Looking to make your search bar cast is SAM Harris just a note to say that if your hearing this year, currently honour subscriber feet. We here in the first part of this conversation in order to access full episodes of making sense, podcast you'll need to subscribe. sand harris downward there, you'll find or private rss feed to add to your favorite pot catcher, along with others. Subscriber only content, we don't run ads on the podcast and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy we're doing here. Please consider becoming what will the big stick,

this week was the firing of tucker carlson from fox news. I normally wouldn't have much to say about this, but this has been such an enormous story, at least for those of us who a media, and everyone has commented on it. It seems no one has made what I consider to be the most important point about all this: So I feel like I have something to add to this conversation, which is otherwise next, Ordinarily boring one I don't know Tucker, I believe we've met twice. I think he interviewed me twice. He was one of my first tv interviews. I don't even know what show that was back in the day I feel like was pbs shows as possible. So I think he's interviewed me twice but not for a very long time. In any case, almost no one

done more to stoke the fires of trumpets, em and populist outrage. Then Tucker karlsson in recent years he's done hour after hour of broadcasts on how the establishment is against you? They are again It's the you being the millions of people in trumps base who have completely lost trust in institutions. He has been need journalistic foil to trumpet magog worry for years, and for that reason alone it should be obvious how not be a fan of his, but as a result the dominion lawsuit against fox, we now have several text messages they karlsson, sent privately to his colleagues at fox by these were entered into evidence. For the upcoming trial, which was only prevented by fox agreeing to pay three core. if a billion dollars in settlement to dominion for defamation any

as we now have a window onto what karlsson actually felton presumably feels about donald trump in one tax he says I hate him passionately. This was sent january. Fourth, just today Prior to the attack on a kapital, he went on to say we're all pretending we ve got a lot to show for it because it in what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest, but come on there, really and turned upside trump on the topic of trump skipper binds inauguration. He texted hard to believe so. Destructive is disgusting. I'm trying to look away just before the capital riot karlsson, wrote

We are very, very close to being able to ignore trump most nights. I truly can't wait and right after the capital was stormed, he texted trump has two weeks left once he's out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his supporters. He's demonic, force a destroyer, but he's not going to destroy us I've been thinking about this every day for four years may read that final line again he's a demonic force. A destroyer. I've been thinking about this every day for four years. Ok! So here you have someone who has done hundreds of broadcasts supporting trump ism, pandering the trump ism and distorting reality. In all the ways you have to distorted, to disregard the danger that trump post and here see that all the while Carl

and believed that trump was a demonic force, a destroyer now, It is the only point I want to make this should matter. It should be impossible. Four karlsson, to have an audience after it has been revealed that he's capable of this level of dishonesty. think about it in every other context. Think about the pharmaceutical executor. Who knows that the drug he's marketing, doesnt work or his dangerous, but in public towns it is both safe and affair. revealing that about a pharmaceutical executive should be the end of that executives. Career is. The very essence of fraud are highly other. These texts were the reason why crossing got fired from fox. I guess that remains to be seen, but of ahead to bed. I would bet that karlsson pays no price at all for his fraudulent,

In fact, I expect him to build an enormous media business once he finds his feet, and that is something quite scary and depressing about our culture or at least a large part of our culture. But by this tawdry business has absolutely nothing to do with today's podcast today and speaking with TIM maudlin timidly, professor philosophy it and why you and they found or indirectly, John bell institute for the foundation to physics. His interest primarily focus on the foundations of physics, as well as metaphysics and logic. and his books include quantum non locality and relativity truth and paradox the metaphysics within physics, and two volumes on the philosophy of physics, TIM has also been a good anaheim fellow and has taught at rutgers, and harvard efficient and why you and I reached out to TIM, almost as an active,

can you and education for myself in philosophy, his area of focus in the philosophy of physics and metaphysics has really not been my wheel house philosophically and has some questions I just wanted to put to him. We talk about the nature of scientific reductionism, emergence the nature of time causation. The nature of possibility, natural law, David Louis, is possible worlds rival, interpretations of quantum mechanics, we have a long wrestling match over the topic of free will and a few other things here anyway. Tim performed a kind of philosophical therapy. For me on a few points, and also, I think we demonstrate that certain rival intuitions on the topic of free will can't quite be resolved through argument. I think I have come to that conclusion. After this conversation,

perhaps more say on that topic. But he just seems to me that if you experience yourself in a certain way, certain points just can't land, whereas if you have a different experience, momentum, when certain points are not only obvious, you can't see how experience can Seen any other way anyway, you can make it our exchange, what you will lose a lot of fun and I bring you tim, one. I am here with tim maudlin tim thanks. We join me thanks for having me, so am I.

