about this, looking forward to watching this one
Never heard of c. theory. Looking forward to learning something new today.
So many things said in this video is in conflict with Deutsch's brilliant work XD but at least the public is becoming aware, slowly but surely
@@SuperGnarley Indeed
@@SuperGnarley in what way? Im qurious
@@jedlapk9125 In many ways, and I don't want to butcher his work by trying to push it into a paragraph. I would recommend getting familiar with epistemology and the work of Karl Popper, and to then read The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, if you're up for it. Definitely worth if you're into knowledge and reason though.
It's been a while, but during my studies for my degree in philosophy of science, I've often wondered about the applicability of such more general analysis of counterfactuals wrt state-space-trajectory-possibilities in physics. In researching such avenues of thought, I've also found the ideas of Jürgen Schmidhuber (whose work creating LSTMs contributed majorly to modern deep-learning AI) on generalized algorithmic information, Kolmogorov-complexity and the computability of physical universes deeply fascinating. It seems as though some fruitful cross-pollination might be possible.
Of course from a logical and epistemological POV, the real difficulty is to not mis-characterize the counterfactuals, since the conceptualizations of the theories used to define/determine the counterfactuals are never free from ontological and epistemological assumptions which may - in one form or another - be mistaken, and in fact probably are.
A good example wrt counterfactuals themselves is Bell, who, not having conceptualized counterfactual definiteness and its import, proposed that there cannot be consistent and empirically adeuqate, locally real, deterministic quantum-mechanics. The work of Everett, DeWitt and others led to an inclusion of a distinction wrt counterfactual definiteness - and showed that by abandoning this preconception, a locally real, deterministic quantum mechanics can be consistent and empirically adequate.
You ready for a compliment?
This is practically nonsense
I struggle with empirical inadequacies myself...
I think this is my favourite new YT series. I can't wait until I have a job again so I can chip in towards keeping this going.
Interesting theory, the concept was discussed in one of the Star Trek novels about 15 years ago. A Tellerite scientist proposed and promoted it.
Star Trek crew know these things. 🙂
Constructor theory (at least as it's presented here) doesn't seem 'more fundamental' _at all_ ; if it relies on binary facts about what is possible and what is not possible - how do we derive these if *not* from the mechanistic approach in the first place? If constructor theory had none of the previous physics to go on, it wouldn't get anywhere?
If feels like a glorified Eratosthenes' sieve but for physics instead of prime numbers - it doesn't get us closer to the pattern that produces it... but it does help rule out what is & isn't possible.
But maybe I just don't get it?
This goes into in a bit more detail.
czcams.com/video/kKviVpmGdqU/video.html
Constructor theory is building on previous physics like thermodynamics and information theory, but not dynamical laws of physics.
Well, the example given (wether gravity has quantum properties or not) is quite huge for me. All of the other theory are quite hard to prove (string theory for example). At least here, we could prove it without delving too much into some abstract concept like string theory does. Just prove that gravity could make an entangled pair then we at least know that gravity has quantum properties.
@@YandiBanyu
Ruling out the impossible is helpful, but telling us what is possible is not the same thing as telling us what *is*.
The set of all possible things is surely much much larger than the set of all things that actually exist?
We already expect gravity to have quantum properties because of regimes where extreme mass/energy *and* extremely small size are (believed to be) simultaneously important (big bang, black hole singularities).
All I think this is doing is distilling the rules from current theories in a highly refined way that lets us ask questions more abstractly - but I don't think it's telling us something we couldn't work out (in principle anyway) 'mechanistically'.
But as I said before, maybe I don't get it. It does seem a bit... aloof... even from this very basic start.
It's more likely that we don't get it.
Once when I was an excited newcomer starting my bachelor in physics, a friend of mine who has a phd in physics told me that String Theory is way too advanced. I thought that just by watching some videos on CZcams and skimming through some QFT textbook I'd already have a good grasp of it. How foolish I was.
