Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Top Chemist on Terrence Howard's JRE Episode "Chemistry is POETRY!" | Lee Cronin

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Curt Jaimungal and Lee Cronin openly discuss Terrence Howard's recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. This is NOT a debunking video. Curt and Lee review some clips from the Terrence JRE episode and discuss what is scientifically accurate and what still needs more review and what may be mistaken. This is meant to be an open minded yet scientifically accurate discussion. Let the open minded yet scientifically rigorous discussions continue! Please consider signing up for TOEmail at https://www.curtjaimungal.org  Support TOE: - Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) - Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE - PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE - TOE Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch  Follow TOE: - *NEW* Get my 'Top 10 TOEs' PDF + Weekly Personal Updates: https://www.curtjaimungal.org - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoriesofeverythingpod - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theoriesofeverything_ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 - Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything  

All right, I'm joined with Professor Lee Cronin, who is a professor of chemistry, and he's at the University of Glasgow and has a fellowship at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. For those who are unfamiliar, my name is Kurt Jaimungal, and I have a background in mathematical physics, and this is a podcast dedicated to theoretical physics, namely theories of everything. Here today, we're going to analyze Terence Howard. He had some comments on the Joe Rogan experience as he made plenty of chemistry, even some mathematical claims. And we want to point out where we think he's correct, where we're not sure and where we don't understand and where we think he may be conflating or misunderstanding. I'm looking forward to it. Let's do it.

Walter Russo and Michael Hudak, you know, took me under his wing and started talking to me But he was more into the philosophy and the love that Walter was talking about but I might by the way Have you seen this before Lee? I watched some of it in preparation and I watched the main part preparation and then the other stuff I was like what's going on? Okay, so yeah, we're getting pretty much unfiltered responses I'm fairly prepared, yeah. Okay.

It was to rebuild the periodic table, you know, build a new periodic table because the stuff I had learned in college, you know, I went to ask, I told the teacher, the professor about the relationship between hydrogen on the spectrometer and carbon and silicon and cobalt and it was like it's the same exact color same tone just doubled in each Okay, he's saying the hydrogen is the same tone as cobalt what is meant by that It's very difficult to interpret I don't know whether he's meaning the same color or the same kind of frequency related with it and but the thing is there's only a fixed frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum where you see things, right?

And, and there are repetitions in the periodic table. So, you know, when you do flame tests, if you look at say, sodium, you get this nice kind of orangey color. And if you have some, you know, look at say copper, you'll get some green color. And, and so I was kind of confused. I mean, I love the kind of poetic kind of, you know, thoughts about these things. And it seems to me that he's making some allegorical comparison at this stage, which I think is cool. But as we can get into it, I think I can

probably narrate, you knowate what is correct science today? What are the actual knowledge we have about the elements? Because I think there's poetry in chemistry and I love that. But there is also discrete numbering in the periodic table. That's a fascinating thing and that's well known and chemists are taught this in chemistry 101 in fact I'm bashing it into my son at the moment he has a chemistry exam tomorrow but he still is still arguing with me about the definition of the element let's continue

and he was like no each element is the same element and it will always be that element it was like you don't see the relationship between hydrogen on the spectrometer and carbon and silicon and cobalt and it was like it's the same exact color same tone just doubled in each octave. You'll see hydrogen sitting all the way over there by itself but they don't show that hydrogen has the same tone as carbon. What do you mean by? Okay, so so Joe is asking what he means by tone I'm gonna let him explain and then please you explain same key of e. Yeah Same what what did he say?

same key of a key of e So I think he's talking about some energy relationship, right? Even it's kind of my okay like how there's GEVs physicists study physicists use GEV okay yeah so they have the same energy it does what he's saying and he's kind of mistaken and I'll explain okay isn't it 40.5 Hertz the next one would be like 81 Hertz. You go to silicon, it would double up and would be 162 Hertz. You'll go to cobalt and it'll be 324 Hertz.

