Science Advances One Funeral at a Time

Science Advances One Funeral at a Time

Even the best get stuck

Naval: There’s some deep symmetry between multiverse theory and Feynman path integrals, right?

Brett: You’re absolutely right. Feynman believed in multiple histories, but it’s an open question whether he thought these were actually physically real things or merely mathematical objects. He was relatively silent on the matter.

Feynman was a realist and an absolute genius—probably the second greatest physicist of the 20th century after Einstein—but he made one of the worst quips. He said, “If you think you understand quantum theory, you don’t understand quantum theory.” Which is nonsense. David Deutsch understands quantum theory. That was one of the few occasions when Feynman fell into irrationality.

Naval: I think it was Planck who said, “Science advances one funeral at a time.” Unfortunately, even the best get stuck behind.

I see this in my own field. Some of the greatest investors of our time—people like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger—are absolute geniuses but cannot wrap their minds around cryptocurrencies.

The idea that there’s extra-sovereign money that’s native to the Internet and programmable is foreign to them because their money is always something that has been provided by the government and controlled by the government. They just cannot imagine it any other way.

It’s just the nature of people.