200 | Solo: The Philosophy of the Multiverse
06/06/22 • 134 min
2 Listeners
The 200th episode of Mindscape! Thanks to everyone for sticking around for this long. To celebrate, a solo episode discussing a set of issues naturally arising at the intersection of philosophy and physics: how to think about probabilities and expectations in a multiverse. Here I am more about explaining the issues than offering correct answers, although I try to do a bit of that as well.
Support Mindscape on Patreon.
References:
- Guth, “Inflation and Eternal Inflation“
- Weinberg, “Living In the Multiverse“
- Susskind, “The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory“
- Carroll, Johnson, and Randall, “Dynamical Compactification from De Sitter Space“
- Sebens and Carroll, “Self-Locating Uncertainty and the Origin of Probability in Everettian Quantum Mechanics“
- Wald, “Asymptotic behavior of homogeneous cosmological models in the presence of a positive cosmological constant“
- Gibbons and Hawking, “Cosmological Event Horizons, Thermodynamics, and Particle Creation“
- Carroll and Chatwin-Davies, “Cosmic Equilibration: A Holographic No-Hair Theorem from the Generalized Second Law“
- Dyson, Kleban, and Susskind, “Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant“
- Albrecht and Sorbo, “Can the Universe Afford Inflation?“
- Boddy, Carroll, and Pollack, “De Sitter Space Without Dynamical Quantum Fluctuations“
- Carroll, “Why Boltzmann Brains Are Bad“
- Aguirre, Carroll, and Johnson, “Out of Equilibrium: Understanding Cosmological Evolution to Lower-Entropy States“
- Carroll, “Beyond Falsifiabiliy: Normal Science in a Multiverse“
- Carter and McCrea, “The Anthropic Principle and its Implications for Biological Evolution“
- Leslie, “Doomsday Revisited“
- Gott, “Implications of the Copernican Principle for Our Future Prospects“
- Bostrom, Anthropic Bias
- Vilenkin, “The Principle of Mediocrity“
- Olum, “Conflict Between Anthropic Reasoning and Observation“
- Elga, “Self-Locating Belief and the Sleeping Beauty Problem“
- Lewis, “Sleeping Beauty: Reply to Elga“
- Hartle and Srednicki, “Are We Typical?“
- Hartle and Srednicki, “Science in a Very Large Universe“
- Neal, “Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Fully Non-Indexical Conditioning“
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The 200th episode of Mindscape! Thanks to everyone for sticking around for this long. To celebrate, a solo episode discussing a set of issues naturally arising at the intersection of philosophy and physics: how to think about probabilities and expectations in a multiverse. Here I am more about explaining the issues than offering correct answers, although I try to do a bit of that as well.
Support Mindscape on Patreon.
References:
- Guth, “Inflation and Eternal Inflation“
- Weinberg, “Living In the Multiverse“
- Susskind, “The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory“
- Carroll, Johnson, and Randall, “Dynamical Compactification from De Sitter Space“
- Sebens and Carroll, “Self-Locating Uncertainty and the Origin of Probability in Everettian Quantum Mechanics“
- Wald, “Asymptotic behavior of homogeneous cosmological models in the presence of a positive cosmological constant“
- Gibbons and Hawking, “Cosmological Event Horizons, Thermodynamics, and Particle Creation“
- Carroll and Chatwin-Davies, “Cosmic Equilibration: A Holographic No-Hair Theorem from the Generalized Second Law“
- Dyson, Kleban, and Susskind, “Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant“
- Albrecht and Sorbo, “Can the Universe Afford Inflation?“
- Boddy, Carroll, and Pollack, “De Sitter Space Without Dynamical Quantum Fluctuations“
- Carroll, “Why Boltzmann Brains Are Bad“
- Aguirre, Carroll, and Johnson, “Out of Equilibrium: Understanding Cosmological Evolution to Lower-Entropy States“
- Carroll, “Beyond Falsifiabiliy: Normal Science in a Multiverse“
- Carter and McCrea, “The Anthropic Principle and its Implications for Biological Evolution“
- Leslie, “Doomsday Revisited“
- Gott, “Implications of the Copernican Principle for Our Future Prospects“
- Bostrom, Anthropic Bias
- Vilenkin, “The Principle of Mediocrity“
- Olum, “Conflict Between Anthropic Reasoning and Observation“
- Elga, “Self-Locating Belief and the Sleeping Beauty Problem“
- Lewis, “Sleeping Beauty: Reply to Elga“
- Hartle and Srednicki, “Are We Typical?“
- Hartle and Srednicki, “Science in a Very Large Universe“
- Neal, “Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Fully Non-Indexical Conditioning“
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice ...
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199 | Elizabeth Cohen on Time and Other Political Values
Time is everywhere, pervading each aspect of intellectual inquiry — from physics to philosophy to biology to psychology, and all the way up to politics. Considerations of time help govern a nation’s self-conception, decide who gets to vote and enjoy other privileges, and put limits on the time spent in office. Not to mention the role of time as a precious commodity, one that is used up every time we stand in line or fill out a collection of forms. Elizabeth Cohen shines a light on the role of time in politics and citizenship, a topic that has been neglected by much political theorizing.
Support Mindscape on Patreon.
Elizabeth Cohen received her Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. She is currently a professor of political science at Syracuse, and in March 2023 will move to Boston University to become the Maxwell Professor of United States Citizenship in the Department of Political Science. Among her awards are the Moynihan Award for Outstanding Research and Teaching at Syracuse and the Best Book award from the American Political Science section on Migration and Citizenship, for The Political Value of Time.
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AMA | June 2022
Welcome to the June 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! We are inaugurating a slightly different publication schedule, in which these monthly AMA will take the place of one of the regular Monday episodes, rather than being in addition to all of them. A slight tweak that will hopefully make my obligations a little more manageable.
These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable size — based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good — and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!
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