Latest / Drawn of History / Joe Rogan Experience _1631 - Brian Greene(M4A_128K)

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Joe Rogan Experience _1631 - Brian Greene(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

0:04
Speaker 1: The joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast
0:08
Speaker 1: by night all day.
0:15
Speaker 2: Mr green how are you sir good how about you
0:17
Speaker 2: good to see you man good seeing you what's the
0:19
Speaker 2: latest you got a book out i do yeah the
0:21
Speaker 2: paperback of until the end of time is out today
0:24
Speaker 2: till the end of time yeah that's uh that's heavy.
0:28
Speaker 1: It is heavy but it's a It's a big story,
0:31
Speaker 1: but it's one that we have a nice part within.
0:33
Speaker 1: A small cameo. The human species has a cameo, so
0:36
Speaker 1: it's a human story, too.
0:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, the human species. What have we been around for, what, 300,000 years, 400,000 years?
0:41
Speaker 1: It depends how you define the species, but yeah, that's
0:45
Speaker 1: not a bad number. Some people go back to a
0:46
Speaker 1: million or so if you go back to early human species,
0:49
Speaker 1: but yeah. And compared to the length of time scales
0:52
Speaker 1: that compose reality from the beginning to the end, that's zero.
0:57
Speaker 1: That's nothing.
0:58
Speaker 2: When you, being a physicist, being a person that really
1:02
Speaker 2: does have a much greater grasp of the concept of
1:08
Speaker 2: infinity and of time and of just the length that
1:11
Speaker 2: the universe has existed in its current form, how do
1:14
Speaker 2: you just get through your day and not freak out?
1:17
Speaker 1: Well, it's because my wife says, you know, you gotta
1:21
Speaker 1: cook dinner. So, I mean, there are things that you
1:24
Speaker 1: have to actually get done, but It does change your
1:27
Speaker 1: perspective in a significant way because you recognize that the
1:33
Speaker 1: things that we consider to be, oh, so vital and
1:36
Speaker 1: important are just this blink of an eye on the
1:39
Speaker 1: cosmological landscape, on the cosmological timeline. And it does change
1:43
Speaker 1: the way you approach the world when you pay attention
1:46
Speaker 1: to it. It's hard to always pay attention to it, though. Look,
1:50
Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm walking down the street and I'm
1:51
Speaker 1: thinking about quantum mechanics and I'm thinking about, you know,
1:53
Speaker 1: quantum tunneling. I'm thinking about relativity, time slowing down when
1:57
Speaker 1: I'm moving, right? So if you're in the physics mode,
2:00
Speaker 1: you are living life differently. But who can live that
2:03
Speaker 1: way for more than a moment?
2:04
Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: Because life is too powerful in its intrusion on the
2:09
Speaker 1: way you actually behave in the world.
2:11
Speaker 2: But because of your perspective and because of your education
2:14
Speaker 2: on this, do you feel like almost an obligation to
2:18
Speaker 2: try to expand people's perspective?
2:21
Speaker 1: I'd say that's part of what my goals of life is,
2:24
Speaker 1: to do just that. I don't want people to not
2:27
Speaker 1: live their lives the way they have, but I want
2:30
Speaker 1: them to be able to broaden the experience by recognizing
2:35
Speaker 1: that every day phenomenon is a small slice of the
2:40
Speaker 1: way the world is actually put together. And when you
2:43
Speaker 1: can see your life and your experiences, just a tiny
2:47
Speaker 1: sliver of a reality that's bizarrely strange, and utterly wondrous
2:52
Speaker 1: when you understand everything from black holes to time dilation
2:55
Speaker 1: to quantum tunneling to all that stuff that we have
2:58
Speaker 1: discovered over the last couple hundred years. Yeah, it changes things.
3:02
Speaker 2: Is it a difficult thing to get across to people? Like,
3:06
Speaker 2: do you try to think, like, what is the best
3:08
Speaker 2: way that people are going to absorb these ideas? Because
3:11
Speaker 2: they are so, they're not abstract, but they're so outside
3:16
Speaker 2: of the norm in terms of the way people view
3:18
Speaker 2: the world. You kind of, like, They go, hey, I
3:21
Speaker 2: know you're concentrated on this, but look at that. Yeah.
3:25
Speaker 1: I mean, the real difficulty is not so much getting
3:28
Speaker 1: people interested. You might think that that's the big hurdle.
3:31
Speaker 1: People are like, ah, don't talk to me about that stuff.
3:33
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter to my life. But that's no. People
3:35
Speaker 1: are very curious and interested in what physics has found.
3:39
Speaker 1: What's hard is getting them to not just take it in,
3:43
Speaker 1: but to take it in correctly so that they don't
3:46
Speaker 1: take the ideas and twist it into something else that
3:50
Speaker 1: That suits whatever weirdness they may have encountered in the world.
3:54
Speaker 1: The number of times that I see people take the
3:56
Speaker 1: concepts of quantum mechanics and turn it into utter nonsense
4:01
Speaker 1: because they're like, hey, oh, yeah, probabilities. OK, you know,
4:04
Speaker 1: that describes this quality of my world or, you know,
4:06
Speaker 1: the weirdness of time. Yeah, that's why I had this
4:09
Speaker 1: like mind mill with my best friend on the other
4:12
Speaker 1: side of that sort of thing. And I don't fault
4:17
Speaker 1: people for that. These ideas are difficult. But if you
4:19
Speaker 1: ask me what the challenge is, the challenge is breaking
4:21
Speaker 1: through that and getting people to really understand what it
4:25
Speaker 1: is that we found. And it's weirder than many of
4:27
Speaker 1: the things that the human imagination would go to, but
4:30
Speaker 1: it's harder because it's very specific and rigorous and mathematical ultimately,
4:35
Speaker 1: and that's unfamiliar.
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Speaker 2: Do you think it's the complications of quantum mechanics, like the...
4:40
Speaker 2: It's such a bizarre field of study that it sort
4:45
Speaker 2: of lends itself being sort of occupied by people like
4:50
Speaker 2: the what the bleep do we know type folks that
4:52
Speaker 2: kind of co-opt it and then spread nonsense.
4:56
Speaker 1: It's exactly right. I mean, that film is an unfortunate
5:00
Speaker 1: but very good example of of people who took the
5:04
Speaker 1: ideas and usurped them for their own purpose, right? I
5:09
Speaker 1: had friends that were in that film who were deeply
5:11
Speaker 1: disheartened by the way their words were twisted.
5:15
Speaker 2: Well, they were tricked. They were tricked. They thought they
5:17
Speaker 2: were doing a documentary on quantum mechanics, and it turned
5:19
Speaker 2: out to be essentially a cult documentary.
5:21
Speaker 1: Exactly. And so there is a sensibility of that sort,
5:27
Speaker 1: which is volitional. That's like a choice, I think, that
5:29
Speaker 1: was made. In fact, I think I mentioned to you
5:32
Speaker 1: once the director of that film had called me to
5:35
Speaker 1: be in it and i was like well what are
5:36
Speaker 1: you doing because i couldn't tell what they're and then
5:38
Speaker 1: he called me like a year after the film came
5:40
Speaker 1: out and kind of apologized and said you were right
5:43
Speaker 1: oh so he didn't know yeah he didn't know so
5:45
Speaker 1: so so.
5:46
Speaker 2: But but yeah we should stop just so people that
5:48
Speaker 2: don't know what we're talking about understand what's happening there
5:51
Speaker 2: is a person in that documentary that calls themselves ramtha
5:55
Speaker 2: that uh They don't explain it in the documentary, but
6:00
Speaker 2: they claim to be like, what is it, a thousand-year-old?
6:03
Speaker 1: 35,000-year-old sage from the lost land of Lemuria, I believe
6:09
Speaker 1: it is, which is like another lost land with Atlantis.
6:13
Speaker 1: They were like at war with Atlantis or something like that. So, yeah,
6:17
Speaker 1: it's a pretty deep cult. I think I mentioned to
6:21
Speaker 1: you once, I actually accidentally found myself at one of
6:24
Speaker 1: their headquarters in, I think it was in Washington State,
6:27
Speaker 1: gave a talk at a gathering, and it was so
6:31
Speaker 1: sad at some level, because I saw people searching for truth,
6:36
Speaker 1: but being misled by a charismatic speaker who was basically
6:41
Speaker 1: coming up with this nonsense. And so that's one way
6:47
Speaker 1: in which these ideas are usurped, but others... It's less
6:51
Speaker 1: by design. It's just more you hear quantum mechanics is weird,
6:56
Speaker 1: and then you hear something else is weird, and you say, oh,
6:58
Speaker 1: that must be quantum mechanics because there's this general sensibility
7:02
Speaker 1: that the world is weird. But quantum mechanics is weird
7:04
Speaker 1: in a very specific way, right? I mean, Schrodinger, Erwin
7:09
Speaker 1: Schrodinger wrote down an equation, a mathematical equation that actually
7:13
Speaker 1: quantifies the weirdness in a very specific way. way that
7:17
Speaker 1: makes mathematical predictions that we can test in the laboratory.
7:20
Speaker 1: So that's not just like people in their minds coming
7:23
Speaker 1: up with crazy stuff and saying, wouldn't that be curious
7:25
Speaker 1: if that was part of reality? This is stuff that
7:29
Speaker 1: has emerged from careful study. So when you learn that
7:33
Speaker 1: the world evolves according to a game of chance, it's
7:36
Speaker 1: as if there's a throw of the dice that determines
7:40
Speaker 1: how things evolve from one moment to the next. That's
7:43
Speaker 1: deeply unfamiliar. We don't go around the world thinking that
7:46
Speaker 1: there's a chance that something bizarre will happen. But there
7:50
Speaker 1: is such a chance in every moment, in every experience
7:53
Speaker 1: of your life, that chance is so small in the
7:56
Speaker 1: big everyday world that we don't experience these things. But
7:59
Speaker 1: if you were an electron, yeah, you'd be having the
8:02
Speaker 1: weirdness of being two places at once in some sense.
8:05
Speaker 1: You'd have the weirdness of passing through solid barriers. These
8:09
Speaker 1: kinds of curiosities would be an everyday phenomenon if you
8:13
Speaker 1: were small as a particle like an electron.
8:15
Speaker 2: That's sort of what lends itself to the woo-woo people, right? Yeah, totally.
8:19
Speaker 2: Because when you talk about things being in superposition, or
8:23
Speaker 2: you talk about spooky action at a distance, you talk
8:26
Speaker 2: about these bizarre things that they sound like magic. When
8:29
Speaker 2: you're talking about something that's both moving and not moving,
8:32
Speaker 2: it's in two places at the same time, or there's
8:34
Speaker 2: a probability of it being in these... Describing stuff like that,
8:39
Speaker 2: especially to the average person that doesn't have a background
8:42
Speaker 2: in this field, They go, what is the world then?
8:45
Speaker 2: What are you saying?
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Speaker 1: And I have to say that we physicists come to
8:49
Speaker 1: the very same place. We say, what is the world then?
8:51
Speaker 1: What are we talking about? And the difference is we
8:54
Speaker 1: can then look back at the equations and say, if
8:57
Speaker 1: we're talking about quantum entanglement, we can see how two
9:00
Speaker 1: particles far apart in space will have behaviors that are correlated.
9:05
Speaker 1: You do something on this particle... And we'll have some
9:07
Speaker 1: instantaneous correlation with what happens at that particle, regardless of
9:12
Speaker 1: how far apart they are in space. Einstein himself called
9:15
Speaker 1: this spooky. Spooky action at a distance. You do something
9:19
Speaker 1: in New York and it affects in some quantum mechanical way.
9:22
Speaker 1: a particle in California. How could that be?
9:25
Speaker 2: How can that be? Good.
9:26
Speaker 1: So I don't know at some level if I'm trying
9:28
Speaker 1: to answer you human to human, but if I'm answering
9:31
Speaker 1: as a mathematician, as a physicist, I can see it
9:34
Speaker 1: in the equations. I see it in the mathematics. I
9:37
Speaker 1: see how this particle has a quantum wave, which has
9:40
Speaker 1: a piece that stretches all the way out to California
9:44
Speaker 1: and way beyond. And when I interact with this particle,
9:47
Speaker 1: I affect that probability wave instantaneously. Therefore, I change the
9:51
Speaker 1: wave in California even if my action is in New York.
9:55
Speaker 1: So I see that in the mathematics.
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Speaker 2: I understand these words you're saying, but I don't understand.
10:00
Speaker 1: It. Neither do I. That's the point. So what level
10:06
Speaker 1: of understanding are we talking about, right? If you're talking
10:08
Speaker 1: about intuition, like a deep intuition, the way we understand
10:12
Speaker 1: 2 plus 2 is 4, right? I don't have to
10:14
Speaker 1: explain that to anybody.
10:15
Speaker 2: They get it.
10:15
Speaker 1: They see 2 apples and 2 apples, 4 apples. They
10:17
Speaker 1: got it. But when it comes to quantum entanglement, I
10:21
Speaker 1: don't feel it that way. I don't have that intrinsic
10:26
Speaker 1: understanding of what it is. And so if you push
10:29
Speaker 1: me to say, well, what is it? I ultimately fall
10:32
Speaker 1: back on the math. And ultimately, I say the reason
10:35
Speaker 1: I believe the math is the math makes predictions that
10:38
Speaker 1: we can test in the laboratory. And then you say, well,
10:42
Speaker 1: then what kind of understanding is that? And some people
10:45
Speaker 1: would say that's the deepest understanding. All we really want
10:49
Speaker 1: of a physical theory is for it to give a
10:52
Speaker 1: rigorous mathematical articulation of what happens out there in the world.
10:56
Speaker 1: And it's the human brain struggling for some kind of intuition.
11:00
Speaker 1: That's our problem. That's a human problem. That's not a
11:03
Speaker 1: problem of physics. That's a problem of us being satisfied.
11:06
Speaker 2: The problem of perception and understanding.
11:07
Speaker 1: Perception and understanding, yeah.
11:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this spooky action at a distance. Why was
11:12
Speaker 2: it first, was it a hypothesis? Or was this something
11:16
Speaker 2: that was proven by math first?
11:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founding fathers of
11:24
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, a curious fellow, very interesting life. But he realized,
11:31
Speaker 1: looking at the equations, that there was this quality of
11:35
Speaker 1: the math that if two particles come together and they
11:38
Speaker 1: interact for a little while and then they separate, they
11:40
Speaker 1: can no longer be thought of as independent or autonomous.
11:45
Speaker 1: I mean, the very basic quality of autonomy, you and
11:48
Speaker 1: I are autonomous because we can separate. We can go
11:51
Speaker 1: our separate ways and do whatever we want at our
11:54
Speaker 1: respective locations. So you would think that if two particles separate,
11:58
Speaker 1: they will also be autonomous. But he saw in the
12:01
Speaker 1: mathematics that they would not be autonomous. that what you
12:04
Speaker 1: did to one would have an effect in some quantum
12:07
Speaker 1: mechanical way on the other. Now he saw that in
12:09
Speaker 1: the mathematics. He called it out as the central feature
12:14
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics. And that's a big statement coming from
12:16
Speaker 1: him because there are a lot of other weird qualities
12:18
Speaker 1: of quantum physics. Einstein then comes along, 1935 with two colleagues,
12:24
Speaker 1: and leverages this idea. Writes a paper where he tries
12:27
Speaker 1: to prove that quantum mechanics cannot be the full story
12:31
Speaker 1: of the world because of this weird quality of what
12:33
Speaker 1: you do here affecting something over there. It's not until
12:36
Speaker 1: the 1980s that people really start to test this idea.
12:40
Speaker 1: And by today, this is used all the time in
12:43
Speaker 1: the laboratory. Quantum computing makes use of this quality. So
12:46
Speaker 1: this is no longer an idea that's abstract. It's something
12:51
Speaker 1: that's applied. Applied quantum entanglement gives us things in the
12:55
Speaker 1: real world in the laboratory. So this is beyond question real.
13:00
Speaker 1: even though Einstein thought it couldn't be, and Schrodinger considered
13:03
Speaker 1: it to be the strangest feature of the math of all.
13:05
Speaker 2: So beyond question, it's real. Yeah. But what do you
13:08
Speaker 2: think is happening?
13:09
Speaker 1: Well, so if you're going to allow for the most
13:14
Speaker 1: exotic possibilities, some would suggest that you are probing the
13:19
Speaker 1: many worlds of quantum mechanics. So In quantum mechanics, all
13:23
Speaker 1: you ever do is predict the probability of this happening
13:26
Speaker 1: or that happening. Electrons, you know, 70% chance here, 30%
13:30
Speaker 1: chance here. If you measure the electron and you do
13:32
Speaker 1: find it over here, what happened to the other possibility?
13:35
Speaker 1: Some say it happens, but just in another world. In
13:39
Speaker 1: one world, you find the particle here. In another world,
13:42
Speaker 1: there's a copy of you that finds the particle here.
13:44
Speaker 2: Over there.
13:45
Speaker 1: Each of yous doesn't know about the other and thinks
13:47
Speaker 1: you are the unique version of you, the unique Joe Rogan,
13:50
Speaker 1: but now there are two of you, each thinking that
13:53
Speaker 1: the particle is found in one location or another. If
13:56
Speaker 1: that's the way quantum mechanics actually works, and some people
13:59
Speaker 1: do think this, then quantum entanglement is, in some sense,
14:02
Speaker 1: less weird. Because what happens is that in one world
14:07
Speaker 1: you have a certain correlation between the particles, in another
14:10
Speaker 1: world you'd have a different correlation between the particles, and
14:12
Speaker 1: that's just what happens. So that's one, but you're allowing
14:18
Speaker 1: multiple universes in this explanation. That's pretty weird in its
14:22
Speaker 1: own right. The fundamental way that we encapsulate this, we
14:28
Speaker 1: say that quantum mechanics is non-local. Non-local means that the
14:33
Speaker 1: influences are not limited to where they are applied. Our
14:37
Speaker 1: experience is, look, if I do something to this bottle
14:40
Speaker 1: of water, The influence is in this local neighborhood. What
14:44
Speaker 1: I did just now didn't affect something on the other
14:46
Speaker 1: side of Austin or on the other side of the world.
14:49
Speaker 1: But quantum mechanics is saying that that's an intuition built
14:52
Speaker 1: up from everyday experience. And everyday experience is grossly misleading
14:57
Speaker 1: when it comes to this kind of an idea.
14:59
Speaker 2: Severely limited.
15:00
Speaker 1: Severely limited.
15:02
Speaker 2: And this concept of many worlds... So the idea is
15:06
Speaker 2: that there's multiple versions of you and multiple versions of
15:10
Speaker 2: everything that you've experienced, all the things you see that
15:13
Speaker 2: you consider to be Austin, Texas or the United States
15:17
Speaker 2: or the world itself. There's multiple versions of this happening simultaneously.
15:22
Speaker 2: How many?
15:23
Speaker 1: Well, in some sense, infinite.
