Robert Laughlin - Can Emergence Explain Reality?

Compartmentalization & Physical Constants Are Essential For Emergence.

This guy's voice sounds very similar to Tom Hanks' and I love it

gujff

I understand the appeal of building an apparatus to peak into the fabric of reality… but don’t 😂 literally in every movie it’s a disaster

I assert the PI author's claim that what makes the constants constant and therefore law isn't emergence but rather ontological mathematics itself.
Actualization doesn't emerge from possibility but rather from my understanding of their material I argue that possibility is contained within actuality for example all numbers, number combinations, configurations, ratios and relationships are contained that is to say implied by every number imaginable in a grand fractal of possibility from which actuality is derived. This is all coordinated by Euler's formula and actualized through Fourier transforms.
For a deeper dive read: "The God Series" by Mike Hockney.

When science dispenses with religion, science becomes the religion. It's not what it is that makes it religion; it's our relationship to it.

I always wonder about how the standard model seems to make things more complicated and ugly. Whereas a relational/systems paradigm often makes things more beautiful- stuff like self-similarity at different levels, patterns repeating.
I wonder if a synthetic rather than an analytic lens is needed and if the scientific process, although powerful, is fundamentally flawed.

Babies are perfect example of emergence in everyday life. A new cosmos as it were w each new birth.

Awareness is known by awareness alone.

Closer to Truth is such a great show. I’ve been watching it since it first started.

Searching among the sequential differences of primes and their thresholds, I have uncovered a specific sequence of values similar to phi identifying such phases as could grade emergence consistently with respect to atoms. We need this.

I grasp Laughlin's direction but it's extremely shallowly explored in 12 minutes. I rarely hear much about the application of theoretical scale so I am at least encouraged. Standard Model theory has literally become tunnel-visioned, with ever-more expensive atom-smashers to come, no doubt. I do not subscribe. If nothing else it appears to be profit-driven which is the destroyer of science.
It is as if theoretical physicists have a think-block on scale. Yes, it might be turtles all the way, in all dimensions - why would there be a fundamental end to anything if we've so far found none in any direction? Physicists can't break out of the mathematics & machinery, like an extension to the manner of their schooling. It takes a polymath, a genius, an ususual maverick, to pierce the theoretical bubble we're trapped within. What does that tell you? The educated mind becomes timid with training, limited with iteration. I hope Laughlin is onto something.

It’s obvious that energy determines emergent behaviour.

Emergent means the process of coming into being or becoming prominent.

Now, when it comes to the beginning of the Observable Universe which includes everything we can observe including matter, energy, and the Laws of Nature... we simply do not know how it came into existence, why it came into existence, if it even came into existence when we think it did, etc. There are things we don't know and will almost certainly never know.

What we can reasonably know is most likely true is that at some time in the past, we think around 13.7 billion years, but this may or may not be correct and when do we really define the beginning anyway, considering the Universe may be infinitely old? Just as another comment on this, Rajendra Gupta, a physics professor at the University of Ottawa, their newly-devised model indicates that the Observable Universe is 26.7 billion years old, so our estimated age of the Observable Universe is not really very certain.

We also think, but like the age of the Observable Universe we are in fact not that certain, that around what we call the beginning of of the Observable Universe everything was elementary particles obeying the Laws of Nature and no atoms had formed yet. Prior to that we can't say what came first, the elementary particles or the Laws of Nature, or if you can even separate them.

But, beginning from that believed soup of elementary particles we have a path of evolution from which we then get many things which emerge, like atoms. Now, assuming the beginning of the soup of elementary particles which is the size of the Observable Universe that has no atoms, there are two things I can think of which we can say about this.

(1) The whole of the Observable Universe must be under some constraint(s) which prevents any atoms from forming and whatever that constraint(s) it must be removed over time such that it allows atoms to form. This would be some kind of Observable Universe scale event but the process of changing would not be happening everywhere at once.

(2) Some atoms would form first and because of the speed of causality the effects of those first atoms forming would not be instantly felt by anything else, but take time to be felt depending upon the distance from the forming atom.

Now, what do we call emergent in this? I would certainly think it is the atoms we would say are emergent from the changing conditions and these changing conditions are certainly occurring across a cosmic scale, the whole Observable Universe, but it is when those conditions change specifically right around where the first atom forms that cause it to form, which is a very tiny localized spot. Can we really separate these two things though, because they are connected, the whole of the Observable Universe and the tiniest element within it.

