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Could aliens teach us science? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: When I say the phrase aliens have arrived, what comes
0:12
Speaker 1: to your mind? Do you think about humans getting sliced
0:15
Speaker 1: to pieces and served for dinner, or alien ships blasting
0:18
Speaker 1: our cities from space. Well, here in our happy corner
0:21
Speaker 1: of the podcast Universe, we like to be optimistic. There
0:24
Speaker 1: are potentially huge upsides to an alien arrival for the
0:28
Speaker 1: curious among us, and among those I count not just
0:31
Speaker 1: the host of this podcast, of course, but you, the
0:33
Speaker 1: listeners in our community of wonderers. For those of us
0:37
Speaker 1: who are curious about the universe, meeting aliens who are
0:40
Speaker 1: technologically advanced enough to arrive on Earth seems like a
0:43
Speaker 1: great opportunity. Pie. I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist and
1:02
Speaker 1: a professor at UC Irvine, and I want to know
1:05
Speaker 1: the secrets that aliens have learned about the universe. And
1:09
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
1:12
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. My co host Jorge
1:15
Speaker 1: Champ can't be with us today, so it's just me
1:17
Speaker 1: and a guest to talk about the secrets of aliens science.
1:21
Speaker 1: Imagine for a moment the best case scenario, aliens arrive
1:26
Speaker 1: on Earth and they are friendly, and we can figure
1:29
Speaker 1: out how to talk to them, and our scientists can
1:31
Speaker 1: talk to their scientists. Maybe these aliens know things about
1:36
Speaker 1: space and time or quantum mechanics that we haven't figured
1:39
Speaker 1: out yet. Maybe we could fast forward human science a
1:42
Speaker 1: thousand years or a million years. In this picture, you
1:46
Speaker 1: can imagine human and alien scientists are like together, engaged
1:50
Speaker 1: in some grand project to unravel the secrets of the universe.
1:54
Speaker 1: If we can talk to them, and if they do
1:56
Speaker 1: science like we do, and if we can make sense
1:59
Speaker 1: of what they've learned, it could be an incredible moment,
2:02
Speaker 1: really a pivot in human history. But is that possible?
2:05
Speaker 1: As one listener asked a few weeks ago, could we
2:08
Speaker 1: even rocket or would they be too advanced? So today
2:12
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking the question, could aliens
2:21
Speaker 1: teach us science? Could we establish a common enough understanding
2:25
Speaker 1: to communicating about complex intellectual questions like particle physics? Would
2:29
Speaker 1: they be interested in the same questions we are, Would
2:32
Speaker 1: we be able to understand their science? Could it be
2:35
Speaker 1: incompatible with ours? Are we certain they would even have
2:38
Speaker 1: developed science in order to be technological To help me
2:42
Speaker 1: explore these questions, it's my pleasure to introduce today's guest
2:45
Speaker 1: Samuel Kimpton I. Samuel is a research associate at the
2:49
Speaker 1: University of Bristol. He works on issues at the intersection
2:51
Speaker 1: of metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Currently, he's working
2:54
Speaker 1: on the Meta Science Project, which seeks to unify the
2:57
Speaker 1: natural sciences, but he agreed to join me on the
3:00
Speaker 1: podcast to talk about aliens and how they think about science.
3:03
Speaker 1: Sam Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Daniel,
3:06
Speaker 1: So tell me first, how often does the topic of
3:08
Speaker 1: aliens and their scientific minds come up in metaphysics and
3:12
Speaker 1: philosophy of science. Is it totally fringe or is there
3:15
Speaker 1: like a whole journal devoted to this topic. Good question.
3:19
Speaker 1: Far from a whole journal, now that that would be
3:21
Speaker 1: a stretch. I mean, philosophers are very interested in thinking
3:26
Speaker 1: about wacky, far out possibilities and scenarios, so aliens do
3:31
Speaker 1: come up occasionally. There are also other monsters in there,
3:34
Speaker 1: sometimes zombies, vampires and the like. So I wasn't completely
3:38
Speaker 1: surprised that you choose to ask a philosopher to talk
3:40
Speaker 1: about this sort of thing. It seems to me exactly
3:42
Speaker 1: the kind of things philosophers might love to talk about
3:45
Speaker 1: because it's a great way to ask one specific question,
3:48
Speaker 1: you know, asking the question, how do aliens think about science?
3:52
Speaker 1: Could we understand their science? Seems to me a great
3:55
Speaker 1: way to reflect on whether or not our science is
3:59
Speaker 1: universe all or just human, you know, whether it's something
4:02
Speaker 1: we've discovered or something we've invented. So I would be
4:05
Speaker 1: a little surprised if it's not something philosophers already thinking about. Yeah,
4:09
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, it's something that I've been thinking
4:11
Speaker 1: about recently actually in the context of the philosophy of
4:15
Speaker 1: the laws of nature and to what extent we should
4:18
Speaker 1: be kind of realist or pragmatists about these things. And
4:21
Speaker 1: maybe we can get into that in some more detail.
4:22
Speaker 1: But there's definitely some value, certainly in thinking about how
4:26
Speaker 1: just beings with very different kind of modes of cognition
4:29
Speaker 1: might explore the world and kind of systematize their experiences
4:32
Speaker 1: as well. Right, So, you know, we've got our five senses,
4:35
Speaker 1: and that seems to be completely integralt up to how
4:38
Speaker 1: we're going to explore the world, and so we're going
4:40
Speaker 1: to be systematizing the world on the basis of our
4:42
Speaker 1: sense experience. But it seems certainly imaginable that some other
4:46
Speaker 1: creatures would have very different senses, and so the way
4:48
Speaker 1: they systematize the world and do science would be would
4:51
Speaker 1: be quite different. Indeed, in senses are something that philosophers
4:54
Speaker 1: I know, to talk about a lot. Is a person
4:56
Speaker 1: isolated in a room who has never seen the color
4:58
Speaker 1: red and notion of quality. But it seems to me
5:02
Speaker 1: to be sort of a difficult topic to explore because
5:04
Speaker 1: we are limited to our senses, and so we're sort
5:08
Speaker 1: of in a box, and it's hard to imagine, like
5:10
Speaker 1: what it's like to be in a different box where
5:12
Speaker 1: you experience the universe with totally different senses. It's the
5:16
Speaker 1: goal there to think about, like what it would be
5:18
Speaker 1: like to experience the universe if you could like taste electrons,
5:22
Speaker 1: or if you had some sense for dark matter or neutrinos.
5:26
Speaker 1: Is it possible for us to really take that jump
5:28
Speaker 1: into sort of logic our way into what it's like
5:31
Speaker 1: to be a bat and you know, what it's like
5:32
Speaker 1: to be an alien? Or is that really impossible? Exactly right?
5:35
Speaker 1: I think that's the exact sort sorts of issues that
5:37
Speaker 1: people might like to wrestle within this area, right, And yeah,
5:40
Speaker 1: you've got the reference in there to what it's like
5:42
Speaker 1: to be a bat, and famously, philosopher Thomas Nagil argued
5:46
Speaker 1: that we can't possibly know what it's like to be
5:47
Speaker 1: about but while that might be the case, at least
5:50
Speaker 1: we can sort of start to think about why that's so. Right,
5:52
Speaker 1: So the bat navigates by by sonar as opposed to
5:56
Speaker 1: kind of visual experiences, and while we can kind of
5:59
Speaker 1: do some side of sonar, it seems a long step
6:02
Speaker 1: from that to actually being able to know what it's
6:05
Speaker 1: like to be that bat. And so it certainly seems
6:08
Speaker 1: imaginable that there are just other actual creatures out there,
6:12
Speaker 1: or possible alien creatures that would just experienced the world
6:15
Speaker 1: so dramatically differently to us that it would be impossible
6:18
Speaker 1: to kind of get into their perspectives and their minds.
6:21
Speaker 1: And so this is quite mind boggling to think that
6:23
Speaker 1: the way that we're experiencing the universe is potentially quite
6:27
Speaker 1: limited in a way. And we know that it's limited.
6:29
Speaker 1: I mean, physics at least has told us that most
6:32
Speaker 1: of the universe is invisible to us. You know, most
6:34
Speaker 1: of the universe is dark matter, which we don't even
6:37
Speaker 1: know what it is, and even of the matter that
6:39
Speaker 1: we are familiar with, like neutrinos are streaming in front
6:42
Speaker 1: of us all of the time, but we can't see them,
6:44
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot. We know for a fact
6:46
Speaker 1: that there's a lot going on in the universe that
6:48
Speaker 1: we do not sense, and that therefore our mental picture
6:52
Speaker 1: of the universe is a very particular one. And it
6:54
Speaker 1: seems frustrating but enticing to me at the same time. Like,
6:57
Speaker 1: if aliens are so alien that they might be impossible
7:00
Speaker 1: for us to really digest, that also suggest that they
7:04
Speaker 1: have some very valuable insight, Like the more alien they are,
7:08
Speaker 1: the more valuable it is to try to understand their minds.
7:11
Speaker 1: But then periodoxically, the more impossible it might be. Yeah, interesting, right, So,
7:16
Speaker 1: like you said, it's tantalizing because even if we were
7:18
Speaker 1: to encounter these creatures, maybe we just have no way
7:20
Speaker 1: of communicating with them, so we have no into their insights.
7:24
Speaker 1: But then I guess there there might be kind of
7:25
Speaker 1: two dimensions to this issue. So what you said, they're
7:28
Speaker 1: suggested the possibility of creatures that might be able to
7:31
Speaker 1: perceive things that maybe we have some sort of knowledge
7:34
Speaker 1: of but no direct perception of, things like neutrinos and that.
7:37
Speaker 1: But I suppose another thing that we might think is
7:39
Speaker 1: just that, going back to the bad example, they kind
7:41
Speaker 1: of the mode of perceiving one's environment might just be
7:44
Speaker 1: very different for the aliens. So if they perceived by
7:47
Speaker 1: reflecting sound waves of surfaces, that would just give them
7:50
Speaker 1: a very different kind of experience. I also often think
7:53
Speaker 1: about the example of the aliens in that the Ted
7:56
Speaker 1: Chang story Stories of Your Life or the film Rival,
7:59
Speaker 1: and they have this very differently if I remember correctly
8:01
Speaker 1: as well, I guess, and so since I read the
8:03
Speaker 1: short story, but they have this very different perception of time, right,
8:07
Speaker 1: And it seems plausible to me that there could be
8:09
Speaker 1: a creature with a very different perception of time, and
8:12
Speaker 1: then that would just make the way they systematized and
8:14
Speaker 1: think about their worlds so different from us. Absolutely. I
8:17
Speaker 1: think one of the really fun things about that story
8:19
Speaker 1: and the movie is understanding and appreciating how difficult it
8:23
Speaker 1: might be to communicate with aliens, not to mention, like
8:26
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, their notions of quantum mechanics, but
8:29
Speaker 1: just like get the basics down, you know, and that's
8:32
Speaker 1: a whole other question, you know, And maybe for today
8:34
Speaker 1: we should put that aside with the question of whether
8:36
Speaker 1: we could discover alien messages, whether we could develop a
8:40
Speaker 1: common language with them. We recently had No M. Chomsky
8:43
Speaker 1: and Kareem Jabari on the podcast to talk about, you know,
8:46
Speaker 1: the universality of language, And something that comes up often
8:49
Speaker 1: in these conversations is not necessarily like could we understand
8:54
Speaker 1: their lingo and their slaying and how they communicate, but
8:57
Speaker 1: that there might be a deeper way to communicate something
9:00
Speaker 1: that's common, something that's universal. This is this I think
9:03
Speaker 1: widely held belief that we can avoid this whole question
9:06
Speaker 1: of language by focusing on the mathematics and the physics,
9:09
Speaker 1: which might be more universal. And Carl Sagan famously argued
9:12
Speaker 1: that we could use mathematics to find a common intellectual context.
9:16
Speaker 1: But how much can we say about like the universality
9:19
Speaker 1: of mathematics itself, What do we know about whether it's
9:23
Speaker 1: likely to be just the way humans think, like an abstract,
9:26
Speaker 1: sort of succinct way to describe the thought processes that
9:29
Speaker 1: we have, or something that actually reflects the objective structure
9:33
Speaker 1: of the universe. How do we probe that kind of question? Yeah,
9:36
Speaker 1: that's that's a great question. Daniel, And this is a
9:38
Speaker 1: whole area of really fruitful research and philosophy and the
9:41
Speaker 1: philosophy of of mathematics, which I certainly can't claim to
9:44
Speaker 1: be any kind of expert on, but it's it's it's
9:46
Speaker 1: tantalizing for sure. I mean, there's this problem, right that
9:50
Speaker 1: you might have encountered, a problem of the unreasonable effectiveness
9:53
Speaker 1: of mathematics. And it seems kind of surprising and really
9:57
Speaker 1: cool that mathematics turns out to be so good at
10:00
Speaker 1: describing the physical universe that we find around us, right,
10:03
Speaker 1: this abstract formal system that we've perhaps invented. You know,
10:07
Speaker 1: a lot of branches of mathematics come about just by
10:10
Speaker 1: mathematicians thinking in the abstract kind of having fun and
10:13
Speaker 1: doing puzzles, if you like, and then turn out to
10:15
Speaker 1: be applicable to real physical systems. And this this is
10:19
Speaker 1: kind of remarkable and maybe something like a hint at
10:23
Speaker 1: the fact that the universe is in a way kind
10:25
Speaker 1: of made in these mathematical terms and there's something objective
10:28
Speaker 1: going on here. So that's an interesting thought. Yeah, maybe
10:31
Speaker 1: there's some hope that that could be something of a
10:34
Speaker 1: universal that even crazy arrival type aliens might be able
10:37
Speaker 1: to communicate with us in terms of I'd love to
10:40
Speaker 1: believe that, and I'd love to think that mathematics is
10:43
Speaker 1: somehow the language of the universe itself, you know that,
10:46
Speaker 1: like if we're in a simulation and mathematics is the
10:49
Speaker 1: way that the source code has been written in some way.
10:51
Speaker 1: But it seems to me a little bit presumptuous, And
10:54
Speaker 1: let me take the devil's advocate position there and argue
10:57
Speaker 1: against it. The thing that makes me wonder about whether
10:59
Speaker 1: mathemat x really is fundamental is not that mathematics is
11:03
Speaker 1: not effective, because you're right, it absolutely is. It's incredible
11:06
Speaker 1: how well our physical theories work. And I'm a particle physicist,
11:09
Speaker 1: and we make mathematical predictions to like ten decimal places,
11:12
Speaker 1: and we go out in the universe and we do
11:14
Speaker 1: experiments and while they're banging on right, and that gives
11:16
Speaker 1: you this feeling like, wow, maybe this isn't just a
11:18
Speaker 1: description of the universe. Maybe it is the way the
11:21
Speaker 1: universe does these calculations. But the problem with that argument
11:25
Speaker 1: is that every theory that we have, every mathematical description
11:29
Speaker 1: we have of the universe, we know is an effective theory,
11:32
Speaker 1: not a fundamental theory. We know that it has domains validity.
11:36
Speaker 1: You know. For example, Newton's theory works really really well
11:40
Speaker 1: until we measured very precisely the orbit of mercury. We
11:43
Speaker 1: were like, wow, this might be the way the universe works.
11:46
Speaker 1: Maybe Newton had revealed the truth of the universe. And
11:49
Speaker 1: so there are many theories out there that only work
11:52
Speaker 1: in sort of a region, in under certain conditions or
11:55
Speaker 1: in certain systems, And can you say that they are
11:58
Speaker 1: a fundamental description of the never is a true description
12:01
Speaker 1: of the way the universe works? Definitely not right. Newton
12:03
Speaker 1: was not correct about the real nature of space and
12:06
Speaker 1: time and gravity, and yet his theory worked really well.
12:09
Speaker 1: And today we have theories that work really well, but
12:12
Speaker 1: we suspect or we are fairly confident that they aren't
12:15
Speaker 1: the devast theories of the universe. The current standard model,
12:18
Speaker 1: for example, will break down at the plank scale, where
12:20
Speaker 1: it needs a description of gravity. So how do we
12:23
Speaker 1: know that there are mathematical descriptions that are really fundamental,
12:27
Speaker 1: not just effective in some regime. Are we just looking
12:30
Speaker 1: at sort of like a patchwork of mathematical ideas, not
12:33
Speaker 1: like a true revealing of the nature of the universe. Yeah,
12:36
Speaker 1: an interesting. Dannally a very good point that it reminds
12:39
Speaker 1: me of a debate in the philosophy of science, realism
12:42
Speaker 1: versus anti realism, roughly the debate over whether or not
12:45
Speaker 1: science kind of gets that the truth of how things are.
12:48
Speaker 1: And the anti realists say that who say that it
12:50
Speaker 1: doesn't get the truth have an argument along those lines, right,
12:52
Speaker 1: They say, Look, all of these past scientific theories have
12:55
Speaker 1: proven to be false, so why could we hold out
12:57
Speaker 1: any any hope that our current theories are anywhere near
13:00
Speaker 1: the truth? But then the flip side of that is,
13:02
Speaker 1: like you say, the or perhaps you alluded to that
13:04
Speaker 1: these kind of false theories that are are mathematized as
13:08
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned before as well, nonetheless seemed to be
13:11
Speaker 1: kind of doing doing quite well, and we can we
13:13
Speaker 1: can do some good work with things like Newton's theory.
13:15
Speaker 1: We can send people into space and stuff like that. Right, Um,
13:19
Speaker 1: So although they might be strictly speaking false, they might
13:21
Speaker 1: be kind of getting at something that's kind of almost right.
13:24
Speaker 1: And we might think that the better theories nonetheless preserve
13:28
Speaker 1: something of the structure of Newton's theory. So then something
13:31
Speaker 1: that some metaphysicians and philosophers of science have said, in
13:34
Speaker 1: response to this kind of pessimistic argument for anti realism
13:38
Speaker 1: and a slightly more skeptical stances, that maybe what we're
13:40
Speaker 1: doing when we're describing the universe kind of imperfectly but
13:43
Speaker 1: in a way that kind of works and is then
13:45
Speaker 1: built on, is we're getting at some underlying deep structure. Right,
13:49
Speaker 1: So then maybe maybe our mass, maybe even something like
13:52
Speaker 1: Newton's theory is nonetheless latching onto some sort of objective
13:56
Speaker 1: structure in a much kind of broader or deeper sense
13:59
Speaker 1: than whether it's it's directly true, and so there might
14:02
Speaker 1: be some some hope there that that the maths is
14:05
Speaker 1: describing something that is fundamentally correct that's then sustained through
14:09
Speaker 1: the theory change. The idea there, I guess is maybe
14:12
Speaker 1: alien physicists also hit on Newton's approach before they hit
14:16
Speaker 1: on Einstone's approach that is not just a human description
14:20
Speaker 1: of the universe, but it really is an effective approximation
14:24
Speaker 1: of the way the universe really works. I guess that
14:26
Speaker 1: is that the argument. I think that I think that
14:28
Speaker 1: might be the idea. Yeah, right, I mean, we can
14:30
Speaker 1: also think we know that Newton's theory is false, but
14:33
Speaker 1: what we can still wonder why it's so kind of
14:35
Speaker 1: effective and useful for us, And perhaps an answer to
14:38
Speaker 1: that is that it is getting at some sort of
14:40
Speaker 1: underlying structure. In some sense, it might be kind of
14:42
Speaker 1: slightly grappling and growing in the dark at this thing,
14:45
Speaker 1: but it might be kind of getting close, you know.
14:47
Speaker 1: And so that's why we might be able to nonetheless
14:48
Speaker 1: use Newton's theory for all sorts of interests and purposes
14:51
Speaker 1: that we have. Yeah, all right, well, I have a
14:53
Speaker 1: lot more questions about how we might probe the universe
14:55
Speaker 1: and how alien scientists do as well. But first let's
14:58
Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right, we're back and we're
15:13
Speaker 1: talking to my guests, Samuel kim Deny, a philosopher of
15:16
Speaker 1: science and metaphysics, about how aliens might think about science.
15:20
Speaker 1: And when we took a break there, we were examining
15:22
Speaker 1: the question of whether our approximate theories like Newton series,
15:27
Speaker 1: whether they're just sort of like human versions of the truth,
15:29
Speaker 1: or whether they might be universal, you know, our alien
15:33
Speaker 1: physicists likely to stumble into sort of the same ideas
15:36
Speaker 1: as we are, or are these just sort of the
15:39
Speaker 1: way the humans think about the universe. And I think
15:42
Speaker 1: One way to maybe probe that is to think about
15:44
Speaker 1: why it's even possible to do what Newton did. I mean,
15:47
Speaker 1: if the universe has some fundamental theory down at the
15:50
Speaker 1: string scale, quantum gravity, whatever is going on down there,
15:54
Speaker 1: why isn't everything at the human scale totally chaotic? You know,
15:58
Speaker 1: if you try to describe a hurricane in terms of
16:00
Speaker 1: its fundamental bits, the rain drops, it's a huge difficult problem.
16:04
Speaker 1: We don't have like a simple equation that tells you
16:07
Speaker 1: where a hurricane is gonna land. It's a massively chaotic problem,
16:10
Speaker 1: and you have to model every tiny little rain drop,
16:13
Speaker 1: and rain drop moves over a meter, it could change
16:15
Speaker 1: the entire path of the hurricane. But in our world,
16:17
Speaker 1: it's possible to do what Newton did and describe the
16:20
Speaker 1: path of a ball through the air without knowing anything
16:23
Speaker 1: about quantum and gravity. Right, you can make chicken soup
16:26
Speaker 1: without knowing what the soup is really made out of.
16:28
Speaker 1: And to me that seems like the key there. If
16:31
Speaker 1: these things are emerging, these descriptions, these simplified mathematical stories
16:36
Speaker 1: the universe are universal. Everybody else should find them as well.
16:39
Speaker 1: But do we even know why they exist? Why is
16:42
Speaker 1: it possible to find these simplified mathematical stories of the universe.
16:47
Speaker 1: It seems to me key to understanding whether aliens are
16:50
Speaker 1: also going to find them. Right, Yeah, I mean again,
16:52
Speaker 1: this is a thing that trusted the science metaphysicians really
16:55
Speaker 1: puzzle over its Um, why do we need to have
16:58
Speaker 1: all of the different science is? Why can't we just
17:00
Speaker 1: have fundamental physics and maybe chemistry? Why do we need
17:03
Speaker 1: biology and psychology and economics as well? Right, that's a
17:06
Speaker 1: little bit aggressive. Why don't we need anything but physics? Really,
17:09
Speaker 1: physics is the only side It could be taken like that,
17:13
Speaker 1: but it could more be um, yeah, a puzzlement once
17:17
Speaker 1: once we kind of realize or think that, hey, it
17:19
Speaker 1: looks like everything is kind of composed out of fundamental
17:22
Speaker 1: particles or fields or something like that, Why can't we
17:24
Speaker 1: just do it all in fundamental terms? And yeah, I think,
17:27
Speaker 1: like you say, it's something of a mystery. I don't
17:30
Speaker 1: know if this is really an answer, but this is
17:31
Speaker 1: just kind of rephrasing the issue. But what what sort
17:34
Speaker 1: seems to happen is that we can effectively abstract away
17:37
Speaker 1: from from certain details. Right because when we look at
17:39
Speaker 1: the level of the weather, systems, or or the ball
17:42
Speaker 1: flying through through space. We don't need to think about
17:45
Speaker 1: certain details at the fundamental level. We can kind of
17:47
Speaker 1: coarse grain the information and then that presents a picture
17:50
Speaker 1: that's far more useful and tractable for us given our interests. Right,
17:54
Speaker 1: And this is what we do, and this is how
17:56
Speaker 1: we how we navigate the world. Like you say, we
17:57
Speaker 1: can we can make our chicken soup without worry about
18:00
Speaker 1: what the what the electrons all the fields are doing. Right,
18:03
Speaker 1: but you said something really interesting there, you said, based
18:06
Speaker 1: on what our interests are. It makes me wonder if
18:09
Speaker 1: the universe is sort of like Russiman. You know what
18:12
Speaker 1: if we look at one system and we say, oh,
18:14
Speaker 1: the interesting thing here is a ball flying through the air,
18:16
Speaker 1: and look, I can tell a simple mathematical story about it,
18:19
Speaker 1: and an alien physicists would be like ball, what even
18:22
Speaker 1: is that? I'm more interested in the flow of these
18:24
Speaker 1: particles over here, and I call that a blah blah
18:26
Speaker 1: blah And here's my equation for the blah blah blah
18:28
Speaker 1: and it's beautiful. And you know, is there there a
18:31
Speaker 1: patchwork of mathematical stories that are only interesting to us?
18:35
Speaker 1: Or are these stories likely to be universal. And I
18:37
Speaker 1: know that the real answer waits until we meet the
18:41
Speaker 1: aliens and we've talked science with them and we figure
18:43
Speaker 1: out if they've developed completely independent branches of science. But
18:46
Speaker 1: I wonder you think it's possible to approach that question,
18:49
Speaker 1: to address that question today before we've met the aliens,
18:53
Speaker 1: just by looking at the structure of our theories and
18:56
Speaker 1: looking for a hints that these things might be arbitrary
18:58
Speaker 1: or might be universal. How we possibly pull those things
19:01
Speaker 1: apart today before we get to talk to the aliens? Nice?
19:05
Speaker 1: I mean, I happened to be somewhat skeptical about the
19:09
Speaker 1: idea that there really is an objective way of kind
19:13
Speaker 1: of I guess, so if we think about the ball
19:16
Speaker 1: or the chicken, to talk of that as like a
19:17
Speaker 1: way of course graining the low the low level information
19:20
Speaker 1: to suit our interests, I'm kind of skeptical that there
19:23
Speaker 1: is an objectively right or best way to do that.
19:26
Speaker 1: And it seems kind of plausible to me that, yeah,
19:27
Speaker 1: the aliens might be interested in some very different course grainings. Right,
19:31
Speaker 1: So we're interested in the lump of matter that kind
19:33
Speaker 1: of corresponds to what we call the ball, But why
19:35
Speaker 1: not be interested in the lump of matter that we
19:38
Speaker 1: call the ball and also my nose every Tuesday. Right,
19:43
Speaker 1: this would be a very strange kind of thing to
19:45
Speaker 1: be interested in because it kind of jumps over time
19:47
Speaker 1: and space in strange sorts of ways. But look, I
19:50
Speaker 1: can I can define that object, right, this lump of
19:53
Speaker 1: matter that we call the ball and my nose on Tuesdays?
19:55
Speaker 1: And why not try and describe the behavior of that thing.
19:58
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a bit too silly, but I think that
20:00
Speaker 1: the point is, Um, it turns out to be very
20:03
Speaker 1: difficult to say why objectively we should be interested in
20:09
Speaker 1: the things that we are interested in. And and do
20:11
Speaker 1: we think that an alien species would be wrong for
20:14
Speaker 1: having some very interested in very different kind of course
20:17
Speaker 1: grainings or would it be impossible for aliens to have
20:20
Speaker 1: interests in very different kinds of course grainings? Um, I'm
20:24
Speaker 1: not sure. I don't see why it would be wrong
20:26
Speaker 1: if they had these different interests. It doesn't strike me
20:29
Speaker 1: as impossibly that if they're again, like going back to
20:31
Speaker 1: what we're saying at the beginning, if their modes of
20:34
Speaker 1: perceiving that their central sense experiences were very different to ours,
20:37
Speaker 1: or maybe if they perceived time very differently than we did.
20:40
Speaker 1: Why not? You know, right? And to me it goes
20:42
Speaker 1: to really the heart of the question of the human
20:45
Speaker 1: experience and the context of it. In the same way
20:47
Speaker 1: that we want to know are we alone? Because we
20:50
Speaker 1: want to understand, like is life rare? And we also
20:54
Speaker 1: like to know are there other kinds of life? And
20:56
Speaker 1: the biology have a lots of different options and we
20:58
Speaker 1: just got one? Or is this basically the only way
21:01
Speaker 1: it can work? Meeting aliens can answer that question, and
21:03
Speaker 1: in the same way meeting alien physicists could tell us like, oh, look,
21:07
Speaker 1: it turns out they got their own Newton and they
21:09
Speaker 1: got their own Einstein, and this is the path you
21:11
Speaker 1: take to understanding the universe and it basically everybody follows
21:14
Speaker 1: the same path, or you know, did they take a
21:17
Speaker 1: completely separate path? And I thought, experiment I'd love to
21:20
Speaker 1: do in reality is to take like a thousand earths
21:24
Speaker 1: and have humans evolve intelligently and then let science progress independently.
21:28
Speaker 1: You know, Newton almost didn't even become a scientist. What
21:31
Speaker 1: would have happened if he hadn't, if we hadn't had Einstein,
21:34
Speaker 1: or if somebody else had been even smarter? You know,
21:37
Speaker 1: it feels to me like the path of human science
21:39
Speaker 1: rests so much on these tiny moments, these tiny accidents,
21:43
Speaker 1: these tiny choices that people make, that it could have
21:45
Speaker 1: very well gone a different way, and we have really
21:48
Speaker 1: no way to probe, you know, the different paths that
21:50
Speaker 1: might have taken, because we haven't met those aliens yet.
21:53
Speaker 1: One way I thought about to probe that is to
21:55
Speaker 1: look at this sort of history of the development of
21:58
Speaker 1: intellectual scientific thought here on Earth. Do you know anything
22:01
Speaker 1: about like the history of you know, Mayan science and
22:05
Speaker 1: Chinese science and Egyptian astronomy, and whether they can tell
22:08
Speaker 1: us whether independent groups of humans tend to come to
22:12
Speaker 1: the same ways of thinking about the universe, or whether
22:15
Speaker 1: there really are divergent ways to attack this problem. I
22:18
Speaker 1: think that's the exactly the right way to kind of
22:20
Speaker 1: go about investigating this thing a bit more empirically. Yeah,
22:22
Speaker 1: that sounds like a great idea to me. Unfortunately, I
22:25
Speaker 1: don't know about any investigations along those lines, although I'm
22:28
Speaker 1: sure there are some. Something kind of similar that I
22:31
Speaker 1: have heard about in philosophy is there's a recent movement
22:35
Speaker 1: in experimental called experimental philosophy, which basically surveys the kind
22:41
Speaker 1: of philosophical intuitions of the folks on various um philosophical
22:45
Speaker 1: puzzles and things like that. So philosophy has kind of
22:48
Speaker 1: um philosophical intuition has been kind of put in the
22:51
Speaker 1: spotlight recently because it's like, hang on a minute, these
22:54
Speaker 1: are the intuitions generally seemed to the interesting intuitions of
22:57
Speaker 1: Western philosophers, and maybe they wouldn't be shared across the board,
23:01
Speaker 1: or or they wouldn't be shared even just by people
23:03
Speaker 1: who aren't kind of indoctrinated into the academy as it were.
23:06
Speaker 1: And the experimental philosophers have done some work in this area,
23:09
Speaker 1: and I think they've uncovered more divergence in kind of
23:12
Speaker 1: philosophical intuitions than the kind of Western cannon would have
23:16
Speaker 1: us believe. So I think there is some good reason
23:18
Speaker 1: to think that something similar might be the case with
23:21
Speaker 1: science as well, right, And I mean, I suppose another thing.
23:24
Speaker 1: I guess why I think this is relevant is because
23:27
Speaker 1: I think, really at the fundamental level, you can't draw
23:31
Speaker 1: sharp dividing lines between a kind of philosophical blue sky
23:35
Speaker 1: approach to thinking about the world and the scientific approach.
23:38
Speaker 1: We've all got to kind of start somewhere. And so
23:40
Speaker 1: if there's some evidence to suggest that these kind of
23:43
Speaker 1: broad philosophical intuitions on big questions are quite divergent between
23:48
Speaker 1: different people and different cultures, then I don't see why
23:51
Speaker 1: that that wouldn't maybe lead us to think that plausibly
23:55
Speaker 1: different different ways of doing science and different kind of
23:58
Speaker 1: foundational thoughts and intuitions on scientific issues might vary quite
24:02
Speaker 1: radically across people in different cultures as well. Yeah, that's
24:06
Speaker 1: the thing. Well, we'll have a scientific anthropologist on to
24:09
Speaker 1: talk about how indigenous cultures do science and the histort
24:13
Speaker 1: of history of the development there. But I think that'd
24:15
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun. I want to turn us
24:16
Speaker 1: back to the question we were discussing a moment ago,
24:19
Speaker 1: which is, you know, whether these emergent theories, these mathematical
24:24
Speaker 1: descriptions of the world that we see it our universal
24:27
Speaker 1: or whether they're just sort of culturally dependent and could
24:30
Speaker 1: be different for aliens. But let's zoom down and talk
24:33
Speaker 1: about maybe like the fundamental theory of the universe. Some
24:36
Speaker 1: listeners out there might think, well, perhaps we have different
24:38
Speaker 1: descriptions of balls versus noses, but at its heart, the
24:42
Speaker 1: universe is a certain way there are fundamental vibrating strings,
24:45
Speaker 1: or there are space pixels or something at the quantum
24:48
Speaker 1: gravity level. And what if we all zoom down there,
24:51
Speaker 1: what would we inevitably find the same description of the
24:54
Speaker 1: universe because it is one way. So Kareem Jabari from
24:58
Speaker 1: the Institute of Future Studies was on the part cast
25:00
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. He made a claim that
25:02
Speaker 1: I found a bit shocking. He said that you could
25:04
Speaker 1: have two fundamental theories of the universe that both work
25:08
Speaker 1: in the sense that they succeed in describing what we see,
25:12
Speaker 1: but internally are fundamentally different pictures of the universe, or
25:16
Speaker 1: like completely different mental descriptions and mental structures telling us
25:21
Speaker 1: a story about what's happening at the deepest scale. Do
25:23
Speaker 1: you agree with that? Do you think it's possible to
25:25
Speaker 1: have multiple accurate theories of the fundamental nature of the universe? Yeah,
25:31
Speaker 1: very interesting, I think nice. I like the approach there
25:33
Speaker 1: to think, Okay, maybe maybe if we zoom down then
25:35
Speaker 1: we can then we can hope for some more objectivity.
25:38
Speaker 1: I suppose one thing that comes to my mind is
25:40
Speaker 1: that kind of approach hopes or assumes that there is
25:43
Speaker 1: such a thing as a fundamental level. For all we know,
25:47
Speaker 1: it could be infinitely infinitely divisible all the way all
25:50
Speaker 1: the way down right, And then I don't know, if
25:51
Speaker 1: we'd be in trouble. Then that might kind of scupperro
25:54
Speaker 1: our aspirations for objectivity. It might mean a lot of
25:57
Speaker 1: work for particle physicists for a long time, though we
25:59
Speaker 1: just keep building bigger and bigger Adams measures potentially good news. Then, Yeah,
26:06
Speaker 1: so that's something that I would worry a bit about.
26:09
Speaker 1: I mean, so I suppose the worry, the kind of
26:12
Speaker 1: anti objectivist or pragmatist approach or kind of worry, would
26:17
Speaker 1: be that maybe all there is to the universe is
26:19
Speaker 1: just some kind of homogeneous blob of matter, and we
26:22
Speaker 1: just kind of cut it up in ways that serve
26:25
Speaker 1: our interests. And so then you're perhaps counterproposal here is,
26:28
Speaker 1: But but what if we could just get to the
26:29
Speaker 1: very nature of the homogeneous blob matter stuff itself. Yeah,
26:33
Speaker 1: I don't know. Perhaps it depends. It depends what we
26:36
Speaker 1: mean by homogeneous exactly, I suppose, and how homogeneous this
26:39
Speaker 1: this blob stuff could be, and what they really would
26:42
Speaker 1: be to say about it, independently of how we carve
26:44
Speaker 1: it up. So I think it's it's it's the right
26:47
Speaker 1: way to go. But I think it depends on on
26:49
Speaker 1: a fair amount of kind of hope that there is
26:51
Speaker 1: going to be some fundamental structure beyond which we can't
26:54
Speaker 1: make any further subdivisions, and that it's going to be
26:57
Speaker 1: some way that we're going to be able to latch onto.
26:59
Speaker 1: And may be I think that's more likely, but I'm
27:01
Speaker 1: a little bit skeptical, as perhaps you can you can sense, well,
27:04
Speaker 1: you know, my fantasy is that aliens come and they've
27:07
Speaker 1: been thinking about physics the way we have. They're just
27:10
Speaker 1: like a million years advanced, and they can like guide
27:13
Speaker 1: us through what would have taken us a million years
27:15
Speaker 1: to figure out in just a hundred years and we
27:17
Speaker 1: zoom forwards, you know, But that relies on us having
27:20
Speaker 1: sort of the same principles. And the flip side of that,
27:23
Speaker 1: my nightmare scenario is that there is no fundamental true
27:26
Speaker 1: description of the universe, and that everything we have learned
27:30
Speaker 1: is just this like patchwork of effective theories or like
27:33
Speaker 1: a ladder of effective theories, where we have like a
27:36
Speaker 1: description at the galaxy scale, and they have a description
27:38
Speaker 1: at the solar system scale and at the human scale,
27:41
Speaker 1: and at the atom scale and at the quark scale.
27:43
Speaker 1: None of these things are like deeply true. They're just
27:45
Speaker 1: like our mathematical stories about the noses we find interesting.
27:50
Speaker 1: And aliens might have their own ladder, they might pick
27:52
Speaker 1: different scales to explore, they might tell totally different stories.
27:55
Speaker 1: And so when we go to that first interstellar physics
27:59
Speaker 1: conference to show your notes that we basically have nothing
28:01
Speaker 1: in common with these folks, and I wonder what we
28:05
Speaker 1: could learn at that point. You know, you work on
28:07
Speaker 1: this project of unifying the sciences of your metascience project.
28:11
Speaker 1: If we thought about, like what it might be possible
28:13
Speaker 1: to try to incorporate a new emergent theory that sort
28:17
Speaker 1: of straddles are various sciences into our structure, Like, how
28:21
Speaker 1: do we absorb that into our sort of mental canon
28:24
Speaker 1: and make use of it? If the aliens are fascinated
28:27
Speaker 1: in this thing that we've never even thought about, Yeah,
28:29
Speaker 1: very interesting. I mean, I certainly don't share your your
28:33
Speaker 1: concern with with the so called nightmare scenario. That doesn't
28:37
Speaker 1: necessarily seem worrying to me. I mean, for sure, it
28:39
Speaker 1: seems threatening to a certain sort of hypothesis, something along
28:43
Speaker 1: the lines of, yeah, that the sciences are all unified,
28:45
Speaker 1: and they're all kind of ultimately getting at one fundamental
28:48
Speaker 1: objective truth, and so one could think that that situation
28:52
Speaker 1: would be evidence for a kind of radical disunity of
28:55
Speaker 1: the sciences. And I take it that that that's the
28:57
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you're you're finding night Marrish, But
29:00
Speaker 1: why right like that that would be an interesting empirical
29:03
Speaker 1: discovery and its own right, And so why not just
29:05
Speaker 1: kind of wonder at that, right that that sounds that
29:07
Speaker 1: seems pretty interesting to me. That would be a nice
29:10
Speaker 1: meal for the philosophers if it would be disappointing for
29:12
Speaker 1: the physicists, right, Yeah, Well, look, I mean I'm not
29:15
Speaker 1: particularly confident about this, but I think there are a
29:18
Speaker 1: great many philosophers, maybe the majority, who probably do hold
29:21
Speaker 1: out for something like the unity that you That you
29:23
Speaker 1: sounded like you were keen on there. So then your
29:26
Speaker 1: other question was, like, Okay, if if we did find
29:28
Speaker 1: these these aliens who had this very radically way, a
29:31
Speaker 1: different way of thinking about the universe and carving things
29:33
Speaker 1: up and doing the science, what could we learn from that? Well, again,
29:36
Speaker 1: that that would strike me as a very interesting empirical
29:39
Speaker 1: discovery in its own right, and it looks like it
29:43
Speaker 1: would tell us something along the lines of, you know,
29:46
Speaker 1: what's kind of important when we're doing science is doing
29:50
Speaker 1: something and kind of carving up the world and thinking
29:52
Speaker 1: about the world in a way that that suits us.
29:54
Speaker 1: So then when we're doing science, we're kind of learning
29:57
Speaker 1: as much about ourselves as we are about the universe.
30:01
Speaker 1: And again that that seems kind of okay, so me,
30:03
Speaker 1: maybe it's not what most scientists have directly in mind
30:07
Speaker 1: when they're doing science, but that seems again like an
30:09
Speaker 1: interesting discovery on a very very worthwhile pursuit to find
30:12
Speaker 1: out about what we like as beings and how we
30:15
Speaker 1: carve up the universe just to suit our needs and interests. Absolutely,
30:18
Speaker 1: it's like if we meet the Aliens and we discover
30:21
Speaker 1: they don't like hamburgers or pizza. They've invented this other
30:24
Speaker 1: weird kind of food, and that tells us something about
30:26
Speaker 1: the aliens, and you know, that's why you go traveling
30:28
Speaker 1: to eat weird kinds of food. That tells you about
30:31
Speaker 1: what those people are like. And but their music is
30:33
Speaker 1: like it does. It's an insight into that culture. And
30:36
Speaker 1: that's only possible if we have enough in common to
30:40
Speaker 1: even really understand it, you know, to understand, Oh, this
30:42
Speaker 1: is a science question, and he raise your answer. I
30:45
Speaker 1: want to turn a little bit to that sort of question.
30:47
Speaker 1: Like we talked earlier about whether it's likely that aliens
30:50
Speaker 1: even have mathematics, and whether that's universal or not. What
30:54
Speaker 1: about the other question of whether aliens are even doing science,
30:58
Speaker 1: like a good science itself be a fundamentally human pursuit,
31:02
Speaker 1: not in the sense that we might be the only
31:04
Speaker 1: curious people about the universe, but you know, science is
31:06
Speaker 1: something we've only been doing in this form for a
31:09
Speaker 1: few hundred years. Isn't it possible to have a technological
31:13
Speaker 1: civilization that doesn't use this particular method of building internal
31:17
Speaker 1: mathematical models to describe the universe in order to make
31:20
Speaker 1: technological achievements? Do philosophers think about this question and the
31:23
Speaker 1: universality of science itself, Yeah, for sure. I mean now,
31:26
Speaker 1: I am tempted to give a very stereotypical philosopher's answer
31:30
Speaker 1: to this thing, which is like, come on, we we
31:31
Speaker 1: don't really know what science is. We can't demarcate between
31:34
Speaker 1: science and non science and so and so that would
31:38
Speaker 1: be a kind of a deflection of the of the question.
31:40
Speaker 1: I suppose. But I think ultimately the kind of the
31:43
Speaker 1: history of this topic of trying to kind of define
31:46
Speaker 1: what constitutes science shows that that that's that's hard, if
31:50
Speaker 1: not impossible, to do, right, And so given that observation,
31:54
Speaker 1: I would certainly be reluctant to rule out whatever these
31:57
Speaker 1: aliens are doing is as counting as science, because we're
32:00
Speaker 1: not really sure where to draw the line anyway, right,
32:02
Speaker 1: But perhaps more positively, I suppose the point just is, well,
32:07
Speaker 1: we should be kind of quite broad and quite permissive
32:09
Speaker 1: in what we mean by science. And it seems plausible
32:12
Speaker 1: that even if these things were radically differently kind of
32:16
Speaker 1: cognitively wired than we are, if they're going about trying
32:20
Speaker 1: to kind of you know, find their way in the universe,
32:23
Speaker 1: build machines that suit their interests, inquire into questions they
32:26
Speaker 1: find interesting and fascinating, then then why not call that science? Right?
32:30
Speaker 1: But I mean, maybe that's not quite what you're getting at.
32:33
Speaker 1: Maybe what you're getting out was more with the science
32:36
Speaker 1: that they're doing be sufficiently similar to our science for
32:40
Speaker 1: there to be any interesting points of contact between us
32:42
Speaker 1: and them. Was that more what you had in mind? Absolutely,
32:45
Speaker 1: And I want to dig into that a lot more
32:46
Speaker 1: and would first take another as ssured break. All right,
33:02
Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking to philosophers science and metaphysics.
33:06
Speaker 1: Samuel can deny about the possibility of talking to aliens
33:10
Speaker 1: about science, learning from them, or maybe just being puzzled
33:13
Speaker 1: at the way they think about the universe. And when
33:16
Speaker 1: we broke off, we were talking about whether or not
33:18
Speaker 1: aliens do something that we recognize as science. And you're right,
33:21
Speaker 1: it's not about like whether or not we can officially
33:24
Speaker 1: call what they are doing science. It's about whether what
33:27
Speaker 1: they're doing is close enough to what we're doing that
33:29
Speaker 1: we could learn from them. I guess my brain naturally
33:32
Speaker 1: goes to these nightmare scenarios where, for example, we meet
33:35
Speaker 1: starfaring aliens. They come to Earth in their spaceships that
33:39
Speaker 1: have crossed the cosmos because they've developed warp drives, and
33:42
Speaker 1: our first question is, of course, how does your warp
33:44
Speaker 1: drive work? But I imagine maybe there are species that
33:48
Speaker 1: have developed technology not through the methodical development of physical models,
33:53
Speaker 1: but just sort of by trial and error. I think about,
33:56
Speaker 1: for example, you know, the swords smiths of ancient Japan
33:59
Speaker 1: or Spain or whatever. They didn't have an understanding of
34:02
Speaker 1: why their technique made the metal extra hard. You know,
34:06
Speaker 1: they developed this technique mostly through trial and error. You
34:09
Speaker 1: dip it in this, you dip it in that, you
34:10
Speaker 1: did this temperature, then you cool it. You get a
34:12
Speaker 1: really hard sword. It's definitely a slower way to make progress,
34:15
Speaker 1: but it's possible. Isn't it possible that we need, you know,
34:18
Speaker 1: a starfaring race of aliens that have been doing this
34:21
Speaker 1: for a million years and sort of like stumbled their
34:24
Speaker 1: way into a warp drive or you know, lights be
34:26
Speaker 1: travel or something without having a deep understanding of it
34:29
Speaker 1: that they could communicate to us. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Nice. So,
34:33
Speaker 1: like one way of kind of reading that scenarro is
34:35
Speaker 1: that these aliens needn't be any more intelligent than us
34:38
Speaker 1: or any kind of radically different to us. But they
34:40
Speaker 1: could have just been around a lot longer, right, and
34:43
Speaker 1: so they had more time to kind of do the
34:44
Speaker 1: trial and error procedure and come up with some things,
34:47
Speaker 1: but then some some great technologies and perhaps innovations that
34:50
Speaker 1: kind of get them to other star systems or something
34:54
Speaker 1: like that. But then they're not able to communicate to
34:56
Speaker 1: us how they've done it because of because of how
34:58
Speaker 1: they got there. Yeah, that that that's only seems pausible.
35:01
Speaker 1: But then I guess it's like like we were saying
35:03
Speaker 1: that that's different from this other worry, which is that
35:05
Speaker 1: they've got there in kind of more of a theoretical ways,
35:08
Speaker 1: that they do have something that we might want to
35:10
Speaker 1: call understanding of the of the underlying physical theory that's
35:13
Speaker 1: underpinning their technology, but but that it's just kind of
35:16
Speaker 1: so so different, and again they're kind of carving up
35:19
Speaker 1: and thinking about the world in a way so different
35:21
Speaker 1: from how we think about it that they're not going
35:23
Speaker 1: to be able to communicate their technologies and their their
35:25
Speaker 1: insights to us. For that kind of reason, something that
35:28
Speaker 1: I do wonder in in the kind of this vicinity
35:31
Speaker 1: and more related to the latter scenario, where the worry
35:35
Speaker 1: that these creatures might just be so radically different from
35:37
Speaker 1: us that we just can't learn anything from them. So
35:39
Speaker 1: to one source of optimism might just be that we
35:42
Speaker 1: might think that the kind of counter as an agent
35:46
Speaker 1: in the sense right where that's a very broad term,
35:48
Speaker 1: but it's a kind of a bit of a philosophical
35:49
Speaker 1: term of art, But you know, we're agents. We have
35:52
Speaker 1: some sort of some sort of aims and goals and consciousness.
35:55
Speaker 1: But to counter as an agent and to have these
35:57
Speaker 1: sorts of interests in exploration and build technology, there might
36:01
Speaker 1: have to be some sort of commonality to what it
36:03
Speaker 1: is to be an agent, right, So to be that
36:05
Speaker 1: highly evolved, to be pursuing those sorts of pursuits and
36:08
Speaker 1: building those sorts of technologies, it might just kind of
36:11
Speaker 1: be the case that they'd have to have something somewhat
36:13
Speaker 1: in common with other agents, namely us, that we could
36:16
Speaker 1: find at least some sort of common ground. And again
36:19
Speaker 1: that's a little bit speculative and hopeful, but it's something
36:22
Speaker 1: that I kind of and somewhat persuaded by sometimes, So yeah,
36:26
Speaker 1: that that might be a cause for optimism. I think
36:28
Speaker 1: that is an attractive argument, you know, to suggest like
36:31
Speaker 1: in order to develop in the universe, you have to
36:34
Speaker 1: be curious, and you have to build mental models to
36:37
Speaker 1: explain why things happen in your life, and those mental
36:40
Speaker 1: models naturally develop into you know, scientific thinking. I think
36:45
Speaker 1: that's an attractive argument, but it also feels to me
36:47
Speaker 1: a little bit too easy. You know. It's sort of
36:51
Speaker 1: like the kind of argument you make where you say, like, well,
36:53
Speaker 1: everybody drinks copy in the morning, because you know, everybody
36:56
Speaker 1: wakes up and they're tired and copy helps, so therefore
36:58
Speaker 1: all humans must drink of be right. It's sort of
37:01
Speaker 1: like in the argument you make. I don't mean to
37:03
Speaker 1: be too negative, but it's an argument from ignorance right
37:05
Speaker 1: to say I can't imagine something different, therefore this must
37:09
Speaker 1: be universal, where the whole reason we want to meet
37:12
Speaker 1: aliens is precisely to confront those boxes and understand the
37:16
Speaker 1: limits of our imagination. And so that's exactly the kind
37:19
Speaker 1: of argument that I'm very tempted by, but I reject
37:21
Speaker 1: for that reason that I want to push my way
37:24
Speaker 1: out of it and understand if there are other ways
37:26
Speaker 1: to explore this. But fundamentally, I think it's it's frustrating
37:29
Speaker 1: because I don't think we can get out of that
37:32
Speaker 1: box without meeting those aliens, the way people can't really
37:35
Speaker 1: understand other cultures without doing some traveling or being exposed
37:39
Speaker 1: to them, because sitting in your little village at home,
37:41
Speaker 1: it's probably impossible to imagine other ways humans can be. Yeah,
37:44
Speaker 1: that's right, that that that would be the best thing,
37:47
Speaker 1: wouldn't it, if if we could meet these aliens. I mean,
37:50
Speaker 1: I'm not like completely pessimistic that there are other ways
37:52
Speaker 1: of doing it, Like, like we've touched on, I think
37:55
Speaker 1: maybe maybe we could push ourselves really hard to kind
38:00
Speaker 1: of think outside the box. I mean, something that comes
38:02
Speaker 1: to mind. And no, I don't ask too many follow
38:04
Speaker 1: ups on this, because I'm by far an expert on
38:06
Speaker 1: the topic. But there's this new thing in physics constructor theory,
38:10
Speaker 1: right which we're told is supposed to be a whole
38:12
Speaker 1: new approach to the foundations of physics, which is nothing
38:15
Speaker 1: like anything anyone has ever done or thought of doing
38:18
Speaker 1: in terms of thinking about the universe before. And and
38:21
Speaker 1: if if that's all it's cracked up to be, it
38:23
Speaker 1: might be something along these lines right away of kind
38:25
Speaker 1: of thinking from first principles in a completely different way.
38:29
Speaker 1: If we think that there is the potential to really
38:31
Speaker 1: shake up our foundation or thinking in these sorts of ways,
38:34
Speaker 1: then then yeah, again, maybe we could have some optimism
38:36
Speaker 1: that if there were this radically different species of aliens
38:39
Speaker 1: that we came into contact with, that at first it
38:42
Speaker 1: looked like we had no hope of interacting with them,
38:44
Speaker 1: maybe after some work and some some reconceptualizing of our
38:48
Speaker 1: foundations we could get there, right, And so I think
38:50
Speaker 1: I think there might be some some reasons to be optimistic.
38:53
Speaker 1: But but yeah, well, if the aliens do arrive and
38:57
Speaker 1: they don't just like fry us from space, think we
39:00
Speaker 1: should send the philosophers first or the physicists. I think
39:05
Speaker 1: maybe the philosophers and the physicists should probably be working
39:07
Speaker 1: in tandem on this one. I think they've probably got
39:10
Speaker 1: strengths and weaknesses in this kind of situation that could
39:13
Speaker 1: complement each other, So send a team of both. I
39:17
Speaker 1: asked no Him Chamski if he thought that scientists would
39:20
Speaker 1: be allowed to talk to the aliens, and he was
39:22
Speaker 1: pretty cynical about whether military and political structures would allow
39:26
Speaker 1: scientists and philosophers to speak on behalf of Earth, which
39:30
Speaker 1: is a whole other reason to be pessimistic and not
39:33
Speaker 1: a road I want to go down today. I think
39:34
Speaker 1: another question people think about when they imagine speaking to
39:38
Speaker 1: aliens is putting aside all these philosophical questions and say
39:41
Speaker 1: they have similar structures, and they've thought about physics in
39:44
Speaker 1: similar ways. They're just really far advanced from us. A
39:46
Speaker 1: basic question is how could they teach us what they know?
