Sean Carroll

You have exact cycles forever and ever.

And at the end of the day, it's all just quantum mechanics that is suggesting this.

In the paper, we wave our hands about

how to map this quantum system onto a classical system, but space-time with a metric and things like that.

But that's the part, of course, that we have the least confidence in, in the paper.

When we're just solving the Schrodinger equation, we get it exactly right.

When we're trying to interpret that as an emergent space-time, it's much harder.

So again, just to be super clear, in this model, unlike most other cyclic cosmologies,

the arrow of time reverses during the crunch.

So the entropy increases in both directions away from the big bounce.

And so what you and I would call the crunch has a reversed arrow of time to what you and I call the big bang.

Of course, the people living on the other side of the bounce would call the phase they're in the big bang and the phase we're in the big crunch.

So I hope that I covered all the bases there for these three questions.

Sorry to go on about it.

I thought that the paper didn't quite deserve its own solo episode, but it did deserve some explication here in the AMA.

All right, let's change gears a little bit.

C. Gerlando says, You suggested that one reason current AI systems probably aren't conscious is that they don't get bored or tired.

Giacomo Leopardi, the 19th century Italian poet-philosopher, has a striking theory of boredom because desire is inseparable from human existence.

Consciousness suffers when it has no object—occupation, fear, pain, or illusion—to absorb it.

On this account, boredom is not just a lack of stimulation, but consciousness experiencing the burden of its own empty duration.