Quantum Ontology (WHAT IS REAL?) Encore with Adam Becker

Hello, hello, this is 2026 Alley, and I'd like to toss us down a wormhole with one of my favorite episodes,

but before we get into it, a little update, thisologist, Dr. Adam Becker, has recently released a new

book, it's titled More Everything Forever. AI overlords, space empires, and Silicon Valley's crusade

to control the fate of humanity. It's about the ideology of technological salvation, where this

religious belief comes from, who's pushing it by pretending it's science instead of religion,

and how it's taken over Silicon Valley. And also how it threatens to take over the world. Again,

his book, More Everything Forever, that's his new one. And he told me by email, I'm pretty hopeful

that we can successfully fight back against this stuff. So you'll hear more about his book,

What Is Real, but also just an update, More Everything Forever is now out. Okay, onward.

Oh, hey, this is your old internet uncle, Dadward von Podcast, here with another episode of

Ally Ward, hi. So do you remember your first real existential crisis? Also, if you clicked on this

and don't know Jack or shit about quantum physics, you're in the right place, you're in good company.

Okay, before we spiral into deep, deep space and dark matter, let's shine a little light on some

business. So first off, thank you to everyone on patreon.com slash allergies for supporting the show,

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from allergies merch.com. And thank you to everyone who leaves reviews, which help the show so much.

And here is a very fresh 2026 one from glowing jelly bean 555, who wrote, I love this podcast so

much. And it's a phenomenal way to stay lighthearted and informed on all sorts of things through

trying times. Glowing jelly bean. Thanks for the glowing review. We do our best. Okay, quantum ontology.

So many syllables. What do they mean? Quantum in terms of physics deals with matter and energy

at its most fundamental level. And quantum comes from the Latin meaning how much how far? How great

an extent already so many questions just to the definition of this. Also ontology comes from the root

aunt meaning being and it is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. So quantum

ontology matter what the hell is it? What are we made of? What is real? Just tuck a bib under your

brain kiddos because this week's episode is just a hearty. It's a feast of information. It's dense.

It's like a bucket of mashed potatoes and it's filling like drinking a pint of gravy. It's going to

make you question everything about life itself. What is reality? What exists? Why are we here? But first

will we cover everything about this topic? Hell no. Will we have to leave out a bunch? Hell yes. Consider

this like a warm welcome and on tray into some of the basic concepts about the hiccups in observing

and understanding existence. So thisologist has a BA in philosophy and in physics from Cornell and a

PhD in astrophysics from the University of Michigan is a celebrated science writer and the author of

the new book. What is real? The unfinished quest for the meaning of quantum physics, which by the way

the Wall Street Journal calls fascinating. The New York Times calls a thorough, illuminating

exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science, splendid says the

Washington Post. Science magazine calls it riveting. So the book, it's good. I met this

ologist about four years ago at Sci-Con camp and he handed me his business card, which read

freelance astrophysicist. I was like, I like this guy. And then the next year he mentioned he was

pitching a book and then the following year he said he had a book deal and was writing it and now

here we are. His book, it recounts a lot of the drama in the quantum physics world,

boy, howdy, is there some? Not only are you going to walk away with an exciting overview of what

the hell the universe may be all about, but you'll also hear about some academic infighting

and why it's exciting that there are so many mysteries in the universe. So in between seminars

and panels at Sci-Con camp, we pulled up a couch. We got to talking. So settle in for philosophical

physics fun times wherein we discuss what matter is made of and how many universes there could be

and why what we think we know just does not add up and how someone could say you're wrong,

but maybe you're writer than everyone realizes and also how an inbox can be a lot like a crackpot.

And how to tackle your dreams when they seem too big to fathom and Einstein and String Theory

and gravity and tunneling and wormholes and cats and more with astrophysicist, author and quantum

ontologist, Dr. Adam Becker.

Although it would be fun. Yes. Okay, so is this good? Yeah, let me check your levels.

Okay, hi. How's this? It's great. You have a good radio voice. Let's go back in time,

if you will. Sure. Would it be a wormhole that I could go back in time to ask you about your

childhood? I guess you could. Sure. Why not? Would a wormhole do it or is it a different type of tunnel

in time? I mean, there's no, there's no known way that would definitely work to go back in time,

but wormholes are one of the, you know, better theories about how you could maybe do it.

Okay. So let's go through a wormhole. Now going back, did you always like physics,

astrophysics? How do you, how does someone decide that they're into something so complex?

Wow. That's a good question. So yeah, see, I didn't think that I was going to sit on a couch

and talk about my childhood, but here we are. Yeah, you trapped me. Yes. So when I was a really

little kid, like a lot of other kids, I wanted to be a paleontologist because dinosaurs are awesome.

And then I discovered space and decided no, no space is more awesome. And so I got really into

space and astronomy and astrophysics and then sort of slowly slid from astrophysics just to physics.

And so by the time I was in high school, I thought, okay, yeah, I think physics is the direction I

want to go in. This seems really interesting. And I read a lot of pop physics books and they

said some confusing things. And in particular, they talked about two theories that said really

wild and strange things about the world. One of them was Einstein's relativity and the other one

was quantum physics. And, you know, really, really weird things in both of those theories. But

turns out relativity doesn't require more than like early high school math. Okay. You don't

need calculus. You don't even need precalculus, like it's just geometry and algebra. And so I learned

relativity in high school. And I thought, oh, all that weird stuff seems a lot less weird now.

I bet when I get to college and I learn quantum physics, that's going to seem less weird too.

That is not what happened. Yeah. No. So instead I got to college and I started learning quantum

physics. And it didn't get better. It got worse. And so I was in this class where the professor

was talking about one of the weird things in quantum physics. I don't remember exactly what,

because it was a long time ago. But, you know, he was saying something about how when you're not

looking at things, you can't talk about what's going on. But then when you look things change,

and I probably asked something like, okay, but what do you mean by looking? What does that mean?

And we kind of got into it. And I don't remember exactly how the fight went down, but I just

remember that at the end, he said, in this like really haughty, disdainful voice, he said, well,

if that's the kind of question that you're interested in, then why don't you go to the philosophy

department? Yeah. But, but joke is on him. I'd already gone to the philosophy department and

double major in physics and philosophy. Oh god. A lot of that was trying to wrap my head around,

like what the heck is going on in quantum physics? Because this is a really, it's a really weird

area, but it's also supposed to be this really fundamental theory about, you know, the fundamental

constituents of the world, right? Like the tiniest things, the things that the things that make us

up are made of, right? Like subatomic particles. And yet it wasn't at all clear what was going on.

And so I started digging into that and the more I dug into it, the weirder it got. I just did that

more and more and eventually thought, you know, I, I want to write a book about this because this

is just so strange and I don't understand why this isn't more widely known. Am I going to,

am I going to feel like I'm on mushrooms? I mean, look at the cover of my book. It says, what is

real? And it's got like wavy rainbow lines. Yeah. So yeah, the answer is probably yes.

Okay. Don't you feel funny? Well, let's go back first and define what is quantum ontology?

Yeah. So quantum, I mean, quantum physics is the physics of the ultra tiny, except that we think

that ultra tiny things make up the world around us. So although it's the physics of the ultra tiny,

there's also a reason to think it's, it's just the physics of everything.