39:50
Speaker 1: How could we possibly understand the science of a super
39:54
Speaker 1: advanced race. It's sort of like if you gave Galileo
39:57
Speaker 1: a laptop, where would you even go to explain to
40:01
Speaker 1: him how it works and what you would do with it.
40:03
Speaker 1: People think about, like, you know, how to bootstrap humanity
40:06
Speaker 1: up to the level of potential galactic aliens. Well, I
40:09
Speaker 1: think they're be inclined to be a bit more optimistic,
40:12
Speaker 1: maybe just from the kind of observation that we teach
40:15
Speaker 1: children all sorts of complicated things, and I've seen many
40:20
Speaker 1: child I mean, this is not necessarily a good thing,
40:22
Speaker 1: but you see kids these days just taking to laptops
40:26
Speaker 1: and iPads as if it was kind of innate in
40:28
Speaker 1: them to use these objects, which strikes me as kind
40:30
Speaker 1: of crazy, but then also makes me think, look, if
40:32
Speaker 1: we can teach kids to use these strange new bits
40:35
Speaker 1: of technology, and we can educate our children to do
40:38
Speaker 1: all sorts of funky things like maths and logic and
40:41
Speaker 1: art and poetry, then yeah, why couldn't the eight Why
40:44
Speaker 1: couldn't we be the children of the aliens? Why couldn't
40:46
Speaker 1: they take us under their wings and teach us their ways.
40:50
Speaker 1: I have a little bit of optimism there, I think, Yeah,
40:53
Speaker 1: let me take your optimism and turn it back into
40:55
Speaker 1: a nightmare scenario, which seems to be my role in
40:57
Speaker 1: this conversation, which is the aliens come and they have
41:00
Speaker 1: super advanced science, and us this is this who have
41:03
Speaker 1: grown up. We're thinking one way, can't rock it. But
41:07
Speaker 1: we send our children to the alien schools and you're
41:09
Speaker 1: write to them. It probably feels totally natural. Then there's
41:12
Speaker 1: this generational divide where one set of humanity is like
41:15
Speaker 1: super charged and thousands of years ahead of the old
41:18
Speaker 1: ancient of gray haired folks like me who just never
41:21
Speaker 1: really understand the modern world, right, and we've got something
41:25
Speaker 1: of a toned down version of that. It feels like
41:27
Speaker 1: today like the Internet natives, and that the technology native
41:31
Speaker 1: people growing up do seem to be somewhat separated from
41:35
Speaker 1: from the older generation. So yeah, it's it's conceivable that
41:37
Speaker 1: that that sort of divide that we actually observe could
41:40
Speaker 1: just be a lot more dramatic, right, Yes, that would
41:44
Speaker 1: be That would be nightmarish for sure. So I guess
41:46
Speaker 1: the answer is, don't give Galileo the laptop. Give Galileo's
41:49
Speaker 1: kids the laptop, and they'll be playing a word all
41:52
Speaker 1: within ten minutes. That's exactly alright, So then to wrap
41:58
Speaker 1: it up, what do you think think is something we
42:01
Speaker 1: can do to prepare? I mean, I don't know if
42:03
Speaker 1: aliens are going to come. I don't know if aliens
42:05
Speaker 1: even exist. I don't know if we will hear a
42:07
Speaker 1: message from aliens. But these are deep and important questions
42:10
Speaker 1: and we haven't really resolved any of them today. What
42:13
Speaker 1: do you think are the most sort of important directions
42:15
Speaker 1: for humanity or philosophy to sort of prepare for that
42:18
Speaker 1: moment so that when it does happen, we have a
42:20
Speaker 1: plan or a thoughtful structure in which to explore these questions. Yeah,
42:25
Speaker 1: good question. I mean I think actually one thing we
42:27
Speaker 1: could do to prepare for that scenario is to look
42:30
Speaker 1: hard at the sorts of things we take for granted. Right, So, um,
42:34
Speaker 1: I think scientists do this, but non scientists do this
42:38
Speaker 1: as well. Of course, we go about the world and
42:39
Speaker 1: we take all sorts of things for granted about the
42:42
Speaker 1: nature of our reality. And really what this is is
42:44
Speaker 1: it kind of a philosophical commitment that we have to
42:47
Speaker 1: various assumptions and premises and background kind of structures ways
42:52
Speaker 1: of thinking, but that we're not particularly aware of because
42:55
Speaker 1: we don't scrutinize them. So perhaps we could do something
42:57
Speaker 1: like that. We could think about what some of these
42:59
Speaker 1: most based stick assumptions that we take for granted in
43:02
Speaker 1: in science but also in everyday life, and see if
43:05
Speaker 1: they could possibly be questioned, because look, these aliens might
43:08
Speaker 1: have very different foundational assumptions to us, and so I
43:11
Speaker 1: think engaging in this sort of exercise could maybe come
43:15
Speaker 1: close to preparing us for this kind of encounter. Yeah,
43:18
Speaker 1: I totally agree. It's like preparing your travel. You should
43:20
Speaker 1: be asking yourself. I wonder if they do drink coffee
43:23
Speaker 1: where I'm going, or you know, if they have a
43:25
Speaker 1: totally different kind of toilet where you don't squat, or
43:27
Speaker 1: you don't sit there, you don't stand, or who knows what.
43:29
Speaker 1: Preparing your mind for the breath of possibilities. And for
43:32
Speaker 1: me at least, I totally look forward to that day
43:34
Speaker 1: when aliens blow our little minds and tell us how
43:37
Speaker 1: there are other ways to think about the universe, to
43:40
Speaker 1: explore the universe, even to ask questions. What questions are
43:43
Speaker 1: they asking? You know, not just what answers do they have,
43:46
Speaker 1: but what do they find strange and fascinating about the universe.
43:50
Speaker 1: It seems to me like a lot of what we
43:52
Speaker 1: think about as objective in science is driven by aesthetics.
43:56
Speaker 1: A lot of the questions we're asking in theoretical particle
43:58
Speaker 1: physics are driven by I like this looks weird, or
44:02
Speaker 1: I think it would be prettier that other way. Even
44:05
Speaker 1: the discovery of the Higgs boson came about because people
44:08
Speaker 1: were thinking, this theory seems kind of ugly, and it
44:10
Speaker 1: would be much prettier if we added this one other piece.
44:13
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot of you know, aesthetics and
44:15
Speaker 1: subjectivity and um, you know, personality in how we explore
44:19
Speaker 1: the universe. And so I think you're right that we
44:22
Speaker 1: need to look at that and put that under a
44:24
Speaker 1: microscope and wonder whether there are other choices that could
44:27
Speaker 1: have been made great. Yeah, So we could even spend
44:29
Speaker 1: some time in some art calories thinking about why we
44:31
Speaker 1: like what we like and dislike what we just like.
44:33
Speaker 1: I'd very much agree with that. Yeah, that sounds very
44:35
Speaker 1: sensible today. Yeah, And you know, as much as I'd
44:37
Speaker 1: like to send artists on that first contingent also to
44:40
Speaker 1: meet the aliens, I think it's almost impossible we will
44:42
Speaker 1: ever understand alien art and I don't know if that
44:46
Speaker 1: bodes well or not for alien philosophy and alien physics,
44:49
Speaker 1: but I look forward to one day finding out all right.
44:52
Speaker 1: Thanks very much Sam for joining us for this crazy
44:54
Speaker 1: and wide ranging conversation on how aliens think about science
44:58
Speaker 1: and whether we might ever be able to understand it.
45:01
Speaker 1: Thank you, Daniel, that was really fascinating. Thanks thanks for listening,
45:11
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
45:14
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast For
45:18
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
45:22
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.