Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, hello. This is 2026 Allie, and I'd like to toss us down a wormhole with one of my favorite episodes. But before we get into it, a little update. This ologist, Dr. Adam Becker, has recently released a new book. It's titled More Everything Forever, AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.
It's about the ideology of technological salvation, where this religious belief comes from, who's pushing it by pretending it's science instead of religion, and how it's taken over Silicon Valley, and also how it threatens to take over the world. Again, his book, More Everything Forever. That's his new one.
And he told me by email, I'm pretty hopeful that we can successfully fight back against this stuff. So you'll hear more about his book, What is Real, but also just an update, More Everything Forever is now out. Okay, onward. Oh, hey. It's your old internet uncle, Dad Ward von Podcast, here with another episode of Ologies. Allie Ward, hi. So do you remember your first real existential crisis?
Also, if you clicked on this and don't know jack or shit about quantum physics... You're in the right place. You're in good company. Okay, before we spiral into deep, deep space and dark matter, let's shine a little light on some business. So first off, thank you to everyone on patreon.com slash ologies for supporting the show, sending in your questions.
Thanks to everyone strutting about on planet Earth and ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. And thank you to everyone who leaves reviews, which help the show so much. And here is a very fresh 2026 one from GlowingJellyBean555, who wrote, I love this podcast so much, and it's a phenomenal way to stay lighthearted and informed on all sorts of things through trying times.
GlowingJellyBean, thanks for the glowing review. We do our best. Okay. Quantum ontology. So many syllables. What do they mean? Quantum, in terms of physics, deals with matter and energy at its most fundamental level. And quantum comes from the Latin, meaning how much, how far, how great an extent. Already so many questions just to the definition of this.
Also, ontology comes from the root ont, meaning being. And it is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. So quantum ontology. Matter, what the hell is it? What are we made of? What is real? Just tuck a bib under your brain, kiddos, because this week's episode is just a hearty, it's a feast of information. It's dense. It's like a bucket of mashed potatoes.
And it's filling, like drinking a pint of gravy. It's going to make you question everything about life itself. What is reality? What exists? Why are we here? But first, will we cover everything about this topic? Hell no. Will we have to leave out a bunch? Hell yes.
Consider this like a warm welcome, an entree into some of the basic concepts about the hiccups in observing and understanding existence. So this ologist has a BA in philosophy and in physics from Cornell and a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Michigan, is a celebrated science writer and the author of the new book, What is real?
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Chapter 2: What is quantum ontology and why is it important?
And they said some confusing things. And in particular, they talked about two theories that said really wild and strange things about the world. One of them was Einstein's relativity and the other one was quantum physics. And, you know, really, really weird things in both of those theories. But it turns out relativity doesn't require more than like early high school math, right?
You don't need calculus. You don't even need pre-calculus. It's just geometry and algebra. And so I learned relativity in high school and I thought, oh, all that weird stuff seems a lot less weird now. I bet when I get to college and I learn quantum physics, that's going to seem less weird too. That is not what happened.
Oh, no.
Yeah, no, so instead I got to college and I started learning quantum physics and it didn't get better, it got worse. Oh no. And so I was in this class where the professor was talking about one of the weird things in quantum physics.
I don't remember exactly what, because it was a long time ago, but he was saying something about how when you're not looking at things, you can't talk about what's going on, but then when you look, things change. And I probably asked something like, okay, but what do you mean by looking? What does that mean? And we kind of got into it.
And I don't remember exactly how the fight went down, but I just remember that at the end, he said in this like really haughty, disdainful voice, he said, well, if that's the kind of question that you're interested in, then why don't you go to the philosophy department? Burn. Yeah. But but joke was on him. I'd already gone to the philosophy department and double major in physics and philosophy.
Oh, God. A lot of that was trying to wrap my head around, like, what the heck is going on in quantum physics? Because this is this is a really it's a really weird thing. But it's also supposed to be this really fundamental theory about, you know, the fundamental constituents of the world. Right. Like the tiniest things, the things that the things that make us up are made of. Right.
Like subatomic particles. And yet it wasn't at all clear what was going on. And so I started digging into that. And the more I dug into it, the weirder it got. I just did that more and more. And. eventually thought, you know, I want to write a book about this because this is just so strange and I don't understand why this isn't more widely known.
Am I gonna feel like I'm on mushrooms?
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Chapter 3: How does quantum physics challenge our understanding of reality?
So quantum, I mean. Quantum physics is the physics of the ultra tiny, except that we think that ultra tiny things make up the world around us. So although it's the physics of the ultra tiny, there's also reason to think it's just the physics of everything. Ontology is the study of what there is, of what's stuff is in the world.
So quantum ontology is the study of, okay, what does quantum physics tell us is in the world? Or, you know, the title of my book, right? What is real? And it is not clear what quantum physics tells us about the world. It's just not clear at all, even though it's not a new theory. It's been around for almost a hundred years.