I thank you for doing that. I am very eager to talk to you about turn the the interesting philosophical questions thrown up by our understanding of physics, but emma I in particular. I have something that I'm curious about that. I will drop on you at some point as we take the tour here, you being a philosopher who It was much more about the current implication of physics, and I do but before we jump and how would you describe your intellectual background and and the kinds of questions you focused on as a philosopher. Well, I I, when I was an undergraduate, I kept bouncing around between different texts and I ended up getting a degree that was a joint degree in philosophy and physics, and then my phd was in history and philosophy of science and in general, philosophy and physics tend to go together, pretty naturally, probably most philosophers of science who have expertise in a science have it in physics, and I think that's because

the basic philosophical impulse, is always to get to the bottom of things. Somehow and and there's a certain sense. It's not the only sense, but there's a certain sense in which physics lies at the bottom of the empirical site. Since I dont want to say that sometimes physicists say that in a very denigrating way. I don't want to do that at all, but there is a sense in which, as you push down you kind of pushed down from biology due to chemistry, the physics, so I think that basic search after foundations explains both of by both of those interests. Maybe we can present of that kind. Jane you just referenced, which is this that the concept of reductionism and the occasion, overweening claims that that physicists are apt to make about how everything reduces to physics, and this connects today the concept

The emergence and emergent phenomenon, emergent properties of the the mind is generally thought of in science as an emergent phenomenon, a born of information processing being biological brains such as our own. As to whether or not this gonna happen in the computers where we are building and their software or may be seen the term. Certainly we know intelligence is an emerging phenomenon of information process. I guess we're or the jury is still out on consciousness and here there being a qualitative character to mind by dumb. How do you think of out, reductionism and emergence, in particular with respect to causal powers, for instance a united. If we say that something it is a higher level phenomenon is an emergent phenomenon if it has causal powers, so, for instance, of the

where we were using our minds, were using language where perceiving the world this moment, this is all Consider to be emergent in our on the basis of it it in to supervise and on the basis of firm neurophysiologist and its micro events, but if it has causal powers, if you know my understanding english grammar say or my intention to use a certain word in the sentence. Has causal powers? Doesn't it only have causal powers at the level of its micro constituents, which say at the level at bottom, at the level of physics, Is it doesn't? The reduction actually run through Even if we can conceive of much much less explain, higher level phenomenon in terms of their micro constituents, which is that were never going to actually be able to think about things like

conversations or stock markets or cocktail parties or anything else in terms of the subatomic particles in and fields of electromagnetism, but aren't they also powers of those higher higher level phenomenon. Nevertheless, reducible to their micro, constituent. Ok, There are a lot of words you use that are multiplying ambiguous and so it's very easy to get lost. In this thicket. It among those are emergence. Supervenient explanation is gonna, be a big one, redder and causation, and part of the poor, visit even in the philosophical literature and and any the the physical literature people can in literally diametrically opposed things by emergence. So there was a time when some of the so called british emergency lists the hallmark of him.

and was a phenomenon that could not be explained on the basis of micro physics, couldn't be accounted for and was fundamentally novel and only emerged at some time or in some systems, or something like that. But my view is it is that the supervision to claim, as far as we know, is true for what we call the ontology. That is is a certain sense in which my computer, just to take the example about to give you my computer is nothing but a collection of atoms put together in a certain configuration and everything it does. We think in printed, could be accounted for by just studying how Adams interact and how electrons interact and how this whole very complicated gadget is put together

but let me just give you an exact example. I use a lot so I suppose I've got my computer, it's on the table and there's a little display of spinning rainbow colors going on coming off the screen. Photons coming off the screen and I call in a physicist kind of a super physicist- and I say: can you make a prediction about about this display? What's gonna happen and you may in the physicists could kind of scanned the thing all the way down to its micro structure and do some calculations and say well that little spinning thing is gonna, go on for the next four years and five hours and forty seven seconds and then the screen is gonna, go blank and I say: ok, thank you very and and then I call in a computer scientists- and I say you know, what's the deal with this-

mean in the computer. Scientist value and look at the computer looks at a bunch of papers that are sitting next to the computer. That is the program. I've just programme, the machine and says look you've got a loop here right step. Ten says: go to step twelve and step twelve says: go to step, ten that little things going to spin forever because you're in a computational loop. Now in terms of the actual prediction, I take it the physicists This will be right because in ten years and so on, the computer screen is just going to burn out and that's not the business of the computer scientist to predict I mean the computer scientist is dealing with the system using a different set of analytical categories.

