The local and the global

When you win a Nobel prize (or become a bestselling futurist for that matter!), you can give your opinions on anything and people will believe you. Works best if you are a physicist...:) Seriously though, I loved the talk by David Gross (the 2004 Nobel prize winner for Physics) during the Future of Physics conference at KITP. (You can listen to an audio recording of the talk from the last link on the page) Some of the questions brought up -- Can we measure the onset of consciousness in an infant? Is quantum mechanics the ultimate description of nature? Do take some time to listen to it...its well worth it!

A~

PS One of the topics discussed was why quantum mechanics breaks down at the level of complex systems. For me, this seems to tie into the idea of local effects and global outcomes (one of the backbones of complexity theory) I cant place my finger on it as yet though...

An interesting addendum to this post would be the Schrodinger's cat paradox