OMG Arvin Ash and Jim Al-Khalili in the same place, albeit virtually. Two of my favourite presenters/educators. Why weren't my science teachers this captivating??? I feel cheated.
There are some captivating teachers in high schools and colleges, but good teaching requires a lot more than simply being entertaining. Someone who could make great videos about football wouldn't necessarily be a good football coach.
@@user-cg2hb3ye9v @I am Noob Not necessarily. Whatever created the first simulation would most likely create many, to see which one led to the desired result. That's how we do things. Why would anyone/thing else do it differently?
Mr Ash, thank you for this interview. The professor is a living legend, not only for his wisdom and acclaimed knowledge, but also for his communicative skills of teaching, and a classic orator. Love your work Mr Ash. Once again, thank you
ash is ok sometimes and stinks others. he still owes us a part 2 of the lab leak since we all have evidence and now arvin looks like a cover up agent more than a truth seeker
Thank you Ash so much for interviewing Jim, it was a great conversation with Q&A. Jim is certainly one of my top 5 idols in my life. I am so thankful for you, Ash, and for Jim for being here enlightening us about this mysterious universe we live in.
Jim’s documentaries on Energy and Electricity were amazing and totally engrossing and if you haven’t seen them yet you are in for a really superb couple of hours on the history of some astounding discoveries humans have managed to unravel!!
It felt more like a job interview though and less like a conversation. I felt like this interview should have been more conversational. It also comes off a little rude but it’s hard to know what Arvin’s setup was behind the interview.
Highly indebted for such a intriguing and fascinating conversation. An unstinting conversation between the two great intellectual minds.Al khalili is the ideal guide through these seeming mysteries of modern science. Thanks Jim AL khalili and Arvin Ash for your unflagging contributions for such spellbinding enigmas.
Based on the interview, it sounds like the *Fundamental* basis of everything is *"Information"* , both coherent and de-coherent. But, *Information* is "Non-material" / "Immaterial". So, would the present Materialist establishment accept this fact?
I really respect the honesty of scientists which you do not find in any other discipline Time... I'm not sure Entropy.... I'm not sure God..... Not sure Honesty is refreshing
That is a misleading simplification. Good scientists always use words like, "probably not," "I doubt it," and "unlikely." This is not the same as "i'm not sure" -- it means there is a lot of likelihood that what I'm saying is correct, but there is always a chance that I could be wrong - because science is not dogmatic. You can never state something for sure.
This video is one of the most interesting and entertaining that I have seen. Please do additional interviews like this. You and Jim are my favorite lecturers. Thank you.
My takeaway are his thoughts on Quantum Thermodynamics and how String Theory etc are missing the point. On that basis alone this is a very well worthy presentation! :-)
@@namaanda5349 The failure to answer the primary question, "Why is there a Universe" and what created it ? . A man can believe in God and reject religion. Jim knows a great deal, but he has no answers. I have another cosmology that you may find interesting. ru-vid.com/group/PL8C82E747F9B956FF Gnosticism Check out Penrose has a different spin.
Thanks for the amazing inside @ 18:44 Jim said that if there is a smart enough life form in the universe, they would discover that in the earth there is an intelligent life because of the atmosphere’s composition, which would not happen naturally. Is there a list of the monocular components that could had been developed naturally through the time and the ones that couldn’t ever naturally developed ?
I appreciate his humility when answering the questions he doesn’t know (and couldn’t know) the answers to. These are wonderful questions! But I keep seeing physicists being asked about the nature of consciousness and God and they generally aren’t the people who are qualified to give answers. I keep seeing well-known and well-respected physicists being asked these questions and giving unfortunately ignorant and sometimes even arrogant answers. We don’t generally ask neuroscientists or neurologists about fundamental principals of physics. I don’t understand why we are asking physicists about the nature of consciousness. From what I can tell they (understandably) have only a cursory understanding of the research (If even) and should preface whatever they say in response to such questions with that upfront admittance. I’d encourage you to talk to people at the forefront of the actual research in such topics, such as DOPS at UVA. I see no one in the physics world bothering to do this. These are rigorous scientists (skeptics even), but they are much closer to the relevant data than any of these physicists are when it comes to questions about consciousness. I love physics (I’m a neuroscientist), but these types of questions really require complimentary and collaborative efforts with scientists across disciplines to get anywhere closer to understanding reality and how we fit in it.
In the spectrum of sunlight emitted by *our* sun the "visible light" is the most intense. Since most humans are active during the day we evolved to harness this "visible light" to our advantage. This narrow slice of the sunlight can deliver more information(in the context of humans ) for our brains....
