7 Ways To Ruin Your Life With Lies From Quantum Physics - Chris Ferrie

Quantum physics isn't well understood. It has a reputation. Even scientists get out in front of public and say that it's counterintuitive and mystical. So, when someone repeats that, you're inclined to believe it. Especially if you have a problem where you went to a doctor and the doctor didn't help you. Now, you're inclined to distrust science. And so, when someone comes along, the rogue scientists that real doctors don't want you to know about, you feel compelled to believe them. I have the backing of this miraculous, super mysterious and complex theory. It's way better. People buy into it. I'm very much looking forward to this episode. I have been for quite a while since I heard about your book. I feel like the world of quantum physics is one which is used by all manner of different people to explain things that they absolutely shouldn't be. But, why should we listen to you as some sort of jujitsu assassin of quantum physics? What are your credentials? Who are you? Well, I'm an associate professor of quantum physics at the University of Technology Sydney, uh in Australia. One of the one of the big places to do quantum technology research and development. And I've been studying quantum physics for 20 odd years now. You've also written 60 books on science in one form or another. Yeah, I have quite a few. Most of them are children's books. So, the latest one probably shouldn't be read to children. And because of the place I had to sit in my house for the people watching, anyway. Yeah, that's a lot of alcohol. Yeah. Uh okay. study quantum physics. So, what are the different types of quantum Talking about quantum physics, there are ways in which people misuse and abuse and misappropriate it. What are the broad buckets of quantum Yeah, so in in the book I go through the major concepts in quantum physics. So, like buzzwords that you might have heard, superposition, entanglement, energy, and I they each have their own brand of attached to them. The there's sort of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The The The ugly is when it comes to quantum energy, which is associated with things like quantum healing, which suggests that people do things that are unscientific and not medically sound in lieu of of actual medical attention and medical advice, so that's very bad. Uh and then there's like mundane things when people misinterpret, say, entanglement as some spiritual connection between things that are separated. Uh which, you know, if if you're not waste If you're not stealing people's money and you're not harming people, no big deal. So, there's a whole kind of range from from Yeah, harmful to just annoying and head-scratching if you're an expert. Okay, who are the biggest culprits of quantum in your view? You know, you remember the FBI had that deck of cards and there was like the ace of spades was number one and so on and so forth. Who would be in your deck of cards? Yeah, that's a good question. In the book I try not to give much attention to specific instances because, you know, I I'm afraid someone will go there and be like, "Oh, yeah, that That feels good to me. I'm I'm going to go with that instead of the difficult Thankfully, everyone Everyone watching this is way too rational for that to be a concern, so you have carte blanche. I think I think the probably the most famous uh example is is Deepak Chopra, who's been at it for a while. He had a book called quantum healing uh going back ages, but that's You know, that kind of stuff has been debunked many times over, but it keeps keeps coming back, right? You know, someone will debunk it, uh he'll kind of disappear, and then he'll discover like YouTube, and then he'll blow up again cuz he has a new audience. Uh of people that didn't listen to the debunking. So yeah, so I think he's he's one of the worst examples, I would say, cuz just cuz he has such a such a huge influence and a big platform. Most of them they they're just they just disappear almost as quickly as they arrive. You know, if you've Hopefully not you didn't Nobody's done this, but like if you actually kind of click on a on a link that you shouldn't, it usually takes you down this path of, you know, websites that that look like you might be able to put your credit card information in, but sometimes you can't even do that. Like the websites don't even work. Like you have to be right on the ball if you want to actually waste money cuz they just happen so quickly. Via quantum fluctuations in the world of quantum Yeah. Yeah. And then there's obviously, yeah, YouTube videos. It's endless, right? Are you familiar with um Gaia? Have you heard of that? Gaia? Oh, like the the Hindu god? It's a streaming platform that's reappropriated the name of a a Hindu god. Um and it's like Netflix but for sort of spiritual woo stuff. Okay, yeah. I I fear that you may have had an aneurysm if you discovered this before you um wrote your book. But yeah, man, I mean, you know, from what I know and from going through your work, it seems like Deepak Chopra would probably be pretty high up on the list. Didn't Didn't you do go on his show or something? Or didn't you have an interaction with him? I went I went on his one of his shows, the one called the Chopra Well, and that was for my my last book. So the last book was called Where Did the Universe Come From? and other cosmic questions? It's kind of I referred to it as my love letter to quantum physics. Whereas the latest book quantum is my hate mail. And it because it talks about how quantum physics you know, explains everything we know about the universe on even on cosmological scales. It it really kind of connected with his point of view and his audience. I was really surprised actually. When when when I spoke to him, I was totally expecting to have to you know, argue with him debunk his you know, nonsense. But he he genuinely when you talk to him one-on-one, he's just a really really insatiably curious person who just wants to know everything, right? And he has this internal mental model and he's just extracting all this stuff and he doesn't spend enough time to actually go through it and dive deep. And so he's just at this superficial level and that's a real problem. I mean, you know, if you've seen like the Dunning-Kruger Kruger effect curve, right? He's at like the the peak of you know, misunderstanding. It's like what's it called the chasm of the chasm chasm of ignorance or something? Yeah. So he you know, he he says he says a lot of stuff. I think he believes some of it genuinely and others it's just him just him like he's he's you do something for so long and you're just good at it and you have no no choice but to do it and he's really good at just spouting things that sound profound but are but are basic basically nonsense. Um I I don't know how I think it's you know, he's he's sitting there. I I don't know how harmful he is anymore. He's you know, just an old dude, right? Um who just someone puts a camera in front of him and he starts talking. But, the movement around him, I think, is is, you know, it it's steamrolled, it's unstoppable. Um, and that's that's the really harmful thing. One of the key terms that you're talking about here is quantum energy and energy medicine and quantum healing and stuff like that. What are the claims that are made by the people that talk about this stuff? Well, there's this idea that um, you know, every Yeah, well, okay. So, some some of it is like morally true. You have to distinguish between like colloquial notions of energy that we we all use today, right? That, you know, we tell children and, you know, all energy comes from the sun and plants take in energy from the sun and that's where we get our energy and if you don't eat, then you'll feel tired because you need energy, right? These are all just like colloquial definitions, but there's technical definitions as well and people people often, you know, mix these up and they'll say, "Well, I have my, you know, my everyday notion of energy and then I read this thing about quantum physics and and energy, the concept there, and they feel similar, so that supports my interpretation, right? Which is not grounded in science. So, with energy, it's that there's this, uh, you know, latent energy that's just spread out throughout the universe and you can somehow tap into it if you, uh, you know, you think hard enough or you meditate or you pull out your credit card and spend 20 bucks or whatever. But, that's not how energy works, right? There's no, uh, there's no, uh, kind of mystical source of of energy. Right? Scientifically, it's measurable and that's do you know how do you know that there isn't quantum