You keep dividing light by two and you'll ultimately get back to the audible sound of it because there was a relationship between light and color, sound and tone, matter and shape. I put... Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here. And I think it might be worth actually explaining what the periodic table does

and two really important things. And then we'll start to unpack this because this is very poetic, but it doesn't bear any relationship to chemistry in the periodic table in a concrete sense where we're looking at what the difference between the elements is. Of course, the elements can have different colors, you can shine light on them and so on, and they can have what's called an absorption spectrum and they can share commonalities. So what is an atom? So an atom, probably all your viewers know what an atom atom is there are protons in all atoms in virtually all other atoms except hydrogen there are neutrons and then the proton has a charge and then an electron balances that charge and so. So one two hydrogen helium three four really am i need to keep going up the product when that is the number of protons associated with each element you have to have the balancing number of electrons. Those electrons are quite small and they describe by quantum mechanics but they like quantum mechanics has discrete one time the electrons occupy.

Energy is a discrete quantum and the periodic table you have this top layer and then you have layers going down and they are basically tell you about the number of layers that you have of electrons right that's a very simplistic way of looking at it now when you hit an atom with some lights electrons get excited. So sure you can those electrons excitement so i function of. and you take the negative charge away from the positive charge and then it'll fall back down again. And there's a really nice spectroscopy called photoelectron spectroscopy where you rip an electron off an atom, it will then fall back down and give out light. And that's called the absorption spectrum. So if you look at the sun, you can see the hydrogen lines. They have nice gray lines, right? It's a really nice proof of you like what indication of quantum mechanics. Now the elements they they will have lots of different colors and they can overlay right they can have the same color but that doesn't mean they're the same thing. Add the same absorption it just mean the energy of the that electron to get out of the atom.

As simple and so so I think that what he's doing is confusing a number of different things. Point of fact, elements are described by the periodic table, and they are arranged in the conventional periodic table in order of atomic number. And the reason why you have this box is like you have hydrogen here, and and then helium and then you can go all the way up right and you have the shells to the first show. Is that you have two electrons and the second show you have a and then it goes up and up and up as you go down. You could find many different ways of arranging the periodic table but they don't make any chemical sense. make any chemical sense. And all the elements in one kind of column have very similar properties. So you take sodium and lithium, if you were to take the metals of sodium and lithium, and you talked about water and you add them to water, they will basically react with the

water. And that's why you can make lithium ion batteries with lithium. You can also make sodium ion batteries with sodium. They're not quite as good. And in biology in so human technology uses lithium, right. It from the periodic table for batteries, but in our cells, when for the, all the energy in the cell, we actually use sodium and potassium. Okay. And you can see the relationship going down. And so I love the

poetry here, but I'm super confused about where the tones and the colors come from. I can only surmise that he loved the absorption spectra that you can see for some of these elements. But if you look in the sun with a spectrograph, you'll see hydrogen and helium and lithium and they're clear lines. And if you do that on earth with spectroscopraph, you'll see hydrogen and helium and lithium and they're clear lines. And if you do that on earth with spectroscopy, you do the same thing. You will never mistake carbon for hydrogen. That's impossible. You might see under certain conditions that carbon might have an atomic absorption in

a similar region to hydrogen, but that doesn't mean they're the same. The elements are fixed by the number of protons. The only thing you can do to change that one element into another is alchemy. Now, luckily you can do alchemy in a nuclear reactor or in the sun. And so I, you know, that's kind of my very short, what is a periodic table and you can arrange them and so on. And it was lovely poetry, but what kind of worried me a little bit was this kind of allegorical analysis people were saying you know oh there's we've we've been told

these lies there you go there's a hydrogen perspective about the periodic table this is what he's referring to that if you were to shine light on hydrogen it would then emit light at four well these are four different wavelengths so you shine light on so the it would then emit light at four, well, these are four different wavelengths. So you shine light on, so the light like pushes an electron out into like a zero kinetic energy, like away, like free, like in orbit around the Earth. And then when it collapses back down, it gives out a color. And that color is absolutely diagnostic of the electron in that condition. And, and, and so if you look at the atomic absorption, say of carbon, you'll see a completely different, um, spectrum. There you go. And

so you can see that you've got carbon and oxygen and hydrogen. They're not the same, right? Carbon, um, has many more lines. Why it has many more electrons, many more quantum numbers. And so that's, do you think he was saying that, look, if you were to space out carbon, so just multiply by two, so let's just say the distance between here, this, this purple one in the left side is one unit, and then you times that by two. So then the space would be two units in this one. Let's call it two units. So then the space would be four units.

