Ep. 117 - Demystifying Physics, Part 2

This is episode 117 of Patterson in Pursuit. It's part two of my conversation with Shiloh and Anastasia of the Demystify Sai podcast. We're continuing our discussion about their new book, Paradox Lost, Material Principles of Natural Philosophy, and we really dive into some nitty-gritty here. We're talking about fundamental questions like why does matter stick together at all? And do our abstractions do anything in the world or are they merely descriptions of the world? We're looking at basic concepts of motion. Does philosophy have anything to say about how motion works? Do we all share the same intuition about how motion works? Really heavy and important and incredibly fun things to be discussing. If you guys enjoy this conversation, we just recorded an interview for their show on the Demystify Hot podcast where I talk with them for another like four hours. Um, and we discuss some of similar concepts and also we go into more detail about the role of mathematics in our intellectual landscape over the past century. in particular, we talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is infinity and its role in uh modern mathematics and how it found its way into the foundations of modern mathematics. So, look for that interview coming out and I hope you guys really enjoy part two of our conversation. >> I like the concept of composition. It's really important in understanding material reality because you have bodies defined by their surfaces and extension and you can have different scales of composition of bodies, right? So you can end up with an entity, a body that possesses new properties because of the actions of its subunits all of a sudden. Whereas if you were to isolate those subunits, they would constitute a different form of body whose subunits informed its behavior. And you'd have to start to think about the comp the composite structure of the atom itself. Uh and with our work, we draw the line at some hypothetical subunit. We call them atomic fiber, but we're assume that the atom's definitely made out of something. And it ain't made out of point particles or pieces of math. It's made out of some subunits which allow it to deform into the shapes because obviously without substructure, you can't deform. Otherwise, the atoms would just be completely motionless billiard balls. >> Yes. Well, that's it. So but but the the key word is structure here. So what is structure? If you're saying that structure affects behavior and structure is something over and above the atoms, how do you get away from the the Platonic idea here that structure is both abstract, mind independent, and causally powerful? Because it sounds like magic, right? Like I could I could I could say like you know you've got you've got Adam A and you've got Adam B. Were they isolated they would have a particular behavior. Uh but they have a particular relation an abstract relation to one another and therefore their behavior is different. >> Would they have a physical relation? >> Yeah, it's a material as well. It literally changes their physical structure right there. All of a sudden their surfaces are intertwined. This is slowing the circulation of the fiber through the molecules and you end up with a different material presentation with different properties that result directly from the basic material principles. Okay, let's let's take the example. Let's like ultra simplify and we'll take like a grid uh you know threedimensional grid of nine units or something just like absolutely basic. We've zoomed in all the way down to the fundamental. So you've got adjacent atoms that are next to one another. Um, why should it be that adjacent atoms interact with one another at all? >> That requires you to understand the substructure of the atom itself. I think because >> but there can't be a further substructure, right? Because we're talking about the base whatever the fundamental thing is. I'm saying there's >> uh we don't Yeah. So we don't we're not fundamentalists first of all. So we we don't uh we don't assume we don't start our presentation at the at the bottom, right? We don't we don't know what that would be. We don't know how diverse or monotonous it those subunits are. >> Um when when I'm talking about atoms, I'm talking about the standard definition of an atom, right? The elements of the periodic table. >> Um which have some substructure. They they have some subunits. They must because they change shape. Um, but the ways in which those subunits move throughout that atom dictate its ability to interact with its neighbors in unique ways. >> And the subunits you're you describe in the book as being filament-like. >> Uh, we call them fibers. Actually, there's two f-words in the books. This is this is slowly presenting as a problem for people, but >> yeah. So, the the filaments are a super structure that we use to describe the somewhat fuzzy outer surface without them. the the atom and everything in the material presentation we make is presumed to be constructed of some set of subunits which we call fibers and the fibers could be like I said diverse they could be monotonous we don't know we draw the line at that and say there might be an entire periodic table of different types of fiber they might have substructure themselves we we don't get into that >> well let's zoom in on it as much as we can so so we're we're we're right there we're looking at the substructure let's say we see the substructure of the fiber and it's some crazy tangled thing. >> Sure. >> Some swirly do. >> It's probably like a little fish hook or something. I don't know. >> Yeah, something like that. Okay. What I'm saying is why should adjacent pieces of the substructure adhere at all? >> Cuz >> why cuz they uh they displace one another, right? So all all inter meshing is literally like my fingers are locked together right now. I don't know if you can see that. Um, but this one is displacing this one. It's it's tensile because they're interlocked, but it's ultimately one subunit displacing the other. >> And what I'm saying is why? So, so here's an analogy. Here's an analogy. Um, on a computer screen, we have pixels that are in different states. And as I drag my cursor over the computer screen, I can have it's not displacement, but it's some sort of, you know, the whiteness of the the cursor moves over and and the thing that it moves over sort of disappears like the black part disappears and the white the white part of the cursor is there and then the cursor keeps moving and the black part comes back for example. So it's not really interacting. So, so what I'm saying is why why should there be adher I understand that that the axiom is displacement but why should there be that seems like a relational thing and I want to know why should displacement be like why is there interaction at all >> okay well can I take this one >> okay so the the situation that you're talking about about the cursor on the screen is ultimately not the motion of a physical body like the cursor is a representation that is derived from some control system that is linked to the mouse that says, okay, there's a mapping between the position of the mouse. And so these p these black pixels that outline the cursor represent where this pointer is. And as you move it across the screen, there is this mapping of the motion of your hand onto the position of the thing on the screen. And that lives in an abstract representational realm where the the bodies in question are the pixels on the screen. And what they're doing is they're they're showing >> So they're pseudo bodies though. They're not real bodies. >> Well, the pixels themselves actually there's like a little LED at each point in the screen that has a specific wavelength of light that it is producing on the basis of the information that's being sent to it from the main frame. My computer understanding is not great. But it's not um like the pixels themselves are sta are stable. They're not changing in terms of their locations. What they are changing is their states. >> Yes. >> Okay. That is not what we think is happening on the level of the physical because the game that we're playing is we're saying okay can we explain everything within the realm of material bodies interacting? And so the the thing that you're asking about like, well, why would they displace each other? I'm like, well, they could only not displace each other if they were some abstract pixel if they were some abstract manifestation of like a background pixel screen. And that leaves you at simulation theory. And that's a different metaphysics. And so at the beginning of the book, we go through and we're like, okay, so there's two there's like metaphysics is the rules of the game by which you explain everything. And so I know that this is an unconventional use of the word metaphysics, but I think that it is internally consistent. And so basically what I'm saying is that every single story has a set of rules. Like Lord of the Rings has orcs and wizards, Star Trek has transponders and um you know phasers and Star Wars has lightsabers and Sith and Jedi. And these things don't belong in the same world as each other because the way that you construct your story of the world requires a very specific set of beliefs about the way that that world operates. And so we're playing the metaphysical game that says if we begin with objects with bodies, material bodies that have location, can we construct the whole material story? And these fiber subunits must behave like all other bodies. They're not That's what I was going to say is that it's it's we start with what we feel is pretty self-evident. If you were to apply the three axims we have to the room around you, there would be no question that this is the way it works, right? I I can push this book. What does pushing a book means? It means I'm displacing it because my body can't be in the same place as the book. I mean, the whole world around us in our everyday lives would make no sense if we didn't have these axioms that were self-evident. So we we sort of take them to be self-evident at our scale and we say what if we just use those same basic axioms that are apparent to a child and we applied them to the invisible world as well. Could we resolve some of the tensions that have emerged and to our surprise it was actually possible to do that? >> Yes. And I I I agree with most of that. However, and this is where I get a really push back here, is I I agree with the displacement axiom, but what I'm going to say is it in order for that to work, it requires abstract mechanisms. >> It requires motion. And the reason that it requires motion is for the same reason that a propeller when it's standing still is something that you can put your hand into and when it's moving you can't. >> But but not motion, interaction. Well, motion is inherently an interaction, I think. >> Well, if we return to the pixel and, you know, pixels on the screen, >> we would c we could easily describe this as motion, >> right? When I'm doing this and people are seeing my hand wave, they really are they're seeing motion, but the but the understanding of what's going on with motion is that there's a behind the scenes information game being played and there's like static pixels that are changing according to you know in a certain pattern such that >> it's the it's the illusion of motion representation actually something moving right and so if we say that it requires the motion of bodies with location that are displacing each other. >> Right? So it's like the the reason that I think that the propeller uh analogy is apt is because okay so for our model of the atom we've modeled it as this like involuting taurus which I think I can show >> well simple hydrogen >> this is like so I' I've shown on screen this is figure one from the book it's the I wish I could tell you what page it's on I should probably put that in this slide but you basically have a nearly spherical Taurus and the Taurus is involuting and the surface of the Taurus is made from these imshed atomic fibers. And in order for the circulation to work, the fibers have to be bodies that are able to displace each other because each fiber as it moves along the surface is pulled by the fiber in front of it and pulls the fiber along that is behind it. And so if the subunits could move through each other, then you wouldn't be able to get this circulatory motion. You wouldn't be able to get the apparent surface of the atom. and the circul like we we haven't necessarily solved like the solidity question of the atom like the atom is supposed to be mostly empty space and so the way that I think about it is I think about it that it's it's it's hollow on the inside and it's the surface that involutes along the outside of the atom and it is the involution that gives it its solidity and if the subunits were able to pass through each other if the subunits were not able to pull on one another and displace one other the entire system wouldn't work. And I don't think that you can build a physical model for the world without there being displacement because then you end up at the pixel screen and simulation theory where there's some