Fallible Animals Episode 10: Interview with Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder

Fallible Animals Episode 10: Interview with Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder

Author: Logan Chipkin November 30, 2019 Duration: 46:10

I interview physicist and science writer Sabine Hossenfelder. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group and researches quantum gravity. We discuss ideas from her book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, such as the role of philosophical ideas of beauty, naturalness, and elegance in fundamental physics and the sociological factors that affect scientific research. We also discuss often misunderstood ideas in fundamental physics, such as the difference between a Grand Unified Theory and a Theory of Everything, and the difference between time-invariance and time reversibility. 

Dr. Hossenfelder's Twitter - @skdh

Dr. Hossenfelder's book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray - https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray-ebook/dp/B0763L6YR7

Dr. Hossenfelder's website - http://sabinehossenfelder.com

Dr. Hossendelder's blog - http://backreaction.blogspot.com

My appearance on Christofer Lovgren's podcast, Do Explain - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/5-big-three-case-against-government-logan-chipkin/id1482313214?i=1000457352171

My recent article with Areo Magazine, People and the Cosmos: Constructor Theory - https://areomagazine.com/2019/11/25/people-and-the-cosmos-constructor-theory/

Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/Fallibleanimals

Twitter - https://twitter.com/ChipkinLogan

Articles - www.loganchipkin.com



Hosted by Logan Chipkin, Fallible Animals is a podcast built on the premise that our best ideas are always provisional, open to revision and improvement. Each episode is a deep, meandering conversation that connects dots across disciplines, from the foundational questions in physics and philosophy to the practical frameworks of economics and ethical reasoning. The discussions are less about delivering definitive answers and more about tracing the evolution of thought, examining how concepts have shifted over time and why that matters for understanding our world today. You’ll hear explorations of complex theories broken down with patience, focusing on the arguments themselves and the human tendency to get things wrong-and then, hopefully, less wrong. It’s an educational series that treats learning as an active, never-finished process. The aim is to create a space for thoughtful inquiry, where listening feels like participating in a sustained, collaborative investigation rather than passively receiving information. For those who find value in these long-form explorations, supporting the ongoing work through Chipkin’s Patreon page helps ensure the podcast and related writing projects continue.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 23

Fallible Animals
Podcast Episodes
Fallible Animals Episode 9: Laws vs. Principles [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:00
We discuss the difference between laws versus principles as elucidated by constructor theory, and why it matters. Constructor theory may be thought of as a 'theory of theories' whose principles constrain other theories.…
Fallible Animals Episode 6: Interview with Physicist Chiara Marletto [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:05:08
I interview Oxford physicist Chiara Marletto, who has been working on constructor theory for several years. She's published papers on its applications to various fields, including those of information, thermodynamics, li…
Fallible Animals Episode 5: What is a Constructor? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 16:03
We continue our exploration of constructor theory, our deepest theory in physics. We learn about the conceptual tools used in the theory, such as constructors, tasks, and substrates. We explain how constructor theory sol…
Fallible Animals Episode 4: Intro to Constructor Theory [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 16:04
We motivate and introduce Constructor Theory, humanity's first Theory of Everything (or so I claim). We explain what the founder of Constructor Theory, David Deutsch, calls the prevailing conception, and why it is inadeq…
Fallible Animals Episode 3: Progress as Error-Correction [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:05
In this episode of Fallible Animals, we discuss how it is that sciences progresses, despite the fact that all science is conjectural. It turns out that progress entails reducing errors in our worldview. We define knowled…