This one, let's call it. You understand that if you were to space them out that it would equal somehow some other chemical is that what do you think his claim is i don't think i don't know i must admit i was incredibly confused um but at the same time i thought well you know he is trying to kind of understand the periodic table in a slightly different way. And I'm, I'm, you know, I kind of thought some time today about it, I even talked to my research team about it, because it's kind of an interesting example, like, he's just publicized a periodic table to millions of people. That's so cool. Good bit. Sad bit is kind

of confused everybody because of his allegorical part. But that doesn't mean you know it's not bad it's just not it's not you know it's not correct to say that about the elements that's not what they do yes there is no mystery in the periodic table with respect to these numbers we know they exist we can measure them that's where we've come very far there's lots of mystery about how do we get these elements to react and one of the reasons I am an inorganic chemist, so organic chemists just focus on carbon. They're really dedicated to using carbon because they're for drug discovery and so on. Inorganic chemists have to

deal with the whole periodic table. So there's all little tricks you use in the periodic table, like diagonal relationships and so on. But when he was talking about water and beryllium reacting, I think his misunderstanding electrochemical processes and using elements to provide energy to cause other things to happen. Of course, if you take hydrogen and you add some energy to it, you can split it into hydrogen and oxygen. In fact, anyone could do it by getting a plastic cup, putting some water in it, get two brass tacks, punch it in the bottom, get a nine volt battery in on top and you'll see bubbles. And one electrode, you'll have hydrogen coming out and one will be oxygen. And that's because the water's being torn apart by the electric current.

This is well known chemistry. And so there were lots of layers. I would love to have talked to him about what he meant because it was like, you know, he is presumably talking about inspiration and the way he was interpreting the periodic table, but it wasn't clear to me why he felt it needed to be reinterpreted and what new explanation he was going to give the world with it, right? Yes.

You know, Mendeleev and all these guys thought about it for years, the pit, the periodic tables, been really good at predicting what happens next. You know, and there were elements missing in the periodic table, went, oh, there's a gap here. I wonder if there's an element where this number of protons is gonna be found. And then boom, people found them.

And so they went around and found all the, you know, a lot of elements. There's a lot of elements found in different mines and things around the UK and in the US and Russia and France and so on. So I was I was deeply confused but at the same time fascinated by the response. Yes. So for people just tuning in or just moving to this point, Terrence is clearly bright.

And just for when I was going through his work at one point, he mentioned something like the free algebra generated by V or generated by X quotiented by some two sided ideal, something like that. Then, you know enough, in my opinion, to be classified as bright, especially if you if you come to that understanding outside the university. It also shows that you're super curious, which I love. And usually on the Joe Rogan podcast, he has his mind blown. And usually on the Joe Rogan podcast, he has his mind blown. That's the stereotype of the Joe Rogan podcast. But on this one, it seems like Terrence has his mind blown constantly.

And that's cool because it just means you have fervency over the ideas that you've had for years. And some scientists can be dry about their own research, even Blase. Terrence isn't, and I love that. The difficult part for me is that it then is him speaking like a firehose and you have to speak to ensure that your interlocutor understands and you have to do so step by step and then

re-explain again and bring people... you have to reference steps that came before and do so in a slow manner, not a deluge. And so, well, we can get to one times one equals two later, but let's continue with this. Yeah, I sent over Walter Russell's. I'm trying to get to that. Yeah, it's, it's Walter Russell's periodic table that he put together. Now you will compare that to what we minute minute minute. Oh, by the way, someone said a hilarious comment on the YouTube channel for him.