other place that is projecting everything that we see. >> I think we could also like jump really far ahead here. Uh and because this picture you just threw on the screen is not some arbitrary representation that we think is cool or something. it it's really the best way to fold in all the mathematics we know about the surface of the atom. So we're we're yes the atom is a material body but we have good reason to believe that it has the structure that we illustrate here. It's it's not just some fanciful design that we think looks cool. Um it's it it's >> well thank you but it it is entirely a functionalized uh representation which as a map a structural map um it's inherently lacking uh in some details as well. Okay, let let me uh let me agree with most of that. So, I'm going to try. I don't know if this is going to come out right, but I'm going to try. So, doesn't one need an explanation for physical interaction at all? And if one wants to say um we're just taking displacement as an axiom, it sounds like a way to say I don't have to explain why interaction happens at all. why displacement happens at all versus we go one step further and we say yes we do need displacement but what displacement is inherently intrinsically is an abstract relational thing. So we so I we haven't so why why is displacement a feature of the world? Well, it's because there's an abstract operating mechanism that says under certain conditions under certain inputs you get certain outputs and you need that abstract you need that abstraction to explain displacement in the first place. I mean, I I tried to point this earlier, but I think displacement is self-evidence at the scale we operate in normally. And so it, you know, and I would I would say that to to really counter that, I would say if you if you have reason to believe that displacement is not a fundamental axiom of physical reality, then you have to explain to me how two bodies can be in the same place at the same time without deforming. um >> like that that's that's what requires the mechanism. It seems like to me the default assumption is mechanismless because you simply just can't it's just apparent that two bodies can't be in the same place at the same time. >> But but the the the argument is not that displacement is the wrong axiom. It's that displacement needs an explanation. Why should why should things being adjacent to one another result in them interacting with one another? Well, I think that the the presence of a surface inherently signifies exclusion. Like it is the most fundamental identity of self versus nonself. And so when you look at a body, the the extent of the body, the the the margins according to which its fidelity is maintained is a cohesive surface. And that cohesive surface is the thing that tells you, okay, this is where body A ends and body B begins. And so if you can say that okay there are bodies and those bodies are surface bound and they have discrete identities that differentiate one from the other then displacement becomes the thing that falls out of the existence of bodies in the first place because you c you you break the idea of separate bodies by saying well they can interact without displacement because then you basically have everything melding together into one and overlapping and you don't have individual bodies anymore. Now you just have like mashed potatoes and >> that will be very relevant when we when we talk about continuity versus discreetness because because of that intuition you just articulated I think ultimately everything material needs to be understood as coming out of fundamental discreetness otherwise you get universal mashed potatoism. But well, let's let's let's focus on this displacement just for a little bit longer. Um, so so here's here's a different way to try to encapsulate what I'm trying to say. And this is part of my transition from nominalism into platonism. Um, I think that geometry is extraordinarily deep and like maybe fundamental not to use that f word, but uh it there's something really really really deep about geometry that we can't seem to get rid of it. And I previously thought that the reason abstractions don't have to exist in the world is because I can see that I can I'm carving up a discrete reality into entities. I'm saying this stuff over here, this stuff over there, but my carving it's me carving it up. It's not reality necessarily coming carved up itself. And so all of my concepts are sort of ways of talking about a geometric arrangement that's out there in the world. So a sort of a let's say a reductive geometric view of what the physical world is. It's just states of geometry in relation to one another. The problem with that view is it doesn't explain behavior at all. Geometry doesn't get us to physics. Even if you have some fundamental uh whatever the geometric construction of that fundamental subunit is even if we understand how you know it's it's you use the term inchained I think in there however it's in chained geometrically it doesn't actually give us any explanation for why the universe would proceed to the next state the way that it does without some additional stuff. You need some sort of laws or abstractions that are governing governing how geometry gets us behavior. >> Well, well, that's true. And that's because physics is both actors and actions, right? So, you you actually it's a physics is more like a movie. It involves dynamics as well as statics. So, the architecture is important in terms of understanding how the actions proceed. The contention that we begin this whole project with is that a lot of physics is actions without actors. And this results in no end of confusion and paradoxes. So if you actually start with structures capable of acting out the dance that gives rise to the phenomenon, then in my book you've given a satisfactory explanation for the production of the phenomenon. And what that means is that you do start with geometry because form is geometry. It's like a three-dimensional representation of an arrangement. Okay? But in order to get to physics, you have to roll the movie forward. You have to see what happens. And so the study of the physical world is the study of the forms of the bodies and the actions that they take. Right? So, you can have like a triangle or you could have a um like a triangular prism and it's uh let's say you have one that's made out of metal and one that's made out of foam. You can use one of those to split a log and the other one would not work to split a log. You might be able to use it as like sound foam or something, >> but it's just like the the the geometry of the object does not inherently tell you anything about like the fundamental >> physical properties of it. There's something deeper about its about the the the strength of the bonds between the atoms that make it, the arrangement of the cells inside of the object that give it its properties. And so there is a dynamic aspect to how it unfolds. You're absolutely >> for almost everything. I think you most of the figures in our book, you'll find arrows on different structures saying what they're doing. There's a few minor exceptions to that. Um, we can talk about gravity. There's a few static uh confirmations that result in the phenomenon, but ultimately they're subject to tensile processes that are informed by the motions of the objects they're tethered to, the atoms and so forth. So, yeah, physics is is both actions and actors. It sounds like we're in agreement that pure geometry is static by definition because you're not taking into account time and pure geometry doesn't get you uh uh predictive uh behavior. Pure geometry doesn't get you to behavior without something else. >> It's an incomplete map. It could be something as simple as uh uh the principle of displacement. So perhaps maybe what you get is geometry plus principle of displacement. Well, now we're talking and maybe we can really go really far. But I want to say please tell me about the ontology of this principle. It sounds like you guys aren't as worried about that. Well, I mean, from the youngest age when you start applying geometry to physical systems, my favorite example is the quadratic equation. Everybody remembers these nightmares from high school if they took physics where they're doing these kinematic diagrams. They're shooting cannonballs off of cliffs and stuff like that. The funny thing is, if you solve those geometric relationships for the parabola, you end up with a negative result that you just discard and move on with your life, right? But you did that for good reason actually. It turns out because the cannonball didn't start on the cliff on the other side and go into your hands first. And that's just a nonsensical story. It has no real correspondence to the physical system that you're examining. And we do this all the time in mathematics where we trim off the fat from things that aren't part of the system. That requires a different level of natural language and comprehension that isn't purely relegated to the geometry itself. even if it's dynamical geometry like the kinematics equations >> and I think that you start to butt up against the question of like why does anything exist in the first place like why are there bodies versus no bodies at all and that seems like a question that is absolutely worth asking and answering but we're saying okay let us begin in a universe where there are bodies and the bodies have surfaces and they have volumes and they have location relative to other bodies and the way that they behave is that they exclude they maintain their identity and they exclude other bodies from becoming part of them and occupying the same space. >> And where does that get us? How do we use those three simple rules where material bodies that maintain their identity move or play out the game of physics? Where does that get us? And yes, I >> and if they don't maintain their identity, that happens all the time, too. it's because their substructure has been rearranged which is ultimately a displacement process as well. >> Okay, I want to give one more analogy here and then we'll move on to to some other ideas. Um really really intrigued by cellular automata and uh and I think this is an exceptional model for understanding how phenomena work. However, um if one there's a there's a problem here that I've spoken with to a few people and they don't seem to like when I point this out, but in order for cellular automat to to go to do their thing, it requires more than cells in states. This in order the gas of the cellular automata is actually in universal rules of how the states update. And so the my question always well what are these rules? How do these rules relate to the underlying phenomena that is being governed by them? And if the rules themselves are not in states, the rules aren't somehow like some part of the space itself. The rules are some thing governing the entire structure. That's where that's again where the platonic uh uh um intuition comes from. Well, the cells aren't enough. The material isn't isn't enough. You got to have the abstract stuff that makes the cells operate the way that they're operating. And so, I guess that would that's just sort of the analogy with what you guys are talking about with displacement. I think you need an explanation for displacement as an abstract principle sort of analogous to the rules of a cellular automa system >> to some degree. But I think that this is also why a lot of the natural philosophers ended up at a prime mover because once you have a system that is in motion, then you have a the like the the thing that makes the system go is already in place because okay, so you have bodies that have discrete extension and they have material tensile properties that define how they will interact once they encounter one another because they sometimes like Shila saying they can they can two atoms can stick together and they can make a molecule. Sometimes two atoms will just bounce off of each other. Sometimes you can hit it with light and you'll excite it into a new shape. Sometimes that shape will collapse back down and produce a different kind of light. Okay. So there's clearly things that happen once motion is in the system because of the material properties. The question I think that you're asking is a very very deep one which is where the hell does the motion come from in the first place? And I don't know the answer to that question. It's a very good one. It has begiled philosophers and scientists for as as long as we've been thinking about this. Like the ancient Greeks were deeply preoccupied by this. >> They're also blending together fundamental metaphysical axioms with quantitative axioms that are apparent. you know, there's and all of those in the physical landscape, I think, can be reasoned with, right? So, you might say, well, there's this rule like circles always have this uh relationship between the circumference and the radius. It's like, well, all right, well, show me a circle in the physical world. And I'm not going to split hairs about it, but like, you know, maybe there's something you could be like, well, this this planet or the sun or something or a raindrop, you