Ontology is the study of what there is of what stuff is in the world. So quantum ontology is,

is the study of, okay, what does quantum physics tell us is in the world? Or, you know,

the title of my book, right? What is real? And it is not clear what quantum physics tells us about

the world. It's just not clear at all, even though it's not a new theory. It's been around for

almost a hundred years. Okay. Well, let's start with a theory relativity, which someone with

a high school math could understand. Sure. Can, can you give that to me like a nutshell?

Sure. He sounds unsure, but that's okay. Right. So, so here's one way of looking at what the

theory for relativity tells us. So we sort of think from our everyday lives that if I'm standing still

or if I'm in a car going at like 20 miles an hour, there are some things that just don't change

between those two situations like how fast my watch runs shouldn't change between those two

situations or how far it is between my house and the movie theater down the street that shouldn't

change either. It turns out though that these things that that we think of as not changing between

those two situations, we call those things invariant because they don't vary. The invariance between

those two situations aren't what we think they are. It turns out that actually the rate that my watch

runs at does change between those two situations and the distance between my apartment and the

movie theater down the street does change. There are things that don't change, but those things are not

distances or time, they're a combination of space and time, space time. Okay. Is time the fourth

dimension? Sure. Yeah. In relativity it is. Okay. Yeah. And now quantum. Yes. Theory. Yeah. Oh,

you want me to do the same thing for quantum theory. Just in a nutshell. Just let us know what we're

working with. Yeah. So quantum theory says that there is something very, very unusual going on

in the world of the very tiny. Really? Yes. And we don't know what that is. What happened? Now,

is this allowed about dark matter and it doesn't make sense that there's so much space between atoms?

Holy shit. I just realized writing this that Adam's name is Adam. Adam. What is life? Also, real

quick, the matter all around you, the stuff that makes up everything you see and touch and smell

and lick all that matter in the universe is 5% of what exists. And according to NASA, dark matter

is something that we can calculate, but we can't see or detect and it interacts with gravity,

but it doesn't emit or reflect light. Hence it's dark and it makes up about 27% of the universe.

Something called dark energy makes up 68% of the universe and we know it's strong and it's getting

stronger, but we don't get what it is. So just know the wisest minds alive don't know shit. And if

frustrates them enough to keep getting out of bed every morning, just to figure it out.

Dark matter? Sure. We don't really know what's going on there. We know it's around, but we don't

know what it's made of. There is a lot of empty space inside of atoms, but that's not really what's

going on here either. That's not why we don't understand this. What's going on instead is

it is hard to understand the relationship between the mathematics of quantum physics and the world

that we live in. Because the math works really well. We can use it to predict and explain all kinds

of things, but it also doesn't really look like the world around us. And that's fine. You know,

things can be weird. It's a big world. There's plenty of room for weirdness.

Oh, you're weird. Thank you. But it's not, there should be a story, even if it's a weird story,

that quantum physics tells us about the world. And it needs to be a story that that makes internal

sense, even if it's a really, really weird story. There's a difference between being bizarre

and being internally contradictory, right? So what he's saying is that the universe,

kind of like a huge restaurant tab at a friend's birthday dinner where no one has accounted for

tax or tip, are there three beverages? Things just don't add up and everyone is testy about it.

The weird thing is that the standard way of answering questions like what does quantum physics

tell us about the world around us is to say, shut up, that's a stupid question. There's

actually a saying in physics to summarize this attitude, shut up and calculate.

Oh, boy. Because no, no one, that that was originally coined by the physicist, David

Merman, as, as like a pejorative, like he was describing an attitude that other people have.

Right. He, no one actually should say that in earnest, but some people do.

And yeah, it's, it's completely fucking ridiculous.

Well, what are these logic gaps? Like I know that it's so bizarre and at least if you could understand

the bizarreness, but what is it that's so contradictory? Like what do we think? What don't we get?

Yeah. So, so there's this, there's this thing in quantum physics, this sort of fundamental role

that the idea of measurement plays. Say that I want to describe, I'm holding a pen.

Say I want to describe where this pen is, you know, where I'm going to find this pen using

the physics that we had before quantum physics, like Isaac Newton's physics.

Okay, quick aside, Newtonian physics is also called classical mechanics and it deals with objects

that aren't at a tiny, tiny scale and how they move and rest and such. So, apples falling on our

heads, tossing your socks in the hamper from across the room, the inertia that causes you to spill

hot tea on your crotch in the car. All of those things exist in space and behave in predictable ways.

I can do that with three numbers. I can say, okay, this pen is this height above the ground and it's

this far off to the right and it's this far in front of me. That's three numbers. It's all I need.

If I want to take all the information I have about where I'm going to find on a electron or some

subatomic particle in quantum physics, it's not going to require three numbers. It's going to require

an infinity of numbers scattered across all of space and and this set of numbers is called a wave

function. Okay. And as the name implies, it kind of waves, it unulates smoothly, right? And that

that wave emotion is described by this very nice, pretty equation called the Schrodinger equation.

And the Schrodinger equation kind of smells like a law of physics. Okay.

It looks like a good candidate for a fundamental law of physics and it says that wave functions,

you know, they wave. They they move smoothly and they they move in a completely determined fashion.

There's nothing random or probabilistic about it. Okay. So when we zoom all the way into an atom

or the elements that make up an atom, instead of having three dimensions x, y, z, we have an

infinity of numbers to describe its location and those infinity of numbers make up a wave. Got it?

Look, we understand everything makes sense. We're pretty much quantum physicists now, all of us.

Just kidding, but we can still celebrate it. But the standard way of using quantum physics says,

okay, wave functions obey the Schrodinger equation, except when you look, when you actually look

for the electron, the Schrodinger equation is temporarily suspended. At which point this entire

other law of physics that is completely different in contradictory comes comes and it's called

the Born Rule. This is Jason Born. Okay. It's actually named for German mathematician and physicist Max

Born, who helped develop quantum mechanics and was nominated for a Nobel Prize by Einstein himself.

But most importantly, Max Born is the grandpa of Greece's Olivia Newton-John. When I read that,

I had chills like multiplying. But yeah, the Born Rule measures probability of a particle's position

and it came on the quantum scene in 1926. And that says, oh yeah, that wave function that moves

smoothly. It stops moving smoothly. It goes to zero everywhere except in the spot where you found

the electron. What? Yeah. And so this leads to a couple of questions. First of all, that's weird.

Yeah. Why does that happen? I don't know. Yeah. Weirdness though is fine. The real problem,

the contradiction, right? The gap in logic is, okay, we have these two rules. They're not the same

rule. When do we apply one and when do we apply the other? Right. Because we need to know that

because they're not the same rule. The usual answer is, oh, we use the Schrodinger equation when

we're not looking, when we're not making the measurement. And we use the Born Rule when we do.

The problem is that the idea of measurement is really, really fucking vague. Yeah. Like,

is it when I make a measurement? Does quantum mechanics only apply to me, Adam Becker? Like,

that can't be right, right? Does it work when a dog looks at an electron? Yeah. Right? Or do you

need to be better qualified? This is bananas. It's completely nuts. And the other thing is, like I

said, electrons aren't the only things that have wave functions. This pen has a wave function.

You have a wave function. I have a wave function. The universe has a wave function. You're going to

wave function. You're going to wave function. You get a wave function. Quantum ontology. It's like

the opera of the physics world. Was the wave function of the universe just waiting for billions and

billions of years for someone to come along and suddenly collapse it and, you know, have the

Schrodinger equation not apply? Like, it's just not clear when one equation applies and when

another applies. There are people who would say that I am wrong about that. These are the same

people who tell you to shut up and calculate. If you ask them, if you pin them down and try to

ask them, okay, fine hotshot when you use one and when to use the other, they're going to give you

something that's either internally contradictory or that contradicts the idea that quantum physics

is more fundamental than Newton's physics. Okay. Yeah. And now, oh, hey, there's a lot going on.

