Leonard Susskind: Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, and Black Holes

Leonard Susskind is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory and in general as one of the greatest physicists of our time both as a researcher and an educator. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on iTunes or support it on Patreon. Here’s the outline with timestamps for this episode (on some players you can click on the timestamp to jump to that point in the episode): 00:00 – Introduction 01:02 – Richard Feynman 02:09 – Visualization and intuition 06:45 – Ego in Science 09:27 – Academia 11:18 – Developing ideas 12:12 – Quantum computers 21:37 – Universe as an information processing system 26:35 – Machine learning 29:47 – Predicting the future 30:48 – String theory 37:03 – Free will 39:26 – Arrow of time 46:39 – Universe as a computer 49:45 – Big bang 50:50 – Infinity 51:35 – First image of a black hole 54:08 – Questions within the reach of science 55:55 – Questions out of reach of science