know, it's very circular. And you're like, why does that happen? And there turns out to be like a good reason for that which is it's an energetic argument and we could break it down materially but essentially you're you're really finding it costly to maintain surfaces and you're trying to minimize that with respect to the volume of material you're enclosing. And so you can dive down into why these relationships hold play out the way they do. And you can describe them with uh increasingly precise equations and maybe you even come up with a constant that scales that relationship to maximize its efficiency, but ultimately you're just discovering what the easiest confirmation of that material is. And it it happens to be related by this concept of pi uh at the end of the day. And so it is a self it is apparent and it it does have a rule to it but it's based on efficiency uh in the natural world is where we deduce it from ultimately. >> Yes. And and uh so so I just want to respond to both those points. So Anastasia yes that is why uh for multiple millennia the claim was that God could be known through pure reason. That is that would be one of the definitions of God. that you know Aquinus said that there is a I forget how many proofs he gave for the existence of God um but he said there's essentially uh there's a difference between the god of the philosophers the prime mover the answer to infinite regress problems and the god uh uh let's say Jesus and the the claims of om I'm the benevolent omnipresent these are separate but the there is an ar there are arguments pointing everywhere from natural philosophy he would say or natural theology was the term that said we're not really saying there's a god even as an empirical claim. We're saying given the way things are, it must be by appealing to logic and reason that you end up with a self-existent entity who is not in motion that sets other things into motion. That is the that is the classical ancient uh Christian take. Um, and then and then Shiloh. Um, hang on. Just quickly remind me what what you said because you were uh >> uh I I just think that these metaphysical axioms, you know, how you go the rules you decide to play the game by are maybe different than the kinds of physical laws that result. Yeah. Because those, you know, >> th those perhaps can be deconstructed into basic material interactions still. >> Yeah. So, I think you end up like I love the example of um the of spheres because I have this uh because I think I'm a I'm a hardcore finitist. Um I the funniest way to put it is I don't think circles exist. So, I'm like a I'm like a anti-circle guy. At least the perfect circle, whatever that is, I don't think that actually exists. But circularity certainly does. And I think when one understands the logic of circularity, one you'll get physical principles that pop out of that. Sort of like understanding the logic of what a shape is in threedimensional space is going to tell you something about why physics is the way that it is. >> Which is why I can understand the Platonic influence, right? Because I think that that's kind of what in the most liberal interpretation possible, I think that that is what Plato was pointing to. He's like, there does seem to be some properties of the universe that enforce circularity and that enforce the way that these interactions will go and that give forms their properties. And I they're they're very deep questions and I think that they operate maybe like one level below where we start this work. >> I was going to say one level above. >> Interesting. >> I mean, yeah, I think there are these stand static patterns. Static maybe not the right word. There are steady patterns. There are stable patterns in the universe. Uh but when you really pry under the hood of those there is a pretty uh physical material basis by which those patterns emerge and why it is that we keep seeing them everywhere because they they tend to be very efficient ways of dissipating emotion is what it comes down to. >> I guess I place them down below because I think that they also drive at the question of why is there something rather than nothing. >> I got no dog in the fight of why there's something. I think it'd be a lot easier if there wasn't a universe. It would make a lot more sense. I have no idea why this place is here. It's totally insane. >> There are some philosophers that are like, "Yeah, nothing exists." There there's a minority school that that uh that says nothing exists. I think that's one of the the few positions of philosophy that unfortunately is like definitely wrong. >> But you >> Yeah. Well, that's a we're That'll be a That's a fun question. Yes. Um Okay. So I'm going to start I want to give I want to transition a little bit to some of the other axioms and I want to start with another quote. All right. So this is you guys are quoting Einstein uh page 339. Quote is the scientist makes use of a whole arsenal of concepts which he embibed practically with his mother's milk and seldom if ever is he aware of the eternally problematic character of his concepts. And yet in the interests of science, it is necessary over and over again to engage in the critique of these fundamental concepts in order that we may not be unconsciously ruled by them. Brilliant quote. And I feel because of my incompetence with regard to technical specifics of physics, what I feel like I can bring to the table in uh in in the spirit of natural philosophy is an examination of some of these fundamental concepts. And and in particular, I found that a one strategy to try to learn faster is to focus on areas of disagreement. And I and maybe this came from like a martial arts background where, you know, if you're it's one thing to say your technique is wrong like in the abstract. It's another thing to like get punched in the face. It's a demonstration that the technique is wrong. And I was always been attracted to like just refute what I'm saying or I'm going to try to refute what we're saying. And it's out of a position of, you know, deep respect for what we're doing here. So, I'm going to try to I'm going to try to I'm going to try to attack what you guys are this wonderful thing that you guys are building. I'm going to try to attack it as best I can. >> And and before you start attacking it, uh I would point out that that is the little preface quote to the chapter we wrote called Objection, your honor, where we are are desperately trying to make the case that this isn't a finished story and that that's kind of how science is supposed to go. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh so we try to point out a lot of the things we're uncomfortable about with respect to our own model and where the work needs to be done in the future. So yeah, attack away. But that that quote was in the context of recognizing that this is that we are far from kings of the world having the answers to everything under the sun. >> Yes. Excellent. And uh okay, so this is going to be pro I would imagine not a criticism that other people will not an angle that other people are going to come at. I don't know. Um, but it it gets really to the heart of so many things and and I I share this perspective with you because I am I must be an idiot and let me tell you why. I will make this I will make this argument. Okay? I have been trying for more than a decade. I have spent a preposterous amount of time trying to make sense of mathematical continuity and I have come to the conclusion that you guys came to with regard to some questions in in in physics that maybe I can't understand them because maybe the concepts don't make sense at all. So my my current position is I think continuity is a flawed concept at the logical level and that might be because I'm an idiot. So I'm I'm totally open to that and maybe you guys can help me understand uh what I'm missing here. So there's going to be two ways to approach this continuity question. Let's uh one is like through math and calculus and the other which might be more fun is through this idea of what of what a a surface is. You're talking about the material atom as something there's boundaries and it encloses an area and then I immediately run into problems in trying to understand that that sound like Zeno's paradoxes problems. Hm. >> Well, this area okay is this is the area it encloses does it have subunits at infin item >> there's a so one of the reasons I like cellular automa is because there is actually a fundamental base indivisible base unit that's the pixel that's the boxel that's the bit that is indivisible and when when you're describing surfaces I can't help but think well there aren't there parts of that surface doesn't that surface have corners and edges implying that it is not itself fundamental and runs into the a composition problem here. >> Yeah, we are not proposing a fundamental end all be all description of reality. We're we're sort of doing what people did with heat back in the 1800s where they thought there was just some sort of magical fluid that flowed around and warmed things up and then they realized, you know, there's actually a better way of looking at this that actually eventually yielded better predictive results where you had the motion of molecules being responsible for the experience of heat. Uh we're just trying to add like one more layer to this puzzle in terms of at the bottom of the bucket where you know what the absolute bedrock building block of reality is. This is something we haven't even begun to touch with a 10-ft pole. Um we're we're really just trying to simplify the structure of the atom in a way that would explain the very limited phenomenon that we've tackled so far which is essentially electricity, magnetism, gravity, and light. And so we're going to hypothesize a substructure that will be necessary to act out the actions that give rise to this phenomena. But you know there's an unending list of phenomena that need explanations in the physical world. And some of them very well may require substructural hypotheses that we don't require. >> I'm I'm even looking for more basic than that. So like can you please explain to me what surface is? What is surface? Like what? So so let me let me tell you why I have a problem with the concept or why why it makes my brain glitch. So um think about a cube and on the cube the the cube has corners and so I I could understand the surface you know there's like this different faces of the surface of a cube and I can understand those as being not fundamental. So the cube itself is not some fundamental thing because the cube has distinguishable surfaces. But then I zoom in on the surface. I look at the and I look at the the boundary of the surface and I wonder well does the boundary have a boundary does the surface have a surface like so so if if the surface has a surface I don't know how you get I don't know so just like you guys have issues with zero dimensional points so do I okay I don't understand what a zero dimensional point is like at the logical level but I also don't understand what it is at the geometric level either >> okay but I don't think that you I think that the zero dimens dimensional point is not part of the model that we are presenting. We're basically saying that like the zero dimensional point is a mathematical artifact. And so the reason that it is that the electron is a point particle with no extension is because what they're really talking about is they're talking about an action and actions don't have extensions. actions have places where they can transmit the full like momentum of of their motion, but it it's not like a it's not a body that has some kind of extension that you can localize. And so for the question of like surfaces, so the way that I would imagine the cube, okay, so you're looking like let's use the book. I have I have a book in my hands. It's got a surface. Presumably, if I zoom far down deep into the the atomic structure of the book, I would find atoms that are enshed with one another. There is there's some kind of structure of the atoms inside the the hard paper of this cover where those the the atoms are basically entwined with one another and they create a barrier that prevents my hand from being able to go through the book because my hand is also made up of atoms. They are also producing a barrier that is the edge of my body. when I press them against each other, they will not go through. However, there is enough there is probably some space between the the inshed atoms because it's a lattice. It's not there must we're going to have to do matter and void discourse. So, in order for the book to be deformable, I could technically bend this page. For the page to be bendable, it means that the lattice that the book is made out of has enough space inside of it that the subunits that are inside of it can move into a new position. They can push on each other and they can take on a new confirmation. So >> furthermore, the subunits themselves can deform. We know this as well from basic atomic chemistry. >> But but that okay, let's actually sorry I'm sorry to interrupt. That's the thing I'm I'm getting tripped up on. That would mean they're not the fundamental