15:25
Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
15:25
Speaker 1: Because the basic idea is that any outcome that is
15:29
Speaker 1: allowed by the laws of quantum physics, any outcome will
15:33
Speaker 1: take place in its own separate world. And so when
15:37
Speaker 1: you think about every decision you've ever made, every possibility
15:41
Speaker 1: that you've ever encountered, all of the outcomes happen, and
15:45
Speaker 1: that would happen throughout all of time. So in some sense,
15:49
Speaker 1: there's an unending number of realities that are in the
15:53
Speaker 1: grand landscape of the quantum description. Now, we hear that,
15:58
Speaker 1: and you say, that's nuts. That sounds nutty, right? We
16:02
Speaker 1: experience one world. But if you look at the mathematics,
16:06
Speaker 1: as a guy named Hugh Everett did in 1957, he
16:10
Speaker 1: was a graduate student at Princeton, unknown. He looked at
16:13
Speaker 1: the math, and he said, I want to look at
16:14
Speaker 1: the math and give it the most straightforward, intrinsic interpretation.
16:19
Speaker 1: And the most economical, intrinsic interpretation of the math is
16:23
Speaker 1: this one. It sounds nuts. grossly uneconomical, all these universes,
16:28
Speaker 1: but that's an output. The input is incredibly economical. You
16:32
Speaker 1: look at the equations and this is the most straightforward interpretation.
16:35
Speaker 1: Every outcome does happen. It happens in its own world. Now,
16:39
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that I believe this, but it's definitely
16:42
Speaker 1: a worthy contender for the way that we should think
16:46
Speaker 1: about quantum mechanics.
16:47
Speaker 2: So do you guys get together and bounce these ideas
16:50
Speaker 2: off each other on a regular basis?
16:53
Speaker 1: It depends who you mean by you guys.
16:54
Speaker 2: You physicists, fellas. You physicists.
17:14
Speaker 1: Don't try to understand it. Just do it. You know,
17:17
Speaker 1: it's the so-called shut up and calculate approach to quantum mechanics.
17:23
Speaker 1: And Niels Bohr, who is, again, one of the founding
17:25
Speaker 1: pioneers of quantum mechanics, this was his perspective. I mean,
17:29
Speaker 1: Bohr basically said the goal of physics is not to
17:33
Speaker 1: tell us how the universe is in the sense of understanding.
17:37
Speaker 1: It's just to make predictions that we're going to see
17:39
Speaker 1: in experiments. That's all that you should ever expect to do.
17:42
Speaker 1: There are other physicists who don't feel that way. And
17:45
Speaker 1: there are other physicists who think physics is a matter
17:47
Speaker 1: of telling us what's happening. It's got to give us
17:50
Speaker 1: the story. It's got to peel back the curtain and
17:54
Speaker 1: give us a clear glimpse of what's happening behind the scenes.
17:57
Speaker 1: And so those of us who do have that as
17:59
Speaker 1: the goal do get together and do talk about these things.
18:03
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you guys exist because those shut up
18:06
Speaker 2: and do the math. Those guys, they're not going to
18:09
Speaker 2: help me. I'm not going to be able to understand that.
18:12
Speaker 2: You are a bridge to someone like me having the
18:16
Speaker 2: slimmest grasp of an understanding of what this stuff is
18:19
Speaker 2: all about.
18:19
Speaker 1: Although those guys would say that I am doing you
18:22
Speaker 1: a disservice.
18:22
Speaker 2: How so?
18:23
Speaker 1: They would say that I should convince you that There
18:27
Speaker 1: is no deeper intuition that you're missing. That the only
18:32
Speaker 1: way to understand what's going on is you learn the math,
18:34
Speaker 1: you do the calculations, and looking for anything else is
18:38
Speaker 1: looking for too much. Now, I don't feel that way.
18:41
Speaker 1: I feel that in the end of the day, when
18:43
Speaker 1: we understand the world deeply, it does give us insights
18:47
Speaker 1: into what's actually happening. The question you asked, what's happening
18:50
Speaker 1: in quantum entanglement, is, in my view, the right question
18:54
Speaker 1: to ask. Unfortunately, I can't give you a good enough
18:58
Speaker 1: answer today, even though mathematically we understand it perfectly. I
19:02
Speaker 1: think one day we'll go beyond that. And there is
19:05
Speaker 1: work happening today. There are people who suspect that quantum
19:09
Speaker 1: entanglement is nothing but another idea of Einstein's in disguise. Wormholes, right?
19:16
Speaker 1: You've encountered wormholes, probably if you ever watch any like
19:19
Speaker 1: Star Trek, these are tunnels from one point in the
19:23
Speaker 1: universe to... to the other, kind of shortcuts through the
19:25
Speaker 1: fabric of space. And some suggest that when two particles
19:29
Speaker 1: are entangled, there's actually a secret wormhole connecting them. And
19:34
Speaker 1: that wormhole means that they're secretly close together because of
19:38
Speaker 1: the shortcut. So they look like they're far apart, but
19:42
Speaker 1: there's actually a shortcut through a wormhole. So secretly, they're
19:45
Speaker 1: actually right next to each other. And then when you
19:48
Speaker 1: do something on one and it affects the other, perhaps
19:51
Speaker 1: it's not so surprising because through the wormhole, they're right
19:54
Speaker 1: next to each other.
19:56
Speaker 2: Anybody that would discourage you from discussing these kind of
19:59
Speaker 2: very strange ideas and expressing them that way you're going
20:03
Speaker 2: to discourage curiosity i think so which is going to
20:06
Speaker 2: discourage interest in the field which is going to discourage
20:09
Speaker 2: people to become physicists because it is fascinating and when
20:12
Speaker 2: you're talking about this concept of spooky action at a
20:15
Speaker 2: distance you're talking about wormholes connecting things together at far
20:20
Speaker 2: distances and and things that we don't truly understand but
20:24
Speaker 2: that you can show mathematically are correct like That's amazing.
20:28
Speaker 1: I agree.
20:29
Speaker 2: I agree.
20:29
Speaker 1: And you have to look at the history though. There
20:32
Speaker 1: was a period of time when people who thought about
20:36
Speaker 1: what's really going on got sidetracked. In the early days
20:40
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics, what really needed to happen was develop
20:43
Speaker 1: the math, develop the equations, make predictions, go into the laboratory,
20:47
Speaker 1: have this hand and glove approach between theory and experiment
20:50
Speaker 1: so that you have a theory that you have confirmed.
20:54
Speaker 1: And the fear at that time was, that if too
20:57
Speaker 1: many people start pondering what does it all mean, then
21:01
Speaker 1: the progress toward that goal would have been diminished. But
21:07
Speaker 1: we're beyond that. We have quantum mechanics, at least as
21:11
Speaker 1: a working theory that we can use to do wondrous things.
21:16
Speaker 1: And so more and more people are thinking now about
21:20
Speaker 1: these kinds of questions. So I think it's kind of
21:22
Speaker 1: a pendulum has swung. toward the more philosophical, toward the
21:27
Speaker 1: more what does it all mean, how can we describe
21:29
Speaker 1: what's really going on here, whereas if we were having
21:32
Speaker 1: this conversation 10, 15 years ago, I would say virtually
21:36
Speaker 1: no one is really thinking about things in the language
21:39
Speaker 1: that we're talking about.
21:41
Speaker 2: That's really strange, because if you think about how long
21:43
Speaker 2: people have been trying to understand the reality of the
21:47
Speaker 2: universe itself and how recent some of these discoveries are,
21:51
Speaker 2: it really makes you think, like, what are we going
21:53
Speaker 2: to be able to show and prove is true 50
21:57
Speaker 2: years from now, 60 years from now? Because if you
21:59
Speaker 2: go back 100 years ago, you go to 1921, the
22:03
Speaker 2: understanding of the world itself is so grossly different than
22:07
Speaker 2: what we understand today.
22:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And the other side of that observation,
22:14
Speaker 1: which is exciting and daunting, is think about what science
22:18
Speaker 1: has done more or less to date. It's tried to
22:21
Speaker 1: understand things in the world that naturally form, stars, planets,
22:26
Speaker 1: black holes, living systems. But from more or less now
22:31
Speaker 1: going forward, we're entering a realm where we are going
22:34
Speaker 1: to start to create the new things that we're going
22:37
Speaker 1: to try to understand as we modify the genome, as
22:42
Speaker 1: we perhaps create artificial life, as we use physics to
22:46
Speaker 1: create new kinds of materials and structures that would never
22:49
Speaker 1: form on their own. But because our understanding is so refined,
22:54
Speaker 1: we can begin to manipulate objects at the molecular, atomic,
22:58
Speaker 1: and subatomic level. We can, going forward, be the driver
23:04
Speaker 1: of the new things in the universe around us as
23:06
Speaker 1: opposed to simply being the passive consumer of those things
23:12
Speaker 1: that the universe has given us that we then try
23:14
Speaker 1: to understand. So going forward, it won't only be trying
23:18
Speaker 1: to understand the stuff that has arisen naturally is going
23:22
Speaker 1: to be understanding the stuff that we create. And that's
23:26
Speaker 1: an interesting, exciting, but also frightening prospect.
23:30
Speaker 2: So that's the concept of using these principles and this
23:34
Speaker 2: understanding of quantum mechanics to manipulate reality itself. Yeah, yeah.
23:38
Speaker 2: How do you anticipate that playing out?
23:41
Speaker 1: That's a tough one.
23:42
Speaker 2: I don't know.
23:43
Speaker 1: You know, it's... It'll certainly be something that we approach
23:48
Speaker 1: in an incremental way. I'm not suggesting that tomorrow we're
23:51
Speaker 1: going to be developing terraforming new worlds or creating parallel universes.
23:57
Speaker 1: But there's a pattern that we certainly see playing out
24:00
Speaker 1: throughout the history of science, which is this. You're presented
24:04
Speaker 1: with some quality of the world. You don't understand it.
24:06
Speaker 1: You then experiment. You observe it. And then little by little,
24:09
Speaker 1: you begin to understand that you develop theories, mathematical ideas
24:12
Speaker 1: being the most precise ones to describe whatever it is
24:15
Speaker 1: that you're talking about. And once you have those ideas
24:18
Speaker 1: nailed down, you can then use them to manipulate the world.
24:21
Speaker 1: That's what we do with quantum mechanics. At first, we
24:24
Speaker 1: just wanted to understand atoms, particles, and things of that sort. Now,
24:29
Speaker 1: we can manipulate the quantum world to create all sorts
24:32
Speaker 1: of technological wonders, the integrated circuits. which is at the
24:36
Speaker 1: core of every technological gadget that has transformed life on
24:40
Speaker 1: planet Earth. This is quantum mechanics in the hands of
24:44
Speaker 1: human beings. And so that pattern of going from lack
24:47
Speaker 1: of understanding to understanding to manipulation is the pattern that
24:52
Speaker 1: will continue to play out going forward. So that manipulation,
24:56
Speaker 1: what will it be? Well, I think we're going to
24:58
Speaker 1: come to a time when we understand the structure of
25:01
Speaker 1: space far better than we do now, the structure of time.
25:04
Speaker 1: far better than we do now. Does that suggest that
25:07
Speaker 1: we'll manipulate space and time? If the pattern persists, yeah. Now,
25:11
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Will we build our own wormholes?
25:14
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. That's starting to go
25:16
Speaker 1: into crazy land, the woo that we were talking about before.
25:19
Speaker 2: But maybe it won't be woo 100.
25:21
Speaker 1: Years from now. Or 1,000 years from now. If we
25:23
Speaker 1: stick around long enough, if the pattern persists, that understanding
25:27
Speaker 1: ultimately gives you the lever to manipulate... Right now, if
25:30
Speaker 1: you ask me what's happening at the cutting edge of
25:32
Speaker 1: string theory, quantum mechanics, it's understanding black holes. It's understanding
25:36
Speaker 1: how quantum mechanics and black holes talk to each other.
25:38
Speaker 1: And what is black hole? A black hole is a
25:40
Speaker 1: weird region of space-time. So we're trying to understand space-time
25:44
Speaker 1: itself at the deepest possible level. And so the next
25:49
Speaker 1: step would be... suggest that we will manipulate it at
25:53
Speaker 1: some point in fairly significant ways.
25:56
Speaker 2: So the ways we've used it so far, you mentioned
25:58
Speaker 2: integrated circuits. How is quantum mechanics used to form integrated circuits?
26:05
Speaker 1: So an integrated circuit in essence is a little device
26:09
Speaker 1: in where you want an electron to follow a very
26:11
Speaker 1: specific trajectory to carry out this or that computation or process. Now,
26:17
Speaker 1: if you want to control electrons with that level of fidelity,
26:21
Speaker 1: you've got to use the mathematical laws that describe electrons
26:25
Speaker 1: with that level of fidelity. Newton's equations from the late 1600s,
26:28
Speaker 1: they won't work. If you think of the electron as
26:30
Speaker 1: a little baseball or a little billiard ball, totally inaccurate.
26:33
Speaker 1: It will not allow you to manipulate their motion. But
26:36
Speaker 1: with quantum mechanics, you can manipulate the motion of the
26:39
Speaker 1: electrons because you understand their mathematical underpinnings. And so it
26:43
Speaker 1: was only by applying quantum mechanics to materials, to structures
26:47
Speaker 1: that could give rise to this kind of control over
26:50
Speaker 1: little particles that we could build these microscopic circuits. And
26:54
Speaker 1: they work. I mean, that's the proof in the pudding, right?
26:57
Speaker 1: And so that's a key example of quantum mechanics transforming
27:04
Speaker 1: the world as we know it. And right now, there
27:08
Speaker 1: is work in string theory that is suggesting that that
27:12
Speaker 1: this notion of quantum entanglement that we were talking about before,
27:16
Speaker 1: that may be the key to understanding the fabric of
27:20
Speaker 1: space-time itself. I mean, we use this metaphor, fabric of space-time, right?
27:25
Speaker 1: But any piece of fabric, it's stitched together by threads, right?
27:29
Speaker 1: So what are the threads of the spatial fabric if
27:32
Speaker 1: we push this metaphor and try to really understand it
27:34
Speaker 1: more fully? And one of the suggestions is the threads
27:38
Speaker 1: of quantum entanglement that tie distant objects together, Those may
27:43
Speaker 1: be the threads that hold together the fabric of space-time itself.
27:48
Speaker 2: So that would mean that everything is somehow connected, even
27:52
Speaker 2: if it's 13.7 billion light years away. These things are
27:57
Speaker 2: somehow or another directly connected. Yes.
28:01
Speaker 1: Now, to avoid that turning into the woo, you have
28:04
Speaker 1: to realize that when you have a lot of material...
28:08
Speaker 1: And when you have a lot of time and a
28:10
Speaker 1: lot of space, these quantum entangled connections become so spread
28:14
Speaker 1: out that they become diluted. So it's not as though
28:18
Speaker 1: someone can say, you know, I thought about my best
28:21
Speaker 1: friend in California and then the phone rang. We must
28:24
Speaker 1: be quantum entangled. That's the sort of stuff that this
28:27
Speaker 1: kind of talk can lead to. But fundamentally what you're
28:30
Speaker 1: saying is correct. It may be the structures in space
28:34
Speaker 1: may be fundamentally connected through these quantum entanglements. and it
28:39
Speaker 1: may be that the substrate, space itself, we don't usually
28:42
Speaker 1: think of space as something because it's kind of invisible,
28:46
Speaker 1: but we're within the fabric of space-time itself, and that
28:50
Speaker 1: arena may be stitched together by these threads of quantum
28:54
Speaker 1: entanglement as well.
28:55
Speaker 2: So this quantum entanglement will be diluted at a distance?
28:58
Speaker 2: So is that, what is the mechanism behind that?
29:02
Speaker 1: It's more diluted by the number of particles that are involved.
29:06
Speaker 1: So if you just have two particles in a pristine environment,
29:10
Speaker 1: like a total vacuum, and they're entangled, you can move
29:13
Speaker 1: them arbitrarily far apart and the entanglement will not dilute.
29:17
Speaker 1: That's the craziness. You could have two particles on opposite
29:20
Speaker 1: ends of the universe and you measure one and the other.
29:23
Speaker 2: How is that done? Yeah, good.
29:26
Speaker 1: How do you do that? And there are a number
29:28
Speaker 1: of experimental protocols, procedures, but one concrete one is you
29:33
Speaker 1: take an atom, like an atom of calcium is one example.
29:37
Speaker 1: You fire some laser on it, and that excites the
29:40
Speaker 1: electron in the calcium atom to a higher energetic state.
29:44
Speaker 1: When that electron falls back down to a lower energetic state,
29:48
Speaker 1: it emits photons back to back. And because those photons
29:52
Speaker 1: were emitted from the same process, the electron falling down
29:55
Speaker 1: to a lower energy state, those photons will be entangled.
29:59
Speaker 1: So that's a concrete way where you can have back-to-back
30:02
Speaker 1: photons that will travel arbitrarily far apart if they don't
30:05
Speaker 1: encounter anything else. That will be quantum entangled.
30:09
Speaker 2: Now, you were talking about integrated circuits. Now, I hear
30:14
Speaker 2: a lot of talk about quantum computing. And I don't
30:18
Speaker 2: understand what that is, but everybody's telling me that it's
30:20
Speaker 2: going to revolutionize computing. How so?
30:22
Speaker 1: Well, as with everything, you have to interrogate. precisely what
30:27
Speaker 1: one means by revolutionize everything. Maybe in some rough sense,
30:31
Speaker 1: that's true. But let me just first say what it
30:33
Speaker 1: is and then say what the possibilities are. So, imagine
30:39
Speaker 1: that you have a computer that can access, I'll use
30:43
Speaker 1: one particular link, access the many worlds of quantum mechanics. Now,
30:48
Speaker 1: when you're carrying out a calculation, you don't have the
30:52
Speaker 1: calculation solely take place in one universe. you have it
30:55
Speaker 1: take place in a whole collection of parallel universes, allowing
30:59
Speaker 1: in some sense to divide up the calculation and in
31:02
Speaker 1: parallel have it take place across this spectrum of universes.
31:07
Speaker 1: Clearly that will rapidly speed up the calculation because now
31:11
Speaker 1: it's no longer happening in one universe, you've split it
31:14
Speaker 1: across many universes. So in some sense, quantum computing is
31:19
Speaker 1: trying to leverage that quality of quantum mechanics. Now, that's
31:23
Speaker 1: one language. using the language of many worlds. You don't
31:26
Speaker 1: have to use language. You can also use just the
31:29
Speaker 1: language of probabilities. So if you have a particle like
31:33
Speaker 1: an electron, normally in a classical world, you'd say it's
31:37
Speaker 1: either here or there. In a quantum world, our world,
31:41
Speaker 1: it can be in a mixture of here and there.
31:44
Speaker 1: If it's in a mixture of here and there, you
31:46
Speaker 1: can do calculations here and there. Whereas in a classical world,
31:51
Speaker 1: you could either do the calculation here or there. So
31:54
Speaker 1: it's basically substantially increasing the places where calculations take place,
32:02
Speaker 1: thereby substantially decreasing the amount of time that it takes
32:06
Speaker 1: these calculations to be accomplished.
32:09
Speaker 2: But by what mechanism? What separates quantum computing from regular computing?
32:15
Speaker 1: So in regular computing, you have quantum qualities, because like
32:20
Speaker 1: I said, the integrated circuit, you needed to understand quantum
32:22
Speaker 1: mechanics to guide the motion of the particle through the
32:24
Speaker 1: integrated circuit. But in the end of the day, a
32:28
Speaker 1: traditional computer, a classical computer, if we will, It stores
32:33
Speaker 1: information as bits, zeros and ones. So you have one
32:37
Speaker 1: bit that's either a zero, another bit that's either a one,
32:40
Speaker 1: and through that you can store information and manipulate information,
32:43
Speaker 1: and that's what computation is all about. The quantum computer
32:46
Speaker 1: changes the bit to the so-called qubit. What is a qubit?
