Quoting AemJeff: If Percontations' relationship to Templeton continues to allow for unfettered scientific discussions like this one (and least week's) then I have to say that it's hard for me to argue that I have any particular problem with their support (for this particular series.)

I agree with your sentiment. Perhaps we should ignore the titles of the series and be prepared for surprises. We may find talks on philosophy, religion or linguistics in Science Saturday, and science talks on Percontations (Templeton or not). I think BhTV administrators are getting a kick out of the confusion that this may create. What will be next? UN Plaza will present a discussion of microbiology? The week in blog discussing Art? It doesn't matter, as long as the quality is good! And back to this diavlog, it was very interesting. It certainly makes me wish I knew more about the topic. I agree that Clifford was extremely articulate and a delight to listen to. He seemed to have great clarity on the topic and the ability to step back and give perspective on the more general state of the field. We have been lucky in recent weeks.

What do zombie cosmologists say? Mmmmm ... Must. Have. Branes. [Added] Much better joke at the end about what the ultimate theories will ultimately be called, but I won't step on their lines.

Quoting Ocean: I agree with your sentiment. Perhaps we should ignore the titles of the series and be prepared for surprises. We may find talks on philosophy, religion or linguistics in Science Saturday, and science talks on Percontations (Templeton or not). I think BhTV administrators are getting a kick out of the confusion that this may create. What will be next? UN Plaza will present a discussion of microbiology? The week in blog discussing Art? It doesn't matter, as long as the quality is good!

Ugh. Then why bother having titles and their implied categories at all? Why not just have Bloggingheads.tv without recurring features and be done with it?

Quoting bjkeefe: Ugh. Then why bother having titles and their implied categories at all? Why not just have Bloggingheads.tv without recurring features and be done with it?

I don't know. Ask the BhTV people who assign diavlogs to the different categories. That was the first point of my comment. The second point was that if having this mismatch of topics is the price to pay for having good quality diavlogs, I would settle with the confusion. Perhaps someone is having too many drinks or something...

Quoting AemJeff: What a pleasure it was to listen to these guys talk, and Johnson seems like a wonderful advocate for the credibility of string theory as a valid scientific endeavor.

Quite agreed.

This was certainly an improvement on the divagations of last week's Percontations. Both speakers made an effort to speak in a way that non-physicists and non-cosmologists might understand. Still, I would like to hear a conversation on cosmology between a scientist and a philosopher. I confess that I have trouble understanding what cosmologists mean when they talk about infinite space and infinite time and 10 dimensions, as if such concepts were anything but mathematical fictions, necessary perhaps for the purposes of science but unintelligible to human beings whose thought is bound by space and time, the bounds of sense. Philosophers since Leibniz and Kant have been trying to understand the role of physical intuition in science and mathematics. I have the impression that modern cosmologists think that mathematic models allow us to escape the bounds of sense. Excuse my divagations.

Quoting Francoamerican: This was certainly an improvement on the divagations of last week's Percontations. Both speakers made an effort to speak in a way that non-physicists and non-cosmologists might understand.

Still, I would like to hear a conversation on cosmology between a scientist and a philosopher. I confess that I have trouble understanding what cosmologists mean when they talk about infinite space and infinite time and 10 dimensions, as if such concepts were anything but mathematical fictions, necessary perhaps for the purposes of science but unintelligible to human beings whose thought is bound by space and time, the bounds of sense. Philosophers since Leibniz and Kant have been trying to understand the role of physical intuition in science and mathematics. I have the impression that modern cosmologists think that mathematic models allow us to escape the bounds of sense.

Excuse my divagations.

There are a lot of physicists who will tell you that if you really want to understand what physics has to say about the universe, you have to give up the demand of understanding everything in ways that seem (immediately) intuitive. This is true at both ends of the

Do we really need 300 diavlogs on all these high level abstract subjects like cosmology, QM, and string theory? Am I the only one here more fascinated by common items like microwaves and RF heating then by string theory? Am I the only one here that would rather have a diavlog on the long term problems with Moore's Law, or what exactly the smart transmission grid is, or the pros and cons of wind turbines are, or why a 56 Kbps modem will never actually give you 56 Kbps, or the current problems with using LEDs for general lighting, or telephone switching stations and sampling rates, or fiber optic devolpments in recent years, or the pros and cons of High voltage direct current tranmission lines, or how flash memory works, or how we could save loads of power by unplugging our damn power adaptors when things are not on, or nearfield and farfield EM radiation and why Tesla was a cuckoo, or why Photolithography has changed our lives, or...or....or....or.... ASAAAAAAAAAAAARgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhgggggggghhhhh hhhhhhhh!

Now, for a question. When it is said tha free space that has matter that is gravitationally bound is not expanding, does it mean the space is actually not expanding, or that space is still expanding, but we just do not notice it because the ratio of expansion via dark energy over contraction due to gravity is so incredibly small that this is not apparent. If it is the second way, do we have the technology to detect the energy being added to the system?

