Daniel Whiteson

when I saw a calculation done in quantum field theory that predicted an experimental measurement to like nine decimal places.

You know, you should measure this thing and it'll be 0.4721, nine decimal places.

Then they go out, they do the experiment, they measure this thing and they get it right to nine decimal places.

And I saw that and I thought,

oh my gosh, the universe is mathematical.

How could it not be?

It's so precise.

And I took that leap to say, it's not just the map, it is the territory because it's so bang on.

And if it was just the map, it'd be fuzzy.

And how could it be this precise and not be the way the universe is doing its calculation?

I'm not a religious person, but that was almost a spiritual moment for me when I thought, I'm seeing the face of the universe.

Of course.

Very powerful.

So there's a lot of good reasons to think the universe is mathematical.

We have to have math to do science.

When aliens arrive, they're going to be doing mathematical science, right?

Sure.

But they're also pretty good arguments on the other side, right?

Yeah.

And the more you dig into it, the more you realize, hmm, we don't really know.