There is a lot going on. And so the notion of, do you remember snuffle up, I guess, from

says, remember snuffle up? Yes. Is there a snuffle up? I guess rule.

He's only there when people who aren't Big Bird aren't looking. Yeah. Oh, man, Big Bird is

definitely not the prime observer of quantum mechanics. I can tell you that right now. Carol

Spinney does not have like special quantum power. Big Bird, Big Bird. It's all right. No, it's not.

Just side note, Carol Spinney is the actor and puppeteer who played Big Bird until his retirement

last year and also did everyone else know his name and that he also voiced Oscar the Grouch

or do astrophysicists just have large brain buckets full of trivia? Where were we? Yes,

okay. So the wave function that describes the place of a tiny particle collapses to a point

when it's observed. This is wave function collapse. Does observing something make it exist

differently? Okay. So then what does that mean for us? Like if I am a wave function until someone

looks at me and then I'm not. Yeah. What does that mean for ontology, for the science and the

study of being? What is anyone? Yeah, it means that there's something we don't understand here.

It means that the story is clearly not complete. It means that shutting up and calculating

is good practical advice if you want to calculate stuff, but it means it can't be the real

story about the world. Like these good to ask these questions because there must be something

else going on. So the problem then is, okay, what is that story of the world? And the answer is

we have multiple candidates for a possible story of the world and interpretation of quantum

physics. There are multiple interpretations running around. There isn't a consensus about which one

is the right one. Okay. So when it comes to quantum ontology, are we real? What are we? What is

reality? How does it work? Why don't things add up between points versus waves? And why can't we

detect or describe dark matter or dark energy? Nobody knows. But there have been scratch paper

pads and whiteboards just shock a block filled with theories. Let's hear a few. Give me some of the

top ones like his multiverse is one. Yeah, that's one of them. That's probably the most popular one

other than, you know, the non-answer of shut up. That's a stupid question. So the many worlds

interpretation, which was developed by this Joker named Hugh Everett III in the mid-1950s

while he was a grad student in physics, he basically got drunk on Sherry one night with a couple

of other physicists. And then like basically develop this interpretation in part to like stick it

to the guy he was drunkenly arguing with who's an assistant of this guy, Niels Bohr, who's a big

famous physicist. Okay, so Hugh Everett, who as a child, wrote a letter to Einstein and got a nice

response. And then later in his life, sat in on some Einstein's lectures, ran with his posse.

So this Hugh Everett, oh, he loved boos and smoking and quantum theory. And he got his PhD in it

in the quantum theory, at least. And Niels Bohr, who by the by was big deal, Nobel Prize winning

quantum physicists and one of like the folks who proposed the structure of an atom with the

electron spinning around it and parts of what became known as the Copenhagen interpretation

that a particle exists in every position of the wave function until it's observed. Okay, so

Everett, he was gently schmammard and arguing with someone from Niels Bohr's lab about Schrodinger's

equation, which tries to find the probability of a particle at a certain point surfing that wave

function when we look at it. Okay, so they're arguing. Everett basically said, look, what if it's just

all Schrodinger all the time? Like, what if that's the only thing that plays on the quantum physics

radio station? It's just 100% Schrodinger. What if that other thing the born rule never comes in,

wave functions never collapse? What does it mean to be while the wall Schrodinger? Is that like

boxed in by Schrodinger? Is it dead cat involved? Well, to explain that I need I need to bring in

like the most famous thought experiment in all of quantum physics, Schrodinger's cat. Yes.

Right. So Schrodinger came up with this way before Hugh Everett. He came up with his cat in the

1930s to explain why he thought there was a big problem here because Schrodinger and Einstein and

a couple of the other founders of quantum physics were really bothered by this problem.

It got a special name later on the measurement problem. They were really, really concerned about

this. They thought there was something missing from the theory. Schrodinger illustrated this by

saying, look, maybe quantum particles are weird. Maybe they can perform strange tricks. That wave

function describing where you're going to find an electron and sort of smeared out over all of space,

that kind of suggests that maybe the electron is in multiple places at once until you look.

But who's looking? And what counts? Nobody actually knows. Anyway. So he said, imagine that you have

a box, a sealed box. And in that box, you have a very slightly radioactive lump of metal.

And you have a radiation detector pointed at it. And you have this contraption set up so that when

the detector detects radiation, it drops a little hammer that smashes a glass vial of cyanide.

And there's a cat in there with this whole thing. So basically if the lump of metal emits any

radiation, the cat will die. So you put this all together, you seal the box and you wait like 30 minutes.

And at this point, the Schrodinger equation says, okay, look, the chunk of radiation that could be

emitted by this metal, it either has or has not been emitted. And so the wave function sort of

says, well, it's been emitted and not emitted, which means that the detector hasn't hasn't been

tripped, which means that the glass vial hasn't has not broken. So the cat in there is, according to

the Schrodinger equation, is sort of part dead and part alive or both dead and alive. It's in this

state called a superposition, which is sort of generally the state that most things are in most

of the time, according to the Schrodinger equation. But according to the usual way of thinking about

quantum physics, this sort of very unsatisfying and incomplete idea that you just, you know, shut up

and don't think about what it means to measure. When you open the box, then the cat is either dead

or alive. And somehow opening the box may that happen. And that's ridiculous, Schrodinger, say,

you know, maybe particles can be in one place or more than one place at a time. But cats are either

dead or alive. And if you open the box and find a dead cat, then the minute before you open the

box, the cat was either dead or dying. And if you open it and find a living cat, it's not like it

was not entirely living before you open the box. Right. All right. So remember our Sherry should

hammered fun loving physicist, Hugh Everett, arguing with the biggest fish in the physics pond,

that their Copenhagen interpretation was Bulkhaka horsepucky. Everett solved this problem a

different way. Okay. Everett said, no, no, it's all Schrodinger all the time. So when you open the

box, you know, the cats both dead and alive before you open the box. And then when you open the

box, you get entangled with the stuff in the box. Okay. Heads up on this next part. Intanglement

sounds like a boundary issue in an unhealthy relationship, but it's actually quantum physics

and it's cool as hell. So Everett said sure. So what that means is, you know, the box split,

according to the Schrodinger equation, and then when you open the box, look, you split into two

copies. Hello, Joe. Hello, Joe. And the reason that you don't see both the living in a dead cat

is because you split. And so each copy of you only sees one cat, one of you sees a living cat.

Thank God. And one of you sees a dead cat, but both copies only see one cat. So then every time

there was a decision, it splits and splits and splits and splits. Yeah, it's this entanglement

sort of contagious and ends up going through the whole world. And so the whole world eventually

splits into the dead cat and the living cat branches. And this happens over and over again all the time.

And so you end up with this massive collection of universes and multiverse. What if there's three

options? Because not everything's on a binary. That's right. Yeah. So then you get three copies.

