# Quote — Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe

> I... ended up at the , focusing on environmental issues. I wanted to... make our planet a better place, and felt that the main problem... [was] that we didn't properly use... technology... I... was intrigued by... creating economic incentives that aligned... egoism with the common good. ...I soon grew disillusioned, concluding that economics was... intellectual prostitution... rewarded for saying what the powers that be wanted to hear. ...[T]he book that changed everything: ...[W]hat did Feynman see that I missed in high school? ...I sat down with... ... and started reading, "If... all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed... " ...I read on ...I felt like I was having a religious experience I finally got it!

- Author: [Max Tegmark](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark.md)
- Book: [Our Mathematical Universe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark/our-mathematical-universe.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark#Our_Mathematical_Universe:_My_Quest_for_the_Ultimate_Nature_of_Reality_(2014)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark/our-mathematical-universe/i-ended-up-at-the

## More from this book

> The very fabric of our physical world, space itself, could be a purely mathematical object in the sense that its only intrinsic properties are mathematical... as dimensionality, and topology.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark/our-mathematical-universe/the-very-fabric.md)

> In 1814... Joseph von Fraunhofer invented... a spectrograph, which let him separate white light into into a rainbow of colors... He discovered mysterious dark lines in the rainbow... and... the detailed positions of these lines... depended on what the light source was made of, constituting a kind of spectral fingerprint. During the following decades such spectra were measured and catalogued for many... substances. ...Sensationally, the spectrum of sunlight revealed that the Sun... contained elements... such as . Moreover... it revealed that stars are made of roughly the same mixture of gases as the Sun! This clinched it in favor of Bruno: stars are distant suns...

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark/our-mathematical-universe/in-1814-joseph.md)

> But I’ve suddenly changed my mind and turned more optimistic about our cosmic significance. Why? Because I’ve come to believe that advanced evolved life is very rare, yet has huge future potential, making our place in space and time remarkably significant.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-tegmark/our-mathematical-universe/but-ive-suddenly.md)