But I would claim that the computer scientists has actually given me much better. Information were understanding than the physicists tonnes right. If the physicist has just ground out a very long calculation on the basis of its physical structure, it may give me good predictions, but it sort of gives me no real insight of the kind I wanted. So to that extent, these other categories that we use to understand the world, including biological categories, computational categories, economic ones. As you mentioned, I mean the basics of economics. Presumably, would not change if you change fundamental fist as long as there were people or creatures that wanted to exchange goods and that had more or less the same psychology that humans have that their greedy

they're trying to make money, then all sorts of economic explanations, for why things happen would be unchanged by even radical changes of physics at the lower level. So the The idea that all explanation were all scientific understanding reduces to physics. I think that just plainly wrong and in fact disciplines other than physics are much broader because they would continue to have explanatory power. Even if the physics were quite different but none the less. My computer really is nothing more than a bunch of atoms put together a bang lots of physics, rain theirs is that in terms of what it is made of or what it really is, that's what it is and there's a sense in which the physical structure accounts for everything else it. It does I think what I hear you alluding to his. What often goes by the name of functionalism in the philosophy of mind, I guess it would take it.

More generally than that which is and another way to combat this is to distinguish the song where in hardware layer of your computer, fear many other things like mines and wicked, acknowledge that any physical instantiation of a certain Function, thing will say a mind or a stock market or anything else that physical instigation does in fact reduced to physics but it has a logical structure that can be implemented in multiple instigations, even as you say in conditions whether the laws of physics are different in important ways. Certainly it even within our reach, where the laws of physics or the same. We know- we can implement a a calculator on highly new non, analogous physical substrates and we can use to arrive

with the wetware in our heads and we can do arithmetic in sulaco with it with a computer, and the same logic can be implemented very differently, but in each instantiated in what happens next and the other the causal properties of of each sequence of events is a matter of what the physics is doing, but it can't be understood at that level You can't look at a collection of atoms in a computer a collection of atoms in our heads and extract the rules of arithmetic from those two different systems, if a beaches implementing the roles of arithmetic that does get what you're going something like that again to go back to your own example of the stock market. You know you ve got a broker sitting there,

uneasy they're, going to press the cell button or not and again, theoretically, a complete physical specification of his brain should allow you to predict where his fingers gonna go. But for all that you might say that give me no inside of the kind I wanted right. I wanted to know what motivated him right. What was he thinking? What was he trying to achieve? Oh he's, greedy right, he thought that the price was gonna go down. He thought he should buy it now or the lose money. All that can be perfectly true right. Is it

He can only do that because he has a brain and the he can only you know he only has a brain is brain is made of atoms and it has a physical structure but there's just all sorts of different levels of conceptual structure that one can bring to a given situation and those different levels provide different sorts of insight into what's going on and in many cases the physical level, even though its not there, even though its there isn't the right one to give you the kind of under standing that you want to get. I mean, let's take it another simple example: pianos where there are no microscopic pianos, they're kind of can't be atomic level piano scores. Pianos are too complicated instruments. Indeed lots of parts put together in certain ways. that sense. Pianos only quote, emerge at a higher level, but are they predictable? Well,

yeah in a sense I mean, if you tell me how all the micro structure is put together, I can predict that that, when you hit the key, the hammer will hit the hit the string and it'll vibrate. none of that is a mystery physically. So because nothing new has emerged. Really ontological, I mean there's a certain sense in which a piano is just a bunch of atoms that have been connected together in a very particular. sort of way. What would you put? What would you class? as an emerging phenomenon. That is perplexing. otherwise, unforeseeable and not understandable at the level of its micro constituents. Yeah, I think,

the only example I know of which is the hardest problem in the world is consciousness. Pride is subject to feelings, pain and to take an obvious example that there's nothing in physics, there's nothing in the conceptual repertoires physics which would allow you to predict not just from small the large, but no matter how big it is that any physical behaviour would have associated with it a feel or a subjective stay That's why you know it's come to be called the hard problem of consciousness. I, on the other hand, could contrast that you could predict all kinds of behavior I mean just as I can predict the behavior of my computer. We think, if I knew enough about the brain, I might be able to predict the words that are going to come out of my mouth in your mouth and the vibrations of the air and so on, but that any of that should be associated with a subjective feel that I think we have no grip on whatsoever