I could make any of Jim's word mine! I love it how he is so careful, but not afraid, when saying: "this is what I'd like it to be, not what I know it is." Perfect! Great video, as usual! hahaha
Good point. Our perception of rainbows might illuminate this problem? Then being able to call them beautiful appears to be truly emergent. Just saying :)
Great questions! I'd ask the same ones I think. Imagine how a pilot wave theory debate would go between Jim and Sean, I think most physicists don't pick pilot and may say he picks it because it feels more right and less because non feeling accuracy. Also simulation theory is not disproven at all because a creator could always have a creator I think that's some type of logical fallacy.
Jim said he doesn't think pilot wave theory is correct even though he prefers the cause and effect nature of it which appeals to our sense of how the universe should work, and indeed how it does work on a macro scale. I think maybe his distaste for the Copenhagen Interpretation clouds his judgement of simulation theory. Multiple iterations of simulations running within other simulations will not "cancel themselves out." The concept is akin to nested loops which are fundamental to every computing language ever developed.
No you're wrong because most people who view these kind of videos are more scientifically minded, the religious people this day are more into ghost hunting video, science debunking video, personal testimony video, preaching video, and religious war/debate/mockery (between them or mocking atheists) video.
@@Napoleonic_S Well, there certainly are a lot of pro-god comments here. Rather hard to miss. But yes, the other side-unlike in the past-has been remarkably restrained, and has avoided engaging in an all-out war. At least till now.
Excellent Q&A. I like Jims view on religion and question "Do you believe in God?". I understood that it is not about religion, but importance to person. Belief is like a mean for psychological and/or social wellness, health, if I may say so. That is why, if one society attacks personal psychological wellness of others, it has disastrous consequences. And on other hand need for psychological wellness cannot be used as a mean to attack others. When I view religion and belief from that context, then it becomes very easy to understand and explain in concise way. Belief is a mean of personal psychological wellness.
I especially liked his response to "Does God exist?" He said, "i doubt it." I no longer call myself an atheist. I call myself a skeptic with regard to the existence of deities. The following sums up my view of this. Religion is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat that may not be there and shouting, "I have found it!” Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat while using a flashlight.
Have you every experienced a cat? You'll know it when you've found it 😉 Religion uses a different type of flashlight, a different set of experiences to encounter existence; this doesn't make the experiences less real or valuable. As for modern science, it's more like being in a dark room with a flashlight, gathering more and more information about the room--its size, walls, and furniture--and thinking this somehow solves the absolute mystery of how there could possibly be rooms and flashlights and cats and people looking, and what they're all really for.
@@KingoftheJuice18 Religion's flashlight is delusions from an indoctrinated mind. The Religious Method is "I don't know, thereforea a fairy tale god did it."
@@gordonsirek9001 How much time have you spent studying the history of religious thought? I'm not talking about the things spewed by Christian fundamentalists in Congress, but the work of some of the greatest thinkers of the past. Honestly, it doesn't sound like you've taken a very sophisticated or open-minded (even "scientific") approach to the extremely rich and complex phenomenon of religion. Name-calling is no replacement for careful and unbiased study. I would have thought someone like you might appreciate this.
@@KingoftheJuice18 What you call "name calling" is you reacting to something you find uncomfortable. Pointing out uncomfortable things is one of the hallmarks of the Scientific Method. BTW I'm a retired engineer from the semiconductor industry who has also studied, as opposed to being indoctrinated, religion and mythology for over 40 years.
@@gordonsirek9001 Throwing out terms like "delusion," "indoctrination," and "fairy tale" is pure name-calling, especially when simply and baldly asserted without evidence. Science must prove the so-called "uncomfortable thing," not start from that conclusion. And science has never proven anything of the sort; it is, rather, your personal opinion, and opinion is not knowledge, that is, not science....I have also studied religion and philosophy quite intensively, for about the same length of time, and arrived at some very different conclusions.
Thanks for the video to touch the deep questions. As an engineer, I know even the simplest working system is designed. If we think all the world we know comes from big bang, and all the systems seems working, definitely it is designed. Even God in religion is designed to take care of human being. Life is never a collection of periodic tables' elements. What we know about the world around us in science is very very linear, it is limited to a way smaller dimension than a real world. Chinese called the "thing" as "dao", it says if you can explain the "thing", it is not the "thing", the thing should not be accessible by human being. Sometimes I think the energy conservation/entropy law/only forward movement of time is the "thing"'s way to protect human being from mess up the whole world of they know too much...
I absolutely adore his BBC docs on the nature of Information and Energy! I also 100% agree with everything he said here regarding Interpretations of QM.
Slight error in the subtitles 19:20 he says "We know we haven't created a simulation ourselves." It's partly because around London we often don't pronounce t properly: ha-ven' instead of "haven't". I far'id. Instead of "I farted". 0:06 Also Surrey is Su-ree not Su-ray but your version is nice + it's England's fault for not designing English so that it's straightforward how to pronounce words. It needs to be redesigned.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili says that I do not need God because I can understand everything around me, and in another topic he says there are things that we cannot understand? I think there is a contradiction! Anyway, thank you very much, Professor Arvin for this excellent meeting, and thank you for all the wonderful videos.