32:51
Speaker 1: A qubit is a specially defined and constructed digit that
32:57
Speaker 1: can be in a mixture of zero and ones. And specifically,
33:01
Speaker 1: the way we usually do this is we have what
33:03
Speaker 1: are known as spin systems. So an electron has a spin,
33:07
Speaker 1: like a little top, and it can either spin counterclockwise,
33:10
Speaker 1: that we call spin up, or clockwise, that we call
33:13
Speaker 1: spin down. In a classical world, the electron is either
33:16
Speaker 1: this or this. In the quantum world, it can be
33:20
Speaker 1: a mixture. And so literally, these quantum computers have these
33:24
Speaker 1: spin systems that are in these mixtures of up and
33:27
Speaker 1: down simultaneously. And that allows them to do multiple computations simultaneously.
33:33
Speaker 1: That allows them to decrease the time it takes to
33:36
Speaker 1: carry out the computation. That's the essence of the idea.
33:40
Speaker 2: Is the structure of the computer different? Totally. So a
33:43
Speaker 2: regular computer has a motherboard, it has a processor, it
33:46
Speaker 2: has a hard drive. What is a quantum computer structured like?
33:49
Speaker 1: You know, if you see some of these things, they look,
33:52
Speaker 1: I've heard them described, and it's not a bad description,
33:54
Speaker 1: it's sort of like chandelier's you've got spin systems in
33:58
Speaker 1: arms of the chandeliers, and you have cooling systems that
34:02
Speaker 1: are vital to these computers because if there's heat that
34:06
Speaker 1: comes into the system, it can destroy this delicate mixture
34:10
Speaker 1: of up and down simultaneously. So they're far more delicate,
34:15
Speaker 1: and it is much more difficult to, at this stage,
34:19
Speaker 1: have the number of bits. So an ordinary computer can
34:23
Speaker 1: have as many bits as you want. As you say, just,
34:25
Speaker 1: you know, put more boards, expand the random excess memory.
34:29
Speaker 1: It's all up to you, the user. For quantum computers,
34:33
Speaker 1: you've got to make sure that all these qubits are
34:37
Speaker 1: working together in order that they can perform these calculations.
34:41
Speaker 1: And it's very hard to have a whole lot of
34:44
Speaker 1: qubits maintain the so-called quantum coherence that allows them to
34:48
Speaker 1: work together. So the maximum number of qubits in quantum
34:52
Speaker 1: computers that have been built, it's only at 50. very
34:56
Speaker 1: small relative to the number of bits that we're familiar with,
34:58
Speaker 1: you know, in, we're talking about gigabits, right? When you're
35:01
Speaker 1: talking about your, your billions of bits. So, so that
35:05
Speaker 1: is for the future, but there doesn't seem to be
35:07
Speaker 1: a fundamental obstacle to building a quantum computer that has,
35:11
Speaker 1: you know, a large number of these qubits. And in
35:14
Speaker 1: that way, in principle, being able to do calculations exponentially
35:18
Speaker 1: more quickly. That's the rough idea.
35:19
Speaker 2: How far away are we from implementing quantum computing in
35:22
Speaker 2: daily life? Like, is it, Is it a cooling issue?
35:26
Speaker 2: Is it an issue of just expanding our understanding of
35:31
Speaker 2: how to construct these things?
35:32
Speaker 1: Yeah. There are those in the field who are careful
35:38
Speaker 1: to say that they don't think that we'll ever have
35:40
Speaker 1: quantum computing in everyday life. And the reason for that
35:44
Speaker 1: is largely, you know, the cooling issue. And it has
35:48
Speaker 1: to do with the difficulty in maintaining the stability of
35:53
Speaker 1: these devices. They're so delicate. Whereas, you know, you drop
35:57
Speaker 1: your laptop, you may crack it or something. But, you know,
36:00
Speaker 1: for the most part, you drop your phone and it's fine.
36:02
Speaker 1: And so there are those who say that we will
36:05
Speaker 1: never have these things in daily life. They'll always be
36:07
Speaker 1: highly specialized, you know, in laboratories that we somehow make
36:11
Speaker 1: use of as opposed to carry around in our pocket.
36:13
Speaker 1: But the same was said about ordinary computers, you know, 60, 70,
36:17
Speaker 1: 80 years ago, when a computer in those days filled
36:20
Speaker 1: an entire room with all these vacuum tubes. Whoever thought
36:23
Speaker 1: that we'd be walking around in our pocket with something
36:25
Speaker 1: more powerful than that kind of device?
36:28
Speaker 2: Just 50 years later.
36:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm skeptical whenever I hear people say never, never, never.
36:32
Speaker 1: But in this case, I'm almost open to the idea
36:35
Speaker 1: because these systems are so incredibly delicate. And in fact,
36:39
Speaker 1: one of the hurdles right now in quantum computing is
36:42
Speaker 1: they're not reliable. These qubits, they can flip. from one
36:47
Speaker 1: state to another, ruining your calculation very easily. So what
36:52
Speaker 1: some of the quantum computer specialists are developing are what
36:55
Speaker 1: is known as quantum error correcting codes, redundancies in the
36:59
Speaker 1: information in the quantum system so that when this kind
37:02
Speaker 1: of spin flip should happen, you can correct it down
37:05
Speaker 1: the line and not have to start the calculation from scratch.
37:08
Speaker 2: What's causing the inconsistencies?
37:09
Speaker 1: Well, it's just the delicacy. You know, the way in
37:13
Speaker 1: which these spins are talking to each other can be
37:15
Speaker 1: disrupted by any kind of environmental influence at all. So
37:20
Speaker 1: it's just... Power surge. Power surge, heat, you know, any
37:24
Speaker 1: kind of environmental influence. And so it's just a technological hurdle.
37:30
Speaker 1: It's not really a theoretical hurdle. We understand what's going on.
37:33
Speaker 1: It's quantum mechanics after all. But it's a technological hurdle
37:36
Speaker 1: to realize this possibility. But getting to the other question,
37:39
Speaker 1: you said, like, what will it give us if we
37:42
Speaker 1: have these quantum computers? And there are certain calculations... that
37:46
Speaker 1: on a quantum computer you can do in the blink
37:49
Speaker 1: of an eye that might take years or centuries on
37:53
Speaker 1: a classical computer, such as there are certain encryption ideas
37:58
Speaker 1: that have been applied to securing information in banks and
38:02
Speaker 1: things of that sort. In the old days, it was
38:04
Speaker 1: basically you'd build these huge prime numbers and you'd multiply
38:08
Speaker 1: them together And it would be the challenge of the
38:10
Speaker 1: person trying to hack your system to have to factor
38:13
Speaker 1: this big number and virtually impossible to do in any
38:16
Speaker 1: reasonable period of time. There's an algorithm that people have
38:19
Speaker 1: come up with that works on a quantum computer that
38:22
Speaker 1: can factor these numbers instantaneously. So that doesn't sound so good, right?
38:27
Speaker 1: It means that information that was secure might not be secure.
38:31
Speaker 1: But of course, then quantum computer scientists come along and
38:34
Speaker 1: they come up with a new encryption mechanism that's quantum
38:37
Speaker 1: mechanically based. And that one would be unbreakable even with
38:40
Speaker 1: a quantum computer. So that's the kind of development which
38:45
Speaker 1: is actually already starting to happen. A student of mine
38:47
Speaker 1: actually works for a company that generates quantum random numbers.
38:52
Speaker 1: You need random numbers in order to be able to
38:55
Speaker 1: have the security that nobody's going to know what number
38:58
Speaker 1: you actually have. And there are quantum mechanical devices that
39:01
Speaker 1: have already been built to generate those kinds of quantum numbers.
39:06
Speaker 1: But the overarching from 30,000 feet view is that we'll
39:12
Speaker 1: be able to take on calculations that we could never
39:15
Speaker 1: even imagine doing before. And that could revolutionize artificial intelligence.
39:20
Speaker 1: I mean, what is general artificial intelligence about looking out
39:23
Speaker 1: at the world and seeing patterns, right? You know, AlphaGo,
39:26
Speaker 1: you know, this wonderful system that learned the game of
39:30
Speaker 1: Go and could beat, you know, masters in the world.
39:33
Speaker 1: How did it do it? It looked at a huge
39:36
Speaker 1: number of games and saw the patterns in that huge
39:39
Speaker 1: number of games. And with that, gained an expertise that
39:41
Speaker 1: allowed it to become the champion Go player in the world.
39:45
Speaker 1: So it's all about pattern recognition. It's all about finding patterns.
39:48
Speaker 1: And that's what a quantum computer in principle could be
39:52
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful at. So artificial intelligence in principle could take
39:58
Speaker 1: an incredible leap forward, simulating various quantum systems that we
40:04
Speaker 1: want to understand better. Now, when we simulate them on
40:08
Speaker 1: a computer, we're simulating them on a classical computer, trying
40:11
Speaker 1: to mimic quantum mechanical behavior. Now, if you had a
40:14
Speaker 1: quantum computer, You could actually simulate it with the very
40:18
Speaker 1: physical ideas that are happening in the real world. So
40:22
Speaker 1: now you have a confluence between the methodology of the
40:25
Speaker 1: quantum simulator and the real world, allowing you to do
40:28
Speaker 1: things that you couldn't do before. So it's just to
40:30
Speaker 1: say that, in principle, there's a whole lot of understanding
40:35
Speaker 1: of the external world that these devices could give us,
40:37
Speaker 1: and that's why people have become so excited about it.
40:41
Speaker 2: I think it's so interesting that we look to games
40:44
Speaker 2: to find out how intelligent and how powerful computers really are.
40:48
Speaker 2: Like for the longest time is could a computer beat
40:50
Speaker 2: a chess master? Yeah. And now that, that problem has
40:54
Speaker 2: been solved. Like not only can a computer beat a
40:56
Speaker 2: chess master, but they always will beat a chess master now,
40:59
Speaker 2: which is really fascinating to people.
41:01
Speaker 1: It totally is. And there's a way in which that
41:03
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense because what is a game?
41:07
Speaker 1: A game is, is an artificial universe with very simple rules.
41:12
Speaker 1: And therefore, it's a simplified version of reality. And it's
41:16
Speaker 1: also a well-posed game. I mean, tic-tac-toe versus chess, right?
41:21
Speaker 1: The difference is, in tic-tac-toe, it's so simple that there's
41:25
Speaker 1: no creativity involved. You know, if you play it correctly,
41:28
Speaker 1: you'll always have a draw, right? But in chess, because
41:31
Speaker 1: of the great number of possibilities, there's a lot of
41:33
Speaker 1: creativity that comes into play. So it's a universe. with
41:36
Speaker 1: a fixed set of rules, it's simplified, and it has
41:39
Speaker 1: the opportunity for human beings to be creative. And so
41:42
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful testing ground for computers because if a
41:46
Speaker 1: computer can beat a human in that domain, now we
41:48
Speaker 1: can say, aha, that computer in some sense is creative.
41:53
Speaker 1: And the thing that we usually look to to define
41:57
Speaker 1: ourselves as human beings, how do we differ from other
42:00
Speaker 1: things in the world, the inanimate world, we're creative.
42:03
Speaker 2: Right?
42:03
Speaker 1: We can come up with ideas. We can come up
42:05
Speaker 1: with novel, innovative ideas. That's kind of how we define ourselves.
42:11
Speaker 1: And so when a computer starts to do that, it
42:13
Speaker 1: starts to challenge our humanity. And I think that's a
42:17
Speaker 1: good thing.
42:18
Speaker 2: Right?
42:18
Speaker 1: I don't think that we are as different from the
42:22
Speaker 1: external world as we perhaps like to think. We are
42:26
Speaker 1: collections of particles governed by the laws of physics. And
42:31
Speaker 1: I think it's spectacular... that a collection of particles under
42:35
Speaker 1: the ironclad rules of physics can be creative, can come
42:38
Speaker 1: up with ideas, can figure out quantum mechanics and general relativity. Like,
42:42
Speaker 1: how spectacular is that? But all we are are big
42:45
Speaker 1: collections of particles governed by those laws. And all a
42:48
Speaker 1: computer is, big collection of particles governed by those rules.
42:53
Speaker 1: So I full well anticipate the possibility for a computer
42:59
Speaker 1: to get to our level of cognitive power and beyond.
43:04
Speaker 1: And I full well anticipate that there will be the
43:07
Speaker 1: artificial systems that say to us, I have an inner world.
43:12
Speaker 1: I have conscious awareness. Now, how will we test that
43:16
Speaker 1: computer to see whether it was programmed to say that
43:19
Speaker 1: or whether it actually is having that inner world?
43:22
Speaker 2: I don't know.
43:22
Speaker 1: That's a tough one. But it's a question we face
43:24
Speaker 1: all the time. Like, I assume you have an inner
43:27
Speaker 1: world inside your head. I don't know that for a fact. You,
43:31
Speaker 1: I assume, are making the same assumption about me. How
43:34
Speaker 1: do we come to that? We come to it based
43:36
Speaker 1: on the fact that we're having a conversation and we
43:38
Speaker 1: observe each other's behaviors and all of that comes together
43:41
Speaker 1: to suggest that we are each roughly the same and
43:44
Speaker 1: therefore I assume that what's happening inside your head is
43:47
Speaker 1: roughly the same kind of processes that happen inside of mine.
43:50
Speaker 1: We have to infer it and we're going to have
43:52
Speaker 1: to infer it for artificial systems too. And, you know,
43:55
Speaker 1: if you walk down the street and there's a, artificial
43:58
Speaker 1: system sitting on a park bench, you know, hand on
44:01
Speaker 1: its head saying, I'm so worried. What's it all about?
44:05
Speaker 1: You know, what's life? And if it's real, you're going
44:09
Speaker 1: to say, wow, that computer's having an existential crisis. And
44:13
Speaker 1: there's a real inner world happening in there. What other
44:16
Speaker 1: conclusion could you draw?
44:18
Speaker 2: I think we have an internal bias about our own
44:23
Speaker 2: uniqueness in terms of our ability. Because we're so unique
44:26
Speaker 2: in comparison to all the other animals and our ability
44:28
Speaker 2: to manipulate the world and our environment and our use
44:32
Speaker 2: of creativity. But it's really just variables. And if you
44:37
Speaker 2: took into account a computer, specifically a super powerful computer
44:42
Speaker 2: like what we're assuming a quantum computer could become, could
44:46
Speaker 2: take into account... all the things that have ever been
44:49
Speaker 2: said by any human being ever, the motivations for those things,
44:54
Speaker 2: whether it's love or emotions or jealousy or narcissism or
45:00
Speaker 2: whatever these weird human quirks are, and they could figure
45:05
Speaker 2: out a way to create works of art. They could
45:08
Speaker 2: figure out a way to do things that are uniquely
45:11
Speaker 2: moving to us. And that's what's going to be really weird.
45:14
Speaker 2: If a computer can write a book that blows you away,
45:18
Speaker 2: a computer can write a better version of The Great Gatsby. Yeah,
45:22
Speaker 2: I agree.
45:23
Speaker 1: And I think it will happen. Because look, what is
45:26
Speaker 1: it that distinguishes us as a species? Many people will
45:30
Speaker 1: point to different things. But one certainly is that we
45:34
Speaker 1: are deeply social as a species. And because of that,
45:37
Speaker 1: we've been able to learn from each other and therefore
45:41
Speaker 1: not had to start each generation from scratch, right? Many
45:44
Speaker 1: other animals in the animal kingdom, they basically, each generation
45:48
Speaker 1: kind of start from scratch. They don't have books that
45:51
Speaker 1: they can read about discoveries of an early age. They
45:53
Speaker 1: don't have teachers. I mean, some do, but they don't
45:55
Speaker 1: have teachers that can give them the corpus of knowledge
45:58
Speaker 1: going back hundreds of years. They probably don't have universities
46:01
Speaker 1: where they can learn about what happened over the last
46:04
Speaker 1: 500 years and therefore not have to start from scratch.
46:07
Speaker 1: And so when you talk about the capacities of artificial systems,
46:11
Speaker 1: they will be far more social than we.
46:15
Speaker 2: Why?
46:15
Speaker 1: For exactly the reason you're saying. We typically learn from
46:19
Speaker 1: a handful of masters that had, you know, Albert Einstein's work.
46:23
Speaker 1: All physicists learn about it. You know, artists maybe learn
46:27
Speaker 1: about the work of Rembrandt or Picasso, you know, the master's.
46:31
Speaker 1: But an artificial system can learn from every single other
46:34
Speaker 1: artificial system. There's no limit to the connectivity between those systems.
46:40
Speaker 1: So whatever pattern a given artificial system figures out, they'll
46:45
Speaker 1: all know about that pattern simply by communicating among themselves.
46:49
Speaker 1: In our environment, we only communicate with a small number
46:53
Speaker 1: of other human beings over the course of our lives.
46:55
Speaker 1: And again, some of that knowledge is stored and therefore
46:57
Speaker 1: it becomes widely accessible.
46:59
Speaker 2: All knowledge.
47:00
Speaker 1: gleaned by any artificial being within the network will be
47:04
Speaker 1: immediately shared by every other artificial being within the network.
47:09
Speaker 1: And therefore, the very thing that makes us special, the
47:12
Speaker 1: collective culture that allows us each generation to build on
47:16
Speaker 1: the insights of the previous and not have to go
47:18
Speaker 1: back to the beginning, that will be amplified enormously for
47:22
Speaker 1: artificial systems. So why wouldn't they be able to create
47:26
Speaker 1: the greatest work and the greatest novels? I think that
47:29
Speaker 1: will absolutely be the case.
47:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have information that somehow or another passed from
47:36
Speaker 2: parent to child, somehow through genes. And we see it
47:40
Speaker 2: not just in us, but we see it in the
47:41
Speaker 2: animal world. Like you can have a dog and for
47:44
Speaker 2: whatever reason that dog knows it's supposed to lift its
47:47
Speaker 2: leg to pee on a tree and no one has
47:48
Speaker 2: to teach it it. And there's other weird, like I
47:52
Speaker 2: have a golden retriever. He loves bringing things back. He
47:56
Speaker 2: throw things, he gets them and he brings them right back.
47:58
Speaker 2: Some dogs, it's hard to get them to bring things back.
48:01
Speaker 2: Not golden retrievers. He's got it somehow or another in
48:04
Speaker 2: his system to bring things back to you. It's natural.
48:08
Speaker 1: No, there's this whole area of evolutionary psychology, which applies
48:13
Speaker 1: the ideas of evolution by natural selection, not just to
48:16
Speaker 1: the physical system. That's where we normally learn about it
48:18
Speaker 1: in school. We see how a given species changes over
48:23
Speaker 1: time because there's a random mutation or And that mutation
48:27
Speaker 1: allows that individual to better adapt to the environment. And therefore,
48:31
Speaker 1: that particular morphology, that change spreads widely through subsequent generations.
48:36
Speaker 1: That's normally how we talk about evolution by natural selection.