Quoting Starwatcher162536: Do we really need 300 diavlogs on all these high level abstract subjects like cosmology, QM, and string theory?

Am I the only one here more fascinated by common items like microwaves and RF heating then by string theory?

Am I the only one here that would rather have a diavlog on the long term problems with Moore's Law, or what exactly the smart transmission grid is, or the pros and cons of wind turbines are, or why a 56 Kbps modem will never actually give you 56 Kbps, or the current problems with using LEDs for general lighting, or telephone switching stations and sampling rates, or fiber optic devolpments in recent years, or the pros and cons of High voltage direct current tranmission lines, or how flash memory works, or how we could save loads of power by unplugging our damn power adaptors when things are not on, or nearfield and farfield EM radiation and why Tesla was a cuckoo, or why Photolithography has changed our lives, or...or....or....or....

ASAAAAAAAAAAAARgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhgggggggghhhhh hhhhhhhh!

Now that you mention it, yeah, it's getting old.

Quoting Starwatcher162536: Do we really need 300 diavlogs on all these high level abstract subjects like cosmology, QM, and string theory? [...]

No. What we really need are 600 more diavlogs on how the far right thinks Obama will cause the ruination of all that is holy (American). But seriously ... I have been asking for more hardcore technology diavlogs since I started following this site regularly. Hasn't appeared to have had much effect, but maybe your added voice will help. You also have to remember that, concerning Percontations in particular, the sponsors are most interested in the "big" questions.

Quoting claymisher: Now that you mention it, yeah, it's getting old.

I really can't imagine getting enough on cosmology and fundamental physics. But, I'll take some of what SW's asking for, too.

Quoting Starwatcher162536: Am I the only one here that would rather have a diavlog on the long term problems with Moore's Law, or what exactly the smart transmission grid is, or the pros and cons of wind turbines are, or why a 56 Kbps modem will never actually give you 56 Kbps, or the current problems with using LEDs for general lighting, or telephone switching stations and sampling rates, or fiber optic devolpments in recent years, or the pros and cons of High voltage direct current tranmission lines, or how flash memory works, or how we could save loads of power by unplugging our damn power adaptors when things are not on, or nearfield and farfield EM radiation and why Tesla was a cuckoo, or why Photolithography has changed our lives, or...or....or....or....

I quite agree. A lot of your examples are tied to the energy consumption problem, and relate to the cosmic question of sustainable civilization.

That was a really beautiful discussion, maybe best I ever heard on the current state of physics. Sort of like Lubos Motl with manners. I hope we have future diavlogs at the same level of sophistication.

Quoting bjkeefe: Therefore, I'm not sure how useful it would be to have a philosopher on to discuss cutting-edge cosmology, although if we can find one who is able to discuss it as well as David Albert discussed quantum problems with Sean Carroll, that might be fun.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I think, however, that the problem of the infinite cannot be left to contemporary cosmologists and mathematicians. Philosophers have been thinking about infinity and its paradoxes ever since Zeno.. For instance, Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) argues that the actual infinite cannot exist because it cannot be perceived, grasped in thought (the actual infinite is to be distinguished from the potential infinite, which is a mere façon de parler, a fiction that can never be realized in actual thought):
"... in order to conceive the world, which fills all space, as a whole, the successive synthesis of the parts of an infinite world would have to be looked upon as completed; that is, an infinite time would have to be looked upon as elapsed, during the enumeration of all coexisting things." I fail to see how contemporary cosmologists, who alternate confusingly between the

Quoting bjkeefe: There are a lot of physicists who will tell you that if you really want to understand what physics has to say about the universe, you have to give up the demand of understanding everything in ways that seem (immediately) intuitive. This is true at both ends of the length scale, the quantum as well as the cosmological. If you want to be able to talk meaningfully about physics at the extremes, you have to accept that there really isn't any alternative to learning the mathematical language, and that any attempt to discuss such matters in our usual spoken languages quickly dooms you to a succession of imperfect analogies that are as often misleading as they are clarifying.

That's certainly true on the quantum scale.

Quoting bjkeefe: I think it is a mistake to call the language and the frameworks of understanding that have been developed to discuss the fundamental structure of our universe "mathematical fictions." ...

You are quite right, however, to say that the math allows us to escape the "bounds of sense." ... We humans and our sensory systems are limited to observing the mesoscales

Quoting Simon Willard: ...
You understate the importance of instruments. There's a reason why the Large Hadron Collider is being constructed at a cost of billions. Measurements lead the way to all science knowledge. The problem with string theory is a lack of data! String theory is a mathematical fiction, like a novel is a linguistic fiction. They may make sense, they may connect to the known world and suggest things that could happen, but we just don't know that.

Abstraction, on the other hand, is everywhere. Seems to me that Newton's gravity is an abstraction.

I think you are, to some extent, conflating "untested" with "untestable."

