She Says Spacetime Points Are Just Where Fields Meet

0:00Physical space time is really where it feels meat. There are fields everywhere that's marvelous and also a bit scary, maybe. Why is it scary? This is Lucretia Rivera, a physicist at the Polytechnic University of Turin. She's rewriting quantum mechanics in bundle differential geometry, where the wave function becomes something called a cosyclic object. The time, tea, and the space acts the variables disappear from the picture. With Jordan François, she's developing the dressing field method. What it does is pull out what's physical without fixing a gauge. These are cutting edge techniques. And don't worry if you don't follow all the technicalities. The point isn't to drink from the fire holes, is to just get wet. I tend to have a geometric mind, maybe it's part of just my personality. On this channel, I, Kurt J. Mungel, interview researchers regarding their theories of reality with rigor and technical depth. Today, Lucretia explains what relationalism is and how you can't make sense of physics unless you realize that the field co-defined one another

1:02and how this upends our traditional view of space time. The manifold is not there anymore. Lucretia, what is the say to about physics? How did you get started in it? Yeah, well, I'm a curious person. And I like problem solving. So I eat one of my skin. I like solving problem, understanding things. And I'm very, very curious. So everything starts from there, actually, because physics is precisely the way in which I get to do this. I had a certain point in my life, several options. I was interested in many disciplines, but then I went for physics. And in fact, I started, for curiosity, I started with my bachelor and master degree in string theory. Precisely because for me, at least to me, that was entirely new. I did just one course in string theory. So that was entirely new for me, and I was very curious about it.

2:04And after that, I did move on to supergravity with my PhD. And there also, it was, again, pushed by curiosity to learn new things and therefore to experiment theoretically, of course, but with a new series. And there, I did supergravity in a geometric way. It is called the geometric approach to supergravity in super space. And this was so because I tend to have a geometric mindset. And so it was very nice to me to get to know supergravity with this approach. And then I did gravity alternative series of gravity, gauge field theory. And finally, my current research, finite, I'm developing now. That is the dressing film method. Oh, great. You mentioned you have various curiosities. So what else besides physics? Well, precisely because of the fact that you get to try to understand how natural works,

3:04to get to understand something about reality. And so that's what's different. I was also intrigued by, for instance, philosophy, in particular, philosophy of physics. And then also by other disciplines like arts and things like that. But then physics won because it's there that you really have to push yourself, to ask yourself questions, possibly the right questions, which is key. And to try to understand how the world works. At the beginning, I wasn't sure if experimental physics or theoretical physics just came to me that choice as the best for me that I could figure it in that moment. But after a course, and it was an analytic mechanics, I said, and I saw for the first time Einstein's equations also the Einstein notation for a generative essay, okay, no, I want to do theoretical physics. So because, yeah, yes. You mentioned that you have a geometric mindset. What's the difference between a geometric mindset and a visual one?

4:09That's a hard question because I tend to inflate a bit of the tool, maybe because I'm thinking more of a differential geometric mind, which, and differential geometry, as also, at least to me, I don't know if it is because of my mindset, but I think it tends to be very visual also. I think of differential geometry, differential geometry of fiber space. And so you have to, so you have a geometric properties, is a mathematics, is a size or mathematics in which you think with, you deal with the geometry, but also it's very visual. So all the objects that play, the mathematics that play, you get to visualize it somehow. And so that's what, when I said geometric mind, I mean, also when I have to think of physics in mathematical terms, so in the language of physics that is indeed mathematics. And when I do computation, when I have to visualize what's happening somehow, of course,

5:12there are things that we cannot truly visualize, but we can have the kids visualize in somehow and that's what I mean. I see. Okay. And for the people who are listening, there are going to be visuals, speaking of visuals, there are going to be various visuals throughout, maybe there were already. So watch on YouTube or the video version of Spotify in case you're interested. Okay. Now we're going to get to the development of this dressing field method, along with your collaborators, but first, what motivated it? Yeah, indeed. Well, first of all, I think that this method that I'm now developing and applying in various areas of physics, I find this very exciting because at the beginning, when you start your study, the PhD student, maybe you think, what if there is something in all these, there are a lot of theories, bas-baray, actually, of the theoretical scenarios. And what if there is something that is ubiquitous? It appears here and there, but it's also hidden, so to be discovered, something important,

6:13there that therefore unifies a common thread in all of these, and needs to be discovered and used, therefore, because if it is, if it starts appearing everywhere, it means somehow that it is important and has to be used. And it just so happened that the dressing field method is such a thing. It is a tool, a mathematical tool. And what motivates it is the core of general relativistic gauge fields theory, modern, generative, st. gauge fields theory, which is the presence of local symmetries. And so with general relativistic gauge fields theory, I mean general relativistic framework, for instance, general relativity is a model of such a framework. And then we have gauge fields theory, for instance, the standard model, electromagnetism, are models within this framework. And together we may sink a bit, at least the classic, and then maybe sink you also, quantization in a second moment, of general relativistic gauge field theory. And there we have the presence of local symmetries, that is gauge symmetries, so internal symmetries

7:16for gauge field theory. And the different physics, there are space and symmetries in general relativity. And it is a common understanding that the physics of the theory is in the invariant content of the theory. And the dressing field method does precisely this. It allows you to extract in a systematic way the invariant content of a theory, would it be general relativistic gauge field theory? Technically this is how to say the conditional statement in the sense that if you manage to find a dressing field in the pool of your field, so it is a field that has to transform in a certain way, and gauge any form of his transformation, then you will manage to build composite variables that are automatically invariant. And that's a represent, therefore, the physics. There are also, we may think of them as complete observables, DRAC observables.

8:16And so this is very nice. It appears as a tool. It works especially well. It is most powerful, I would say, in a bundle differential geometry, and field space, that is the scenario, the mathematical scenario of modern fields here, I would say, is field space and possibly field spaces are fiber bundle. But it can also be applied just field theory, so a different level of abstractions. And it works both non perturbatively, so it is intrinsically non perturbatively. And it unifies also several notions that appear in the literature that seem apparently unrelated. That are, for instance, the Stucleberg field and Stucleberg massode. So this is similar formally to the dressing field method, but conceptually it implements a symmetry, while the dressing field method reduces it. Hedge modes, quantum reference frame, scalar coordinate situation.

9:19I mean, there are a lot of things in which things like dressing appear. And in fact, we then discovered applying the dressing field method that is this precisely the case. And most importantly, I would say conceptually, it has a nice natural relational interpretation. So not only comes with a powerful technical tool to achieve invariance, but also it has this nice relational interpretation. And with relationality here, I mean the fact that there is no fixed background structure. And that feels the field variables co-defined each other. And therefore, we struck this relational network. So in the end, physical space time is really where it feels meet. It's defined with the point coincidence and values of field. And so this is very nice, I think, because relationality is the key insight of a generality of the stick physics. So it's very nice to have a tool that makes the rationality manifest.

