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Solution: ‘Is It Turtles All the Way Down?’

quantamagazine.org

67 pointstheafh8 comments

> As Torbjörn commented, Smolin is considered a fringe figure in the field and has not had the compelling successes required for his theory of the evolution of the universe to become mainstream.

Fringe is an exaggeration. Smolin is certainly a dissident in theories of quantum gravity. I would imagine most physicists, including myself, are not impressed by his convictions about various aspects of reality. But at the same time, I think most physicists share his view that string theory is not likely to be fruitful anytime soon. Historically, quantum mechanics, which unites the physics of light and matter, was discovered only after many mathematical developments in both fields that led to the two analogous theories of the principle of least time and the principle of least action. By contrast, the exegesis of quantum mechanics and general relativity has only just begun. Smolin has gained notoriety by appealing to this sense of doubt. "Fringe" however is a term more commonly applied to arguments and theories widely believed to be without merit. That would be an unfair characterization here.

sorry for going on a tangent ...

is there such a thing as populism in physics?

I have read couple of Brian Greene, and Stephen Hawking's books (also read some to my kids "the key to the universe" which he wrote as children book together with his daughter iirc) and I/we loved them. It made me wonder if the gift of writing good prose (and in Hawking's case his disability and popularization of mechanic speech especially) has contributed more to his success than his actual scientific research.

Somewhere I read that people in his field weren't happy with his contribution. They didn't say it as bluntly as myself but it sure sounded a lot like it.

Is there such a thing as populism in physics - and if yes is it more pronounced than in other fields?

I'm intrigued by commenter Roger's (attempted) answer of the question of whether there is something rather than nothing.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/puzzle-with-infinite-regress-...

If I understand this correctly, then "nothing" is in itself something, and you can create more structure by grouping the original "nothing" with itself, and you can similarly combine the groupings, so the entire universe is essentially built from sets with "nothing" as the leaves.

But this still leaves open a lot of questions, such as who is controlling this grouping, or do simply all possible groupings exist? Is grouping what makes time progress? And if so, can we estimate/determine how many groupings the current universe is from the leaves? And where does consciousness enter the picture?

> I'm intrigued by commenter Roger's (attempted) answer of the question of whether there is something rather than nothing.

Really? It's just playing semantic games with the definition of "nothing" and "something". It doesn't explain anything: neither why there is something instead of nothing, nor why that something is the way it is.

Thinking about Roger's comment some more, I believe the error he makes is that he treats "nothing" like the empty set {}, which can be used to form non-empty sets {{}}, {{}, {}}, {{{}}} ("something"), when really the term "nothing" denotes a concept closer to the non-existence of the empty set and the construction of sets from other sets.

From my quick reading, it sounds like he's proposing that there is no such thing as "nothing", that what we call "nothing" is in fact like an empty set. There's still something there.

I kind of see what he means - in his view, it is turtles all the way down, and the bottom turtle, what seems to us empty, is made of the same being/existence.

It takes 1-bit to store the state “nothing” vs “something” — so it’s a question of information content — whether or not it is perceivable information is what we traditionally use to delineate existence vs. non existence.

> The chicken is the closest living relative to theropod dinosaurs.

Which makes the "T-rex was actually a chubby little chonk" feel more plausible.

https://twitter.com/quilpatay/status/911342546386907136?s=20

sine qua non : something absolutely indispensable or essential.

First time I've heard that phrase I think.

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