and I it's not just we don't have a grip. I don't even know what a grip on it would look like you will you and I are in agreement there and hard problem of consciousness is something that is quite central to my interests, but I'm going to leave it to the side, because I have so much also. I want to talk to you about, but just to revisit this. This issue of emergence for a second so come back to a property or a function like a rift matic right. The fact that its substrate independent the fact that we could eat it, it is a certain concatenation of events- can constitute a rhythmic tick brains, but it can also do that in a computer made of atoms that don't it all resemble what's in our brains and presumably there, We could do this in all kinds of systems that one would either

early wooden, imagine could be re. Proper computer could could be made up a proper computer in some sense and implemented rithmetic. So therefore, arithmetic itself can really be reducible to any one of those things are any string of those things, or is there something about that confusion on the lot okay. So here here's now you ve brought up open that. Yet another independent can of worms, which is the status of mathematics, mathematical entity, said this is not like stock trading and pianos. We all agree that there can't be stock markets without some physics, our pianos, without some six their fundamentally physical things. In that sense, although I guess I would, I would hesitate with ie the stock I get in that if stock markets are also substrate independent and an open to a functional list, definition then does not play the same kind of havoc with

with the reduction, not no, not really, because if you give a functional, wist definition of the sort, you're thinking of still That's in a way substrate independent. I may take the definition of a touring machine made its given a kind of very abstract. It's got a certain number of internal states in their inputs in their memories and then their rules for how things evolve. None the less. In order to have such a thing, you need some something physical right. You need something. It may be that many different substrates can reach, lies. It but you need a physical substrate. The question of the relation of mathematics or arithmetic to physics seems to be quite different. What we, with a normal thought, is it arithmetic is just completely independent of any physics that, even if there were nothing physical, it would still be the case that one plus one equals to it would still be the case if their an infinite

preventive measures. Even if the physical world is finite and there aren't an infinite number of anything physical still there, in number of villagers. Why is while you can't stop right every time every and you get to an integer there's one a different one, that's one bigger, so I mean my view about that is what's called platonists m. That is that the mathematical realm is independent of the physical ral, entirely in a way that stock market art well prattled touch on that again, because I was central to my it's earned today is to talk about the existence of things that don't exist concretely and obviously mathematical objects, like numbers, are part of that picture, although different from what I want to focus on it, but before we get there,

let's talk about time and why that is such a difficult notion scientifically know what we have is common sense experience of time which klute things like duration and change and seek once right, is bound up with our capacity to remember, what's happening as also bound up with our sense of that. We understand something about causation, because you causes proceed their effects If my thumb hurts now is because I hit it with a hammer. Yesterday is not because I'm going to hit it with a hammer tomorrow, and that implies a certain structure which we we take into account it in personally in every moment of our living? How has physics put pressure on our common sense notion of time

alright! So now, I'm again, I should just warn you that what I'm going to say that you'll hear a lot of people object to, but nonetheless I'm going to say it cause. I think it's obviously true, I don't think physics has put any pressure on the idea that time is fundamentally directed that some things come before other things that causes come before their effects. There's a have a very specific account of the structure of time, or we might call the temporal structure of the world that was given by newton, that's kind of a very common sense. one which involves the notion of simultaneity of thinking that if I snap my fingers here, ok at tat very moment, that's marked by that finger snap. That moment as newton says, exists

throughout the heavens right, the very same moment exists in london on the moon, and you know at the farthest stars newton said something like that, and then you can think of time as the succession of these global instance, which is going forward right, it has a direction in a way that space doesn't have a direction and there's duration. You can measure, then there's a fact about how much time has passed in there. Certainly a fact about what happens before. What when we get to the theory of relativity the special and general theory of relativity. They deny that there is this global simultaneity. They deny that if I snap my fingers here, there's any fact at all about exactly what was going on on alpha centurion at that moment, because there's nothing that counts as being at that very same moment, analysis and turkey. So it's a bit of it

the shock in a way to the everyday conception. On the other hand, the everyday conception not. We believe that there is this kind of global instant, but that were immediately aware of it. I mean all of us are shocked. The first time were told when you look up at the sky. You know if you see up, if use, if you see a supernova. Your normal thought is gosh that star just exploded and then there's, no none, no, no! No it. It exploded millions and millions of years ago, and the light has been travelling to us ever since what you're seeing isn't what's going on right now and that's true even of even for newton right for anybody. So you you have. This tendencies are very naive. We think that you're being presented right now with the world around you, as it is right now, but any kind of just