10:23Right. You have a visual about point coincidence. And you're talking about what relationality is. I think you created this. It has some music. It says physics and reality. Yes. And then you have the tablecloth. Ah, yes. OK, I see. OK. This was in a, yeah, it was a derivative talk. Indeed, and it was to explain. Yeah, it was a major to try to explain the formal physics in particular. And the idea was, yes, that you have, you may think, of the manifold of the differential geometric manifold as the table. And then these tablecloths as the metric field. And then things over the table as the other fields, matter fields, electromagnetic field, and so on. And then you drag, with a digital morphism, you drag the fields over the manifold. And so there was this dragging of the close over the manifold. And you see that object essentially what happens in the visual is that objects change position

11:25with respect to where they were before. And so one may ask what is physical. And actually physical is the relation between the object, the relation between the object and the close. And the table, the table disappear. And from the physical picture. So this was a table theory, if I remember well in those slides, but it was just to explain something that is actually deeper. And this would say the dialectic between the whole and point of coincidence argument by Einstein. And that's the way in which a radiationality emerged in general, at theistic physics. And this can also be extended actually then to gauge field theory, to internal symmetries and to gauge, or into general TV stage fields here. So to the generalized point coincidence argument, that is how a relationality manifests itself. And more physically in field theory, what happens is that you may think of having these the manifold and then fields on it.

12:27And so both the manifold and fields are subject to the action of different morphisms, of the different morphism groups. So the manifold transform and the fields are dragged over the manifold. But then what happens is that you may think of a diffure morphism that is the identity everywhere, but in a hole where it has support. So there it is different from the identity. And so you will have some field equation in your theory. You will have that if you have two solutions that are diffure morphic one another, then they will be the same outside the hole, but they will be different inside the hole. And but the theory at the same time is covariant, that the equations are covariant under the form of phisms. And so it will appear that the theory cannot distinguish, cannot truly tell you what is physical. There will be a sort of indeterminism of ill-defined, cushy problem technically we would say.

13:28And so at the beginning, as time was even dropping to reply to this saying, okay, we will therefore have to drop the general covariance principle as a principle because we cannot have a determinism and some physics. But then the reply came with the point coincidence argument, or I'm saying was then later named this way, that tells us that actually what is physical is this point coincidental value of fields. So it is something it is imbiant can be dragged along, but it does not transform under the form of phisms. And therefore, in this sense, a space time, physical space time is made out of field on field to quote or so rebellion, I think. And the manifold, just it is there is a mathematical object, but it disappears from the physical picture, it is just as scaffold that you see, the constructives you in, and then disappears.

14:29This is probably a great point to talk about the difference between relativity and then relationalism. They sound the same. In fact, there is even relativism, which is more philosophical has to do with truth and so forth, but here we are talking about relativity and then relationalism. Yeah, yeah, I see. That is a good point indeed. Because surely there are distinct things, there are different, but there are also related, at least there is some logic path that you can follow to get from relativity to relationality. So we may think indeed of three kinds of relativity. So we have Galilean relativity, spatial relativity and general relativity. And the first two, so Galilean relativity, spatial relativity are more similar because they both deal with the relativity of observers, with inertia friends and so on.

15:33But what they have in common, especially is the fact that they are both based on rigid, on global symmetry groups. While we've general relativity, there is the big change because there we have low cultural transformation, we have different horizons. And in particular, there we have covariance under the thermophyson. You may think there is this view of the thermophysom as passive transformations, that is just therefore general coordinate transformation. And we have general coordinate in variance and differential geometric settings and so on. So that is okay. But what's more subtle is the active view of the thermophyson. So here we have the thermophyson, the dress field, transformed the manifold. We have covariance under active deformophysons and that's what ignits the logic of the whole and then point coincidence argument and therefore ends up with relationality. So there are distinct concepts, relativity and relationality, but from general relativity

16:36and so the key insights from general relativity physics is rationality, I would say. Does the relationality of the dressing field method depend on the whole argument or does the whole argument just motivate relationality? Okay. The fact is that the dressing field method is the technical way of implementing the point coincidence argument. That's key actually. It's very important what you raised here because you may also just start with the point coincidence argument, philosophically conceptually. So you will not have to raise the whole argument as a problem in principle if you start with the solution. So the key insights of GR is actually the point coincidence argument and relationality. And what does the dressing field method is that it implements it technically, physically. And in the end, you have, we may say that you have two dual pictures.

17:37One is the bare theory, so the standard theory, the bare theory, which has manifest covariance and it is tacitly relational because of the presence of local symmetry and covariance under this local symmetries. And on the other hand, we have the dual description, which is the dress description, in which we have a manifest in variance and explicit relationality. And so I think this is particularly powerful because it's a duality, but from other dualities, like holography, ADSTFT, duality, you have two dual descriptions. And something is better read in one of them. It's easier to achieve. And for that's surely the case with the dressing field method for achieving an invariant description to achieve the physical degrees of freedom, variables, observables of a theory and so hopefully also to their quantization.

18:37Okay, so let's explain what gauge fixing is. Maybe the difference between gauge fixing and a gauge redundancy or gauge symmetry versus gauge redundancy. But let's do so first with an analogy for those people who are unfamiliar and then you could talk about it in more technical terms. So let's say one example may be, I was going to say you have a salad, but then there's salad dressing. So that's a big confusion. Yeah, okay. Let's say I have macaroni and cheese. It's something I make. Now I know you're Italian and the boy I make macaroni and cheese maybe. Okay, not the way you throw up. Okay, let's eat that. Okay, so I have sodium citrate. I have this something called sodium citrate, which allows you to emulsify the macaroni cheese. So sodium citrate, cheese, macaroni and then milk. Okay, let's say those are foreign ingredients. You have a recipe that you make macaroni and cheese with. And in physics, sometimes our observable may depend on the macaroni and cheese. And often the way we do this is we integrate over all possible recipes and then someone says, whoa, hold on, that's too many. What matters is the ratio between the milk and the cheese and so forth.

19:40So you pick one. You say, let's gauge fix. Let's just choose our milk to be 500 milliliters and then we get one recipe and then we get something that's finite in the end. Something like gauge fixing there. Now the rhyme there people may hear is, well, the wave function is a ray and so the ray is what is it? You're quotient out by U1. You're quotient out by a phase. And then that gives you something that's true. Okay, you know, but I see what she really is just that it's really hard to make this work in a sense because surely like if you, I mean, you have to think of it as a redundancy somehow. You have in mind a redundancy in the description. And so you are associating gauge symmetry with a redundancy. It's true that some people think of it in this way, but it's not where I stand. So it's if we have to compare this to our recipe is a bit more complicated because it's

20:41like having many ingredients to do our recipe. And then possibly also another important thing is not to introduce further ingredients from the outside. So ad hoc ingredients that would be ad hoc dressing fields from the outside otherwise the relational description, the relational recipe would be spoiled. So you have to pick from the from your ingredients and try to arrange them in such a way that in the end what you have is a complete dish, a complete meal. So it would be more of this kind. And to picture a gauge of fix here, it's like, I don't know. It may be like saying that you just use some of them, but there is not truly a perfect way of using them in such a way to make a complete dish. I don't know if it can make sense or not.

21:43No, I don't. We're listening on that way. Let's play that. Well, but okay, I cannot but at a certain point be a bit more competing in the physical sense. But yeah, in the sense that we can differentiate these into two topics, I would say. So one is the factor is related to redundancy. And the fact that I don't truly think that gauge symmetry is just a redundancy. It is a symmetry. And therefore, the gauge, we have the gauge principle that is telling how to do it. That's how to build our theories. And it allows us also to discover particles. We have the principle of general covariance for the formal fism. So this is the preamble to relationality. Because of covariance of your field equations under those symmetries, then you will have to come to the conclusion that rationality is there.