They said, Joe Rogan was on the Terence Howard experience. In the layoffs periodic table, you'll compare Walter Russell's to it, and you'll see something completely different. It's unwinding. And you see there's a relationship. But go back to the the wiggly one This is how I saw it more so but as a vortex But you'll see there's a relationship between hydrogen carbon silicone cobalt

Rhodium they're all bonded. They're all sit as a middle point between two noble gases So what he's referencing is another formulation of the periodic table, which just when someone says periodic table, what they mean is some arrangement of atoms in some order that gives insight and explains relationships. So you mentioned before conventional periodic table. So that to me means that are that implies that there are multiple periodic tables. So is that the case? Do you as a chemist use only one periodic table? Do you use none of them and just focus on some other form of calculation? Are you not aware of this?

No, I'm aware. So I mean, the periodic table history is fascinating. It's a bit like, you know, the history of any technological era or any kind of understanding science. I think a good example was probably pre-Newtonian gravity, gravity, special and general relativity. We use Newtonian physics still because it's still pretty good to get to the moon and stuff, and we can make adjustments that Einstein gave us. The periodic tables that he refers to aren't any way I can't I don't want to be rude or I don't want to be just proud because it's cool we saw that anyway in use today right there is no use of these periodic tables. use a periodic table to basically identify what's called a non-metal and a metal and look at the different blocks and we would teach that to students they get to understand the periodic table, the relationships, because as you go down the periodic table you get you get trends and as you go across you get trends. What he's talking about these midpoints. That's just, I guess, I could make reference to

some kind of labeling schemes. Occasionally people like maybe in category theory, like in some areas of mathematics, you might say I'm going to make a new labeling scheme for this thing that helps me to give insight. Take maybe say Stephen Wolfram using cellular automata to tell us something about physics. We might use those in some new way and say, hey, can we look at physical reality? And that may or may not be a robust representation of some things. You can play with it. It's a toolbox. Here, there's no toolbox, right? It's not clear to me what these representations would do. The chemists like basically use the current periodic table to understand where the valence electrons are these electrons on the outside and these electrons are responsible for the chemistry. That you do right how you do the reactions and so on and as you get deeper in.

in the electrons are less boring, sorry, more boring, except for some very special heavy ones where the electrons in the middle actually pop out and are very sharp and they use the colors in phosphors. They're like europium and erbium and these rare earths and they're really good at making shiny colors and you can use them in some kind of medical imaging and so imaging this super expensive. I'm sorry so that's a very long hours and there's only one periodic table that's in use today the other periodic tables have no use other than to explain how science kind of. how science kind of bowed to try and figure out what was the ground truth in the same way that when people were looking at electricity is electricity a liquid, is it a solid? How do you account for static electricity and a battery and a

lightning and then AC and they realized that electricity was unified by electromagneticism in the same way, the unification of the periodic table is by electromagnetism. In the same way, the unification of the periodic table is heuridicity that comes from filling electrons in shells and going down quantum levels. So what I mean by that is the top of the periodic table, you have hydrogen, helium, one electron, two electrons. There is no more electrons you can have in the valence shell at the top. When you go down a level, then you go down to lithium and beryllium and across, right, to the first row when you have carbon is there and nitrogen is there and oxygen is there. You go down a level and you have eight electrons there, right?

And then, and so you have this counting scheme and that counting scheme is critical for understanding bonding and structure. We use it to design drugs, understand the structure of DNA. We use it to basically actually do all the tool craft we do in chemistry today. And it's kind of the bedrock. So the reason why I'm going into such detail is important for viewers to understand there is not a new periodic table here you can use the chemistry it would be confusing and none of the things we do would work we train physicians. No drug discoverers inorganic chemist people to doing green energy people doing synthetic biology they all use the same periodic table and it works every day.