energy? Well, I don't, but the thing is Well, there Okay. I I know that there is there is there is quantum energy, right? I mean, that's sort of what what we study and what we research and what I teach to to students. But, it's not the same kind of energy as this mystical force that permeates the universe. How do I know? Well, I think that's a deeper deeper question. I mean, it's a somewhat of a philosophical question. Like, what does it mean to know something? In science, we have a very a very clear notion, right? If If you can measure and perform repeatable experiments, and those experiments give similar or the same results, then we can say that we we know something, and we assign some some objective notion to that. At least an intersubjective notion that we we all sort of come to agree that that we're going to include that in our in our mental model of reality. Uh that's that Yeah, that's how it works in science. So, un- unless you can measure it, and you can tell someone the procedure by which you measured it, and they can repeat it, then it's not scientific. But, that doesn't mean it's it's wrong. It's just probably useless. Right. And when people talk about energy healing, they're not just talking about repurposing their kilojoules from a Snickers this afternoon into somebody else's body. They're talking about tapping into some sort of extra special quantum field that gives them the ability to go in and fix your past trauma or or your athlete's foot or your your gluten intolerance or whatever it is that you're dealing with. Yeah, exactly. Um Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, if you can put it put a number like kilojoules on it, then it becomes measurable. And And and then you can make predictions, and yeah, say what what you could do with it by con- Now it's been connected to the rest rest of the scientific uh corpus, and you can start to make use of it. Why is it the case that spirituality is such a hotbed for so much of this stuff? It's like a quantum theory of the gaps, almost. Yeah, that's right. Um we we do have a a desire to know, like as humans, we we despise uncertainty. Uh we want to have some idea that we we have everything sorted out. We, you know, uh and when there is when there is a gap in our knowledge, we have we just can't help but but fill it, and really, the the problem is it's sometimes it's not fillable, and so you get people that come in and provide uh uh yeah, very attractive options to fill these gaps, and people maybe just don't have the time or energy or or yeah, understanding to know when yeah, when they should use a a proposed solution or or or not. Well, what is it about quantum physics specifically, do you think, that's allowing this speculation to be sucked in? It So, that I think the the recipe is like you have some some So, you start with some problem, you know, you give some examples, athlete's foot or you know, trauma or whatever, uh and then someone comes along and says, "You know, that's a really really hard problem, right?" And it's going to take some some complicated mhm almost miraculous solutions. I happen to have those, right? And and don't worry because, you know, I know quantum physics and if you know anything about quantum physics, it's super complicated and it has all this counterintuitive stuff. So, don't worry about all that. Just Just know that I've talked to the experts or I'm an expert myself. And that's sort of uh you know, placates the the person into accepting this miraculous solution. So, I think that's that's kind of the the crux of the problem, right? That quantum physics isn't well well understood. It has a reputation. You know, even scientists get get out in front of public and say that it's counterintuitive and mystical. And and then So, when someone repeats that, you're you're inclined to believe it. And if if especially if you have a problem where you have feel like you've somehow tested out the scientific route or the medical route. Like you went to a doctor and the doctor didn't help you, right? Didn't give you the right pills or didn't give you a procedure to to fix your problem. Now, you you have you're inclined to distrust science. Um and so when someone comes along, you know, the rogue scientists that's uh that real doctors don't want you to know about, um then yeah, you're kind of you you you feel compelled to to believe them um because they're they're somewhat aligned with you, right? They say, "Well, I'm against uh the status quo. I'm against convention. And and I have the backing of this miraculous, super mysterious, and complex complex theory. So, it's you know, it's it's way better." And yeah, people buy into it. Yeah, there's a a a number of uh elements, I think, of quantum theory that that sort of quantum world that lends itself um to charlatans and grifters being able to insert themselves. One of them being the fact that it is uh not particularly easy to understand. Even me, who's done episodes with Michio Kaku and Shawn Carroll and, you know, a ton of ton of of different physicists who are very, very highly acclaimed, if someone asked me over a cocktail party to explain what quantum gravity is or quantum theory or why we can't reconcile general relativity with quantum gravity, I can't explain it. I can't even begin to explain it, right? And I've had hours and hours of conversations about it. So, first off, you have a topic which is difficult for people to get into. That means that someone can be a gatekeeper to knowledge, kind of in the same way that in the Middle Ages, the Bible was not translated into the common language because that meant that the priests and the clergymen were the funnel through which your communication with God could only occur, right? You had to go through them. You were beholden to them because it was the only way that you could access this kind of information. And it kind of feels the same way. On top of that, I do think that going to guess that you would agree, a lot of the information that you find out at the quantum level is very different to what we experience up here at the big sort of level. There's all everything kind of behaves in a very different way. It's almost like a different universe, right? It's not. It's part of our universe. It's just really, really, really, really small. But it is very It behaves in a different way, and that makes people think, "Oh, well, maybe because it behaves in a different way, there are some degrees of freedom that allow me to extract that type of movement and momentum and energy out into the real world, and I can kind of insert my own choose your own adventure, choose your own energy healing thing into that world um And when you have that, it it the difficulty of being able to understand, the blurriness around what it is, uh and certain people that are able to posit themselves as experts, it is just a breeding ground for people that are charlatans and grifters. My roommate Zack Callender has this thing he calls the charlatan playbook. And diet is another one of these because, you know, even the best dieticians on the planet, it's really hard to do the interventions. We don't particularly know what's going on despite the fact that everybody eats multiple times per day. And there's a ton of contested stuff around it. Where do they insert themselves? Right into diet because it's this gatekept knowledge and it's kind of hard to understand and you can sort of wish it, think it, believe it, and achieve it. So, I I understand why I think both spirituality that attract a particular type of persons and wishful thinking, a lot of placebo effect, some of this sort of spiritual woo language and quantum theory, the world of quantum physics, which is like the scientific counterpart to that with sufficient unknowns and degrees of freedom that people can can make it happen. I can see how that would be a marriage made in hell, perhaps. Yeah, quantum avocados. No, I think that's a very Yeah, you know, you hit on some really good points. I totally agree that uh I I guess, you know, sometimes public engagement, you know, scientific communicators do act really as the gatekeepers of knowledge and I think some of them enjoy that, enjoy being in that position rather than, you know, maybe they set out to say I'm going to educate the world on on my particular topic of interest and then and then they quickly, you know, buy into the the fame, right? And become sort of the gurus. And, you know, I can imagine, you know, it feels good. You know, when people man. Yeah, being the being the the gatekeeper of this knowledge, it's alluring. Yeah. Or I mean, I haven't made it that far that far yet. So, I I'm still I still just don't know waiting for the I'm waiting for the quantum energy healing