Or what if what if you left the cat in there for 15 minutes, right? So instead of

instead of leaving it in there long enough that you had a 50-50 shot of finding a dead cat,

you've probably got a living cat, right? Sweet. So then there's two copies, but somehow you're

more likely to be the copy that sees the living cat. And this is another part of the problem,

right? Because quantum physics famously only gives you answers in terms of probabilities,

most almost all of the time. But the Schrodinger equation isn't a random equation,

it's completely determined. So where do the probabilities come from? Well, they come in when you

use this other rule, the born rule. Born rule to refresh calculates the probability of measuring

or observing a particle at a particular spot on the wave. One way of thinking about this is to say,

oh, well, sure, you know that when you open the box, you're going to split, but you don't know

which universe you're going to be in when you open the box. You don't know which branch of the

wave function that you're going to be in. And so, you know, this rule is about figuring out the

probability that you're going to be in the branch with a living cat or a dead cat. It gets

really trippy. Yeah. Okay. Well, so this is the many worlds theory, which is one of the ways that

you could try to explain the inconsistency. What about your own life? Do you think about that when

you are about to make a decision? You know, I don't go through my life assuming that there are

multiple copies of me. Well, so part of the reason is that I don't subscribe to the many worlds

interpretation. I think it's a reasonable option, but I don't know that it's the right answer.

I don't know what the right answer is. And I don't think I don't think anybody can say for sure

that they know what the right answer is here, because we don't have a good scientific consensus

on this debate. But I mean, in my everyday life, I mean, I don't know. I think I'm a pretty regular

guy. It's just two things the way I do. You wouldn't be like, well, I might as well make this risky

choice because somewhere there's someone making the less risky choice. I'll have the puffer fish.

Yeah, that's not, that's definitely not how I approach my life. I do not recommend that anybody

do that. Do not try that at home. Okay. Yeah. Um, does it ever, you're, you're a young guy.

Does it ever, does it ever trip you out that like in our lifetime, you may not figure out what's up?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is frustrating, right? Because like you asked me again, we're on a couch

talking about my childhood, but um, you asked me about, you know, what got me interested in this

stuff in the first place. I wanted to know what was going on, right? I wanted to know what was up.

This is why I keep saying, you know, it's fine if our theories are weird. We live in a weird

place. There are so many weird things about the world. Have you seen a platpus? Like, like, have you,

have you seen, this is one of my favorite examples of like just a weird thing in physics that

is nothing to do with quantum anything. Have you done that demo at like a science museum where

you sit in a, in a spinny chair and you're holding a bicycle wheel and then you flip, you flip

it upside down and all of a sudden you start spinning. Like, that's weird and the wheel feels like

it's fighting you. What the fuck is going on? Like, there's a good answer there, right? So like,

this is just a strange place. And I want to know what's going on in it. So on the one hand, yeah,

it's frustrating that we might not know, but on the other hand, it's kind of amazing that we

don't know, right? Like, we, we have been doing science. We have been thinking about this stuff

for a long time. And every time we discover something new, we find more interesting questions.

And this is a complete cliche. I don't know, the first person to say this, but the idea that,

that there are such fundamental things in the world that we do not understand, that we,

we don't know why these things happen. We don't know what, what, like, the nature of the world is.

And we are in it. We are of it. One of the great illusions that being human and especially being

human here and now in this culture, like, sort of fosters is this idea that somehow we are

separate from the world. We are of the world. We are pieces of the world. This is one of the

things that's so frustrating about this idea that, oh, the rules are different when you measure.

What's, I'm not special. I'm of the world. Like, I don't, there are not different rules for me

than there are for anyone else. I'm a piece of the world. I'm part of the world. So are you,

so is everyone. We are all of a part with this strange and wonderful place that we live in.

And you just not clear how any of this works. What are some other theories? Okay, so we got

multiverses, multi many worlds. What are some other leading theories of what the hell's going on?

Okay, so, so another one. And this is really going to piss some people off. If I describe

this as a leading theory, but it totally is and they're wrong. There's, there's so much controversy

here. There's like, there's so much drama. Yes. This is, this is a lot of what drew me to this.

Once I realized, like, there's so much weird stuff in this area and this unresolved debate,

I started wondering, okay, why is it unresolved? And it turns out a lot of it has to do with just,

like, debate and interpersonal drama between really interesting people. And then I tried to find

a book about it. I couldn't find one. So I wrote one. Again, the title is What is Real? The

Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Dr. Adam Becker, available wherever you

get books. It makes a great holiday gift. He did not ask me to say that, but it is legit a very

good book. Another leading theory is this, uh, it's this thing. It goes by several different names,

but I, I like to call it pilot wave theory. It's this idea that when you're, you know, when you're

talking about, you know, where is that electron, it is in a place before you look. And when you look,

you find it, but there's a wave that's associated with each particle and these waves sort of guide

the motion of those particles. And that wave is sort of associated with that wave function that we

were talking about before. And one of the things that really clued physicists in in the early 20th

century to something really profoundly strange going on was that they found that things that they

thought were waves sometimes acted like particles and things that they thought were particles,

sometimes acted like waves. Yeah. So like something that you thought was in one place suddenly,

like started rippling out word like a wave, something that you thought propagated like a wave

and could ripple out and and do all those weird wave things, uh, suddenly was acting like a baseball.

Like it just really weird. So this is sort of a puzzle. Like how can particles act like waves and

vice versa? What's going on? Why does everything seem to have both a particle and a wave nature?

And the answer in this theory, the pilot wave theory is, oh, that's because there are particles and

waves and every particle has a wave associated with it that determines how it moves. And so that

sounds really simple and really cool. Um, there are problems, right? There's problems with everything,

right? Otherwise, there'd be no controversy. The first issue, though I hesitated to call it a

problem is remember entanglement, you know, when, when things get, when things interact, they,

they start sharing a wave. So when you have two entangled particles, one particle, uh, say that

they're entangled and like you're flying off in different directions, one of them's way over here

and one of them's way over there, right? Like one of them's in Mississippi and one of them's in Calgary,

right? Okay. Then the one in Mississippi, if it moves a little bit, that's going to affect the

pilot wave that guides the particle and Calgary. Oh, instantaneously, immediately. It happens

faster than the speed of light. So that's weird, especially because, you know, we can prove in the

math of the theory that that's what happens, but you can also prove that you can't use it for

signaling. You can't send messages faster than the speed of light this way. Okay. So, so somehow

there's this subtle connection that we don't see direct evidence of. When I said we don't see

direct evidence, we do see evidence, but it's, it's, it's indirect evidence. It's evidence that

they are connected. You can't, you can't use that connection, you know, like no one would dispute

that they were connected if you could use one to instantly make the other one, you know, send a

message. But that's not how this works. So in the pilot wave theory, there's not a wave for a

particle. There's a wave that the particle is kind of surfing and it can affect the particles

in numerous superpositions. But it would be faster than light, which really irks some people

because all Albi Einstein's relativity says nothing is faster than light. So he didn't like that.