In the same way that new Tony mechanics works. It may not be perfect and the absolute truth for everything but it's really really close. So those things don't really exist it's only one substance now the problem is the first thing that we're able... Okay just just a moment he's saying something doesn't exist't exist. I want to rewind a bit and then explain. Between hydrogen, carbon, silicon, cobalt, rhodium, they're all bonded. They all sit as the middle point between two noble gases. So those things don't really exist. It's only one substance. Now the problem is... So that's where I really kind of fell off my chair. You know, that's just that's just not true. So that so an element is defined is defined by its number of of its atomic number, right?

Because the entire thing is the the proton, the number of protons and electrons. Now, a given atom, an element can have different numbers of neutrons and they're called isotopes. In fact, I'll give a plug for Glasgow. The isotope was discovered by Frederick Soddy at the University of Glasgow, just a few miles from here, where he was like, I'm going crazy. I've got these elements. They have got these, sorry, these elements. They have the same chemistry, but when I weigh them, they weigh differently.

What's going on? And then, and they realized that actually those different numbers of neutrons. And then we put together the atomic theory. So no carbon and hydrogen are not the same. If you, the only way you can turn hydrogen into carbon is in the sun when it, when it basically explodes. The only way these can come one is if you were to literally rip apart all the protons and neutrons and get out the constituent quarks and gluons and make a quark-gluon plasma at

whatever hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin. And so this fit was just not correct. And I'm not sure why he was, what he was trying to say made it my only thought as if he was doing in good faith is either number one mistaken, which that's fair enough, we're mistaken about things all the time.

Or number two, he's trying to convey some kind of acoustic poetry to say oh they're the one thing because they have these um values equated with them a bit like if i took a a blue car and a blue jeep and a blue bicycle they are different things but they are they are all blue yes and maybe he was trying to say something like that. That was my understanding. So the string theorist would say, well, hydrogen and helium and lithium, they may look different, but they're firstly all just some arrangement of protons, neutrons and electrons. And then even further, there's some quarks and then electrons. So they're all just quarks and leptons.

Even further, they're just strings, manifestations of different vibration, vibrational modes of the strings. So it was my understanding that what he's saying is that that they're the same in a similar manner. Now he's not saying this string theory is correct. In fact I don't believe he's referenced string theory. And by the way for the people watching I have a string theory iceberg in case you're interested with about the math of string theory. It's a three-hour video. But that was my understanding. As for what is that unifying element or substance I don't know what he was of string theory. It's a three-hour video but that was my understanding. As for

what is that unifying element or substance I don't know what he was saying. I think he was saying it was all reflections of hydrogen or whatever hydrogen is. Maybe he calls it something else. Does that sound like what he could be saying? I mean I think so. I mean, I think so. I mean, look, is it a wonderful exposition in that, I mean, I saw online and there's like all the people going, wow, there's a new reality here. And there's all the haters going, this is complete gibberish. And I'm like, well, he's not a, he's not a chemist, right? And he's not using chemistry to do stuff. And so I, you know, what an interesting non sequitur. You know, but I, the reason why I'm talking to you about this is I

think a is super interesting culturally and B, no, no, there is one periodic table and it works quite well. Thanks. And, and the same way, you know, you can say at one level description, we're all strings, if string theories and D correct, and that let's assume it could be like that's good. But then at another level description where we've got clocks and gluons, they're all one thing. But the fact is, the difference between a hydrogen atom, and a carbon atom

is six protons versus one. Yes, yes. That's amazing, right? To actually turn a hydrogen into a carbon, you have to get at least six of these charges together. And you have to come up with some neutrons as well to boot, to make sure you get your C12 because you want six protons and six neutrons and six electrons. And so that's a really hard thing to do. And you can view that these elements are like crystallized matter at this energy level. So basically if you have ultimate infinite energy in the universe, then everything's just basically, I don't know, whatever the, the highest level

energy description is, it could be, let's say a quark and glue on. And then as you, as you call it down, they crystallize into certain things. And the crystallization is controlled by the way they interact. And then they collide and you produce hydrogen, helium, the, the, the, the, and the thing that I love about all of this, the periodic table interact and then they collide and you produce hydrogen helium. And the thing that I love about all of this, the periodic table, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention it is like the elements in our body that help us help biology work. I mean, they were manufactured in the star as it exploded with star dust. And so that's kind of for me, like, uh, you know, don't give up on the element easily they're not the same thing something really absolutely incredible happened. Produce us a star exploded where is all the hydrogen universe how high can probably is produced in some other places or can be traced back to the big bang.

