Physics Creativity Culture and the Future (podcast)

The first half of my interview with Chris Ferrie, quantum physicist, educator, and author.

“’You don’t want complete freedom, but you also don’t want complete structure. You need something in the middle, but that thing can’t be static..”
― Chris Ferrie

Chris is a happily married father of four, and an Associate Professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. He specializes in quantum computation and information theory.

He has written and co-authored over 2**6 popular books introducing theories, practices, and applications in all fields of science. Most of his titles are for young readers, such as Blockchain for Babies, and ABCs of Engineering, along with adult-oriented titles like 42 Reasons to Hate the Universe, and Quantum Bullsh*t.

This is the first half of our January 2024 interview. The full interview, and a searchable transcript of it, is available to paid subscribers.

Excerpts from the interview:

“Human life is at that point (where) it’s extracting as much energy as it can to maintain this complex state. It’s not the low entropy state, which is not desirable, and it’s not the high entropy state, which is also undesirable. It’s something in the middle. So it makes sense that you have a similar struggle in lots of systems. By analogy in politics: you don’t want complete freedom, but you also don’t want complete structure. You need something in the middle, but that thing can’t be static.”

“The only thing I’ll say from a political perspective is that I hate it. The reason I hate it is that everyone who’s engaged in it is looking for simple solutions that lead to some static state of the world where we can all be happy with no more work to do, when that’s not the case. There’s always work to do. You shouldn’t want a static economy, a static political system, or a static universe.”