22:45It is tacit, but so it is fundamental in this sense. Theories of everything is brought to you by mod. That prescribes a once or twice daily, medallinal drink that can keep you energized and alert throughout the day. Here's the mechanism. Caffeine temporarily blocks something called adenosine. That's a chemical that makes you feel tired. Adenosine keeps building up and up and up in your brain so that when the caffeine wears off, all that adenosine comes crashing at once. Medallinal works differently than caffeine. It engages several brain pathways such as dopamine, neuroaprenefranhystamine, anorexin, for steady energy and alertness across 10 to 12 hours. Medallinal was invented in the 1970s and it's been used since by the highest performers on and off the planet. Soldiers and pilots use it as well as astronauts aboard the space station where full concentration is required. It's now available at modmod.com to qualifying patients. Visit mod.com. That's mod.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping

23:51with the promo code T-O-E. That's promo code TOE at mod.com. See their website for important safety information and we thank mod for sponsoring the pod. We can build an AI that holds a conversation. Yet your watch, your phone, your headphones, your e-reader, they all take four different cables. Ridge solved that. Their five-in-one travel power bank has cables built in. The one device charges your phone, your watch, your headphones, all at once and nothing else goes in the bag. In fact my sister-in-law just came over and she has the old iPhone and we all have USB C's so we couldn't charge it and then I remembered, ah, yes I have Ridge. Ridge saved my sister-in-law. It has max save wireless, it charges Apple Watch, it has lighting cables, USB C, all-in-one unit, 20 watts. So your phone charges as fast as it can and 10,000 milliamp hours, which is roughly three full phone charges. I've had the mat all of one since July. There's free shipping, a 99 day risk-free trial and a lifetime warranty.

24:54One thing to pack, five ways to power. You can find Ridge's power bank at Best Buy or what you should do is get 10% off at Ridge.com with the code KurtCURT at checkout. That supports us, that gets you 10% off and cuts out the middle name. Just head to Ridge.com, use code KurtCURT and you're all set. After your purchase to ask you where you heard about them, please support our show, tell them, hey KurtCURT, theories of everything sent you. Take care. So there are two kinds of relationalism, maybe at least two kinds, maybe there are more, but one was by Roveli and say 1991 or so, which is a classical kind. And then another is the more quantum kind from a 1996 Roveli as well. Which one is yours? Yeah, well, surely I would say the classical one. As we were discussing before, I mean, it is about a generative VCKG field theory and it's the key insights of generative VCKG physics. So the one that you achieve with the dressing field method is that one.

25:58But also regarding the relational quantum mechanics of Roveli, it is not super clear to me the way in which the classical relationalism relates to its quantum mechanics version. At least to me, then, really try to explain this, but to me, it's not very clear. And I think it's a kind of different, but what's nice is that with the dressing field method, we manage to expose the logic that you have at the classical level, so relationalism is there to the quantum mechanical framework in different ways. So it depends on the approach that you are dealing with to describe your quantum theory, which quantum theory you are describing to or model better. But and therefore, technically, we reach the insights of the point coincidence argument there, but technically and the relational reading that corresponds in the end to the one

27:00by Roveli. And so I think that this is very nice. And for instance, we did it in a work where we were dealing with a system of and particles, point like particles, both classically and at the quantum level. And we did it in a bando geometric setup, which is not necessary for this kind of system, but it was nice to introduce what we call a configuration space-time bando. So it was powerful geometrically, unnecessary but powerful. And so we derived like the classical dynamics and then the Schrodinger equation, the wave function geometrically in this formalism, and then the dress, the Schrodinger equation, and the dress, the wave function. And that was nice because the reading of it, so the of the dress theory, was telling us that there is no meaningful way of describing a quantum state to a particle, to a subsistence, a system of this system on its own, alone. It does not really make sense.

28:01It's itself as a classical, but the quantum network reveals in the moment in which it is put in relation with the rest of the subsystem. So each particle, position in that case, acts as a reference frame. And it can, each particle can witness the quantum dynamics and it is assigned a quantum state with respect to the rest of the system. So that's how our relation are reading, which I think it's pretty much aligned with Robert II quantum mechanics, the interpretation is that. And we also have, we have also introduced, it comes naturally actually with the dress simple method, a way to switch among different reference systems. So in this case, change particle position to describe and to witness the quantum dynamics. And these are called, we call them transformation of the second kind, it's just how we call that, we name them in, in this is just a way of changing dressing field, which in this

29:04case for this system means change frame, change reference frame to describe the system. Ah, okay, so if any particles position can be a reference frame, serve as a reference frame, then how does the audience picture what a measurement is? Okay, this is a good question and it's actually hard question also in the sense that measurement is next level. So this is like a physical frame covariance, which is kind of a law of nature. So it's crucial and the fact that we found it in our nice geometric way is good. But the problem of measurement is more related to the interpretation of quantum mechanics is more complicated. So I don't have a need to reply regarding this, but what I may say is that we may think what a measurement is in quantum mechanics. So what you have is that you have some wave functions, some state that is acted upon by

30:05some operator and the operator is unobservable, something that interrogates the state, the wave function. And then you get some result from this. And the operators have a spectrum that is a set of possible outcome and that's how measurement work in standard quantum mechanics. When you think of the dress theory, you will have the same situation, but your wave function or your state, both your state and your operators will be dressed now. And this is how in the dress implement, you have this explicit relationality. So it really explains how relationality manifests at the quantum level. So in the end, you will have those dressed the state and observables and you will get some result. But then you may have another dressing field. So another, in this case, when we were talking about the particles, so you may think of having another particle in another position.

31:07And so you use it as reference frame now. And so you will have to dress the theory with respect to that. And you will get another dress state, another dress wave function, other dress operators. And so you will get maybe a different outcome indeed. But what's important is that you will have also a map to understand how to relate those two, the two relational descriptions. And these are indeed, by physical frame covariance. And then you may have also, you may think also, maybe a third part of the, of the C-sector subsistence, like in Wigner's friend, like a third particle that we nested the quantum dynamics. And so you will have to dress with respect to it, the dynamics of the others and so on. But there always would be a map to change frame, a way to change frame and to relate those relational descriptions. For the researchers watching or listening, what would you say is the dressing field method

32:08doing? Converting what to what? Or is that the wrong way of thinking about it? Like is it converting gauge variant quantities to gauge invariant quantities? Or like what is it doing? Yeah, it's not truly converting, I would say. Because when the dressing field, to be a dressing-finite task, to be, to transform in a certain way, a field, possibly as I was mentioning before, to be picked from the fields that you have a tiered disposal, because that's where you will have a nice relational reading. So it has to be gauge variant, it has to transform, to transform the gauge transformation and the formal fissons. And then you will have a nice prescription, that is a rule of thumb. You just replace the gauge, the way in which the other fields transform, you replace the parameter with the dressing. This is technical, but essentially you would build composite fields out of the field content of your theory in such a way that the result is composite and it is gauge invariant. So there will be, you kind of promote some of your fields if you can, so if you find them

33:13to dress in field, but it's just the way in which they transform it, we'll tell you if they are not. And then you will build a composite variables that are complete observables, that are automatically invariant. In the moment in which you find a dressing field in your theory, you will just dress or the rest and it comes naturally or the rest of the construction. Okay, just dress the rest. It is, yeah, it is not truly converting. Those, I mean, the bare objects, the bare fields that will be still gauge by and transform on the different fissons and the gauge and so on. But the composite objects are quick questions. So my understanding is singer and gribot. Ah, yes. They showed that there's no global section that you can take off connections for you have to module the gauge group when the gauge group is non-communative, I believe. Anyhow, the dressing fields, do they share the same obstruction? Okay. Maybe we can, we may think of what are gribos and gribos ambiguity, gribos singer obstruction