that you that doctors don't really want you to know about pivot for Chris Ferry. Um so, one of the other terms that a lot of people listening will have heard about will have been vibrational frequencies. What do you think people mean? Or what do you think people think they mean when they talk about vibrational frequencies? Uh yeah. Well, let me let me just point point out that uh just so that like there's like a clear demarcation, right? So, energy the conventional concept or everyday notion of energy is that it includes the the idea that it it flows, right? It's continuous. And what quantum brings to the table is that that's not that's not true at fundamental level of understanding we have. Energy comes in discrete chunks. So, energy is not like a slide that you can go up and down. It's like steps. You have to be on a step. These steps are incredibly tiny. You'd never notice them in everyday life, but they're there. Right? So, that's sort of the difference between quantum and classical energy. That that's never actually used in any of the right? They don't actually use the real kind of concept of energy. Uh but frequency is similar. So, again, we kind of understand that the how energy is mediated between things is through waves. So, there's electromagnetic waves that we're using right now to communicate over the internet. Uh there is sound waves that come from the speaker in in your headset or or on the speakers on your device. That's a vibrating air molecules. That's traveling as a wave. So, waves carry energy. Now, in order for that energy be received, that thing has to resonate. So, we Again, it's just another one of these words that is has many meanings, right? There's colloquial meanings and there's technical meanings. Um It They're very similar. So, when you say something resonates, it's like you're in tune with it. But, technically, it's when the wave that could potentially interact with the thing is around the same size as as the object. So, if you think about water waves, I think it's an excellent example. So, imagine, you know, you're you're a boat, and there are just in There's an enormous swell in in the middle of the ocean. You wouldn't even notice, right? Like, you look around, and it looks like it's pretty flat around where you are, because this you know, you can't see the next the next peak in the wave. And if there's tiny ripples, you wouldn't notice those as well. When do you notice a wave if you're a boat? It's when the distance between the peaks is about the same size as the boat, right? So, that one end of the boat is at the top, and the other end of the boat has gone to the bottom. So, when things are around the same size as the wave, that's when there's there's a an interaction. And that That's when you, quote unquote, resonate with it. Uh so, there's yeah, example Just sort of look around you, and there's examples everywhere, like That's why we can't hear microwaves, right? Or we can't We can't see radio waves. Yeah, so that that they Your eye is basically tuned to only the visible portion of this vast electromagnetic spectrum that includes radio waves, infrared, uh microwaves, and then the other end, higher energy waves, like ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays. They're all They're all hitting you all the time, right? But you can't You can only see the the visible ones. And that's just a an accident of evolution because it seemed to be useful uh for survival. Now, so people think that they can somehow I guess in in the implicit assumption is that they can in change change something about their themselves, what they think or what they do so that they can tune to some wave that's out there. And well, that's just somewhat ridiculous. I mean, it's it's true in like a you know, a sort of mundane sense, right? If I if I uncover my ears, then I've allowed my hearing apparatus and all the stuff that goes on inside my ear and my brain to be in tune with those waves. Or if I open my eyes, I can be in in tune with visible light. But I There's nothing I can do to see infrared light. Unless, you know, unless you trust scientists and engineers and use technology, then you then of course you can, but uh you like we're pretty limited uh when we think about the biology of these bodies that we're carrying around. So, when people say vibrational frequencies, what they're probably talking about is their emotional state, what how they're receiving other people's emotional states, what they're putting out into the universe, and how that's impacting a field, the quantum field, perhaps. Yeah, so so you you you do have a you do have like several wavelengths associated with you and different parts of your body. Again, like your retina is associated with a certain wavelength that's tuned to visible light. Your eardrum is associated with wavelengths of sound, you know, uh what 15 hertz up to however, you know, whatever it is, 44,000 hertz. And your entire body can act like an antenna as well, which is tuned to roughly 10 hertz. So, if if someone was blasting a speaker that was 10 hertz, and you know, if you've been to concerts, maybe you kind of can can feel this, right? Really, really low bass, some of which you can't hear with your ears, but you can feel in your body. That's because you are you are an antenna. And certain parts of your body will resonate with electromagnetic frequencies as well. And those are, you know, regulated by the FCC, sometimes because it's unhealthy, but most of the time just because it, you know, if if human bodies are absorbing the signal, then you're not going to be able to get signal to your smartphone. So, don't use those frequencies, right? Like engineers don't think of humans as things that they don't want to harm. They think of things that are in the way of their Wi-Fi signals. The if Now, there there is this there is this notion that like if, um, you know, if we agree on something, or we have the same opinion, then somehow we are in tune, but you know, that opinion resonates with me. Uh, which is, you know, it's a it's a fine way to communicate, and and it works because it it's embedded within a system of language that we all understand and we can make use of. But, it it has its limitations. And if you if you start to say that it does things beyond just, you know, helping social interactions and people come to agreements, then then you're in trouble because, you know, those those things aren't verifiable. And by this, we're talking about someone genuinely having a physical connection between themselves and somebody else that them and the other interlocutor are moving or attached through some kind of quantum wave or quantum energy field in a strange way. Yeah, that's right. So that if if that were true, then you should be able to measure it, right? Uh and if if you can't measure it, then you can't verify it. So it's it's just magical thinking otherwise. Well, how much quantum physics can we measure? Is is it possible in your view as somebody who has spent an awfully long time studying quantum physics that this could be something that exists or is the only way that this exists if it is tapping into something which is outside of the field of quantum physics most likely? It So you can take this point of view, right? That that everything in the world is is just atoms, right? You know, nowadays you we teach this to children or at least I do. Um that all of this stuff around us including your body is made of atoms. And the world is just a one everything you see is built up of several of 118 elements that we often see arranged on the periodic table. That's it. That's all there is to the to the universe. It's everything is just a bunch of these atoms stuck together in different arrangements. And their their interactions are mediated by electromagnetic waves. So with that understanding there are there are things that are just ruled out. So I I can't I I I can't have a physical interaction with you. I mean, again, it's it's somewhat subtle, right? Be- because in some sense, I I I can influence you, right? If If I pause for long enough, then you'll probably say something. Um and that's happening at a distance. But So, it really depends on the kind of claim that you want to make, right? It usually they're they're quite they seemingly miraculous things. And And you know, you you apply a simple a simple rule, right? If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. So, if if it sounds too good to be true, then it it it's not part of science and not part of quantum physics. Quantum physics is used to explain this this idea of the world, that everything is made of these fundamental building blocks, and what we see around us is it's just a built up of many many interactions