Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What Is The Most Important Invention In Human History? (ft. Ryan North)

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What Is The Most Important Invention In Human History? (ft. Ryan North) · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:07
Speaker 1: So sometimes when I look around me, I'm amazed at
0:09
Speaker 1: how many tech devices I have in my life. I mean,
0:12
Speaker 1: of course I have a laptop, I have a telephone,
0:15
Speaker 1: you know, I have a TV, this kind of stuff,
0:17
Speaker 1: But just all around me, to my kitchen is a
0:19
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff that my grandparents and their grandparents wouldn't
0:22
Speaker 1: even recognize. Your grandparents didn't have the George Foreman grill.
0:26
Speaker 1: What do you mean, that's right, the panini maker. I mean,
0:29
Speaker 1: it's a fundamental element if youman society. Now, how did
0:32
Speaker 1: people live so long without paninis? Be without Panini's. It's
0:36
Speaker 1: baffling to me, It's baffling. Um. You know, I just
0:39
Speaker 1: feel like so many elements of my life rely on
0:42
Speaker 1: inventions that have appeared fairly recently, which means that my
0:45
Speaker 1: life is completely different from the life from my grandparents
0:48
Speaker 1: and their grandparents. Yeah. I guess what maybe one way
0:51
Speaker 1: to think about it is look around you and think
0:53
Speaker 1: which technology, if it was wasn't there, would make my
0:57
Speaker 1: life totally different. Yeah, And I think the most important
1:00
Speaker 1: invention might not be something that you notice when you
1:03
Speaker 1: just look around you might not be something that throws
1:05
Speaker 1: itself in your face every single day of your life.
1:08
Speaker 1: It could be something you use every day and not
1:10
Speaker 1: even think about it. Are you talking about the toilet?
1:15
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm using it right now. Please this podcast out
1:21
Speaker 1: of the studio and into the toilet. Him and I'm Daniel,
1:41
Speaker 1: and this is our podcast degree his invention in the universe.
1:45
Speaker 1: The podcast called Daniel and Jorge Invent the Universe. Inventing
1:49
Speaker 1: new title for the podcast on this pot now the
1:53
Speaker 1: podcast is called Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, in
1:56
Speaker 1: which we take everything in the universe. We explained to
1:59
Speaker 1: you how is an invented or discovered or at least
2:02
Speaker 1: understood in a way that you can possibly understand it
2:04
Speaker 1: and explain it to somebody else, and then you can
2:06
Speaker 1: tell them about the awesome podcast you heard it on
2:09
Speaker 1: and maybe using this knowledge, you can go out there
2:12
Speaker 1: and invent new thinks. That's right and give us one
2:15
Speaker 1: percent of all your royalty. That's right. By listening, you
2:18
Speaker 1: are implicitly signing a contract, that's right. Or there we
2:23
Speaker 1: need terms and conditions on this podcast. Yeah, so welcome
2:26
Speaker 1: to our podcast everyone, and the topic today, what is
2:32
Speaker 1: the most important invention in human history? Yeah, of all
2:35
Speaker 1: the things that have been invented to make life easier,
2:38
Speaker 1: more fun, maybe more violent. What do you think is
2:42
Speaker 1: the one invention that has had the most impact on
2:46
Speaker 1: human filization or the human condition? That's right. And you
2:50
Speaker 1: might be tempted to think about something which is very immediate,
2:53
Speaker 1: like well, I use my phone every day, and so
2:55
Speaker 1: the iPhone is a very impactful invention. But think a
2:58
Speaker 1: little deeper. I mean, think about the thing in which
3:00
Speaker 1: if we didn't have it would change human history. And
3:02
Speaker 1: so I think that's I'm tipping my hand here. That's
3:05
Speaker 1: my definition for what's the most important invention is the
3:07
Speaker 1: invention with um, without which human history would be markedly different.
3:12
Speaker 1: And I love thinking about the way that history could
3:14
Speaker 1: have been different. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that.
3:16
Speaker 1: When you say what's the most important invention, what do
3:18
Speaker 1: you mean? And so for you, it's about changing history,
3:22
Speaker 1: like the invention that marked the point in time at
3:26
Speaker 1: which humanity could have gone left or right exactly. And
3:29
Speaker 1: some of these inventions they really come from like moments
3:31
Speaker 1: of inspiration or or or you know, just um accidents.
3:36
Speaker 1: You know, somebody accidentally invents something in the lab. They're
3:38
Speaker 1: trying to make a better peanut butter, sandwich, but they
3:41
Speaker 1: actually invent a laser gun or something, right, And this
3:44
Speaker 1: kind of thing happens all the time, and it changes
3:46
Speaker 1: the course of human history. And so I wonder sometimes,
3:49
Speaker 1: like if that person had been sick that day, or
3:51
Speaker 1: gotten a car accident, or decided to become an artist
3:53
Speaker 1: instead of an engineer, how human history could have been different.
3:56
Speaker 1: And so there are these moments, these pivot points in history,
3:59
Speaker 1: or I feel like if things hadn't gotten a certain way,
4:03
Speaker 1: the whole future could have been dramatically different. And inventions
4:06
Speaker 1: are one of those. And so I like to think
4:08
Speaker 1: about if you had deleted one person from history or
4:11
Speaker 1: distracted them in the right moment, things could have been
4:14
Speaker 1: very different. Yeah, like talk about a butterfly. Fi Like,
4:16
Speaker 1: if a butterfly had flown in front of Einstein just
4:20
Speaker 1: as he was about to come up with, you know,
4:23
Speaker 1: the idea of relativity or quantum physics, he could have
4:25
Speaker 1: been distracted and not come up with it. That's right, Yeah, absolutely,
4:29
Speaker 1: And there's there's lots of real examples, you know, for example,
4:31
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton, genius in human history, right, changed the way
4:34
Speaker 1: we think, invented lots of important stuff, physics, gravity, calculus,
4:38
Speaker 1: all this stuff. His family was sheep herders, right, And
4:41
Speaker 1: the only reason he actually got an education was because
4:44
Speaker 1: his father died and his mother remarried somebody who insisted
4:47
Speaker 1: he go and get an education, maybe just to get
4:49
Speaker 1: young Isaac out of the house, right, And so if
4:52
Speaker 1: Isaac hadn't been sent to school, he never would become
4:55
Speaker 1: this staggering genius in human history. Yeah, or even more
4:58
Speaker 1: sort of crazy is supposedly he came up with the
5:01
Speaker 1: idea of universal invitation when the end an apple hit
5:04
Speaker 1: it hit him, right, I think that's probably mythology. But
5:09
Speaker 1: let's but let's go let but you know what would
5:12
Speaker 1: have happened if instead of an apple had been an orange.
