Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | September 2026

September 14, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In the September 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape, Sean Carroll opens with a rare mea culpa: he made a significant error in a previous AMA about quantum mechanics, specifically regarding an EPR-style double-slit experiment. The setup involved two entangled particles, one sent to Alice and one to Bob, each with their own double-slit apparatus. Carroll had initially answered that if Alice measured which slit her particle went through, Bob’s interference pattern would disappear—implying a faster-than-light signal. The correction, pointed out by listeners and a physicist friend, is that there was never an interference pattern to begin with. Because the two particles were already entangled, Bob’s particle was never in a pure state capable of interference, even before any measurement by Alice. “You’ve basically pre-detected, pre-measured, even if you don’t know the outcome,” Carroll explains. The mistake would have violated theorems forbidding superluminal signaling, so the correct answer preserves causality.

The Alcubierre Drive and Black Holes

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What you'll learn

1 (00:22) **Opening & Corrections** - Sean begins the September 2026 AMA with two corrections from previous episodes.
2 (11:01) **Alcubierre Drive & Black Hole Escape** - A listener asks if an Alcubierre warp drive could escape a black hole.
3 (24:54) **Anthropic Reasoning & Full Non-Indexical Conditioning** - A priority question probes how Sean's favored "full non-indexical conditioning" (FNC) can support multiverse arguments for fine-tuning.
4 (32:38) **City Size, Attention, & Walking Speed** - A listener connects a discussion on city scaling laws with a previous episode on directed vs. involuntary attention.
5 (34:34) **Physicists & New Mathematics** - A listener asks how physicists approach mathematical concepts that don't yet have a use case.
6 (36:48) **Human vs. AI Juries** - If innocent of a serious crime, would you prefer 12 human jurors or 12 AI jurors?
7 (38:50) **Gravitational Waves for Communication** - A listener asks if information can be passed via gravitational waves and what applications that might have.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Sean Carroll

Show Notes

Welcome to the September 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

Blog post with show notes and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/09/14/ama-september-2026/

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