Also, Adam says this was developed. The basic idea was developed by one of the founders

of quantum mechanics, a guy named Louis de Bois in the late 1920s. But then he was convinced by some

other physicists that it couldn't be right. He dropped it. He was independently rediscovered by

another physicist, David Bohm in the early 1950s. And he sort of fixed up the problems that were

with it that that De Bois had sort of left and and like sort of made it a fully fledged theory

and published it. And then he his life like descended into a living nightmare for mostly unrelated

reasons like he yeah, he got caught up in the red scare in the 1950s. Yeah, he got, he got black

listed. He ended up being effectively exiled to Brazil. And then the US government confiscated

his passport. So he's trapped in Brazil. Like there's a whole it's like a movie. It's like a

friggin spy thriller. Like dude got the fucking short end of the stick. Okay. Now this guy's life, my

word. He had his own work at Berkeley confiscated and then classified. So he didn't have access to it

so that it could be used on the Manhattan project. And he eventually in the 70s had to have

electroconvulsive therapy for depression and just the saga and the drama of his life and political

affiliations affected the reception of his work sadly. Okay, but one hiccup is that the particle

surfing a pilot wave doesn't work with other theories like the relativistic quantum field theory

that explains what happens when you smash particles together in a nearly 17 mile particle

accelerator tube underground, which as discussed in the cosmology episode with Dr. Katie Mac is not

called the hard on collider. No one has found a way to unequivocally take that theory and reframe

it in terms of this pilot wave stuff. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that if it's right,

the job isn't finished. But there are a lot of physicists who don't like this stuff for that reason.

And because it's got this weird tangled history. So yeah, so that's another option is this pilot wave

theory. There are lots of other options. How often do you think people get stoned and come up with

their own theories and email physicists? Oh, well, I can tell you that happens a lot because I get a

lot of those emails. Some of those people, by the way, I think are not stoned. I think that there

could be like an interesting psychology paper done here. Oh man, I'm going to get some hate

mail for this. That like being an old retired white male engineer must have some effect on the

brain that is similar to like cannabis or alcohol or something. Because those people, I'm pretty

sure they're sober. And they send me all sorts of wacky stuff all the time. And it's not correct.

Do you have a favorite? Oh my god. Any simulation theories? Yeah, I definitely get those. I also

get, you know, Einstein was wrong and complete fraud. And here's why I'm the only one who found it.

And I'm like Galileo. I've been persecuted, right? There's this, there's this thing called the

crackpot index online, which basically you was signed more and more points to a crackpot email

depending on like what kinds of claims they make. Okay, side note, this crackpot index is indeed a

real thing. And it was published in 1998 by a mathematical physicist, John Bias. And one score

is determined by points with infractions being five points for each word in all caps. Ten points

for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and asking them not to tell anyone

else about it for fear that your ideas will be stolen. Ten points for each statement along the

lines of, I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right. So while I need us for someone

to just express it in terms of equations, ten points for each comparison of yourself, Einstein,

twenty points for emailing to complain about the crackpot index, twenty points for suggesting

that you deserve a Nobel Prize, thirty points for claiming that your theories were developed by

an extraterrestrial civilization. And, and I think the worst thing on that index that you can do

is compare yourself to Galileo. In that vein, either we're going to create simulations that are

indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist. Those are the two options.

And now what about a simulation? Okay. What if the reason why we cannot reconcile the wave versus

the particle and the born versus the Schrodinger? What if that is because it's all fake? Right. So

so a couple of things there. First of all, you'd still need to have rules. Like if it's a simulation

and a computer like any computer we know, there's still rules that the simulation runs on, right?

So and that that means that there still has to be some internal logical coherence, right? It can't

contradict itself even if it's weird. So there's that. But more importantly, and I don't know,

I don't know if you're going to like this answer. I think that the simulation thing is kind of

not kind of non, I can imagine. Simulation thing is fucking bullshit. Okay.

Hey, it's fucking bullshit and here's what. And this is going to take like a sharp left turn.

It assumes that that's something that it assumes that that's a thing that you can do,

which we still don't know that you can do that. And it also assumes that and I guess what I'm

really talking about here is this argument that that we almost definitely live in a simulation,

right? Like there are those people who say, no, no, no, we definitely live in one like almost

certainly there's almost no chance that this is like the base reality, whatever that means.

I really think that's wrong because it assumes that technology, it assumes a lot about the

future progression of technology, but it also assumes that technology always progresses through like

the same inevitable stages. It assumes a lot about history and culture and the nature of life

and intelligent life and intelligence itself. And I think that basically all of those assumptions

that go into that argument, that fuel that argument are hopelessly myopic. They're just like

completely blinkered and narrow-minded about like the wide variety of ways that that things in the

world can be and that, you know, technology and civilization and culture can be even in this

world here and now. Like it's a very, it's a very western centric, male centric, white centric,

rich centric argument that, you know, basically, yeah, no, the inevitable progression of any

intelligent being in any logically possible universe is basically going to be like a rich white

dude born between 1970 and 1990. Like, and that's some fucking bullshit. Yeah, that is bullshit.

Yeah. And also, I've been using maybe everything's assimilation as an excuse for why things are bad,

but I shouldn't do that, right? Yeah, I think I think like two things. First of all, you shouldn't

do that. Okay. So yes, clearly we can't look at global warming and agonizing political situations

and forest burning and that time you farted in ninth grade history class and people having cancer

and being driven from their homelands because of greed. Just as a video game gone wrong and that we

should give up and fold our hands and our laps and just wait for the apocalypse or the game over screen.

Second, even if this is a simulation, the suffering is real. Yes. I am suffering. Yeah. You are

suffering. We got to fix that shit. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people out there real suffering. Yeah. We

can't just shrug it off as it's all video game. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Do you think that we're real?

I mean, yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by real, but for any like good meaning of

that word, sure, we're real. Yeah. I mean, say that the say that it is a simulation, say that

everything I said was wrong. Say that there are some other universe with other laws of physics and

other beings and for whatever reason, they decided to build this simulation, like to build a computer

and inside that computer, like there's a simulation going on and we're in there. We're real. We're

in that simulate. We're really in that simulation in that scenario, like there are real entities in

that simulation that are you and me and all the things around us, even if that's not how the

programmers think about it, like I am having experiences here in this simulation and I have a

hand over here and I'm waving it around and I'm banging it on the edge of the sofa, like that's

all happening. Does the actual structure of the world that it's most fundamental level look

anything like the way we think it looks? Probably not. Whether or not we're in a simulation, I think

that's wrong, but does that mean that we're not real? Absolutely not. Okay, so here's the thing.

I think everyone, I hope everyone can agree that temperature is a real thing, like things have

temperatures. I can take my cool nerdy infrared thermometer and point it at the wall and it will

tell me that the wall is 74.6 degrees Fahrenheit because we live in a country that doesn't know how

to measure temperature. But the thing is temperature, according to our best understanding of temperature

in physics, it comes out of thermodynamics, which is itself something that comes out of statistical

physics, a really, really interesting field of physics. Temperature is an emergent property.

It's not a property that individual subatomic particles can have. It's something that only aggregate

collections of stuff have. So one molecule can't have a temperature, but a group of them can,

because they're all moving around. So Adam Likens' temperature to existence and asking the question,

are we real? These things in this world around us can emerge out of that lower level,

in the same way that temperature is a property that emerges out of the lower level,

you know, little jossalings of tiny things, because that's where temperature comes from. It's,

you know, a tiny object, a tiny piece of that wall is moving around a little bit and all that

jiggling together comes out and looks to us like temperature. That's a real thing. That wall

is actually a temperature and we are here and we are having this conversation even if, you know,

the perception that there is such a thing as space and time is something that emerges out of

some lower level of reality. There's still a space and a time that we're in, even if it's not

fundamental. All right, you've not let me get off the hook about existing and I still have to like

do all my bullshit and get through my to-do list. That's right. I can't. Okay, can I ask you

Patreon questions? Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Are you ready? I mean, I'm never going to be completely

ready, right, for the weirdness that is Patreon. Yeah. High Patreon. That's the right answer.