So those things don't really exist is only one substance now the problem is the first thing that we're able to perceive is hydrogen. That's the first visible element, because before it is too dense for us to perceive it. You understand what I'm saying? Okay. Okay. I don't understand what he's saying. So I have no idea. Okay. I have no clue what that is about. Oh, I could speculate. But he's on a different plane of existence to me at this point. Okay, I thought at first he was referring to how directly after the Big Bang, you couldn't see photons even because they were too high energy. By the way, this has a technical term

called recombination, which means that the universe was opaque, because there were photons that were constantly scattering off free electrons. So in other words, the path of photons were extremely short and they couldn't travel without interacting with electrons. Maybe, but that's kind of, it's kind of, yeah, okay. That's cool. Okay. So it seems to me like what's happened here and maybe I keep this and maybe I keep this

out but it seems like someone is studying at the first or second year undergraduate conceptual level and then realizing that what was told in high school was incomplete maybe even Incorrect like F doesn't equal ma and M isn't just M There's rest mass as well and then rather than having the feeling like whoa, this is cool Which tends to be the feeling that most physicists and mathematicians have in my experience tends to be the feeling that most physicists and mathematicians have in my experience. Terrence has taken it from this is cool to this is reflective of something covert and tendentious and I'm going to assume there's something suspicious going on. And part of that's correct, at least to me, the suspicious part because one of the reasons why I started this podcast was because there are three levels of explanation. There's level one,

which is the high school POP-Sci understanding, surface level, cosmetic level understanding. And then there's level two, where you understand now the rigor, the equations behind it. And then there's level three, where you're able to derive the equations based on the POP-Sci definition, because you have such familiarity with the equations. Public science communication is at level one so you can think of Neil deGrasse Tyson is at level one and there's also a level two and so to me you should be wary of level one or you should know where the person is who's giving you the information you're obviously at level three Lee professor Cronin is obviously at level three and so you should just know where is the level that you're getting the information

from and what level are you speaking to? Because the surface level simplistic ones can be misleading. There's nothing wrong with what he is doing from a curiosity point of view. But what I think what is interesting, if there is a confusion here, if, if it's not allegorical and it's just confused, what he's done is picked different levels and mixed them up. And he's trying to synthesize something else. And he maybe hasn't had time or he hasn't had confidence. And I can completely understand interdisciplinary science.

We do that all the time. That's why, you know, you can make fun of what he's saying here. Indeed. I'm sure some chemists do, but just imagine how difficult it is for someone who understands cell biology and string theory to try and talk to one another. And they can, when they've only got a level one of understanding of each other's respective disciplines

and try to dig deeper where there's a new thing that has to happen. And that's why I'm very sympathetic. But what I like to do is remove the conspiracy nature because the high school is just expediency, right? My son is 16. He's doing his high school is just expediency, right? You know, my son is 16. He's doing his high school chemistry exam and he's making fun of me. Cause I said, you don't have to define what's an element and he can't define it.

He said, but he's not in my curriculum. They don't ask that. That's, you know, you know, and, and, and he's not wrong, right? They don't ask for that precise thing. And so I think there was this kind of, you know, this kind of a conspiracy-esque thing, and then this confusion, and then this frustration. And actually, he has the makings of a great scientist. Great scientists have to contain the frustration for being not understanding, the conspiracy