subunits, right? Because doesn't deformation itself imply surrounding space? >> Yeah. And so basically, okay, when Shiloh says the subunits deform, he means that the atoms deform. >> Yeah. Sorry, I was talking about atoms just now. >> Okay. And so the atoms are also made out of subunits. And those subunits are the things that we call the atomic fiber. And so you're like, okay, well, do those then deform? Like is there is there is there substructure there? And I'm like, maybe. And then you'd get to the question of like, okay, so the atomic subfibers, do those deform? Is there substructure there? And I'd be like, maybe. And so you'd get to the atomic sub substructure, and you'd be like, okay, well, do those? And I'm like, maybe. And the thing is is that you have to ask this question in in a frame that offers you utility which is what Shila is trying to drive at which is that okay so you can ask the philosophical question about the fundamental and you can seek to to to map the universe and and dig down to its farthest deepest parts and this is perhaps where I become something of a positivist where I'm like I don't know what's down there we are we are operating at a scale that is like far far above the scale of the atomic fiber of the atomic subfiber of the atomic subfiber and so our conclusions about what's down there and where is the fundamental and what is the fundamental pixel of nature I just I think that we're we're a ways away from being able to figure that out and I always laugh because when you know people will ask us they're like okay so you guys have this bottle. Well, what does it um what does it say about quirks? And I'm like, and Shiloh's always like, "Oh, hold on." Like, we haven't even gotten onto the same page about like what an electron is. >> Yeah. >> We can't do quirks yet. Like, we don't >> especially since you use electrons to detect them. >> Yeah. So, it's like Go ahead. Go ahead. >> Okay. I I want to say a couple things. One, God and Plato are waiting for you down at the very bottom resolution. >> Okay. Uh but also here here's why I actually think this matters. It's it it directly connects to what we were talking about ear earlier is it absolutely shapes how you think motion works because if it if it ends up that for logical reasons you can't have deformity all the way down. If you end up with rigid geometry then then motion becomes motion analogous to the computer screen. Well, why couldn't you just have a flow of rigid parts that are just pushing each other out of the way like like a conveyor belt or something or like a bicycle chain? >> So, what would be pushing pushing? It would be it would be adjacent states and one state would transmit to the other state, but there wouldn't be >> there would just be translation. >> Yeah. I mean, yeah, they're just pushing each other. They could be interlocking depending on their structures. It could be a very diverse set of fundamental fiber at the at the bedrock of everything. I I would go so far as to say I assume that there are. I don't know what their shapes are and structures or how diverse or monotonous they are, but >> zoom in on it. Then let's say that there is I think there I think it ends up >> with no substructure. Yeah. >> So yeah, so we've got and we're it's returns to the adhesion problem. >> They're not bowling balls. Yeah. >> Okay. Whatever they Yeah, that's fine. whatever they are at that level. If we're actually, you know, zoomed in to that level and and if it were true that logic demands spatial rigidity, then what then what then what motion ends up being is the transmission of state across a grid >> that that >> maybe look at how you're holding your hands. You're holding your hands like this, right? Yeah, >> but you could solve this problem by holding your hands like this. >> Because if you hold your hands like this and then there's it's like the what is it? The Greek key. The way that they that they have these like uh in in meshed patterns that are Yeah. Exactly. So it's >> drying. >> Yeah. Well, no, no, no. They're rigid, so they can't deform. So you basically lock your hands together. You can't deform them. Now pull one hand. >> No, no, no. They can't deform. >> I'm intentionally cheating. >> I know. I know. But like So if you weren't if you weren't cheating at that moment because what you're doing is you're basically letting your fingers deform and fly apart. >> And so you have to do that because it's necessary in order for the enchainment to not work as this translational motion of undeformable objects. >> But if they're pressurized from either side, then they could actually lose their interlocking. I I guess what I'm trying to say is that inchainment mean that it must operate not geometrically if ultimately there is a base unit of space. In other words, it can't be it can't be deforming and it can't even be pushpull, right? >> Because >> because it doesn't have an explanation for why these two things would cohhere at all. You're just looking at two bits that are next to one another. So, so, so in other words, when I'm doing this, the fund, this isn't this isn't adjacent fundamental units. This is already cheating. >> Why? >> Uh, because >> well, they're not adjacent. You're right. They're not adjacent fundamental. >> This is where the connection point is is being made. It's not actually this. I'm like hiding the connection point. It's this. >> So, this sort of the same thing. What I'm saying is uh there is no geometry does not give us an explanation for why there is uh pushing or pulling pushing it. Oh, put put it this way. pushing and pulling is a force. But I know you guys don't like the force idea, but I think that's what's going on is if if we if we anal if it's the case that everything in the physical world is is in a fixed grid, then I then the reason you get adherence is because of some abstract immaterial force that says when there is adjacency, then you get a a particular output state. >> Okay. Okay. So, there's an interesting lead here which I I think is is perhaps relevant where we have a friend who studies water. His name is Michael Hughes and he has been studying the the way that water molecules can organize inside of liquids. So, water is incredibly complicated. We tend to think of it as this like flubby bulk substance where everything's just sort of I don't know just jiggling around. But what actually happens is that you have these pockets of of densification and of rarification. And you have these structures that form inside of the water. And the structures can move through the bulk of the water faster than any one molecule can diffuse through the substance. It seems to be what you're pointing out where you're like, okay, so you have this you have a fairly dense grid of water molecules and those water molecules take on some kind of confirmation and that confirmation is a mobile structure that can move through the body of the water across the water molecules without actually taking any of its original water molecules with it. Is that kind of what you're pointing to? That's that's it is it is analogous. It's what I want to say is the best analogy is again to the computer screen that what motion ends up looking like is a a information pattern. It looks like that there is a real structure moving through space that satisfies our natural intuitions of what that means. when you look underneath it deeply enough, it's actually anformational pattern that is moving in a discrete way across a fixed grid. So the motion isn't smooth in a in a continuous sense. It's and that that uh that motion so so when I said before when I was sort of painting this picture, you were saying, "Well, that's not real motion. If there's a fix if it's a fixed grid idea, that's not real motion like with the pixel." I'm going to say, well, what if that is real motion? That actually and and I have I have sort of empirical evidence for this that isn't it interesting that we get if you put on a virtual reality goggles, you get a con a a continuous smooth experience of what appears to be motion all around you that sat seems to satisfy the intuitive criteria for motion. And yet underpinning all of it, it's a fixed grid with pixels that are changing state relative to one another based on information patterns. >> Well, I first of all, I think we do see that kind of thing happen in the material world, especially when it comes to wave dynamics and we could talk about that. Uh, but at the end of the day, we define all of these things including motion in the context of material physics, right? So what you're using as motion is not what we're using as motion, which is just the relocation of a body itself. So if we want to use these these words consistently, we have to be really careful and rigorous about what we mean when we say motion because when I say emotion, you know, you see this kind of thing happen all the time with consciousness or or life, right? People mean different things, energy, right? >> Um so we we're very careful. um we you know we we use these terms consistently throughout the book surface motion. Um but in terms of the actual idea that you could have motive processes that don't necessarily um right so you have you have a wave that travels right that's a very common parlance in physics and I don't really have too much of a problem with that. um it is an abstraction layer up because you're not necessarily talking about the longitudinal propagation of a subunit during a wave of light for instance, >> right? >> You're talking about a deformation of the super structure which is the the material that spans between the two the emitter and the absorber. And you're talking about that deformation propagating as opposed to the actual subunits propagating which is very close to what you're pointing out. >> When you say the defamation propagating I I my my intuition is is to say well to make sense of that it's it's information propagating like the thing that's being transmitted is anformational state. Well, for us it's just the subunits getting pulled out of the way by their neighbors essentially. But we're talking about different scales though because the scale that you're talking about in terms of the light and the deformation is it a scale like far above the one that Steve is trying to probe because Steve is like if you zoom like all the way down deep into the depth towards the fundamental and I I think I have a different a slightly different take on it because I think you're totally right about the defformation at the scale that that we define it in the book and I I totally agree with you about that I'm just like in the world of modern physics there is this place where you have to transform information into matter into material bodies and right now that's kind of at the moment of wave function collapse and it's not inherently part of the theory. You can kind of depending on your interpretation of of of the theory, you can place that transformation from um unrealized probabilistic universe towards material realized universe that has discrete properties in different places. But you still have this problem and the description that you're kind of giving al of this of this steady uniform grid where information is the thing that travels through it. And like don't you also then get stuck with the problem of how you couple that to material bodies? Like it seems like it doesn't erase the fundamental issue with >> that we've identified with quantum physics which is that you have to go from one type of immateriality to materiality. And we're saying that any theory that has that gap in it is fundamentally unsatisfying because then you have to have a mechanism for how you go from one kind of thing to another. You have an inherent dualism and then you have to have the physics of the chasm. And I'm like, well, what if we just don't have the physics of the chasm? What if there's no chasm? >> Yeah. Well, so yes. So that so there's an interaction problem here um uh about Yeah. going from information to uh material from mind to body and and actually um yes this is why this is so central here's the claim I want to make that in order to understand physical interaction if we understand it at the fundamental logical level we're talking about bits flipping and different bit states you end up if you so you end up baking an immaterial uh superructure into the material. So you can't I want to say you can't explain material interaction without the abstract. And and but here's the cool thing is if you allow an abstract superructure to explain the what's going on with physical to physical interaction, it actually solves the mind body problem because you can you can allow this sup this abstract superructure to also output mental states to input and output me mental states. So, so in other words, if one, so what I'm trying to say is if one might be forced to concede that in order to explain physical interaction at all, there is some sort of abstract behind the scenes happening going on. I call it the universal function like a bunch bunch of information going into a universal function and then the next output states are generated. And if there's already the dual if if we're forced into a dualism to explain