When we get to stars forming from heavier atoms more complex atoms, the conditions across the Observable Universe can be, as a whole, relatively unchanging. But, the conditions around the star forming and the creating of heavier elements within the star is still a large scale event. However, that large scale event only takes place because of the small scale events taking place, yet the small scale events only happen because the large scale event is happening.

This is like the chicken and egg question of which came first.

Both are required for that formation of heavier elements and if you remove either then you don't have the required system anymore. Thus, maybe you can't separate these two any more than you can separate the mass of an object from the volume of an object and still have that object. So to say volume emergent from mass or mass is emergent from volume is just not logical or reasonable to say, because they are both intrinsic properties of the object.

Thus to say the tiniest elements of the Observable Universe are emergent from the largest elements of the Observable Universe is not a logical and reasonable thing to say. Nor is the reverse, because to say the largest elements of the Observable Universe are emergent from the smallest elements of the Observable Universe is not a logical and reasonable thing to say. This is because we can't separate these two things which are both intrinsic to the Observable Universe.

Every now and then, someone comes along that renews my faith...
Hopefully, others will follow.
The nonsense chasers have been running things for too long.
🤞🤞

Can wetness explain water?

Consciousness

Is human society and culture an emergent property of individuals? Is the internet becoming a new layer of intelligence and communication on Earth like the Noosphere of Teilhard Dechardin?

The Philosophy of Samuel Alexander and Roy Wood Sellars emphasizes the importance of emergent properties and being a Naturalist. Systems philosophy is also very interesting.

hang on.... he said in ancient Greek the words for “god”, “logic” and “nature” are all the same word?
The word for "god" is "theos" (θεός)
The word for "logic" is "logos" (λόγος)
The word for "nature" is "physis" (φύσις)
Did I misunderstand?

This notion of "togetherness" is general and applies to all designs. If we start from bottom up then lowest modules have their own functions. As we go up in design the top modules have a completely different purpose while they depend on lower modules. So nothing fundamental here when applied to atoms.

What is emergent vs what is fundamental is pointless to ponder because they are interrelated and one cannot exist without the other.

I think I agree with Robert Laughlin despite the fact that this is the first time I saw him on video. As a science enthusiast, I believe Laughlin's concept of emergence agreeable with quantum mechanics. This is to say that there is no such thing as wave function collapse, but there is a wave function emergence. I believe that all electrons occupying the same atom obey the classical laws of physics, but their angular momentum is not allowed to go lower than the reduced Planck's constant. But when the atom is in the act of being observed, all electrons involved in the process immediately or spontaneously reorganize themselves in order to quantize the change in the energy state of the atom. This immediate reorganization of the entire electron cloud is the reason why a wave function should emerge spontaneously and momentarily. And by virtue of which, it appears to me that the transient emergence of a wave function is just a natural way the atom would like to communicate with the outside world. So, at the conclusion of the emission of radiation, the said wave function immediately disappears, and subsequently the entire electron cloud resumes their obedience to the classical laws of physics.

Welcome to hermeticism

the airplane is continuously coming apart and reforming on time scales irrelevant to the process of eating peanuts

ONE WORLD RULER JESUS CHRIST

Excellent! The most valuable and honest physicist.

Jun 30, i933 📺

No

Another good one!
Please, would be good to know when this was first recorded. Is it possible to add such info, especially when maybe originally published some time ago? Would be very helpful, thanks!

Wow... now science looks like science fiction. 😮 Everyday physics gets closer to science fiction. Amazing. 👌

confusion with Complexity...

Thanks for useful discussion Sir. Regards

Such a fascinating topic. Everything is made of something smaller. We're made of atoms, atoms are made of smaller particles, those are made of even smaller particles, and so on. So why should it stop here? We already know we live on a subatomic particle relative to the size of just our galaxy. So what emerges out of all these cosmic webs and great walls and attractors?

Consciousness is the missing ingredient. Upon observation the wave function collapses causing objects to emerge into existence within our conscious minds.

