Emily Adlam: Reality Is a Completed Puzzle, Not a Flowing River

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Curt Jaimungal

Physics, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Emily Adlam challenges time's flow, presenting an 'all-at-once' universe like a completed Sudoku puzzle. The conversation delves into quantum measurement, observer roles, causality, and the arrow of time, highlighting the need for both philosophical clarity and scientific precision.0:00 Introduction0:56 Observers in Quantum Mechanics2:15 The Measurement Problem6:23 Dogmas in Quantum Foundations8:24 Causation and Its Philosophical Implications9:12 The Arrow of Time and Its Mysteries10:28 Exploring Coarse Graining and Reductionism13:21 Non-Locality: Temporal vs. Spatial16:06 The Nature of Non-Locality19:34 Temporal Non-Locality and Its Implications21:51 Retrocausality: The All-at-Once Perspective26:25 The Measurement Problem and All-at-Once Framework28:24 Observer-Centric Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics31:29 Probabilities in Physics32:51 The Process Matrix and Causal Structures38:33 Foundations of Physics and Philosophy1:05:16 The Emergence of Space-Time1:08:11 Exploring Correlations in Physical Parameters1:10:44 Epistemology of the Measurement Problem1:13:26 Lessons in Patience and PersistenceSPONSORS:- I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE- Substack: personal writings https://curtjaimungal.substack.com- Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE- YouTube Membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join- Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungalRESOURCES:- Emily's profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emily-Adlam- Spooky Action at a Temporal Distance (paper): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7512241/pdf/entropy-20-00041.pdf- Quantum Field Theory and the Limits of Reductionism (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.20457- Two Roads of Retrocausality (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.12934- Taxonomy for Physics Beyond Quantum Mechanics (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.12293- Strong Determinism (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.02886- Carlo Rovelli on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF4SAketEHY- Stephen Wolfram on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YRlQQw0d-4- Emily interviewed about Nonlocality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR7aPlZg7dE&ab_channel=GeorgeMusser- Tim Palmer on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlklA6jsS8A- Tim Maudlin on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU1bs5o3nss- Algorithmic Randomness and Probabilistic Laws (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.01411- Governing Without a Fundamental Direction of Time (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.09226- Matt Segal on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeTm4fSXpbM- Jacob Barandes on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oWip00iXbo&list=PLZ7ikzmc6zlN6E8KrxcYCWQIHg2tfkqvR&index=33- Sabine Hossenfelder on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3y-Z0pgupg&t=1s- Bernardo Kastrup and Sabine on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJmBmopxc1k&t=755s&ab_channel=CurtJaimungal- Sean Carroll on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AoRxtYZrZo- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt- Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal features long-form, technically detailed interviews with leading researchers in physics, mathematics, consciousness, and philosophy, exploring topics at the level of active research. For academics, graduate students, and anyone seeking depth beyond popular science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The dogma I worry about is that we should think about physics in terms of time evolution.
0:04.4	This picture where you start at the beginning and evolve forwards in time.
0:07.3	That's a very intuitive way of thinking about physics, but it is very clearly not a good fit
0:11.9	for what we are seeing. There's really good evidence coming from lots of different parts of
0:15.8	physics that we shouldn't be thinking about time in those terms.
0:20.9	Imagine a completed Sudoku puzzle.
0:23.7	The rules don't dictate that you start in one corner and then work systematically across
0:27.5	the grid.
0:28.5	Instead, they just constrain what patterns are valid for the entire puzzle.
0:32.5	Professor Emily Adlam of Chapman University suggests that the fundamental laws of physics
0:36.6	work similarly.
0:38.0	You don't evolve the universe step by step from past to future.
0:42.1	Instead, there are these constraints, something that selects valid patterns across all of
0:46.9	spacetime simultaneously.
0:48.9	This quote-unquote, all-at-once perspective, helps explain paradoxical quantum phenomena
0:53.8	like delayed choice experiments
0:55.4	and bell non-locality. It also comports with Einstein's relativity where the distinction
1:00.2	between past and future depends on the observer's reference frame. If correct, this paradigm
1:04.4	shift would transform our understanding of causality of observers and of the nature of physical
1:09.7	law itself.
1:16.1	What's the largest unsolved problem in physics today that you're interested in?
1:21.6	Well, this is not a very original answer, but I think the measurement problem of quantum mechanics for me still really stands out as an important unsolved problem.
	...

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