Great interview. It's such a shame there are so many people who just can't bring themselves to see that "We don't know" is an acceptable answer to many of these questions rather than seeing it as a springboard for legitimizing a belief in pixie dust.
Hmm, then the question remains, why do you so arrogantly say that God "doesn't" exist? After all, science is pixie dust to cavemen and God may be the climax of science, thus, pixie dust to us humans as physics remains to be uncovered
..And bro, if God ever happened to communicate with us, he would most definitely have sent someone exceptional to do so, perhaps give him the power to change laws of physics at will, after all, we know that black holes make a fruit salad out of our current physics, cause they can possibly change it
@@zaeemali4287 he just said, he doubt it, he didn't said, it does or doesn't exist.. The simple answer is "we don't know".. Religion says we know without giving proof & asks us to just "believe" it.. No matter what or which religion says, "we don't know" ..
@@zaeemali4287 why would god send some fallible human to deliver his message.. i don't subscribe to this theory .. On the other hand, some religion also says, that god took human form & incarnated on earth to guide humans ..that too is far fetched ..
I was waiting for this and my hearty thanks to you Arvin for picking my question :) ( it was about Jim's bias in the topic of Copenhagen Interpretation vs Many world/Hidden Variables)
I have a lot of respect for Jim, BUT, uhu. Consciousness seems to be the only fundamental of the universe. I cannot be convinced otherwise. Also, I’m convinced that our math is all falling in confusion because we are thinking all answers in 3D.
When you introspect and try to figure out your own experience, you can come to the conclusion that consciousness is something more than a brain function, but if you take your internal experience out of the picture, and imagine yourself as a visitor from another planet, then it is easy enough to see humans as unitary organisms, and nothing more. These creatures may report a lively internal mental life, but you can see them for what they are.
More importantly what is going on with the Unruh effect? How this relates to egregores and daemonic reality and how Consciousness is responsible for the collapse of the wave function.
As a Pantheist, I would say, "Science, of course, has evolved a lot in the past century, but actually it uses just models to try to calculate or predict the outcome of certain actions." Science doesn't really explain existence. That's why I call it God. Not a kind of creative conscious being, but the Wonder of existence.
(1) But in a purely material universe, how could there exist a being who needs to "give meaning to his life"? (2) How does materialist science give meaning to our lives? Doesn't it just tell you how things work? (3) Evolve toward what?
@@emmanuelpil *Science does explain existence and have a more valued reason in its explanation, religion can only use the "GOD" clause to explain a limited view of the world* 😊👍
@@KingoftheJuice18 *Life has no meaning other then your level of understanding of it and thus human beings give it meaning sadly through a limited intellect from religion mostly .....it's all down to how your thinking was conditioned in childhood 👍*
@@terry.chootiyaa So you must mean that your opinion about religion and the meaning of life is all down to how your thinking was conditioned in childhood.
I think it is inevitable that a Creator/Holy Ghost created the universe and its laws of physics, both in terms of the design of the laws of physics, the choosing of the physics constants to facilitate the necessary chemistry, and the creation of life on this world (and probably other worlds). There are certainty insane and irrational alternatives to this question, such as the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics. But the MWI interpretation is not scientific, not observed, and is an irrational avoidance of the truth. Some day, the physics community will come to terms with the truth that we were created to live biological lives (which get diseases, suffer and die). Some day, the science community will have no choice but to bow before the CREATOR and ask for help with the medical suffering of humanity.
Adavaita vedanta and Quantum mechanics are two sides of coin both prove the oneness and non-dual reality of this existence and universe. Ervin shodinger was fascinated by adavaita Vedanta he said quantum mechanics reflects the oneness of the universes. Everything is consciousness,every thing is manifestation of the one. I believe in parabhraman the only logically, factually, and scientifically true god. Advaita Vedanta's Non dual reality of existence will come as shock to most of the minds in this world. Most of minds will not able to fathom and comprehend advaita Vedanta it will scare them beyond comprehension. "Some religions say there is only one god. Vedanta says there Is only god.". Vedanta's definition of god: there is no god there is nothing but god. This is the depth of Hinduism,Sanatan and its philosophies like upanishads. God do not exists in everything but everything is nothing but god, everything is not everything, everything is god,one god. existence itself is the god and god itself is the existence, god itself is the pure existence,awareness-knowledge and peace. God is not in everything but everything is god. God manifest as everything.
