Carlo Rovelli

Rovelli argues, based on loop quantum gravity, that black holes become white holes, making them a shortcut to the future.

“So if you jump into a black hole in a short time for you, you're going to jump out billions of years in the future”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:59:00

Rovelli suggests primordial black holes may explain unexpectedly early galaxies without revising the age of the universe.

“I think it's more plausible that there were primordial black holes that gave rise to these early galaxies”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:52:44

Rovelli argues physics is overrated because knowing fundamental laws is like knowing chess rules without knowing how to play.

“You're asking this question to me as a scientist, a physicist, I think the physics is badly overrated”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:31:35

Rovelli holds that 'consciousness' is essentially the modern term for what people formerly called the soul.

“I think it just means what people meant by soul in the past”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 35:21

Rovelli argues the United States should return to international law and UN-based cooperation rather than seeking enemies.

“is to go back to more power to international legality, United Nations collaboration”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:03:43

Rovelli says he is most worried that most AI funding goes to military purposes amid great-power rivalry and nuclear arsenals.

“Today, majority of money that goes into AI is for military related things”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 47:50

Rovelli recounts solving a physics problem with Anthropic's Claude that he could not solve with his students.

“last night I worked out a physics problem with Claude, which I couldn't work out with my students”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 46:17

Rovelli sees no principled reason why a digital system could not have everything a human has, including consciousness.

“I don't think there's anything magic in humans that cannot happen in a digital system, first”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 45:53

Rovelli argues reality should be understood as a network of interactions describing how things appear to one another.

“So we should understand, I think, reality as this network of interaction, how things look to everything else”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 3:50

Rovelli argues that the idea of an objective reality underlying everything is wrong, and that quantum mechanics shows this.

“The very idea of an objective reality down there might be wrong. In fact, I think it's wrong”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 2:45

Rovelli leans toward the view that war is recent, arising after agriculture, since many hunter-gatherer groups do not wage war.

“I'm not sure but I tend to think that war is recent because a lot of the communities on earth which live hunting gathering, they don't go to war”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 2:24:27

Rovelli thinks it most probable that aliens have seen humanity and ignored it as uninteresting.

“That they have already seen us and they thought we were totally uninterested”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 2:01:36

Rovelli says he would bet that the Big Bang was a bounce from a previously collapsing universe rather than the beginning of time.

“And if I had to bet now, I'm not sure, but I would bet for the second one”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:51:23

Rovelli describes loop quantum gravity, his main research program, as an unproven attempt to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity.

“It's a way of bringing together quantum mechanics and Einstein theory”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:47:58

Rovelli, while saying he does not support Trump, credits him with reducing hypocrisy in US foreign policy rhetoric.

“Trump is not my guy, not at all. But at least he has taken away some of the hypocrisy”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:25:11

Rovelli warns that Ukrainian strikes on Moscow with Western weapons are unprecedented attacks on a nuclear power and a dangerous gamble.

“Ukraine with Western weapons is bombarding Moscow. Never happened for the last century that a nuclear power was bombarded in its own”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 57:08

Rovelli explains that more time passes at higher altitude, a measurable effect of gravity on clocks.

“So up here, there's more time passing than down there”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 29:41

Rovelli contends that a quantum particle has a position only when it interacts with something else.

“you cannot make sense of the particle as something which always has a position”

The Joe Rogan Experience: #2554 - Carlo Rovelli (Sep 15, 2026) · Listen from 22:49