Prof. Brian Keating
@Briankeating • 57,244 subscribers
Every great scientist is a storyteller. I interview Nobel winners on @Into_Impossible🎙️ Cosmologist & Chancellor's Professor @UCSanDiego
Shorts
Videos
Big, if true! Can any chemists confirm? Prof. Lee Cronin?
Prof. Brian Keating12,360,651 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren
Are microtubules the key to consciousness? Every cell has microtubules, but what makes them special in the brain? When they form coherent states and collapse, could that be a moment of consciousness? Sabine Hossenfelder shares her thoughts on Penrose and Stuart Hameroff's controversial ORCH OR idea and why she finds it hard to believe. What do you think?
Prof. Brian Keating34,576 Aufrufe • vor 29 Tagen
Stanford scientists put millions of living human neurons into mice whose own cortex had been removed. The odd part? The mice still behave like mice. So where, exactly, does “human” cognition begin? We are getting disturbingly good at building experiments before we agree on what their results would mean. Read the article here:
Prof. Brian Keating28,967 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
In recent days, multiple Erdős problems have been solved by GPT-5.2 Pro, with solutions accepted by Terence Tao. This is not a gimmick—it's a qualitative shift. Erdős problems lie at the core of additive combinatorics, extremal graph theory, and probabilistic methods—problems that resist brute force and demand structural insight. Many have endured decades of expert scrutiny. Acceptance matters more than authorship. Tao doesn't rubber-stamp ideas; he rigorously tests logic, generality, and novelty. If a proof clears that hurdle, the system didn't merely recombine known lemmas—it explored a true mathematical search space. This means AI has crossed a threshold: from assisting mathematics to participating in it by proposing nontrivial arguments, uncovering hidden structures, and resolving problems humans value—without a predefined solution path. Importantly, this doesn't diminish human mathematicians. It reshapes the field's topology. Just as symbolic algebra systems amplified rather than replaced math, AI now seems poised to expand the frontier itself. If these claims hold, recent days may mark the lift-off for AI-driven science: not flashy demos, but quiet validation by the world's toughest referees. We should remain skeptical, careful, and precise—yet honest about the implications. Something fundamental may have changed. Here's a five-minute video with Terry explaining these problems and meeting the man himself:
Prof. Brian Keating104,865 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
95% of Professor's Research is Pointless | Aswath Damodaran Timestamp: 00:00 Intro 01:37 Why Nobel Economists Aren't Billionaires 06:08 Universities Have Completely Lost the Plot 07:43 95% of Academic Research Is Worthless 13:05 The University Is a Sticky Business — But Cracks Are Forming 40:00 ChatGPT Already Does What Bankers Charge Millions For 46:43 The Most Dangerous Number in Finance 52:35 There Is No Safe Place Left to Put Your Money 55:48 When Every Asset Is Overpriced, Buy What You Love 1:00:22 We Are Losing Our Ability to Think 1:01:30 Markets Are Smarter Than Experts — Every Single Time
Prof. Brian Keating57,534 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
I’m sick of it. While I must confess to having poured more than a few buckets into the AI doom reservoir, enough is enough. If you’re as saturated with the AI Apocalypse as I am, this clip from my conversation with Yann LeCun (Yann LeCun) is a powerful antidote. I don’t agree with him on everything. That’s the point. But what can you say to refute him? cc Dr. Roman Yampolskiy Emad Max Tegmark
Prof. Brian Keating18,355 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
The Physics Law That Guarantees Everything Will Go Wrong Rebecca Newberger Goldstein | Rebecca Newberger Goldstein TIMESTAMPS : 00:00 Why every human being needs to matter — and what happens when they can't 04:25 The second law of thermodynamics and what it has to do with your life 08:00 The 4 types of people: Transcenders, Socializers, Heroic Strivers, and Competitors 17:30 Why fame-seeking millennials will give up everything — including relationships 22:00 Zero-sum mattering: the competitor who was happy for 15 minutes after winning a Nobel Prize 24:15 Ludwig Boltzmann solved one of physics' greatest paradoxes — then despaired 34:50 All tragedies are thermodynamic — and so is depression 40:00 Life as resistance to entropy: what flourishing actually means 54:00 Can AI have a mattering instinct? What that would mean for human rights 57:50 If AI becomes a heroic striver, what's left for us?