physical interaction then uh that suddenly the the mind body interaction kind of disappears because we could just appeal to the same mechanism. An analogous issue here is with uh the laws of physics. So one one might add I know you guys probably aren't going to run into this problem because of the way you're framing things but a more standard physicist is going to have ontological problems with regards to the laws of physics. What are the laws of physics? Not what are they named or how do they operate like ontologically what are laws? And if one concedes that well you have to have laws in order to explain physical behavior, you've already conceded a dualism where you have laws that are some sort of non-atomic thing and you have the behavior that's governing them which is or then you have the the phenomena that's being governed by them. So you're already in some sort of a a a dualistic conundrum here. So that I guess that's what I'm trying to do is by zooming in all the way down to the granular underneath the the normal atoms all the way you know the subfighters the sub subfers when you think about it as like at the absolute fundamental level I think you it reveals that one needs the abstract in order to explain things like motion or interaction at all. Well, motion is an abstraction. So is displacement. So yeah, I I don't think that you can do physics without abstractions. Uh but the motion is the most basic physical abstraction imaginable. It is just the relocation of a body. That's it. It's in a new place with respect to all the other bodies. So yeah, you can't get away from that from having to use abstractions as a human being trying to contemplate causation. I mean, causation is an abstraction by itself as well. So that that's fine. I I I don't see there being any contradiction necessary there. >> Okay. Well, it's but it seems like it uh well, I don't want to dwell on the point too long, but it but it but it does seem like there's a tension in understanding how motion could work. >> It's really interesting because people have I mean, you're not you're not the first person to propose this and we've been working through it with some of our other friends. Um, shout out to James Ellias of Antica, the guy who runs the Dialect Channel. Um, lots of there have been a fair number of arguments about I think precisely this. I think you're the first person to have formalized it quite so clearly. And I have not yet found a way to put my ideas into a language that easily translates to the to anformationalist view where I'm like I think that information is really important. I think that it absolutely is the abstraction layer that governs the way that these fund super fundamental subunits would interact and how they would behave. And yet I cannot think of information as coming in any kind of form except for in in the physical game that we're playing except for being encoded in the material properties of these sub subfiber units. Because when you try to move, when you try to do anything with them, you end up having an outcome that is encoded by not just the location and the shape, but also by the material properties of the body. And so when you try to move it, it responds in some way and interacts with its environment in some way. And so that does seem to be like the the core of the thing that you're pointing to. And I don't think that they're incompatible. I just haven't like I haven't meshed them together fully yet. >> Well, let's let's just briefly explore this idea of that information must be encoded in some way in the material. So, so um if I were to say, so this is an interesting argument for the the dualism between mind and body. Um, imagine I would just say that one can fully explain all aspects of the phenomena of listening to music through an understanding of the underlying physical states of a of a brain or of a human uh uh body. So in other words, if one if one were to say a full incomplete description of auditory experience can be had through understanding of material material states. Would you agree with that argument? I don't I mean I don't know because my immediate thought goes to somebody who listens to like scream thrash metal versus somebody who listens to Bach like and they both genuinely enjoy the musical experience that they're having. But those realms do not evoke any of the same emotions. Like you can't play thrash metal for somebody who loves bach and have them have a response the same way that you can't play back to the thrash metal head and have them have the response. >> So So is there would you say there's a qualitative aspect an internal experiential aspect which is not fundamentally captured by material description. >> I would be inclined to say so. Yeah. Like that's the I think that that's the place where my dualism exists. And this is this feeds into what I was talking about biology earlier, which is that there's a there's a preference, a will, a a desire, an aesthetic, these things that are not encoded in the material. Because the person who listens to the thrash metal and the person who listens to Bach have some kind of materiality that is if not 99.9999% identical, then then something very close. Then then let me ask you, can one have information about the uh differences in qualitative experience? So in other words, if you're saying there's information left over from a material description, is it possible for somebody to possess that information? In other words, sorry, let me try to rephrase it one more time. That's I'm doing a poor job. Um, if we say that it is un a an incomplete description of listening to Bach is is available to those who restrict themselves to physics. There's we could say there's there's information left over that is not captured by physics. Another way of talking about it. Now if that's true and you can you can sort of know what that information is you know uh information about qualia then doesn't that mean that there is indeed information that is not attached to the material because it's what we're talking about when we're talking about qualitative experience. Well, I would be inclined to say that it is in some ways at least bridging across the material because the information that decides what kind of music somebody likes, I think has a lot to do with their the way that they look out onto the world and the aesthetic preferences that they have. Like their the guy who listens to thrash metal is like the guy who listens to box at total pon. I don't want to be like that guy. I want to be like the guy who's got the mohawk and wears the chains. And so there is like a material emer there's there's a material realm from which that information emerges. But I don't think that the information is encoded purely in the material. It is partially encoded in the voluitional which emerges like I I don't think that you can have consciousness without a body. I'm not saying I'm not restraining it to human bodies, but I think that you do have to have some kind of organization of biological matter that is capable of going out into the world and doing things in order to have this kind of preference to begin with. And so I cannot div I cannot set it into a different bin. I cannot put it on a shelf somewhere else and say, "Okay, this is where the preferences exist and this is the information about the preferences." and they don't supervene at all on the material. And over here is the material and it has nothing to do with the preferences and like these things are kind of >> they're like inshed in some abstract way. >> I guess the question is whether or not those two circles completely overlap or two ways of describing the same thing. So, so I might ask the question um >> when would we say a a theory is incomplete? I think one possible answer would be well if there's information left over that's not being captured by a theory you have an incomplete theory. So then if if we want to uh break apart the phenomenon of people experiencing music and we say even if one had a full and complete understanding of the brain state of somebody listening to music there would still be information left over. I think that means that well therefore the purely physical description is definitionally incomplete because there's leftover information and then and then the final step there would be well then it must be the case that information doesn't have to be fully bound to the material because I when I'm talking about the experience of listening to Bach I'm talking about information referring to something qualitative experience but I'm not talking about anything that is found through a understanding just of the material of brain of the brain states >> and yet at the end of the day somebody's rolling a bow across the violin string right so the rubber always meets the road still >> well I think that well what I think but wouldn't that imply that what's going on ultimately is just the the bow stringing and the vibrations I I think what we what I'm trying to say is that qualia is real and not captured by physical descriptions which means that information is not always bound to the material. Information can refer to both physical and non-physical. >> Okay. But I think that what I would say to that is I would say that the qualia cannot exist. It cannot occur in the absence of the material. Like there is no there is no place in the universe where qualia lives divorced from the material. And so what I'm I think that what I'm what I'm trying to drive at is that if you attempt to describe a system solely through the material physical properties, >> you have described the material grounds, the stage on which something else plays out. >> All right, we're going to we're going to swap language here. All right, we're going to go right into the religious. Could you like talking about this as the body being a temple, a real material structure, but with that temple, one is accessing informationational qualitative states that are not themselves fundamentally material. There's sort of a portal. The body is some kind of a portal that takes you from the material via the material, but but the contents of it are not to be found in the material. The contents of it I think are ultimately grounded in the material though like they are not that this is I know that this sounds really weird because okay so it's like the body is the the temple and the temple is the way that you access this this space of preferences and emotions and experiences and awe and wonder and all of these other things. Okay. So imagine that you just have a body born in a void. Blackness always, no visual stimuli, no material world, let's say not even an awareness of the body. It's like totally paraplegic. It's just there is a body, there is a brain, it can do the fundamental functions of the body, and it's a magical void where despite the fact that there's nothing else, you can still breathe and your heart still beats. Like I don't really think that you have like a lot of qualia. Like I think that an orphan that's raised in a Soviet era Romanian orphanage never forms proper language or the ability to operate in the world because all of these programs that we're talking about require a deep training to interact and meet them. Like when you have a newborn in your hands, like that is just like a little worm that is barely aware of its own experience or anything around it. Like it's got >> it knows to eat. That's it. >> Okay. Well, could we just say, well, yes, of course, the the the details of the temple construction matter. >> But once you have the temple constructed in the correct way, then you do have access to these other onlogical categories even. >> Yes. But I think that by virtue of the temple construction mattering and the temple like looking out onto the rest of the world and evaluating whether or not its inputs are resonant with its preferences, you still have this kind of like material lens because what is when when we talk about the sacred like what are we talking about? We are talking about the desecration of the body. We're talking about something that is sinful or bad versus something that is good and vaunted. And what are those if not like ultimately ways of talking about the state of the material body and the spirit that inhabits it? Like you make your bed not because God told you to make your bed. You make your bed because it feels good and orderly to make it. or you don't make your bed because you're depressed and you don't care about the world and think that it doesn't matter. And like there's this interplay between the the qualia space and the material space. But ultimately in the absence of the sign and the things that it signifies like in sorry in the absence of the sign you cannot get at the signifier. Right? So if if you don't if if the bed is a meaningless object that does not map onto a sense of you know the early bird gets the worm and this is orderly and good and clean and I like things to be orderly and good and clean. The bed is a meaningless object. You have to be able to have some kind of material map into which you place all of these objects and their states in order to derive some kind of qualia based sense about them in the first place. Which is why