Now 6 years later, I'm still going through the basics of Electromagnetism and General Relativity. And I now understand very clearly what my friend told me---if I want to really understand stuff like String Theory, I have a long way understanding all of the physics that precedes it before I get there.
Well, I assume they're introducing the possible/impossible sets axiomatically and only re-deriving existing physics in an "emergent" way from those sets, so "backwards" in a sense. Otherwise, yes, as you say their theory wouldn't be fundamental at all.
In just a few seconds Matt gives the best explanation of entanglement I think I've heard, 9:00-9:10. Overall this is a perfect video to show senior high school physics students and any others, especially the economics students (I have a BEc), to help broaden their approach to the questions or conundrums in any field of knowledge.
"apparently nonlocal effect" 👍👍👍
What a fascinating video! Thank you for translating this really complex idea for a simple social scientist.
I am an engenneer , so nothing super fancy but. Using counterfacuals seem to wif a bit of the famus quote "mashines heavier than air cant fly". If we were aplaying that kind of methodology it would be super easy to rulle out airplanes . I dont wat to argue it just reminded me of that haha
I hope Wolfram makes some more progress on his new ToE physics project and this show can get into computational irreducibility and stuff.
Yes, my cute little Mortals:
Yes, you should rethink stuff.
Exiting times 👍
While I see a lot of people seeing CT as having some statement about what physics is possible/impossible, I think the better way to see it, is that if we assume the universe operates under certain assumptions (infinite/finite, discrete/continuous spacetime, invariance, quantum etc.) then CT gives us insights as it what math is possible, and what math we should be restricting our models to. One thing that I've always been curious about is given the assumption of quantized energy levels, what are the implications that come with assuming that spacetime is continuous? The implications of discrete spacetime would mean that only a subset of the mathematics could be constructed that otherwise could be constructed if spacetime is continuous. Would the set of real numbers even be able to exist in a universe governed by QM and discrete spacetime?
Somewhat similar to that, I've always wondered this: since (a) the Planck length is smallest level we can move, then (b) no spacetime quanta can move in between Planck Lengths (i.e. only from one "side" to the other)....and since (b), then wouldn't that mean that all spacetime is "locked" into it's physical location? That is, if I describe spacetime quantum "Q" as Q(x,y,z), then isn't spacetime quanta Q(1,0,0) always locked into the location (1,0,0)? Because if it were to move, then it can only move to (1+/-1, 0+/-1, 0+/-1)....but that would just mean that it's now a different spacetime quantum (since they are indistinguishable).....therefore, all spacetime quanta are locked into position...thus, what we perceive as "movement" isn't actually movement at all, but a change of some other variable. For example, at time t=0, Q(1,0,0) spins at rate X, while Q(2,0,0) spins at rate X-1....at time t=1, Q(1,0,0) spins at rate X-1, while Q(2,0,0) spins at rate X-2..and we perceive a body's "location" as when it has a spin X-1, so our body just "moved" from Q(2,0,0) to Q(1,0,0) when really there was no "movement" of a particle.
What about a unified theory between Quantum field Theory and String Theory where the strings in String Theory are the constant flow of quantum field energy (Quantum Field energy flows hence the flow could either be Lamina [Open Strings] or Turbulent [Closed Strings]) that flow through all particles that are formed in the quantum field. Theory: Quantum Field Theory describes a Particle's Space component while String Theory describes the Time component on the Space-Time coordinate geometry
Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but after a few days of thought, I was struck with a conceptual idea that in a fashion breaks quantum entanglement as it is presented. Within the video, it is described that for the two particles to be entangled, they had to have interacted with each other at one point or, as the quantum field mesh idea fleshes out, they need to interact with other particles that have in turn already interacted with the first particle. When explaining this to a friend earlier, I equated it to essentially the same type of configuration as the very Internet we currently use. That being said, going from let us say Partle A, to Particle B, could very well be traveling through an innumerable number of other particles in its journey, and as such wouldn't that mean that entanglement cannot actually be "instantaneous"?
i've heard of entanglement evolution on this channel.. personally i think it may be a clue to Sheldrake's morphogenic field and hints at holographic effect.. there's also the idea that universal entanglement comes from the big bang singularity and subsequent entanglements are perhaps a kind of "resonance"
This episode warped my brain more than a black hole warps spacetime.