that maybe they're not quite knowing what's going on with reality, because reality is not giving them what they want to know, and then basically is wish to interrogate and get the information and synthesize it over time. And it's just sometimes if you know i'm quite gullible. As a scientist and then something i love to like i don't know of course it doesn't work i need to do that control what is your goal. that control. Well, like I remember a few years ago, I was making magnets. And I thought I what I designed by I discovered with my team, a magnet that was really hard, but it was based on carbon. And I was like, Wow, I've got this magnet is really hard. It acts like iron, but there's no iron. It's really hard. And I was like, Oh, my god, this is this is great, because it means we can use carbon, like which is really cheap and make really hard magnets

and not have to mine stuff like, you know, all these rare earths and all this. And I was doing all the experiments, I was starting to write the paper and then I was like, said to my team, there's something wrong here. And we then we took the stuff and burnt it in a certain way. And we burn all the carbon away burnt it in a certain way and we burned all the carbon away. So it's the magnetism should have gone away, but still there are magnetic flakes. And I realized what had happened is I was using a nickel spatula and the atoms of nickel were falling off the spatula and going into my carbon. They were just gluing onto it. And nickel was really magnetic under some circumstances and

it was faking out my car and I was like, you know, and I was like, oh, I'm so gullible. There's no electrons there. There's no magnetism. It was a nickel contamination. Damn. I see. I see. And so, so sometimes mixing this kind of curiosity kind of, and, and, you know, this childlike,

wow, what has happened here is a great recipe for doing science, but you then need to have the razor of reason, if you like, you know, calculations. So I said, I said on Twitter, I was somewhat joking, but somewhat serious that there's this phrase called shut up and calculate. And I said, understand and speak up is greater than shut up and calculate like just great 100% 100% However, what I didn't say, which is underneath that implicit hopefully is that in order to get to the point where you understand and can speak up, you do need to go through a period of calculating.

So you need to have precision with your fingers and pen and work with a concept or an equation or with coding and Otherwise you just get a misunderstanding times another misunderstanding which Unfortunately does not equal understanding Despite one times one equal in one so so I'll give you a subtlety a subtle case so the one times one equals one He says the reason why that's not true is that it's not true that if you have $1 times $1, you get $1.

And he's correct. $1 times $1 doesn't equal $1. However, okay, let me say it like this. $5 times $1 does not equal $5. But five times $1 equals $5. And so to people who are just listening in their car and they're driving, they're like, but that sounds the same. What do you mean? Well, think about it like this. If you have two apples and then someone gives you someone multiplies your apples by three, then you have six apples. OK, but if you have two apples and someone multiplies your apples by three apples, you're just,

you have WTF amount of apples. Like it doesn't make sense. You have apples squared. It's a different unit. So one dollar times one dollar doesn't equal two dollars. It equals some amalgam some something like one dollar squared one by the way, dollar squared is in the brackets. But you can still have one times one equals one because it's unit lists. By the way, dollar squared is in the brackets. But you can still have one times one equals one because it's unitless. By the way, I have this whole two hour video on natural units, which goes over the undergraduate education and theoretical physics in approximately two hours from a natural units perspective. And all you need is high school math. That's absolutely right. That's a really nice way of putting it because there's this this whole idea that mathematics, the laboring schemes that go with mathematics, when you're trying

to get to abstraction, you start with physical example, your $1 times $1. And then you abstract out and that abstraction is right, can I now apply my counting to, I don't know, to pounds and to tomatoes and so on. And then as you go down and go up, it's like the process of abstraction is the way of building is mental architectures and then removing the units in such a way that you can understand. Architecturally where you add them on and there's so many things we do that we build these architectures on if you think about the concept of debt or interest rate, right? And I think actually the concept of our economics is more proof that time is fundamental, but that's for another podcast another day, because you're betting on the possibility space

of new things you can build, right? The whole concept of capitalism is to basically take capital, put it into technology and build new things, and the value of the stuff goes up. That's why the value of our economy goes up. But there's a big digression from here, but it's just a nice thing that fits into the one time with one argument. And I'm, you know, and I saw that, I was just like, no, dude, we need to do some category theory. I was like, no, no, it's not

going to do that. It's like, it's just a simple misconception that's easily, easily adjusted. However, I don't know if he was, I don't know what I would mean. Like I, I'm one of my best attributes is like, I'm wrong all the time. Right. So this is like someone pointed out to you, you're wrong. We can do this. You're like, Oh, actually that's right. I think people might have tried to point out to them this one times one thing. And he's like, no.