34:21and where they appear, first of all. And then I can tell you already that I don't have also a definite reply here. It's something that we think it were seen this way, but we are still working on these two. But what happens, and this is also to maybe discuss the difference between gauge fixing and dressing because gribos obstruction are something that appear when you gauge fix. So why you gauge fix? Because you have those gauge symmetries and you would want to have technically just a well-defined solution to your unique solution to your field equations to have a well-defined solution because you have problems. And then you fix in one way or another there are more sophisticated techniques like bare-seagage fixing to do so, but then you try to fix the symmetry to constrain the fields. And we may think of these, I have also a nice visual for this. You may think of like modern field theory and is done in field space. And you may think of field space because you have the action of gauge and ephemeral fission

35:25as a structural group of principle bound. So an infinite dimensional bundle that is field space, in which each pointer is a set of fields. You may have the electromagnetic fields, the electromagnetic field, the metric, matter fields and so on. And so when you gauge fix, you select as lies in this bundle. So you have that this bundle is fibered into orbits and you are intersecting the orbits with this gauge fixing. And it's like also technically it's what is the image of a section. So from the base space of the bundle to the fibered space to this fiber bundle. And so this is a constraint slice gauge fixing. And gribos, obstruction are the fact that there is, it is said that it is and it is proved actually that there is no such a global section. So it is, in other words, it does not exist a perfect gauge fixing. And so now how this differs from the dressing film method, the dressing film method and

36:31the dressing film in particular is a realization of a projection of from the bundle to the model space. So it actually realizes a coordinateization of the model space where we were physical degrees of freedom live actually. So it is a space that you cannot truly access but with the dressing you build a coordinateization of this space. And so you are not anymore in the space that you would end up with with a gauge fixing. You are in a different space now, which is supposed to describe the physical degrees of freedom. And so in this sense you may circumvent gribov ambiguities, gribov obstructions. You are not truly solving the problem, not because it's not the problem. The problem doesn't arrive to rise to begin with. Yeah, it does not rise. Yeah, exactly. You may maybe have difficulties in finding such a dress, a well-defined dressing film, a global dressing or maybe, like for instance, since it has to be picked from the fillet

37:32shirt, this puzzle, you may say, but what if it has to be filled upon? So what if a field is zero somewhere then the dressing is singular there, how it can be well-defined, but actually for instance, in physically real situation, we don't truly have the fillet zero. So this is just to say that it might be a way to circumvent gribov obstructions, but not to solve the problem. Yeah. Yes, okay. Now, if the dressing brings you to a different space, then do you have a different sort of quantization there, like how there's geometric quantization, is there a dressing quantization or something else? That would be what we make all the relational quantization, what we are calling relational quantization, invariant quantization. Right, right. And I mean, the tools and disposal, it depends on what you are dealing with. But for instance, in field theory, what we are now, what we have done and we are now developing is that you may think of some Lagrangian and action and therefore to develop

38:36a patenteural quantization. And what's nice is something that we did in a work that we were thinking of classical mechanics as a one-dimensional generative EC gauge field theory and then putting it on the bundle, of course, is not necessary. But it was nice to do that because in that way, when you apply the dressing method, you just see that the theory you end up with in the quantum mechanics of this system is the quantum patenteural. The dress patenteural correspond to the standard patenteural, the Feynman direct patenteural of quantum mechanics, which is well defined. So and it is not a gauge fixed version of it is addressed to the description. So something that we are used to deal with is already addressed the description in disguise. And so this was the first thing to say, okay, now we have to apply all of these machinery to the true setup of generative EC gauge field theory.

39:37And therefore, again, in bundle geometric terms with this bundle geometric description of field space, we worked there and we worked out an invariant patenteural quantization. So again, with this tool of patenteural, which is standard and when in field theory, it's quantization, but to address the version of it, which has nice properties like natural invariance, manifest invariance, explicit relationality. And also some other properties like it automatically implements mechanism for anomaly cancellation. They are so it has some good properties, say this kind of this formulation. Right, and there's something that makes these dressed ghosts disappear. Yes, exactly. Okay. And also, this is related to the fact that at a certain point, we had to state clearly, which is the difference within gauge fixing and dressing. And so one way, one approach to gauge fixing, it is more sophisticated and powerful is this

40:44BRST, BB formalism, in which you start by rewriting the gauge algebra in a nice, homological way. So you introduce the BRST operator and you introduce also ghosts and a conditional truth fears and so on. You introduce indeed the ghost. And then you rewrite your symmetry algebra and you do implement, you know, it is said in a covariant way in the sense that you implement the gauge fixing constraint in a dynamical way in the Lagrangian. And so the point was what happens if we now take these formalisms, so we start from the BRST algebra and we dress it. So we build the dressed BRST algebra. What will happen? If something different should happen because dressing and gauge fixing are different operations. And indeed, if you fully reduce the symmetry, so if you reduce completely the symmetry group,

41:45you will have the dress, the ghost vanish. It is not the bare ghost, of course, that vanishes. But the dress goes to would be zero. The BRST algebra trivializes. And this reflects the fact that the two achieved the invariance indeed and the relational description. Then there might be cases in which you decide to reduce just part of the symmetry, like a subgroup of the whole symmetry group. And so in this case, you will have a residual symmetry, a residual gauge symmetry. And therefore you will still have that some residual ghost that they would be dressed ghost, but just with respect to a subgroup of the original symmetry group. And so those will not be zero, but in general, you would want when you have a gauge symmetry and the form of the system, you want to reduce the whole of it. So to construct the invariant with respect to all of it.

42:46So this can be seen as an intermediate step to achieve full invariance, to be in the sense. If you drink, you've been told you feel less than 100% the next morning because alcohol dehydrates you. Cheers health says that's only 10 to 20% of it. The rest occurs while you sleep. Your brain compensates for alcohol by turning down its own calming system. So you're in rebound once the alcohol clears. Your liver turns ethanol into acetaldehyde, which is more toxic than alcohol itself. Then it turns it into harmless acetate. And that second step is the bottleneck. And as long as this acetaldehyde is around, that's what you're feeling. Cheers restore is an after alcohol aid you take after your last drink or before bed. It uses DHM, a flavonoid from the Japanese raisin tree that interacts with GABA receptors and L-sistine and amino acid that binds to acetaldehyde. The formula is patented. There's no proprietary blends. Cheers says that you'll feel at least 50% better or your money back.