Yeah, that one was tough. I never heard about constructor theory and i barely understood the general idea.
I don't understand anything about Constructor theory yet but Deutsch's interview on Kuhn's Yt show Closer to the Truth is really interesting
Brain? Look at the size of his head!!
@@chuckghaly Hmm okay. Maybe I'll check it out.
@@gen-mhi Glad to see I'm not the only one 😂
Still, the theory is based/"needs" existing physics theories to say what is possible and what is not. So we are actually back to square one.
Is it really a square? What if it's actually a circle?
this is what i was thinking as well. until people charted out mercury's orbit constructor theory would have said it was impossible for any object to not follow newtons laws of motion and gravitational attraction.
Well if you had an list of states and a list of binaries saying "possible" or "impossible"
You could plug that into a neural net and that would surmise the laws of physics (in theory)
So you could say we're back to square one, or you could say we now have a framework that is easier to apply super computers to.
While changing representations in principle gets you back to "square one".. isn't that the point of physics?
Didn't Einstein and Plank go back to square one when they invented their theories?
One could argue it's ALL about finding new ways to reason about what we already know. But hopefully this time come up with one theory to rule them all.
You seem to mistake theory for law. We indeed need some kind of formulas to start with, and those are laws, which we derive through experiments. But as it works now, AFTER that you should create some kind of idea in your head of how a set of laws works together and then wrap it with another formula. The week part is that you need to create some sort of idea first. Authors suggest that instead of trying to create something new as a ready-product we should instead focus on all the states that are possible with current set of laws. And then merge all the possible and impossible states of one law with another and with another etc using only logic. SO in the end you will get all the possible and impossible states of every existing law that we know.
Of course that is an impossible task for a human because there are millions of impossible statements and changes in every basic law will change the whole tree of statements inherited from that law. But the good thing is that we have computers.
As a programmer I would say that is a very IT like aproach, and as for now IT algoritms were able to produce amazing models very close to real world without actually using hard-to-calculate-by-computer math ideas like intergals. The problem of modern math and also physics which is described by it is that you can't easily check how changes or creation of one theory impacts on the whole system, you need to manualy calculate all of this. We need to teach computers to produce theories, even useless ones, just because they can produce millions of them in a second.
You know, Alan Turing used to win a lot of mail chess games without actually being able to win anyone in a irl game. Just because he used algoritms to calculate next move instead of thinking about it. You see what I mean?
@@kitrana Exactly
Awesome VT-100 terminals in the graphics. Brings me back.
Brilliant show, and the tunneling QA was awesome.
This reminds a bit of how property based definitions can be created in mathematics. For example the natural exponential function can be defined as e^x (with an appropriate definition for e) or as a Taylor series like (x^n)/n! sum from n=0 to infinity. For both of those definitions you can show that the function is its own derivative. However it's possible to flip that and define the natural exponential function as the function that is its own derivative. You can show any function that satisfies the property is equivalent to the ones above.
You know it’s a big video if the intro looks funny.
This sounds like taking our very limited understanding of the universe and trying to complete a picture we don't have enough paint to finish yet.
Theories has been getting more and more weird after Newton's era 🤭
One of favs. Along with Veritasium. Glad these guys take the time, really am. Thanks guys!
Constructor theory sounds like category theory, studying categories whose morphisms are tasks. Category theory is inherently constructivist. I would like to see constructor-theory proponents tackle the topological portions of particle physics using standard category-theoretic language rather than these vague handwaves.