5:14
Speaker 1: You know, we could have had a totally different science,
5:18
Speaker 1: the theory of universal juice instead, Right, Orange, You're glad
5:23
Speaker 1: it was an apple who invented the first pun. Anyway,
5:27
Speaker 1: somebody's got to get credit for that one. That definitely
5:29
Speaker 1: changed that is the most important for the worst. Yeah.
5:37
Speaker 1: So I'm not an expert in history of technology, and
5:41
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that Moore you are not either, And so
5:44
Speaker 1: for this particular topic, we decided to reach out to
5:47
Speaker 1: somebody we know who is an expert who has thought
5:49
Speaker 1: really deeply about these topics. So this is a good
5:52
Speaker 1: friend of mine. His name is Ryan North. So Ryan,
5:55
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me great.
5:59
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure?
6:02
Speaker 1: My name is Ryan North. I m write a web
6:05
Speaker 1: comic called Dinosaur Comics between that for fifteen years, and
6:09
Speaker 1: on top of that, I do nonfiction writing. I write
6:11
Speaker 1: the inm Beautifule Squirrel Girl for Marvel Comics. And my
6:15
Speaker 1: new book is called How To Invent Everything, a survival
6:18
Speaker 1: guide for the stranded time traveler, and it's proceeds in
6:21
Speaker 1: the premise that if you are in the future, you've
6:23
Speaker 1: rented a time machine, you go back in time and
6:25
Speaker 1: your time machine breaks, Here's how you fix things. There's
6:28
Speaker 1: how you rebuild civilization from scratch in any time period
6:31
Speaker 1: in nurse history. So it's sort of a nonfiction book
6:34
Speaker 1: with a fictional candy coding on the outside, which is
6:37
Speaker 1: the time travel part of it. I get to call
6:38
Speaker 1: my my nonfiction time travel book, which I'm very happy about.
6:42
Speaker 1: And was it inspired because you met a stranded time
6:44
Speaker 1: traveler and thought, how am I going to help this person?
6:47
Speaker 1: I have no comment on that you are. Yes, I
6:53
Speaker 1: always thought of you as a man from the future, Ryan,
6:55
Speaker 1: So is that true? Maybe maybe that's your secret. This
6:58
Speaker 1: is your way to disclosing it to the Again, I
7:02
Speaker 1: don't want to confirm anything, some mystery, right, keeping guessing.
7:07
Speaker 1: I was really interested in the book because it reminded
7:09
Speaker 1: me of when I was a kid. I was totally
7:11
Speaker 1: enamored by that game Civilization, which you also played, right,
7:15
Speaker 1: And in Civilization for those of you haven't played, you
7:18
Speaker 1: have to basically reinvent Civilization and you have to do
7:20
Speaker 1: it in order. And for me it was the first
7:22
Speaker 1: education where somebody had taken down a lot of humanities breakthroughs,
7:27
Speaker 1: you know, and said, well, what would you need to
7:28
Speaker 1: reinvent um the combustion engine? What you need this? And
7:31
Speaker 1: for that you need this, and for that you need this,
7:33
Speaker 1: all the way back to numbers and writing and this
7:35
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So it was really fun to see
7:38
Speaker 1: this sort of detailed breakdown and what made me think about, like,
7:41
Speaker 1: which are the inventions in human history that most catalyzed
7:44
Speaker 1: technological progress, from which most changed the future. So that's
7:48
Speaker 1: what we wanted to sort of focus on in today's
7:50
Speaker 1: podcast episode. Is this sort of broader question, what is
7:53
Speaker 1: the most important invention in human history? And before we
7:57
Speaker 1: talk to you about it, since obviously you've thought deeply
7:59
Speaker 1: about this to write your book, we went and asked um,
8:02
Speaker 1: a bunch of people on the street who hadn't had
8:04
Speaker 1: a chance to think about at all, and ask them
8:06
Speaker 1: what they thought was the most important invention in human history,
8:09
Speaker 1: just from the top of their heads. Here's what they
8:11
Speaker 1: had to say. Fire. Fire. If I call the wheel,
8:16
Speaker 1: I would say that, all right, thanks, light bulb, the wheel, wheel,
8:22
Speaker 1: the wheel. The concept of evolution is that what you're
8:25
Speaker 1: happen to be studying right now. I was surprised how
8:29
Speaker 1: often fire showed up. Yeah, fire, fire was a popular one.
8:33
Speaker 1: Fire in the wheel. Yeah, so that that's surprised to you.
8:35
Speaker 1: How come? Yeah, Um, and I see why they went
8:39
Speaker 1: for fire, But I feel like it it kind of
8:40
Speaker 1: dodges a question a little bit because it's a pretty
8:43
Speaker 1: human invention. Yeah. Wow, so fire predates humanity. Homo erectus
8:48
Speaker 1: was using human was using fire, and they're not us.
8:51
Speaker 1: I mean, they're humans, are homo, but they're not Homo
8:53
Speaker 1: sapiens are not. So wait, we can't we can't claim
8:56
Speaker 1: credit for fire. We can't claim Homo sapiens did not
8:59
Speaker 1: invent fire, and they might have stolen it or reinvented it,
9:01
Speaker 1: but they didn't first invented it was Homo orectus. I
9:04
Speaker 1: think you've just undermined like a core tenant and belief
9:06
Speaker 1: a lot of people have about their own species, and
9:09
Speaker 1: a lot of people went to fires like this is
9:10
Speaker 1: the defining thing about humanity. This was mixes who we
9:13
Speaker 1: are with this is what makes us. Yeah, you just
9:15
Speaker 1: de cute it from the list. That's pretty tough, man. Okay,
9:19
Speaker 1: so we eliminate fire then from the list of important
9:22
Speaker 1: to mentions because we didn't invent it. Yeah, so yes,
9:25
Speaker 1: so people said fire. They also tend to go with
9:27
Speaker 1: for the wheel, right, the wheels are a pretty common one.
9:31
Speaker 1: Was also embarrassing, though the wheel is embarrassing, was that, well,
9:34
Speaker 1: we had the wheel for thousands of thousands of years,
9:37
Speaker 1: but we used it for pottery on this side as
9:39
Speaker 1: a pottery wheel. So it's again like if you want
9:42
Speaker 1: for transportation, it took us thousands of years to flip
9:45
Speaker 1: it over on its side. And that's what we think
9:47
Speaker 1: with think about whe we think about movement transportation, but
9:50
Speaker 1: we use it to make pottery for a really long time.
9:53
Speaker 1: Is that true? Yes? Yes, the wheel for transport comes
9:57
Speaker 1: well after the wheel for pottery. Nobody thought to put
10:00
Speaker 1: did on the side. I want to talk about that
10:02
Speaker 1: some more, but first let's take a quick break. So
10:16
Speaker 1: this is something you come back to a lot in
10:18
Speaker 1: the book. Is that you say, we had everything we
10:20
Speaker 1: needed and if you just knew what to do, you
10:24
Speaker 1: could skip a thousand years or a hundred thousand years,
10:26
Speaker 1: you could accomplish something in an afternoon. Right, And I
10:29
Speaker 1: get that that's like a really fun fantasy to imagine
10:31
Speaker 1: fast forwarding human progress. But I wonder sometimes how true
10:35
Speaker 1: that is. Like, let's take the question of language. Right
10:38
Speaker 1: in your book, you you lay down language is like
10:40
Speaker 1: a pretty critical cornerstone of human technology, and I completely agree.
10:45
Speaker 1: But um, do you think that going back like fifty
10:49
Speaker 1: years to skeletally identical humans, that if you went back
10:53
Speaker 1: that you could teach English, for example, to a group
10:56
Speaker 1: of two year old, um, you know, modern human from
11:00
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, and that they would learn it and
11:02
Speaker 1: develop and and and turn into you know, English speakers.
11:05
Speaker 1: I do. And the reason, UH sort out of that
11:08
Speaker 1: loophole there is that you said two year olds, which
11:10
Speaker 1: is great because, um, it's very hard, maybe impossible for
11:14
Speaker 1: humans to learn a language after puberty. It's also really
11:18
Speaker 1: unethical to test to run experiments on it. But in
11:21
Speaker 1: cases of feral children, people spend their lives trying to
11:23
Speaker 1: teach them to talk, and maybe they learned it a
11:25
Speaker 1: little bit, but they're never communicative that don't really use it.
11:28
Speaker 1: And so if you're traveling back, you know, a hundred
11:30
Speaker 1: thousand years, fifty thousand years, and you want to start
11:32
Speaker 1: rebuilding civilization, I would recommend don't necessarily chat up the
11:36
Speaker 1: cave men the cave women, but maybe talk to their kids.
11:40
Speaker 1: Maybe steal some babies if you're going to do it
11:42
Speaker 1: that way. So you're on going on record for baby
11:45
Speaker 1: stealing right here. Um, I don't want to go on
11:47
Speaker 1: record for fully endorsing baby stealing. But in terms of
11:50
Speaker 1: just pure efficiency of civilization building, directing your efforts towards
11:55
Speaker 1: the cave babies will get you much better results. And
11:58
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a hug question where care right,
12:00
Speaker 1: because you mentioned how we have these skeletally identical humans
12:04
Speaker 1: like um, anatomically modern humans. So people whose skeletons look
12:08
Speaker 1: like ours, and those show up around two thousand BC,
12:12
Speaker 1: and then behaviorally modern humans show up, humans that that
12:15
Speaker 1: act like us, that behave like us, that decorate their bodies,
12:19
Speaker 1: bury the dead, that sort of thing shop around fifty
12:22
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's this huge gap of what took
12:25
Speaker 1: us along, what what made us finally take that leap
12:27
Speaker 1: from anatomically modern to behaviory modern. And we don't for sure, no,
12:32
Speaker 1: because it's very hard to desk. None these things fossilized
12:36
Speaker 1: are preserved. But one the theories and want to go
12:38
Speaker 1: within the book is it was the mention of language.
12:40
Speaker 1: It was he mentioned of talking to each other, that
12:43
Speaker 1: that let us make that leap, for let us finally
12:46
Speaker 1: become fully human. And so that's the technology. I would
12:48
Speaker 1: say it's the most important one for us, language because
12:52
Speaker 1: it allows us to to have not just to talk
12:55
Speaker 1: to each other, but to like have ideas that can
12:57
Speaker 1: survive the death of the host. That's so importantly. Language
13:01
Speaker 1: is definitely definitely important. But but the supposition there is
13:05
Speaker 1: that somehow we had the capacity for it but didn't
13:08
Speaker 1: invent it for aft years, Right, But is it There
13:13
Speaker 1: are other ways you might imagine it could have gone, right,
13:15
Speaker 1: it could be that most of us didn't have the
13:17
Speaker 1: capacity for it, and then a few brains you know, mutated,
13:21
Speaker 1: evolved whatever in to develop an additional capacity which allowed
13:25
Speaker 1: for the creation of it um and then and then
13:27
Speaker 1: of course it would be a rapid selection effect. So
13:29
Speaker 1: you can imagine that after the capacity for language evolved,
13:32
Speaker 1: it might have been developed and then spread very rapidly. Sure,
13:36
Speaker 1: but that requires a change to the brain that sort
13:40
Speaker 1: of evolved in us. And without needing to suppose that,
13:44
Speaker 1: we can just suppose someone inventive language, and then the question, well,
13:47
Speaker 1: why why did it take us so long? And language
13:50
Speaker 1: is a really hard thing to advent because imagine you're
13:52
Speaker 1: trying to you have to be sort of this uh,
13:55
Speaker 1: it might had a column Caveman Einstein who has to
13:59
Speaker 1: not only come up with the idea of language, the
14:01
Speaker 1: idea of expressing thoughts in words, but instantiate that idea.