43:49Go to cheershealth.com slash T-O-E and use the code T-O-E-T-O-E-T-O for 20% off your entire order. That's cheers CH-E-E-R-S-H-H-H-D-O-E. This video is sponsored by Cheers. So something just happened recently. The economist sat down with Elon Musk, who told him that AI will surpass human intelligence within five years and then in ten, humans won't be running the world. It went viral and I recommend you check it out. See the economist is more than a magazine. Actually I subscribe to the economist's annual subscription. Their science and AI coverage is among the best that I found anywhere. And I say that as someone who reads plenty of it, they even covered how dark energy may be weakening with time. If that holds up, it completely changes our understanding of the universe's fate. Those are exactly the kinds of questions that we explore every week on this channel. Now the economist is, of course, known for global affairs, both political and economic reporting. Interestingly and flatteringly, Toe is one of the only podcasts that the economist

44:50partners with. So as a Toe listener, you get their exclusive sale, 35% off the annual subscription. This is not a deal they have just anywhere. Head to economist.com slash Toe to subscribe. That's economist.com slash Toe for 35% off. Does it trade the elimination of ghosts for normal quality? Well, in general, no. But it may happen. What may happen is that when you implement the dressing film method, the reduction of the symmetry and therefore trying to achieve this environment comes at the price of locality. It doesn't always happen so, but it may happen. And it may happen. It is just in the construction of the dressing field and then it is appearing in other entities objects in the series. But yes, it may happen, but there are also other cases like, for instance, in the electro weak model. And so in the rereading with our spontaneous symmetry breaking of it, we are the dressing

45:54film method. For instance, this is a local. There is also like all kind of scalar coordinateization. So in which you, for instance, also in cosmological models in which you think of having some dust, it is described effectively with a scalar field and then you have the metric field and you dress and the scalar fields act as a reference frame. And so in that case also when you build, when you achieve environments with the dressing is local. And also in the Lawrence dressing, I would say that it is nice because it is something that is very common in physics to move from the description of general activity with the field and the spin connection, the differential geometric object. Then you move from that to the metric description with the fine connection. And that move is addressing, even though sometimes it is not recognized as such, but you reduce

46:55the Lawrence symmetry. You create environments under that blurry symmetry and you get the description with the fine connection. And that is local again. Interesting. Let me ask you a funny question. Yeah. Okay. When you look at the world, like right now you look around you. Yeah. What do you see? So what I mean is firstly, yes, I see walls, okay, I see the window, et cetera. But many years ago I was at some co-working space and I was just pausing and looking at the wall, not looking at anything. And then someone who was working there said, Kurt, what are you doing? I told them I was just thinking about how many neutrinos are passing through me a second and how I can't see them and what else is out there that we can't see. And then as I started to learn more about philosophy and physics, then I started to wonder, well, is the physical all there is and then is everything relational? What does that look like? What does that feel like? So what I want to know is when you look at the world, okay, you as Lucretia, you look

47:56at the world, what do you see and what do you feel at the same time? We have a physical model and that's written down on paper with integrals and differential forms and so forth. And that's fairly abstract. But do you make a connection between that and the way you experience the world? I don't think so in the sense that when I look around me, I mean, I see things, the walls again, the kitchen and so on. I see things normally. Sometimes when I stop and think of the wonder that is around, that may happen, I think and there are fears everywhere. So that's marbles and also a bit scary maybe. But yeah, why is it scary? Because again, as you were saying before, like, new dreams, past them through me, constantly your things like that, if you think that all of this is happening and you cannot witness it, at least with your own sense, with your eyes, with the sense of touch and so on,

48:59okay, it's impressive and also a bit scary of all of this reality behind that we cannot see, but I think it's also extremely fascinating. And also it's nice, I think, to have somehow, to have a feeling of it, of some visual of it through mathematics, differential geometry and physics itself, because, for instance, also if you think of having to visualize or have in mind the fact that there is this thing that is a space time made of fears and there are many dimensions at least four. And also we are, I mean, we are in the simple being, we cannot perceive this. We can see space, we can perceive a part of time, but we cannot really understand with our senses, we cannot see reality, like if we were, I don't know, in matrix and see the matrix, yeah. But we can perceive it and try to think of it, I would say, me, I tend to think of it

50:04geometrically, mathematically and therefore physically. When I'm doing my research, also was conceptually and technically, because when I mean mathematics, for me, doesn't have a strict only technical sense, it is the language to express the physics. In this sense, I need to visualize what's happening, so I don't know, fears, interaction, stack of fears, things like that. And also to have a geometric picture of it in another corner of my space or of my end. And to see also the formulas by means of which, and to these formulas, I connect the notions and concepts. So it's like that. But only when I really stop thinking, otherwise, I just live life. Okay. As normal as we can, yeah. So let's say, when you're speaking to someone, say a cashier, do you ever look at them and think,

51:05you exist only relationally? You think you exist absolutely, but you don't even exist. Like, is that how far your relationalism goes? Or do you not think like that? Or is there some reason why they do, in fact, exist absolutely? Yeah, I don't think like that, but what you're saying, okay, now we may, yeah, it puzzle me a bit. Because in a sense, it's true that what the, how can you define yourself if not, okay, in a rationality, physically, what I'm doing does not go there. But now that I'm thinking of it, how can you define yourself? It's not, if not in a relation with the others. I mean, your own inner nature is just you that you can assist to this. Why do you, you are defining the world with the relations and, yes, in interrelations with the others. So in a sense, but I don't, usually I don't think of these of people like you exist on me, relationally. So like, say thanks. Or I thank you. So in your theory, maybe you could say that

52:08we codify one another. Now, in your theory, I think fields codify one another. So if that's the case, then is there no ground? Like what is underneath that? Is it just relations relating to one another or are you a structural realist? Or is there something absolute? Actually, most of the time when I speak to people who are relationalists, I find that they have some invariant structure underneath, even special relativity, Felix Klein wanted to call it the theory of invariance to Einstein. So sometimes relationality is not the correct word. There's something still, maybe the bundle structure is then varying in structure. Yeah. Yeah, I see. This is a good question. And I think that it relates to a very important point that I mentioned maybe already before, but it's the fact that if with ground floor, you mean like the manifold, I would say no. There is not such a thing physically. It is there mathematically, but there is not this kind of ground floor.

53:12But because indeed fields codifying each other. And so there is actually a ground floor, but it is made of fields on fields in this sense. And so this is the view that we take with the dressing film that our view of relationality. But on the other hand, we may also think of in a structural realist term. And then we can discern, I think between like, animinativism, animinativist and non-animinativist. So what is that? Yeah, because even before this, so it is how we are used to perceive a reality. We think that objects typically, that object like lamp, a bottle, that objects are primary. And then they are connected by relations. So this is a nice visual that we can have. It's like having a graph. We have points that are objects and then we can draw line among them. So radiation comes, they are secondary and they come after. But for a structural realist, there is

54:17quite, this logic is a reverty. And especially for animinativist, I think, is the fact that you think, if you are an animinativist, you think that relations come first. And there is not such a thing, they are detached from the objects. So they are ontologically, there is where there is the ontological way. In the meta-vists? Yeah, in the network of relations only. While non-animinativist is when you think the tactically object and relations are quite extensive, in a sense that you cannot treat the touch, the relations from the object itself, themselves. And I think this is the adding tone view of ontistraterrary realism. And from your sense, adding tone view about group theory, about gauge symmetry for group also, there is a nice example, because if you take an element of a group, you cannot truly define it without the relations with the other group elements. And so with the composition maps and so on. So

55:26in that view, you will have that you cannot truly detach the object from the relations. And so the dressing thing that in the tradition, I think, there is more with this view. So both the objects and the relation are quite extensive. And in fact, when you think of building dressing field, in this case, with bare feet and dressing field to be the dress of variables and to access the relation on network, we have kind of these philosophical interpretative view in mind. So to say two dressed descriptions describe the same physics, then don't you need something like a global bundle, it's automorphism group of the difuomorphism of that manifold and then the the gauge transformations and some prospective neutral moduli space or no. Like don't you need something that's invariant underneath that? I don't know, actually, you will not have

