#370 – Edward Frenkel: Reality is a Paradox – Mathematics, Physics, Truth & Love
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2023
⏱️ 232 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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EPISODE LINKS:
Edward's Website: https://edwardfrenkel.com
Edward's Book - Love and Math: https://amzn.to/40Bgxh0
Edward's Twitter: https://twitter.com/edfrenkel
Edward's YouTube: https://youtube.com/edfrenkel
Edward's Instagram: https://instagram.com/edfrenkel
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OUTLINE:
Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) - Introduction
(05:54) - Mathematics in the Soviet Union
(16:05) - Nature of reality
(27:23) - Scientific discoveries
(40:45) - Observing reality
(56:57) - Complex numbers
(1:05:42) - Imagination
(1:13:33) - Pythagoreanism
(1:21:28) - AI and love
(1:34:07) - Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems
(1:54:32) - Beauty in mathematics
(1:59:02) - Eric Weinstein
(2:20:57) - Langlands Program
(2:27:36) - Edward Witten
(2:30:41) - String theory
(2:36:10) - Theory of everything
(2:45:03) - Mathematics in academia
(2:50:30) - How to think
(2:56:16) - Fermat's Last Theorem
(3:11:07) - Eric Weinstein and Harvard
(3:18:32) - Antisemitism
(3:38:45) - Mortality
(3:46:42) - Love
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with Edward Franco, one of the greatest living mathematicians, |
| 0:05.4 | doing research on the interface of mathematics and quantum physics, with an emphasis on the Langlann's |
| 0:11.2 | program, which he describes as a grand unified theory of mathematics. He also is the author of |
| 0:18.0 | Love and Math, the heart of hidden reality. And now, a quick use that can mention of each sponsor. |
| 0:25.6 | Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got |
| 0:29.8 | house of Macadamia's for healthy snacks, Shopify for e-commerce and ExpressVPN for security |
| 0:36.7 | and privacy on the internet, to use wisely my friends. Also, if you want to work with our |
| 0:42.4 | amazing team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfreedman.com slash hiring. |
| 0:48.0 | And now, onto the full ad reads, as always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, |
| 0:53.0 | but if you must skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. |
| 1:00.0 | This show is brought to you by House of Macadamia's, a company that ships delicious, high quality |
| 1:07.1 | and healthy, macadamia nuts and macadamia nut-based snacks directly to your door. I don't know why |
| 1:14.2 | shipping to your door matters, but in the copy they gave me, they put that there, and I should use |
| 1:18.8 | this opportunity to say that this sponsor and every sponsor, I have been extremely strict with |
| 1:24.5 | that they can't tell me anything about what I can say. So sometimes when I say something that comes |
| 1:29.4 | from their copy, it's just because the eternal laziness that is my human mind, the limits of my |
| 1:36.8 | mind that are very quickly becoming superseded by GPT-4, GPT-5, GPT-6 and beyond. The sound of |
| 1:43.6 | my voice will soon be generated by AI. The thoughts coming from my mind will soon be generated by AI. |
| 1:49.2 | The entirety of wisdom will be generated by language models, large language models that form deep |
| 1:58.2 | representations, compressions of human knowledge, and are able to access, search, query, integrate |
| 2:05.2 | and generate wisdom. Far, far better than I ever can, which is why I will not be generating wisdom. |
| 2:13.1 | I will be sitting in a couch with a zen-like look on my face, appreciating every single moment that |
... |
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