qualia cannot exist without the physical. That's why it's like the the idea of there being like information or consciousness or any of these things in the absence of the physical to preede it seems like it it breaks my brain. >> Not even to precede it, but to go hand in hand with it. That's why I hate this fundamentalism stuff is I'm like, yes, like consciousness is fundamental to reality. So is material reality, right? These are both handinand glove situations. >> Well, I I I agree with that, but I do think it's a bit intention to what Anastasia is saying about everything having to cash out in terms of the material. So if one were to draw a plateist for example, one could say well sometimes the information is attached to the material. It doesn't have to be. I can have information about qualitative states that I can I can imagine, for example, that maybe the material is unreal. I at least have the ability to conceptually distinguish between uh the material and the non-material such that if everything's some great hallucination, so be it. that that doesn't seem like logically impossible to me. And I can even have knowledge and information true information about abstract structures. So when we're talking about the truths to be found in arithmetic or in geometry, I don't have to ground that in any in anything material. Now perhaps it's the case that uh in order for there to be minds like ours grasping the truths of geometry, it requires a particular material structure. That seems reasonable. But in but in principle I don't think the information has to cash out in in the material and and and this and if this is true it allows for a a wide ontological pluralism. So instead of uh there just being mind and matter is it well it could be mind matter abstract stuff maybe spiritual stuff is in some other category and maybe 35 other dimensions or type ontological states that we don't have access to all of which there can be information about but they don't have to cash out into that doesn't have to be grounded let's say in the material world some of them are some maybe some of them aren't >> I think that this is circling around the idea of abstraction layers that we brought up a couple of times Yeah. >> And I think it's also rooted in why we have different disciplines at the academy, right? That's why people study chemistry and some people study neuroscience because the abstraction layer that they work at comes with different tools, different ways of speaking about uh the phenomena they're studying. They're obviously different phenomena. Like look, both my surgeon and my uh guy who takes care of my Honda at the garage, they're both mechanics in a sense, right? But I wouldn't go to the guy at the garage if I needed my appendix out. Not because he can't move body, right? He can physically rearrange bodies, but there it's a different set of rules, right? There's a whole different set of rules and terminology fundamentally. Yeah, they're kind of doing the same thing. I mean, you could you I'm sure that they can comprehend what each other's jobs are and so forth, but the abstractions are different. So this is, you know, the main thrust of what we're saying is not, we're not saying that physics should be able to explain everything. We're saying kind of the opposite. We're saying physics should do this one thing that nobody else is doing because if they don't do it, who the hell's going to do it, right? And and there's a lot of other ways to approach the aspects of reality at the higher abstraction layers. Not even higher, but at different abstraction layers, motivational structures, whatever you want to get into. Uh, but nobody's really picking up the mantle of the material basis of these of these phenomena, these basic basic phenomena. Like I'm stuck to the floor right now. That's freaking insane. And we don't have a material approach to that whatsoever. It seems like a very material process. Like my materials are stuck to the floor, right? This isn't, you know, this this this isn't something this isn't like I'm thinking differently and all of a sudden I'm sticking to the floor. Like no, no, no. It's like, well, even if I die right now, I'm still going to stick to the floor, right? There's this is not a conscious decision. This is there's nothing to think about here. It's like, we need a material approach to that question. >> It's funny the way you said that. It reminded me, have you ever listened to those videos of 911 calls from people that have taken like a whole pan of pot brownies? >> I've heard stories from like real surgeons or doctors. >> The way you said that, I am stuck to the floor right now. It just gave me that feeling, that vibe. Yeah, it's actually like a huge burden on the poor. It's like half the emergency room visits these days now that weed's legal and stuff, too. They're just selling like nuclear uh strength THC gummy bears to everybody and stuff. >> Yeah. Okay. So, uh I want to I I want to hit one more idea if you guys have the time. >> Let's go. >> We're all right. All right. And it So, um it's a it's selfish because I already asked for help before and I need further help. And it's this idea that comes up unexpectedly before I started reading the book and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I got to talk to these guys about it. They they got to help me out." And it's this idea of continuity versus discreetness. And uh let me Okay. Well, let me find one more quote. You say, "It is worth noting that although the shape change of an electron shell is a discrete event, the charging process by which the shell accelerates is continuous." As you will see time and again in this book, the emergence of the quantized from the continuous is at the core of our approach to all quantum phenomena. And I this was one of those lines where I read and I despared because I'm like, okay, if I had to try to encapsulate the radical heterox perspective I'm taking with math and physics, it's literally the exact opposite of that. The exact opposite, which is the continuous arises from the discrete. So I want to hear So this is I can't wait to have this conversation. So what do you mean by that quote? What do you mean by continuity generally speaking? >> I mean can I open this up and say that I I can I can see both being true which is annoying. Um but in the context of this statement and really this book um we're when we say quant we're actually referring to a an actual uh symbol which is a word that means something to these uh relational theories these mathematical relations there is a quanta right so we're unpacking what that quanta is at every stage whether it's charge whether it is uh the quantum of action in in the plankian relationships. Um those are what we're referring to as emerging as from the result uh of continuous phenomena that are being assayed at discrete locations under discrete or let's say under consistent energetic measurement conditions and we're building it out that at the same time I can see that of course these processes are built out from the actions of discrete subunits at the same time those discrete subunits like the fiber we've been talking about are not what the physicists mean when they say quanta. The photon is not a discrete subunit. The electron is not a discrete subunit. And so the fact that they're observed in these discrete packets of observation is the matter that we're chasing down in this book. What why why do why do we how did they get to be treated as if they were discrete material bodies? >> Okay. So, so for clarification, what is meant in that view by continuous? >> Okay. Well, there's not uh let me see if I can present this in the easiest way possible. And I would I would look at something like light. So, the easiest way to think about light is the light that is produced by a single atom. So if you you probably did this experiment in chemistry at some point where you would have various kinds of salts on a little metal stick and you would put them into a Bunson burner and then you would look through this diffraction grading and what you would see is you would see these discrete lines of color and these discrete lines of color represent the atomic spectra. They are a very very narrow wavelength. They're they they are specific sometimes, you know, less than a nanometer in width, a kind of color of light that these atoms will make when they're heated under a flame. If you heat them with a much hotter flame, you get different colors of light. There's they each individual atom produces a vast quantity of these lines. Some of them fall into the visual spectrum. Okay, >> those lines represent discrete actions of the atom. So when we talk about this in terms of the language used by quantum physicists today, what we have is we have that the electron of the atom, this little like zerodimensional point particle gets excited to a higher orbital state. That higher orbital state then is a temporary condition of the electron and as it falls back down that stepwise transition corres the amount of energy lost in that stepwise transition corresponds always to the amount of energy that is released in the form of this light. It is a discrete step-wise process. It is a quantum of I they don't use quantum of action in this term but I think that you can call it that. Well, they did. Clunk got all of this from uh he got all of this from black body work. >> The black bodies have a light spectrum. So, it is light, but it's Sorry, I'm getting in the weeds. So, let's >> Can I try to rephrase just in different language and see if you agree with the way Okay. Um so the the quant is a unit that is measured in a particular uh physical environment or experiment. So it so nature itself comes back to us with uh integer-based information >> basically and the way that we discovered all of this is through light through atomic light specifically. And so like when we talked about at the beginning the like the wave function equations and you know why are we so sure that these wave functions are correct or whatever. Well, like a big part of the reason that we think that the wave functions are correct is because the mathematics of their excitation states, these quantized levels to which you can push them, recapitulates the atomic light that the hydrogen can produce. And so you can get the wavelength of light be by looking at the difference in the energy states of this the the various uh ex excitatory states of the wave function and you can say okay this transition should produce light of this energy. If we transform the light of this energy using plank's constant which he got from this black body stuff to a frequency then we get this wavelength of light and by gum what do you know we actually do see that we have solved one of the grand mysteries of the universe. We have taken this equation for the state of the electron shell of the atom and we have accurately translated it. We have predicted the kind of light that it will produce on the basis of its excitation states. And these excitation states are discreet. You do not get a smear of light of many different colors. You get one color of light at a time. That's crazy. >> Tiny little question there. When you say we don't get a smear of colors, >> is this accepted that it's within certain parameters of precision? it's within the margin of error, we don't get particular colors. So, >> so um >> wouldn't that be like experiment dependent based on how you're measuring it? >> So, the when I say you don't get a smear of colors, which is I'm saying that like each visible >> when an isolated species, an atom, an element >> if you have an atom by itself, when I say that you don't get a smear of colors, what I'm saying is that the wavelength of the light is maybe like two or three ten of a nanometer wide. So it's like it's that narrow of a bandwidth. So you do like there's definitely like a a a frequency range that it occupies but it is a discrete frequency range. It is a very very tight resonance >> and importantly it corresponds to the electron quantization itself. I I actually think we jumped way too far ahead here getting into light because you h we're already talking about electrons which we haven't defined yet. The electrons do seem to occur at these quantized states, right? You don't have half an electron. You you're always transitioning between two states, two electron either you're adding an electron or subtracting an electron from an accounting perspective. >> Those correspond to structural changes in the surface architecture of the atom. And so it's no surprise that when you transform between two structural states of the atom that you would have a corresponding quantization of deformation energy that's dumped into its wider network. So it's really really important to point out that you can't get light by going between two energy states that don't result in the shape change of the atom. You have to change the shape of the atom to get light out of it at the end of the day. So are you saying that the shape change of the atom is continuous? And what that means is that it is at least operating at a higher resolution, a much higher frame rate than the emissions of the energy. >> Well, I think