And then, and then what happens is you build in this kind of this kind of resilience as like this resistance to the new paradigm and again you see this in science you see this in science like the real scientists if you like or the other playful ones that make mistakes and correct that's really cool whereas and that's how science kind of works. So science kind of has playful ones and occasionally they make mistakes. And then there are the people like, no, this is how it is, it's not moving.

And it plays together quite nicely where you have stubbornness and playfulness. And they interact in such a way that if you're respectful of one another, you can basically discover new things and also stop people discovering nonsense and say, no, that's not correct. Yes. Because you do critical thinking so on. But maybe that's a bit of a digression.

Well, no, it's a great point. So Nima, Nima Arkani Hamed, the physicist said that what characterizes physicists or physicists, sorry, is radical conservatism. So not conservatism not radicalness but both. And the reason is that Einstein while we look back fondly and romanticize and say okay what he did was undo what came prior to him. That's not true. He overturned one axiom but held the rest so fixed. Let's see let's just get through the rest of this. Oh and just a quick aside again.

Look if you're going to redefine 1 times 1 to equal say 2 the multiplication has something called a group structure so you can't just change one part of a group structure without changing other parts of the group structure and one way for people to understand this is you have a multiplication to end it's called multiplication but it's technically a group operation. And you can have a multiplication table if you have a finite group. And it's something like a crossword puzzle or a Sudoku. So if you were to change just one word in the Sudoku from screen to rabbit, you can't

do so without changing the other local structure, maybe even global structure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's a good way of putting it. I like it. As you reach into the next octave, the carbon octave, and they call that the bisexual tone, because the carbon has two tones to it. It has a negative side and a positive side. Okay, just a moment.

And I don't mean this to be a racy comment or or like I'm making fun of either you or him or I just I just don't know is bisexual tone something that chemists call chemicals like how they're spin no I mean I wonder if he's talking about being amphoteric or the fact that carbon can be positively charged and negatively charged I just have no clue what he was going on about. I mean, it's just like I was like For me, I was completely I mean I was pretty bemused and then we got to this I was just like I was just What was your problem is your initial reaction? just, um, what was your initial reaction? Be honest. My initial, my initial reaction that he was, he was on a different plane of existence as sounded really fun. And, um,

but it wasn't my plane of existence or anyone else. I see. And so Terry, again, like I tried to reach out to Terry over email and I haven't been successful, but he's invited to this podcast. So you're, you're welcome to come on, Terry. I don't want to speak of you without you being here. We're only doing so because I wasn't able to get ahold of you. And this is the closest I can get. And hopefully we can elucidate understanding for ourselves and others at the same time. Where lithium behaves, lithium is a is contractive.

Beryllium is contractive. Boron is contractive. But the moment you get to carbon, you balance it out. It gets to a perfect balance of plus and minus four. So it's a double tone. Then... Okay, so chemically speaking,

what do you believe he's referring to here? What is this contraction? So he might be talking to electronegativity, right? And say that metals are losing electrons and but I have no idea I mean like okay, you're so out with the birdies at this point. I'm just like it's beautiful. It's It's it sounds beautiful, but it's nonsense. Okay. Okay, that's more than enough. Thank you professor Where can people find out more about you and what are you working on? Wow, you can find me you find me on Cronan lab calm and what am I working on? Wow, you can find me on croninlab.com and what am I working on

right now? I'm trying to make life in the lab because that might help us find aliens. I'm trying to work on this new theory for selection, assembly theory, which is causing people to get excited about looking at selection before evolution. And I'm also trying to work out how to make chemical computers and see if one day we can create chemical artificial chemical consciousness but that's the most controversial thing I can come up with with a juxtaposition of listening to this but that's maybe a podcast in the future if I get anywhere because I'm probably gonna fail all right thank you sir you take care. you you you you you you you