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Nima Arkani-Hamed: The End of Space-Time [video]

isthisthingon99 4y ago
Just finished the video. What he's basically saying that he things he's found a simpler way to discuss physical processes that has space time naturally fall out of it which is motivated by the fact that physics breaks down at small enough scales. I don't think he gave enough information to know whether what he says helps progress physics just that it exists.
- sidlls 4y ago
  Regardless, a video is poor medium to communicate the idea. Publish at least a summary with actual work shown, or the video is just useless self-promotional fluff
  - sairahul82 4y ago
    He wrote tons of papers. I don't know about the topic but he wrote real papers ! https://archive.ph/20121215091939/http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+a+arkani-hamed,n https://archive.ph/20121215091939/http://www.slac.stanford.e...
  - cschmid 4y ago
    It's a popular science talk, not a presentation of a specific research result. The re-interpretation of scattering amplitudes in terms of novel mathematical structures is almost its own subfield of theoretical particle physics. Most of the specific results he mentioned are described in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2007 https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2007
jeremysalwen 4y ago
I thought this was a very high quality lecture in that it managed to be very accessible despite being grounded in very high level physics ideas. It's a very narrow path to walk between the chasm of confusion/boredom, and the chasm of misleading pop-sci explanations.
- nico 4y ago
  The main idea explained in the video reminds me of some of the concepts that the guy of Wolfram Alpha talks about.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
swader999 4y ago
Nima is one of the few people I don't speed up on YouTube.
aaroninsf 4y ago
Bookmarked to watch later, but being familiar with the Wolfram take on similar issues, I am curious if there is any "serious" discussion within this domain, about the simulation hypothesis. Naively, it certainly *seems* like a lot of the properties of our own universe are consistent with those one would expect from a simulated one... I am thinking specifically of eg uncertainty and "local reality"; and, absolute limits on the speed of information propagation; and even perhaps general relativity—many such things seem naturally emergent from a computed universe. I have found it puzzling that this is not more generally discussed; I'm not sure if that's because it's considered obviously false, or, obviously true, or, irrelevant ("metaphysics") when the task at hand is just characterization of what we're living with.

Just finished the video. What he's basically saying that he things he's found a simpler way to discuss physical processes that has space time naturally fall out of it which is motivated by the fact that physics breaks down at small enough scales. I don't think he gave enough information to know whether what he says helps progress physics just that it exists.

sidlls 4y ago
Regardless, a video is poor medium to communicate the idea. Publish at least a summary with actual work shown, or the video is just useless self-promotional fluff
- sairahul82 4y ago
  He wrote tons of papers. I don't know about the topic but he wrote real papers ! https://archive.ph/20121215091939/http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+a+arkani-hamed,n https://archive.ph/20121215091939/http://www.slac.stanford.e...
- cschmid 4y ago
  It's a popular science talk, not a presentation of a specific research result. The re-interpretation of scattering amplitudes in terms of novel mathematical structures is almost its own subfield of theoretical particle physics. Most of the specific results he mentioned are described in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2007 https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2007

jeremysalwen 4y ago

I thought this was a very high quality lecture in that it managed to be very accessible despite being grounded in very high level physics ideas. It's a very narrow path to walk between the chasm of confusion/boredom, and the chasm of misleading pop-sci explanations.

nico 4y ago
The main idea explained in the video reminds me of some of the concepts that the guy of Wolfram Alpha talks about.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

swader999 4y ago

Nima is one of the few people I don't speed up on YouTube.

aaroninsf 4y ago

Bookmarked to watch later, but being familiar with the Wolfram take on similar issues, I am curious if there is any "serious" discussion within this domain, about the simulation hypothesis. Naively, it certainly *seems* like a lot of the properties of our own universe are consistent with those one would expect from a simulated one... I am thinking specifically of eg uncertainty and "local reality"; and, absolute limits on the speed of information propagation; and even perhaps general relativity—many such things seem naturally emergent from a computed universe. I have found it puzzling that this is not more generally discussed; I'm not sure if that's because it's considered obviously false, or, obviously true, or, irrelevant ("metaphysics") when the task at hand is just characterization of what we're living with.