Quoting Simon Willard: [...] You understate the importance of instruments. There's a reason why the Large Hadron Collider is being constructed at a cost of billions. Measurements lead the way to all science knowledge. The problem with string theory is a lack of data! String theory is a mathematical fiction, like a novel is a linguistic fiction. They may make sense, they may connect to the known world and suggest things that could happen, but we just don't know that.

I didn't mean to suggest that instruments were not all that important, and I certainly agree that data is hugely important. But there has always been the urge to put the existing data into a larger context, or a more encompassing framework, and that means creating theoretical constructs. In many cases, these constructs can only serve, for at least some time, on an abstract level; e.g., to explain a larger set of observations more coherently. It is possible in many of these cases to draw logical conclusions along the lines of "if assumption X is true, then it must mean Y, Z, ...," while, for example, waiting for the theorists to come up with testable predictions or for the state of the art

I liked the discussion of the anthropic principle. Anthropic arguments make sense to me. People who marvel at the precise tuning of the constants of nature may be engaging in anthropocentric thinking. If you tweak certain fundamental constants you no longer get atoms. The interesting question is: What do you get instead? That question is too difficult for anyone to answer at this time. Perhaps other universes would be full of alien complexity that we would not easily recognize. This is the option Anthony described like this: "life would have somehow managed to arise -- as black hole beings in momentum-space, or whatever."

Imagine an alien intelligence who gets a glimpse into our universe and is struck by its dullness. Here are some excerpts from his report:

Nothing much here ... just a bunch of hot gases exploding ... mostly empty space and radiation ... there's a small rock where some intelligence has evolved, but it's not very interesting ... they like to kill each other with guns and knives ... in terms of civil organization, they invented something called the 'Registry of Motor Vehicles' ... OK, I'm outta here!

Quoting bjkeefe: I didn't mean to suggest that instruments were not all that important, and I certainly agree that data is hugely important. But there has always been the urge to put the existing data into a larger context, or a more encompassing framework, and that means creating theoretical constructs. In many cases, these constructs can only serve, for at least some time, on an abstract level; e.g., to explain a larger set of observations more coherently. It is possible in many of these cases to draw logical conclusions along the lines of "if assumption X is true, then it must mean Y, Z, ...," while, for example, waiting for the theorists to come up with testable predictions or for the state of the art of our instruments to advance to carry out such tests.

The hypotheses bloom like dandelions in my yard. Recent history shows that every scrap of qualitatively different data prunes away a multitude of hypotheses and supports one, or a very few, or sometimes none at all. Theorizing without data usually gets you nowhere, unless you spot things that are extremely and compellingly beautiful, like Einstein did. The string people think their work is beautiful, and I don't

Quoting AemJeff: I think you are, to some extent, conflating "untested" with "untestable."

In fact, here's some potential data.

Quoting Simon Willard: The hypotheses bloom like dandelions in my yard. Recent history shows that every scrap of qualitatively different data prunes away a multitude of hypotheses and supports one, or a very few, or sometimes none at all. Theorizing without data usually gets you nowhere, unless you spot things that are extremely and compellingly beautiful, like Einstein did. The string people think their work is beautiful, and I don't doubt that. But they are really far ahead of the data. Einstein, Schrodinger, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Weinberg, Wilczek were not that far removed from the data.

I'm not sure their contemporaries would have agreed with you, but I take your point.

I think these two brilliant men - (who are way beyond my ability to know and comprehend all of this difficult science ) - and all of their colleagues are still, nonetheless, ultimately always stuck with the final notion that, as Clifford says: "It is the way it is because it is the way it is."
I don't think science will at any foreseeable point in time OR EVER be able to tell us why there wasn't always nothing.
When Anthony posits a "secular" idea of some space alien Designer of the Universe, it relies on the same exact inexplicable (and in our world irrational) notion of our "creation" as does the idea of a "God." To call that a "secular" idea is just wordplay. You can't rationally justify the existence of that space alien Designer/Creator any more than you can rationally justify the existence of a "God" or of any of us or even one fleck of dust.
Rationally, there ought to be nothing. But, yes, Clifford is right: You can still do infinite amounts of science in our universe and we can discover lots of things. And I love to listen to brilliant scientists like these men

Quoting kidneystones: ... for some strange reason he feels compelled to reconcile science and religion.

... Bob is, whether he's willing to acknowledge the fact or not, very much of the same school as William Paley.

I've been noticing the parallel between Bob and E.O. Wilson, a self-described deist, who has recently been interested in reaching out to the religious communities he knew as a boy growing up in the American south. Does anyone else see a connection here?

At minute 22:10 and beforehand. Something sounding like peribation theory is referred to. Can someone spell this properly or give me the wikipedia/google name I can look this up with and learn more.

Quoting Flaw: At minute 22:10 and beforehand. Something sounding like peribation theory is referred to. Can someone spell this properly or give me the wikipedia/google name I can look this up with and learn more.

If memory serves, it was perturbation theory.