of many of these things. And we you know, we understand that to an extent that our entire modern world is built on on quantum physics. Everything around you you know, the the device you're using, the the scans you get at when you go to when you go see the doctor, um compact discs, if anyone remembers those. Um you know, lasers, uh clocks, GPS, the internet, computers, everything is is built from this understanding that the world is made of atoms, and if we put the these together in various ways, then we can put that to good use. I was on a boat party talking to uh a girl that was part of another uh group that had turned up, and uh she seemed uh perfectly nice and was explaining about her uh young son and what she hoped for him in the future and the job that she was doing and all of the rest of it. Now, asking about how she'd uh like uh changed. She made some job changes recently, I think. And she said, "Yeah, I I just really started raising my frequency." And I thought, "Well, now I'm interested." And I asked, "What do you mean when you say that?" And she said, "Well, you know, I I I sort of changed the way that I thought and I I adjusted my emotions." And I said, "Yeah, okay, but what about what about the frequency thing?" She says, "Well, you know, emotions have got a frequency. They vibrate at a frequency." I was like, "Okay, what do you mean by that?" She said, "Well, they they they vibrate, you know, because they vibrate at a frequency and I changed." I was like, "Right, but what do you mean by that?" And I kept on asking the what question and it resulted in her saying the sentence, "I believe in quantum physics." Like this was some like a walled off garden, a castle that she could retreat into that would explain something that I didn't understand, but self-evidently neither did she. Um "I believe in quantum physics." And she did leave not long after this. I think that I was very polite. I didn't like, I don't know, take the piss. But I did push a good bit to say, "What do you mean I raised my frequency? What do you mean emotions have a frequency and they vibrate at a frequency? And what do you mean I believe in quantum physics?" Like genuinely, for the love of God, what the do you mean? And I don't think I don't think that she really knew. And I think this kind of taps into what you're talking about with the the good, the bad, and the ugly of quantum physics. And also maybe even Deepak Chopra as somebody who from the outside might seem willfully negligent or or kind of like jovially ignorant, purposefully ignorant in a way that benefits perhaps himself. But, it can start people down a slippery slope toward believing in things that become increasingly and more and more disempowering and less and less accurate to the world around them. And it can also cause people to do things like abandon their cancer treatment in place of going to do crystal healing and stuff. I'm pretty sure that wasn't it um Steve Jobs who decided to try and do some very holistic sort of woo things to try and cure his Was it pancreatic cancer? Incredibly treatable, 90% recovery rate had he have just decided to go and get standard treatment from Western medicine and he went to and somewhere in Tibet or or or or India or something and and sat in a cave and had some treatment and you know, we lost one of the greatest marketers and product inventors of ever because of that, which shows that it doesn't really matter how smart you are that these kinds of ideas, I don't know how quantumy Steve Jobs's worldview was, but these ideas can take a hold of people. And it is a very slippery slope, you know, that if the thin end of the wedge is just believing in entanglement and two people that love each other have an emotional connection that transcends space-time and physics as we know it, it is just a difference of degree all the way down to I don't need chemotherapy because I've got some tiger stones at home. Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, we like to say, "Okay, that's innocent." Whatever, but the I think it the the issue is that again, people want simple stories, right? And they once they have a story that they're comfortable with, that they stick with it. The as as scientists, this is just our basic state, you know, we in order to make progress, you need some some assumptions, right? But, we're always ready to abandon those assumptions when they lead us astray. So, if if you accept some set of assumption, some story, then you're eventually going to be led down that down the wrong path. If you need to have every new piece of evidence or new piece of information fit within that story. And it you know, you uh it extreme examples are like conspiracy theories, like flat-earthers, right? Um so, in order to believe that the the Earth is flat and then be told that people live in Australia, in order to make those two things like fit together, right? You have to say like we're all actors, right? And you know, we're in Hollywood and there isn't really a place called Australia. Um I mean, some of us don't even have Australian accents. Uh but that that I think is is the problem, right? That I I'm I'm fine with people making assumptions and having simple stories. I I do it all the time, even within a scientific context. But, you have to be ready to abandon them when those those analogies, those stories no longer are fit for purpose. You had a quote in the book from Quantum Love and you said, "When you use the power of the quantum field, honing your emotions and intentions to create the frequency or vibration of that desire, you will draw the things you want to you." Yeah, no, that doesn't doesn't work like that. What the does that mean? Uh that's yeah, that's an interesting book. I think probably one of the my favorite examples of quantum because the person who wrote that book, Dr. Laura Berman, I think she's Oprah's love expert or relationship expert, or something. And has a PhD from New York University. Uh In what? Probably sociology. I I don't know exactly what it is. That's right. Dude, the pivot, the seamless pivot from sociology into quantum physics is so brazen. I work so hard to gain millimeters every single year in self-confidence. And then there are people that decide to abandon social science and just dip into quantum theory. Like, fair play. You know what I mean? Fair play to her. Well, I think it Yeah. I mean, if if that's allowed, then then I can I can give people relationship advice. Why not? Damn right. But so she, in her book, actually if you read like the first chapter, it's her explanation of quantum physics, which, you know, reads like something that would be in, you know, Scientific American or some popular science magazine. It's it's it's not accurate, but it's no less accurate than than what you would see from even a science journalist. And then the problem start to arise is when she tries to connect that to her particular area of of expertise. Um But yeah. I mean, all relationship advice is the same. It's just has different sort of layers of slapped on it. Um And she decided what, you know, there's a there's a gap. Throw quantum physics in there. Like a quantum quantum love. But that Yeah, that the then when you make a claim like that one that you just read out, that is very specific claim, which is is comically untrue. I don't mean I I don't know Again, you there are all all of these cognitive biases that come in, right? So, if I I "Okay, well, I read the book and I did the sort of exercises that she suggested and and then uh you know, I played I played the lotto and I I won 20 bucks. So, it must have been it must have been that, right?" So, there's confirmation bias happening all the time because the other 100 tickets that you played didn't win. Uh so yeah, again, it's you know, this these it's these huge gaps and all of these cognitive biases that people aren't aware of that that allow these things to thrive. Well, there's also a placebo effect, which is unbelievably strong, right? And I'm kind of torn and this is more an ethical question, but uh the placebo effect or the expectation effect as David Robson would call it, which kind of expands it out from taking substances to to expectations too that we have around the world, is the most reliable effect in all of pharmacology or medicine, right? If you could bottle it, you would have a panacea. And you know, they've shown that studies where people take sugar pills that they've been told are sugar pills have better outcomes than people that don't. And they've been told that it's a placebo. So, you know, I I it I um disregard the expectation effect as little as I can. I think that it it it is very very useful. But the mechanism that this thing is working on is not