Why Do Physicists FIGHT Philosophers?

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2024

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Join my mailing list https://briankeating.com/list to win a real 4 billion year old meteorite! All .edu emails in the USA 🇺🇸 will WIN! Why do physicists fight philosophers? A couple of months ago, I was invited to Robinson Erhardt’s podcast to discuss the expansion and inflation of the universe, the relationship between theory and experiment in cosmology, gravitational waves, my brainchild, the BICEP experiment, and a lot more. Enjoy! Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in between: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsxwneBx6apV1mQ7CbWKfXQ Key Takeaways: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:15 Brian the Builder 00:07:15 The Theory of Cosmological Expansion? 00:23:48 The Origins of Inflation 00:31:47 On Theory and Experiment in Astrophysics 00:41:55 On Gravitational Waves and Inflation 00:58:27 BICEP Tech Specs 01:12:01 What Did BICEP Find? 01:26:46 The Simons Array 01:30:37 On Eric Weinstein’s Theory of Everything 01:36:44 Outro — Additional resources: 📝 Get one month of Snipd Premium for free with this link: https://get.snipd.com/Cx7S/brianSnipd Snipd lets you take Smart Notes 🧠 with AI 💡 — it’s my favorite podcast player 😀 ! ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/ 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A common misconception among most laypeople and even some experts is that my job is to prove a theory, say prove inflation right or proves the
0:12.0	pyrotic model or bouncing cosmological model or ADS, and it's nothing of the sort.
0:18.0	My job is to disprove theories.
0:20.8	The more the better. We don't have a notion of proof that would suffice
0:26.8	for a philosopher like you or a mathematician. It cannot be accomplished in the physical sciences.
0:35.0	And yet, and yet what we can do is disprove a panoply of competitive theories,
0:41.4	which if true it perhaps you know revoke or you
0:46.4	know promote a given model of cosmogenesis and that's what makes my job
0:52.0	exciting I get to be a professional exterminator, killing off rival theories and working towards the betterment of understanding.
1:11.0	Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
1:15.0	Open the pod bay doors, how? Just to start off, what was it that gripped you so much about the building and the seeing?
1:19.0	Because from the way that you write and talk about Galileo in your book losing the Nobel Prize I can
1:27.2	see that it's really a romantic serious love affair.
1:30.8	Yeah, I mean for me the notion of contributing to the corpus of scientific knowledge, you know, really
1:40.1	initiated by Galileo is really too much to wish for and yet you know here we are or I've come
1:48.4	very close to you know making measurements along with my colleagues and trends and team members using a Galileo
1:55.7	and refracting telescope exactly of the character that Galileo himself used in the skies of
2:02.4	Northern Italy in 1609 and so it fills me with overwhelming
2:06.8	awe and dread to follow, you know, clumsily in the footsteps of your heroes.
2:12.8	And yet the contribution I think I'm most capable of making
2:18.1	is in regard to the acquisition of data.
2:22.2	And I think of a common misconception among most lay people and
	...

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