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I very much doubt the universe thinks
Recent suggestions to the contrary don’t take biology seriously, as usual
Sabine Hossenfelder is a brilliant theoretical physicist with whom I almost always find myself in agreement. Her book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray is a superb takedown of the recent fashion in fundamental physics to judge the merits of scientific theories on the grounds of non-empirical criteria, such as “beauty” or “elegance.” Which is a really, really bad idea.
Sabine also wrote a no-nonsense rebuttal of a recent pernicious fashion in philosophy, the entirely not empirically verifiable notion of “panpsychism,” the idea that consciousness is, somehow, a basic property of matter.
Occasionally, like the rest of us, Sabine gets something wrong, or at the least she defends a questionable position. So far, I called her only on one such occasion, back in 2020, when she decided to write that predictions in science are “overrated.” This post is my second such call.
More recently she published an excerpt from her book, Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions, in the form of an essay entitled “Maybe the Universe Thinks. Hear Me Out.” I did hear her out, but I ended up not appreciating what she had to say. Let me first summarize her position as…