Utterly new terminology may appear to be handwaves, but that's par for the course. While I see your point, making constructor theory terminology identical to category theory is likely to prove problematic, since we don't know that their Venn diagram would show complete unity. I see this theory as a revision of point of view more than process, but the process also changes, primarily by bringing Sherlock Holmes' principle, "once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be true" to the very starting point, but instead of filtering ideas per se, the concept must obviously be to pose a question, rather than formulate a hypothesis, run it through the filters of possibility, and see what remains. That's a sea change from developing an idea or inspiration into a full-blown, mathematically-supportable theory to test, in that you can feed in seemingly stupid or crazy concepts, eliminate the impossible, then consider what remains.
This is a useful approach, not least because a lot of strokes of genius in physics initially met resistance as crazy or stupid. The trick to mining "dumb" ideas is in giving them all a chance initially, then weeding out anything unworkable. Why is that useful? Well, to misquote an old saying, "all the best ideas are already taken", so if you can't invent something out of nothing deliberately, your best bet is to reconsider that which has been casually been discarded because it clashes with normal human understandings. Even after the initial culling, most of them still prove to be unhelpful, but the bonus is that in testing the concept, you learn things you never even heard about.
The primary difference is that you feed in your question and try to falsify it before even the hypothesis stage - which is not the same as dismissing it without due consideration. Since everything must accord with reality well enough to make predictions with a degree of accuracy, this approach opens the front end wider while still filtering out the provably garbage stuff. Shifting your approach can be very useful indeed, in the end. If nothing else, it allows you to triangulate a little. Please don't mistake my tone, I'm not lecturing you, I'm putting my thoughts on this approach out there, so others can make of it what they will. When I think this way, I talk in this manner, that has nothing to do with you, friend.
@scessarcessartm I think it's about a deterministic way of saying "hey, I ALREADY know this won't work" ...?
@@bookman7409 there was a brief period where a planet not following newtons laws of gravity and motion would have been crazy. then people charted mercury's orbit. how do you prevent constructor theory from what you even bother looking for. mercury's orbit was pretty obvious nowadays we're in territory where things are not so obvious.
@@kitrana Not quite sure where you're going with that, but I certainly don't want to prevent CT from becoming a thing. One thing science always needs is fresh viewpoints, so adding this one strikes me as a good idea. It ain't like we're going to abandon all of the current stuff, after all.
May Fortuna favor your future.
@@bookman7409 well yeah it does, but think of it like this, if you use the constructor to eliminate things current theories say can't happen how do you get relativity for example? Newtonian mechanics don't allow for space and time to stretch or compress so if you only know about newton then by constructor theory this must be impossible. that's what i was getting at, how do you prevent this constructor theory from limiting what you even bother looking for or the ideas you examine more closely?
This is like Getting an Answer on an Exam Question, without showing your work.
Great channel,
but not big enough! C'mon, grow! Me recommending you to others cant be your only way to grow!
Collabs can make you grow; to your info!
I'm doing my best but you have to do your part, BDS-ST!
this is more like saying there is an answer without showing it.
@@dudono1744 I once did that when I ran out of time on an exam: "At least one proof exists (on the marking sheet) therefore this must be true. QED." Not worth points, but hopefully gave the marker a smile.
Quantum Entangled Twisted Tubules:
Quantum Entangled Twisted Tubules: When we draw a sine wave on a blackboard, we are representing spatial curvature. Does a photon transfer spatial curvature from one location to another? Wrap a piece of wire around a pencil and it can produce a 3D coil of wire, much like a spring. When viewed from the side it can look like a two-dimensional sine wave. You could coil the wire with either a right-hand twist, or with a left-hand twist. Could Planck's Constant be proportional to the twist cycles. A photon with a higher frequency has more energy. (More spatial curvature). What if gluons are actually made up of these twisted tubes which become entangled with other tubes to produce quarks. (In the same way twisted electrical extension cords can become entangled.) Therefore, the gluons are actually a part of the quarks. Mesons are made up of two entangled tubes (Quarks/Gluons), while protons and neutrons would be made up of three entangled tubes. (Quarks/Gluons) The "Color Force" would be related to the XYZ coordinates (orientation) of entanglement. "Asymptotic Freedom", and "flux tubes" make sense based on this concept. Neutrinos would be made up of a twisted torus (like a twisted donut) within this model. Gravity is a result of a very small curvature imbalance within atoms. (This is why the force of gravity is so small.) Instead of attempting to explain matter as "particles", this concept attempts to explain matter more in the manner of our current understanding of the space-time curvature of gravity.