little bit of thought about how the information got to you and you realize no, there must have been a time delay. It took some time just as will take time for a letter to get you right. When you read a letter, you dont think ass. This is going on right now. You think this happened a few days ago, what's being reported here, I was out of the same you can say as much neurologically what what's happening. What, when you touch something with a timid your finger, and you see your finger- that, with your eye, you know the transit time of through the visual system and through the centre, motor system is different and there's gotta be some time of integration at the level of cortex that fits creating this unity of a factory in the so called right in solving the binding right so that the present moment is a confection, somewhat born of of war.

in memory, and you know some period of integration that is not just a truly punctuate in the now conscious had absolutely emmy that there is no question that time perception again, the subjective feel of time is a very complicated neurological construct an end there could be at people on. You know their sort of temporal illusions. You can make and trick people about events that are pretty close to each other in time and get them to think that the time orders different than it was an we kind of understand how that works. That kind of complicated neural investigation is not where I spend my time, and I don't know I know a bit about it, but not a lot. On the other hand, one does want to you know, I think say. The perception of time is a bit different thing than time itself. I mean we all think that after the big bang, there was nobody around perceiving anything but

of happened and it happened in a certain order, and you know it took a certain amount of time for first stars to form and for galaxies to form and so on so time itself. Physical time itself is independent of our perception of it, and our perception may be very, very complicated and away the time itself. Isn't: okay. It's. What to revisit. This claim that the notion of a present more The notion of now is specious at sea. The widest scale By so doing they say that unity, snap, your fingers now that now doesn't hold for anything outside your reference frame. So when you talking to out now in another galaxy, you really can't you know utter that sentence. Co currently right because- and I guess she just spells out more- the reason. Why is because it is based on relativity enough you if you snap your fingers and then I snap my finger,

a second later in also. U yours now proceeded mine by a second in our reference frame. Well, you can based on on relativity. You can imagine someone far enough away moving fast enough say, will be it in relation to us where the sequence is truly reversed. Its perceive that I snapped before you snapped. yeah, I mean don't know that I mean it. You and me if it's coming true and I'll try and get people to fire up their imaginations and a bit which would help me try to explain this newton's picture, which is kind of the everyday picture. It is again in that time comes in these global instance, you can imagine the snap a snapshot of the entire universe. Now another snapshot a second later, another snapshot a second later, and you sort of stack up all those stab shots. The way you would frames on a film- and that gives you the entire history of the universe. Ok, and that idea, that

technical name for it is that there is a full wages of space time to imagine space time as being for dimensional us having kind of three spatial dimensions and one time dimension, and then you imagines icing it like a bologna into all of these layers that just one lies on top of the other right to that was Newton's picture nothing to do with anybody's reference framework. Anything this is just objectively. the structure of time. What happens when you go to relativity and it's you just have to keep stuff about reference frames out of it, has nothing to do with reference frames or anything like that. It just doesn't have that foliated structure. It has a very different one called a light cone structure so for every event, theirs of past and future light. Conan, that's perfectly objective, that's just as objective as anything newton had it's just not a slicing, and I'm sure people interested in this civically seen pictures of of light cone

somewhere, but you could, you can imagine a double cone with the snapping of your fingers right at the apex, with a combed owing downward at a cone going upward that are called the past and future lightens. Now, those according to relativity are as objective as anything. They have nothing to do with anybody's reference framework. Anything and all of the things in my the future white cone or objectively later than that finger snap, everything in its path, light coneys objectively earlier than it and everything outside of those to the whole region. That's outside the cone, these events that are called it space, like separation, those have dough definite temporal order with respect to the finger step. Now, if you and I tried to snap our fingers at space like separation, we couldn't do it because we're too close, and we would have to step with such precision that we could never ever do it. So if you kind of

match and at I'm sorry to have people do this in their heads. But if you have this picture of this double cone and then you keep taking the comb flattered flatter kind of, flattened out you'll, see that it more and more carefully approximates a kind of playing and that those thin regions outside the cone, those its basic separation, you sort of never never. Run across him in everyday life, but the further away you get the bigger that region gets in. So if you're, if your light years away than that region, can get quite large, ok, so there, This again meet you. You seem to be endorsing more of a common sense notion of time. Then certain physicists, might amuse. You alluded to that offer a footnote before you. You began, I guess

