Sam Kuypers is a theoretical physicist who specialises in the physics of time. If you have the time, Sam can take up as much of it as you like telling you about how our ideas of time have changed…over time. As Sam will reveals: times, they are not a-changing. But there is change! Newtonian physics has a notion of time (or at least Newton himself did), Relativity as discovered by Einstein in the early 1900s radically transformed our notion of what time is and now, in the 21st Century, Sam Kuypers and others are beginning to develop a quantum theory of time. And this is why Sam joins me for this ..read more

Part 2: Time is in the instant. The instant is not in time. More on the quantum theory of time and how the "spacetime" view of time, and the flow of time are false. How time relates to the "block universe" model and how the multiverse fixes the paradoxes at the heart of our common sense (and classical physics) ideas about time - more readings from "The Fabric of Reality" chapter 11 and in addition: A couple of acrostics about David Deutsch in terms of "Popper". David's changing view of free will. Readings on "free will" from "A Science of Can and Can't" by Chiara Marletto. A summary of a paper ..read more

This is really "episode 0" but not quite because we do indeed get to some readings and unpackings of the chapter. But in the overall scheme, that forms a minor part of a longer introduction to the "common sense" understanding of time and then to some relativity (of simultaneity) and reflections on the work of other physicists and popularisers.   Note clips from "The Lord of the Rings" and "Spaceballs" movies are owned by their respective copyright holders ..read more

The nature of proof and mathematics as a creative enterprise. Not all that is true can be proved as such, the high hopes of David Hilbert for placing the entirety of mathematics on a "firm foundation", the mathematical world-shattering results of Kurt Gödel which frustrated that project, a history of proof and finally Roger Penrose and whether human brains are computers in the Turing sense. And some very long remarks by me, especially in the introduction. Become a subscriber at https://patreon.com/tokcast?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm ..read more

Drawing on Chapter 15 "The Evolution of Culture" from "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch and then applying it to some special cases. Come and chat to me about this or anything else at https://www.getairchat.com/brett Timestamps: 00:00 Speech, Trade and Democracy 02:39 Is Democracy under attack? 07:05 Free Speech as Error Identification 09:14 Limits on Free Speech? 13:02 Case Study 1: North Korea 14:18 Case Study 2: Afghanistan and Iraq 17:30 Case Study 3: South Korea 19:43 Case Study 4: China 24:43 The Evolution of Culture by David Deutsch 1 29:43 Protecting liberty in Western Nation ..read more

00:00 Introduction 08:03 Interview Begins 09:42 How Chiara found herself at the foundations of physics 15:30 How Chiara found Everett 19:13 No Special Physics is required for Observers 21:02 What is a counterfactual? How is it linked to a constructor? 29:05 What is (classical) information? How is it different to quantum information? 32:30 Quantum Information is more constrained. This makes it more powerful. 34:08 Is the universe made of information? 38:04 The Simulation Hypothesis 40:33 The second law of thermodynamics 53:16 The AI Apocalypse? 58:02 How do we help a human become passionate abo ..read more

The certainty of mathematics and its place in the supposed hierarchy of subjects (assumed to be above science which is itself above philosophy in turn). Some more remarks on Bayesianism and somehow ghosts and alien life ..read more

This episode is an introduction to the chapter. Although there are some readings, they are limited and I provide context by diving deep into David's more recent work on all this. Specifically we go through the connection of Chapter 10 here (published in 1997) and Chapter 5 "The Reality of Abstractions" from "The Beginning of Infinity" (published in 2011) and then also in light of David's recent speech given at his Dirac Medal award ceremony (published in 2017) - here is the timestamped link to that https://www.youtube.com/live/J7HeDX_7... and the text of that speech is online here: https://www ..read more

Very brief readings from and lengthy reflections upon David Deutsch's paper "The Philosophy of Constructor Theory" published here https://link.springer.com/article/10.... and available in full here: https://www.constructortheory.org/por... #physics #knowledge #philosophy #epistemology #daviddeutsch #science Also available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMCx2Com7LU Discuss this or any episode of ToKCast on ToKChat: a channel on "Airchat" available here for download for iPhone and Android: https://www.getairchat.com/ ToKChat is here: https://www.getairchat.com/bretthall/tokchat Ti ..read more

This is a "return to regular format" episode in one respect - readings from and reflections upon "The Fabric of Reality" but also a departure from regular formatting in another respect: I teach a bunch of simple mathematics. This is for those who might think "quantum computation" and "quantum algorithms" will be forever beyond me. They are not! I begin with (quite literally) primary school mathematics level stuff (what's a prime number, what is the "fundamental theorem of arithmetic") and very gradually move up into algebra and some modular arithmetic and present examples using real numbers of ..read more