what's being claimed. The outcome can be something which is positive in the direction of what you wanted to occur, but the mechanism that you said it operated on is not accurate. And is conning people or duping people or lying to people or convincing them that a particular thing works worth the outcome because the only way that that outcome can be achieved is by getting them to believe it, which means that you need to give them a sufficiently convincing lie. I'm not sure. And I'm definitely not sure when there is a slippery slope down toward believing things which stop you gaining some of the benefits of expectation effect and actually start causing you to believe a whole host of other silly woo. Yeah. I guess the the the issue I I think is that there's a huge gray area, right? The there is there is no truth. Right? We have we have models of reality. We have these these simple stories that tell cause and effect relationships, of chains of events. But but these but these aren't true in any universal sense of of the word. There is no universal truth. There there's a big gray area. When you think about it that way, you can start to see, okay, well, there there are things that are more truthy and things that that are clearly untrue. But even that our best theories are are just useful theories. They're they're not true theories. So, our understanding of how the placebo effect works probably has something to do with with uh you know, human psychology and potentially we can get down to uh you know, chemical yeah, chemicals that that are being passed around within our body. And at some point you can say, well, you know, those chemicals are made of molecules which are made of atoms. So, you know, it's all yeah, at at some point it's all ba- can be understood as being based on quantum physics. But I think you have to have these different layers of explanation and accept that at any point, none of them are true in any objective sense of the word. They're useful. So, how I think we should accept these lies if they if they give give us mileage, but as soon as they stop giving us a return for believing it, then we should abandon it. So, if you want to say, "Well, you know, this placebo effect works because you know, there's some some quantum interactions that are happening in the brain, and if you think the right way, you can make those align, and that achieves the outcome that you want. The person gets gets better." That's great, but maybe maybe it everything should just have an implicit disclaimer like your mileage may vary. If you if you use this model to do something else, it probably won't work. Well, the problem that you have there is that stopping people at the bounds of this is what it's good for, and it's not good for much else, or it's good for a a small number of things isn't the way that human brains work. You know, if we if we find success and and win 20 quid because we did our right energy crystal healing and tapped into the the quantum realm, I mean, that's going to fix everything. Like, my chronic flatulence is fixed by it, my erectile dysfunction is fixed by it, like everything. Do you know what I mean? Um moving on to another very common question around quantum physics, uncertainty, the uncertainty principle. What are people getting wrong about Schrödinger and his cat and and and uncertainty and all the rest of it? Yeah, so this one's a I would say is one of the probably more mild ones. So, nobody's it's just such a an abstract concept that I don't think it's made its way into into these other these these other places. No one's found a way to monetize it yet is what you're saying. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. So, uncertainty, it's it's kind of the hallmark of of quantum physics. Uh so, and there's this famous story that we have of was discovered by Werner Heisenberg who had hay fever. So, he secluded himself on this island with uh and it came to him in like in a dream or something like that. He woke up one morning and had to write something down and you know, it it wasn't like, "Oh, he just, you know, wrote it down in a stone tablet and then brought it back to to Copenhagen." It was more uh you know, he had this idea, scribble it down, and then he developed it over over, you know, uh probably weeks to months. And it was probably some mess when it started, but eventually, you know, we retail the story as as it was like this eureka moment where he basically had this idea of trying to measure the property of something. So, he there's this idea of Heisenberg's microscope. So, if you know how a microscope works, a light microscope, you shine light on something, light bounces off of it, and then, you know, gets magnified and enters your eye. Then he thought, "Well, what if the thing I was trying to to look at with the microscope was a single a single atom or a single electron, fundamental subatomic particle? Well, when I shine light on it, which is fundamentally other particles, it's like two billiard balls hitting each other. So, just the simple fact of trying to measure something alters it in in some way. So, if I shine the light on the electron, yeah, it's going to bounce off and then come and hit my eye, and then I can infer something about where it was and other properties of it. But now I've imparted something onto that electron, and it's going to take off in some other direction, some random direction that that I don't know. So, that So, his notion was you can't simultaneously know where something is and how fast and where it's going at the same time. You can choose to measure one property, but you can't obtain everything there is to know about both properties. Nowadays, we understand the concept of of a bit more subtly. The the real crux of the issue is that these properties aren't even defined. Like, it it it doesn't make sense to say that there is something pre-existing in the world and our job as observe as observers is to go and figure out what those properties were that were there regardless of whether we chose to go and measure them or not. So, you can choose to measure by setting up some apparatus measure position of of something, find out where it is, but by doing so, by arranging that apparatus, you've caused something else about it to be undefined. So, there isn't some set of pre-existing set of properties in the world. Now, this gets sort of caricatured as um yeah, you when you measure something, you affect it. And so, you see this a lot in popular culture. Um there there's another a related effect in psychology called the Hawthorne effect or the observer effect, uh which is like if I prime someone before I ask them questions, then the responses will be different than had I not primed them. So, if uh if like when you do these psychological studies, like if you know the context of the study, then you're not going to act in a natural way, right? So, this is basically why you should take every psychological study with a grain of salt because you know, people aren't going to act naturally when they're set in a in a white room with one chair and asked to do a task, right? That's not the their natural state. They know they're being observed, so they're going to behave behave differently. And this sounds similar, like it has uses a similar set of words and a similar set of concepts, but it's unrelated. Like the the the effect in psychology has nothing to do with with the effect in quantum physics. They just seem similar. Yeah, there is a associated phenomenon that people talk about a lot, I guess, which is quantum entanglement. The ability of something to travel faster than the speed of light, and then this kind of gets stretched out to talk about connection to the cosmos because we're becoming quantum entangled with somebody else through love and spiritual connection and stuff like that. What is and is not about quantum entanglement? Yeah, that's a tough one because it's probably the most abstract in concept in quantum physics. At its basis, if you try to understand quantum physics from the point of view of information, um maybe more of an engineering point of view, then a lot of these things become clearer. Again, the the issue in quantum physics is that it at the same time it tells us that there there is no fundamental reality. There is no thing out there that's independent of us waiting for us to come and observe it. But in order to make progress as humans with our limited, you know, mental capabilities, we have to create these sort of concrete stories of reality. But, you know, as soon as you do that, you've violated the one principle of quantum physics. So, we we do this as physicists as well because, you know, it it's difficult to carry around all of these abstract conceptual