The two views here can be loosely described as in the present ism, verses, eternal ism, in some sense, where they take us, the eternal ism peace. I have often thought of by reference to the phrase if the block universe, which I dunno the do you know the origin of that phrase, I I I don't know who first started using it. I do know that that is again a phrase that is objectively does does a disservice, and and and I'll just say, a word that I can say with certainty about it, which is it you price, who wrote a book trying to argue against a phone if the mental direction of time- and this is something I believe that time has a direct art and time goes for it- we're all getting older right, I mean, as physics didn't tell us that isn't true

it would be a really amazing discovery. I'm still waiting on actually getting older right, I'm waiting for the discovery that tells me that isn't true right. So I think that it's nothing too now what what huh does in his book is. He does. He gives us explicitly there's a paragraph where he defines what he means by a block universe and the problem is: it has two pieces to it: one pieces to say that the past present and future are all equally real, and I believe that I think they are just facts about what happened in the past facts about what's going on now, facts about what are going to happen in the future, I I think the you know past people are just as real You know past pains and sufferings were just as real as the ones we endure and the ones in the future will be just as real. What worries us is real or are just as real cause registers rail guerrilla, being generated the sense of their to our future. Right I mean they haven't happened yet, but that they will happen in

you know case asura, things will happen in in some very particular way and then he adds a second clause, which is that and furthermore, there is no fundamental direction of time and I kind of endorsed the first one and completely reject the second one. So then you say: do I believe in a block universe? Well, I'm not a present is present. I need some present is home to me, the very peculiar view that all of reality is confined to what presently exists and then, if you say that sort of natural thing to say which is it while presently, there are no living dinosaurs, you say yeah, but still dinosaurs are not fictional right there, not fictional in the way that no Sherlock Holmes is. general. There really happened. Dinosaurs are real and in in a certain sense of real. Of course, they existed earlier Then we do there in our past light com, but they're not actual

This actually brings me directly to the topic. I do want to raise good with you, so um, maybe we're all just Allah start the slide in into that. But let let me just prop up the two views where we have begun to talk about here this year with presenters versus eternal ism. I mean, I think the present at em does to some degree I dunno all of it's implications in science at the moment, but it is my understanding of it does capture what I consider. A common sense notion of time is that the past no longer exists never happened, happened and its effects may be evident in the present. No, so that we can see that the ruins of the colosseum in rome, our you can see the dirty dishes. You left from lunch, but a journalism suggests and inestimable was also going by the name of the block universe suggested in some very real sense. The past

I am in which the colosseum was full of living. Romans who were shrieking for the blood of gladiators, is still real, all right in the end, as your past self still, devouring lunch right like that like it's, not, though those moments have been experienced, really left. hind by you in some sends me. You never were there. Wrong, and you you are no longer having lunch, but I know you We will work with with which you are currently identified as a sort of key hole. View of of the cosmos through your inner, your conscious mind in this moment, but on this view of of a block universe. Where are you they specialized time and given it no real preferential direction. The past is still in something actual, even though you can't actual eyes it end or, worse still, for common sense. The future is also

out there and on the other there is a version of the block universe. I think this is called the growing block universe, where the future isn't yet real. But let's leave that aside for second, it almost like either the reality is a is a novel and you're on page sixty three now and yet page one page A hundred and eighty exist just as much as the page or on, and you know that that's the intuition confounding sense in which time gets fully spare, lies in a block and ethics. Has it you're not signing up for that picture, then? No, I end again. It's I mean I just have to take to kind of sign post some words you used

The word still read and still was doing a lot of work there would you know it is: is the gladiators battle battles in the roman colosseum? I mean you, imagine a kid going to a museum and they see a picture of these gladiators and they say that real and there's it's obviously a sense in which you would correctly. If, if you just been seen pictures of unicorns and the loch ness monster, you say no, no, that's real up where it really it happened now. Of course it happened in the past. If he says, is it still real and then you might say, oh by still, you mean. Is it going on right now? No, no! No! It's not going on right now. It it went on in the past really did go on in the past, and so, if you have this picture with these, you know if you can have this picture in this of this four dimensional structure, with the light cones kind of in your mind- and you say right now- I met the cone point of one of these cones. All of that is real. The whole thing is real. The stuff in my past life