56:27the gauge symmetry, will not be manifest anymore, it would have been reduced. You will not see, I mean, it is still there is a mathematical construction, but you will not have the the fibres space anymore. So you will not have to worry about picking a global section there. You will not end, you will have just object that are in bias, there are equivalence classes, also in jargon, but okay, there are complete observables and they belong to the living space that is a physical coordinateization of the moduli space. So it is just there. And I don't see, I mean, that's what's physical is the invariant content, so I think that you need to need other structures and they're in. When we were speaking off air, you mentioned that in loop quantum gravity, relationality is made more apparent, it's manifest. Not so much in string theory, it may be there. I mean, but that's my question is, well, what is it that's different

57:29about loop quantum gravity such that relationality hits you right in the face, whereas when you studied your masters in PhD are in string theory, but it was de-emphasized or what, like what's going on? Yeah, okay. I'm not an expert in loop quantum gravity, so now we are doing this dressing film method, we are developing it and it has, it just so happened that it has this nice, really short interpretation, but it has, it is a separate, it has seen, it's not related to loop quantum gravity that I'm not an expert in it them. But as far as I can tell you, I see a variationity as fundamental to be in the form of nations of loop quantum gravity. You have this graph, the spinatric, you would want to quantize the geometry in a relational way. You have this quantization of the metric and fields over it, so it is relational and in spirit, you have different morphism in violence and there is no background structure, the ground independence and

58:34rationality are not the same thing, but still, okay, these are the features of loop quantum gravity. I don't know how much of this is, and therefore also the relational view is exported to modern loop quantum gravity, so to the modern developments in the field, honestly. But I see this as more foundational in as foundational in loop quantum gravity, of course. In string theory, it's not, it's something that is never, as far as I can tell again, never mentioned, it's not a keyword in string theory, maybe also for some prejudice with respect to word, this rationality that is sort of as belonging to loop quantum gravity community, and so you know that loop quantum gravity string theory kind of compétitors, so maybe because of this, maybe because it's just not there as a key concept. On the other hand, I think that it has to be there, tacitly, but it has to be

59:37there and it could be made manifest, and part of my prejudice also to do this, to apply the dressing film at the end of the string theory, because in some way in it, it has to reproduce general relativistic physics and rationality is a key insight of general relativity, so it has to be there, it's just that maybe it's indeed not to manifest. Explain what you mean when you say tacit relationality versus manifest relationality. Earlier you also mentioned that with GR with local symmetries are tacitly relational, and then something else was manifestly relational. When the person hears this, they think if something is tacitly so-and-so, in this case relational, then it is relational, it's just saying that it's there, but you just need to look a bit closer. Yeah, I think it's precisely in the sense that in the bare theory, if you want, but also without thinking of the dressing actually, you just have some symmetries, so gauge symmetry and the film

1:00:40of physics in your general relativistic gauge field theory, and those are there, so the gauge principle and general covariant principle already points, already points at the relationality, so because of them, again, it's the dialectic between the whole endpoint coincidence argument, also how do we get there? So they are the preamble to relational, the motivation, and so, but you have a theory that in principle is just covariant under those symmetries, so the equation of the same form under those symmetries, and so variationity is not manifest. Well, it is tacit, because you know that those are hints to where the fact that you may have, you then want to achieve invariance, the physics in is invariance, so you would want to have Indian relationality, but then if you really want to, you have to make it manifest, and so move to the dual picture in which you have

1:01:46manifesting variance rather than covariance, and there are many relationalities manifesting your variables in your co-definition of the variables that you have at disposal, in this sense, yeah. What is the big problem that you're trying to solve? Well, yeah, it's, first of all, yeah, I'm trying to redrive some things carefully to understand in a neat technical, conceptual way, the basics, the foundation of physics, to rewrite theoretical fundamental physics in a manifest rational way, and thus ultimately to converge to what I would call a relational quantum field theory, and therefore to deal with the foundation, mathematical and conceptual foundation of quantum field theory, and therefore also, ultimately to quantum gravity,

1:02:47which in fact, it's a maybe seen as a sub problem of this major problem, the fact that we don't have a full coherent mathematical foundation for quantum field theory, and also therefore, physical and conceptual understanding of it. Some physicists think that one of the issues, the major issues at the heart of quantum gravity, is time is treated differently in GR than in quantum mechanics. Now, is this something that relationality helps solve, or is the way I posed it not well posed? I mean, we can see it as you go, but I can tell you what I think about it in a way, because I'm not sure that this can solve the problem of quantum gravity, but what I may say is that actually the way of dealing with time in a relational description is indeed different, because you will have some way of making maybe the description involved in a manifest way, the time viable at

1:03:59duration, so you will not have a time viable appearing, and maybe you may have what Stephen Nyser is that you may have clock fields, and therefore to use them to build your relational description without having to have time manifest as a variable. As I was saying before, when you think of fields, on fields, the time, T, and space acts as variables disappear from the picture. There will not be part of the physical picture anymore, the manifold is not there anymore, so you will have a different way to deal with this notion and to coordinateize time to coordinateize with clock fields, and anyway with physical reference frame or your physics. What issues do you see with the way that research gets conducted these days? How does it compare to how it used to be when you first started? Well, I may see if we want to maybe main issues that

1:05:06are also related one another. One is surely the fact that there is a scarcity of resources, scarcity of positions, in particular permanent positions in the field, and so this may mean incentivize, okay, you have to evaluate researchers somehow, therefore, in the field, so it's a sector that became more and more competitive, and also, of course, you have to evaluate researchers, but the point that nowadays we use, we strongly use bibliometric indicators, metrics, maybe an issue, because in the moment in which the metric becomes a target, it's not a good metric anymore, because they will all point to this and this may come not always, not say, but can come added a cost of quality, in the sense that you tend to maybe produce more and more papers, more of a pointy to the quantity, to try to get some strategy, to be more cited, and so on, and that's

1:06:09also not very in a sense, because physics is made of people, so you will have to think of trying to do research through seeking research, but also your own personal life and career, of course. And this is maybe also related to the fact that it's harder to do, regarding the strict seeking nature of research, it's harder to do maybe interdisciplinary, generally interdisciplinary research, because it is kind of promoted interdisciplinary research, and I think in Foresan doing something that has to do with mathematical physics, philosophy, physics, and theoretical physics, together, so this nice encountering of disciplines, but it can become especially hard then to maybe publish, and so therefore, because it's maybe more difficult to get into interdisciplinary paper, publish and appreciate it by the community, and also the fact that maybe you will have less

1:07:10citations, I don't know, and so your metric, so it will not be as good as you were doing, maybe some specialized topic. To me, it sounds like you would get more metrics if you're interdisciplinary, because you have more people that could read it, unless what you're saying is you need the intersection of all three to read it. No, okay, it depends, because it's actually difficult to find maybe interdisciplinary journals that have a high impact, there are of course, but it's also maybe also hard to publish there. So usually, I think that typically for, especially for younger researchers, is difficult to do interdisciplinary research. Then it may come with a lot of benefits also, I'm just saying that I think it may be difficult, and also because nowadays, those disciplines, I was thinking precisely of philosophy, physics, theoretical physics, and mathematics, they are more separate, maybe than they used to be. So maybe it's harder also for this reason.