But before we get to your genius and weird and dry and perfect questions submitted on Patreon,

each episode, we donate to a charity of theologist choosing. This week, Dr. Becker chose

TechBridge Girls, which excites, educates, and equips girls from low income communities by

delivering high quality STEM programming that empowers a girl to achieve economic mobility

and better life chances. And TechBridge Girls was one of the earliest organizations to focus on

introducing girls and marginalized communities to the STEM fields and it's based in Oakland,

California where Adam lives. So that's TechBridgeGirls.org. That donation was made possible by sponsors

of the show. And so you may hear some words about them right now. Okay, back to your questions.

Travis Demello wants to know, how does quantum stuff relate to nature? What is its role beyond

technology? Oh, I mean, that's a great question. Quantum physics explains a huge variety of natural

phenomena. Like without quantum physics, we wouldn't understand why the sun shines. We wouldn't

understand how our eyes can see that the sun shines. We wouldn't understand, and I mean this in

the most general way possible, the phenomenon of solidness. Like we wouldn't understand not only why

I'm not passing through this couch right now, but why my bones are solid at all in the first place.

For more on that topic, you can see the osteology episode about bones just saying quantum physics is

necessary for understanding where the periodic table of the elements comes from and the idea

of molecular structure. So all of chemistry and thus all of biochemistry and thus all of life.

So quantum physics explains, you know, or has a really important role in explaining almost every

single possible natural phenomenon. So it's important. Yeah, just a little. So a bunch of folks

asked about existence and what it really means and why such as Wendy Lockhart, Sarah Piet,

Matthew Thomas Hill, and Sam Gordon, who wants to know, how do you deal knowing what you know

about existence and Christy Stewart wants to know, why does it matter if we exist or not?

Humans are curious. If we're going to try to engage in the dangerous game of coming up with

fundamental human behaviors that are true across cultures, I do think that curiosities are

really good candidate for one. And also more generally, and this is me stealing from my book.

So the ideas that we get from science, the picture of the world that comes with our best scientific

theories, it filters out into the wider culture. Science is not a separate human activity

from the rest of the human world. It is of a peace with the rest of human activity with art

and politics and music and, you know, the social sciences and the physical sciences and biological

sciences, these all form a unified whole. And so the pictures of the world that come from science

not only go out into the other sciences, but out into the wider world, like a really, really simple

and facile and total white dude example. If Copernicus and company had not uncentered the earth

and shown us that no, the earth is not at the center of the universe, it seems hard to imagine

that Charles Darwin or Chuck E.D. to his friends and company would have had the audacity to

suggest that humans are not at the center of biological creation, right? And instead that we're

just another ape, just another organism in a giant tree of organisms. And without

both of those changes in the way that we think about the world, I mean, first of all, you can

probably come up with your own examples here, but without both of those changes, Stanley Kubrick

wouldn't have been able to film 2001, right? All those apes at the beginning and, you know, the,

like, come on, that wouldn't happen. And there's lots of other art and culture and, and just the

important things that have happened because of our scientific theories and vice versa. Yeah.

Samuel Ball wants to know, has the impossible issue of tunneling been solved yet, or are there any

good theories out there? What is tunneling? What is tunneling? So tunneling, so the short answer is

in classical physics, if I put my hand on this table and leave it here, then it will just sort of

stay on top of this table. But in quantum physics, there's a small chance that my hand will suddenly

pass through the table. But it's phenomenally unlikely because my hand is quite large and the

probability of that kind of tunneling has to do with, among other things, the size of the object

involved. For tiny objects, tunneling happens all the time. In fact, if tunneling didn't happen,

the sun would not shine. So we know that tunneling happens. Tunneling is not more strange than the

rest, or unexplained than the rest of quantum physics. So if you can get a good picture of the

world that comes with quantum physics, you get tunneling for free. Oh, I didn't know what tunneling

was until right now. I thought it was maybe something that college kids did a party. It does,

it does kind of sound like that. This next question about something that we keep in our pants

pocket was asked by patrons, Julie Bearer, Will Matlach, Jess, CJ Stewart Hodges, Mike Ratch,

Courtney Markham, Edwin Monroe, Michael Preston, who wanted to know why we should give a rats left

ear about the topic, Philip Wary, and Spencer wants to know, no matter how much I research, I don't

understand quantum computing. Is there an easy way to understand it? Also, will quantum computers

replace all computers? Eventually, like our phones are just supercomputers. Yeah. So I'm gonna take the

second part first. Okay. I don't think that anyone who works seriously in that field thinks that

quantum computers will ultimately replace all computers. Okay. I don't even think that they're

gonna replace all supercomputers. There are things that classical, normal computers can do better

than quantum computers and vice versa. Okay. And I don't think that that's gonna change.

Also, let's explain what a quantum computer is. Also, let's explain what a quantum computer is.

Quantum computer is a computer that harnesses some of the strange and, no, that's not a good way

of saying it, right? Because the usual way that people say it is, oh, quantum computer is a computer

that runs in quantum physics. Everything runs on quantum physics. So all computers run on quantum

physics. Then people say, oh, quantum computer is a computer that uses special properties of

quantum physics to do certain computational tricks. That's not specific enough either because

semiconductors, which are what like the computer in your lap are, and in my pocket, like all

computers are built on basically. Semiconductoring itself is a quantum property. Like you can explain,

you can't explain that without quantum physics. A better definition of a quantum computer is a

computer that uses specific quantum properties like superposition and entanglement to perform certain

computations that normal conventional computers cannot perform as quickly in that way.

So it's using the superposition of, say, positive negative here there as kind of a replacement for

the binary 10010. Yeah. And so it can go much faster because it's at an elemental level.

Sort of. I mean, it can do some things more quickly. Basically, instead of having a bit that's either

one or zero, you can have it in a superposition. And then you can take advantage of some of the wave

properties of matter to to give you a speed up for certain kinds of computational algorithms.

The more specific you get about this, the more wonky and less cool it sounds. It is I assure you very

cool. Okay. Also, if you've been seeing the words quantum supremacy lately, thank Google.

So in late 2019, just a few weeks ago, Google announced that their quantum computer,

which looks to be about the size of a small chandelier that dangles in a cryo chamber colder

than outer space is named Sycamore. Well, the processor at small chip is Sycamore, but it needs all

those kind of sparkly golden wires to function. Anyway, a team out of University of California,

Santa Barbara's labs just published a paper revealing that Sycamore had solved a math problem

in 200 seconds. So where to go Sycamore? Who cares? Well, a lot of people because that same math

problem would be pooped by an existing supercomputer would take years to solve. How many years,

you wonder? 10,000 years. So what would take a supercomputer? 10,000 years to calculate Sycamore

did it in 200 seconds, like three and a half minutes. So quantum computing, it might save us,

it might kill us. Either way, get hype. But so you don't think that it's going to replace all

super computers. I don't think anyone's serious in the field thinks that. I mean, there are people

who know a lot more about quantum computers than I do. My book is, I mentioned quantum computing. I

talk about it briefly. It's not primarily about that. I do touch on it because it's important.

But I have talked with a lot of people who work in that field. I don't think anyone thinks that.

So I almost everyone's wrong. I don't think let's get up. Okay. Jennifer Coil wants to know,

a therapist once suggested to me that one day a physicist will prove the existence of God thoughts.

Get a new therapist. Fire your frigging therapist. Is she on mushrooms? Yes, no. This is a safe space.

You can tell us if you think your therapist is on mushrooms. Yeah, I know.