14:07
Speaker 1: And it's still completely useless unless you're also smart enough
14:09
Speaker 1: to teach someone else how to use it all within
14:13
Speaker 1: a single lifetime. Like it's it's not easy to be
14:15
Speaker 1: that first person who's coming up with the technology of languages,
14:18
Speaker 1: inventing language. And I think you can point to out
14:21
Speaker 1: and say, yeah, that that might take a long time
14:22
Speaker 1: to have all those things line up as they would
14:25
Speaker 1: need to be for this to have any practical use, right.
14:28
Speaker 1: And I think it touches on this other issue, which
14:31
Speaker 1: is a lot of these foundational inventions. People who are
14:34
Speaker 1: listening might think, what, that's crazy. It's just so obvious,
14:36
Speaker 1: And a lot of these things are so foundational. They've
14:39
Speaker 1: in you know, they're deeply embedded in the way we
14:42
Speaker 1: think that it's impossible to imagine life without them, which
14:45
Speaker 1: is why, frankly, they're so difficult to invent, right, I mean,
14:49
Speaker 1: because they completely transform the way you think and then
14:52
Speaker 1: become deeply ingrained in your thought process. It's hard to
14:55
Speaker 1: imagine how to get there when you don't have it.
14:57
Speaker 1: I've spent years trying to picture thinking without words, Like,
15:01
Speaker 1: how do you what? I'm talking to two cartoonists here, right,
15:03
Speaker 1: you guys are experts at thinking without words, right, But
15:06
Speaker 1: we're we're taking words and put them into pictures. But
15:08
Speaker 1: it's still your The process seems very very language based.
15:11
Speaker 1: But one of examples I love touching on that is
15:14
Speaker 1: the idea of if you have a time machine, you
15:16
Speaker 1: could take one of those children born, take them to
15:21
Speaker 1: the modern world, adopt them, raise them as a modern child,
15:24
Speaker 1: and they'll be like any other human on the planet.
15:26
Speaker 1: They'll they'll be a smart and creative and clever and
15:28
Speaker 1: fun and loving as any other human because they're, you know,
15:32
Speaker 1: standing on the shoulders of giants. They're having fifty years
15:35
Speaker 1: worth of technological process for free. They get to have language,
15:39
Speaker 1: they get to learn how to read and write, they
15:41
Speaker 1: get to be in a community. And it seems almost
15:44
Speaker 1: like you're breaking a rule right to have this you know,
15:46
Speaker 1: literal cave person and have them be in distinguished from
15:49
Speaker 1: modern person just by changing the environment in which they're raised.
15:52
Speaker 1: But that's what that's what these inventions do for us.
15:54
Speaker 1: They change the nature of who and what we are
15:57
Speaker 1: in a way that makes it hard to imagine what
15:58
Speaker 1: it's like without it. And that's the kind of thing
16:03
Speaker 1: that makes me wonder what's in the future, Like if
16:06
Speaker 1: there were in the past these sort of trivial but
16:09
Speaker 1: transformational inventions math, language, etcetera. Are there ones that remain,
16:14
Speaker 1: you know, well, in a hundred thousand years, people look
16:16
Speaker 1: back and think, how come Ryan North didn't think of
16:19
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah blah, some transformational but basic way
16:22
Speaker 1: of living and thinking that exploded our capacity for technology
16:27
Speaker 1: in life. I mean, do you think that there are
16:28
Speaker 1: those sort of transformations left? Yeah? I hope so, I
16:31
Speaker 1: mean I believe. So what the punchline of this is,
16:33
Speaker 1: you know, we could have met all this stuff and
16:35
Speaker 1: we didn't. And look how blind we were not to
16:37
Speaker 1: see that. How can we have been so stupid? But
16:40
Speaker 1: if there are all these inventions and all these points
16:42
Speaker 1: in history we can point out and say, yeah, we
16:44
Speaker 1: didn't see this until later, Um, it stands the reason
16:47
Speaker 1: that there maybe that right now there's probably still some
16:49
Speaker 1: of this I call it the low hanging fruit of
16:51
Speaker 1: civilization that we could invent an arn't and just aren't
16:55
Speaker 1: seeing yet. And I think that's really optimistic. I don't
16:57
Speaker 1: think that makes us feel stupid, that makes us That
16:59
Speaker 1: makes me feel like side it, like, that's what are
17:01
Speaker 1: we missing? That's out there right now? There's still really
17:04
Speaker 1: cool stuff that we can all come up with. So
17:07
Speaker 1: is that your choice, Bryan, for the most important invention
17:10
Speaker 1: in human history? Language? Yeah? I think it's foundational. I
17:15
Speaker 1: think it's consequential. I think it's transformational. And also I'm
17:18
Speaker 1: kind of cheating because it's actually two inventions. I'm rolling
17:21
Speaker 1: reading and writing together into one. They're just calling it language.
17:25
Speaker 1: But how do you define language? You mean, like the
17:27
Speaker 1: the idea of words or just communicating because people I'm
17:31
Speaker 1: sure communicated with grunt or hand signals, right, yeah, but
17:34
Speaker 1: that's not language. Um, So the example I would give is,
17:38
Speaker 1: let's say I draw three pictures. I draw a picture
17:41
Speaker 1: of a cool dog and a picture of a skateboard,
17:44
Speaker 1: and a picture of a thumbs up, and those symbols
17:48
Speaker 1: can be interpreted. You can, Oh, he's saying a cool
17:51
Speaker 1: dog in a skateboard is good. Or maybe I'm saying
17:55
Speaker 1: I saw a cool dog in the skateboard and I
17:56
Speaker 1: gave it a thumbs up because I love cool dogs
17:58
Speaker 1: on skateboards. But there's there's ambiguity there, and what languages
18:03
Speaker 1: is something that works to eliminate ambiguity. So when we're
18:06
Speaker 1: communicating now, because I'm using words with precise meanings, they're
18:10
Speaker 1: not perfect, but they try to be precise so that
18:11
Speaker 1: we can communicate quickly and clear that they're having to
18:13
Speaker 1: go back and clarify all the time. And so yeah,
18:15
Speaker 1: you can communicate with Brench, you can communicate with how
18:18
Speaker 1: you can communicate with long ang glances across the dance floor,
18:21
Speaker 1: but for precision communication you need language. And that's that's
18:25
Speaker 1: what I'm calling the technology. So it's kind of like
18:28
Speaker 1: the idea of somebody at some point they say, hey, guys,
18:30
Speaker 1: this is crazy. We should have rules that define what
18:35
Speaker 1: those glances across the dance floors are. Yeah, yeah, okay.
