80,000 Hours Podcast With Rob Wiblin

Quantum mechanics — our best theory of atoms, molecules, and the subatomic particles that make them up — underpins most of modern physics. But there are varying interpretations of what it means, all of them controversial in their own way. Famously, quantum theory predicts that with the right setup, a cat can be made to be alive and dead at the same time. On the face of it, that sounds either meaningless or ridiculous. According to today’s guest, David Wallace — professor at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the world's leading philosophers of physics — there are three broad ways experts react to this apparent dilemma: 1. The theory must be wrong, and we need to change our philosophy to fix it. 2. The theory must be wrong, and we need to change our physics to fix it. 3. The theory is OK, and cats really can in some way be alive and dead simultaneously. (David and Rob do their best to introduce quantum mechanics in the first 35 minutes of the episode, but it isn't the easiest thing to explain v