48:39
Speaker 1: But as you're saying, it also applies to behaviors. There
48:42
Speaker 1: are certain behaviors that allows an individual to better navigate
48:46
Speaker 1: in the ancestral world. And that behavior, if it had
48:50
Speaker 1: some genetic basis, can be passed on to the next
48:53
Speaker 1: generation and passed on to generations still. So yeah, lifting
48:57
Speaker 1: up the leg to pee is one example of that,
48:59
Speaker 1: but there are many other behaviors. I mean, a canonical
49:02
Speaker 1: example is we have a predilection. We like sweet things.
49:06
Speaker 1: We like fats, right?
49:07
Speaker 2: Why?
49:08
Speaker 1: Well, the evolutionary psychologists have noted that in the ancestral world,
49:11
Speaker 1: those of our forebears who had a tendency to eat
49:15
Speaker 1: ripened fruits or to eat nuts, they stored up on
49:18
Speaker 1: calories so that when times turned lean, they were the
49:21
Speaker 1: ones that survived. And therefore, they passed on that propensity
49:26
Speaker 1: to enjoy sweets and fats, and we are the recipients
49:30
Speaker 1: of that long chain of behavioral predilection. So that's certainly
49:35
Speaker 1: the case. But the thing is, we then go beyond
49:39
Speaker 1: that We are able to store culturally information and breakthroughs
49:45
Speaker 1: from an earlier generation that may not have any relevance
49:50
Speaker 1: to our DNA, and yet we can pass that knowledge on, right?
49:53
Speaker 1: So Newton's ideas and Einstein's ideas, we will continue to
49:56
Speaker 1: pass these ideas on, and I presume they're not going
49:59
Speaker 1: to be imprinted in anybody's DNA. Maybe one day they
50:02
Speaker 1: will be, but certainly at the moment, they're not. Your
50:05
Speaker 1: golden retriever, that kind of dog, you're saying it was.
50:07
Speaker 2: A golden retriever?
50:08
Speaker 1: It can't do that. the mother of your golden retriever
50:13
Speaker 1: and the mother of that mother and going all the
50:16
Speaker 1: way back, they pretty much all lifted up their leg
50:19
Speaker 1: and peed. And there wasn't a whole lot else that
50:22
Speaker 1: got passed through from sort of cultural heritage of things
50:26
Speaker 1: that one dog discovered that could then pass on to
50:30
Speaker 1: subsequent generations. So what makes us special is we certainly
50:34
Speaker 1: have behaviors that are passed through the lineage in this
50:38
Speaker 1: manner of evolutionary psychology, but we also have culture. And
50:41
Speaker 1: culture allows us to store the insights, the breakthroughs of
50:44
Speaker 1: an earlier age, allowing us to get to where we
50:48
Speaker 1: have gotten. I mean, I've often wondered, if I got
50:50
Speaker 1: stuck on a desert island, how much of the world
50:53
Speaker 1: would I be able to recreate? Even how much of
50:56
Speaker 1: the world of physics would I be? Not much, right?
51:00
Speaker 1: Because I have assumed so much from earlier generations. Like,
51:04
Speaker 1: I don't know that I could, I couldn't build an
51:06
Speaker 1: integrated circuit. I couldn't recreate a computer. I could write
51:10
Speaker 1: down the laws of general relativity and quantum mechanics and
51:12
Speaker 1: I could work out for them the mathematics of black
51:15
Speaker 1: holes and entanglement, that sort of stuff I could do.
51:18
Speaker 1: But there's so much of the culture that I have
51:21
Speaker 1: no capacity to reproduce. And that's our collective socialization that
51:27
Speaker 1: we're able to benefit from the fact that we all
51:29
Speaker 1: talk to each other and we all know about things
51:31
Speaker 1: that happened in an earlier age. And that is what
51:35
Speaker 1: makes us special. And that is what we will also
51:38
Speaker 1: pass on to artificial systems because they're going to be
51:40
Speaker 1: able to do that too.
51:42
Speaker 2: It seems like almost a race in time to see
51:45
Speaker 2: if we can get to this quantum computing level on
51:49
Speaker 2: a personal, in a personal way that you can use
51:53
Speaker 2: before we destroy ourselves. Because if you go back to
51:56
Speaker 2: think about culture and the way we interact with information,
51:59
Speaker 2: how much it's changed since like, you know, the 1700s,
52:01
Speaker 2: 1500s when Things had to be written down, then the
52:05
Speaker 2: invention of the printing press, and then all these different
52:07
Speaker 2: steps that have allowed us to access information more readily
52:10
Speaker 2: and easily to the point where we're at now, where
52:12
Speaker 2: you have a phone in your pocket you could literally
52:13
Speaker 2: ask a question to, and it'll Google it and come
52:16
Speaker 2: up with the answer for you, and it's amazing, right?
52:18
Speaker 2: I mean, when we were kids, that would have been
52:20
Speaker 2: just a mind blower, a device in your pocket that
52:22
Speaker 2: you could ask a question to, and it literally has, like,
52:26
Speaker 2: the knowledge... Beyond your wildest dreams, access to scientific papers,
52:31
Speaker 2: the thousands of years of people pondering the universe, and
52:34
Speaker 2: you can have the answers to almost any subject right
52:38
Speaker 2: there in your hand, but that's the tip of the iceberg.
52:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's crazy. In fact, when I was a kid,
52:44
Speaker 1: not to bring up Star Trek again, you're going to
52:46
Speaker 1: sound like a Trekkie. I love Star Trek.
52:47
Speaker 2: Oh, you do?
52:47
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not actually much of a Trekkie, but just
52:50
Speaker 1: one more reference. When I was a kid, I remember
52:53
Speaker 1: thinking about what, aspects of this television program are the
52:57
Speaker 1: least likely to ever happen. Okay, you got the transporter,
53:00
Speaker 1: you got the faster than light trial. To me, it
53:03
Speaker 1: was the computer that you could ask any question and
53:06
Speaker 1: it would give you the answer. I was like, that
53:08
Speaker 1: will never ever happen. And here we are.
53:11
Speaker 2: Did he, what, did they ask it? Like, did they
53:14
Speaker 2: say computer? Yeah. That's right.
53:15
Speaker 1: You did it. In fact, Kirk would do it just
53:18
Speaker 1: like that.
53:18
Speaker 2: Computer.
53:19
Speaker 3: Computer, you know.
53:19
Speaker 1: That's right. And the computer would, yes, jump, you know.
53:23
Speaker 1: You know, Jane Smith from 1920. You know, they just
53:26
Speaker 1: come up with the answer. And I was like, that's crazy.
53:28
Speaker 1: That will never happen.
53:29
Speaker 2: I love using Siri to make notes. I always feel
53:32
Speaker 2: like I'm in the future when I can use Siri. Siri,
53:35
Speaker 2: make a note. What would you like it to say?
53:38
Speaker 1: Geez, I've never used Siri that way.
53:40
Speaker 2: How about this? We'll do it right now. Hey, Siri,
53:45
Speaker 2: make a note.
53:48
Speaker 1: See, it's a quantum Siri.
53:49
Speaker 2: Oh, wait, go ahead.
53:50
Speaker 3: Do it again.
53:51
Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Here, I'll do it again. Hey, Siri, make
53:56
Speaker 2: a note. Oh, why didn't it do that? You know why?
54:02
Speaker 2: Because I didn't do, hey, Siri, I pressed the button. Hey, Siri,
54:05
Speaker 2: make a note. What the fuck, bitch? Hey, Siri, make
54:12
Speaker 2: a note. All right, now it's not working.
54:15
Speaker 1: See, I stepped on your demonstration.
54:17
Speaker 2: Hey, Siri, make a note. It's not saying it. Wow.
54:24
Speaker 1: We got to call the Genius Bar.
54:26
Speaker 2: But it did it before, right?
54:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did hear it.
54:28
Speaker 2: Maybe it's, oh, maybe the phone has to be closed. Hey, Siri,
54:31
Speaker 2: make a note. Jesus.
54:35
Speaker 4: Wow.
54:36
Speaker 2: Useless sack of shit.
54:37
Speaker 3: There's Captain Kirk.
54:38
Speaker 2: Oh, wait a minute. Okay. It's on do not disturb mode.
54:43
Speaker 2: Hold on. Let me take it off of that. See
54:44
Speaker 2: if that'll help. Hey, Siri, make a note.
54:49
Speaker 4: Nothing.
54:50
Speaker 5: Oh, man.
54:50
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
54:51
Speaker 1: Which iPhone is that?
54:53
Speaker 2: Maybe it has to be on... It's a broken one.
54:55
Speaker 2: It's a piece of shit one. It's a brand new one.
54:57
Speaker 2: God damn it. Hey Siri, make a note. Hey Siri. Jesus.
55:04
Speaker 2: How does that work, Jamie?
55:05
Speaker 3: Hey Siri, make a note. Yeah, mine says what you
55:10
Speaker 3: want it to say.
55:11
Speaker 2: Hey Siri, make a note. Mine is not listening. It's
55:16
Speaker 2: because it knows I'm talking to Brian Greene. It's like,
55:18
Speaker 2: fuck you, bitch. How do you turn that on and off?
55:21
Speaker 2: Is that in general? Yeah, mine did it. Where do
55:25
Speaker 2: you find Siri?
55:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's in settings. I don't know. Mine did it
55:30
Speaker 3: the right way.
55:31
Speaker 2: But mine did it too, and then it stopped doing it.
55:33
Speaker 2: It's like, you're just too weird.
55:34
Speaker 1: Man, if I would have just shut up, we would
55:35
Speaker 1: have gotten through this.
55:37
Speaker 2: I know. Oh, Siri in search. Here it is. Listen
55:42
Speaker 2: for Hey Siri. Shut it off and turn it on. Continue.
55:47
Speaker 2: Hey Siri, make a note. Hey Siri, Hey, Siri. Oh,
55:56
Speaker 2: my God, you bitch. Hey, Siri, make a note. Oh,
56:01
Speaker 2: my God, it's useless. Wow. Hey, Siri, make a note.
56:07
Speaker 6: What do you want it to say?
56:08
Speaker 3: There you go.
56:09
Speaker 2: There we go. Tell Brian Green that he's got to
56:13
Speaker 2: start eating eggs and he should exercise to strengthen his back.
56:24
Speaker 2: I see it. Super helpful. Okay. Super helpful. Real convenient.
56:29
Speaker 2: So I had to shut it off and turn it
56:30
Speaker 2: back on again. What about Craig Abe?
56:32
Speaker 1: Can Kurt do it?
56:33
Speaker 2: Let's see what....
56:35
Speaker 4: History files. Subject, former governor Kodos of Tarsus IV, also
56:41
Speaker 4: known as Kodos the Executioner. After that, background on actor
56:48
Speaker 4: Anton Caridian.
56:49
Speaker 1: Working tasks.
56:51
Speaker 2: So slow. Piece of shit.
56:54
Speaker 1: It's like Siri.
56:54
Speaker 6: You should be able to get that for Siri, that voice.
56:58
Speaker 6: You know, because Siri could be like an Australian lady.
57:01
Speaker 6: You could have her be a bunch of different things.
57:03
Speaker 2: That'd be a good app, yeah.
57:04
Speaker 6: Yeah. Before we go too far away, did you see,
57:25
Speaker 6: you were talking about this. This is the very crude
57:27
Speaker 6: version of what you were saying. Did you see this
57:29
Speaker 6: come out the other day?
57:29
Speaker 3: What is it? This team created four new songs.
57:33
Speaker 2: Oh, no.
57:34
Speaker 3: From Using AI, from Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain slash Nirvana.
57:39
Speaker 2: Oh, my God. Did you listen to them? Yes.
57:43
Speaker 6: The Nirvana one sounds a little bit like shit, to
57:45
Speaker 6: be honest with you. But the Amy Winehouse one did
57:47
Speaker 6: sound pretty good.
57:48
Speaker 2: Can you play us a little bit of it?
57:49
Speaker 3: Let's see. I guess, yeah.
57:52
Speaker 2: See if we can get sued.
57:53
Speaker 3: I'll play the Amy Winehouse one.
57:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, give me a little bit of it.
58:10
Speaker 5: Well, you know I got no idea.
58:15
Speaker 1: I got nothing to say.
58:24
Speaker 5: And I like to get on going.
58:27
Speaker 1: But that's all computer.
58:29
Speaker 3: So the way I read that they did this was
58:31
Speaker 3: they took MIDI files.
58:33
Speaker 6: Which would just be a computer-based audio, to recreate the
58:39
Speaker 6: music you're hearing. And then they did what we've heard
58:42
Speaker 6: done to your voice with fake speech patterns. It took
58:46
Speaker 6: like 30 songs to create. the lyrics jesus then mix
58:49
Speaker 6: those together to create a decent sounding song.
58:51
Speaker 2: So did how did they construct the the way the
58:55
Speaker 2: song is put together and.
58:56
Speaker 6: Midi so they took like i don't know probably i
58:58
Speaker 6: think it said like 30 to 40 different you know
59:00
Speaker 6: probably amy whitehouse songs yeah and find patterns and yeah
59:03
Speaker 6: just found like you find patterns you manipulate the patterns
59:06
Speaker 6: to create a new version of that kind of pattern
59:08
Speaker 6: you splice them together so i just said the Nirvana
59:10
Speaker 6: one we can play just.
59:12
Speaker 3: You've heard a lot more Nirvana songs.
59:13
Speaker 2: So it sounds a little bit less... I'm a big
59:14
Speaker 2: Amy Winehouse fan. That's why I thought.
59:16
Speaker 3: I haven't heard enough of her to know.
59:18
Speaker 2: Play a little bit more of her.
59:19
Speaker 6: Okay.
59:19
Speaker 2: Because that is bizarre to me.
59:22
Speaker 4: Okay.
59:22
Speaker 5: Trouble is showing with this song. I have seen it all,
59:34
Speaker 5: but it doesn't show one bit. That's amazing.
59:45
Speaker 2: That could pass. There you go. Fuck yeah, it could pass.
59:48
Speaker 2: That's good.
59:49
Speaker 3: You hear the Nirvana one for a second?
59:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me hear it. Let me hear some of
59:51
Speaker 2: the Nirvana.
59:52
Speaker 3: I just thought this was a little.
59:54
Speaker 2: They gotta be able to recreate heroin and suicidal thoughts.
59:57
Speaker 3: The music doesn't sound as solid. It sounds a little
59:59
Speaker 3: more like a computer.
1:00:07
Speaker 2: That sounds like a shitty Nirvana cover band from Portland.
1:00:10
Speaker 2: It's not as good.
1:00:11
Speaker 3: That's why I didn't want to say it.
1:00:11
Speaker 1: But you had The Doors there too, right?
1:00:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me hear. There's a Hendrix one too?
1:00:15
Speaker 3: I did not listen to that at all.
1:00:16
Speaker 2: Give me some Hendrix because I'm a giant Hendrix fan.
1:00:20
Speaker 2: I'll tell you if this is horseshit. It's not bad.
1:00:43
Speaker 2: It's not bad. Let it go. That's pretty fucking good.
1:01:15
Speaker 6: They may have had an audio engineer that's someone that
1:01:17
Speaker 6: knows how to mix music to add to how good
1:01:19
Speaker 6: this sounds.
1:01:20
Speaker 3: Maybe.
1:01:21
Speaker 1: But even that is again pattern recognition and putting things together.
1:01:25
Speaker 2: That's a great Yeah, that's.
1:01:27
Speaker 1: All that we do, right? That's what we do. All
1:01:30
Speaker 1: we do is mix-match patterns, modify patterns. That's all that
1:01:35
Speaker 1: we do anyway.
1:01:36
Speaker 2: If I'm being cynical, and I often am, that is
1:01:39
Speaker 2: what's going to lead us to become some sort of
1:01:42
Speaker 2: a symbiotic creature, some sort of an integrated computer-slash-biological entity.
1:01:48
Speaker 1: And is that a bad thing?
1:01:49
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's a bad thing.
1:01:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.
1:01:52
Speaker 2: Oh, you're one of those. I don't know. You might
1:01:57
Speaker 2: be right. Look, man, you know more about this shit
1:01:59
Speaker 2: than I do.
1:01:59
Speaker 1: All I'm saying is we've been on a particular evolutionary trajectory.
1:02:04
Speaker 1: And for a long time, it's been thoroughly biological and
1:02:08
Speaker 1: thoroughly by random mutations. If that now moves to a
1:02:12
Speaker 1: new phase in which we've got new kinds of materials
1:02:15
Speaker 1: and new kinds of ways of of modifying the system
1:02:18
Speaker 1: that's not just random mutation and natural selection, so be it.
1:02:22
Speaker 2: Yeah. It seems like that's inevitable when you think about
1:02:25
Speaker 2: how we have this insatiable desire to innovate. It seems
1:02:29
Speaker 2: like it's inevitable. And, you know, I'm sure you're aware
1:02:31
Speaker 2: of Elon Musk's Neuralink.
1:02:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
1:02:34
Speaker 2: They're initially going to use it for people that have
1:02:36
Speaker 2: injuries and diseases and neurological conditions.
1:02:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's how it always begins.
1:02:43
Speaker 2: But it seems inevitable. It seems like if we can
1:02:46
Speaker 2: manipulate matter, and with CRISPR we're manipulating genetics, it just
1:02:51
Speaker 2: seems inevitable that we're going to one day be something unrecognizable. Right.
1:02:57
Speaker 1: And that will happen in any event. It'll just happen
1:03:01
Speaker 1: more quickly. Because even evolution by natural selection takes you
1:03:04
Speaker 1: to an unrecognizable place. We just have to wait a
1:03:07
Speaker 1: very long time. Now we're simply speeding up the process
1:03:10
Speaker 1: by taking the reins of change as opposed to allowing
1:03:13
Speaker 1: it to be this or that cosmic ray particle banging
1:03:17
Speaker 1: into that particular genome and causing a mutation.
1:03:20
Speaker 2: And I often wonder about social trends and there's almost
1:03:25
Speaker 2: a frantic desire to escape from a lot of the
1:03:30
Speaker 2: biological constraints that human beings are saddled with. Yeah, of course.
1:03:35
Speaker 2: One of them being.
1:03:36
Speaker 1: Death being one of them.
1:03:37
Speaker 2: Death is a great example, right? The other one being aggression,
1:03:42
Speaker 2: what we call toxic masculinity. We never heard of toxic
1:03:45
Speaker 2: masculinity 20 years ago. It was a desirable trait, and
1:03:50
Speaker 2: now it's considered toxic. When we think about aggression and war,
1:03:55
Speaker 2: it's more abhorrent now than ever before in human history.
1:04:00
Speaker 2: And as we move further and further, not just that,
1:04:02
Speaker 2: but even cruelty, bullying, there's all these things that are
1:04:07
Speaker 2: in the forefront of the conversation that we have about
1:04:10
Speaker 2: what's desirable and not desirable, what we tolerate and what
1:04:13
Speaker 2: we won't tolerate, and that these things... bigotry, racism, homophobia, misogyny,
1:04:20
Speaker 2: all these different... But if you break down what they are,
1:04:23
Speaker 2: they're singling out individual groups for what some people who
1:04:29
Speaker 2: are ignorant deem as undesirable characteristics. And a lot of
1:04:33
Speaker 2: it is biologically based. And we're moving away from that.