That's going to be a no from you, dog. Got it. Okay. We'll uncle that word here. Pop it in to say

everyone is entitled to their own spiritual beliefs. Just so long as it's not oppressing or

screwing up other people's lives. But if you're wondering if scientists tend to be atheists

at a higher rate than the general public, that's a yes. Rice University sociologist Dr. Elaine

Howard Ockland had the same question. And in her 2010 paper, science versus religion,

what scientists really think? She crunched the numbers. So only 2% of the general US population

says, I don't believe in God. But over a third of what she describes as elite scientists are atheists.

But Ockland continues 22% of the scientists who identified themselves as spiritual also described

themselves as atheists. So wait, huh? What is a spiritual atheist? Dr. Ockland interviewed

a one biologist who described spirituality this way said that feeling you get by the seashore

looking over the endless expanse of water or the feeling you get considering the age of all

things in existence and how long it could go on. Sort of an awe at the totality of things. If

that's what spirituality is, then I get it. So the biologist. So while the narrative of what's

controlling our existence, is it ascension? Shadow, we figure in a cloud watching over us,

getting pissed when we lie? Or is it chaos mixed with chance mixed with logic and a heavy proportion

of mystery? Those sources made change. They might be different for each individual. But in the end,

perhaps what matters most is the awe that keeps you inspired and the respect that you show to the

fellow lumps of molecules with whom you share the universe. Or maybe it's all a video game.

Are we real? Probably, but nobody knows. And that is why quantum ontology is cool.

Favorite uncertainty principle joke? Yes. Hi, Megan. So the uncertainty principle was drafted by

German physicist Werner Heisenberg. And yes, Breaking Bad's Walter White took his alter ego name

after this very renowned physicist, who Adam explains in his book, had a deep loyalty to Germany

and was the head of its World War II nuclear program. Gross. Anyway, the uncertainty principle theorizes

that when it comes to a particle, its momentum and location cannot be known at the same time.

And Adam remains on the spot for a good uncertainty principle joke per listener, Julie Bear.

Um, Julie Bear wants to know favorite uncertainty principle joke.

Yeah, I mean, God, they're all just flying out of my head right now except for the most boring one.

The most, the most boring one is, this is, I, yeah, I apologize to physicists who are listening,

you've all heard this before. Um, and probably the person who has this, um, uh,

cop pulls Heisenberg over for speeding and says, you know, sir, do you know how fast you were

going? And he says, no, but I know exactly where I am. Amazing. Yeah.

Isabel B. Holper wants to know which movie your TV show gets the best?

Ooh, like just quantum, general, which movie your TV show gets it best?

How does quantum leap do? Uh, oh man, quantum leap. Uh, quantum leap is almost nothing to do with

quantum physics, but I watch that show so much growing up. Um, yeah, it was good.

Wow. What about what the belief do we know, Julie?

Hope it wants to know. Are people affecting the world of reality that they see?

We betcha they are. What is reality? What is reality? Have you ever thought about what thoughts

are made up? It is so mysterious the cat explainer. Oh really? Uh, what the belief do we know is, um,

okay, so take it out of what computer you've got it input on like a thumb drive that you don't care

about, set it on fire, bury it. What the belief do we know is wrong about everything and the people

who made it are malicious. They tricked a friend of mine who is in that movie. They tricked him

into participating and then they misleadingly edited his contributions to make it sound like

he supported their crazy stuff. Oh no. Also, they are literally a cult. Oh no. Okay, so you heard

it here first. Okay, this next one is about string theory and as patron Nick Rinders inquires,

string theory, come on. What the fuck? That's an excellent question. I will attempt to summarize it

in the smallest jankiest nutshell I can. String theory is that particles are actually teeny tiny tiny tiny

strings, which means that there could be more dimensions and also string theory may unify Einstein's

theory of relativity about gravity with the other quantum physics that just do not comply. In his

book, Adam Wright's quote, string theory doesn't describe a single universe, but instead describes

a string landscape, a phenomenally huge number of possible universes 10 to the 500th power or more

quote. So what is happening in all those universes? Is my dog there? Am I still wearing this yellow

sweater? And does string theory finally reconcile the other theories that don't mesh together?

Is string theory the dongle that all of science is waiting for? Kitty Halverson also asked about it

as did. Graham Titus all wants to know string theory, flimflam or science? Sure seems like science.

Okay. I manage a wants to know does quantum physics have anything to do with our consciousness?

Yeah. Because it has something to do with everything. Yeah, so so so yeah on the one hand,

sure, right? So putting my cards on the table, I see no reason to think that consciousness is not

something that arises purely out of the behavior of neurons in our brain. Okay. I think there's a lot

of good evidence for that. Our neurons are made of subatomic particles. Those subatomic particles

are governed by quantum physics. So in one sense, yes. But there's often another sense that people

have in mind when they ask this question. Okay, real quick. Remember Schrodinger's cat?

So if you observe or measure it, it flips to one position. Minio or oh no.

But what's measurement, right? What counts as measurement? Some people will say things like, well,

maybe consciousness counts as measurement. Maybe it's when a conscious being interacts with a

thing. Maybe that's what measurement is in quantum physics. A couple of things. First of all,

that still leaves you with this problem of, okay, but does that mean that the wave function of

the universe was waiting for a conscious being to come along? Also, what is conscious? What do you

mean by consciousness? What counts as conscious? You still have that problem. Yeah. It really seems

like a very human-centric view. And I am always really wary of human-centric views. There is a mystery

in human consciousness, right? Or there seems to be one. Like, you know, what is human consciousness?

Where does it come from? Sure. You can have different views on how consciousness works,

and what it is. And like, they're whether or not there's even a mystery there. But I do not see

a compelling reason to invoke consciousness in quantum physics, given that there are alternatives.

And I do not see why we would say that it is more related to quantum physics than to any other,

issues in physics. Like, I don't think that consciousness plays a more special role in quantum physics

than it does in any other area of physics. The question of consciousness? Sure. Whatever. That's a good

question. We can have interesting conversations about it, but I don't see it as related to these

questions about quantum physics. Catherine W asked Adam, what does an average day of your life look

like? So as an author, he took me through his process of writing the book, which is so, so, so

helpful, no matter what you're working on. And earlier off, Mike, he had mentioned that he has ADHD.

You can see the molecular neurobiology episode with Dr. Crystal Delworth, where we touch on that.

And so these are his secret tips on how he accomplished these huge goals. This is earnestly

life-changing. I love this. What was the process of writing the book like? Ah, so first it was

Object Terror after I got the contract because I, you know, like after I finished partying, right?

I was, I realized I was on the hook for 90,000 words. And I'd never published anything longer than

about 3,000. So that was completely fucking terrifying. I had a history earlier on in my career of

having difficulty getting work done and getting it done on time or getting it finished.

And I had, by that point, you know, moved past that. I finished my, my degree and whatnot,

but I still have this mental image of myself as someone who had difficulty getting work done on time.

And so it was really extra scared. But I decided, okay, the only way that I'm going to get through

this is if I plan it and then just only pay attention to whatever's in front of me because

I can't write 90,000 words, but I can write 600 words a day. And if I do that for a while,

eventually I'll have 90,000 words. So, so yeah, so I outlined it and I went over the outline with

my publisher and they liked the outline. Of course, it changed, right? No, no plans to

write contact with the editor. So for each chapter, I'd outline the chapter. And then I'd just

sort of work through the outline and write a really shitty first draft and try to do 600 words

a day. And what I do is I would do 50 minutes on and 10 minutes off. And in the 10 minutes off,

I wouldn't look at anything with a screen. And I wouldn't read any nonfiction. I would read exclusively

novels and that really helped my brain work because I found that if I didn't read it all,

I couldn't write because if there's nothing going in, nothing's going to come out. So I,

I would write 600 words a day and then get this shitty first draft done and then walk away from

it and then come back and clean it up and fill in all of the blank spots where I had, you know,

where I knew I had a quote, but I had to find the quote and stuff like that and things would change.