1:08:11We are in time thing, which we have an increase of difficulties, I mean, things are technically harder also to deal with. So you need to be more specialized than it's affected to deal with them, but this specialization may also come in the price of a unity between those disciplines and aspects. What's the largest unsolved problem in physics that you see? Because various people have various rankings. Some see the cosmological problem as the most important problem, so on and so forth, I have confinement, whatever. What do you see? Other than quantum gravity, which is everyone's number one. Yeah, quantum gravity is, yeah. To me, I mentioned that before, but I think, at least me, I'm pointing that direction, but I think that the biggest problem is the understanding, one of the biggest problems is the understanding of the conceptual, mathematical, and conceptual foundations of quantum field theory. And therefore, and there, of course, quantum

1:09:14gravity also comes as a subset of this major problem. At least in theoretical physics, I think that it is this. You mentioned earlier something about relationality and the path integral. Is the path integral somehow well defined under the dressing approach? Yes, exactly. Yes, in the sense that, I mean, it always depends on a formal measure. So that's the secret theory stick of the path integral. But I mean, again, it depends if you mean well defined because of the major integration, this is a problem that is a feature of the path integral itself that is not going to change when you construct the dress theory. But if you mean if it is, if it has some better properties, with respect to the bare formulation, in the sense that it will be automatically imbibed, but the measure of integration and the dress of the action and it would be imbibed. And it will have an

1:10:18automatic and intrinsic mechanism for a non-money cancellation also in the theory of quantum anomaly. So it has better properties, of course, whenever a non-money carries some physical information, it has to resurrect it in some other way into the dress theory. And it does so nicely, with those transformation of the second kind, those transformation capturing physical frame covariance. So it has nice property, but well defined, if you mean for a malty, by means of which, you write the measure, not that would not change. So what's the reception been like? I know that it's recent, just a couple of years since you started publishing along with Francois, Jordan Francois, I'm not mistaken, in the dressing field method. What's it been like? What sort of questions do you encounter? What do you see? Yeah, it was, yeah, it is very nice actually out of this program, I think, because I mean, I'm still doing gravitational series, super gravity series, but now we've

1:11:20this view that the dressing field method provided and is continuing and it still provides when we develop it, because it has to be developed as a formalism. It was introduced by Francois in Mathematical Innocence, and then we developed it together. We discovered that it had this national relational interpretation, and also, and we start applying it to different contexts. We see cases of dressing emerging here and there, so being a bit could be quite us. And what we are now trying to do is, and the other nice thing is that there is a neat program to follow. So sometimes in research, you may happen, you say, okay, I would want to dig into this question, and it would be a work on its own, and then I move on to something else, and then you don't have to have always a clear path here, we find all of this. Why for this project it is so? So it was first of all to build it in the most general way for general tvcgge field theory, and why we developed the formalism,

1:12:20we also had a better understanding of the conceptual aspects of the philosophical and conceptual aspects of general tvcgge field theories. So the framework and the models and the rain. And then think, okay, now we have to apply it to several theories as much as we can understand some gage fixing, rereading them in another way under the lens of the dressing film method. We applied it also to super gravity, we will apply it to string theory, and then develop the quantum version of the dressing film method, and therefore applying it to quantum field theory, relational quantum field theory, relational quantum gravity to build those frameworks. Yes. And then also to other scenarios like the electric physics, lattice computation, cosmological perturbation theory. So it is very versatile, this is very nice, I think. And this is part we are doing this slowly but thoroughly. And so yeah, in this scenario,

1:13:26applying it and into the physics there. When you were talking about jumping around and not having a clear direction, is that what characterized yourself earlier in your career? No, in my case it was not much of that, but I know it may happen in some projects. For me, it was more of a curiosity driven, changing topics here with some, I mean, for instance, from string theory to super gravity. There are different theories, but there is kind of a path also then to gravity, gage field theory. So it was the most possible. But when we zoom in into each sub project, maybe there are some on the single work, the paper that you are writing, the research that you're doing, that may be more on a specific topic than it's not maybe directly related to the other. In a big picture, of course, they would be related. It's maybe to reply to a single big question. Kurt here, note that if you'd rather listen to Tau, we're on Spotify, iTunes everywhere with

1:14:31a podcast catcher. You can just search my name or theories of everything. And also remember to hit subscribe. What about the impact of AI on your research? And then also just how you see it in your field? I see. Yeah, I sort of it indeed. Well, in general, I think I thought about AI for humanity as a tool, as something revolutionary. And it comes also with some problems, like famous lead alignment problems, but I think it is very useful to, and in particular in theoretical physics, I think it can be in physics, but it can be very useful. And for instance, it can speed up some processes. You can use it to prepare meals, to do fast courses maybe on some topic. If you want to get some news here, to get knowledge faster in an effective way, yes, you can use it that way. And, but as a tool, I think that you may use it also in a bad way,

1:15:37saying the sense that maybe to produce just AI-generated papers, so we will have a lot of, again, quantity, I mean, quality. So a lot of papers that maybe they don't have, they may also happen to have a good deep content, but it's rare. I would say it becomes more difficult, so to do self-generated papers. And also cases in which maybe researchers feel full, too, about using AI, some kind of fault for using AI to do computations, we should be able to do our own computation. And so we did use AI only to write the paper and to generate the paper. And I think that that is dramatic, because I mean, it means it's good if you need to use it to check the syntax, to check the grammar, or if you're not native English speaker, that's great. But if you really need to write your own paper, your own ideas, and you're so lazy that you don't even try to rewrite them anymore, that can be a problem. So it can be used for good and for

1:16:44last good say things, that's for sure. So I think that asking the right question is crucial. In physics, in general, not only to AI, in general, it's more important in the sense that the answer will come almost together with the question, if you ask the right questions. So that's for sure. If you prompt an ICI, it can be of help, it can also produce some new results that I think. So it can be also through thinking, there are companies that are trying to develop the sort of thinking AI. But if you just prompt it to try to be fast, to produce papers as much as you can to have more chances like it to survive the system, because somehow to do your own career, to get citation, to have a huge number of publications, okay, this cannot be deeply good. I think for sure. Yeah, I see. It's too competitive so people try to gain badges

1:17:45on themselves with it. Yeah, it can be like that. I mean, I don't know, I don't know, actually, it can be. Yes, of course, it can be. Yes. Yes. What advice do you have for students who are getting into physics? Let's imagine there's a 18-year-old student who's listening, watching, they're interested in your approach, they like what you have to say, and they're looking to you now, and they want to know what advice do you have for them. Yeah, okay. As I said before, maybe to ask the right questions, to be curious, to be through seeking, to end to ask, not only the right question, but also to ask questions in a sense, to be aware of how the system works as much as possible, to know that it is hard, especially in those times, but not to discourage, just to be aware, because that's to play your own strategy at best as you can, to do the best that you can with your resources. As I was saying, to ask questions, to choose wisely your supervisor,

1:18:50to ask a question, to your supervisor, ask to be mentored really. Interesting. Meaning not only technically, like to, if you are asked to do computation, of course, do computation, it is important to get a new skill to know how to compute, but also not only under a technical perspective, ask question, but also how to network the field, sociological aspects about the fields, to be to be made aware of what it means to be a researcher, and what it means to be a first principle thinker, what it means to do through seeking research, in this sense. And also to possibly, so therefore, to try to be at your best a first principle thinker, and also to recognize the people do so. So I think that's it. Yeah. So what do you mean when you say truth seeking? Do you mean to say

1:19:52that there is some way nature is and you want to probe nature itself, or what do you mean? Yeah, I mean ask yourself fundamental questions about the reality. And so if you are curious and interesting something that you feel is deep, that you think in deep, is deep and you have reason to think so, then investigate there, push yourself there, and try to again ask yourself questions and direct your research in this direction. And of course, then if it is nearly, of course you will have to study to build your own baggage of knowledge, and to also, in principle, you may not have opinions, so it's legitimate to say I don't know, so just to study to build your own opinion, your own baggage of knowledge, and then also to learn how to compute, as I was saying before, if you are just asking at the beginning, you also say, okay, now you study this now compute, and so yes, you compute because it is necessary, it will

1:20:56be useful. And then, but always having in mind this thing, therefore asking fundamental questions, and dig deeper into reality. Yeah. What's the biggest mistake you have made that you can talk about? That you want to discourage other people from making, like they should learn from your mistake, it's an easy mistake not to make. Well, that's again, hard question. I wouldn't say truly maybe mistakes, I mean, not in this context at least, but maybe more of something that I lacked in a sense, I was maybe naive, a bit unaware of what we discussed about so a bit unaware of how the sector works, for instance, I did get to know about the existence of the archive only during my PhD, but nowadays of course, students, they also know about this before actually.

