Physicist Jonathan Gorard: pressure and temperature don't really exist
burny_tech · x · 2026-11-06
In an interview, mathematician and physicist Jonathan Gorard argues that macroscopic properties like pressure and temperature don't fundamentally exist — look closely at water and there are only molecules bouncing around; we invented these properties because we can't see individual molecules.
- A galaxy-sized intelligence wouldn't know what "temperature" means: it could track every particle and never need our equations. At high enough resolution, space, time and particles themselves dissolve.
- Relativity and quantum mechanics both came from one realization: the observer is part of the universe, under the same limits as the thing being measured.
- Intelligence and consciousness may work against each other: far more sensory data arrives than the brain can process.
A philosophical long-form interview on realism and the nature of intelligence.
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