And then eventually I'd have a chapter draft that I wasn't embarrassed about and then I'd

send it to my editor and move on to the next one. It was terrifying. There was a lot of research

involved. There was a lot of running around and interviewing people like a lot of people. If you look,

if you look in the references there, the very beginning of the references of the book has the

list of interviews I conducted, I think it's like 42 interviews or something like that, most of

which were in person. Isn't 42, though, the answer to the universe? It is. I don't know if it's

actually 42. I know I know that it's like it's somewhere around 40. Okay. Okay. At this point in

the interview, anotherologist had stopped into record and I'm going to make you wait to find out

who it was, but we counted his list of interviews in the back of his book and it's like, I love

the hitchhikers guy. It's 42. It's 42. Yeah. So yes, it was indeed 42 interviews.

The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is

42. For more on why you can see the hitchhikers guide to Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Oh my god,

Adams. Again, Adams is anything fucking real? But yes, Adam Becker says, don't be afraid to

start something. Start writing. Just jump in. Shitty drafts are your BFF. Yeah. Shitty drafts are

really important. I also had I had like a spare parts bin where if I had like one of my one of

my darlings that I couldn't kill, like a sentence that I didn't want to get rid of, but it didn't

fit. I put it in there and tell myself, like I lied to myself and tell myself that I come back.

It never came back. But more generally, like I spent a lot of time thinking about narrative

structure. Like my overall approach was this is a book about really abstract ideas.

People care about ideas, but they generally care more about people than they care about ideas.

And I wanted to make it compelling. I wanted to see if I could write a book about some of the most

abstract and strange ideas in physics or in all of science that was difficult to put down.

And so I thought, okay, the way to do that is to wrap these ideas up in people and stories about

people. So then it was a question of, okay, how do I build a narrative arc that will give me good

excuses along the way to explain me ideas and introduce the new characters that are that are

going to come into the story. And that was a real learning process for me. And I spent a lot of

time, like watching YouTube videos about film editing to learn, like what narrative structure

looked like in other forms of stories. Also, Adam stuck to another edict to make a book about

quantum ontology accessible. Oh, and no math. That was the rule. No math. No math in the book.

No math. No math. There is there is one equation in the book. Okay. And I didn't want to have any

math in the book. So I wrote it out in words. The equation was two times three equals three times two.

That's it. And that's it. Yeah. And what's the shittiest thing about quantum ontology? Is it answering

those maybe religious questions or two philosophical or or two loaded questions or what's the

shittiest thing? The shittiest thing is definitely dealing with physicists who think that this was

all resolved 90 years ago. And we should just shut up and calculate. There are so many of them.

They are wrong. There are so many good arguments about why they're wrong and why these questions

are interesting. And they're still out there. And and it's just kind of astonishing. But it is

getting better. And I really think that, you know, as as like a new generation comes into physics,

we will see more and more acceptance of these questions as legitimate areas of scientific inquiry.

No. What's the best thing about quantum ontology? What do you love the most about it? You get to

ask the biggest questions. I know. Right? Like these are the these are the biggest questions. Like

I thought you meant me right now. Oh no. No. Well, you totally do. That's the best part about your

job. Best part about thinking about quantum ontology is you get to ask questions like what is real?

Like what's going on? And other Marvin Gaye songs, you get to ask these really deep questions

about the world. You get to think about these wonderful things. And it's like chemists have really

good demos, right? They get to blow things up and you know put one liquid into another liquid

and suddenly it's foaming everywhere and stuff like that. And because for some reason, John,

you're a 42 year old man who needs his attention sustained with tricks. Here's some fucking

Mentos in the bottom of Diet Crew. And like biology, you get like creepy crawly things and like

cute baby chickens and things like that. Like there's all sorts of fun stuff. Physics doesn't have

you know, cute baby chicks. I mean, you can have cool explosions, but like chemistry really is

really, really sweet for that kind of thing. But physics does have the truly, you know,

pervasive on its side, right? Like if you want me to talk about some of these questions in the

foundations of quantum physics, I can point to literally any object and say, look, let's talk about

the constituents of that object. Let's talk about why that chair is solid. Let's talk about why

this ring on my finger is yellowish instead of silvery, right? All of these things come back to

quantum physics and thus ultimately to foundations of quantum physics. And it's just amazing. Like

it goes after a lot of the reasons why I wanted to go into science in the first place.

So it's everything in its everywhere and we don't understand it. Yeah. It's let it cost out.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm more confused about my existence.

Good. That means I did my job. Okay. There's a question mark at the end of the title of my book,

right? I love it. Thank you so much for doing this. Absolutely. This is so much fun. Thank you

for doing this with me. You're my favorite quantum ontologist. Oh, thank you.

So remember, ask smart people the big questions, even if it's about the littlest stuff,

because how else in the world would you discover that there was another you eating pufferfish

and cutting bangs and texting your crush? Oh, also, if you're jealous of that person,

then go do those things yourself, except maybe the poisonous puzzle. That means fish, whatever.

So more links are up in the show notes and up at alleyward.com slash allergies slash quantum ontology.

And you can get merch through that site or at oligiesmerch.com. And be sure to follow Dr. Adam Becker

on Blue Sky at Adam Becker and on Instagram at freelance Astro. And once again, get his book,

What Is Real or His New One, more everything forever about AI overlords. And for shorter

kid-friendly episodes, we have small energies. They're in their own feed wherever you get podcasts.

You can tell your friends or students. Also, updates, editors. Thank you, Jake Chafee,

and Mercedes-Mateland of mainland audio for working on this updated one as well as Susan Hale,

who is our managing director. And of course, Noel Delworth is our scheduling producer.

And Aaron Talbert for admitting the wonderful Facebook group into Jared Slaper of Mind Jam Media

for Assistant Editing. And of course, to the Wizard of A, Steven Ray Morris, who edits all these

pieces together and also hosts the Kitty Pod, the Perkast, and the Dino-centric Seed Jurassic Right,

and the theme song was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. Thank you also to Emily White

and everyone in the transcribers group, making transcriptions available at alleyward.com slash

allergies dash extras. I'll link it in the show notes. Now, if you stick around to the end of the

episode, I'll tell you a secret. This week, my friend Simone Yatch was in town, and I was telling her

that I wish there was a word for when you try to improve something, but you make it way shittier.

Essentially, a word for one of those things where you want to make something good, and somehow it

would have been so much better if you had just not. In the etymology episode, I was talking to

Helen Salzman, and I pitched maybe a bon mall, like French for good bad, or Greek, like

Voivlap. Anyway, I told Simone, I wish there was a word, and she said, there is, in Swedish,

it's called a bear favor, and it's from a fable about a bear trying to help someone by

chewing away a fly with a boulder on their face and kills them. So, a bear favor. Y'all, there's

a word for it. I'm thrilled. It's very exciting. Okay, goodbye.

Yeah, hello. So, that'll be about as much fun as a lecture on ontological empiricism.