Grant Sanderson: 3Blue1Brown and the Beauty of Mathematics | Artificial Intelligence (AI) Podcast

49 thoughts on “Grant Sanderson: 3Blue1Brown and the Beauty of Mathematics | Artificial Intelligence (AI) Podcast”

1. I really enjoyed this conversation with Grant. Here's the outline:
   0:00 – Introduction
   1:56 – What kind of math would aliens have?
   3:48 – Euler's identity and the least favorite piece of notation
   10:31 – Is math discovered or invented?
   14:30 – Difference between physics and math
   17:24 – Why is reality compressible into simple equations?
   21:44 – Are we living in a simulation?
   26:27 – Infinity and abstractions
   35:48 – Most beautiful idea in mathematics
   41:32 – Favorite video to create
   45:04 – Video creation process
   50:04 – Euler identity
   51:47 – Mortality and meaning
   55:16 – How do you know when a video is done?
   56:18 – What is the best way to learn math for beginners?
   59:17 – Happy moment

2. 32:14 man I must be really crap at maths

3. Lovely! Thought provoking..
   A real pleasure to watch. Thanks!

4. I am a huge fan of 3Blue1Brown! Thanks to them I now understand many fairly complex concepts that without them I doubt I would have understood in the way I do now.

5. The unification of two previously distinct YouTube channel dimensions!!

6. lex, fantastic episode and guest !!!

7. this may be a long shot but would be incredibly cool….edward witten?

8. —Just because you're trolling me, doesn't mean I'm wrong (54:35)

9. LF: Do you think life has meaning because because we are mortal ?
   GS: What else would give this podcast the meaning, if not the fact that it will end ? How much more do I love this room because we will be kicked out ?
   LF: Just because you are trolling me, doesn't mean that I am wrong.

10. oh man this is good stuff

11. One of your best! I thought I wasn't a "math person." Turns out, after discovering @3blue1brown and @Eddiewoo — it was WHO was teaching me and HOW I was being taught math that together were the problem.

12. lex sounds like long Robert De Niro

13. 35:10 I wish I would have known this earlier. It took me 3 years of Mathematics at University until I realized that starting with concrete use cases and then going to abstraction is a way more natural way of understanding and makes it so much more accessible. Before I would just learn the definitions and not worry too much about examples or the physical motivation, because, well.. they're for the physicists and engineers, I thought.

14. 9:38 The only constant in life is change!

15. 14:42 Physicists often do possess a better physical intuition than most people, though. Imagine trying to explain slightly complicated physical phenomena like the movement of tea leaves at the bottom of a tea cup after being stirred or the mechanism of meander formation (not to mention complex phenomena like gyroscopic precession…) These are some phenomena that most people would have difficulty with explaining or even understanding at an intuitive level, even if they can't formalize that intuitive understanding. They would quickly admit they are not up to the task and give up, while realization of one's having such skills, relatively speaking, is often a major reason why people go into the field of physics.

    In a famous letter to Jacque Hadamard (mathematician), Einstein had described his thinking as follows: "The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'voluntarily' reproduced and combined…. The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of a muscular type."

16. I could listen to Grant all day. Good voice, smart thoughts.

17. Yo I am finally starting to see where this fits in with the work I was doing – thank you both for helping let my rational brain catch up with intuition…it's amazing how far some people can go off that alone, seemingly unconscious lol…like super-little actual formal math being used what so ever ha! I will be in the lab for a little bit now. I hope you both see all your dreams come true. Dream big, go big, leave it all on the field of play when you leave this place. One day maybe we'll connect and laugh over this shit – and if i'm just crazy and you have no idea, well, maybe one day i'll explain it … but I know I'm not crazy, or who cares lol – crazy like fox!? My 'slack gamble' to get attention and then get big brain ballers to listen seems to have worked….TY TY. I think I'm the dumbest genius to have walked the Earth lol…life long learning dude – thanks. Thank God, for ace pattern rec. skills and some clever hints. Imagine what I'll do next…we need to collab one day.

18. It was nice to see Lex being more relaxed and talkative.

19. Grant is a naturally smart individual. The way his thought wraps various concepts is even more interesting that Math concepts he is talking about. Great talk.

20. one of them is clearly more philosophical than the other

21. I am really suprise. Grant seems way ahead of philosophical thinking compared to Grant (It's not a good or bad thing) but I am suprise nontheless. I would love to have a conversation with both of them

22. When you ask, would you live forever, maybe I might be insane after a hundred years, so living for eternity is not preferable.

23. Infinity is an algorithm, an endless loop, but which is not endlessly executed either. With infinity you just mean, you stop when you are satisfied with the precision or size. It cannot exist in reality, neither in mathematics nor physics, because you would never stop to describing it. Sqrt(2) is an algorithm. Try executing it forever. The whole universe will be gone including you, so you cannot continue executing it forever. Also, nature showed that it is finite via the quantum "fact". We still can think of information below h, but just as a thought loop in the brain not yet stopped. In reality it does not exist any more. There is no exact square in nature, with diagonal exactly Sqrt(2), because the atoms or protons or whatever do not exactly fit into it… By the way: I really like 3B1B.