18:38
Speaker 1: So it's the the invention of rules that everyone would
18:41
Speaker 1: agree to communicate ideas Yes with an asterix. Because when
18:45
Speaker 1: the when of the craziest proofs I read when I
18:47
Speaker 1: was doing computation linguistics was this person was making the
18:51
Speaker 1: argument that one of the neat things about language that
18:53
Speaker 1: is almost unique is that it involves so quickly. You
18:56
Speaker 1: look at the way English was spoken a hundred years ago,
18:58
Speaker 1: it already it sounds age and or at least odd.
19:01
Speaker 1: You go back two or three or four, you go
19:02
Speaker 1: back to Shakespeare four years ago, and it's hard to understand, right,
19:06
Speaker 1: So why is it changed so quickly? Why isn't why
19:09
Speaker 1: it's based on rules, rules what make language work clearly?
19:12
Speaker 1: Why these rules seem to change so often? That seems
19:14
Speaker 1: like a failure. And the argument this paper was making,
19:17
Speaker 1: which I love was that the reason language evolves so
19:20
Speaker 1: quickly is because language is really hard to learn, which
19:23
Speaker 1: is true, but actually it's impossible to learn, and we
19:27
Speaker 1: never actually learned the language our parents are speaking. We
19:30
Speaker 1: learned an approximation of it that allows us to communicate,
19:33
Speaker 1: but we all the edges are fuzzy, and so since
19:35
Speaker 1: we have all these places where we don't actually know
19:37
Speaker 1: what the rule is, that allows language to change so
19:40
Speaker 1: quickly and to evolve generationally so fast, which I love.
19:43
Speaker 1: I love to do that. You know, language not just hard,
19:45
Speaker 1: it's impossible, and you will never learn the language your
19:48
Speaker 1: parents are speaking just can't be done. Well, it's certainly true.
19:51
Speaker 1: The parents just don't understand. So maybe that's the reason.
19:54
Speaker 1: That's right, I forgot your computational linguist, right, that was
19:57
Speaker 1: your education, Yeah, I did. I did a master's in
20:01
Speaker 1: compunition linguistics. So that's a bit suspicious that a computation
20:04
Speaker 1: of linguists thinks language is the greatest invention ever. You know,
20:09
Speaker 1: cartoons are the most important invention ever. It's only a
20:13
Speaker 1: tiny of itself centered. But also it's a bit of
20:15
Speaker 1: a dark view because it suggests that the greatest accomplishment
20:18
Speaker 1: in human history is thousands of years ago and we
20:20
Speaker 1: haven't really done anything since, which matches up. But we're
20:23
Speaker 1: still using it right, Like it's allowed us to do
20:26
Speaker 1: everything else. So that's that's why I say it's so
20:29
Speaker 1: it's so foundational, is that it it is what unlocks
20:31
Speaker 1: everything is you can be the smartest person in the world.
20:33
Speaker 1: Without language, You're trapped in your own head and you're
20:35
Speaker 1: having these amazing world changing thoughts and can't communicate them
20:39
Speaker 1: in a way that's clear you can. You're not gonna communicate,
20:41
Speaker 1: you know, relativity through grunts and glances. You need you
20:44
Speaker 1: need language that I need mathematics for that. So I
20:46
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating what you're saying, because I was going
20:49
Speaker 1: to make exactly the same argument to make a different point.
20:52
Speaker 1: I was going to use the same argument to suggest
20:54
Speaker 1: that math and science are the most important inventions in
20:57
Speaker 1: the industry, but for exactly the same reason. And I
21:03
Speaker 1: feel like you guys are maybe a little biased in
21:06
Speaker 1: your selections here. I feel like until we had mathematics,
21:09
Speaker 1: all we had was language, which is frankly kind of
21:12
Speaker 1: clumsy when you want to communicate very clearly and precisely.
21:16
Speaker 1: And I remember learning math and learning logic and feeling like, finally,
21:20
Speaker 1: here we have effectively a language for very clearly and
21:24
Speaker 1: precisely communicating ideas ideas which are too fuzzy in English
21:27
Speaker 1: to communicate clearly. But is mathematical language just another language?
21:32
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like? Is that a sub
21:33
Speaker 1: invention of language? Uh? In the book, I cheat because
21:36
Speaker 1: I'm saying now language is the most important to mention
21:38
Speaker 1: the book. I actually give five I say written language,
21:41
Speaker 1: spoken language, scientific method, calorie surplus, so again having extra
21:45
Speaker 1: food so they can worry about other things, and we're
21:47
Speaker 1: your next meal is coming from. And the last one
21:49
Speaker 1: I call non stucky numbers, which is basically a number
21:52
Speaker 1: sism that permits mathematics to happen in a in a
21:56
Speaker 1: productive way. So one of the reasons the ancient Romans
21:59
Speaker 1: didn't get that far with maths. They have these Roman
22:00
Speaker 1: numerals which are just incredibly clumsy to operate with. You
22:05
Speaker 1: you have to do math. We know what number you're
22:06
Speaker 1: looking at. So I'm not gonna sit here and argue
22:10
Speaker 1: that math isn't important because I have I have on paper,
22:12
Speaker 1: I think it is important. But I will say, um,
22:16
Speaker 1: and this is maybe dodgy, But I, personally, Ryan North,
22:19
Speaker 1: think that mathematics and correct me if I'm wrong, But
22:22
Speaker 1: I feel like mathematics can be a creative expression in
22:26
Speaker 1: the same way that language can, only with more rules.
22:29
Speaker 1: Is that wrong? Is that romanticizing it? Or am I
22:33
Speaker 1: the romantization of mathematics? While um, I'm not sure it's
22:37
Speaker 1: possible to romanticize math. Now I think that's fair. Um,
22:41
Speaker 1: but I would also make a similar argument, you know,
22:43
Speaker 1: for science, like in terms of helping us develop technologies,
22:48
Speaker 1: or helping us understand the world, or communicating clearly with
22:51
Speaker 1: each other what we know and what we don't know. Um.
22:54
Speaker 1: It's always amazing to me that took so long for
22:57
Speaker 1: people to come up with a scientific method, you know,
22:59
Speaker 1: or even to come up with the idea of empiricism,
23:02
Speaker 1: Like you have an idea, let's actually check if it
23:05
Speaker 1: works before we accept it in the canon of ideas, right, Um.
23:09
Speaker 1: You know, one of my favorite examples when I teach
23:11
Speaker 1: introductory physics is the comparison between Aristotilion physics and Galilean physics.
23:17
Speaker 1: You know, like Aristotle thousands of years ago said, oh,
23:20
Speaker 1: things just moved, because it's in the way of things
23:22
Speaker 1: to move, and Galileo was like, let's check, and turns
23:26
Speaker 1: out in an afternoon he disproved all of Aristotle. Right,
23:30
Speaker 1: And there's an example of somebody actually making huge progress
23:32
Speaker 1: in an afternoon based on a single simple idea. But
23:36
Speaker 1: why did it take thousands of years before people realized, Wow,
23:39
Speaker 1: science is actually only useful when you compare it to
23:41
Speaker 1: what's actually happening in the real world. Um, I, you know,
23:45
Speaker 1: once you have that idea, of course, then that you
23:47
Speaker 1: have this enormous flowering of technology and advancement. So it
23:50
Speaker 1: seems to me like, yeah, language is important, math is important,
23:53
Speaker 1: but in some sense science is a really strong contender
23:56
Speaker 1: for the most important because it's we've had it the
23:58
Speaker 1: shortest amount of time, but it's led to perhaps the
24:01
Speaker 1: greatest transformations in you know, the way we live. Well,
24:03
Speaker 1: here's an interesting question. Um so you Ryan think language
24:06
Speaker 1: is the greatest invention ever? Uh? And Danny, you think
24:10
Speaker 1: math and science are the greatest inventors ever? Do you
24:12
Speaker 1: think that we're done? Like, can you foresee a possibility
24:17
Speaker 1: that there's an invention in our future that could maybe
24:20
Speaker 1: overtake these two things to be the greatest invention ever?
24:23
Speaker 1: So one of the reasons my book is structured the
24:26
Speaker 1: way it is, where it has this invention of time
24:28
Speaker 1: machines and then you go back and you're doing time
24:30
Speaker 1: tourism and you get trapped in the past. Is that.
24:33
Speaker 1: I feel like, if you invented time travel, then you're done.
24:38
Speaker 1: That's the last invention that ever needs to be invented,
24:40
Speaker 1: because any problem you encounter, you go to the future,
24:43
Speaker 1: see how they solved it, bring the solution back with you.
24:45
Speaker 1: The second you invent time travel, you've invented all other inventions.
24:50
Speaker 1: It's possible for humans to invent boom, which rooves the
24:52
Speaker 1: time time travel is impossible, or it proves that that
24:56
Speaker 1: could be that would surpass language and science in my
24:59
Speaker 1: est ration, all other inventions on mass beats everything else
25:03
Speaker 1: for sure. But what do you think, Daniel? I think
25:06
Speaker 1: that for that to work, you'd have to invent time travel,
25:09
Speaker 1: which would violate causality, which is what you need in
25:11
Speaker 1: order to be able to steal inventions from the future
25:14
Speaker 1: that haven't been made yet, which is basically just science
25:17
Speaker 1: fiction and so, and we already invented that. So that's
25:21
Speaker 1: what I think about that. What do you What do
25:23
Speaker 1: you think, Daniel, would be What do you think could
25:25
Speaker 1: be something we might invent in the future that could
25:28
Speaker 1: totally revolutionize things even more. That's impossible to comprehend, Like I,
25:32
Speaker 1: you know, if I if I knew that, then I
25:33
Speaker 1: would invent it right. All of these inventions that really
25:36
Speaker 1: the transformational ones that And I love the way Ryan
25:39
Speaker 1: pointed this out in this book, all these inventions, if
25:41
Speaker 1: you just knew what the invention was, then you have
25:44
Speaker 1: invented it, right. It's like having the password right. All
25:48
Speaker 1: you need to know is the password and the doors open.
25:51
Speaker 1: Some of these inventions, like you know, steal, how do
25:54
Speaker 1: you even if you went back and told somebody how
25:56
Speaker 1: to smelt steal. It's not like they could do that
25:58
Speaker 1: that afternoon. They have to build a whole industrial base, etcetera, etcetera.
26:01
Speaker 1: But these really transformational ones, it's just knowing the idea
26:05
Speaker 1: is the invention, so all right. It's not like I
26:08
Speaker 1: have the next human transformational invention already in my head.
26:11
Speaker 1: I just haven't shared it with anybody, and I was
26:13
Speaker 1: waiting for this podcast to reveal it. But if I did,
26:18
Speaker 1: I would totally roll it out right now, let's take
26:21
Speaker 1: a quick break. I also wonder like if you could
26:36
Speaker 1: go back in time and you're you're talking to year
26:39
Speaker 1: old dude and you're like excited to share with them
26:43
Speaker 1: the ideas you have and the technology that you can
26:45
Speaker 1: use to transform is in her world. I wonder if
26:48
Speaker 1: they might think, you know what, we're good, like, uh,
26:51
Speaker 1: you know, I got I got my roving mammals, I
26:54
Speaker 1: can eat. You know that, hunter, I gather, I you know,
26:58
Speaker 1: carve sticks. Every once in a while, we bang rock
27:00
Speaker 1: together around the campfire. Life's not bad, you know. Yeah,
27:03
Speaker 1: that's the That's the thing that we kind of forget
27:04
Speaker 1: is that in times of plenty, the hunting and gathering
27:07
Speaker 1: lifestyle is a fabulous lifestyle. It's like you're lazing around.
27:11
Speaker 1: It doesn't take all day to hunt and gather. You
27:13
Speaker 1: have lots of free time, just chill out, do whatever
27:15
Speaker 1: you want. Foods plenty. Who would give that up? Farming sucks.
27:19
Speaker 1: Farming is fluck crack, break back, breaking labor in a field.
27:23
Speaker 1: Like it's it's a lot of work, but what it
27:25
Speaker 1: gets you is reliable foods that when the times of
27:28
Speaker 1: plenty run out pretending gathering, you don't starve and suffer
27:32
Speaker 1: catastrophic population collapse because you have resources. You're in one place,
27:35
Speaker 1: you can build infrastructure. You can start building buildings that
27:39
Speaker 1: you don't have to pick up and carry with you
27:40
Speaker 1: like it's it's where civilization begins when you when you
27:43
Speaker 1: stop moving around. Every time things get hub, it gets hard.
27:46
Speaker 1: So yeah, I can I can see. Uh, if you
27:51
Speaker 1: arrive at a time where it's very easy to find food,
27:53
Speaker 1: is gonna be hard to humance people to join the
27:55
Speaker 1: farm and work for you or work with you. But
27:59
Speaker 1: one of the arguments for that that I found was, um,
28:03
Speaker 1: someone was pointing out that it's very hard to produce
28:06
Speaker 1: alcohol in a hunting and gathering lifestyle all the time,
28:11
Speaker 1: and so if you want to have a beer, you
28:15
Speaker 1: need a civilization for that, and that might be one
28:17
Speaker 1: of the things that induces people to come and help
28:20
Speaker 1: out on a farm. Yeah. My my other fear for
28:23
Speaker 1: time traveling Ryan is that you go back in time
28:25
Speaker 1: with all these crazy ideas, you're just gonna get brands
28:27
Speaker 1: into which and killed. Like you know, this is sort
28:30
Speaker 1: of a social barrier to convincing people to join your
28:32
Speaker 1: let's transform humanity movement. But you're you're right, maybe beer
28:36
Speaker 1: is the answer to that problem. All right, I only
28:38
Speaker 1: only have one more question for you, which is sort
28:40
Speaker 1: of a multiverse question. To me, the history of human
28:45
Speaker 1: invention seems sort of chaotic, you know, with somebody had
28:47
Speaker 1: this idea, somebody had that idea, sort of came together
28:50
Speaker 1: here and there. Have you thought about sort of the
28:53
Speaker 1: thousand parallel universes where you run the human experiment, and
28:57
Speaker 1: how many of them do you think we would end
28:59
Speaker 1: up after this out of time at roughly the same place?
29:01
Speaker 1: Like do we always end up stumbling into the same
29:04
Speaker 1: things in roughly the same order? Or are there these
29:07
Speaker 1: moments when human technology could have shifted dramatically and gone
29:10
Speaker 1: down a different path and become, you know, done things
29:13
Speaker 1: more rapidly. Do you think those thousand different parallel universes
29:17
Speaker 1: have similarities? Are all totally different? I think that's similarity.
29:20
Speaker 1: I think they're they're markedly different. Like when you have
29:22
Speaker 1: these huge expanse of time which we could have met
29:24
Speaker 1: something and didn't, all you need is that one person
29:27
Speaker 1: to invent it. You remove Isaac Newton from our history
29:29
Speaker 1: and we have a very different history of thoughts of mathematics,
29:33
Speaker 1: right perhaps, but you know, maybe Leibnitz would have invented everything.
29:35
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton didn't think of right, there could have just
29:37
Speaker 1: been like it could have been an idea of the
29:39
Speaker 1: time that somebody was going to invent because the pieces
29:41
Speaker 1: were there. And that does show up. We look at
29:43
Speaker 1: the invention of radio, and there are a bunch of
29:44
Speaker 1: people independently coming with radio at about the same time
29:47
Speaker 1: because the pieces were in place. There are certainly moments
29:49
Speaker 1: where sort of things are in the air and everyone's
29:52
Speaker 1: moving towards this one invention, and radio's example of that,
29:54
Speaker 1: but all these other examples where it didn't have to
29:57
Speaker 1: be that way. Um, the stat Dou's go, it was
30:00
Speaker 1: a fun one. That's that's The first stethoscope was just
30:03
Speaker 1: a rolled up tube of paper to listen, to isolate
30:05
Speaker 1: and listen to a sound, and we had paper since
30:09
Speaker 1: it was invented in eighteen sixteen CE by male heterosexual
30:14
Speaker 1: doctor who had a busty female patient and didn't want
30:17
Speaker 1: to press his ear to her chest. That was too
30:19
Speaker 1: erotic and experience for him, so he rolled up a
30:21
Speaker 1: top of paper to leave some room for Jesus and
30:23
Speaker 1: listened through that and accidentally discovered that this isolates and
30:26
Speaker 1: clarifies the sound. So that's when a few examples I
30:29
Speaker 1: can find where someone actually progressed science by being too
30:31
Speaker 1: horny to do with their job properly. And that guy
30:35
Speaker 1: could have shown up at any point in history, right,
30:36
Speaker 1: Like that's and also proves that that boobs are useful
30:39
Speaker 1: for something. All right, Ryan, thank you so much for
30:43
Speaker 1: joining us. Thank you very much, Ryan for entertaining all
30:46
Speaker 1: of our amateurish thoughts on a topic in which you
30:48
Speaker 1: are an expert. Thank you. I think they're great questions.
30:51
Speaker 1: I love talking about this stuff. I wrote a book
30:52
Speaker 1: about I love talking about it so much. It's called
30:55
Speaker 1: How to Invent Everything, a survival Guide for the Stranded
30:57
Speaker 1: time Traveler, and you can get it at how to
31:00
Speaker 1: Invent Everything dot com. Well, I think that Ryan, who
31:07
Speaker 1: has a history of studying language, thinks that language is
31:10
Speaker 1: the most important thing invented human history, and me, as
31:13
Speaker 1: a scientist, I think math and science is the most
31:15
Speaker 1: important thing invented in human history. Yeah, I found that
31:17
Speaker 1: a little suspicious, Like you guys said all these great
31:20
Speaker 1: reasons why your team should win. That's right. And you
31:23
Speaker 1: know there's a trend there, because when I was asking
31:25
Speaker 1: people on the street what they thought the greatest invision
31:27
Speaker 1: in human history, was. Most of them talked about what
31:30
Speaker 1: they happened to have been reading. You know, so students
31:32
Speaker 1: studying evolution said evolution. A student studying the atomic theory
31:35
Speaker 1: said atomic theory. Uh, student on a scooter said the wheel.
31:41
Speaker 1: I think it's it's just it's a hard question to
31:43
Speaker 1: answer because it's so broad, and so people freeze up
31:47
Speaker 1: a little bit and then they think about it from
31:49
Speaker 1: their perspective, and there's a lesson there, and you know
31:51
Speaker 1: that we all see the world from our own perspective. Well,
31:54
Speaker 1: you know, it sort of happened to me too when
31:55
Speaker 1: I was asked this question. When I had to think
31:58
Speaker 1: about it, I just kind of looked around me, you know,
32:00
Speaker 1: like I didn't think internally through the history of human civilization.
32:04
Speaker 1: I just kind of looked around me, and I thought,
32:07
Speaker 1: what would be You thought banana? I could not live
32:11
Speaker 1: without bananas. Yeah, it's what makes everything else possible. To
32:14
Speaker 1: come on, It's what God monkeys out of the trees,
32:18
Speaker 1: anything up into the trees exactly. But yeah, you sort
32:22
Speaker 1: of have that instinct to look around you and to
32:24
Speaker 1: try to gauge impact that way, like what all around
32:27
Speaker 1: me would not be here without if it hadn't been invented,
32:31
Speaker 1: That's right, And I think the lessons there is that
32:33
Speaker 1: we can all see only a tiny bit of the
32:35
Speaker 1: fabric of human history, right, and so it's very difficult
32:38
Speaker 1: to say anything in general, because human history is this
32:41
Speaker 1: incredible mosaic of billions of people's experiences, and all we
32:44
Speaker 1: can do is speak for ourselves. I mean, I know
32:46
Speaker 1: historians try their best to weave these broader stories about
32:50
Speaker 1: what has happened in humanity, but I always feel like
32:53
Speaker 1: so much of actual human experience it just brushed under
32:56
Speaker 1: the rug when they try to do that, And so
32:58
Speaker 1: I think none of us can really speak for all
32:59
Speaker 1: of humanity, can only speak for ourselves. What is the
33:01
Speaker 1: most important invention that is affecting your life? I think
33:04
Speaker 1: that's really the question of the podcast, or you know,
33:06
Speaker 1: maybe points to the idea that the more you know
33:08
Speaker 1: about something, the more fascinating it becomes, you know what
33:12
Speaker 1: I mean. Like Ryan has studied linguistics for a long
33:15
Speaker 1: time and so he just knows so much about it
33:18
Speaker 1: and how it's connected to everything. So from his point
33:20
Speaker 1: of view, it's like the most important thing. It's it's
33:23
Speaker 1: the hub of all things. And like you've studied science,
33:26
Speaker 1: and physics for a long time, and so you've seen
33:29
Speaker 1: how it's kind of sort of connected to everything else,
33:31
Speaker 1: and how it's nothing would be possible without it, and
33:34
Speaker 1: so you see it as the most fascinating, most important thing.
33:37
Speaker 1: And so maybe it's just all sort of connected to itself.
33:40
Speaker 1: And it's just that the more you know about something,
33:42
Speaker 1: the more you think it's crucial to the structure of
33:45
Speaker 1: human history. So why didn't you argue for comics to
33:48
Speaker 1: be the most important? Do you spend twenty years studying it? Right?
33:52
Speaker 1: I totally agree that things as you study them, anything
33:55
Speaker 1: can become interesting. You can find a puzzle anywhere, right,
33:58
Speaker 1: Like you can go into deep I have about like
34:01
Speaker 1: a cup, you know, like if humans hadn't invent at
34:04
Speaker 1: the cup, what would happen? There'd be a lot more
34:07
Speaker 1: injuries in baseball. Wait, now you're talking about a different Sorry,
34:12
Speaker 1: but you don't do you know what I mean? Like
34:13
Speaker 1: you're going to deep diving on anything and see how
34:16
Speaker 1: it's all connected to the greatest moments in history and civilization. Right,
34:20
Speaker 1: Like without a cup or any kind of vessel to
34:22
Speaker 1: hold water, maybe we wouldn't you know, being able to
34:26
Speaker 1: you know, leave the water and hole and start building
34:29
Speaker 1: villagers and things like that. All right, so maybe we
34:31
Speaker 1: should leave that as a challenge to our listeners. Choose
34:34
Speaker 1: some trivial item in human life and challenge us to
34:38
Speaker 1: spend an entire podcast drilling down and discovering what's fascinating
34:42
Speaker 1: about tonail clippers or glad wrap or whatever it is
34:47
Speaker 1: in your life. Send it to us at feedback at
34:50
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com or rights as at jog
34:54
Speaker 1: strap at Daniel Cornall hot coom. And thank everyone for
35:00
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe.
35:04
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed it, tune in next time or check
35:06
Speaker 1: out our book called We Have No Idea, An illustrated
35:09
Speaker 1: guide to the Unknown Universe. See you next time. Thanks
35:13
Speaker 1: for listening. If you still have a question after listening
35:23
Speaker 1: to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
35:26
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
35:29
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or
35:33
Speaker 1: email us at feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.