I correctly say happened a while ago and isn't going on now. The stuff in the future will happen and it going on now, the idea of What's going on now, it's kind of a bit messed up in relativity, because, unlike there be Just a single thing that you have this whole outside region, that's actually quite large and doesn't correspond to your naive sense of the present. What really gets lost is the naive sense of the present, quite honestly, as stretching out. but I think the other thing you said was well. If I do all this and I completely space wise time and get rid of a direction, but that's what I dont want do. I dont think time is that that's what many people believe happens when you quote specialised time, you get rid of a direction reality to it and I think there's nothing. In physics. Endeavour has been anything in physics that suggests the time doesn't have a direction, and certainly physicists always.

it is having a direction always often it is so obvious because we know the way tie it normally goes when I put in a time coordinate that direction towards the future is supposed to be where the numbers get bigger, except when I'm sending off rockets, then I count down right then in the direction toward the future go ten nine eight, but at all other times you can hydrogen You just give me a time poured in it and don't tell me anything else. The convention is that, as the time coordinate gets larger, that's the forward direction of time, so it so obvious and so easy, and there is so little to to debate about it that you can. the fly under the radar. But it's their looks at you. Someone tonight there's no direction of time. I just route. I literally have no idea how to understand the world on living in But what about all the talk in physics around the math actually having no implication of direction, hourly that either the equations, irreversible and, and only and therefore end

repeat this is sort of comes to the rescue of of intuition here, I'm happy with their again it two things just happened. The first thing is people say There is no direct reality and equations, then you say will actually it turns out. There is because the cp keep the urgency and peer right and there's a technical sense in which, in quantum theory, the theory which is the best theory we have. There is a directionality of time and nobody disputes that nobel prizes were given for the discovery of parody violation, and so there is no physical dispute that that that there's, a symmetry that is called c p t. where the tea is time, symmetry and there's a general argument that any good theory should should respect that symmetry. But the sea p part violates it, and so the only you get. The whole thing to work is to have t be violated to you. There can't be a time symmetry, so they say, look in the equations of physics. You don't,

see this and use, it will actually be equations of physics as we haven't, you do see it, and then they say. Oh well, let's forget about that. I mean it's a very strange situation and then they bring in stuff about entropy. Now the thing about entropy is in everyday life. Of course there are many many times, cemeteries. Typically, although not always, if I show you two photographs taken a few years apart of somebody, you can put them in time order and figure which is a picture of them younger and which is a pity of them older? You might get it wrong. You know if they had a lot of cosmetic surgery. You could metz that up, but you know there are there. kinds of pretty reliable temporarily? irregularities and they demand an explanation, and the explanation for them is often goes through. Entropy, that's true, but what you? What are you trying to explain your trying to explain why? Typically, this happens before that, and so you're already assuming a time order in. Even

stating what it is you're trying to explain your trying to explain why things typically happen in a certain time order, and not in the reverse order. An entropy considerations are often important for understanding that they do help comprehend that. But if that doesn't at all suggest that time doesn't exist or time order doesn't exist, you assume it. exists just to state. The problem here will be the first to admit that they should hand a nobel prize out to whoever can explain what's happening to me face in the mirror, because that that shrieks for explanation, but hey. You alluded to the fact that many physicists or certain physicists, wouldn't agree with you here, and I am thinking of thought on not super familiar with their work. I'm thinking of people like Julian Barbour or carlo rovelli, I mean what what's, who who are you thinking of when you, when you're imagining having to debate someone on this topic? Well, the the Will you just I mean julian- has an extremely

idiosyncratic view. I view think he he got interested in trying to get rid of space and time spatial temporal structure at a fundamental level altogether in in of something called called relational, ism relation ism, and he pushed that programme as hard as anybody has pushed it. But that's not mainstream physics, Carlos views. I are a little bit hard for me to understand that, but the idea that there is a deep problem that connects entropy to time itself, as if I mean one might put it, sway. Some people seem to think that if entropy isn't going up or down than than time than the direction of time will have disappeared, that that that you couldn't say that anything happened before after anything else, that's a pretty widespread view and one I think that just doesn't. I don't think, there's any reason to believe that I dont think that there is a problem there,

that there is a problem about explaining the manifest time symmetry asymmetries. We see and that's a good problem. A lot of this has to do with what gets defined in terms of what and it's a very delicate situation to decide what you think should be the defined object in what should be the defining object. So I personally think, for example, to give the example. I think you would agree if word accusation and causation can be a very puzzling subject. I think it's part of the debt, initiative, a cause. Is it when you have a cause and effect pair the cause precedes the effect right? So I'm going to assume I have a good notion of time, precedence of time order of earlier and later and use that in defining causes their peep who would have foot that around and say no. No! No! No. I don't understand what, before and after me, but I have some independent grip of causation and I'm gonna. Some