This reminds me of Aristotle's "possibility", where he splits being into it's necessity, that which exists in material sense, and possibility, that which is possible but it's not yet present (it is present precisely as a chance, i.e. as not-existent). In philosophical tradition there was and still is the never-ending debate if this "possibility" is a part of thing itself or is it just a property that we ascribe to things because of our knowledge etc. I think this applies very well with this theory. Thanks to bring it to our attention, even though it's not accepted as "physics".
Possibility is part of the essence
How to separate the possible from the impossible with incomplete understanging of what is possible or impossible? I find this improbable... but not impossible.
You just have to have a huge head!
If the starting point involves stating what is/isn't possible, then isn't this whole system working backwards from the outcome already?
This strikes me as a slightly less ambitious, slightly more formalized version of Wolfram's weird approach. Like, if we can generate a simple set of rules and updates that, when it evolves, results in all the laws of physics we currently know to be true, it would *definitely* be worthwhile to explore what else happens to reside in that result-space. But it wouldn't give you anything testable because there is no way to know whether those updates actually reflect *our* reality or simply a very similar reality. This, on the other hand, is very much in the vein of Schroedinger. We've got a lot of things we "know to be true" that might just be *extremely good* approximations for reality. Strip them away, stick exclusively to the things we know, see what other processes or mathematics can describe those facts and counterfactuals. See what falls out.
This is really feels like it's just a formalization of how to systematically incorporate thought experiments into the scientific method. Which is probably valuable.
Bingo.
If you want to figure out a solution to a problem, it is often helpful to identify anything blocking any of the paths to your solution. If you know that you can't buy enough steel to build a bridge, that does not mean you decided already how you'll build your bridge. It simply means you have now recognized that one of the solutions to your building a bridge cannot be building it out of steel since you have just realized you can't get enough steel.
So for every constructor, in every input state we want to be able to determine whether it can end up on each output state. How big would be the data structure that stores this? I think it would store a lot of falses, seems like there's a huge compression problem associated to this
In the Principle of Least Action, there are an infinite amount of paths the thing can't take, but they are ruled out mathematically to get the answer. You don't actually have to think about all the wrong paths.
czcams.com/video/Q_CQDSlmboA/video.html
That commenter's metaphor of unobserved particles not being fully rendered by the universe, and things glitching through walls as a consequence… was a thing of true beauty.
Constructor theory feels less “what if?” more “if, then…”
Huge head!
This is a very interesting, it basically gives a methodology to not having a path forward
☺☺
I can see this theory finding imaginary tasks eventually - the search for the illusive imaginary special task or "ability" that just "must" exist and will be found someday to make this and that theory true.
6:50 Small mistake here: "And the second law of thermodynamics tells us that it's impossible for a *non-isolated* system to keep running forever"
The text in the background said "an isolated system" and that's actually true.
I don't think the perpetual motion machine example is useful. As Matt mentions, the physics behind it would explain mathematically why it can't worth through torque and other variables. But the Constructor Theory version basically says "We know it's impossible from two other theories, so all perpetual motion machines are impossible including this one." I can't imagine how this sort of logic gate thinking could possibly generate new insights or discoveries. It's like physics for toddlers.
The final example of quantum gravity is silly too: If you can cause a quantum phenomena using just gravity, you've discovered a connection between the two! That's a trivial statement.
I think the claim is that it demonstrates that if gravity can be used to produce entanglement, then gravity has an associated quantum field (or something equivalent to one), not just that it follows that gravity is in some sense quantum mechanical.
Not entirely sure though.