Our Mathematical Universe
"Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present, and future, and through the physics, astronomy and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and ground-breaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories (his website gives a flavor of how they might boggle the mind), but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist. Fascinating from first to last--here is a book for the full science-reading spectrum"
Stats for nerds
32recommend
57mentions
47people
2014–2024years
67% recommend32% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- See Our mathematical universe : my quest for the ultimate nature of reality by Max Tegmark
- If anyone is interested in reading about this idea, I recommend Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" [0] and Max Tegmarks's "Our Mathematical Universe" [1].
- >Cannot be disproved, cannot be verified.
Not 100% but you can get a reasonable idea but looking. The God hypothesis seems unlikely for a variety of reasons such as the presence of evil and why there are trillions of stars if it was made for us.
Simulations are normally quite imperfect - you can see the pixels etc. The physics of our universe is hard to simulate - we can't even do one proton reasonably well yet no glitches are seen in physics experiments so that hypothesis seems unlikely too.
Personally I think it's maths. The deeper in physics you go the more it looks like maths. See https://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Ultimate-... for example.
- If you seek elightment, you seek truth. Look down towards foundations like physics, mathematics, logic and look back towards the past.
It' smaybe check out the Computer History Museum.
Read Feynman's (or about) books. "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman" is light but profound. Max Tegmark's "Our Mathematical Universe" is great. "I am a strange loop" by Douglas Hofstadter will connect many dots. If you want to peek deeper - "Through two doors at once" describes experiments at the edge of our reality. "The singularity is near" is a good perspective that connects dots through time back many years to many in the future.
These are just some incomplete starter points. It's deep, beautiful rabbit hole. Enjoy it.
- It really depends - for most crappy non-fiction I'd agree, but the really great ones are different.
The Emperor of All Maladies, The Gene, Our Mathematical Universe are some that are better because of their book format. I'd put Hackers in that category too (along with pretty much all the books by Steven levy).
The phoenix project is a lot more entertaining as a novel too thought that kind of blurs the lines towards fiction.
- “Our mathematical universe” by Max Tegmark.
I’m not a physicist, but this book took me very close to abandoning my CS career and getting into theoretical physics.
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