Sean Carroll

@sean-carroll · 20 positions · On ppll ↗

Theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy, host of the Mindscape podcast and author of Something Deeply Hidden.

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What Sean Carroll says most about

physics 5

The largest contribution physics can make to AI is energy efficiency: computers waste heat hilariously worse than brains do, and nobody has seriously tried to fix it.
Einstein's equation is much smarter than Einstein was: it knew about black holes, gravitational waves and the Big Bang while he did not.

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quantum mechanics 3

Declining many-worlds because it extrapolates past what we can observe is methodologically respectable and still a failure of nerve.
The story that Einstein could not keep up with quantum mechanics is almost exactly backwards: his philosophical objections were correct and should have been taken far more seriously.

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energy 2

Physicists did not invent dark matter and dark energy to rescue their theories — they would much rather the answer were something cooler, and the data will not allow it.
The largest contribution physics can make to AI is energy efficiency: computers waste heat hilariously worse than brains do, and nobody has seriously tried to fix it.

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humility 2

When somebody accuses you of being arrogant about an idea, almost all they ever mean is that they disagree with you.
Assuming you are a typical observer in the universe is not humility but a hilariously presumptuous claim that typical observers are like you.

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space 2

A great filter is a weak explanation for the silence, because it would have to work every single time — one civilization with self-replicating probes could fill the galaxy.
The simplest explanation for why we have never noticed an alien civilization is that there are none out there.

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