that's a fair way of looking at it, but I I would maybe just make sure that I'm completely clear here. The structures that the atom take on are stable structures. Actually, most structures that persist in reality have some stability to them. What what we're changing when we go between these charge states is the amount of motion in that fiber system that constitutes the atom. As you add more and more motion to it, it it cannot dissipate that motion properly through its circulatory system. And it actually has to it has to break open essentially at some point. It's like any system. When you push it too hard, crazy stuff's going to happen. >> In this case, in this harmonic system, which is we we model it as a circulatory system of this fiber, when you drive that fiber into higher and higher states, it needs to explore more and more territory as it bottlenecks going through its central pinch point. And so it kind of explodes harmonically into a new stable pattern. And so you have the appearance of well it's almost like it's almost like there's these discrete steps and it's like yeah because it's restructuring into a new accommodation right >> and it's the and it's the restructuring that is the thing that is releasing the the energy >> or and vice versa right so if you wanted to drive current into a system you're going to have to change the atom exactly yeah so to measure it in one way or another you're only seeing those structural uh rearrangements of the atoms, whether it's through light or electricity, you're always seeing some sort of discrete jump in the structure essentially, which is where your evidence comes from. Crude analogy. We're talking about a balloon, and when you squeeze the balloon, it deforms. And if you squeeze it too much or too fast, it pops. The squeezing of the balloon is the shape change, the continuous shape change, and the popping is the discrete event. >> Yeah, it's kind of like that. It's more like uh one of those like Tilta World uh amusement park rides where like you get on it and you just sit in these little baskets but then as it spins really fast you add motion to the system they kind of expand and fly outward. >> Yeah. And at some point that happens >> at some point the thing is >> a slow Yeah. Yeah. >> Right. So you know obviously with the tilt well if you fire it up to you know a thousand RPMs you're just going to like rip the little baskets off of it. But in the case of the atom, instead of the atom ripping apart, it accommodates that new motion by supplying additional path length. So when you contort a surface, you actually create surface area so that your fiber can actually the same amount of fiber can now explore more territory which adds speed to it. Right? So you're actually accommodating the additional motion in a new stable structure with the same amount of material with new motion added to it. I think there's an analogy here also, right, with I don't talking way out of my league, but isn't this sort of why brains fold that that that you're able to get more surface area. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And this just by just through the geometry, you get sort of more magic out of the same amount of space when you allow these folded deformationations. >> Yeah, dude. Surface area to volume is at the root of so much science. It's unbelievable. That's why I kind of brought it up with the circle earlier. But I mean bubbles uh even living beings like why are we the size that we are? It it comes down to being this really perfect balance between exchanging heat with the environment and creating heat internally, right? It's this negotiation. Um I think Galileo wrote a lot about this uh the square cube law, but um yeah, you're you're always trying to negotiate surface area. Surfaces are costly, but they can also be really dissipative also if you're trying to exchange with your environment. Um, so yeah, you have to find interesting ways to fold up if you need to accommodate more surface. >> And the um the example that we actually use in the book is the Cloudney plate, which you've probably seen videos of this where you have like a speaker cone that has a plate on it and you sprinkle it with sand and then you turn on the speaker to play a pure tone. And as you increase the frequency, eventually you get to the first harmonic of the system and you get like a very simple harmonic pattern where there's places on the plate that aren't moving and the sand gathers there. And then you can keep driving the frequency. And what happens is that you get this like chaotic intergnum and then all of a sudden when you heat when you hit the next frequency of the system, you get a new shape that emerges. And so the shapes on the plate are the quantized phenomena because there's only there's a shape at a relatively narrow band of frequency, but the the system still is absorbing energy from the speaker as you increase the drive frequency of it. >> Okay. So help me. So that's super clarifying. So help me um undercut my my criticism here because what I want to say is at the fundamental level continuity is a problem and discreetness underlies continuity and it sounds like what you guys are saying is well that's not really maybe maybe not but it sounds like you're saying there is a continuous process regardless of what is underneath that continuous process there is a continuous process of let's say shape deformation and out of that continuity you get discrete events that are happening. >> Yeah, I would say it would just be the excitation. The motion of the circulation of the fiber through the atom is what is continuous. You can add more and more motion to it, but at some point it's going to explode into a new shape because it cannot accommodate the drive that you're pressuring onto the system, right? You're literally pushing those fibers to go faster and faster and faster and they're going to bottleneck at the nucleus. Right? >> So, so I'm sorry, working through basic concepts here. So you're you're using continuity and this might be a wrong way of understanding, but it sounds like you're using continuity as like or or maybe I should say you're using discreetness as as like a break from a uh an underlying smooth pattern or something. >> Yeah. And that's that's kind of what I think is meant by quanta in physics as well, >> right? So we're trying to describe what it is this quant stuff that everybody's pointing at and we're like oh it's just a discrete rearrangement of the surface of these atoms which is has an underlying continuous process to it. With regard to your original statement though I'd absolutely agree that the physical bodies are discreet for sure. uh but their motions, you know, the amount of motion that's added into a system of physical bodies will inevitably drive it into new confirmations. Whether it's the Claudney plate or the atom, you're actually going to create new superructures depending on how much motion that system can accommodate in its present superructure. >> And and the transition to those new structures is not a a slow process. >> It's a >> it snaps, I think. Yeah. I mean but even if it's it yeah it's uh it's all we have for measurement is what what's most important here right so if we see an electron if we see a photon what we have seen actually is the atom changing shape okay so that makes a ton of sense I love it does deflate my fight though right because I'm like no continuity doesn't make any sense you're like yeah that's not what we're talking about So, I I'm trying to think, well, gee, can I can I find a way to push back on that because that just feel like that totally sidesteps all of my passionate objections here. I think I think that's a pretty good explanation. >> I just I think that these there's a way that philosophy fits onto the physics where it really just depends the scale at which you're operating. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, it means different. I mean, frankly, the word discreet and continuous means completely different things in these two two contexts. I'm not actually talking about the thing you guys are talking about when you use continuity. And this might be relevant maybe in purer math because then you can get down to the logical you know the the fundamental logical level held as an abstraction in one's mind that is you know independent of what's going on with the physical world. But it seems like uh yeah maybe that's where my objection is is that is at that layer and not not at the level you guys are talking about. I mean the thing is we got this this like broke our brain for many years because all that we're all the things that we're saying here are written in the canonical textbooks already at least they're encoded by the mathematics. But for us we're looking at these continuous wave models and we're asking ourselves what the like first of all what is waving right and what what kind of wave is it doing? It doesn't seem like a water wave. these wave functions, they have phase. Uh there's something going on here. And it wasn't until almost the last minute of this project that we really came to understand what was waving when it came to the electron surface of the atom. And it was a circulatory process, right? It was the only thing that fit the bill for every single piece of this quantum puzzle that we looked at. We're talking because remember a wave is just a periodic phenomenon, right? So that point making its way through the atom back to its original point is the only thing that made everything crisp pop into focus for us with respect to this and understand why driving the thing would result in the expansion of the surface area would actually produce the new structures that we see. It's actually a physical mechanism for why that happens and and it it really just escaped us for the longest time. We knew there was some resonant thing. We knew the shape change was important. We knew the electron had something to do with the outer surface of the atom, but in ter in terms of learning to think about a wave as a circulation as opposed to a water wave or something that people are used to, that was a really really difficult leap for us to make and and everything kind of snapped together at that point. One of the cool things that pops out of this that uh you know as a as a non-physicist I thought oh well that that makes sense is um you guys talk about the inverse square law and I thought you had a really neat way of describing why that's a thing. So one could if one had the view that the inverse square law is sort of a like a I don't know an equation that governs phenomena and like the reason there is the inverse square law is because there's some like downward causality in that case that's a very different picture than what you guys are p explaining that the reason we see the inverse square law come up naturally is because as a as a sphere expands. Uh, and if there are little filaments that a finite number of filaments that are attached to the sphere, then the the relative amount of those filaments necessarily intrinsically decreases as you go farther out in the sphere. It's not a law per se. It just pops out of the geometry. >> Yeah. Uh, I mean, we didn't even get to the filaments yet, but we we we have good reason to believe that, and this isn't controversial, but there's there's good reason to believe that the atom isn't simply the nice little bubble shell thing that you see in your chemistry books. Um, and it's been described as a cloud and so forth in the past. Um, which isn't too far off. Uh, but we had problems with using a cloud to model the tensile processes that seem to underpin attraction in particular. Um whereas if you have a tensile structure, it can do the same job of extending the surface of the atom in a sort of uh rarified fashion uh without actually um while being able to still m you know do tensile action which is what pole is. I think people are familiar with the pole of gravity and so yeah the statics of this tensile network help us to understand gravitational inertial processes but that's a hu we'd have to really build that argument out. It's a huge ask, but we kind of wish we'd written a paragraph into the book where we said, "Listen, before we get into these filament things, we know this is going to sound batshit insane. However, if you can hold on to your hat for a few minutes, we promise you that it's going to simplify the hell out of a ton of other paradoxical things that we've all become accustomed to." >> Yeah. And so, you know, it's a it is a big ask, but at the same time, we think that it ultimately consolidates contradictions. Um, it's it's not a perfect uh it's not the end of the story for sure, but it moves us closer in the right direction. >> Yes. And I only Oh, sorry. >> Oh, I was just going to say the inverse square law is one of those things that just falls out of it. And there's several other things like that. >> Yes. And I I just uh I wanted to bring that up. We don't have to go into the details of the of the of the filaments, but it's another example of where deep investigation into geometry, I would say the logic of geometry gives us physical intuitions. So when you're talking about how the shape