concepts. It's much easier to just have some concrete physical model in mind and then apply our notions to that. So with entanglement, you know, the basic idea is say you have two two particles and you interact them in some way and then you separate them. And if you've done it in a in a clever way, then they the state of those particles is is some special state that we call entangled. And and what that means is if I measure a property of one and I get some outcome which is random, I'll I'll get the same outcome on on the other one. And it seems like because I can choose which measurement to do on one side that I have somehow influenced the other one. And you'll see this in repeated by scientists and you know, in science magazines and uh there was a recent article even in the the New York Times that quoted a scientist that said exactly this. Entanglement is when things particles are separated and doing one thing in instantaneously affects the other one. But that's not at all what what happens. This is this is you know, the all of these problems that we've been talking about repeated but by scientists. Once you've committed to this story of there's physical things in the world and and then you have this other this other piece of information all that you know, they seem to be correlated in every possible way I can choose, then you're forced to say something instantaneous hap- happened. But that's just not true. There's there's no there's no influence, there's no information, nothing is traveling faster than light. Now, everything is connected, right? So there gravity is a simple example, right? Um gravity has no no bound, right? It it the force of gravity drops off the further two objects get move away from each other. But there is a force of gravity between you and the moon and you and the sun and you and all of the planets and all of the stars, right? It's just imperceptibly small. And that but that that the connection say it's between those two is mediated by you know Einstein's field. But it can't travel faster than light. So there's no sense in which those things can influence me on any time scale that's relevant to me. I can shoot a laser and you know it it it it it will take a few seconds to to hit the moon and back. And if I go further and further away, it just it just takes longer. So yes, you know, in some real technical sense, everything in the universe is connected and probably everything has some small amount of entanglement if you try to model it with quantum physics. But that doesn't actually help you do anything anything that was is relevant on human scales but in time or in space. How much truth is there in people talking about using quantum entanglement to be able to communicate in the future across galaxies while we could use we could entangle these two things and then we'll spread them apart and then that means that we can communicate. Is there a future in which you think that could happen? No, you I mean we're always limited by by the speed of light. So you if I take if I entangle two particles, take one to Alpha Centauri or or something and then you know, I've done it in a very clever way use all all of our advanced engineering future technology whatever. What it means is that they're just correlated, right? It's like photocopying a book, right? But not knowing what's in it. And you separate those two books, what do what do you know? You know that when you when those books are opened, they're going to have the same words in them. But you you know, you can't use that to communicate faster than light. In order to do anything with it, some some more communication would would happen. Now, the correlation is useful. You You can use these correlations and in some sense you there's a there's everything about our our experience is ultimately about correlations. Like this conversation deals with correlations. Like we we have a correlated dictionary of English, right? So that when I sit speak these words, they have a meaning to you because there's this prior correlation that has been set up. But just because that correlation was there, doesn't mean we could have said everything that needed to be said without actually having the the conversation, right? So the everything will be limited by the speed of light and entanglement is just a new kind of correlation that we can we can create in the world and it can allow us to do things more efficiently, but ultimately nothing nothing miraculous. Any sense Any sense Any sense that two humans can become entangled together? Mhm. No. So the quantum I think I the way I like to think about quantum physics is it's a theory about isolation. So when you have an object and you completely isolate it from its environment, then if you use anything but quantum physics to describe that object and when I say describe, I mean make predictions about the outcomes of experiments that you might do, then you'll be wrong. You need to use quantum physics to to describe that object if it's isolated from its environment. Now, if you think about, "Okay, well, um you know, the atoms in my body aren't isolated. You know, what why can I stick it in an MRI machine or something and quantum physics somehow is the is what's powering that technology?" It's that if you if you heard anything about atoms, it's that they are mostly empty space. So, maybe you've heard this idea that uh the chair you're sitting on is mostly empty space and when you sit on the chair, you're not even touching the chair. There's, you know, an enormous amount of space, at least on, you know, a small enough scale, between you and the chair. Nothing ever touches, right? And and the parts of the atoms uh there's, you know, vast orders of magnitude in scale between the size of the parts of the atoms like protons, neutrons, and electrons, and the actual space between them. So, basically, everything is everything is empty space. Um So, the uh that's why quantum physics is useful to describe those things because in some sense, they're isolated from the other things around them. Now, if you want to have something as big as a human body to be usefully explained by quantum physics, you would have to isolate it. And well, that means no no light, no air, uh and it would cease to be a a human pretty quickly. Uh so, y- yeah, you could you could get a large massive object, or two of them and and have them entangled, but it would be nearly impossible to isolate them from their environment, and that's the real issue. Like, the bigger the object is, the more ways it can interact with stuff around it. And so you have to remove all of those possible ways in order for it to start to behave in a way that's different from our everyday our everyday experience of the world. And I think you know, the the largest thing that we could probably get to be entangled might be like a a a future computer chip, right? That would is would be the basis of quantum computing technology. But even then, the the apparatus that you have to stick around it in order to isolate it from its environment would be huge. So the places that they put these things, so if you've ever seen a picture of a quantum computer, it looks like uh it I mean, it looks like like a giant tube, right? Uh an enormous sort of cylindrical vat. And what that is is a dilution refrigerator. And uh liquid helium is used to cool the inside of that thing down to uh thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, which is which is that you know, thousands of times colder than even outer space. So we've created the most extreme environment in the entire universe here on Earth just so that we can you know, watch watch an atom uh do something. You mentioned quantum computing. You also do a ton of stuff to do with computer science. But we're supposedly on the cusp of a quantum computing age. And if we get there, it's going to break all of the algorithms because everything that we've used to do credentials and and security for cryptography is going to be out the window. What can and can't quantum computing do? Well, quantum we don't know. I mean, the a great quote from I think like the late 1940s from the then CTO of IBM was there never be a market in the world for more than six computers. So clearly, um you know, even someone of that caliber can't make accurate predictions about future technology. Uh so, I mean I can say a few things, but uh the disclaimer is I don't know and nobody knows what what what this will be useful for. You know, the first application of a transistor was for a hearing aid, right? And now we carry around a billion of them in our pocket. Um the We have algorithms. So, these are like you know, recipes. If you can If you can transform this this data into this data, then you can