1:22:00So I was a bit unaware, maybe in general. And together with this, also the fact that I was a bit shy, in a sense that it was hard to me to state my opinion, which is, as again, as I said before, it's normal to maybe not to have a strong opinion about something if you don't know it's really well already. So if you are still studying and so on, but so it was maybe difficult, and also being shy about asking question, about say, I don't know, I did not understand this, this is another important point. So maybe I heard the conversation, I used to hear conversation, I would say, okay, this I'm not understanding this, I'm lacking something, you see, it's not I'm not enough, I'm not good enough, but actually this may not come only from you, it may be something that is lacking into that conversation itself in the interlopter. So maybe pointing nicely this out, so saying, I did not

1:23:00understand this, so let's discuss it, and it depends on the conversation, but pointing this out may help all the people in the conversations. And in my case, surely all of these would have helped me a lot in learning things, more things and faster, for sure. So this I would say, how did you get over that shyness or that timidity? I'm not sure that I really did get over it yet, maybe it's part of just my personality, but maybe in a sense taking myself less seriously, so taking the game seriously, and so my work and my job seriously, research seriously, but myself maybe less seriously, and what happens around, so just say, okay, I'm Indian free to ask questions and free to interact with people, and by Danny, if I say something wrong, okay, let's see, it just happens, I don't know, something like that, but yeah, taking myself less seriously, I would say, sorry, how do you work

1:24:05on not taking yourself seriously? Do you practice that or is it just something that comes with time, do you actually put energy into that? No, well, it depends, in the sense that I think it's something that came just aging, one would single it, that should be one, if there is one, it's that possible, but also sometimes I have to focus on it saying, okay, for instance, if I have to prepare something, a presentation, if I don't know, if I have some applications, some performance to do, I get stressed and say, okay, let's focus on the fact that, yes, you are just prepared, you go there with what you are, your baggage, your knowledge, your way of just being, your personality, and that will be enough, in any case, it has to be enough, because that's what it is, and so just try to enjoy it and get the best of it, without taking too much seriously, I mean, and what if something bad happens if I do something that is not a particularly perform,

1:25:12or just try to enjoy the process, say? Well, I hope I didn't stress you with this podcast. No, absolutely, it was fantastic, no, no, no, absolutely. I'm glad, and the audience enjoyed you, and your personality. Yeah, no, no, no, thank you so much for it, it was amazing, fantastic, I love, I was very excited, the idea of doing it, and I still am very, very happy of this very day, I thank you a lot, yeah, no, no, absolutely. Working the audience, find out more about you. Also, what's next for you? What are you working on? Yeah, I'm working as I was saying, before on this project, on the dressing film matter, then the relational quantum field theory, relational quantum gravity, and also to apply in the dressing film matter to diverse areas of physics, and also for instance, now that I'm currently a researcher at Polytechnic Editor, you know, it's maybe also an occasion to apply to condensed matter physics because it applies also

1:26:13there, and to different scenarios, as I said before, and so people may find me on the Polytechnic Editor in a website, I also have a personal website that is lookretseramera.com, and on social media, and then I have also a YouTube channel that is reframed, so because of reframing like physics with, yeah, in a relational way. That's where that talk is, which I highly recommend people watch, so yes, a link to your YouTube channel will also be on screen and in the description your personal website as well. You mentioned your into art, do you have any art on my? Yeah, well, I have some that is separate from physics somehow, because I sing, I do some songs, I'm some writer, and I don't know that. Yeah, like that. And so, yes, I have a profile for that, but it's something apart, and also I used to paint, to things like that, but I don't, I mean, yeah, I tend to separate these two universes.

1:27:14So, yeah. Okay, well, let me talk about the conjunction between those two universes. So, is there anything from your artist mindset or your painterly mindset or a composer mindset, or you're singing mindset, anything from that artistry world that influences the physical world, the physics-minded research? I think yes, so there is something that they both have in common, indeed, and it's creativity, because I think that for being a physicist, for doing physics, you also have to be creative, and that's also what you do when you do art, whatever kind of art. I mean, so yes, I think that that's something that is there, yeah, common ground. Thank you. Thank you for spending so much time with me. Okay, thanks a lot to you Kurt, and also for giving me this my first podcast, so thanks a lot to you. Hi there, Kurt here. If you'd like more content from theories of everything and the very

1:28:15best listening experience, then be sure to check out my sub-stack at KurtGyMungle.org. Some of the top perks are that every week you get brand new episodes ahead of time, you also get bonus-written content exclusively for our members that's C-U-R-T-J-A-I-M-U-N-G-A-L.org. You can also just search my name and the word sub-stack on Google. Since I started that sub-stack, it somehow already became number two in the science category. Now, sub-stack for those who are unfamiliar is like a newsletter. One that's beautifully formatted, there's zero spam. This is the best place to follow the content of this channel that isn't anywhere else. It's not on YouTube, it's not on Patreon. It's exclusive to the sub-stack. It's free. There are ways for you to support me on sub-stack if you want, and you'll get special bonuses if you do. Several people ask me like,

1:29:15hey, Kurt, you've spoken to so many people in the field of theoretical physics, a philosophy, of consciousness. What are your thoughts, man? Well, while I remain impartial in interviews, this sub-stack is a way to peer into my present deliberations on these topics. And it's the perfect way to support me directly. Kurtjimungle.org or search Kurtjimungle sub-stack on Google. Oh, and I've received several messages, emails, and comments from professors and researchers saying that they recommend theories of everything to their students. That's fantastic. If you're a professor or a lecturer or what have you, and there's a particular standout episode that students can benefit from or your friends, please do share. And of course, a huge thank you to our advertising sponsor, the Economist. Visit economist.com slash toe to OE to get a massive discount on their

1:30:16annual subscription. I subscribe to the Economist and you'll love it as well. Toe is actually the only podcast that they currently partner with. So it's a huge honor for me. And for you, you're getting an exclusive discount. That's economist.com slash toe to OE. And finally, you should know this podcast is on iTunes. It's on Spotify. It's on all the audio platforms. All you have to do is type in theories of everything and you'll find it. I know my last name is complicated, so maybe you don't want to type in jimungle, but you can type in theories of everything and you'll find it. Personally, I gain from rewatching lectures and podcasts. I also read in the comment that toe listeners also gain from replaying. So how about instead you relisten on one of those platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Google podcasts, whatever podcast catcher you use, I'm there with you. Thank you for listening.