Prof. Brian Keating42,988 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten
For 50 years, dark matter explained why galaxies spin too fast. MOND explained the same thing with no new particles at all. Gaia just measured a billion stars in our own galaxy. Alessandro Melchiorri & Ruchika say both of them may have predicted the wrong curve.
Prof. Brian Keating13,003 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
The Equation That Changed How Physicists Think About Reality | Juan Maldacena Timestamps: 00:00 The claim Einstein wrote in 1935 and missed 01:15 The most-cited physicist alive walks into UC San Diego 03:25 What would shock Einstein most about modern physics 07:45 The holographic principle — what it actually means 09:20 Throw a laptop into a black hole. Now what 11:00 General relativity says lost. Quantum mechanics says preserved. 12:25 The problem Juan wants to solve before he dies 13:50 Why real black holes don't emit measurable Hawking radiation 15:25 How black hole math accidentally explained why the universe has structure 17:00 Could primordial black holes be dark matter? Juan is skeptical. 18:30 Why a partition function went imaginary — and what it cost to fix 21:15 Why imaginary numbers keep being right about reality 25:00 How AdS/CFT got its name — and why physicists did the Macarena 27:05 We don't live in AdS space. Why does it matter 29:00 Earth-sized wormholes are allowed. Faster-than-light ones aren't. 32:10 Could AI have helped Einstein in 1913? 33:00 Can a working physicist also believe in God? Juan answers.
Prof. Brian Keating31,615 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
Einstein was WRONG! (ft. ) Timestamp: 00:00 Intro 01:58 Cosmological sector and geometric unity 03:57 The Poincaré group 08:31 Quantum gravity and the standard model 14:41 Torsion and gauge invariance 28:13 Spinor group and 14-dimensional space 38:24 Grand unification and spinors 42:34 The Higgs is an illusion 50:08 Outro
Prof. Brian Keating63,726 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
Sam Harris on why consciousness is more certain than the universe — and why free will is a different problem entirely Pulling out a clip from my conversation with Sam Harris (Making Sense Podcast) where he draws an asymmetry I think is worth sitting with. His claim: consciousness is the one thing in the universe that can't be an illusion — even more certain than physics. We could be brains in vats, in the matrix, on an alien supercomputer. None of it changes the fact that something seems to be happening. That seeming IS consciousness. Free will? Different story. Sam argues it's not just illusory but incoherent — provably so, regardless of how you tune determinism vs quantum indeterminism. He agrees with Sapolsky on the conclusion but adds a unique contribution on the experience of free will itself. Curious what the community thinks. Does the consciousness-as-bedrock argument hold under closer inspection, or is it just Descartes in new clothing?
Prof. Brian Keating26,693 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
The Quantum Theory No One Dares Explain! David Deutsch Timestamp: 02:15 – David Deutsch introduces the idea that infinity is not just a mathematical abstraction but a physical reality. 06:42 – He emphasizes that understanding infinity is central to progress in both science and philosophy. 11:03 – Discussion on how infinity challenges human intuition and traditional explanations. 18:29 – Deutsch argues that good explanations must account for infinity, not avoid it. 23:51 – He contrasts finite vs. infinite models of the universe. 30:14 – Infinity as an unavoidable aspect of quantum mechanics and the multiverse. 37:40 – Practical implications: infinity changes how we view knowledge, discovery, and human progress. 45:22 – He warns against simplistic or “bad” explanations that ignore infinite possibilities. 53:09 – Closing: infinity should be embraced as part of reality, not feared or reduced.
Prof. Brian Keating37,930 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
Terry Tao: “AI solved the knottiest problems in math”
Prof. Brian Keating35,019 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten