Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Do aliens exist?

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Do aliens exist? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

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Speaker 1: I am Morgan and the creator of PhD Comics. And
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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and definitely not an
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Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. And welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge
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Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio. Listeners
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Speaker 1: of the podcast will though that I am particularly fascinated
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Speaker 1: by aliens and the search for alien intelligence, because I
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Speaker 1: hope that those aliens will one day reveal the future
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Speaker 1: and secrets of physics to us. But I'm also equally
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Speaker 1: fascinated in the search for intelligence here on Earth. And
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Speaker 1: I don't mean among the political class, but I mean
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Speaker 1: in our computers, whether our computers can be intelligent, whether
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Speaker 1: they will be intelligent, maybe they will discover secrets of
0:46
Speaker 1: physics and unraveled them for us. Well, today we have
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Speaker 1: an amazing combination of those two ideas wrapped up together
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Speaker 1: in one podcast. Yeah, we are once again taking questions
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Speaker 1: from some friends of ours, so to be on the podcast,
1:16
Speaker 1: we have the host of a popular podcast here to
1:20
Speaker 1: ask us questions. So to be on the program, we
1:23
Speaker 1: have the host of the podcast Sleepwalkers with us here today,
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Speaker 1: So Kara Price and Oz Walshing. Hey, guys, hi, Hi,
1:37
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on, thanks for having us. We're not
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Speaker 1: just listeners, but we're we're super listeners and big fans
1:42
Speaker 1: and hoping that you can explain the universe to us today,
1:45
Speaker 1: not the whole universe, just some sounds like a great
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Speaker 1: idea of for podcast. Yeah, So Kara and Oz are
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Speaker 1: produced and host the podcast Sleepwalkers, which is also by
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Speaker 1: Our Heart Radio, and which is about everything you need
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Speaker 1: to know about artificial intelligence, right guys, hopefully it is everything,
2:04
Speaker 1: but yeah, the way it's affecting people's lives in different areas.
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Speaker 1: And I was interested, you know, to hear Daniel that
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Speaker 1: you use machine learning in your work, because we're focusing
2:13
Speaker 1: more and more on how AI can help us understand
2:16
Speaker 1: complex systems, so not just simple cause and effect, but
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Speaker 1: you know, multifarious interacting causes which produce hard to explain effects.
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Speaker 1: So we were looking today at death actually, and how
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Speaker 1: death involves the collapse of all these different systems, and
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Speaker 1: the collapse of one system might affect another system, and
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Speaker 1: how hard it is for doctors to predict time of
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Speaker 1: death because it's hard for people to conceive of the
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Speaker 1: interaction between different types of systems and different types of
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Speaker 1: data points. But that's something that computers are very good at.
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Speaker 1: That's right. One of the things we do is that
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Speaker 1: we take these big, complex pictures of particle collisions and
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Speaker 1: then we have to try to unravel and we have
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Speaker 1: to try to wonder what's going on in the data.
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Speaker 1: Is that we use machines, we computer intelligence to do
3:01
Speaker 1: that sometimes, but we also want to interpret it. I
3:04
Speaker 1: was listening to your podcast last week about making sure
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Speaker 1: these things makes sense and how do we understand the
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Speaker 1: decisions these computers have made. And that's the same problem
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Speaker 1: we have UM here in particle physics, because nobody wants
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Speaker 1: to publish a paper that says, um, the computer found
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Speaker 1: a particle in the data. We can't see it, but
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Speaker 1: trust us it's there. Very interesting. Yeah, we were talking
3:25
Speaker 1: to UM author Provoca, who ran DAPPA for a few
3:29
Speaker 1: years until Seen, and she was telling us that this
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Speaker 1: concept of explainable AI is a big priority at Dopper
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Speaker 1: right now. So cool to hear you're working on. Start
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Speaker 1: us off. Maybe if you can tell us a little
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Speaker 1: bit about yourselves and a little bit about the podcast
3:44
Speaker 1: and how we can find it. I mean, you said,
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Speaker 1: my name is Karat Price. I'm the co host of Sleepwalkers,
3:51
Speaker 1: and my background is well in content production, but that's
3:55
Speaker 1: not fun for a podcast. But I did have a
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Speaker 1: show on hof Post called Talk Nerdy to Me. That
4:00
Speaker 1: was a video show where we asked other big questions
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Speaker 1: not only pertaining to the universe, but sometimes pertaining to
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Speaker 1: the universe. So I do have a general understanding of
4:09
Speaker 1: some of the things that you guys talked about on
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Speaker 1: your show, and I've gotten to speak to some really
4:12
Speaker 1: interesting folks at NASA, and I've gotten to it was
4:17
Speaker 1: during the time of you know, when they first detected
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Speaker 1: gravitational waves, and so we did a lot of research
4:22
Speaker 1: around that, and I became particularly interested in gravitational waves
4:27
Speaker 1: from that um for the show. And also I grew
4:31
Speaker 1: up with a father who was obsessed with both the
4:35
Speaker 1: universe and extrachestrial life and actually edited a book called
4:38
Speaker 1: the Universe. And he was an adult man, so he
4:42
Speaker 1: could not go to space camp, but sent me to
4:44
Speaker 1: space Camp when I was ten years old. I think
4:46
Speaker 1: I went there before I went to sleepaway Camp. So
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Speaker 1: I've always had a solar system consciousness, I think more
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Speaker 1: so than your average middle schooler that has to learn
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Speaker 1: about it in school. At least I sort of grew
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Speaker 1: up in the shadow of the nineteen sixties and how
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Speaker 1: being a parent that really was obsessed obsessed with the
5:03
Speaker 1: fact that we had landed on the Moon, and obsessed
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Speaker 1: with astronauts and going to space, and also understanding sort
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Speaker 1: of is there life in the cosmos? So from a
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Speaker 1: personal standpoint, these are the things that I think about
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Speaker 1: kind of on a daily basis. So being on your
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Speaker 1: show is quite interesting. And and then also you know
5:21
Speaker 1: this idea of will we ever find life on Mars
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Speaker 1: or on other earthlike plants where they can actually survive,
5:28
Speaker 1: or will they find us? Or have they or have
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Speaker 1: they found this green and us tell us a little
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Speaker 1: bit about you. Yeah, I'm afraid I don't have nearly
5:37
Speaker 1: quite such a romantic origin story as Kara. But I'm
5:43
Speaker 1: interested in origin stories, origins of the universe, origins of
5:47
Speaker 1: computer science, origins of artificial intelligence. And I was a
5:52
Speaker 1: huge fan of Kara's work on Talk Nettie to Me,
5:55
Speaker 1: so um, when I started thinking about Sleepwalkers as a show,
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Speaker 1: you know, she was the first person and I reached
6:01
Speaker 1: out to for advice on how to build it. And
6:03
Speaker 1: then I got very lucky that she didn't just want
6:04
Speaker 1: to give me advice on how to build it, but
6:06
Speaker 1: also join the show. So really, you know, it's a
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Speaker 1: show which is about technology and about artificial intelligence, um,
6:13
Speaker 1: but it uses those topics as a way in to
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Speaker 1: have big conversations about our culture and our society and
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Speaker 1: what makes us human more are the limits of our humanity?
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Speaker 1: And so you know, as the series is progressed, we've
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Speaker 1: gone from looking at how algorithms are able to understand
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Speaker 1: us and know us in some sense better than ourselves
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Speaker 1: and thus influence us, whether that's to buy or to vote,
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Speaker 1: or to appear at protests or to keep swiping on
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Speaker 1: dating apps, And then as a series is progressed, we've
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Speaker 1: looked at you know, medical applications. As Karrol was mentioning, um,
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Speaker 1: what what happens in a world when we can use
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Speaker 1: AI to interpret our biological signals, a mess of our
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Speaker 1: biological signals to tell us when we might die, or
6:55
Speaker 1: the mess of our genome to tell us what kind
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Speaker 1: of illnesses we may be prone to, how tall our
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Speaker 1: children maybe and what color their eyes will be and
7:03
Speaker 1: whether we want to intervene in that. And our final
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Speaker 1: episode of the series of season one is coming out
7:08
Speaker 1: in two weeks, which features an interview with Yuval Noah Harari,
7:11
Speaker 1: who wrote Sapiens and Homodaeus, really asking the question what
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Speaker 1: does all of this new technology mean for our status
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Speaker 1: as humans? Are we on the verge of speciating becoming
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Speaker 1: a new species of people who are technologically enabled? And
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Speaker 1: obviously there's a bunch of people looming in the background
7:30
Speaker 1: like Elon Musk who kind of constantly ringing the bell
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Speaker 1: for for terror, and he's somebody who's worked on transhumanism
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Speaker 1: in the form of neuralink. Also somebody who's interested in
7:40
Speaker 1: the potential for us living in a simulation. Which is
7:42
Speaker 1: an episode of your show I really enjoyed. But but
7:45
Speaker 1: we try and take a more um, you know, more
7:47
Speaker 1: neutral line looking some of the optimistic things that this
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Speaker 1: new technology will allow for us and for our species
7:53
Speaker 1: to enjoy and perhaps even have more time to play
7:56
Speaker 1: or listen to podcasts podcasts. Well, hopefully I will make
7:59
Speaker 1: our next podcast, so we would have to ye from
8:04
Speaker 1: our voice hopefully cool. Well, if you are interested in
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Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, which I think everyone should be at this point,
8:11
Speaker 1: please go check out their podcast. But today we'll be
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Speaker 1: answering questions from Oz and Cara related to the universe
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Speaker 1: and aliens and astrology and fate, and so let's jump
8:25
Speaker 1: into it. Well, I think I speak for all women. No,
8:28
Speaker 1: I'm joking. Um, I think astrology is becoming a multibillion
8:33
Speaker 1: dollar industry with absolutely no uh grounded facts. And so
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Speaker 1: I'm always interested in talking about astrology, but I don't
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Speaker 1: really know so much about how it relates to astronomy,
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Speaker 1: even though I probably should. And so I figured i'd
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Speaker 1: ask a question about that and maybe you guys could
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Speaker 1: give me a decent answer. So I can, you know,
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Speaker 1: school my friends. So the question is, what does astronomy
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Speaker 1: have to do with astrology? Right besides the word stro
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Speaker 1: in front of it, I think I think you just
9:03
Speaker 1: answered the question. Actually, I think those letters are about
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Speaker 1: all they have in common. I mean, astrology is like,
9:10
Speaker 1: you know, looking at the stars and identifying constellations and
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Speaker 1: imagining somehow that the constellations that were in the sky
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Speaker 1: when you were born might dictate who you are and
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Speaker 1: the events that happened to you in your life. You know,
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Speaker 1: it's really mysticism, whereas astronomy that's like a scientific study
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Speaker 1: of the universe. Let's look out into space and try
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Speaker 1: to figure out what's out there and how does it work?
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Speaker 1: And can we build a model that actually makes sense?
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Speaker 1: And so there's really almost no overlap at all. UM
9:39
Speaker 1: overlap might be that astrology relates to constellations, and constellations
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Speaker 1: are kind of weirdly a lot of people's introduction to astronomy.
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Speaker 1: You know, people look up at the stars and they
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Speaker 1: see these constellations and that's fun. That sort of draws
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Speaker 1: them into the mystery and the majesty of the night sky. Now,
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Speaker 1: is it possible that, um, the way in which we
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Speaker 1: look at a strong g today, future generations will look
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Speaker 1: at what we think of as astronomy. In other words,
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Speaker 1: would it be a system for understanding the world which
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Speaker 1: future scientific revelations proofs or demonstrates was actually a flawid understanding.
10:14
Speaker 1: I'm sure that the future generations will look back at
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Speaker 1: our astronomy and they will snicker at our misconceptions. Right,
10:19
Speaker 1: they will think, oh, my gosh, they thought that the
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Speaker 1: universe was like this. It turns out it's like that.
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Speaker 1: But that's you know, that's the part of the process
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Speaker 1: of science is corrections, and there's nothing to be ashamed
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Speaker 1: of in a modern day astronomy. We've made dramatic understandings,
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Speaker 1: and anything that we misunderstand, we're happy to have a
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Speaker 1: new understanding. Astrology is a little bit different, you know,
10:39
Speaker 1: it's a it's not a scientific understanding. It hasn't come
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Speaker 1: to be out of a method which has been built
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Speaker 1: to separate fact from fiction. It is really just pure fiction.
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Speaker 1: When I think about astrology, astrology is to astronomy sort
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Speaker 1: of like what weather gods are or rain dances are
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Speaker 1: to meteorology, you know, like which is a much more
11:00
Speaker 1: precise science, right, yeah, exactly. You know. The thing that
11:04
Speaker 1: amazes me is that these things are so often linked
11:07
Speaker 1: because they really have almost nothing in common. And I
11:10
Speaker 1: go to planet I take my kids to planetariums, for example,
11:13
Speaker 1: and very often they start off a planetarium show with
11:16
Speaker 1: the constellations. They're like, this is this constellation, this is
11:19
Speaker 1: that constellation. And I'm thinking, this is supposed to be
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Speaker 1: like an extronomical educational experience, supposed to be learning about
11:26
Speaker 1: the universe. But constellations have no insight into the universe
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Speaker 1: at all. They're just they're an artifact of where we
11:32
Speaker 1: happen to be in space. You know, you look at
11:34
Speaker 1: the stars in a particular constellation, they look close together
11:37
Speaker 1: because of where we are, but you know, some of
11:39
Speaker 1: them are zillions of light years apart. You look at
11:41
Speaker 1: them from another perspective, there's no constellation there at all.
11:44
Speaker 1: So it always, it always frustrates me that essentially they
11:47
Speaker 1: begin with astrology, with with the zodiac signs, with basically
11:51
Speaker 1: Bronze age myths, you know, as an entrance to astronomy.
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Speaker 1: That always frustrates me. So the stars don't ever align
11:57
Speaker 1: really for anybody. I mean, some people have charmed lives,
12:02
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's because of the stars. Is
12:05
Speaker 1: it possible? And I've always wondered, you know, people feel
12:09
Speaker 1: the moon for example, Like I've been with people who
12:11
Speaker 1: want it's a full moon. They feel some kind of
12:13
Speaker 1: connection to the moon, or they feel some sense of
12:15
Speaker 1: excitemental wildness. Um, is that pure projection? Is there is
12:19
Speaker 1: there any possibility that sort of events or planets moving
12:23
Speaker 1: throughout Galic se can on a particle level affect us
12:26
Speaker 1: or connect with us? Well, I don't know, your friends,
12:28
Speaker 1: are they sort of they get sort of hairy and
12:30
Speaker 1: a little more toothy when the moon comes out like
12:33
Speaker 1: that all the time, when they sounds fascinating. Um, I
12:39
Speaker 1: think it's it's not a stretch actually said that the
12:41
Speaker 1: moon affects people, right, because the Moon is pretty close,
12:44
Speaker 1: and it certainly has a physical effect on the Earth
12:46
Speaker 1: that causes the tides. It affects the things on the planet,
12:50
Speaker 1: that's for sure. But I suspect that that's a lot
12:52
Speaker 1: a lot of that is psychostomatic. That you know, seeing
12:54
Speaker 1: the moon affects the way people feel. You have to
12:57
Speaker 1: do some sort of blind study where people couldn't see
12:59
Speaker 1: the moon and just feel it. But the other planets
13:02
Speaker 1: and stars, you know, we were It's funny. We're talking
13:04
Speaker 1: about this just recently on the podcast. It is true
13:07
Speaker 1: that you feel the effects of other atoms in the universe.
13:10
Speaker 1: In fact, every other atom in the universe. There's, for example,
13:13
Speaker 1: an electromagnetic field that connects you the protons and electrons
13:17
Speaker 1: in your body with the electrons everywhere. But those things
13:20
Speaker 1: are negligible because the power of those things drops as
13:23
Speaker 1: the distance squared, So the electrons and alpha centauri have
13:27
Speaker 1: no measurable effect on you and the out and the
13:30
Speaker 1: you know where that we know of where Jupiter is,
13:33
Speaker 1: where Saturn is, doesn't affect whether or not you should
13:36
Speaker 1: like say yes to a date or invest in SpaceX right,
13:40
Speaker 1: that's Alpha Centauri is acting super crazy to Well, to
13:47
Speaker 1: be fair, Dannie, you shouldn't base all decisions on astrology
13:50
Speaker 1: or astronomy either one. That's right. Well, the stock market
13:55
Speaker 1: is just a random chance anyway, so you know, just
13:58
Speaker 1: roll a dime and make your investments as advice and mercury.
14:04
Speaker 1: And they started with constellations because it sort of gives
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Speaker 1: you a little bit of context about what we humans
14:16
Speaker 1: seeing this guy and what we are yearning to understand
14:20
Speaker 1: how this guy is related to our lives. Right, I
14:23
Speaker 1: think it's really interesting, so I can I can imagine Daniel,
14:27
Speaker 1: it must be frustrating on the one hand to have
14:29
Speaker 1: the specter of astrology haunting astronomy. On the other hand,
14:34
Speaker 1: the fact that people have a baseline interest in the
14:37
Speaker 1: stars maybe is you know, net positive. I think so. Yeah.
14:41
Speaker 1: I just wish it wasn't diverted into astrology. You know.
14:44
Speaker 1: It's like if somebody asks, hey, tell us about you know,
14:47
Speaker 1: the particles in the universe and what everything is made
14:49
Speaker 1: out of. You don't start off with, well, there's fire, air, wind,
14:53
Speaker 1: and earth, you know whatever, like the four elements. The
14:55
Speaker 1: Greeks thought you begin with things we actually know. You
14:59
Speaker 1: begin with you true facts about the universe. Uh. I
15:02
Speaker 1: think I think there's so much amazing stuff in astronomy
15:05
Speaker 1: that you don't have to begin with astrology to get
15:08
Speaker 1: people excited, just while them with reality. The universe is
15:11
Speaker 1: a crazy, amazing place and there's lots of cool stuff
15:14
Speaker 1: out there. You know, when people refer to a whole
15:17
Speaker 1: you know, the universe telling me to quit my job,
15:19
Speaker 1: or it's just the universe doesn't think that I know
15:22
Speaker 1: that I should be with this guy or this girl whatever. Um,
15:25
Speaker 1: you know, like the universe has a personality and opinions
15:28
Speaker 1: about your dating life, and you would disagree as a
15:31
Speaker 1: degree in psychotherapy, right exactly what. It's the same we
15:35
Speaker 1: see in coverage of AI as people like to anthropy,
15:39
Speaker 1: anthropomorphize UM machines and algorithm algorithms, the algorithm, the algorithm algorithm,
15:44
Speaker 1: you know, and and it's kind of a bit of
15:46
Speaker 1: a cop out, isn't it to thinking about how we
15:48
Speaker 1: are responsible for our outcomes. Yeah, I think there's something
15:51
Speaker 1: really fascinating there. Actually, it says something really interesting about
15:53
Speaker 1: human intelligence and consciousness. Um. You know here, I'm very
15:57
Speaker 1: far from my area of expertise, But I think that
16:00
Speaker 1: that people are really good at identifying intelligence outside of themselves. Right.
16:06
Speaker 1: It's certainly a survival tactic to say, like, oh, this
16:09
Speaker 1: creature here seems to be aware and intelligent and how
16:11
Speaker 1: and be an agent and uh. And so I think
16:14
Speaker 1: that's how people identify, you know, will in other beings.
16:17
Speaker 1: And it's very natural to extend that to the universe,
16:19
Speaker 1: to say, like, you know, it seems like there's some
16:22
Speaker 1: organizing intelligence that's acting in this way to bring storms
16:26
Speaker 1: or to star wars or whatever. And I wonder how
16:29
Speaker 1: easily people will apply that to AI. You know, when
16:32
Speaker 1: we have a I that is that can mimic human
16:35
Speaker 1: human intelligence that really is interchangeable with a human being,
16:39
Speaker 1: will people be tempted to give them human rights? You know,
16:42
Speaker 1: because they appear to suffer, Do they really suffer? You know,
16:45
Speaker 1: these are really fascinating questions that I think you guys
16:48
Speaker 1: probably should answer in your podcast. Well, if you watch,
16:50
Speaker 1: I mean, if you watch, like there's Boston there's videos
16:53
Speaker 1: on the Boston Dynamics YouTube right of or there's there's
16:57
Speaker 1: videos where you watch robots either getting beat up or
17:00
Speaker 1: watch robots, you know, dog fight, breaking into dog, robot
17:04
Speaker 1: fights um or dogs pulling a truck? Am I supposed
17:07
Speaker 1: to feel bad for this robot dog that has to
17:09
Speaker 1: pull a truck as opposed to what dogs should be doing,
17:12
Speaker 1: which is playing and using their minds and building tech companies? So,
17:16
Speaker 1: you know, I think we don't exactly. Yeah, I think
17:21
Speaker 1: these questions are going to come up. I think they're
17:23
Speaker 1: already coming up, you know, just in terms of who
17:25
Speaker 1: are we who are we blaming? When when algorithms go wrong?
17:31
Speaker 1: Can you even blame an algorithm? Yeah? I guess the
17:34
Speaker 1: real question mark, I think obviously, you know, all goes
17:37
Speaker 1: back to you. That's right. He didn't know what he
17:39
Speaker 1: was making. And when the dog aies take over, we'll
17:42
Speaker 1: have to ask them if they're interested in astrology, if
17:44
Speaker 1: they just skip over and go straight to astronomy. Let's
17:48
Speaker 1: let's the dog constellation. What's the fight? I think Orion
17:57
Speaker 1: has a dog, doesn't the Ryan of a dog? There
17:59
Speaker 1: you go? Maybe the hunter? Yeah, But it seems like
18:04
Speaker 1: you're saying the answer is that astronomy is a science.
18:06
Speaker 1: It's based on facts and observations and data, But astrology
18:10
Speaker 1: is really just sort of people making stuff up. Astrology
18:15
Speaker 1: is spiritual mysticism, and you know, some people find it helpful,
18:19
Speaker 1: but it's definitely not science. In this political moment, you know,
18:23
Speaker 1: with you know, you have the ministers in Britain saying,
18:26
Speaker 1: you know, we're past the age of experts, and you
18:29
Speaker 1: have a lot of conversation about fake news in the US.
18:32
Speaker 1: And that's something we've looked at on our podcast is
18:35
Speaker 1: deep fakes and how manufactured media can you know, disturb
18:40
Speaker 1: the notion that truth exists anywhere, and that's obviously having
18:43
Speaker 1: big implications for our politics. Is that how much of
18:46
Speaker 1: a concern is that in the world of science that
18:49
Speaker 1: you know, in the end, somebody might turn around and say, well,
18:51
Speaker 1: I choose my facts and in my universe astrology is
18:55
Speaker 1: just as vad as astronomy. Well, I think that the
18:57
Speaker 1: sort of two answers, they're one. Um. I think the
18:59
Speaker 1: general public has already lost a lot of faith in
19:03
Speaker 1: science as an institution, not because science has misbehaved, but
19:06
Speaker 1: because our political leaders have begun dismissing it and then
19:10
Speaker 1: pushing it away from having a role at the table.
19:12
Speaker 1: The facts of reality are not always convenient. Um. But
19:15
Speaker 1: I think there's another angle to that, which is fakes.
19:18
Speaker 1: In science and actually there you know, there are scientists
19:22
Speaker 1: who fabricate data and produce papers, um with with images
19:26
Speaker 1: that are not actually taken from their experiments. But the
19:28
Speaker 1: fascinating thing is that they're very easy to detect. I mean,
19:31
Speaker 1: they just take an image that's in another figure in
19:33
Speaker 1: the same paper and like inverted or flip it or whatever.
19:36
Speaker 1: So there might be a day when scientists use sophisticated
19:40
Speaker 1: AI to generate false data for their papers, but that
19:43
Speaker 1: day is not yet here. Well, and you also just
19:45
Speaker 1: have the larger problem of misinformation in the case of
19:48
Speaker 1: you know, the flat earther movement. I still can't tell
19:50
Speaker 1: if the flat Earther movement is a bunch of trolls
19:52
Speaker 1: of people really believe that, you know, like, does anybody
19:56
Speaker 1: actually seriously believe that? I mean, I think it's a
19:58
Speaker 1: crazy option of YouTube rad goals. I don't think there's
20:00
Speaker 1: going to be much progress made in the scientific establishment.
20:04
Speaker 1: It's an interesting example of how the algorithm has impacted
20:08
Speaker 1: people's perception of reality and science, because those were most
20:12
Speaker 1: people who have been radicalized in that way. Um, we're
20:16
Speaker 1: radicalized on YouTube by being suggested other videos like videos, Well,
20:20
Speaker 1: folks just need to listen to our show and they'll
20:22
Speaker 1: understand everything exactly. Well. The thing about that idea of
20:26
Speaker 1: fake sciences that do you think, Daniel, that we can
20:29
Speaker 1: always just verify these things. You know, like if somebody says, hey,
20:34
Speaker 1: I can clone human beings but nobody else can do it,
20:36
Speaker 1: then you know that cast some shadow on their claim, right. Yeah,
20:40
Speaker 1: that's the nice thing about sciences. There's always somebody else
20:43
Speaker 1: out there who wants to prove you wrong, and so
20:45
Speaker 1: fake results don't last very long. Um. We talked about
20:49
Speaker 1: that on a podcast recently about cold fusion, how folks
20:51
Speaker 1: claim to have invented fusion that you could do at
20:54
Speaker 1: room temperature, but then within months lots and lots and
20:57
Speaker 1: lots of groups tried to reproduce it and couldn't and
20:59
Speaker 1: so it went from a media sensation to you know,
21:03
Speaker 1: um to fringe ridiculousness in just a few months. And
21:06
Speaker 1: so I think that's one of the real strengths of
21:08
Speaker 1: sciences that it has this self correction because we can
21:11
Speaker 1: always refer to the experiments because in the end, it's
21:14
Speaker 1: grounded in truth and facts. That's not always the case
21:17
Speaker 1: about you know, mainstream discussions in the news media. So
21:20
Speaker 1: you have two other questions, and these are pretty interesting
21:23
Speaker 1: about life and other planets, and also about those UFO
21:27
Speaker 1: sightings by the Navy. Yes, and so we'll get into those,
21:30
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. All right, We're
21:45
Speaker 1: here with carea Price and ask wall Shit, the host
21:48
Speaker 1: of the podcast sleep Walkers, which is about artificial intelligence
21:52
Speaker 1: and society and culture. And today we're taking questions from them,
21:55
Speaker 1: two experts and AI asking one expert about the universe
22:00
Speaker 1: in one cartoon is deep Questions about the universe. And
22:03
Speaker 1: so Karrol, what's here a second question? Well, it really
22:06
Speaker 1: freaks me out to think that there could be a
22:08
Speaker 1: bunch of life like creatures living on a planet that
22:11
Speaker 1: I don't know exists. So my question is, what are
22:15
Speaker 1: the chances that there's such a thing. Why do you
22:20
Speaker 1: say life like? Well, I guess, I guess. You know what,
22:22
Speaker 1: it really trips me out to think about there are
22:24
Speaker 1: human beings on another place that don't know that there
22:26
Speaker 1: are human beings on Earth. So we're all we're both living,
22:29
Speaker 1: minding your own business, shopping at whole foods, living on
22:33
Speaker 1: different planets, and is that happening? Is that possible that
22:36
Speaker 1: there is that there are supermarkets. On another point, like
22:40
Speaker 1: a humans like people or just like weird blobby green
22:44
Speaker 1: aliens who also happen to have whole foods. I think
22:48
Speaker 1: care is worried that maybe on alien whole foods that
22:50
Speaker 1: prices are lower. How do I That's impossible, That is
22:54
Speaker 1: physically impossible. No. I guess my point is is, you know,
22:58
Speaker 1: if there are earthlike plant it's could they be producing
23:01
Speaker 1: earth like human beings? Yeah, that's a great question. You know,
23:05
Speaker 1: is there life elsewhere in the universe? And you know,
23:07
Speaker 1: if they only exist as slimy, tentacled creatures, can they
23:10
Speaker 1: still push a shopping cart at whole foods? Right? That's
23:13
Speaker 1: a deep question about the universe. A lot of people
23:14
Speaker 1: have asked, um, And I think it's a fascinating question
23:17
Speaker 1: because it goes right to like the context of human existence.
23:21
Speaker 1: You know, are we alone in the universe or are
23:23
Speaker 1: we one of many? You know? Um, is there other
23:26
Speaker 1: civilizations out there? And I think that's something people have
23:29
Speaker 1: wondered for a long long time. And the fascinating thing
23:31
Speaker 1: is that we still really have no idea what the
23:34
Speaker 1: answer to that question is. But the most amazing thing
23:37
Speaker 1: is that I think one day we will This is
23:39
Speaker 1: the kind of question that we are currently ignorant of
23:41
Speaker 1: the answer, right, we don't know that if there's lots
23:44
Speaker 1: of other civilizations out there or we're the only one.
23:47
Speaker 1: But one day we will know, and people will look
23:48
Speaker 1: back and wonder, like, what was it like to be
23:51
Speaker 1: ignorant about this really basic question about the universe? And
23:54
Speaker 1: so it's fascinating and exciting and also sometimes frustrating to
23:58
Speaker 1: live back in that age of ignorance about the universe.
24:01
Speaker 1: But is it possible that there are other intelligent life
24:04
Speaker 1: forms in the universe? And we will never until the
24:07
Speaker 1: end of time? No, absolutely, I mean, all of these
24:10
Speaker 1: things are possible. Um. You know the here, here's the
24:13
Speaker 1: whole range. Like, we know that there's lots of earthlike
24:16
Speaker 1: planets out there. We know that like twenty of stars
24:19
Speaker 1: there have an earthlike planet, which is incredible because there's
24:24
Speaker 1: one in five. Yeah, and you know, we only learned
24:27
Speaker 1: that recently. We've known for a long long time that
24:29
Speaker 1: there's zillions and zillions of stars in the universe, but
24:32
Speaker 1: we didn't know how often they made earth like planets,
24:34
Speaker 1: like is it unusual? Um? And that's that's the problem,
24:37
Speaker 1: is that we only have this one data sample Earth,
24:39
Speaker 1: and so we were tempted to extrapolate and wonder if
24:42
Speaker 1: there's lots of others, But we don't know if we're unusual.
24:44
Speaker 1: And does earthlike mean between thirty and forty degree or
24:47
Speaker 1: between zero and forty degrees celsius normally with oxygen, nit string,
24:52
Speaker 1: combon dioxide and the atmosphere and water. What are the
24:55
Speaker 1: dorsal definition of Earth like and and whole. Yeah, No,
24:59
Speaker 1: it means a rocky planet. So this is a surface
25:02
Speaker 1: and roughly the right amount of solar radiation so that
25:06
Speaker 1: you could get liquid water on the surface. We don't
25:09
Speaker 1: know if there's gonna be liquid water there. We certainly
25:11
Speaker 1: don't know about oxygen. Oxygen is actually hard to make.
25:13
Speaker 1: You need microbes for a long time to produce oxygen typically,
25:17
Speaker 1: but just you know, very basic rocky planet with about
25:21
Speaker 1: the right distance from the sun so that the water
25:23
Speaker 1: is not frozen and so it's not super duper hot. Right,
25:26
Speaker 1: that's pretty basic requirement. And so we now know that
25:29
Speaker 1: there's zillions and zillions of those, And now the question
25:32
Speaker 1: is how many of those have life, and how many
25:34
Speaker 1: of those have intelligent life, and how many of those
25:35
Speaker 1: have technologically intelligent life, and how many of those have
25:39
Speaker 1: technologically intelligent and intelligible life right that we can actually
25:43
Speaker 1: communicate with and recognize. And the frustrating thing is that
25:47
Speaker 1: that the numbers either is somewhere between of those planets
25:52
Speaker 1: have a life and Earth is the only one right
25:55
Speaker 1: one over like a trillion, and we just really don't
25:58
Speaker 1: know the answer. It's that are somewhere in between, and
26:01
Speaker 1: the reason is that we've only ever seen this one
26:03
Speaker 1: planet where it's happened, which is Earth. As a book
26:07
Speaker 1: called The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Condera, beautiful
26:12
Speaker 1: book about about love, and the protagonist is wondering about
26:17
Speaker 1: his relationship and should he stay or should he go?
26:21
Speaker 1: And there's this phrase in German which survives into the
26:24
Speaker 1: English translation, which is einmal is kind mal or once
26:29
Speaker 1: is none, basically to say that if you only have
26:32
Speaker 1: a sample size of one, you can never make a
26:34
Speaker 1: good decision. Scientifically, we only have this one data point,
26:37
Speaker 1: and it'll it'll just blow it open. Once we can
26:40
Speaker 1: visit one more planet, just one more will tell us
26:43
Speaker 1: a huge amount, because if that the other planet also
26:46
Speaker 1: has life on it, boom, life on another planet. We've
26:49
Speaker 1: discovered it, we've answered the question. If it doesn't right,
26:52
Speaker 1: then it tells us that the number is probably a
26:55
Speaker 1: lot less than of Earth like planets have life on them. Um.
27:00
Speaker 1: And the other reason why it's sort of a struggle
27:02
Speaker 1: is that we still don't really know how life started
27:05
Speaker 1: on Earth. You know, if we had a really detailed
27:07
Speaker 1: mechanistic understanding of that process, you know, to go from
27:11
Speaker 1: lifeless but with the ingredients of life to life beginning,
27:15
Speaker 1: then we can answer this question scientifically. We can build models,
27:18
Speaker 1: we can say how often that happened, but we don't.
27:21
Speaker 1: It's still a mystery to us. We know it took
27:23
Speaker 1: about five dred million years or maybe a billion years
27:26
Speaker 1: or some controversy, but we don't know how it happened,
27:29
Speaker 1: and so we can't really speak concretely about whether it's
27:32
Speaker 1: likely to happen elsewhere. Well, I can have a question
27:34
Speaker 1: for you guys. So let's assume that there is an
27:38
Speaker 1: advance realization out there, or there are many out there.
27:41
Speaker 1: Do you think it's inevitable that they will all be
27:43
Speaker 1: overtaken by artificial intelligence, or that they will develop it
27:47
Speaker 1: and maybe taken over by it, as some people fear
27:50
Speaker 1: will happen to us. Do you feel like AI is inevitable?
27:53
Speaker 1: That's a very interesting question. Yeah, And I was about
27:55
Speaker 1: I was going to say that, you know, if if
27:57
Speaker 1: you if you think about statistics, you know, one over
28:00
Speaker 1: a trillion chance, I wouldn't I wouldn't bet on that.
28:03
Speaker 1: So from that point of view, you know, I would
28:05
Speaker 1: if I was a good today in a falsetti because
28:07
Speaker 1: I would think that, you know, in a statistical likelihood
28:09
Speaker 1: is that something does exist out there. So what is AI?
28:12
Speaker 1: I mean AI is statistics and probability, and computers are
28:16
Speaker 1: able to harness the power of statistics and probability in
28:19
Speaker 1: order to make predictions about the future. So you would
28:22
Speaker 1: assume that other beings of our sentience and intelligence would
28:26
Speaker 1: also create, you know, computer like machines to help with
28:31
Speaker 1: mathematical equations, and if they did, the logical progress of
28:36
Speaker 1: that would I think to be towards artificial intelligence. I'm
28:39
Speaker 1: curious for daniels thoughts on that. I think that's a
28:41
Speaker 1: wonderful question. Actually, once wrote a science fiction story in
28:44
Speaker 1: which an organic creatures develop artificial intelligence, which then wipes
28:48
Speaker 1: them out and then um and then thousands or millions
28:51
Speaker 1: of years later that that machine based society develops organic
28:55
Speaker 1: computers UM, which then grew into intelligence and wipes out
28:59
Speaker 1: the machine based to thezation, it all comes full circle.
29:03
Speaker 1: The organic computer even look like like you have one
29:06
Speaker 1: in your head right now, brain, Sorry news, Yeah, exactly, No.
29:14
Speaker 1: I think that these really fascinating questions, and this is
29:16
Speaker 1: exactly why I want to meet the aliens. Why why
29:19
Speaker 1: I want to collaborate with them, why I want to
29:20
Speaker 1: be first in line to talk to them, because these
29:23
Speaker 1: are deep questions that can only really be answered by
29:25
Speaker 1: getting more data. You know, is the physics that we've
29:27
Speaker 1: developed the physics of the universe or the physics of humanity?
29:31
Speaker 1: Is artificial intelligence and natural outgrowth of technology and computerization,
29:36
Speaker 1: or is it just the consequences of human thought and civilization.
29:39
Speaker 1: We really don't know the answer to that, and we
29:41
Speaker 1: can't really ever tell until we meet those aliens and
29:44
Speaker 1: talk to them about it. Well, speaking of meeting other aliens,
29:48
Speaker 1: we'll get to your last question, Kara, which is about
29:51
Speaker 1: those UFO signings by the Navy. But first let's take
29:54
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, Carrot, what's your last question?
30:09
Speaker 1: It's about something that is seems straight out of the
30:12
Speaker 1: X files, right, Yes, it is out of the X files,
30:15
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, what's going on with the U. S.
30:18
Speaker 1: Navy and UFOs. I've always followed UFOs sort of casually
30:24
Speaker 1: or just the hype the crazy, but it seems like
30:28
Speaker 1: it's in the New York Times now now I'm paying attention.
30:33
Speaker 1: I mean, unidentified flying object is a drone? No, if
30:37
Speaker 1: we know what a drone is, it's not a UFO, right.
30:40
Speaker 1: I mean UFO is a technical description of something in
30:43
Speaker 1: the sky that is unregistered by whatever the traffic control is.
30:48
Speaker 1: Teenager flying a camera, right, But in this case that's
30:52
Speaker 1: not so glamorous. It's the Navy. Pilots have seen weird
30:57
Speaker 1: stuff in the sky, and because they're in the Navy,
31:00
Speaker 1: we're trying to trust them more than you know, the
31:03
Speaker 1: tin hat brigade. Um. But the real question is is
31:06
Speaker 1: what they're seeing real or is it more likely that
31:09
Speaker 1: their brains are being, you know, in some sense overwhelmed
31:11
Speaker 1: by all the century data of flying that fast and
31:13
Speaker 1: that high. Um, what's going on? Tell us? I don't
31:16
Speaker 1: know why that step back per second to assume that, like,
31:19
Speaker 1: for example, I've have not seen these latest articles in
31:22
Speaker 1: the New York Times is there something new going on
31:24
Speaker 1: in the world of UFO sightings and spotting. There is
31:27
Speaker 1: a little bit. There's this sort of a long history
31:30
Speaker 1: of Navy pilots seeing weird stuff and reporting it. And
31:33
Speaker 1: there was like an incident in two thousand four around
31:36
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier where some pilots reported seeing something that could
31:40
Speaker 1: do things that no plane could do. You know, it
31:42
Speaker 1: could drop really really quickly towards the ocean, it could
31:45
Speaker 1: disappear under the water and come back up, and the
31:48
Speaker 1: pilots there said that it looked like like a big
31:50
Speaker 1: tic tac And you know, these things happen occasionally people
31:53
Speaker 1: brush them off. But recently the Navy released some footage,
31:57
Speaker 1: some video of an encounter in two thousand two thousand
32:01
Speaker 1: fifteen where the pilots actually got this stuff on video,
32:04
Speaker 1: and it shows these aircraft doing some pretty weird stuff,
32:08
Speaker 1: you know, making sudden stops and starts and turning really quickly,
32:11
Speaker 1: dropping a really fast, accelerating really quickly, things that appear
32:15
Speaker 1: to do things that we that humans couldn't survive, you know,
32:18
Speaker 1: because humans can't survive very very fast accelerations. And so
32:23
Speaker 1: there were these this footage and the Navy released it
32:25
Speaker 1: to the public, and so it's out, there's on YouTube.
32:27
Speaker 1: People like watching it and dissecting it. And and then
32:30
Speaker 1: there was just very just a couple of weeks ago,
32:32
Speaker 1: I think the Navy briefed a bunch of top lawmakers
32:35
Speaker 1: in the United States, you know, about what is the
32:37
Speaker 1: status of the UFO thing, and so it's sort of
32:41
Speaker 1: come like into the mainstream, away from the fringes, so
32:43
Speaker 1: that I guess that's the big news is that the
32:45
Speaker 1: Navy is being kind of open about it, right, I
32:48
Speaker 1: think I think that's what is throwing people off, that
32:50
Speaker 1: it's openly talking about these sightings and it uploaded video, yeah, exactly.
32:56
Speaker 1: And the Navy has now like an official policy for
33:00
Speaker 1: pilots for how to report UFO sightings. Um. Whereas it
33:03
Speaker 1: used to be like something I think pilots were loath
33:06
Speaker 1: to admit, you know, because it made them seem crazy.
33:09
Speaker 1: Now the Navy is encouraging pilots and giving them a
33:11
Speaker 1: formal process to report this stuff so that we can
33:14
Speaker 1: get a clear picture for sort of what's going on,
33:16
Speaker 1: which I think there's a lot about the times in
33:20
Speaker 1: which we live that now you're not crazy if you
33:22
Speaker 1: see a UFO, you're just being a good pilot. You're
33:25
Speaker 1: probably crazy to be a pilot in the Navy. Maybe
33:29
Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh No, I'm just kidding. There is
33:31
Speaker 1: a relationship between this and AI actually, because it's the
33:35
Speaker 1: same Senator Mark Warner. It's one of the people who
33:37
Speaker 1: has called for a briefing from the Navy. Is also
33:42
Speaker 1: today introducing something called dashboard, which stands for Designing Accounting
33:48
Speaker 1: Safeguards to help broaden oversight and regulations of Data ACT.
33:52
Speaker 1: And that was the man that is a golden acronym.
33:55
Speaker 1: It is pretty good. Here's the guy who's out in
33:58
Speaker 1: front on trying to compel technology companies to tell users
34:02
Speaker 1: the value that generating from their data each month, like
34:06
Speaker 1: literal cash value. But he's also the guy who, as
34:10
Speaker 1: Carro said, called these call for these closed door hearings.
34:14
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're closed door, it maybe something going
34:16
Speaker 1: on with the Navy about these UFO sightings. And his
34:18
Speaker 1: spokesman said something like, it doesn't matter what they are,
34:22
Speaker 1: whether it's drones or little green men. Senator Warner is
34:25
Speaker 1: focused on keeping our pilots safe and getting Google to
34:29
Speaker 1: paper back from my GEO location data. Well, I thought
34:34
Speaker 1: this is really fascinating and I was wondering, like, what
34:37
Speaker 1: do people out there think about UFOs? Do they think
34:40
Speaker 1: it's evidence of aliens? Do they think that's impossible? So
34:43
Speaker 1: I walked around campus a UC Irvine this morning actually
34:46
Speaker 1: and asked folks what they thought about the latest UFFO
34:49
Speaker 1: sightings and whether they thought aliens had ever visited the Earth.
34:52
Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. Do you think aliens
34:54
Speaker 1: have visited us here on Earth? Uh? Not? Why not?
35:01
Speaker 1: I don't have proof of that or any signs of
35:04
Speaker 1: them vis kipping us. Okay, cool, I don't think so. No,
35:07
Speaker 1: why not? It's because you would have known by then.
35:11
Speaker 1: Like I'm not sure, like if we have actual evidence
35:14
Speaker 1: what about UFOs, I don't know. It could be anything.
35:17
Speaker 1: I think it's possible, but I don't think like there's
35:20
Speaker 1: any reason to think that they have, um what about us?
35:24
Speaker 1: I feel like that could be like just stuff in space, Like,
35:28
Speaker 1: but I think it's possible that there's aliens and that
35:30
Speaker 1: they visited us, but like, I don't have any reason
35:33
Speaker 1: to believe it. I guess. I mean there's been that
35:36
Speaker 1: whole thing is scenative, right, So I think it's definitely possible,
35:39
Speaker 1: but I don't know if there's definitely proof that it
35:40
Speaker 1: has happened. If they're here on Earth and flying around,
35:43
Speaker 1: why don't they just make themselves known right on this
35:46
Speaker 1: Their waiting for like us to become intelligence pecis by
35:49
Speaker 1: their standards. No, no, why not? Because I'm Egyptian, So
35:54
Speaker 1: that would mean that the pyramids would play and I
35:57
Speaker 1: don't like that. I think there's explanations that don't involved extraterrestrials.
36:01
Speaker 1: But again, I don't know to this generally skeptical of
36:05
Speaker 1: the alien hypothesis. Skeptical is a good word. Yeah, so
36:08
Speaker 1: some pretty well a wide range of answers they're right,
36:11
Speaker 1: and a lot of people seem very skeptical, and some
36:14
Speaker 1: people seem very Egyptian and strong opinions about us. I
36:20
Speaker 1: think he took that as a cultural threat. You know,
36:22
Speaker 1: pyramids they appropriated by extraterrestrials. Yeah, but I think overall
36:26
Speaker 1: there's a lot of skepticism. I think, you know, people
36:28
Speaker 1: have heard about stories UFOs, but I think they imagine,
36:32
Speaker 1: you know, if aliens came, it would be a thing
36:34
Speaker 1: you'd see about, you'd read about in the cover of
36:36
Speaker 1: the New York Times. You'd see the aliens meeting the president,
36:39
Speaker 1: right like it wouldn't just be one story and then
36:41
Speaker 1: fizzle away. So I think because people have heard of
36:43
Speaker 1: these stories and lots of times, then they sort of
36:45
Speaker 1: turned into nothing. There's a lot of skepticism now built
36:48
Speaker 1: up in the general public about whether aliens have visited,
36:51
Speaker 1: and that would be the time for aliens to strike,
36:53
Speaker 1: by the way, that's right, spoonful for a bunch of times,
36:58
Speaker 1: and then when our guard is down they can swoop
37:01
Speaker 1: in that why why would you imagine they strike? Maybe
37:04
Speaker 1: they're just visiting here as a scientific delegation to give
37:06
Speaker 1: us the secrets of the universe, right, But first I
37:09
Speaker 1: want to play practical jokes on us. Is that what
37:11
Speaker 1: you're saying. One of the things I found interesting about
37:14
Speaker 1: this story, um, is that the navy pilots, very few
37:17
Speaker 1: of them have actually seen these things with their own eyes.
37:20
Speaker 1: What happens is their radar systems or their weapons systems
37:23
Speaker 1: will will tell them. They will tell them as something
37:26
Speaker 1: there will see an object, and then they'll fly down
37:28
Speaker 1: to where the objects meant to be and they'll be
37:30
Speaker 1: nothing that they can see with their own eyes. Although
37:32
Speaker 1: there wasn't in one case where this kind of bull
37:35
Speaker 1: flews right straight past the window of the airplane, So
37:40
Speaker 1: short of aliens, like, what are the explicable phenomena of
37:43
Speaker 1: physics which would explain what's happening here? Yeah, this is
37:46
Speaker 1: really fun because I looked this up and I said,
37:48
Speaker 1: like what experts say? And the experts have like a
37:51
Speaker 1: list of explanations, but they're all very generic. You know,
37:54
Speaker 1: they're like, well, pilots fatigue, basically hallucination. But you know,
37:59
Speaker 1: we see these videos, right, so there's something there. It's
38:03
Speaker 1: not just the pilots being being tired, um or they
38:06
Speaker 1: say like weird atmospheric effects or you know, um classified
38:11
Speaker 1: government programs testing new kinds of aircraft. Basically your list
38:15
Speaker 1: of generic explanations. And at the end they always say,
38:19
Speaker 1: of course it could be aliens, but you know that's
38:21
Speaker 1: very unlikely, and so this just sort of this go
38:23
Speaker 1: to list. But the problem with those explanations for me
38:26
Speaker 1: is that they're not specific. They're not saying, well, I
38:28
Speaker 1: looked at this video and here's an alternative explanation. There's
38:32
Speaker 1: no specific, credible hypothesis that can say here's how this
38:36
Speaker 1: event happened, here's how that event happened. It's just sort
38:39
Speaker 1: of a general sort of the same reaction that the
38:41
Speaker 1: folks on the streets had. It's sort of a general skepticism,
38:44
Speaker 1: so like, well, I'm just not going to believe it
38:46
Speaker 1: unless I have three or four ten pieces of data
38:48
Speaker 1: that show me it's aliens. They're willing to sort of
38:51
Speaker 1: scoff off one event, which is fair, right, I don't
38:54
Speaker 1: know is it fair? I mean, if aliens came to Earth,
38:57
Speaker 1: how would it happen? Right? Like, I think that's really
39:00
Speaker 1: more interesting question, Like say aliens had come to Earth, right,
39:04
Speaker 1: what would that be? Like? Why would they be here
39:07
Speaker 1: and sort of zip around playing games over the ocean
39:11
Speaker 1: near fighter um, near U. S. Navy fighters and not
39:14
Speaker 1: make themselves known? Right? That's sort of a like in
39:17
Speaker 1: what scenario does that happen? To me? That's sort of
39:20
Speaker 1: the interesting question. You mean they could be like tourists
39:23
Speaker 1: or scientists studying that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. I
39:27
Speaker 1: mean we talked a minute ago about, you know, the
39:29
Speaker 1: likelihood of finding other life. My personal belief, not based
39:32
Speaker 1: on any science at all, is that the universe is
39:35
Speaker 1: filled with life and because it just seems very unlikely
39:39
Speaker 1: that the Earth is the only place for this to happen,
39:41
Speaker 1: and we know how many earthlike planets there are, and
39:43
Speaker 1: so I imagine that the universe is filled with life.
39:45
Speaker 1: And then the question is like, why haven't the alien visited?
39:49
Speaker 1: And you might say, oh, they're really far away. But
39:51
Speaker 1: it turns out that the universe is um is pretty
39:54
Speaker 1: old in comparison to its size, so it doesn't actually
39:57
Speaker 1: take that long to explore. Like if you're a single
40:00
Speaker 1: civilization and you want to explore the whole galaxy, it
40:03
Speaker 1: doesn't take billions of years. It only takes tens and thousands,
40:07
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of years, and the galaxy is very
40:09
Speaker 1: old in comparison to that number. So it sort of
40:12
Speaker 1: feels like they should be out there, that should be exploring,
40:15
Speaker 1: we should have been contacted. So then if you wonder,
40:18
Speaker 1: like why haven't we been, you have to come up
40:21
Speaker 1: with explanations like there they have come, but they're hiding
40:24
Speaker 1: from us because, like you say, maybe they're scientists, they're
40:26
Speaker 1: observing us, or they're tourists or whatever. When you say
40:29
Speaker 1: it's older than it's large, you mean it grows very
40:31
Speaker 1: slowly and therefore, um it's more navigable. What's what's the
40:35
Speaker 1: relationship between the age and the size of the universe.
40:37
Speaker 1: That that makes it more likely that we should have
40:39
Speaker 1: been contacted. I mean that the galaxy is big, right,
40:42
Speaker 1: and so you might think, oh, it's it's too far
40:43
Speaker 1: to get to those stars, you know, like the nearest
40:45
Speaker 1: stars tens of light years away or light years away,
40:48
Speaker 1: and the other side of the galaxies is thousands and
40:51
Speaker 1: thousands of light years And that's true, and that means
40:53
Speaker 1: it would take a long time to get there. But
40:55
Speaker 1: the but it's been there for a long time. That's
40:57
Speaker 1: what I mean that it's older than it is large.
41:00
Speaker 1: But we also don't have any life forms that live
41:03
Speaker 1: longer than We don't have life forms that live hundreds
41:05
Speaker 1: of thousands of years. Sure, but civilizations might, right, And
41:09
Speaker 1: and that's another question, is like it could be the
41:11
Speaker 1: civilizations only last or fifty years before they get taken
41:15
Speaker 1: over by AI or kill themselves in nuclear holocausts. That's
41:18
Speaker 1: certainly another possibility. Let's bleak. I mean, but you have
41:24
Speaker 1: to find hopefully, hopefully the stars will align and mercury
41:28
Speaker 1: will be in the right phase will survive. But you
41:32
Speaker 1: are confronted with that fact, the fact that the universe
41:34
Speaker 1: seems like it's filled with places for life to flourish
41:38
Speaker 1: and it's not that big. So life, if it had developed,
41:41
Speaker 1: might have found us already, but it hasn't, And so
41:44
Speaker 1: you have to try to answer that question, like why
41:46
Speaker 1: haven't we been just full on contacted by alien visitors? Um?
41:50
Speaker 1: But it certainly it's true that if aliens come to
41:52
Speaker 1: visit us rather than us finding them, it's very likely
41:55
Speaker 1: they're more technologically advanced than we are, which means they
41:59
Speaker 1: might have the technology to stay hidden. But you know,
42:01
Speaker 1: you have to wonder about the motives they're like, why
42:03
Speaker 1: would they say hidden if I went to another planet,
42:05
Speaker 1: if I found intelligent life on another planet, I don't
42:08
Speaker 1: want to go talk to them, meet their scientists, talk physics,
42:10
Speaker 1: you know, figure out what math they figured out that
42:12
Speaker 1: we haven't, um, why stay quiet? So it kind of
42:15
Speaker 1: sounds like you're saying, Daniel, that it is physically and
42:19
Speaker 1: mathematically likely that there are other life forms out there,
42:25
Speaker 1: But it's it seems unlikely that they would come visitors
42:29
Speaker 1: and be so kind of weird and secretive about it, right,
42:33
Speaker 1: like that would have these erful signings without a big
42:36
Speaker 1: splash or that you know, we would see these small
42:39
Speaker 1: glimpses of them. But and that's it, Yeah, exactly. And then,
42:43
Speaker 1: of course, you know, make some assumptions about alien psychology,
42:46
Speaker 1: which certainly I'm not justified in making. But it seems
42:49
Speaker 1: unlikely to me that they would come all this way, um,
42:52
Speaker 1: spend all that energy and then just sort of like
42:54
Speaker 1: not engage, um, and that they would be able to
42:57
Speaker 1: they would come all this way, not engage and yet
42:59
Speaker 1: still spotted. That seems sort of like clumsy and immatur
43:02
Speaker 1: ish in contrast with the amazing technology required to get here, right,
43:05
Speaker 1: You're like, it sounds like a bad plot point. There's
43:07
Speaker 1: also the assumption that we would know how to understand them.
43:12
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a whole other question, Right, do we
43:14
Speaker 1: even speak to them? Could we understand their language? Maybe
43:16
Speaker 1: there are aliens that are here, we just don't know
43:19
Speaker 1: how to understand them yet or see them because they're
43:22
Speaker 1: maybe in a different visual plane. I just always wonder
43:25
Speaker 1: maybe it's not them, it's us, it's me. That would
43:29
Speaker 1: be their answer, Yeah, what did you want to talk
43:32
Speaker 1: to this? It's not you? Well, we you know that.
43:37
Speaker 1: That touches on the whole different, fascinating question, which is
43:40
Speaker 1: could we even recognize alien life? It's possible we could
43:43
Speaker 1: land on another planet and there could be life going on,
43:46
Speaker 1: but it's just of a form that's so literally alien
43:49
Speaker 1: to us that we don't even recognize it because we're
43:51
Speaker 1: looking for life that's recognizable, because we've only ever seen
43:54
Speaker 1: life on Earth, and life could be you know, could
43:57
Speaker 1: take place on much longer time skills, you could have
44:00
Speaker 1: life that you know, where the beings last for hundreds
44:03
Speaker 1: of thousands of years, and their metabolism is crazy slow,
44:06
Speaker 1: and so we don't even see them moving right, They're
44:08
Speaker 1: they're talking to us, but they're they speak so slowly
44:12
Speaker 1: we only get a tiny little snippet of it. You know.
44:15
Speaker 1: It's we have to broaden our minds when we think
44:17
Speaker 1: about life in the universe because we've only ever seen
44:19
Speaker 1: this one example. Why is it I've always wanted to
44:22
Speaker 1: know that water is considered to be the crucial ingredient
44:26
Speaker 1: for a life. I mean, is it possible we'll look
44:28
Speaker 1: back on water as the astrology of nine And why?
44:34
Speaker 1: Why do why are we so convinced that two hydrogen
44:36
Speaker 1: one oxygen particle which supports our life, is crucial to
44:40
Speaker 1: all life throughout the whole galaxy. Yeah, it's a great
44:42
Speaker 1: question and the only argument really is that all life
44:46
Speaker 1: we've ever seen relied on water, But again that's only
44:49
Speaker 1: life on Earth, and so you're totally right. It could
44:51
Speaker 1: be that there's a completely different way for things to
44:54
Speaker 1: be alive and that doesn't require water, or like they
44:57
Speaker 1: can live in frozen water, or they can live in
45:00
Speaker 1: vapor or something like that. And so, you know, one
45:03
Speaker 1: question is that there is there earthlike life out there,
45:06
Speaker 1: and that would be fascinating because it's more likely we
45:09
Speaker 1: could speak to them and learn physics from them. But
45:11
Speaker 1: another question is are there weird other forms of life?
45:14
Speaker 1: You know? Is there life in the sun in currents
45:16
Speaker 1: of energy in the sun? Totally possible, right, so people
45:19
Speaker 1: are living off of the sun. Essentially, the sun could
45:23
Speaker 1: be alive for all we know. Australians, I've often wondered
45:30
Speaker 1: with their aliens. To our Australian listeners, we love you.
45:33
Speaker 1: I feel like our questions of an answer. I'm curious,
45:35
Speaker 1: Kara and Oz you sort of said that this idea
45:38
Speaker 1: of life and other planet's really trips you up. Can
45:41
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit bit about why that
45:43
Speaker 1: trips you up and why you brought these questions to us.
45:45
Speaker 1: I think the question of life is is very relevant
45:48
Speaker 1: to our sleep Bokers podcasts and AI because you know,
45:52
Speaker 1: people see autonomy and algorithms, they see an output, whether
45:57
Speaker 1: it's an A I'm making a song, or whether it's
45:59
Speaker 1: an AIM a king a diagnosis, or whether it's an
46:02
Speaker 1: AI doing a job that was previously done by human
46:06
Speaker 1: And the natural response, as we talked about, is to say, okay, well,
46:11
Speaker 1: you know, to assign personhood and say okay, that's life.
46:15
Speaker 1: But is it? I mean, it's such a big definitional
46:17
Speaker 1: question here what is life? And one of the questions
46:22
Speaker 1: we're going to look at in our final episode of
46:23
Speaker 1: the series is there a fundamental difference between carbon life
46:28
Speaker 1: US and silicon life computers. And if we do believe
46:33
Speaker 1: that such a thing as silican life exists, well it
46:35
Speaker 1: doesn't require oxygen or water to exist. And so I
46:39
Speaker 1: think the question which is which has been haunting our
46:42
Speaker 1: our podcast is what are we? And how do we
46:45
Speaker 1: define ourselves? And as humans we've always you know, I'd
46:48
Speaker 1: like to define ourselves in opposition or in the absence
46:52
Speaker 1: of so you know, if you look at the history
46:54
Speaker 1: of theology in the you know, in the in the
46:56
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, God War, a total explanation until you know,
47:05
Speaker 1: you had people who came to challenge the status co
47:07
Speaker 1: about the creation and the seven days and where the
47:10
Speaker 1: earth was flat, and so this concept of the God
47:13
Speaker 1: of the gaps emerged, where every phenomenon that couldn't be
47:18
Speaker 1: explained was was attributed to God until the number of
47:21
Speaker 1: phenomena that couldn't be explained shranked the number that you know,
47:26
Speaker 1: the God who was only responsible for those wasn't wasn't
47:28
Speaker 1: so much for God anymore. Um. And so I think
47:31
Speaker 1: for me, the reason why we wanted to get your
47:33
Speaker 1: incredible insight today into into life on other planets is
47:37
Speaker 1: because it really starts to put on the same strings
47:40
Speaker 1: that we're pulling on, which is, you know, what is
47:42
Speaker 1: life and how do we define ourselves? And you know,
47:45
Speaker 1: this desire, this human quest to explore the universe or
47:48
Speaker 1: to understand how AI works is you know, is constantly
47:53
Speaker 1: in search of a of a question I think which
47:54
Speaker 1: often comes back to who we are? Do AI lives matter? Basically?
47:58
Speaker 1: Well that and also are our lives at risk? I
48:02
Speaker 1: think it's a lot of people's big question. Not at risk,
48:05
Speaker 1: but you know, will we be dominated? In a certain sense,
48:09
Speaker 1: some of us obsessed about what life means here on Earth.
48:13
Speaker 1: Maybe there are there's clear evidence of life out there,
48:16
Speaker 1: or well some of us obsessed about life out there,
48:18
Speaker 1: maybe there's really interesting and amazing things redefining life right
48:23
Speaker 1: here on Earth. Rate I think it's always interesting to
48:25
Speaker 1: think about the way in which, you know, alien invasion
48:28
Speaker 1: is depicted in films and in science fiction. I mean
48:31
Speaker 1: not always. I can't speak so so much on science
48:33
Speaker 1: fiction and literature, but um, the idea that it's somewhat sinister,
48:39
Speaker 1: I think is what's interesting to me. That we fear
48:42
Speaker 1: what we don't understand, especially when it resembles us in
48:44
Speaker 1: some way, right, which is the same with robots. I mean,
48:47
Speaker 1: if you look at truly again going back to this,
48:49
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of Boston Dynamics examples, If you
48:51
Speaker 1: look at some of these robots that they're developing, it's uncanny.
48:55
Speaker 1: Not that they it's the uncanny valley. It's not so
48:57
Speaker 1: much as they look like human beings, but they look
49:00
Speaker 1: almost like dogs or almost like human beings. And that's
49:03
Speaker 1: what's really scary about it, Not that it's some robot
49:07
Speaker 1: version of a person. It's a robot that looks like
49:11
Speaker 1: what a person is supposed to be and it makes
49:13
Speaker 1: you feel, right, it makes you feel This week, there's
49:16
Speaker 1: been there's been two stories, right. There's been the continuing
49:19
Speaker 1: interest in the UFOs and the navy hearings, and has
49:23
Speaker 1: also been the methane emerging from Mars. And people don't
49:26
Speaker 1: care so much about the methane emerging from Mars because
49:30
Speaker 1: it's not human like and even if it does signify life,
49:32
Speaker 1: it doesn't signify any kind of life that we can
49:35
Speaker 1: computer similar to our own. Whereas these things flying through
49:38
Speaker 1: the sky obviously you know, bring to mind pilots, that's right.
49:42
Speaker 1: And so for those of you who are unaware about
49:44
Speaker 1: the methane issue, people have found methane on the atmosphere
49:48
Speaker 1: of Mars, and that's usually a hallmark of microbial life,
49:51
Speaker 1: that these little bugs are producing methane as they metabolize something.
49:55
Speaker 1: And it's convincing because methane doesn't last very long, and
49:57
Speaker 1: so it's produced, it breaks down the atmos fear, which
50:00
Speaker 1: means if you find it, he was recently made. And
50:03
Speaker 1: some people wonder if there's microbial life under the ground
50:06
Speaker 1: on Mars, and that there is another fascinating question about
50:09
Speaker 1: whether there's life elsewhere in the universe that we talked
50:11
Speaker 1: about once in this podcast, which is are we the aliens?
50:15
Speaker 1: Because there's one school of thought that says maybe life
50:17
Speaker 1: began on Mars and then came to Earth as microbes
50:21
Speaker 1: and then flourished. Right, we don't understand the process for
50:24
Speaker 1: how this began, and it's certainly possible for rocks to
50:27
Speaker 1: get blasted off the surface of Mars and land on Earth.
50:30
Speaker 1: So one not too crazy theory is that we are
50:34
Speaker 1: all Martians. Well that's the immigration debate right there. No,
50:38
Speaker 1: I mean it is when we when we talk about
50:40
Speaker 1: the United States, No wall will protect us from Mars.
50:43
Speaker 1: All right, Maybe we should say that for the next podcast.
50:46
Speaker 1: But thank you so much Kara and Oz for joining
50:48
Speaker 1: us here to the m bringing your questions. So if
50:50
Speaker 1: people want to find your podcast, what do they search
50:52
Speaker 1: for Sleepwalkers podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
50:56
Speaker 1: your podcasts or the i Art radio app, Yeah, and
51:00
Speaker 1: usta crow or Instagram, Twitter? All right, Well, thank you
51:02
Speaker 1: for joining us today and we look forward to hearing
51:05
Speaker 1: your podcast. Thanks retreat to talk to you. If you
51:17
Speaker 1: still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
51:20
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
51:23
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
51:26
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's One Word, or email us at
51:30
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
51:33
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
51:36
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