Okay. Well, let's start with the theory of relativity, which someone with high school math could understand. Sure. Can you give that to me in like a nutshell? He sounds unsure, but that's okay.
Right. So here's one way of looking at what the theory of relativity tells us. So we sort of think from our everyday lives that... If I'm standing still or if I'm in a car going at like 20 miles an hour, there are some things that just don't change between those two situations.
Like how fast my watch runs shouldn't change between those two situations or how far it is between my house and the movie theater down the street. That shouldn't change either. It turns out, though, that these things that we think of as not changing between those two situations, we call those things invariant because they don't vary.
The invariance between those two situations aren't what we think they are. It turns out that actually the rate that my watch runs at does change between those two situations. And the distance between my apartment and the movie theater down the street does change. There are things that don't change, but those things are not.
distances or time they're a combination of space and time space time okay is time the fourth dimension sure yeah in relativity it is okay yeah and now quantum yes theory yeah oh you want me to do the same thing for quantum theory just in a nutshell
Just let us know what we're working with.
Yeah. So quantum theory says that there is something very, very unusual going on in the world of the very tiny.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of multiple universes in quantum theory?
The weird thing is that the standard way of answering questions like, what does quantum physics tell us about the world around us, is to say, shut up, that's a stupid question. There's actually a saying in physics to summarize this attitude, shut up and calculate. Oh, boy. Because, no, no one... That was originally coined by the physicist David Merman as like a pejorative.
Like he was describing an attitude that other people have. Right. No one actually should say that in earnest. Right. But some people do. And yeah, it's completely...
fucking ridiculous well what are where are these logic gaps like i know that it's so bizarre and at least if you could understand the bizarreness but what is it that's so contradictory like what do we think what don't we get yeah so so there's this there's this thing in quantum physics this sort of fundamental role that the idea of measurement
plays. Say that I want to describe... I'm holding a pen. Say I want to describe where this pen is or where I'm going to find this pen using the physics that we had before quantum physics, like Isaac Newton's physics.
Okay, quick aside, Newtonian physics is also called classical mechanics, and it deals with objects that aren't at a tiny, tiny scale and how they move and rest and such. So apples falling on our heads, tossing your socks in the hamper from across the room, the inertia that causes you to spill hot tea on your crotch in the car. All of those things exist in space and behave in predictable ways.
I can do that with three numbers. I can say, okay, this pen is this height above the ground, and it's this far off to the right, and it's this far in front of me. That's three numbers. That's all I need. If I wanna take all the information I have about where I'm gonna find an electron or some subatomic particle in quantum physics, It's not going to require three numbers.
It's going to require an infinity of numbers scattered across all of space. And this set of numbers is called a wave function. And as the name implies, it kind of waves. It undulates smoothly. And that wavy motion is described by this very nice, pretty equation called the Schrodinger equation. And the Schrodinger equation kind of smells like a law of physics. Okay.
It looks like a good candidate for a fundamental law of physics. And it says that wave functions, you know, they wave. They move smoothly. And they move in a completely determined fashion. There's nothing random or probabilistic about it. Okay. So when we zoom.
all the way into an atom or the elements that make up an atom, instead of having three dimensions, x, y, z, we have an infinity of numbers to describe its location. And those infinity of numbers make up a wave. Got it? Look, we understand. Everything makes sense. We're pretty much quantum physicists now, all of us. Just kidding, but we can still celebrate it.
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Chapter 5: How does the theory of relativity relate to quantum physics?
And then the U.S. government confiscated his passport. So he's trapped in Brazil. Like there's a whole it's like a movie. It's like a friggin spy thriller. Like dude got the fucking short end of the stick.
Okay, now this guy's life, my word. He had his own work at Berkeley confiscated and then classified so he didn't have access to it so that it could be used on the Manhattan Project. And he eventually in his 70s had to have electroconvulsive therapy for depression. And just the saga and the drama of his life and political affiliations affected the reception of his work, sadly.
Okay, but one hiccup is that the particle surfing a pilot wave doesn't work with other theories, like the relativistic quantum field theory that explains what happens when you smash particles together in a nearly 17-mile particle accelerator tube underground, which, as discussed in the cosmology episode with Dr. Katie Mack, is not called the Hardon Collider.
No one has found a way to unequivocally take that theory and reframe it in terms of this pilot wave stuff. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that if it's right, the job isn't finished. But there are a lot of physicists who don't like this stuff for that reason. And because it's got this weird tangled history. So, yeah. So, that's another option is this pilot wave theory.
There are lots of other options. Yeah.
How often do you think people get stoned and come up with their own theories and email physicists?
Oh, well, I can tell you that that happens a lot because I get a lot of those emails. Some of those people, by the way, I think are not stoned. I think that there could be like an interesting psychology paper done here. Oh, man, I'm going to get some hate mail for this.
That like being an old retired white male engineer must have some effect on the brain that is similar to like cannabis or alcohol or something. Because those people, I'm pretty sure they're sober and they send me all sorts of wacky stuff all the time. And it's not correct.
Do you have a favorite?
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