In this episode, I speak with Nobel laureate Gerard ’t Hooft, a theoretical physicist known for his work on the electroweak interaction and his radical ideas about quantum mechanics. To him, the universe is a cosmic pinball machine. Every ball follows a fixed path. No randomness. No mystery. We only invented quantum mechanics to cope with our ignorance. In his picture, there are no real numbers. No wave functions. No superposition. Just discrete states clicking forward, one after another, beneath everything we see.

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Timestamps:

- 00:00 - Why Quantum Mechanics is Fundamentally Wrong

- 05:00 - The Frustrating Blind Spots of Modern Physicists

- 11:27 - The "Hidden Variables" That Truly Explain Reality

- 17:00 - The "True" Equations of the Universe Will Have No Superposition

- 23:00 - Our Universe as a Cellular Automaton

- 30:02 - Why Real Numbers Don't Exist in Physics

- 39:14 - Can This Radical Theory Even Be Falsified?

- 46:29 - How Superdeterminism Defeats Bell's Theorem

- 58:19 - 't Hooft's Radical View on Quantum Gravity

- 1:08:24 - Solving the Black Hole Information Paradox with "Clones"

- 1:14:00 - What YOU Would Experience Falling Into a Black Hole

- 1:20:17 - How 't Hooft Almost Beat a Nobel Prize Discovery

Links Mentioned:

- Gerard’s site: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/

- Gerard’s papers: https://inspirehep.net/authors/1019113

- Cellular Automaton Interpretation Of Quantum Mechanics [Book]: https://www.amazon.com/Cellular-Automaton-Interpretation-Mechanics-Fundamental/dp/3319823140

- David Wallace [TOE]: https://youtu.be/4MjNuJK5RzM

- Emily Adlam & Jacob Barandes [TOE]: https://youtu.be/rw1ewLJUgOg

- Roger Penrose [TOE]: https://youtu.be/sGm505TFMbU

- Conway’s Game Of Life: https://playgameoflife.com/

- Julian Barbour [TOE]: https://youtu.be/bprxrGaf0Os

- Emily Adlam [TOE]: https://youtu.be/6I2OhmVWLMs

- Sabine’s video on Gerard: https://youtu.be/2kxoq5UzAEQ

- Sabine Hossenfelder [TOE]: https://youtu.be/E3y-Z0pgupg

- Tim Palmer [TOE]: https://youtu.be/vlklA6jsS8A

- Carlo Rovelli [TOE]: https://youtu.be/hF4SAketEHY

- Stephen Wolfram [TOE]: https://youtu.be/0YRlQQw0d-4

- Bernardo Kastrup & Sabine Hossenfelder [TOE]: https://youtu.be/kJmBmopxc1k

- Tim Maudlin [TOE]: https://youtu.be/fU1bs5o3nss

- Jacob Barandes [TOE]: https://youtu.be/wrUvtqr4wOs

- Ted Jacobson [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3mhctWlXyV8

- Claudia De Rham [TOE]: https://youtu.be/Ve_Mpd6dGv8

- Neil Turok [TOE]: https://youtu.be/ZUp9x44N3uE

- Latham Boyle [TOE]: https://youtu.be/nyLeeEFKk04

- David Kaiser [TOE]: https://youtu.be/_yebLXsIdwo

- String Theory Iceberg [TOE]: https://youtu.be/X4PdPnQuwjY

- Birth of Asymptotic Freedom [Paper]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0550321385902068

- How To Become A Good Theoretical Physicist [Article]: https://www.goodtheorist.science/index.html

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