Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality

by Max Tegmark

Alas, I soon grew disillusioned, concluding that economics was largely a form of intellectual prostitution where you got rewarded for saying what the powers that be wanted to hear.

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. —Niels Bohr

the fundamental Legos out of which everything is made appear to be purely mathematical in nature, having no properties except mathematical properties.

These quantum waves are strikingly different from the classical waves from Figure 7.6: a classical wave that you’re surfing on is made of water and the thing which has a wavy shape is the water surface, but the thing which is wavy or cloudlike in a hydrogen atom isn’t water or any kind of substance at all: there’s only a single electron there, and what’s wavy is its wavefunction, the extent to which it is in different places.

Back in high school, my friend Magnus Bodin had inspired me with his contrarian philosophy. Since everyone else sent their letters in rectangular envelopes, he made triangular ones. Ever since, when I see the majority do things one way, I instinctively look for alternatives. For example, all my classmates spent ages on electromagnetism homework during our first year, so I talked our professor into letting me skip this in return for an oral exam at the end of the course. Instead, I spent endless hours in the library feeding my curiosity, learning all sorts of amazing physics that wasn’t in the textbooks—and which has kept helping me to this day. It also freed me up to pursue research on the side.

1. Make predictions from assumptions. 2. Compare observations with predictions, update assumptions. 3. Repeat.

in the spirit of Pascal’s Wager, my advice is that you should live life to its fullest and do novel and interesting things. That way, in case you’re a simulation, whoever created you will be less likely to get bored and switch you off.…

My guess is that these phenomena can exist much more generally than in the carbon-based examples we know of. As mentioned in Chapter 11, I believe that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed. Since matter can be arranged to process information in numerous ways of vastly varying complexity, this implies a rich variety of levels and types of consciousness. The particular type of consciousness that we subjectively know is then a phenomenon that arises in certain highly complex physical systems that input, process, store and output information.

All too often, schools resemble museums, reflecting the past rather than shaping the future. The curriculum should shift from one watered down by consensus and lobbying to skills our century needs for relationships, health, contraception, time management, critical thinking and recognizing propaganda. For youngsters, learning a global language and typing should trump long division and writing cursive.

my key role is inspiring a scientific lifestyle, curiosity and desire to learn more.