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David Friedberg

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
8269 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

So he showed like if you put helium-3 cold enough, it kind of almost has this new sort of characteristics with the physics and how it moves and how it works.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

I think that's really worth spending a moment on.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

Yeah, great.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

So when we talk about quantum mechanics, when we talk about the relative position or energy or movement of a particle at the atomic scale, as small as an atom or smaller than an atom,

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

we have to use kind of probabilities to describe where things are going to be.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

That was what was really kind of the big understanding of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, right?

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

Is that there's the probability of things being where they are and moving as they're moving.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

It's not like deterministic, like we can see with the ball that we throw around.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

When you get very, very small,

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

Things get very fuzzy and it's very hard.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

So quantum mechanics ultimately became a field that people say is very non-intuitive in terms of understanding where small particles are, the energy they have, where they're moving to.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

And basically, we resolved to figuring out

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

that we have to use these functions.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

It's not just a single point, but it's a distribution.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

It's a whole bunch of places.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

And there's a probability of where the atom could be or where the electron could be.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

It's also a probability of how fast it might be moving.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

All of these things become probability functions.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

So rather than think about an electron moving around an atom in a pre-described path and I can know where it is at any point in time, the right way to think about an electron around an atom is it's in a wave.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Nobel Prize in Physics Winner: John Martinis on the State of Quantum

There's a wave that describes kind of where it is and what it's doing.