I will whelan causation to define time order while and it seems to me this is just putting the cart before the horse. I mean this is putting the thing to be defined in the wrong spot, trying to define the later thing into You know that the earlier they ensure the later thing. It's just doesn't make any sense to me why I think we do you have at least we think we have an dependent grasp of the concept of causation, because we can talk about the possibility and, in general, the the non existence of things like teleology. Rather, that causes could stand as some kind of a tractor in the future been appalling events toward them as opposed to pushing from behind. So the fact that weaken you have a conversation about that suggests that causation is is separable from from the temporal order. You just scared right, but I guess my feeling is it that that part of the great triumph of the scientific,

revolution was to eliminate that kind of teleology. That oh, I understand why things are doing what they are doing now in terms of them being pulled by something in the future now course often you understand why things are going on. We are now in the sense that someone is aiming at something in the future. Right I mean you will get the builder building a house and you understand what he's doing in terms of having plans in his head and wanting to accomplish something and you're taking steps to accomplish it. That's a kind of tea the ology entirely logical explanation, but the thing free of evolution, successful We owe emanated the kind of tv ology europe mentioning here from biology and, I think, did a good job of it and said you know, evolution and evolutionary pressures and selection pressures. All explain why there's this appeal?

instead of design in nature, even though there isn't a designer, even though it's not aiming at anything and I and I take that to be a great triumph of of science. If someone says gosh, the reason that such and such is going on today is that something that's going to happen in one hundred years is pulling it forward. I think that's contrary to physics, it's contrary to biology. It's contrary to chemistry, it's kind of contrary to everything. so I think we ve gotten rid of that. I hope we have ok Sola, let some land on my arm topic of where I I'm genuinely uncertain, which really is the genesis of my interest in this conversation, as it relates to the concept of possibility, as it exists in physics, but also as it exists in I guess metaphysics and in philosophy, and I guess

But my question is what, if there is only the actual, is there some scientific reason or of logical reason, to rule out the possibility? How realise that circular, that possibility itself is just an illusion right, the end that cost So so the current sense of possibility- I think we all have- is that it itself is kind of mysterious because on some in some sense the assertion that reality includes things. They don't exist. Is it that there is more than the actual, rather the shoulder the things that actually happen. But then there are the things that haven't happened yet, but might happen through the things that could have happened. Had we done something.

Differently, but they didn't happen because we didn't do something differently and and and all of that space seems to exert an influence on what is actual in a way that is kind of inscrutable. So I guess the big emmy. So it seems that if some comes into being at time tee one say right becomes actual at t one. It does seem some necessary to say that its possibility was real at time: t zero, and so the question is in What does that possibility consist in ireland perhaps a now realising that we could start talking about David Louis's model. Realism here, which I might be worth addressing, however, have a robbery we, but my underline concern is whether the sure on the possible or in fact identical sets and that any thing that is possible, really is in fact actual and

were adding to this picture is an idea which we we live with his persistent idea that other things, I'd have happened or might yet happened. You know you could have married a different person. You could have worn a different outfit, but in reality there is always only the person you married and the outfit you war and the rest is something you are thinking yeah. I understand what you're what you're saying? Let me go back this kind of wonderful discussion of these basic questions by nelson goodman in his book in his set of lectures fact fiction and forecasts. Nay, talks about everyone has a philosophical conscience and that conscience is a set of things you think are pretty much okay,

I hate that to believe in and then there are things that are not obviously okay to believe in it doesn't mean you immediately rule them out, but you you would require some work to explain them right, and he says people have different consciences for him among the things that he can't accept. without further explanation are unrealized possibles, which is exactly the thing you've been talking about angels. He says neutrinos. He says I e it's not that he won't accept neutrinos, but he can get some explanation. He doesn't quite know damn what they're supposed to be only two out of three and bad yet aouda? He has a whole way and any just as this is my conscience, if you have a different conscience, you're gonna think out, you know you might think, I'm I'm allowing too much. You might become a little and if what you were saying was what about unrelenting actualize the if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe, that sam harris dot org once you do you'll get,

access to all full length episode the making sense podcast, along with other subscriber, only content, including bonus episodes in a yes and the conversations I've been having on the waking up at the makings has podcast his ad free in relies entirely and listeners. or you can subscribe now at san terrorist network. I