Can physics ever get to the truth? | Eric Weinstein & Hilary Lawson clash over the nature of reality

this is ridiculous Hillary I I just absolutely think this is not [Music] true there's this issue that I'm going to be heard as championing the naive view that all reliable notion uh all reliable knowledge is scientific but I'm hoping to to convince you that what's about to come and is not yet fully here is going to be a reassertion of the so-called realism in science what we are actually looking at at the moment is many different crises that have been conflated the repr reproducibility crisis the issue of political economy with grants uh and peer review in science the issue with a better understanding of the ways in which our brains misperceive reality and our umelt and all of these different kinds of critiques have been conflated in this post realism approach that we're hearing about from Hillary Hoffman and others and what we if we're going to have this conversation we should do it uh by talking over each other bringing passion but also being very careful to Decon flate all of the different critiques of scientific knowledge if you try and get rid of uh metaphysics in the sense of things that are not grounded on observation it turns out you can't really do it and I would argue the reason that you can't really do it is because observation itself builds in the idea that we can reach through to reality that we can just see how it is and that will that will tell us where we are but I don't think we can reach through to uh to how it is in that way both with our senses and with our theories and with our language in the case of science you can see that there are elements of the framework of science which we can't find any observation for I mean science has a story there are laws and they apply to things well we can't find the laws can we in the sense if you can't get a telescope and oh there's the law you can't find the law and you can't find the things either it turns out cuz as as you look at the things they keep on disappearing on you this is ridiculous Hillary I I just absolutely think this is not true this sort of set of new age beliefs flatter Us in 1913 we found the last major land mass on Earth which turned out to be um seia Zia north of Siberia and it was mapped by 1932 that's 90 years in our past nobody is searching for land major land masses on Earth why because that game is over it closed right um so in a sense what what's going on is we have a belief that the that there an infinite number of problems all the way down now do I agree with you that there will always be problems that we can't solve we always know that there will be diophantine equations for number theorists to work on we've proven that we've proven that there are things that are true that are not true for any good reason so girdle will not allow us to reach them from inside of an axiomatic system but the idea that the rules of chess can never be known right which is really what a Theory of Everything Is it's just a search for rules where at some point the scientists put down their pen and the Phil philosophers are the only one interested because of this mythical equation which really should be a lran and not an equation um that that sense it flatters our current sense of ourselves but it's obviously not true we're not looking for an extension of the genetic code we're sort of curious that maybe something doesn't follow 64 codons and 20 amino acids you know and there's some stuff around the edges but in fact there are things that close there are things that extend infinitely and we need the wisdom to know the difference Eric you mentioned you know well there are things that close I think that nothing ever closes as it were that you can never quite get to the bottom of anything but that doesn't mean to say that you can have a damn good go and and you refine it as as it works and and indeed I think science has always worked like that so so when when Newton first said you know the Apple falls to the ground because of gravity the the people critics of him said well wait a minute you know when we point to situations which it doesn't fit like most of the time the Apple doesn't fall to the ground you say there's an equal and opposite force in the tree holding it there but but any example we counter example you just say well there's another force acting so we can't counter your theory because whatever you do you'll just say there's another force and that is how science works it creates you know something doesn't work you say oh well this must be going on so you then add something else and you endlessly refin you have the illusion that you're getting to reality uh rather instead what you're doing is refining your model to one that works better we've lost this idea that sometimes we pull off some genius level stuff and as much as I love Hawking and Heisenberg they they're no derck and Einstein we have these exceptional moments where things really go pretty wild and if I think about you know we never get to the bottom of nobody is looking for a new Norm division algebra between the beyond the reals complex querian and the octonian that's stable it's never going to change uh unless something you know is is is true about logic that I don't know I think the frame that you have for things is always up for grabs but it's true within that frame you have things that just don't make much sense and which we would say are which we would say are wrong you know to say one side is one in a football game when uh when the score was different is uh is usually just thought of as wrong actually if you get down to the detail I would even challenge that cuz I think cuz I think that what happens is the the the the the supporter who goes along uh who you know the scores meant to be to1 they say oh we were robbed we run really so there's always a way of of of re reframing it to say there's a different outcome and what I'm here to tell you is that I believe that a short time from now you can have a situation in which the thing closes just like land masses on Earth and think about how silly it sounds when you have Gilligan Island going in your head they the crew the ships on ground on the shore of this Uncharted desert aisle with Google Earth nobody's thinking about Uncharted desert aisles you have to give the idea that certain things close its due or this whole thing leads to Madness the the dominant story in physics for the last 30 years or so has been string theory and Eric has been a fantastically valuable critic of that idea the bit that I would then take isy with him is the notion that you might arrive of course there'll be someone who will come along after you will who will say actually Eric's theory is is is also mistaken it's like this and you accepted that idea that' be another theories but you want to hold on to the idea that some at some point we'll get to the end of that uh process that you know there might be a whole series of you know coonan Paradigm shifts but eventually we might arrive and I'm saying I I don't think so there's two separate things there's a question about my physics theory and my theory in general about this issue I don't know that it it's not an infinite series of closure problems all the way down yeah I am saying that it may close and that you seem to be indicating that that is effectively impossible because there's always a larger system in which that thing may not be true and I would say that the real time that we we we hit the rock bottom is when the scientists say I don't see anything more for me to do and the philosophers and the theologians take over right and that there are these M or the fiction right there still people writing about you know beneath the surface of the Earth even if scientists aren't thinking scientists always imagine that they've almost got there Lord Kelvin said you know 1890 uh we've cracked it we've only got a little technical details that was before Einstein before quantum mechanics and and and Hawking thought we'd almost got it didn't he we were just it's it's a fantasy no no no those are several data points that we all know and because to continue watching this video click the link in the top left or in the description below or visit I a.tv for more debates and talks from the world's leading thinkers on today's biggest ideas

Channel: The Institute of Art and Ideas

Views: 17,947

Keywords: learning, education, debate, lecture, IAItv, institute of art and ideas, IAI, philosophy, metaphysics, matrix, can physics find truth, the nature of reality, what is real, postmodern theory, perspective, reality, myths, mythbusters, science debate, idealism, elon musk, panpsychism, simulation, the matrix, red pill blue pill, what is truth, can physics get to the truth, is metaphysics real, what is metaphysics, head to head, face off, philosophy debate, physics debate, academic debate

Id: ILXJqdmAtXQ

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2024