The Big Picture (Sean Carroll)

[GrandizerII]

I recently bought the book "The Big Picture" by physicist Sean Carroll, and have read the first couple chapters thus far. It's a good start so far (nothing really exciting yet), but I really do like the core of Sean's thinking when it comes to the nature of this reality, which is that there are multiple levels of having a discussion about this one reality. This mindset is labeled by Sean as "poetic naturalism".

The way I see it is like this (not necessarily in full harmony with what Sean says as I haven't read the whole book yet):

At one level of discussing this reality, it is appropriate to speak of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. At another level, it is not appropriate, especially if we're discussing how days and nights on Earth occur. At an even deeper level, it's not even appropriate to talk about causes and effects when discussing the fundamental nature of reality, but we can (and should) discuss causality when analyzing reality at levels that are less deep. This is why you may have noticed that biologists, when talking about biological evolution, are describing the world at a higher (less deep) level than physicists talking about the fundamental nature of time (where, at that deep level, biological evolution is not really a thing anymore).

It's sort of like when you're zooming in on something with your mobile phone camera (say, a mountaintop far back in the horizon) and you see such fine details there that you can't see when you zoom back out to the max. It's not the best analogy, but it gives a sort of idea of what reality is possibly like. When zoomed in (in terms of analysis level), we can observe change all around us, but go zoom out "all the way", and you realize change is (or may be) just an illusion.

Fun read thus far. I'll be reading the next couple chapters soon after this post.

Anyone else read/reading this book? And if so, tell me what you think. Feel free to spoil, lol.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I haven't read it (hadn't even heard of it prior to your post), but I read an essay by Carroll a year or so ago in which he pretty persuasively argued that, in terms of human awareness and experience, there is no such thing as 'the present'.  It has to do with the fact that neural impulses in the human body are not instantaneous, so that every thing we think, feel or experience has happened before we think, feel or experience it.

Carroll struck me at the time as an unusually adept thinker and explainer for those of us who can't shake the notion that an electron is something about the size and shape of a small pea.  I think I'll get his book.  Thanks for mentioning it.

Boru

[LadyForCamus]

I recently bought the book "The Big Picture" by physicist Sean Carroll, and have read the first couple chapters thus far. It's a good start so far (nothing really exciting yet), but I really do like the core of Sean's thinking when it comes to the nature of this reality, which is that there are multiple levels of having a discussion about this one reality. This mindset is labeled by Sean as "poetic naturalism".

The way I see it is like this (not necessarily in full harmony with what Sean says as I haven't read the whole book yet):

At one level of discussing this reality, it is appropriate to speak of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. At another level, it is not appropriate, especially if we're discussing how days and nights on Earth occur. At an even deeper level, it's not even appropriate to talk about causes and effects when discussing the fundamental nature of reality, but we can (and should) discuss causality when analyzing reality at levels that are less deep. This is why you may have noticed that biologists, when talking about biological evolution, are describing the world at a higher (less deep) level than physicists talking about the fundamental nature of time (where, at that deep level, biological evolution is not really a thing anymore).

It's sort of like when you're zooming in on something with your mobile phone camera (say, a mountaintop far back in the horizon) and you see such fine details there that you can't see when you zoom back out to the max. It's not the best analogy, but it gives a sort of idea of what reality is possibly like. When zoomed in (in terms of analysis level), we can observe change all around us, but go zoom out "all the way", and you realize change is (or may be) just an illusion.

Fun read thus far. I'll be reading the next couple chapters soon after this post.

Anyone else read/reading this book? And if so, tell me what you think. Feel free to spoil, lol.

Sounds like a very interesting read, but how smart do you have to be to understand it?  I’d love to take a crack at it but I’m no physicist.  Is it written so that an average shmuck like me could grasp it?  I gave ‘A Universe from Nothing’ everything I had, and I’m pretty sure I had smoke coming out of my ears, lol.

[GrandizerII]

I recently bought the book "The Big Picture" by physicist Sean Carroll, and have read the first couple chapters thus far. It's a good start so far (nothing really exciting yet), but I really do like the core of Sean's thinking when it comes to the nature of this reality, which is that there are multiple levels of having a discussion about this one reality. This mindset is labeled by Sean as "poetic naturalism".

The way I see it is like this (not necessarily in full harmony with what Sean says as I haven't read the whole book yet):

At one level of discussing this reality, it is appropriate to speak of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. At another level, it is not appropriate, especially if we're discussing how days and nights on Earth occur. At an even deeper level, it's not even appropriate to talk about causes and effects when discussing the fundamental nature of reality, but we can (and should) discuss causality when analyzing reality at levels that are less deep. This is why you may have noticed that biologists, when talking about biological evolution, are describing the world at a higher (less deep) level than physicists talking about the fundamental nature of time (where, at that deep level, biological evolution is not really a thing anymore).

It's sort of like when you're zooming in on something with your mobile phone camera (say, a mountaintop far back in the horizon) and you see such fine details there that you can't see when you zoom back out to the max. It's not the best analogy, but it gives a sort of idea of what reality is possibly like. When zoomed in (in terms of analysis level), we can observe change all around us, but go zoom out "all the way", and you realize change is (or may be) just an illusion.

Fun read thus far. I'll be reading the next couple chapters soon after this post.

Anyone else read/reading this book? And if so, tell me what you think. Feel free to spoil, lol.

Sounds like a very interesting read, but how smart do you have to be to understand it?  I’d love to take a crack at it but I’m no physicist.  Is it written so that an average shmuck like me could grasp it?  I gave ‘A Universe from Nothing’ everything I had, and I’m pretty sure I had smoke coming out of my ears, lol.

Let's just say you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand what he's saying in this book. In fact, this book is meant for laypeople like us, not for the really smart who already know most of the advanced stuff to do with cosmology and metaphysics and all that. But it does seem like some basic understanding of physics is suggested (velocity, momentum, and stuff like that), but it's not a big deal anyhow.

[LadyForCamus]

Sounds like a very interesting read, but how smart do you have to be to understand it?  I’d love to take a crack at it but I’m no physicist.  Is it written so that an average shmuck like me could grasp it?  I gave ‘A Universe from Nothing’ everything I had, and I’m pretty sure I had smoke coming out of my ears, lol.

Let's just say you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand what he's saying in this book. In fact, this book is meant for laypeople like us, not for the really smart who already know most of the advanced stuff to do with cosmology and metaphysics and all that. But it does seem like some basic understanding of physics is suggested (velocity, momentum, and stuff like that), but it's not a big deal anyhow.

Awesome.  That sounds totally manageable.  I’ll definitely check it out.  Thanks for the recommendation!

[GrandizerII]

I'm currently reading the chapter on time's arrow, and what a light-bulb-popping chapter it is. So I have to share what I have just read. Apparently, Sean Carroll suggests (and I have been agreeing on this for quite some time even before reading this) that just as it is possible for an unbroken egg to become broken and scrambled as we move forward in time, it is possible for the reverse process to occur! There is nothing about the physical laws being violated when we think of a broken egg becoming unbroken just purely by physical processes, but it just so happens to be an extraordinarily unlikely event to occur as to be virtually impossible in the time stream that we see ourselves in.

Now of course, Sean Carroll will next link this properly to entropy, so now I'm going to see what he has to say next in the next subsection of the chapter.

Later.