Sean Carroll

You can still imagine that free will is real.

You can still imagine the position space and momentum space are real, right?

They're just not fundamental.

They're not there in the most austere, deepest down way of talking about what reality is doing.

Now, the reason why people are reluctant to go down that route is because, boy, space seems like more than a little bit useful, right?

It seems super duper real.

Like I move through it.

Literally, how could I possibly imagine having a description that didn't have space in it?

And my answer is space can still be there, but it's not fundamental.

It's emergent.

And that's the puzzle.

That's why we're having this podcast, because that's the open question, the research-level question.

How do you start with quantum mechanics and find space within it?

Is that even a sensible thing to do?

I think it is a sensible thing to do, but let me mention that—

If you don't think it's a sensible thing to do, I get it.

Like, I appreciate why someone might not think that.

Everettian quantum mechanics is already pretty far away from the manifest image of reality, right?

With all these extra worlds and decoherence and things like that.

Now you're pushing it even further away.