#1352 - Sean Carroll

Joe Rogan (0:04)

And here we go. Hello, Sean.

Sean Carroll (0:05)

Hey, Joe, how's it going?

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Thanks for being here again, man. I really appreciate it.

So over the weekend, I got into your book.

Sean Carroll (0:11)

Woo. Yes.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Yes. It's great.

I mean, I really appreciate someone like you who's trying to break down quantum mechanics and quantum physics for someone like me. It's very hard to follow. And there was a lot of backing up and trying it again, and backing up and trying it again, and going over paragraphs and trying to figure out exactly what it means. But it's really excellent and really perplexing at the same time.

Sean Carroll (0:40)

Well, thank you. And there are different styles when it comes to writing popular books. I think there should be different styles. And my particular style is, look, it's not gonna be a breezy page-turner.

But if you read it carefully, there's not prerequisites. You don't have to come into it as an expert, what you have to come into it is someone who's willing to sit and think about every paragraph. And then hopefully it will be rewarding and you'll truly understand what's going on after doing that.

Joe Rogan (1:07)

Well, it is rewarding, because it is fascinating. And the history of quantum physics is also pretty fascinating, because I've always wondered, how did anybody even want to come up with this stuff? And the fact that it was so long ago, the beginnings of it were in the 19th century?

Sean Carroll (1:24)

Well, 1900 is the typical, literally that year, the turn of the century, when Max Planck first got the first hints of it. And then, yeah, it took another 27 years to put it into final shape.

Joe Rogan (1:35)

Now, for regular people that don't have a background in physics or that don't, this is, like the whole idea behind it is so bizarre. It's like, why would anybody try to figure out something that, one of the things that you said that's really interesting is that quantum physics is used all the time.

It's used with exact calculations, but yet we don't really understand it.

Sean Carroll (2:07)

Yeah, yeah, no, that's the main message of the book, really, because physicists, of course, do quantum mechanics every day, whether it's straightforward quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, quantum information, quantum computing, clearly we're pretty good at it. You know, like transistors and lasers depend on quantum mechanics. The sun shining, figuring that out depends on quantum mechanics, the Higgs boson, et cetera. So to claim that we don't understand quantum mechanics is a little bit weird. But then we have quotes from people like Richard Feynman saying nobody understands quantum mechanics, right? And so if he says that, then there's some authority behind it.

And the reason is what we have is sort of a black box, right? We say, you know, I think what I said in a New York Times article I wrote recently is physicists understand quantum mechanics in the same way that someone who owns a smartphone understands the smartphone, like they know how to use the apps. They can call people, they can make phone calls, they can take pictures. They don't know what's going on inside.

And that's physicists with quantum mechanics. They use it, they can make very, very precise predictions, but if you ask them what is really going on, like what is actually happening, what are all the details, they're like, yeah, no, that's not our job. Let's just stick to predictions.

Joe Rogan (3:16)

But to someone like me, that's so terrifying, because the very nature of reality is being examined by people. If it is a smartphone, it's being examined by people like me.

Who don't really understand the smartphone. I have no idea what's going on inside a smartphone. I know some words that have used to describe RAM and processors.

Sean Carroll (3:42)

Probably electrons moving around in there, right? But yeah, and I think in some sense, that's fine. Most of us don't need to know what's going on inside the smartphone to use it, but somebody should know, right? And my argument in the book is, look, 500 years from now, when historians write the history of 20th century physics, they will say two things.

One is, my God, these people were so brilliant and creative to invent quantum mechanics.

And then they were so afraid to really take it seriously and try to understand it. Like they said, stop asking questions about the meaning of reality and what the world is doing. In my mind, what physics is all about is understanding reality and what the world is doing. It's not just about making predictions. Making predictions is good, but we do that mostly because we're curious about what the world is doing.