Thank you very much! A very important question and interesting dialogue for the global brainstorming.
We need a new view of matter as an integral generative process: MATTER is that from which all meanings, forms and structures are born.
The event "grasping the structure means understanding". (G. Gutner "Ontology of mathematical discourse").
To understand the nature of the phenomenon of "emergence" in the Universe (Reality) means to "grasp" (understand) the primordial generating structure of the existence of the Universe as an eternal holistic generating process, to grasp the absolute (unconditional) forms of the existence of matter (absolute states - rest, movement, becoming) and LAW (Logos) of the generation process.
What generates, preserves, organizes, directs the process of generation? This is METANOUMEN - Ontological (structural, cosmic) memory, "soul of matter", its measure.
More than a quarter of a century ago, mathematician and philosopher Vasily Nalimov set the super-task of building a "super-unified field theory that describes both physical and semantic manifestations of the World" - the creation of a model of a "Self- Aware Universe"
In the same direction, the ideas of the Nobel laureate in physics Brian Josephson (which are not very noticed by mainstream science), set forth in the essay "On the Fundamentality of Meaning".
The new information age, the problems of understanding in the foundations of knowledge requires a new, deeper, holistic view of the Universe (Reality).
J.A. Wheeler: "We are no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, fields of force, into geometry, or even into time and space. Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself."

My brothers read this book and be transformed now Amazon book title:Awakening The Inner Light by Viivik

That was interesting, especially at the end..

I want more! Is the fine structure constant and time the ‘lens’ or the ‘well’ of a cyclic phase emergent from a precursor? Thanks

This whole explanation of emergence makes no sense. It seems to be an attempt for force nature to be something we can understand when we really can never understand the fundamental nature of the universe aka reality. Our brains can only COMPARE things. We cannot GRASP reality any more than you can grasp water poured into your hand. Our brains can only grasp relationships between patterns of energy like atoms (material things), electromagnetic waves (light) and so on. Emergence is just a fancy way of saying there are organizational principles, e.g. phyical “laws”, that predict how various forms of energy interact. Oh well. Seems to me that there is nothing “fundamental” in the universe that you can “know” other than relationships you can sense one way or the other. Like watching a fight. You can see the blows and where they land and how the fighters react. But can you know the actual people? Why they are fighting? What they will do next? If you watch long enough, you can predict some of these things, but if you can’t communicate directly with the fighters, you can’t really KNOW what they will do. There is a limit to what we can actually know about because of the very nature of knowledge itself.

Very interesting discussion!

I certainly appreciate the video interview and emergence concept. We must carefully consider the exact opposite argument which is this. “Emergence” is simply the old “God-of-the-Gaps” or “magic”thesis disguised in 21st century clothing. You see, the argument goes, everything is simply naturalism and 100% of it can ultimately be explained by reductionism. 100% of Reality is fundamentally reductionist. Matter, energy, particles, forces and fields over vast cosmic timescales naturally evolve from physics to chemistry to biology to life to intelligent sentient life to advanced consciousness and beyond. Because we humans in the current state of our brain evolution trapped in one local universe of particular space-time constants cannot yet explain how consciousness comes from matter does not refute the argument. We just don’t know enough yet. The default position should be, so the argument goes, simply reductionism and we simply keep digging to find the law, principle or logic to explain it all from reductionism.

That guy was great! Fun to listen too and made a lot of sense.

If you can’t walk on water, freeze it. 😂 Safety in numbers, strength in numbers, who said that?

"causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience" DH

Great talk!

Rigidity of titanium comes because of molecular bonds. Sure, rigidity only occurs when there are many atoms of titanium that form the crystal. Question: will titanium rod have the rigidity if the underlying atoms did not have the properties they have. And by definition the rigidity we are talking about here is a property at the level of collection of atoms. Emergence can be still bottom up in the sense that it emerges because the constituents have the microscopic properties they have all the way down. The question that is being indirectly asked is does he think reductionism is still true or not? Can one flying bird form a flock. Of course not. Flock is a property if a lots of birds flying together. So by definition the flockness occurs when a lot of birds fly together.

Well apparently I have finally found a scientist who agrees with me about emergence. Thing is, I'm not a physicist. I'm just a guy who thinks about things. I've been saying very similar things for many years. Just look back through my comments on CTT episodes. Emergence is fundamental. We need to stop spending our time crashing things together and start asking about how things emerge from lower level physical systems. Maybe the physicist will finally make some real progress.

Almost as if Existence itself has a working brain! 😮