>what if the math is the reality, what happens then?
Magic. Reversing the relationship between reality and our interpretation of it literally means bending reality with ideas. In this case magic is matrix multiplication.
Yeah. I think the downside is that you end up even further into the "shut-up and compute" paradigm of physics that we are already in.
But if you get predictions from the theory that turn out to be true in the end (like entanglement, Bell's inequality, etc) then it gives you a lot of confidence in your theory.
I don't know how it'll turn out. At this point people are throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks to get physics out of the local minima it seems to have found itself in.
I don't think Carroll or anyone else is naively wandering into this endeavor from a philosophical standpoint though.
I fully agree to the last point. He had (and probably/hopefully continues to have) very interesting discussions on all kinds of topics ranging from physics to biology to philosophy to psychology to social topics to ... in his mindscape podcast
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/
Magic. Reversing the relationship between reality and our interpretation of it literally means bending reality with ideas. In this case magic is matrix multiplication.