you can solve some problem. One of them is factoring numbers, and this is what you'd have to do to break current encryption systems that that secure the internet. Uh but it that I don't think that'll be a big problem for when when quantum computing happens. And you we we can already see certain uh people with with really important secrets like state governments uh and large corporations that are moving to what's called post-quantum cryptography, different encryption schemes that quantum computers we think won't be able to break. So, if you say you have to you have to ask yourself, well, how you know, how important is my secret? And important is is how long do I need to keep it, right? So, you can't keep a secret forever. Maybe you need to keep it for 50 years. And then if you say, well, if someone learned this in 50 years' time, that would be bad. And then you say, well, quantum computers might be around in 50 years, then I should probably switch. But if you're like, you know, I just I you know, I don't care if people know this next year, but I don't want them to know it for leaks my nudes in 20 years' time, that's totally Yeah, you don't care. Yeah. So, you you you don't have to worry right now. You can you can keep using uh iCloud or whatever, right? Yeah, that's fine. But if you think that's that's really important, maybe you maybe you want to switch or um you know, send some customer feedback to to Apple asking them to switch. The But that's so yeah, you know, we we say quantum computers will break the internet, but probably not. Most likely not. People will you know, people are in the process of switching to post-quantum cryptography and when quantum computers become ubiquitous, then we just will use something different. Um the the other thing I think the kind of the thing that you should keep in mind in you know, the back of your mind when you think about future technology is that um it it happens slowly, right? Like you know, even think about probably the most transformative uh example would be something like ChatGPT where it had the fastest adoption of of any technology. Yet, it doesn't it hasn't broken the way the world works, right? Like we still basically interact and engage with the world the same way we did before. And the same will be true of quantum technology. It will happen over a longer time scale, but it won't be like, "Okay, one day you just throw your old computer and now you have a quantum computer in your house." No, it'll be it'll be slowly integrated and the end user won't have a different experience because that would be terrible, right? You at the end of the day, it's all driven by uh the economy and the the customers, right? And what they want and what what they'll buy. You know, Henry Ford could crawl out of the grave and step into a Tesla and happily drive it away. The interface hasn't changed even though the entire technology behind it is different. So, with quantum computers, you know, the if you're just an average consumer and you're like, "Oh, well, what I care about is, you know, can will I still be able to use TikTok? Then yeah, of course, right? Because we wouldn't develop technology that, you know, can't can't be used in the exact same way and and sold to the same set of people. The the other like promising future prospects of quantum technology include things uh like quantum simulations, and that sounds like just more complicated and and uh annoyingly complex, but it it's incredibly important. So, when we design new materials, when we design new when we design new drugs, and when we want to understand how things are made, we we want to understand them at the deepest and most fundamental level possible. So, that that is basically at the level of atoms. Like, if I could understand uh what sort of atoms I need to put together to make a super strong material or to make uh a material that can conduct electricity without dissipation or resistance, then then I could do you know, there's no there's no limit to the imagination at that point, right? Like, just yeah, for example, imagine you could make a uh a material uh called a superconductor that works uh at high temperatures. And uh so, these are the things that make like levitating trains and and I don't know, maybe you've seen a levitating frog on YouTube. Um if you could create a material that can conduct electricity with with absolutely no resistance, then you wouldn't have to build, you know, coal-fired smoke plants right next to cities, right? You could just throw a whole bunch of solar panels out in the middle of the desert, and the entire world would have free electricity. Why can't we do that? Well, because it's nearly impossible for us to simulate using conventional technology what happens when we put even just a few atoms together, but the number of degrees of freedom and the amount of data that we'd have to track is is just impossible for even today's supercomputing clusters. Which, you know, still attempt to do this. Like, you know, a huge fraction of the world's energy budget is just simulating interactions so that we can make better fertilizer, right? Um if you could have could create a computer that just natively does this without having to to attempt to encode all of this information in a in a really inefficient way, which is what we seem to have to do with conventional computers, then yeah, then then all you have all of these sort of dream applications. But, we don't know exactly how we would do that with a quantum computer. We have, you know, the basic fundamental idea and some simple examples and some understanding of what it would be what would be required, but you know, if someone dropped a quantum computer on my lap, it's not like I would be able to get going on this right away. So, the the progress again will be slow. We'll see We'll see incremental improvements, uh but you know, maybe 30 years down the line it'll And if you look back and say, "Okay, compare it now to 30 years ago," you'll say it's a huge, you know, it's an enormous change. What about many worlds? Are we part of a a multiverse? Is the fact that I decided to say many worlds instead of multiple worlds meant that we've branched off into a different universe as well now? It's a quantum the sort of quantum metaphysics, quantum philosophy, um it's an interesting place. It's a very interesting place because it's like it's like woo, but but it it's people with PhDs. So it's kind of like it's a really it's a really strange thing. So I think it just goes to show that yeah, there's no matter how much you learn and how no matter how educated you are, you can still just get attached to to things that are are not to me comically comically miraculous. So there's no it's an interpretation of of quantum physics. So you have this idea of superposition and then the cartoon explanation is like things can be in two two states at once. But when you go to measure them, only one one of them occurs. So you mentioned earlier Schrödinger's cat. So that's like a famous example of you put the cat you put a cat in a box and inside the box there's a vial of poison and a hammer which breaks the vial, but the hammer is will only fall if some quantum event happens. So you arrange for that event to be in superposition, you know, an atom decayed or not decayed at the same time. So that means the hammer has broken the vial or not broken the vial at the same time, which means the cat is alive and dead at the same time. But you would whenever you you attempted to perform this thought experiment and open the box, you'd either find an alive cat or a dead cat. Okay, so then the many worlds interpretation says, well, there's a multiverse and in one branch of the multiverse there's an alive cat and in the one branch there's there's a dead cat. And you as an observer are on one of these branches. It's not testable and it it's not it doesn't simplify anything. I mean, it I think for most people it's it's alluring because it gives you this Yeah, it it gives you the sense that um that you know you that that you could have you could have done things differently or that there um you know there there are better better options that that you could take, right? There's another There's another version of me that you know it was more successful or uh didn't didn't have health problems and I think this idea that you know you could go back and change things uh it it's just something that people have kind of yeah, people like but it's there's no it's not it's not based on uh on anything that's measurable. Like you can't test test the many worlds hypothesis. It removes the pressure of having to make decisions as well because if the decision that you make now, whether it be going left or going right, is