303 | AMA | February 2025

3201.556 - 3224.396 Sean Carroll

but then also tell me the configuration of the system at some other time. And I'm going to search through all possible ways to connect the configuration at the early time to the configuration at the late time. I'm going to choose the one that minimizes a certain number called the action. So you can show that the actual behavior of systems under these two ways of talking are completely equivalent.