24. Grant is brilliant, yet does not resonate with Lex's existentialism. Grant seems to be not aware of his mental grounding in our co-subjective reality and unlike Lex had no good reason to attempt to deconstruct his mind. As such he is not concerned with the vicious cycle, that objective understanding of reality depends on understanding of mind producing it, which depends on understanding of reality. It's like trying to explain what is "knowledge" without using it.

25. you guys seem to be in love with each other 🙂

26. Grant’s so fucking smart

27. I have always thought of the complex number i as simply an ugly shorthand for "two variables that can't mix" that's useful because of the orthogonal graph space it can represent and all the trig that tags along. I really like Grant's point about this around 9:00 because e^i*2*pi*t*f really seems like a strange way of simply saying circular motion at some frequency when the equivalent idea of one-cycle-per-period is very basic. The Internet Age's plethora of quality content that is able to bring context and visualizations to these concepts is exciting, empowering, and in my opinion as binge-worthy as anything streaming.

28. (@4:54)
    >he doesn't think that's pedagogically helpful

29. An interview with Josh Starmer from StatQuest would also be nice 🙂

30. I imagine maths as pure discovery. The act of uncovering a fundamental truth about the world that has always been true, yet remained unseen.

31. Q: Why is the maths describing the world relatively simple and yet it describes pretty complex things?
    A: We live in a simulation and the equations need to be simple enough to be run, but complex enough to describe the physics.

32. ➗✖➕➖

33. Can anyone tell what does Grant say at 2:53? I understood servial numbers but that's not right

34. This make so much sense I can understand what you mean a lot. So much sense to it.

35. Good stuff.

36. What you may read below is a part of my conversation with one of my friends years ago (I saved it in my PC)…

    Only my posts 🙂
    Maybe relative to this video
    ============================
    as you know (and I told it to you before), my religion is mathematics
    And I accept the concept (which you call it god) years ago using mathematics he has applied in his(or her!?!) book and his existence had proven to me years ago … But now I'm in the second level which is not clear for those who still stuck in the first level (or phase)
    as I always say:
    "Blindly worship is far worse than prudent atheism"

    The first level's main goal was the answer to the question "HOW?" which was answered by mathematics (and the help of god using his book). Now for people like me who are in the second level answering to "HOW" questions are No more our main concern, but the "WHY(or why not)" is now our new subject to find out. In this level, unfortunately, mathematics wouldn't be helpful, and we need to make use of philosophy (which in fact is Not a scientific branch thus won't benefit from scientific problem-solving tools like math), But Not that philosophy which they learn it in universities (because it uses arguments and logic as its tools) … this philosophy is completely different … some of its tools are perfect ignorance and anarchy which looks crazy for people from the second level. I think it's enough for today and it is better not to bustle your mind more than this. :slight_smile:

    But someone may ask: how can I advance to the second level?
    There is not a unique formula that is practical for everyone, but there is a quote from an old book which if someone gets the point behind it then we can say he is ready for progression
    " both god and evil are in details "
    We believe God (or gods_ infinite theory in math proves the use of the plural in this case !?!_) is in the second level because he is also stuck in mathematics and has implemented it and is unable to break/defy it.
    =============================

    After years, I think almost the same ….

37. If there were a voice to math, it would yours Grant! ….. love your content!!
    Thanks Lex for your amazing podcast…. its the best for AI out there!!

38. Next guest recommendation: Matt O'Dowd
    — Astrophysicist and host of the amazing YouTube channel SpaceTime.

39. Next person to invite is Mathologer (channel).

40. Look up… fusion art and the picts.

41. honestly, this guy is the smartest human being I've seen in a while

42. I did not expect 3B1B to look like that

43. 31:17 love the discussion on accepting that you can't concretely understand very abstract concepts in a way that you can anchor your understanding simply. Kind of makes me think that is why these concepts are intrinsically abstract. 🙂

44. @31 minute mark regarding the discussion about infinity. Is it important to be able to 'visualise' or 'envision' (whatever these mean, exactly) infinities? We can't envision an arbitrary (finite) dimensional space, either. Why is it any different? Does infinity have to exist in nature for it to 'make sense' or 'be useful'?

    'To exist' has (at least) two different meanings in that discussion, though.

45. 34:52 explanations work better, if you flip them, so the pattern recognition already sets in unconsciously from seeing different examples, before you bring the “powerful thing” (generalization), instead of starting out with the “high cognitive load” and fill in examples after revealing the formula
    46:29 “You don’t really know anyone but versions of yourself”
    49:46 “Once you understand something, it doesn’t have the same beauty?” – Continuing the discussion about the “Euler”: dopamine, dating and death

46. Can science explain everything? https://youtu.be/v0AKUTHcI04

47. Grant lost himself at 5:02

48. Learn to program!!! Yes!!! I remember getting shit on on Reddit for giving that advice, but it's such a good way to get into and really understand math deeply

49. He's so frikin handsome

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