just one of a number and it it almost creates this uh like liminal excuse, this kind of get out of jail free card that you have uh which I understand. You know, it's psychologically comforting to not be beholden to being locked into the future by whatever decisions you make now and I understand you know, there's parts of me that really understands Is it agoraphobia? That's why people sometimes don't like to leave the house, I think. I I kind of get that. I almost get the you know or or the the um concern around germs and stuff like that. Like there's just so many things that can happen that are outside of my control and and if I don't make any sort of decision or commitment or if I try and change things as little as possible, if I try and make as few changes as possible to whatever state I'm in now, that would suggest that I'm going to stay safe moving forward. It it's a a fundamental fear of the unknown, the unexpected, the uncertain, the future. I understand I understand how what that's psychologically disquieting. Um but again, with the many worlds thing, if it's if the quantum physicist says it's untestable and therefore difficult for us to work out whether or not it's true. I don't know. I you know, you can allow people to indulge in it as a sort of psychologically comforting fantasy. So, the person who developed it, his name is Hugh Everett the third, um which is the worst uh the worst name of Hughes. Uh he had a terrible life. Um people didn't take his ideas seriously. Um and he he had this he also developed this notion of quantum suicide, which was basically that there is there you know like think about quantum Russian roulette, right? You know in six of the worlds, there's six worlds in only one of which I'm dead in, right? And in five of which I live. So, you know, why not play the game? Because I'll survive in one of them. So, if you you know, imagine this this sort of thought experiment, right? Like someone says I you flip a coin, heads I give you a million dollars, tails you die. Then you should play you should if you believe the many worlds, you should play the game, right? Because in one of the worlds, you're a million dollars richer, and in the other one you don't care. Uh so, I think it sounds innocuous, but you know, I think if you really took it to its logical conclusion, you you'd have you'd be forced to to also believe some pretty ridiculous things. And that's that's basically my problem with it. I've heard you use the term not even wrong. Uh where does that come from? Yeah. I'd never heard that before. Uh can you explain what that is for the people that are un-inducted? Yeah. I recently was told that it would it goes back to Pauli, which is a quantum physicist, but there's a book by that title and it it is basically about the Well, the book was written about these ideas in theoretical physics that are just not testable. Right? So, they're You can't even say that they're wrong. So, it's it's just a kind of mental masturbation, essentially. That you you come up with all these ideas and theories and they you know, you can say, "Well, because they have mathematical symmetry, they're beautiful. Therefore, they must be true." Things like that. But, you know, a practical person would come along and say, "Uh I can't tell you not to believe that because it's not even testable and you know, the the mental state that you've put put yourself in is difficult to get out of. Uh so, yeah, you're it's not even wrong. I can't even say it's wrong. It's What is it? It's nothing, right? Yeah, that's um that's maybe one of the most like not kind of patronizing, but like good insults or pushbacks that I can think of when someone starts spouting out a lot of horse You mentioned uh previously that you wrote a book in the past that was a love letter to physics and quantum physics and this is your hate mail. Did I see on your Twitter that you've been receiving genuine hate mail from some people that are a part of the spiritual community that took a little bit of upset at what you've been pushing? Yeah, I slough it off, to be honest. It's the recommendation I give in the book is to just not engage. There's there's no really no no good can come out of it unless you're prepared to put in the time and it takes a lot of time. So, What have people been accusing you of? Well, it's I mean, they they they accuse me of everything you can imagine. Like that I've lost my way, I need to find Jesus. You know, all that sort of Yeah, like religious stuff to to like they have their pet theory and and they you know, they accuse me that I don't really understand quantum physics because yeah, and then they'll just repeat something that's again not even wrong. And it's not even worth it's not even worth my time to engage because it would be like the conversation that you had with with with that woman that they they would just repeat themselves or go in circles. That was enjoyable. Like that that conversation I actually took an awful lot away from it. But yeah, man, I I think as somebody that is world-class expert at receiving comments from the internet, my my theory is absolutely just engage where you want to and draw the line at that. Like if you want to find out I wanted to find out from that girl and it was a very enjoyable and and respectful conversation and I wanted to find out what do you mean when you say raise your frequency? What do you mean when you say I believe in quantum physics? What do you mean? What do you mean? That was perfectly enjoyable. It wasn't cantankerous at all or anything else. But the line on the internet is just don't feed the trolls unless you want to unless you've got some spare food lying around and some spare sanity that you want to throw at them. I have friends Destiny, this guy is a he's a streamer and he lives he absolutely breathes for opposition and for um antagonism and for debate and stuff like that and that's his lifeblood. I It's like he's a plant and that's the sun. Um whereas for me and perhaps for you too, there are that's not what how I would enjoy spending my Saturday afternoon. And so, I would choose to do other things. And I I Every time that I see some of my smart friends on the internet getting into spats with people, um and I understand in some regards if you use it to kind of make an example to signal boost a bad idea and show how easily it can be fixed, that's not necessarily a bad way to do things. But one-on-one in the DMs or in a a a message thread or a thread on Twitter or whatever, trying to slowly chip away at some person's worldview, it's like, look, I've done I've done the work. I've broadcasted my stuff in a video or in a book or or at a presentation or whatever. And if you disagree with that, that's fine, but I don't know what you think my time or your time or anybody else's time is worth, but I can promise you that it is worth way, way more than trying to convince somebody that doesn't like me and doesn't agree with my worldview that they're in the wrong. Right. Yeah. Um yeah, don't don't feed the trolls. I think it's it's good advice. It It will often have the opposite effect that than you expect. Catalyze you catalyze the trolls rather than Yeah. Yeah, so they Unless you're prepared to put in the time. Like I you know, if you have a a family member that believes in some conspiracy, then you then maybe you want to slowly you kind of remove that, remove those those those beliefs. But it probably takes you know, the problem is like it takes orders of magnitude more time to fix than it does to create. It take It take me a second to create on the internet. And and then the damage is almost irreparable because even if all of the scientists in the world went to to debunk that, well, I could I now I could just create 10 more pieces of in the time that took them to do that. Yeah, have you have you heard of Brandolini's law, which is what you're describing there? No. Brandolini's law, also known as the asymmetry principle. It takes a lot more energy to refute than to produce it, hence the world is full of unrefuted Yeah. There you are. There's a law a law for everything, including the production of on the internet. Dr. Chris Ferry, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do and check out some of your work, where should you go? So, the website is csferry.com and there you can contact me. You can follow me on on all the social media platforms, though I tend not to use them very often. But, yeah. I'm a bit secret, but you can contact me via my website if you want. Or follow me on apparently you can follow people even on Amazon now. So, you can follow me on Amazon. Hell yeah. Chris, I appreciate you. Thanks for the day. What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.