of the atom deforms, deformation is a geometric thing and yet it explain it comes with an intuitive explanation for why things are the way they are. Just like the inverse square law seems magical and mysterious if it's just abstract. But if you ge if you geometize it or whatever uh then it it makes it makes intuitive sense. >> You have to have visual models. You have to have visual models because in the absence of them, it remains a deep abstraction that you're stuck accepting simply because the math says that it must be so. And so I think that this is the place where the geometry and the visualization and the material worlds that we're trying to describe all meet because the explanation has to fit all of those. And you got like one thing is really fascinating if people get into prior or something like that, you start to find that the structures that we see repeating themselves in nature are really just the easiest outcome of the dissipation of the motions that are inherent in the system. Like it's just nature's lazy like a lot of these structures are just they just happen. I mean almost everything, right? And I'm not I mean we can get into biology and psychology and all that. we get into weird realm. But when we're talking about like inanimate matter organizing into structured relationships, it's all just downhill lazy stuff at the end of the day. >> I love that. Well, that also gives me some justification for being lazy. I feel like look, I'm expressing a natural principle of the world. >> Beings are not part of this uh excuse. Sorry, >> we are the exception. >> Um, okay. So, I do want to close the door though. just I I just thought of a way to close the door on the continuous versus discrete thing. In the way that you're using that term, does it incorporate the concept of infinity at all? >> Well, infinities tend to be places where theories break down. like these are places where you have an equation and it basically tells you that you have left the linear domain where your predictions are very accurate and so this was uh always a thing. So in in biological laboratories you do a lot of western blotss which is basically where you have to you you isolate the proteins from your sample you attach some kind of light producing protein to them and then you add a photographic plate and you basically identify what's present in your blood. And the thing is is that if you leave the linear domain of exposure, you can no longer accurately quantify what's actually happening inside of your system. You've basically veered off into a realm where you're like, I know that something is there. I know that it's it it's present versus not present, but I cannot tell you anything specifically about what has the dynamics of it because we have veered into the territory where it is just functionally infinitely black. And so I think that we do our best to avoid infinities at all cost because it seems like that's the place where you lose your ability to do any kind of fine grain manipulation of your understanding because you're just like we've we've gone too far. We have to turn back. We need a new theory. We need some kind of that we have it is a signal that you have entered a new domain that requires some kind of new equation that allows you to actually differentiate what's happening there because by virtue of including you know infinity on any graph what you've done is you functionally erased your ability to look at everything that precedes it. And so that is telling you about the informationational domains in which you have to operate because what you're curious about is not necessarly the infinity even though the infinity is a sign that you have to come up with something new like the ultraviolet catastrophe is a really famous infinity at the foundation of quantum physics. So they had these equations that were able to tell them roughly speaking the relationship between the intensity of the light frequencies that a heated body produced and the temperature of the body. This is like at the heart of quantum mechanics. This is where like plank did all of his work. And before plunk, there were these equations that predicted that as you heated a piece of matter more and more, the amount of ultraviolet energy that it would produce went to infinity. And very correctly, everybody at the time was like, well, that's crazy. That's not real. We know that you don't get infinite quantities of ultraviolet energy from heating a piece of coal. And so they had to go and they had to figure out well okay well why do our mathematical predictions that work at the low frequencies fall apart so badly at the high frequencies. They had to figure out the the mechanics of the equations that would actually give them an accurate prediction. They never quite like figured out why the distribution looked the way that it did because it's not an infinite distribution. It's kind of this like weird like offnormal distribution that's like truncated in the high frequencies and extended in the low frequencies. It's got a weird shape, but the recognition of the absurdity of infinities used to be central to physics. And I think that in the last 100 years or so, probably since the ultraviolet catastrophe, we have stopped paying attention to the fact that that is a sign that you need a new paradigm in order to be able to understand the thing that you're predicting. >> I think this goes very deep. And in my reconstruction of history, what I'm calling the dark age of the last century or so, I think it is connected to infinity. And I'm going to suggest that that the that uh the reason that models incorporating actual infinities in physics don't make sense is because they're broken at the logical and conceptual level. And and this is a I love to make this claim another time. This is sort of my pet subject for for many years. But I think what you also saw about a little bit more than a century ago is the incorporation of actualized infinities into the foundations of mathematics specifically. So there used to be a tradition where we one would shy away from this idea of of infinite totality. The idea of an infinity was understood as a potential infinity, never an actualized infinity. and and and this changed when there was a I I don't know if you guys have looked at the the mathematical crisis that happened around the 20th turn of the 20th century. Okay. The foundations were ma of math were undermined around the turn of the 20th century and it's it has something to do with the development of non-ucuklitian geometries because people had previously thought that underlying mathematical truth was geometric truth and then when we got non-ucuklitian geometry we said okay what's the foundations of math if it's not geometry what's the foundations and there were different competing schools of thought trying to refound math on stable foundations I think all of all of those schools of thought wound up failing. There was kind of a truce that emerged which is like don't worry about it like just if the math works just you know shut up and calculate except in math not in physics. But anyway, one of the the the the way that mathematicians themselves are trying to aximatically build up their structures of knowledge is based on a set theory that was developed in the late 19th century that incorporates infinite sets for the first time in mathematical history as totalized objects. And this was derided even by a lot of contemporary of his contemporary mathematicians. And yet it found its way into the heart. In fact, it found its way into an axiom of Zermal Frankle set theory which is the axiom of infinity which says at least one infinite set exists validating the this concept of the infinite set. And so the the story I want to tell is well there there's a huge problem and it has implications with for physics and I wonder if the reason that people have gotten lazy in physics with regards to infinities is because well the math you know that we have math for it assuming that the math actually checks out and maybe it doesn't. >> Absolutely. There's a really fun story to talk about with respect to astrophysics. If you want to get into infinities sometimes, we have a we have another barn burner of a topic that we can get into uh which takes us on a ride from the sun to black holes and uh how these infinities have been uh perhaps they're pointing at a much more mundane solution to the problems than what has become popular. But I do think that that's a really profound frame because you know we one of the motivations that we had for writing paradox lost is that we were trying to figure out where people had given up on searching for material explanations. And when we set out, we were kind of like, I don't know, it's probably like bigen morally, the death of the luminiferous ether. And then, you know, through our investigations, we discovered that this is like a much older, much more complicated story. And even when we were done with it, I was still stuck with this question of like, well, I can understand why they moved away from material explanations. And Michaelelsson Worley was kind of like a bit player in the entire arc where they were like, you know, the luminiferous ether isn't there. We have this different realm that we can explore. We have a new mathematics that allows us to encounter it. Great, perfect. Let's move on with our lives. But the idea that there was some kind of philosophical transformation in the way that math was applied and formulated fits really neatly into the eventual catastrophe of the like full mathematization of physics that we have not explored. And so it'd be interesting to to talk more about that for sure. love to talk more about that on a a later time because that is that's my conclusion that I'm really excited to share with people after a many many years of investigation. You guys uh noticed that on in the intellectual hierarchy physicists seem to be occupying the top spot and and if they're wrong about things that has downstream consequences I want to say I think it's mathematicians occupying the top spot and they made errors in the 19th century with regards to infinity and then that had downstream consequences on the physics which then further had further uh consequences and what's fascinating is in the course of the 20th century in multiple domains you have the takeover of mathematization. So in economics you actually have the one could make a very compelling argument that 20th century economics has become heavily mathematized not to its credit. There are schools of thought that make this argument I think very compelling. So in my um who I'm throwing stones at and pointing fingers and saying you guys are the problem. It's the mathematicians specifically with this infinitary concept. >> I love that. >> Yeah, that would make a lot of sense. I I think that our investigations would support that, too. >> Yeah, definitely. >> All right, guys. Well, yeah. So, go ahead. >> I was just going to say I think we have a lot left to talk about. >> I We certainly do. Um this has just been absolutely delightful. Thank you so much uh for for taking the time. We've gone several hours over. So, you've been extremely generous and uh and what a pleasure, guys. >> No, these are all really interesting questions. you're you're helping us learn how to understand our own ideas and uh so there's more to talk about >> and uh for individuals who want to learn more about you guys and your show and your book, where can they go? >> Demystify SAI everywhere. And uh yeah, we have books on pre-sale now. They're going to go public at the end of the summer. Um but we're selling them at a discount right now to you. And then yeah, we got a podcast. We talk to really interesting people and uh try to we do some live streams now about the book, too. We're doing those every Saturday morning if you're around 10:00 a.m. Pacific. We're on YouTube talking about the book and working through different problems. So, >> but you can find us basically everywhere. All of our links are on demystify.com for Paradox Lost, the book that we wrote. Par we do a show called Paradigm Drift, which your listeners might be interested in, where it's a game show. Everybody has 60 seconds to present a theory if they get pulled out of the hat and then we do a little interview with them. And so there's a link for that too at demystify.com. >> Love that idea. And uh and just so people know I I patronized two uh producers on on Patreon. Well, generally one of them is a guy named Norman Wildberger who's a mathematician. I don't know if you have are aware of him. He you guys would love uh Norman. And the other is you guys. I think you spectacular work. No kidding. >> Hopefully uh hopefully the audience will also uh uh take a look cuz I think you're doing something really important. >> Heck yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, we we couldn't do this without our patrons. We don't have ads or sponsors and we're not planning on it. So yeah, it's it's really an incredible time on earth for people who want to make stuff and be connected to the people who want to support them in doing that. It's pretty amazing. So thank you. >> Thank you, Steve. >> Thanks, guys.