Carlo Rovelli: Nothing Exists Alone

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

Today on The James Altucher Show.

Carlo Rovelli (0:07)

I think we make a mistake when we try to jump out from my perspective, your perspective, somebody else's perspective, and somehow try to access something absolute, final, definitive, like if we were looking at the world from the outside, instead of from the inside, that we actually look at the world. And this view of the world from the outside, sort of more than all the perspectives, it does not work, it does not work in physics, I don't think it even works in philosophy, it's just an illusion that only grounds our sense of, oh, where do I put my feet? But it's not really useful.

SPEAKER_1 (0:48)

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show.

James Altucher (1:05)

So Carlo Rovelli is one of the smartest people I know, and he's a theoretical physicist, he's written a ton of great books. His new book is On the Equality of All Things, Lessons on Physics and Philosophy. He's been on the show before. Look, at the end of this one, I told him I felt like he was just tolerating my questions and he was nice about that. But the very first question I asked was, do I in fact exist? Because in his new book, On the Equality of All Things, I'll try to summarize it a little bit. Nothing actually exists on its own. Not a person, not a particle, not you.

Everything is only exists in relation to other things. And we talk about this on the podcast. And I spent an hour trying to understand this. And what are the consequences of this? What does it mean? You know, I asked him if free will is fake. He said, the illusion isn't that you're a machine. The illusion is thinking you're something other than your brain, like as he referred to it, a ghost. And then I wondered, like, okay, is it an absolute truth that everything decays? Like, you know, an apple goes rotten, a stone eventually turns into sand. He said no. And he gave me some examples to show how that wasn't an absolute truth either.

And here's the part I can't put down. I spent most of my life trying to be certain about things, about money, about whether I was going to be okay in life. And Carlo was saying to me, the thing that finally made him calm down wasn't about knowing more things, it was about putting the need to know things down. And it's really fascinating how he came to that conclusion and I agree with him. So here's Carlo Rovelli.

So, Carlo, I'm going to try to summarize your very beautiful book in one sentence, and then I have questions about that sentence.

Carlo Rovelli (3:04)

All right.

James Altucher (3:05)

The sentence is, essentially, you're saying, everything in the universe can only be looked at or defined by what it's relative to. There's no truth. There's nothing exists except in relation to something else.

Carlo Rovelli (3:20)

That's correct. That's a very good, it's a super short, of course, but it's a very good summary. I think you got the core.

James Altucher (3:27)

So the obvious question is, is there any absolute truth? Also, what's interesting about your statement?

First off, is there any absolute truth? Do I exist? Do you exist? Does the chair I'm sitting on exist?

Carlo Rovelli (3:39)

Very good way of putting the question. Look, James, there are truth. Of course you exist. Of course I exist. But why do we have to add absolute to the very satisfactory facts that I'm existing, and the very satisfactory fact also for me that you exist?

Why do we have to add absolute relative, these heavy words to our everyday convention, which are very good and sufficient and relative to us, right? For me, you exist and I'm very happy.

James Altucher (4:08)

Okay, so maybe my question is wrong.

I guess in the book you say, it's not like I just exist. It's like, my name is James. I live in a city. I do this for a profession. And so we tend to define ourselves in terms of these other relative terms. So you're a physicist, I'm doing a podcast. This is how we kind of look at each other relative to each other. And this, you're saying that we give existence meaning by defining all our relationships.

Carlo Rovelli (4:38)

Yes. Look, I'm not saying anything dramatic by observing that we live through relations and relationships, right? The world that I see is just a perspective from my eyes. My social position is with respect to other. My friendships is the relative things, is a relational thing. My love stories are relations and so on. So we exist through all this kind of relations. And this is very good. And with respect to me, I see the existence of all the others and we communicate. It's not that we don't communicate with that.