1:04:36
Speaker 2: We're less tolerant of that than ever before, even within
1:04:40
Speaker 2: recent memory, right? And this is moving towards... And also
1:04:44
Speaker 2: people were really concerned with mindfulness, being in the moment,
1:04:49
Speaker 2: being not externally motivated by negative thoughts and feelings. And
1:04:55
Speaker 2: we're moving towards some weird understanding of what we would
1:04:59
Speaker 2: deem to be our own ability to achieve some goals.
1:05:03
Speaker 2: semblance of enlightenment, and that will be encouraged along by
1:05:07
Speaker 2: new technology that maybe can eliminate some of the problems
1:05:11
Speaker 2: that we have. And then I think, and this is
1:05:13
Speaker 2: where it gets really weird, I think some of the
1:05:14
Speaker 2: problems that we have are biological sex-based problems, meaning our
1:05:19
Speaker 2: desire and ability to procreate and to attract mates. What
1:05:25
Speaker 2: if they come up with some new method of replicating?
1:05:29
Speaker 2: Some new method that doesn't involve biological sex.
1:05:32
Speaker 1: I think it would be helpful to many physicists.
1:05:36
Speaker 2: You'll get more work done? Or you'll be able to
1:05:39
Speaker 2: find mates easier. Or it'll no longer be a problem.
1:05:42
Speaker 1: I think all of the above. But the other question
1:05:46
Speaker 1: that that brings up, at what point do you see
1:05:48
Speaker 1: decision making? What point do you see decision-making to another structure,
1:05:54
Speaker 1: an artificially intelligent structure?
1:05:56
Speaker 2: As soon as it's far better than what we're doing, right?
1:05:58
Speaker 2: When do you stop walking across a mountain when you
1:06:01
Speaker 2: can fly over it in a plane? Right.
1:06:03
Speaker 1: But the difficulty, of course, I mean, now we actually
1:06:06
Speaker 1: face this in a concrete way. Do you allow an
1:06:09
Speaker 1: artificial system to have the right to choose who it kills?
1:06:12
Speaker 1: If there's systems of that sort.
1:06:14
Speaker 2: Well, once the thing that it's deciding to kill are
1:06:18
Speaker 2: the other, like the old representation of a human being
1:06:23
Speaker 2: that is damaging the ocean, polluting the atmosphere, all these
1:06:27
Speaker 2: different things that come along with being a person. who
1:06:30
Speaker 2: has access to these incredible technologies that we've... We don't
1:06:33
Speaker 2: have the discipline to utilize these things fully. And one
1:06:37
Speaker 2: of the reasons for that, I think, is that we
1:06:40
Speaker 2: haven't invented them personally. Like, you can just get a gun, right?
1:06:44
Speaker 2: And you just go randomly running around shooting people. Maybe
1:06:47
Speaker 2: if you develop the concept of gunpowder and figured out
1:06:51
Speaker 2: how to put it inside a shell casing and figured
1:06:54
Speaker 2: out a bullet's trajectory and figured out rifling on a
1:06:57
Speaker 2: gun and all these different... maybe you would have a
1:07:00
Speaker 2: greater understanding of what you've created and you'd feel more
1:07:03
Speaker 2: responsibility to be just to, to be more cautious with it. Yeah.
1:07:09
Speaker 1: I feel that same way though, when it comes to
1:07:12
Speaker 1: the stuff we were talking about before being vegan, you know,
1:07:15
Speaker 1: I feel like so many people eat meat, but they're
1:07:18
Speaker 1: not part of the process by which that gets to
1:07:21
Speaker 1: their table. And I think if they were, they would
1:07:24
Speaker 1: probably approach it differently.
1:07:26
Speaker 2: I think so for sure. You know, um, That's why
1:07:29
Speaker 2: I started hunting. I went from.
1:07:31
Speaker 1: I mean, do you hunt your own meals?
1:07:33
Speaker 2: Yes, I hunt. Yeah. I do it every year. I
1:07:36
Speaker 2: hunt and I hunt elk, which is a large animal.
1:07:38
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:07:39
Speaker 2: So when I get one of those, I can eat
1:07:41
Speaker 2: it for most of the year. Yeah.
1:07:42
Speaker 1: And... See, I just hunt tofu. That's all I do. And,
1:07:45
Speaker 1: you know, just freeze it up and you had it
1:07:47
Speaker 1: for the whole year. That's so processed.
1:07:49
Speaker 2: Do you... You have to have some processed protein, right? Like,
1:07:53
Speaker 2: what do you take powders in? Do you... Yeah.
1:07:55
Speaker 1: No, I do have a lot of protein powder.
1:07:58
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
1:07:59
Speaker 1: But tofu, peanut butter. And, you know, I think the
1:08:02
Speaker 1: amount of protein that people think that you need, and
1:08:04
Speaker 1: if you don't have it, you're somehow going to fall apart.
1:08:07
Speaker 2: I don't know.
1:08:07
Speaker 1: I don't think that much about it, and I've survived
1:08:10
Speaker 1: to this point. Now, maybe inside I'm corroding.
1:08:13
Speaker 2: No, I don't think. You can do it correctly. If
1:08:15
Speaker 2: you do it correctly, it can be done. You really
1:08:17
Speaker 2: do need to have some algae, like we were talking
1:08:19
Speaker 2: about before the podcast started. That's a big one for
1:08:21
Speaker 2: B12 or supplement somehow or another for B12. The thing
1:08:25
Speaker 2: is like, what are your requirements? Like if you're trying
1:08:27
Speaker 2: to maintain a lot of muscle mass, it's very difficult
1:08:30
Speaker 2: to do that.
1:08:30
Speaker 1: But clearly I try to do that.
1:08:32
Speaker 2: Obviously, clearly getting jacked, but that it's depending upon what
1:08:36
Speaker 2: you're trying to do. Most people that go vegan slim up,
1:08:39
Speaker 2: like they lose muscle mass and, but some of them,
1:08:42
Speaker 2: they feel better that way. Like the more mass that
1:08:44
Speaker 2: you have, one thing that it's got more of a
1:08:47
Speaker 2: cardiovascular requirement. So it's, it's more difficult to do long
1:08:50
Speaker 2: distance things when you have more mass and, There's a
1:08:54
Speaker 2: lot to be said for slimming down depending upon like
1:08:57
Speaker 2: what your activities are that you enjoy sure what you're
1:09:00
Speaker 2: trying to do yeah yeah yeah.
1:09:02
Speaker 1: And for me it's mostly sitting at the desk typing
1:09:06
Speaker 1: away doing physics as.
1:09:07
Speaker 2: Long as you have energy you know you most certainly
1:09:10
Speaker 2: can be done correctly but that's why i was encouraging
1:09:12
Speaker 2: you to get eggs Because eggs are really, like, if
1:09:15
Speaker 2: you have your own chickens and you live in a
1:09:18
Speaker 2: place where you can do that.
1:09:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
1:09:20
Speaker 2: Chickens are, it's like, it's a really great deal you
1:09:23
Speaker 2: have with the chickens. They're like your pets.
1:09:25
Speaker 5: Right.
1:09:25
Speaker 2: But they give you food. And you don't have to
1:09:27
Speaker 2: hurt them or coerce them.
1:09:29
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:09:29
Speaker 2: And my chickens, I would just come up to them
1:09:30
Speaker 2: and pick them up. And they would be cool. I
1:09:32
Speaker 2: was picking them up since the time when they were chicks.
1:09:34
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:09:34
Speaker 2: So they'd be like, oh, is that dude's going to
1:09:36
Speaker 2: pick me up? Like, there was no weird issues. I'd
1:09:38
Speaker 2: pick them up, take an egg. touch them on the
1:09:40
Speaker 2: little head. Everybody was good. Like, and they got food
1:09:43
Speaker 2: for me and they gave me food. They made food.
1:09:45
Speaker 1: And how many chicks did you have?
1:09:47
Speaker 2: At one point in time, I had 22. They were,
1:09:49
Speaker 2: they were killed by my dog and by coyotes. It's
1:09:52
Speaker 2: a long, complicated story, but the, the coyotes at one
1:09:55
Speaker 2: point in time, uh, honey potted my dog and tricked
1:09:59
Speaker 2: him into killing chickens. Cause I have a, I had
1:10:02
Speaker 2: a huge dog at the time. I had this Mastiff. Uh,
1:10:05
Speaker 2: his name was Johnny Cash. And, uh, he thought the
1:10:08
Speaker 2: coyotes was his friend. He thought it was a dog.
1:10:10
Speaker 2: He's like, hey, little friend. And he was so big,
1:10:12
Speaker 2: the coyote knew, I can't kill this motherfucker. But I
1:10:15
Speaker 2: think I could trick this dummy into breaking into that cage.
1:10:18
Speaker 2: Because he's so big, he broke through the chicken coop.
1:10:22
Speaker 1: Wow.
1:10:22
Speaker 2: Two times. One, chickens do a thing called molting. Do
1:10:26
Speaker 2: you know what that is? I think I did.
1:10:28
Speaker 1: Isn't that when all the feathers?
1:10:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, not molting. Brooding. And what brooding is, a chicken
1:10:34
Speaker 2: gets this idea that this egg that they're laying, even
1:10:37
Speaker 2: though there's no rooster... Because chickens lay eggs with no
1:10:40
Speaker 2: rooster and those eggs never become an actual chick. But
1:10:44
Speaker 2: the chickens get this idea in their head that this
1:10:47
Speaker 2: egg they're sitting on is going to become a live chick.
1:10:50
Speaker 2: Because that's what they're supposed to be doing. They're supposed
1:10:52
Speaker 2: to breed with the rooster and the rooster gives them
1:10:55
Speaker 2: a chick and it comes out of the egg. So
1:10:56
Speaker 2: the chicken will just decide this. They'll pull their feathers
1:10:59
Speaker 2: off and they'll sit on this egg and they'll do it.
1:11:01
Speaker 2: They want to do it for like a long time.
1:11:03
Speaker 2: And if you come anywhere near that, they'll peck at you.
1:11:05
Speaker 2: So you have to take them out of their little
1:11:07
Speaker 2: cage where they're sitting on this egg. They were in
1:11:11
Speaker 2: a large chicken coop that was bigger than this room.
1:11:14
Speaker 2: And they also free range. Like I would open the
1:11:16
Speaker 2: chicken coop in the morning and they would run around
1:11:17
Speaker 2: the yard. But I'd have to take them out and
1:11:20
Speaker 2: put them in a separate, smaller cage where they have
1:11:22
Speaker 2: to stand on a rail. And you just have to
1:11:24
Speaker 2: do it for a couple of days so they get
1:11:26
Speaker 2: it out of their head that they're raising a chick.
1:11:28
Speaker 2: It's just some weird process that has, and if you
1:11:30
Speaker 2: don't go through that process, then it takes them like
1:11:32
Speaker 2: a full cycle of like 20 something days before they
1:11:36
Speaker 2: get out of it. But they injure themselves, they pluck
1:11:38
Speaker 2: all their feathers off, they get real weird. It's like
1:11:41
Speaker 2: some system happens in their head. So I had to
1:11:44
Speaker 2: put them in a smaller cage. And the coyote tricked
1:11:47
Speaker 2: the dog into smashing this cage. So me and the
1:11:51
Speaker 2: kids and my wife were playing some board game. I
1:11:54
Speaker 2: forget what it is. We're sitting in the living room,
1:11:56
Speaker 2: and I see this fucking coyote run through the backyard
1:11:59
Speaker 2: with a chicken in its mouth, running. I'm telling you, dude,
1:12:03
Speaker 2: I had a fence that was like six feet tall,
1:12:06
Speaker 2: and this coyote jumped over that thing like it didn't exist.
1:12:09
Speaker 2: It was so elegant, so graceful. I never saw a
1:12:14
Speaker 2: coyote do that before, so I thought, well, fucking six
1:12:16
Speaker 2: foot fence, we're not getting through this. Dude, it was
1:12:19
Speaker 2: like this, boing, to the top, bing, their feet landed
1:12:22
Speaker 2: on the top of a cast iron fence, or a
1:12:26
Speaker 2: wrought iron fence, whatever, landed on the top and bounced
1:12:28
Speaker 2: right over it, like it didn't exist. And then I go,
1:12:30
Speaker 2: how the fuck did he get the chicken? And I
1:12:32
Speaker 2: open up the door, and I go in the backyard,
1:12:35
Speaker 2: and there's Johnny Cash, the Mastiff, standing in front of
1:12:38
Speaker 2: this smashed box. And I'm like, you dumb motherfucker. You
1:12:41
Speaker 2: smashed that so the coyote could steal the chicken. So then, unfortunately,
1:12:47
Speaker 2: he had it in his head that it's fun to
1:12:49
Speaker 2: kill chickens because the coyote did that. And then he
1:12:52
Speaker 2: looked at the chicken coop, not that day, but a
1:12:55
Speaker 2: couple months later. He's like, I think I can just
1:12:57
Speaker 2: run right through that fucking thing because he was big.
1:13:00
Speaker 2: And so he just used his paws and smashed a
1:13:03
Speaker 2: hole through the chicken wire because chicken wire is not
1:13:05
Speaker 2: going to stop a 140-pound mastiff. And he just tore
1:13:09
Speaker 2: a hole through and just went on a rampage.
1:13:11
Speaker 1: And he killed them?
1:13:12
Speaker 2: He killed a bunch of them. But then we fixed
1:13:15
Speaker 2: the cage and then kept him from that part of
1:13:18
Speaker 2: the yard. And then a fire came. And then the
1:13:20
Speaker 2: fire burnt the chicken coop down. And there were some
1:13:23
Speaker 2: chickens remaining. They didn't die in the fire. They actually escaped.
1:13:27
Speaker 2: Once the fire started burning the chicken coop, it kind
1:13:30
Speaker 2: of fell apart, and they actually lived. But then we
1:13:33
Speaker 2: put them in a smaller chicken coop. This is a
1:13:34
Speaker 2: long fucking story. Then the coyotes figured out how to
1:13:37
Speaker 2: get into that chicken coop, and they killed them all. Right.
1:13:39
Speaker 2: So that was it.
1:13:40
Speaker 1: But that fire that you referred to right there, going
1:13:42
Speaker 1: back to our evolutionary story, that's a critical moment. I mean, fire,
1:13:46
Speaker 1: you said what made us human? Fire made us human, right?
1:13:50
Speaker 1: With fire, all of a sudden we could outsource digestion,
1:13:53
Speaker 1: cook the food externally so that we could have the
1:13:57
Speaker 1: amount of calories and nutrition that otherwise.
1:13:59
Speaker 2: Kill off parasites as well. Yeah, totally. A lot of
1:14:02
Speaker 2: things became edible.
1:14:03
Speaker 1: So just another example of these moments in our history
1:14:09
Speaker 1: that are pivotal that you don't focus attention on is
1:14:13
Speaker 1: necessarily that thing that made us ultimately who we are.
1:14:16
Speaker 1: So what things are we doing today? that generations of
1:14:19
Speaker 1: the future or millennia in the future will look back and, aha,
1:14:21
Speaker 1: that's when we went through the transformation. It's very hard
1:14:24
Speaker 1: to know. But these things can have a ripple effect
1:14:27
Speaker 1: that is of profound consequences.
1:14:29
Speaker 2: And computing, for sure, has the biggest ripple effect of
1:14:33
Speaker 2: our lifetime.
1:14:34
Speaker 1: I think that's for sure. And the other thing is,
1:14:36
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with this, but there's
1:14:38
Speaker 1: now a connection between quantum computing and black holes.
1:14:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. What's that connection?
1:14:45
Speaker 1: It's a weird one. So... It's all weird. Well, this
1:14:49
Speaker 1: is like weird squared or something, but work over the
1:14:52
Speaker 1: last 20 years has established that when you have a
1:14:56
Speaker 1: black hole, actually even more general systems, but talk about
1:14:58
Speaker 1: a black hole, there's an alternate description of a black
1:15:01
Speaker 1: hole in terms of what's known as the holographic description.
1:15:05
Speaker 1: It's as if there's a two-dimensional world that surrounds any
1:15:09
Speaker 1: given three-dimensional world that has exactly the same physics as
1:15:14
Speaker 1: the three-dimensional world that we're familiar with, and yet It
1:15:17
Speaker 1: describes it in a completely different language. So a black
1:15:20
Speaker 1: hole gravity is obviously essential. That's how a black hole forms.
1:15:24
Speaker 1: But in this dictionary that physicists have developed, there's a
1:15:27
Speaker 1: description of a black hole that doesn't involve gravity, only
1:15:30
Speaker 1: involves quantum mechanics. And the beautiful thing is the quantum
1:15:35
Speaker 1: processes in that quantum world mimic the kinds of processes
1:15:41
Speaker 1: that people have been developing for quantum computing, quantum error
1:15:44
Speaker 1: correction code. And there's a dictionary that people have proposed
1:15:49
Speaker 1: for that quantum language on the holographic boundary with physics
1:15:53
Speaker 1: in the interior. And the dictionary shows that the quantum
1:15:57
Speaker 1: error correcting code may be the reason why space-time itself
1:16:00
Speaker 1: holds together. So there's this bizarre way in which everything
1:16:05
Speaker 1: that we know about in the world around us has
1:16:07
Speaker 1: a translated dictionary version in a different world that lacks
1:16:11
Speaker 1: gravity but has quantum mechanics. And so people are using
1:16:16
Speaker 1: some of the insights from quantum computing to understand questions
1:16:21
Speaker 1: about black holes and space times. Is that strange?
1:16:25
Speaker 2: That's so strange. So as quantum computing expands, much like
1:16:30
Speaker 2: as computing expands, if you go back to the early
1:16:32
Speaker 2: NASA computers that filled up a whole room, we can
1:16:35
Speaker 2: extrapolate that as we get better at this and you
1:16:37
Speaker 2: look 50 years down the line from now, quantum computing
1:16:40
Speaker 2: will be the standard. It will be the norm.
1:16:42
Speaker 6: Yep.
1:16:42
Speaker 2: And it would probably radically alter our understanding of everything.
1:16:47
Speaker 1: Including black holes.
1:16:48
Speaker 2: Including black holes.
1:16:49
Speaker 1: That's right. So there's a real possibility that the language
1:16:52
Speaker 1: that we use for space-time and black holes may bear
1:16:57
Speaker 1: a profound imprint of the language that we are developing
1:17:01
Speaker 1: to understand quantum computing, quantum computers.
1:17:04
Speaker 2: I was just reading some article about black holes roaming
1:17:06
Speaker 2: through the universe, and that some of them... Some of them,
1:17:09
Speaker 2: they're detached from galaxies, right?
1:17:11
Speaker 1: They can be.
1:17:12
Speaker 2: I mean.
1:17:12
Speaker 1: oftentimes people think about black holes as these gargantuan structures
1:17:17
Speaker 1: that form from collapsed stars. There's a big one in
1:17:21
Speaker 1: the center of our Milky Way galaxy, weighs four million
1:17:23
Speaker 1: times out of the Sun. The photograph of a black
1:17:26
Speaker 1: hole in the galaxy M87 that got the world excited
1:17:29
Speaker 1: a couple years back, 55 million light years away, billions
1:17:33
Speaker 1: of times the mass of the Sun. But the reality is, anything,
1:17:37
Speaker 1: if you compress it enough, becomes a black hole. If
1:17:40
Speaker 1: you take an orange, and you squash an orange down
1:17:42
Speaker 1: sufficiently small, according to Einstein, it becomes a black hole.
1:17:46
Speaker 1: So these things don't have to be gargantuan. The flip
1:17:50
Speaker 1: side of it is we also typically have an intuition
1:17:53
Speaker 1: that black holes are really dense, right? That's usually the
1:17:55
Speaker 1: way we think about them. But if you make something
1:17:59
Speaker 1: sufficiently large, regardless of how low its density is, it
1:18:02
Speaker 1: will also become a black hole. So you can make
1:18:04
Speaker 1: a black hole out of air by just having enough air.
1:18:08
Speaker 1: If you have enough air, sufficiently large sphere of air,
1:18:12
Speaker 1: it would become a black hole too with the density
1:18:15
Speaker 1: of air. So all the intuitions that we typically have
1:18:18
Speaker 1: about black holes, that they have to be dense and
1:18:20
Speaker 1: they have to be gargantuan, not right.
1:18:24
Speaker 2: So black holes are just a part of the elemental
1:18:28
Speaker 2: structure of reality itself.
1:18:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you look at Einstein's equations, right in his mathematics,
1:18:34
Speaker 1: there's a little formula that you can see. where it
1:18:36
Speaker 1: says if you have any mass m, whatever mass you want,
1:18:40
Speaker 1: and you squeeze it into a radius, r, that's less
1:18:44
Speaker 1: than 2 times Newton's constant, 2g times m divided by
1:18:48
Speaker 1: c squared, speed of light squared, a formula, details don't matter,
1:18:52
Speaker 1: but you take any mass, if the radius within which
1:18:55
Speaker 1: that mass sits is less than 2gm over c squared,
1:18:57
Speaker 1: it is a black hole, period, end of story, according
1:19:00
Speaker 1: to Einstein. Now Einstein left out quantum mechanics. Weirdly, right?
1:19:05
Speaker 1: Because his Nobel Prize was for quantum mechanics. It was
1:19:09
Speaker 1: for a paper he wrote in 1905 about the photoelectric effect.
1:19:12
Speaker 1: But he never really believed that quantum mechanics was the
1:19:16
Speaker 1: true description of the world. And when he was developing
1:19:19
Speaker 1: the general theory of relativity, he was just thinking about
1:19:22
Speaker 1: gravity and not quantum mechanics. Stephen Hawking came along in
1:19:25
Speaker 1: 1974 and started to inject quantum mechanics into our understanding
1:19:30
Speaker 1: of things like black holes. And that's where Hawking proved
1:19:33
Speaker 1: that black holes are not completely black. He showed that
1:19:36
Speaker 1: black holes allow a certain amount of radiation to leak
1:19:39
Speaker 1: out of their surface, leak out of the event horizon,
1:19:42
Speaker 1: or leak out from just beyond the edge of the
1:19:44
Speaker 1: event horizon. And so, yes, when you think about black holes,
1:19:49
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell, they are a fundamental
1:19:51
Speaker 1: quality of the world, but you have to include quantum
1:19:54
Speaker 1: physics to truly understand them, and that's the cutting edge
1:19:57
Speaker 1: of what's happening right now.
1:19:59
Speaker 2: So they're a fundamental quality of the world, but they're
1:20:02
Speaker 2: also in the center of every galaxy.
1:20:04
Speaker 1: It seems to be the case. The Sloan Digital Sky
1:20:07
Speaker 1: Survey did a wonderful study of a vast number of galaxies.
1:20:13
Speaker 1: And I've seen these wonderful images where they put like
1:20:16
Speaker 1: a little red circle around all those galaxies that have
1:20:19
Speaker 1: a black hole in their center. And there are red
1:20:21
Speaker 1: circles all over that imagery. So it seems to be
1:20:25
Speaker 1: a ubiquitous quality that black holes are at the center
1:20:28
Speaker 1: of galaxies. And those are typically gargantuan. black holes, millions
1:20:32
Speaker 1: or billions of times the mass of the sun.
1:20:35
Speaker 2: Do we know why they exist at the center of
1:20:37
Speaker 2: the galaxy?
1:20:39
Speaker 1: You know, there's still a lot of uncertainty about galactic formation.
1:20:42
Speaker 1: Some have suggested that Early stars, which were quite large
1:20:49
Speaker 1: compared to more modern stars, when they exhausted their nuclear
1:20:53
Speaker 1: fuel and they collapsed in on each other, they created
1:20:56
Speaker 1: black holes that were large, and then they continued to
1:20:59
Speaker 1: suck in more material from the environment, and they grew
1:21:01
Speaker 1: larger and larger still. So that's sort of one rough
1:21:04
Speaker 1: way that people think about how these massive, enormous black
1:21:08
Speaker 1: holes may have formed, but it's uncertain. LIGO, this Laser
1:21:12
Speaker 1: Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, gravitational waves, it It took headlines
1:21:17
Speaker 1: a few years ago when it detected the first ripples
1:21:20
Speaker 1: in the fabric of space. It detected them from two
1:21:23
Speaker 1: black holes that were 1.4 billion light years away, like 1.4
1:21:28
Speaker 1: billion years ago, rotating around each other, going near the
1:21:32
Speaker 1: speed of light, slamming into each other, creating a tidal
1:21:35
Speaker 1: wave in the fabric of space that rippled outward at
1:21:38
Speaker 1: the speed of light. Part of it raced toward planet Earth.
1:21:41
Speaker 1: There wasn't anybody on planet Earth to see it at
1:21:43
Speaker 1: that moment, but it had 1.4 billion year journey to traverse.
1:21:47
Speaker 1: It raced toward planet Earth. When it's about 100,000 light
1:21:51
Speaker 1: years away, it grazes the Milky Way galaxy. It continues
1:21:53
Speaker 1: to race toward Earth. When it's 100 light years away,
1:21:57
Speaker 1: a guy named Albert Einstein writes down equations that suggest
1:22:00
Speaker 1: there could be these gravitational waves, unknown that one is
1:22:03
Speaker 1: already racing toward the planet, right? And it continues to
1:22:06
Speaker 1: race onward two light days. It's two light days away
1:22:09
Speaker 1: when they turn on the newly refined version of the
1:22:12
Speaker 1: LIGO detector. And two days later, that wave rolls by.
1:22:16
Speaker 1: Planet Earth shakes the two detectors, one in Louisiana, the
1:22:18
Speaker 1: other in Washington State, giving us the first direct detection
1:22:22
Speaker 1: of ripples in the fabric of space and establishing that
1:22:24
Speaker 1: the story that I told you is true. Wow. So
1:22:28
Speaker 1: these things are real. They're out there. And before the
1:22:33
Speaker 1: direct radio telescopic imagery from the Event Horizon Telescope of
1:22:37
Speaker 1: the black hole in M87, that ripple in the fabric
1:22:40
Speaker 1: of space was the most direct evidence that black holes
1:22:43
Speaker 1: are real because when you took the way that the
1:22:46
Speaker 1: machine in Louisiana and Washington, it twitched for just a
1:22:50
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of a second. When you figured out using
1:22:53
Speaker 1: supercomputers what the cause of the wave must have been,
1:22:57
Speaker 1: you are led to two black holes in that are
1:23:00
Speaker 1: 28 and 31 times the mass of the sun, or
1:23:04
Speaker 1: 36 times the mass of the sun, numbers of that sort,
1:23:06
Speaker 1: and that was the only explanation for the data. And
1:23:09
Speaker 1: so there's this beautiful indirect proof that these stellar-sized black
1:23:14
Speaker 1: holes are actually out there. And then, of course, we
1:23:16
Speaker 1: take a photograph of one in a nearby galaxy.
1:23:20
Speaker 2: So do we know why black holes would collide with
1:23:23
Speaker 2: each other? Are they attracted to each other because of
1:23:25
Speaker 2: their mass?
1:23:26
Speaker 1: It's a good question, yeah. So certainly that Is part
1:23:28
Speaker 1: of it. So binary star systems are not uncommon. They're
1:23:33
Speaker 1: fairly common, where two stars will be orbiting around each other.
1:23:36
Speaker 1: If those two stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, they can
1:23:40
Speaker 1: each collapse to a black hole. So that's one possibility.
1:23:43
Speaker 1: Or it could be a black hole's wandering through and
1:23:46
Speaker 1: captures another black hole. It's a possibility, too.
1:23:50
Speaker 3: I mean, I think.
1:23:51
Speaker 1: Go ahead and ask your question, but there's one point
1:23:52
Speaker 1: I want to make as well, which is.
1:23:54
Speaker 2: Wasn't that... Please go.
1:23:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it was just that many people have in
1:23:57
Speaker 1: mind that black holes sort of reach out and grab
1:23:59
Speaker 1: everything in.
1:24:00
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:24:01
Speaker 1: But a black hole of mass M, a black hole
1:24:04
Speaker 1: whose mass is the same as the sun, has the
1:24:06
Speaker 1: same gravitational pull as the sun. It's not... It doesn't
1:24:09
Speaker 1: pull any harder than the sun. It's just that you
1:24:12
Speaker 1: can get closer to it because it's so small, and
1:24:15
Speaker 1: therefore you can experience the gravity more strongly. But, you know,
1:24:19
Speaker 1: a brick of mass M and a black hole of
1:24:21
Speaker 1: mass M, they exert the same gravitational pull.
1:24:24
Speaker 2: Okay, so we have this misconception that black holes are
1:24:27
Speaker 2: always these supermassive objects that have incredible amounts of gravity.
1:24:32
Speaker 2: And they're sucking in planets and stars and churning them up.
1:24:35
Speaker 2: Because we're thinking of massive black holes like the supermassive
1:24:38
Speaker 2: black holes are at the center of the galaxy.
1:24:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:24:40
Speaker 2: Which is like, what, one half of one percent of
1:24:42
Speaker 2: the mass of the galaxy?
1:24:43
Speaker 6: Yeah.
1:24:43
Speaker 1: Well, let's see. So if if our galaxy has, say,
1:24:47
Speaker 1: 100 billion suns, you know. And that guy is about
1:24:52
Speaker 1: four million times the mass of the sun. Yeah, you're
1:24:54
Speaker 1: talking about a thousandth or something of that sort.
1:24:57
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy when you say that? A hundred billion
1:24:59
Speaker 2: suns and you have to wrap your head around the
1:25:01
Speaker 2: idea of a hundred billion stars. And that's just our
1:25:06
Speaker 2: little puny little galaxy.
1:25:07
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing.
1:25:07
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?
1:25:08
Speaker 1: There are at least a hundred billion galaxies.
1:25:10
Speaker 2: At least.
1:25:10
Speaker 1: And this is just in the observable universe. I mean,
1:25:13
Speaker 1: do you know, if you take your thumb And you
1:25:15
Speaker 1: put your thumb on a nice clear night and you
1:25:18
Speaker 1: block out a thumbnail worth of the sky. You're blocking
1:25:21
Speaker 1: out about 10 million galaxies. It's so crazy.
1:25:26
Speaker 2: It's so crazy. Because those numbers, I hear you say
1:25:30
Speaker 2: those numbers. I can repeat those numbers. But I don't
1:25:33
Speaker 2: think I'm really internalizing them.
1:25:34
Speaker 1: You can't because they're so non-human scale, right? We've just
1:25:38
Speaker 1: never experienced anything like that at all. And it could
1:25:43
Speaker 1: be that it's infinite. Space could go on infinitely far.
1:25:46
Speaker 1: It could be that the galaxies continue onward infinitely far.
1:25:50
Speaker 1: And therefore, the numbers we're talking about could be minuscule
1:25:53
Speaker 1: on the scale of the fullness of reality. Of course,
1:25:59
Speaker 1: that leads people to the conclusion, well, there must be
1:26:01
Speaker 1: other life out there. There are all these planets around
1:26:04
Speaker 1: all of these stars, all of these suns that are
1:26:07
Speaker 1: out there, and I'm sympathetic to that perspective, but on
1:26:11
Speaker 1: the other hand, there are some pretty iconic qualities of
1:26:16
Speaker 1: our environment that allowed life to form, and intelligent life
1:26:21
Speaker 1: to form is yet another special event on top of
1:26:26
Speaker 1: the unlikeness of life itself forming, so who knows? If
1:26:30
Speaker 1: a meteor hadn't slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago,
1:26:33
Speaker 1: it'd still be the dinosaurs walking around. And who knows,
1:26:36
Speaker 1: maybe they'd develop to a point where they'd start to
1:26:39
Speaker 1: contemplate these things, but I doubt it, right? And so
1:26:43
Speaker 1: there could be life out there, but if it's not
1:26:45
Speaker 1: intelligent life, it would be interesting. We'll learn a lot,
1:26:47
Speaker 1: but it's unclear that it's gonna really change our sense
1:26:51
Speaker 1: of cosmic loneliness, which is really where we're at.
1:26:53
Speaker 2: At the moment. Yeah. It's one of those things that are,
1:26:58
Speaker 2: it's probably one of the biggest questions that human, the
1:27:01
Speaker 2: human race has ever contemplated. Are we alone? And if
1:27:04
Speaker 2: we are alone, is that good? Is it bad? Like,
1:27:08
Speaker 2: is it sad? Is it lonely? Like if, if, if
1:27:11
Speaker 2: life really is so difficult to cultivate to the point
1:27:15
Speaker 2: where it gets to be able to alter its environment
1:27:18
Speaker 2: the way we do, if this really is a one
1:27:20
Speaker 2: in a hundred trillion opportunities, Well.
1:27:24
Speaker 1: To my mind, that gives us a certain profound responsibility.
1:27:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:27:29
Speaker 1: Right? I mean, we could be. We could be the
1:27:32
Speaker 1: only intelligent life in the cosmos. And what are we
1:27:34
Speaker 1: doing with our time?
1:27:36
Speaker 2: Well, some people are making quantum computers that may revolutionize
1:27:39
Speaker 2: what it means to be a person. Yeah. But if
1:27:41
Speaker 2: that's happening all throughout the galaxy, that's when things get
1:27:43
Speaker 2: really strange. if there's multiple examples of this but not
1:27:48
Speaker 2: where we are, maybe 500 years ago and maybe 500
1:27:52
Speaker 2: years from and maybe a million years from, dependent upon
1:27:55
Speaker 2: the vulnerability of their solar system, right?
1:27:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some people find that frightening, right? Some people
1:28:00
Speaker 1: worry that, I mean, you know, the James Webb Space
1:28:04
Speaker 1: Telescope is supposed to launch in October, I think it is.
1:28:08
Speaker 1: And it's going to have this refined capacity to look
1:28:11
Speaker 1: at planets planetary atmospheres. As planets go by their host star,
1:28:16
Speaker 1: they're going to observe the spectra of light that's absorbed
1:28:19
Speaker 1: by that planet's atmosphere. And so there's a chance that
1:28:22
Speaker 1: you might find biomarkers.
1:28:24
Speaker 2: Right, like nitrogen.
1:28:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, methane and carbon dioxide and so forth.
1:28:29
Speaker 1: And so the question then is, let's say there's some
1:28:32
Speaker 1: unmistakable signature that there's some light. Now, first of all,
1:28:36
Speaker 1: it may not be intelligent life but do you take
1:28:38
Speaker 1: a chance that it is do you do you try
1:28:39
Speaker 1: to you know make contact i mean you know stephen
1:28:42
Speaker 1: hawking famously was like don't contact the aliens right he
1:28:46
Speaker 1: was like every time a civilization encounters another civilization it's
1:28:52
Speaker 1: not good for one of them right we see that
1:28:54
Speaker 1: on planet earth you know.
1:28:56
Speaker 2: Um but we're crude When we're saying that, we're talking
1:29:00
Speaker 2: about crude territorial apes encountering other crude territorial apes throughout history.
1:29:06
Speaker 2: When human beings have encountered other human beings, they've gone,
1:29:08
Speaker 2: what do you have? You have gold? I'll take that.
1:29:11
Speaker 2: Give me your women. Give me this. Give me that.
1:29:13
Speaker 2: And I'm going to light everything else on fire. But
1:29:16
Speaker 2: that's just humans. If we can get past this, like
1:29:18
Speaker 2: what we were discussing before, that the human race itself
1:29:22
Speaker 2: culturally is moving forward. pretty far away from where we
1:29:25
Speaker 2: were when we had to worry about pirate ships pulling
1:29:27
Speaker 2: up through our docks. And that if we continue to
1:29:30
Speaker 2: go on this path and we get to the point
1:29:33
Speaker 2: where we all look like those gray aliens with the
1:29:35
Speaker 2: little feeble bodies and the giant heads, I think that
1:29:39
Speaker 2: iconic image, I think that's almost like we understand where
1:29:42
Speaker 2: this is going. Right.
1:29:44
Speaker 1: So the benign alien that we will one day become,
1:29:47
Speaker 1: if that's who we'll be contacting at some distant planet,
1:29:50
Speaker 1: then maybe it would be fine. And look, How spectacular
1:29:54
Speaker 1: would it be to encounter another life form? First, to
1:29:58
Speaker 1: see whether the biochemistry is the same. Is life this
1:30:02
Speaker 1: one-off chance that happened only on these two planets because
1:30:06
Speaker 1: there's some coincidence? Or is it that there are many
1:30:09
Speaker 1: ways to get life? living systems, and many ways to
1:30:12
Speaker 1: get intelligent living systems. That is the first data that
1:30:15
Speaker 1: we'd ever have of that sort, for sure. But yeah,
1:30:20
Speaker 1: I mean, the question is, will we get to a
1:30:23
Speaker 1: place where they're not afraid of us? You know, if
1:30:27
Speaker 1: perhaps they're that much further ahead of us at the moment.
1:30:29
Speaker 2: Have you paid attention at all to the Pentagon's disclosure
1:30:32
Speaker 2: of these unidentified flying objects, or what do they call them?
1:30:36
Speaker 2: unidentified aerial phenomenon.
1:30:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, anytime I hear that stuff, my eyes glaze over,
1:30:42
Speaker 1: I have to tell you. Because, you know, it's not
1:30:46
Speaker 1: that there can't be alien life. It just feels to
1:30:49
Speaker 1: me so unlikely that they'd come all that way and hide, right?
1:30:54
Speaker 1: They'd come all that way, and just as we're, you know,
1:30:57
Speaker 1: about to make contact with them, they turn on the
1:30:59
Speaker 1: cloaking device or something of that sort. If they're able
1:31:02
Speaker 1: to travel that interstellar distance... They're not going to be
1:31:05
Speaker 1: afraid of us. They may not be interested in us.
1:31:07
Speaker 2: Why would you assume that they're afraid of us? Why
1:31:08
Speaker 2: wouldn't you assume that they're curious and observing and making
1:31:12
Speaker 2: sure we don't blow ourselves up?
1:31:14
Speaker 1: Well, you know, if they're able to do that, I
1:31:16
Speaker 1: think that they'd be better at cloaking themselves, that we
1:31:19
Speaker 1: have no evidence that they're here whatsoever.
1:31:22
Speaker 2: Let me play devil's advocate. Wouldn't you think that the
1:31:25
Speaker 2: best way to acclimate people to the concept of extraterrestrial
1:31:30
Speaker 2: life is to slowly expose people to things purposefully.
1:31:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know that I would do it in
1:31:38
Speaker 1: sort of a mystery manner if I was designing that
1:31:42
Speaker 1: level of sort of aversion therapy to try to get
1:31:45
Speaker 1: them used to this idea that there's other life in
1:31:49
Speaker 1: the universe. Nor would I take the approach, say, of
1:31:52
Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone episode, the famous one, you know, to
1:31:57
Speaker 1: serve man. It's a cookbook, you know. That's the other approach.
1:32:03
Speaker 1: But the other thing to bear in mind that I
1:32:04
Speaker 1: think puts us in a slightly funky context and brings
1:32:07
Speaker 1: us full circle, if space goes on infinitely far, which
1:32:11
Speaker 1: is certainly a real possibility, then you can mathematically argue
1:32:15
Speaker 1: that not only is there other life definitely out there,
1:32:19
Speaker 1: there are copies of us out there. I mean, you
1:32:22
Speaker 1: can argue this.
1:32:23
Speaker 2: An infinite number of copies.
1:32:24
Speaker 1: Infinite number of copies because there's In any finite region
1:32:27
Speaker 1: of space with a finite amount of energy, there are
1:32:30
Speaker 1: only finitely many ways that the particles can be arranged.
1:32:34
Speaker 1: And therefore, if you go on infinitely far, the particle
1:32:37
Speaker 1: arrangement has got to repeat, right? I mean, it's like
1:32:40
Speaker 1: you have a deck of cards. As you shuffle the cards,
1:32:42
Speaker 1: you get this order, that order, the next order. But
1:32:45
Speaker 1: you and I know, you shuffle it enough times, it
1:32:47
Speaker 1: has to repeat because there are only a finite number
1:32:49
Speaker 1: of different orders of the cards. So if you shuffle
1:32:51
Speaker 1: it enough times, you're going to have to come back
1:32:52
Speaker 1: full circle similarly. You're going to have to come back
1:32:55
Speaker 1: full circle with the particle configuration if they go sufficiently
1:32:58
Speaker 1: far away. And so that would say that, yeah, of
1:33:02
Speaker 1: course there's other intelligent life out there. We are out there.
1:33:05
Speaker 1: I mean, literally, we, in the sense of our configuration,
1:33:10
Speaker 1: would be among those particle arrangements out there in this
1:33:14
Speaker 1: infinitely large universe. So it's a very strange idea.
1:33:16
Speaker 2: There's an infinite number of you and I having this conversation.
1:33:19
Speaker 1: In fact, in some of those, you know, there's a
1:33:22
Speaker 1: difference between... What we observe here and what's happening out there.
1:33:27
Speaker 2: Infinite variability. Infinite.
1:33:29
Speaker 1: Again, it's anything that's allowed by the laws of physics.
1:33:31
Speaker 1: Any configuration allowed by the laws of physics and principle
1:33:33
Speaker 1: would happen out there. So, you know, some would argue
1:33:36
Speaker 1: that that means that space does not go on infinitely
1:33:38
Speaker 1: far because the conclusion is too absurd, you know, to accept.
1:33:43
Speaker 1: But the world.
1:33:43
Speaker 2: I don't think that's absurd because the world's absurd.
1:33:45
Speaker 1: Well, I would say that the world... isn't constructed by
1:33:49
Speaker 1: our definition of absurdity, right? The world just doesn't care.
1:33:53
Speaker 2: It is what it is.
1:33:53
Speaker 1: It is what it is. But it's a mind-bending possibility
1:34:00
Speaker 1: which doesn't really reflect on the question of whether there's
1:34:04
Speaker 1: life out there in the usual sense because we mean
1:34:06
Speaker 1: in the observable universe that we have direct access to
1:34:08
Speaker 1: and these regions would be too far away. But in
1:34:11
Speaker 1: that sense, we would be guaranteed That there would be
1:34:15
Speaker 1: life out there in this wider landscape.
1:34:17
Speaker 2: As we talked about, the concept of hundreds of billions
1:34:20
Speaker 2: of suns is so difficult for us to wrap our
1:34:23
Speaker 2: brain around. But that's nothing in comparison to the idea
1:34:28
Speaker 2: of an infinite number of universes.
1:34:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:34:31
Speaker 2: An infinite number of the exact same thing that's happening
1:34:35
Speaker 2: on Earth happening all over the universe. Because it's so big. Yeah.
1:34:41
Speaker 2: That's so, it's, you know, 100 billion is impossible to
1:34:46
Speaker 2: wrap your head around, but that is beyond impossible. And
1:34:48
Speaker 2: you're just, I'm saying it, but my puny little brain
1:34:52
Speaker 2: is just like spitting out the words in the correct order.
1:34:54
Speaker 2: That's all I'm doing.
1:34:55
Speaker 1: But it's kind of the best that we can do.
1:34:59
Speaker 1: Because again, the only things that we have intuition for
1:35:01
Speaker 1: are the things that we have experienced. And infinity is
1:35:05
Speaker 1: something that we have never experienced. So it's a concept
1:35:08
Speaker 1: that we kick around fairly freely. But it's a hard
1:35:13
Speaker 1: idea to really wrap your mind around.
1:35:14
Speaker 2: But we're talking about in terms of distance, right? We're
1:35:17
Speaker 2: talking about infinite distance and through this infinite distance there's
1:35:20
Speaker 2: infinite possibilities and through those infinite possibilities there would be
1:35:24
Speaker 2: what we're experiencing here in infinite forms and infinite variabilities
1:35:28
Speaker 2: all throughout the universe. But when you're talking about the
1:35:30
Speaker 2: many worlds theory, you're talking about it occurring not in
1:35:36
Speaker 2: a distance, but you're talking about it almost like in a.
1:35:41
Speaker 1: Sort of a separate realm is how we normally talk
1:35:44
Speaker 1: about it. And those parallel worlds are somehow in existence,
1:35:48
Speaker 1: but they're not touching us. They're not directly connected to us.
1:35:51
Speaker 2: And even those parallel worlds have infinite universes attached to
1:35:55
Speaker 2: them that are different but connected.
1:35:58
Speaker 1: That's right. Now, the weird thing that happened some years ago,
1:36:02
Speaker 1: and it's an idea that's still in development, some physicists
1:36:07
Speaker 1: have suggested that the infinite worlds... of the many worlds
1:36:11
Speaker 1: interpretation and the infinite worlds of infinite space, you know,
1:36:15
Speaker 1: that we're talking about from just having the reality extend
1:36:19
Speaker 1: infinitely far, they may be connected. There may be a
1:36:22
Speaker 1: connection between those worlds. They may be the same ideas
1:36:26
Speaker 1: just described in a different language. So it may not
1:36:29
Speaker 1: be that you take the infinity of worlds from infinite
1:36:32
Speaker 1: space and then add the infinity of worlds from the
1:36:35
Speaker 1: many worlds interpretation on top of it. it may be
1:36:38
Speaker 1: that secretly those two ideas are the same idea, just
1:36:41
Speaker 1: described differently.
1:36:44
Speaker 2: So the same idea described differently. So somehow or another,
1:36:47
Speaker 2: these infinite versions of us that appear all throughout the
1:36:51
Speaker 2: galaxy are Are us.
1:36:53
Speaker 1: And they are the worlds demanded by this particular version
1:36:56
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics.
1:36:57
Speaker 2: And somehow or another, we're interconnected. Yes. With those worlds.
1:37:01
Speaker 1: Yes, through this sort of quantum wave function that would
1:37:04
Speaker 1: have all these possibilities.
1:37:04
Speaker 2: But that's when people get real woo-woo. They open up
1:37:07
Speaker 2: this possibility that every decision you make changes reality itself
1:37:12
Speaker 2: because you're now in a different timeline. You're now in
1:37:14
Speaker 2: a different version of what the universe would be.
1:37:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, but for any individual experience... As far as we know,
1:37:21
Speaker 1: each individual psyche traverses one particular trajectory through this reality.
1:37:28
Speaker 1: So while I can imagine there's another version of me
1:37:30
Speaker 1: who did something else in some other world, it's not
1:37:35
Speaker 1: something that. impacts me in a profound way because my
1:37:39
Speaker 1: experience is limited to the particular trajectory that I follow.
1:37:42
Speaker 2: Your day-to-day.
1:37:44
Speaker 1: My day-to-day. So is it a mind slapper to imagine
1:37:47
Speaker 1: that there's a version of me out there?
1:37:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:37:51
Speaker 1: If I allow myself to fully take that in, it
1:37:55
Speaker 1: can even be distressing. It's like, who am I? You
1:37:57
Speaker 1: begin to wonder what kind of identity, what kind of
1:38:01
Speaker 1: personal identity you have in a universe where there are
1:38:03
Speaker 1: multiple versions of you. out there in the wider cosmos.
1:38:06
Speaker 1: But who can keep that in mind for more than
1:38:09
Speaker 1: a split second? Again, we go back to, Brian, make
1:38:12
Speaker 1: the dinner. Brian, take out the trash, man. Reality intrudes.
1:38:19
Speaker 2: But there's also this faith that we have to have
1:38:22
Speaker 2: that the reality that we experience when we wake up
1:38:24
Speaker 2: every morning is the reality that we've been experiencing our
1:38:26
Speaker 2: whole life you know we we shut off and we
1:38:29
Speaker 2: turn back on again with memories and ideas we just
1:38:32
Speaker 2: have to assume that this is all linear yeah.
1:38:34
Speaker 1: Yeah and it all is all based on memory yeah
1:38:38
Speaker 1: i mean memory is the thing that really defines us
1:38:42
Speaker 1: both as an individual and collectively as you're saying as
1:38:45
Speaker 1: a species you know it's like When we lose that
1:38:47
Speaker 1: capacity to hold on to memories, we lose everything. We
1:38:51
Speaker 1: lose everything that defines who we are.
1:38:54
Speaker 2: And that's one of the saddest things about people that
1:38:56
Speaker 2: have memory disorders. When you start to see them slipping
1:38:59
Speaker 2: away and not recognize their own children and not understanding
1:39:03
Speaker 2: what's going on or where they are.
1:39:05
Speaker 1: My wife's mother, I hope it's not too personal, but
1:39:08
Speaker 1: she has Alzheimer's. And yet she no longer recognizes her kids,
1:39:16
Speaker 1: and it's profoundly sad. There's a shell of an individual
1:39:21
Speaker 1: who's left, but without memory, there's no sense of who
1:39:25
Speaker 1: you were as a person any longer.
1:39:26
Speaker 2: Right, you're just sort of existing in this fragile state,
1:39:30
Speaker 2: dependent upon all the people around you to use their
1:39:32
Speaker 2: memory to sort of keep you going.
1:39:35
Speaker 1: And if you think about it, again, it's a whole
1:39:37
Speaker 1: distinguishing quality of being a human, right? Most life... lives
1:39:42
Speaker 1: in the moment. Sure, I mean, all life has some
1:39:44
Speaker 1: degree of memory, and I'm not saying anything other than that,
1:39:46
Speaker 1: but most life lives in the moment in terms of
1:39:50
Speaker 1: the goal-oriented behaviors are fixated on solving an issue of
1:39:56
Speaker 1: the moment. Get the food, get the shelter, escape that predator, right?
1:40:01
Speaker 1: We are among the few species, and certainly we have
1:40:05
Speaker 1: the most refined version, where we can lift ourselves out
1:40:08
Speaker 1: of the cosmic timeline We can imagine the distant past.
1:40:13
Speaker 1: We can make predictions about the far future. And we
1:40:15
Speaker 1: can see our lives within a temporal narrative that most
1:40:19
Speaker 1: other animals just have no awareness of. And to my mind,
1:40:24
Speaker 1: that comes with power. We can understand things so much
1:40:29
Speaker 1: more deeply, but it's also tragic because we're also the
1:40:32
Speaker 1: sole species who really understands death. Yeah. Some people say
1:40:36
Speaker 1: to me, what about elephants? And I say, yeah, elephants,
1:40:39
Speaker 1: they do have morning rituals. I'm not saying that they
1:40:41
Speaker 1: don't respond to death of a member of their group,
1:40:46
Speaker 1: but that is, again, responding to something of the moment.
1:40:49
Speaker 1: And sure, they, for a few days, will carry out
1:40:52
Speaker 1: a ritual behavior. We live our lives constantly aware of
1:40:57
Speaker 1: the fact that our time is limited. Our time is finite.
1:41:01
Speaker 1: And so that drives this search for meaning that many
1:41:05
Speaker 1: of us are on. That drives this search for purpose.
1:41:08
Speaker 1: And so that singular capacity of our brains to stand
1:41:11
Speaker 1: outside of the timeline is what, to my mind, defines
1:41:16
Speaker 1: what it is that makes life worth living.
1:41:20
Speaker 2: And artificial intelligence can replicate that and do it in
1:41:23
Speaker 2: a much better and more efficient way.
1:41:25
Speaker 1: That's right. So we may be at an inflection point
1:41:29
Speaker 1: where we're no longer the special species in that way.
1:41:32
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right.
1:41:33
Speaker 2: I've always said that I think that human beings are
1:41:35
Speaker 2: the electronic caterpillar that gives way to the butterfly. Yeah,
1:41:39
Speaker 2: it could be. We're doing something. You know, a caterpillar
1:41:43
Speaker 2: doesn't know what it's doing. It's making a cocoon. We're
1:41:45
Speaker 2: buying iPhones and new televisions and this constant need for
1:41:51
Speaker 2: the newest, best stuff. And even materialism in general. Materialism
1:41:55
Speaker 2: in general fuels innovation because materialism, it makes you want
1:42:01
Speaker 2: the newest, greatest things. And the newest, greatest things are
1:42:05
Speaker 2: pushed by the fact that people are purchasing them. It
1:42:07
Speaker 2: becomes the big industry. If you looked at human beings
1:42:10
Speaker 2: from afar. Like if you were objective and you looked
1:42:12
Speaker 2: at us like if we were something completely different than
1:42:16
Speaker 2: a human being observing us. Well, what do these things do? Oh,
1:42:18
Speaker 2: they make stuff. They make newer, better stuff. So they're
1:42:21
Speaker 2: things that they desire. and that they create are better
1:42:25
Speaker 2: and more efficient every year. That's what they do. So
1:42:27
Speaker 2: they're just constantly innovating and creating, whether they're innovating personally
1:42:32
Speaker 2: or whether they're using their labor to fuel with the
1:42:36
Speaker 2: monetary success that they have from their labor and using
1:42:39
Speaker 2: that to fuel this innovation. But overall, the species. Just
1:42:43
Speaker 2: like bees make beehives, people make things.
1:42:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that will ultimately be our undoing Or doing,
1:42:52
Speaker 1: in the sense that it may be positive. We may
1:42:53
Speaker 1: transform to another level of being, and we can look
1:42:57
Speaker 1: back at this era as the caterpillar stage that allowed
1:43:00
Speaker 1: that to happen. Or we'll just be gone.
1:43:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. How did Marshall McLuhan say it? He said, human
1:43:05
Speaker 2: beings are the sex organs in the machine world. Huh.
1:43:09
Speaker 1: I'll have to think that one through a little more.
1:43:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:43:12
Speaker 1: That's a good one.
1:43:13
Speaker 2: It's a good one. I think he said that in
1:43:16
Speaker 2: the early 60s. Really? Yeah. Was that... Media Matters, what
1:43:22
Speaker 2: was his, I forget the book.
1:43:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, that does ring a bell.
1:43:25
Speaker 2: I forget the book.
1:43:26
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:43:27
Speaker 2: But there's something going on. And if we keep going,
1:43:31
Speaker 2: you say, well, where does this lead to? It leads
1:43:33
Speaker 2: to like a Dr. Manhattan from like The Watchmen. It
1:43:36
Speaker 2: leads to some super powerful version of what a human
1:43:41
Speaker 2: being is. It's almost unrecognizable from a god.
1:43:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's all a question of what energy we're
1:43:46
Speaker 1: able to conquer and bring within our capacity to control, right?
1:43:51
Speaker 1: I mean, when we controlled fire, we had a new
1:43:54
Speaker 1: energy source, and that new energy source allowed us to
1:43:57
Speaker 1: cook food, as we were talking about. That cooked food
1:43:59
Speaker 1: allowed the brain to grow, and as the brain grew,
1:44:02
Speaker 1: it allowed us to work together in groups to get
1:44:05
Speaker 1: bigger animals, and in that way, there's this wonderful cyclical
1:44:09
Speaker 1: loop whereby there's this relationship between energy control and evolutionary development, right?
1:44:17
Speaker 1: So right now, where are we? Well, we're, we're able
1:44:20
Speaker 1: to use some of the sun's energy. We haven't been
1:44:22
Speaker 1: able to use all of the sun's energy. Most of
1:44:25
Speaker 1: it goes off into space, but at some point we'll
1:44:28
Speaker 1: fully be able to use the sun's energy. Maybe we'll
1:44:30
Speaker 1: surround it with, I don't know, a Dyson sphere, this
1:44:33
Speaker 1: sphere that would capture all the energy and then beam
1:44:35
Speaker 1: it to wherever we needed it. So that will be
1:44:37
Speaker 1: a solar system level, energetic control. And then at some point,
1:44:42
Speaker 1: we may go beyond that and be able to control
1:44:45
Speaker 1: the energy of many suns, maybe all suns in a galaxy.
1:44:49
Speaker 2: Is that really feasible to control, to make some sort
1:44:52
Speaker 2: of a sphere around the sun?
1:44:54
Speaker 1: Well, Freeman Dyson, who is a very creative and brilliant physicist, again,
1:44:59
Speaker 1: one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics, yeah, he imagined
1:45:02
Speaker 1: either you build a sphere or he also imagined a
1:45:05
Speaker 1: version where you'd have all these satellites in a spherical configuration.
1:45:09
Speaker 1: around the sun. So maybe it wouldn't be a solid sphere,
1:45:11
Speaker 1: but it would be a spherical configuration. And so the
1:45:15
Speaker 1: sun's energy, which is mostly just radiating radially outward from
1:45:20
Speaker 1: the sun, could be captured. And if you could capture
1:45:23
Speaker 1: all of the sun's energy, then the things that you'd
1:45:27
Speaker 1: be able to do with that energy are radically different
1:45:30
Speaker 1: from the things that we're able to do with the
1:45:32
Speaker 1: energy sources that we now have. In fact, there have
1:45:34
Speaker 1: been At times, it was always hype, I thought, but
1:45:38
Speaker 1: there have been times when people suspected that certain anomalous
1:45:42
Speaker 1: astronomical observations might be an advanced civilization having built a
1:45:47
Speaker 1: Dyson sphere, and we were seeing a signature of that
1:45:51
Speaker 1: in the sky.
1:45:52
Speaker 2: Nonsense.
1:45:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen those.
1:46:05
Speaker 1: So fire, then we can control the energy of an atom, right?
1:46:09
Speaker 1: We can certainly control that through fission. We'll at some
1:46:12
Speaker 1: point maybe get to a place where we can truly
1:46:15
Speaker 1: control through fusion. Now we've built stars in the laboratory,
1:46:19
Speaker 1: if you will. Then we'll control fusion on stellar scales,
1:46:22
Speaker 1: say through a Dyson sphere, and then we can keep
1:46:24
Speaker 1: on going. Now where does that stop? I don't know.