Haqq (Arabic: حقّ ḥaqq) is the Arabic word for truth. In Islamic contexts, it is also interpreted as right and reality. Al-Haqq, 'the truth, is one of the names of God in the Qur'an. It is often used to refer to God as the Ultimate Reality in Islam. We think about thousands and thousands of things. We imagine a horse, a man, an aeroplane, the earth, a train and a book. We see the pictures of these things displayed on the screen of our imagination.This is called ‘the existence in imagination’. (Wujud-e-Dhehni) And also a horse, a man, an aeroplane, the earth, a train or a book has its own existence outside our imagination. That is called ‘existence outside imagination’. This is the real existence (Wujud-e Khariji). Sometimes, we imagine such ideas which can never be found outside our imagination. We may imagine ‘2+2 = 5’. But can 2 + 2 be 5 in real existence? No. We may imagine that a thing exists and also does not exist at the same place at the same time. But can this happen in the world of reality? Certainly NOT. Such imagined ideas which can never exist in reality are called (Mumtaniul-Wujud) 'impossible’. Also we imagine a man walking at a certain time. Can this happen in reality? Remove all other ideas from your mind. Just look at the imagined picture of that man walking at a particular time. Now say, is it necessary that that man should be walking at that time? Or, on the other side, is it impossible of him to be walking at that time? The answer to both questions is ‘No’. Why? Because it is neither essential nor impossible for any man to walk at a given time. He may be walking; he may not be walking. So far as the reason and logic is concerned both his walking and not walking are possible - possible,but not necessary. Such imagined ideas which have equal relation with existence and non-existence, are called Possible, or Transient.(Mumkinul-Wujud). They may exist in reality; they may not exist. There is nothing in their nature to demand this or that. So far as their nature is concerned, ‘To be’ and ‘Not to be’ both are equal to them. So far we have seen two categories of relationship between an imagined idea and its existence in reality: 1. Where that idea has equal relation with existence and non existence. It may exist; it may not exist. There is nothing in its nature to prefer either side. 2.Where that idea can have absolutely no relation with existence. It, by its very nature is non-existence. It will appear from above classification that there should be a third category which would be opposite of ‘Impossible’ (Mumtani ul Wujud) mentioned in (2) above. This third category is of the idea which can have absolutely no relation with non-existence. By its very definition, it is self-existent. Such an idea is called (Wajibul-Wujud) 'Essential Existence’ or ‘Absolute Existence’.
Mulla Sadra's Existential Cosmology: Existence is the one and only reality. Existence and reality are therefore identical. Existence is the all-comprehensive reality and there is nothing outside of it. Essences which are negative require some sort of reality and therefore exist. Existence therefore cannot be denied. Therefore, existence cannot be negated. As Existence cannot be negated, it is self-evident that it Existence is God. God should not be searched for in the realm of existence but is the basis of all existence. Reality in Arabic is "Al-Haq", and is stated in the Qur'an as one of the Names of God. - Fazlur Rahman, The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra State University of New York Press, 1975, p. 125
@@zakyzayn5361 I used to be most hardcore atheist the most resolute materialist i used to blindly defend atheism without rest and tiring I used to think myself as rationalist I fought,I argued I even name called others even abused others but one year ago Hinduism and its philosophy changed my thinking Pattern and I am now hardcore Hindu and true believer in "the absolute" Hinduism and its philosophies have gave me solace that was otherwise impossible to seek and obtain from other ideologues. Now i know about my true Divine nature because of Hinduism and it's philosophies. Hinduism and it's philosophies not only blown my mind but exploded it. Pure enlightenment and now I fear nothing and worry about nothing. I have transcendence beyond pleasure of senses.
@@shadowoffire4307 The Skeptic said, “What if you are wrong?” I said, “What if I am right?” The Atheist said, “How is there a Creator?” I said, “How is there a Creation?” The Christian said, “Love God and worship Jesus” I said, “Love Jesus and worship God” The Jew said, “God will always keep his covenant with us” I said, “Have you always kept your covenant with God?” The Buddhist said “The purpose of life is to discover Enlightenment” I said “Enlightenment is to discover the purpose of life” The Polytheist said “I only worship gods that they all might hear me and intercede with God” I said “I worship no gods but the only all-mighty God, who hears all without intercessors” The Extremist said, ‘Extreme times, calls for extreme measures’ I said, ‘Extreme times comes from extreme measures’ The Secular Reformist said, ‘We should reform revelation to fit the times” I said, “We should reform the times to fit revelation” The Ex-Muslim said, ‘I had enough of Islam and left after I learnt more about it and the world’ I said, ‘You left Islam because you didn’t learn enough about it or the world’ The ‘Moderate Muslim’ said “The truth is, only following Islam moderately makes you a good person” I said “Then you are only moderately truthful, and moderately a good person”
I knew Dirac at FSU and he would ask what does your theory have on the Fine Structure Constant and if there were nothing regarding the Fine Structure, he would walk away. Good talk, well done to you.