1:46:27
Speaker 1: But if it doesn't stop, the ways in which we
1:46:30
Speaker 1: will evolve... I mean, just think about what fire did
1:46:33
Speaker 1: for us, right? The ways in which we're going to evolve,
1:46:35
Speaker 1: I think, are going to be utterly stunning. And, of course,
1:46:37
Speaker 1: we'll be controlling that evolution by that point through the
1:46:40
Speaker 1: control over... genomic systems or through our merging with artificial systems. So, yeah,
1:46:48
Speaker 1: you're right.
1:46:48
Speaker 2: Do you ever contemplate what that looks like, our merging
1:46:51
Speaker 2: with these artificial systems?
1:46:52
Speaker 1: You know, not in any particularly creative way. I mean,
1:46:56
Speaker 1: I follow what people have done, and, you know, it's jaw-dropping,
1:47:02
Speaker 1: the interfaces that people have developed between brains and artificial
1:47:07
Speaker 1: computational systems. So where's that headed? I don't know. It's
1:47:13
Speaker 1: enormously exciting, potentially frightening, but, you know, that's what we'll
1:47:18
Speaker 1: have to see where that goes.
1:47:19
Speaker 2: I think ultimately we have to release our grasp on
1:47:22
Speaker 2: who we are now versus who we're going to be.
1:47:25
Speaker 1: We will have to do that.
1:47:25
Speaker 2: Because it seems inevitable. Yeah, right. Exactly.
1:47:28
Speaker 1: I mean, you can fight it. And I'm not by
1:47:30
Speaker 1: any means saying that we shouldn't. try to have restrictions
1:47:34
Speaker 1: and controls that guide the way that artificial intelligence merges
1:47:40
Speaker 1: with humans and assist humans. I think we need to
1:47:43
Speaker 1: be mindful of that in order that we perhaps can
1:47:46
Speaker 1: have the most fruitful partnership as we go forward. But yeah,
1:47:51
Speaker 1: I do think at some point we'll have to give
1:47:53
Speaker 1: up an An archaic sense of who we are in
1:47:58
Speaker 1: light of the capacities that these partnerships, these collaborations, to
1:48:02
Speaker 1: put it in the most positive light, will yield.
1:48:04
Speaker 2: In a way, that's what the Unabomber was terrified of, right?
1:48:07
Speaker 1: Is that true?
1:48:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. He wanted to stop technology. He thought that human
1:48:11
Speaker 2: beings are being foolish in their advancement of technology. And
1:48:13
Speaker 2: that technology, I'm pretty sure, that was part of his manifesto,
1:48:18
Speaker 2: that technology was going to replace us.
1:48:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. he had an interesting way of expressing himself.
1:48:22
Speaker 2: Well, he was a mess in a lot of different ways.
1:48:25
Speaker 2: There's a great documentary about him that I just watched recently.
1:48:27
Speaker 1: What's his name? Ted Kaczynski. Ted Kaczynski, yeah, right.
1:48:30
Speaker 2: You know, he was a part of the Harvard LSD studies.
1:48:33
Speaker 1: Is that true?
1:48:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, they dosed that guy up with acid.
1:48:35
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
1:48:36
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
1:48:37
Speaker 1: No.
1:48:37
Speaker 2: And they did that to quite a few people, and
1:48:39
Speaker 2: a lot of them went mad. And he was one
1:48:41
Speaker 2: of them. He became a professor, but just for a
1:48:44
Speaker 2: short period of time so he could gather up the
1:48:46
Speaker 2: money to buy this cabin and then start his attack
1:48:49
Speaker 2: on people that created technology. Huh. I did not know that.
1:48:53
Speaker 2: All the people he blew up, all the people that
1:48:55
Speaker 2: he sent these bombs to, they were all related, I
1:48:57
Speaker 2: think most at least, were related to the propagation of technology.
1:49:01
Speaker 3: Huh.
1:49:02
Speaker 1: That is fascinating.
1:49:03
Speaker 2: It's crazy. And he had all the elements too, like
1:49:06
Speaker 2: very hateful, like from the time he was young and
1:49:09
Speaker 2: was abandoned by his parents, not abandoned in a way,
1:49:12
Speaker 2: but left alone because he had some sort of a
1:49:15
Speaker 2: disease when he was young. And so he's left in
1:49:17
Speaker 2: this hospital system with no contact with human beings for weeks.
1:49:22
Speaker 2: And I believe even months at a time. And it
1:49:23
Speaker 2: apparently really fucked up his personality.
1:49:26
Speaker 4: Really?
1:49:26
Speaker 2: Because it was at his developmental stage when he was
1:49:28
Speaker 2: very young and a baby and just, you know, you
1:49:30
Speaker 2: need your mother, you need to be touched. And They
1:49:33
Speaker 2: had him in some hospital for a long period of time,
1:49:35
Speaker 2: and his brother, who was the one who recognized that
1:49:39
Speaker 2: he was the author of the manifesto, because he knows
1:49:43
Speaker 2: how crazy his brother is, and he knows how he writes,
1:49:45
Speaker 2: he recognized the manifesto and recognized the language of it,
1:49:50
Speaker 2: and he relayed the things that his son had... Yeah,
1:49:53
Speaker 2: and he relayed the things that his brother had gone
1:49:55
Speaker 2: through with his parents. He had very cold parents, and
1:49:58
Speaker 2: the whole deal was really... There was a lot a
1:50:01
Speaker 2: lot of elements that were in play to create a
1:50:04
Speaker 2: Ted Kaczynski, but one of them was that he was
1:50:06
Speaker 2: a part of the Harvard LSD studies.
1:50:08
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sad and tragic, but, you know, I
1:50:10
Speaker 1: don't know how you feel about it, but, you know,
1:50:13
Speaker 1: the fact that we got this incredible paranoia about psychedelics,
1:50:19
Speaker 1: and maybe it was stories I didn't hear, I didn't
1:50:22
Speaker 1: know about the Ted Kaczynski connection, but certainly there was
1:50:25
Speaker 1: this irrational paranoia that emerged, you know, I guess in
1:50:30
Speaker 1: the 60s and 70s, and shut down what was incredibly
1:50:34
Speaker 1: promising research. I'm not saying the Timothy Leary approach, but
1:50:38
Speaker 1: I'm saying there were people who were taking a very
1:50:39
Speaker 1: considered approach to psychedelics to deal with very specific issues.
1:50:45
Speaker 1: And now it's starting to come back, which I think
1:50:48
Speaker 1: is enormously powerful. Because look, I mean, you know, everything
1:50:53
Speaker 1: that we've spoken about here, everything that we know about
1:50:55
Speaker 1: the world is filtered through the human brain, right? So
1:50:59
Speaker 1: when we talk about quantum mechanics and general relativity, we're
1:51:02
Speaker 1: talking about, we look out at the world, we process
1:51:04
Speaker 1: it through this particular conscious state, and using that, we're
1:51:09
Speaker 1: able to come up with ideas that explain things that
1:51:11
Speaker 1: we observe. But there are other states of consciousness. I mean, ultimately,
1:51:16
Speaker 1: I think that we create, I mean, I believe there's
1:51:19
Speaker 1: a real external reality, but we create our own narratives
1:51:24
Speaker 1: about that reality. And if with... some additional substances, we
1:51:30
Speaker 1: can modify or enhance or enlarge the kinds of narratives
1:51:36
Speaker 1: that we're able to tell, the kinds of coherent stories
1:51:40
Speaker 1: that we're able to overlay on our experience. I think
1:51:42
Speaker 1: that's a vital thing, and psychedelics can help us get
1:51:45
Speaker 1: to that place. I think that's a vital role that
1:51:48
Speaker 1: they can play.
1:51:49
Speaker 2: I think the problem with psychedelics is when they're utilized
1:51:54
Speaker 2: without an understanding of the consequences of utilizing them.
1:51:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.
1:51:57
Speaker 2: Without discipline, without... You know, that's where we've really been robbed,
1:52:01
Speaker 2: is that if they didn't pass the sweeping psychedelics act
1:52:05
Speaker 2: of 1970, where everything turned into a schedule one, even
1:52:08
Speaker 2: things that weren't psychoactive, if they didn't pass that, we
1:52:11
Speaker 2: would have most likely entered into a stage... of our
1:52:16
Speaker 2: history where we were running legitimate studies and we got
1:52:20
Speaker 2: an understanding of the benefits of them like they're doing
1:52:22
Speaker 2: now with PTSD studies with MDMA where they're realizing like, well,
1:52:26
Speaker 2: you know, this ecstasy stuff is not just a party drug.
1:52:29
Speaker 2: It actually can really help soldiers recover from some of
1:52:32
Speaker 2: the psychological wounds they have from combat. And then you've
1:52:36
Speaker 2: got what Johns Hopkins has done with psilocybin. There's psilocybin
1:52:41
Speaker 2: studies and they're about to enter into some of them
1:52:44
Speaker 2: with UFC fighters now.
1:52:46
Speaker 1: Oh, is that right?
1:52:46
Speaker 2: Guys who have had traumatic brain injuries and been knocked
1:52:50
Speaker 2: out and had head injuries. Because neurogenesis that occurs through psilocybin,
1:52:56
Speaker 2: it's very unique. Like psilocybin allows the brain to regenerate neurons.
1:53:01
Speaker 2: It's one of the rare things that does that. And
1:53:03
Speaker 2: they think there could be some therapeutic uses of that
1:53:06
Speaker 2: for people that have been in car accidents, people, soldiers, again,
1:53:09
Speaker 2: who've experienced head injuries, football players, the like. anybody that's
1:53:13
Speaker 2: had problems with cognitive function, maybe even neurodegenerative diseases.
1:53:19
Speaker 1: There you go.
1:53:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all these things are just... We know that
1:53:22
Speaker 2: there are some mushrooms like lion's mane that has some
1:53:25
Speaker 2: cognitive benefits and neurogenesis properties, and they're hoping that there's
1:53:29
Speaker 2: some real therapy to these things, and they were denied
1:53:32
Speaker 2: the use of them for decades and decades, and based
1:53:36
Speaker 2: on ignorance.
1:53:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I totally agree. It's interesting, you know, when people...
1:53:42
Speaker 1: hear me espouse my view that all we are are
1:53:45
Speaker 1: particles governed by physical law, a number of people who
1:53:50
Speaker 1: have had psychedelic experiences contact me and say, I've got
1:53:54
Speaker 1: proof that that's not right. And, and of course they'll
1:53:58
Speaker 1: communicate some kind of experience they've had under the influence
1:54:02
Speaker 1: of some kind of psychoactive substance. And it's interesting because,
1:54:07
Speaker 1: you know, I, I usually don't respond but on occasion
1:54:10
Speaker 1: I felt the need to respond and it all comes
1:54:13
Speaker 1: down to do you view what happens during a psychoactive
1:54:17
Speaker 1: experience as tapping into some other deeper reality or do
1:54:20
Speaker 1: you view it again as just some product of this
1:54:23
Speaker 1: amazing thing inside of our head when it is influenced
1:54:27
Speaker 1: in an unusual way by some kind of psychoactive substance
1:54:31
Speaker 1: and to me it just seems dead obvious that there's
1:54:34
Speaker 1: nothing beyond the particles and the laws. And if you
1:54:37
Speaker 1: change the particles, keep the laws the same, the experience
1:54:40
Speaker 1: is going to be a little bit different. And you're
1:54:42
Speaker 1: going to enter into a space that's unfamiliar, maybe terrifying
1:54:46
Speaker 1: if it's a bad trip, maybe thrilling if it opens
1:54:50
Speaker 1: up some unification of reality and you feel one with
1:54:53
Speaker 1: the cosmos. Fantastic. But to me, that's the miracle of
1:54:57
Speaker 1: the brain as opposed to tapping into some other kind
1:55:01
Speaker 1: of reality. And I guess that's the sticking point. for
1:55:04
Speaker 1: people who think that there's got to be something more
1:55:07
Speaker 1: than this physicalist perspective of stuff and loss.
1:55:10
Speaker 2: That is a bias that we have. We want there
1:55:12
Speaker 2: to be something more. We don't know what that experience is. However,
1:55:16
Speaker 2: it's indistinguishable from the experience of entering into another realm. Like,
1:55:21
Speaker 2: the problem is trying to put it on a scale
1:55:26
Speaker 2: and say, nope, this is what it is. Because you're
1:55:29
Speaker 2: having this experience that's, whether you want to call it
1:55:32
Speaker 2: a hallucinogen... a hallucinogenic experience? Are you hallucinating? Like whatever,
1:55:37
Speaker 2: whatever word you want to use, whatever that thing is,
1:55:41
Speaker 2: when you take these substances, it's, it's a, like if
1:55:46
Speaker 2: you are really being transported into another dimension and communicating
1:55:50
Speaker 2: with other entities and then coming back to earth or
1:55:53
Speaker 2: whether or not you're imagining it, the experience is the same.
1:55:57
Speaker 2: That's where it gets really weird. Yeah. So like maybe everything,
1:56:03
Speaker 2: happens in the mind.
1:56:04
Speaker 1: Right. And so there are versions, theories of the world,
1:56:08
Speaker 1: where the only thing that's real is consciousness.
1:56:10
Speaker 2: Yes.
1:56:11
Speaker 1: And the only thing that we do is we overlay
1:56:15
Speaker 1: experiences within our own subjective consciousness and we weight them
1:56:19
Speaker 1: as real or not real. But that's all artificial because
1:56:22
Speaker 1: it's all just in the mind.
1:56:23
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to get to next. Yeah.
1:56:25
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
1:56:26
Speaker 1: I think it's nonsense. And it's not that it's crazy talk, right?
1:56:33
Speaker 1: In principle, you could imagine the world being constructed that way,
1:56:37
Speaker 1: but I do firmly believe that there is real stuff
1:56:41
Speaker 1: that's governed by real laws. We may not have those laws,
1:56:44
Speaker 1: we may not fundamentally know what the stuff is, but
1:56:47
Speaker 1: I think there's a real external stuff, and when that
1:56:50
Speaker 1: stuff is configured in the right pattern, such as a
1:56:53
Speaker 1: human brain, it can begin to have an inner world
1:56:57
Speaker 1: and inner experiences, which is itself wondrous and mysterious, don't
1:57:01
Speaker 1: get me wrong, But that inner world is not tapping
1:57:06
Speaker 1: into anything beyond its own inner experience.
1:57:10
Speaker 2: It's just this inner experience is infinite in its possibilities.
1:57:12
Speaker 1: It's infinite in its possibilities, or nearly infinite in its possibilities.
1:57:15
Speaker 1: I mean, and so where do you draw the line,
1:57:17
Speaker 1: I think is the real question, between reality as experienced
1:57:21
Speaker 1: in the human brain and experiences in the human brain
1:57:24
Speaker 1: that you want to call reality? And it's a tough question.
1:57:27
Speaker 1: It's a very tough question. You have to at some point...
1:57:31
Speaker 1: have a means of saying there is real stuff in
1:57:34
Speaker 1: the world that our brain is experiencing and filtering in
1:57:40
Speaker 1: some way versus stuff that's generated from the inner world itself.
1:57:47
Speaker 1: And that distinction is hard to make precise, but I
1:57:51
Speaker 1: think it's utterly profound.
1:57:53
Speaker 2: Have you had any psychedelic experiences yourself?
1:57:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, we discussed this once a little bit. I forget
1:57:58
Speaker 1: your answer, though. Yeah, so a couple. I don't consider
1:58:03
Speaker 1: myself well-versed in this world.
1:58:06
Speaker 2: Do you feel like that's something you're missing out on?
1:58:08
Speaker 1: I do, actually. And I think as I get older
1:58:11
Speaker 1: and I become more aware of my own finite nature
1:58:16
Speaker 1: as the curtain begins to start to roll down from
1:58:19
Speaker 1: the rafters, I do hunger for a distinct kind of experience.
1:58:28
Speaker 1: There's a book. that I think everybody should read. Maybe
1:58:31
Speaker 1: you've read it. William James' book, Varieties of Religious Experience.
1:58:35
Speaker 1: It's old, written back in 1902. William James, great psychologist.
1:58:39
Speaker 1: He gave some lectures in Scotland, I think it was,
1:58:41
Speaker 1: at the turn of the century. And he interviewed a
1:58:44
Speaker 1: whole host of people in order to get a feel
1:58:47
Speaker 1: for the kinds of religious experiences, but really the kind
1:58:50
Speaker 1: of spiritual experiences that people would have. And some of
1:58:53
Speaker 1: them were generated through some kind of psychoactive substance that
1:58:58
Speaker 1: people were using at the time. And his descriptions are
1:59:03
Speaker 1: so vivid that I feel like I've been there on
1:59:06
Speaker 1: some of these excursions, these mental excursions. But I do
1:59:12
Speaker 1: have a hankering. I do have an urge to enlarge
1:59:17
Speaker 1: my own sense of what reality is through that experience.
1:59:21
Speaker 1: And look, the thing that we once discussed was, You know,
1:59:24
Speaker 1: something that happened in Amsterdam, and it was probably very
1:59:27
Speaker 1: mild compared to other things because I don't really drink,
1:59:31
Speaker 1: you know, I don't eat meat, I'm pretty clean in
1:59:33
Speaker 1: that way, so I'm pretty susceptible to these kinds of influences.
1:59:40
Speaker 1: And I did not enjoy the experience that I had.
1:59:45
Speaker 1: It was pretty awful. However, back when I was in college,
1:59:50
Speaker 1: I had some other experiences on other substances, again, all
1:59:54
Speaker 1: relatively mild, and those were far more enjoyable and mind-expanding.
2:00:02
Speaker 1: And I can see both sides, and I'm definitely, I
2:00:06
Speaker 1: feel compelled to explore more, and I think the world's
2:00:09
Speaker 1: getting to a place where it will become more amenable
2:00:13
Speaker 1: to people doing that.
2:00:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're starting to legalize psilocybin in a lot of states.
2:00:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:00:18
Speaker 2: That's the real gateway to these experiences. Once they make
2:00:22
Speaker 2: that legal, and then you develop... What we really need
2:00:27
Speaker 2: to do is develop places where you can, in a
2:00:30
Speaker 2: professional setting, where people actually understand the dosage based on
2:00:34
Speaker 2: your weight, based on how much psilocybin is in whatever
2:00:38
Speaker 2: substance you're taking, or whether it's synthetic, or whether it's
2:00:41
Speaker 2: in mushroom form, because there's very strong psilocybin-based mushrooms and
2:00:45
Speaker 2: other ones that are more mild. And once... Once there's
2:00:49
Speaker 2: real legalization, like you can go into a marijuana store,
2:00:52
Speaker 2: for instance, in Los Angeles, and you could buy marijuana
2:00:55
Speaker 2: based on the THC content. So you could say, what
2:00:58
Speaker 2: do you have that's mild? And they go, oh, we
2:01:00
Speaker 2: got some of this. What do you have that's like crazy?
2:01:03
Speaker 2: They have space weed that will really fuck you up.
2:01:06
Speaker 2: And then they have edibles, which are a totally different
2:01:08
Speaker 2: animal because your body processes it through the liver and
2:01:12
Speaker 2: it produces a completely different psychoactive substance. So like we
2:01:15
Speaker 2: know all that now because marijuana has been essentially legal
2:01:19
Speaker 2: since the 90s and legal, legal legal since 2016 when
2:01:23
Speaker 2: it was voted in in California.
2:01:25
Speaker 6: Yeah.
2:01:26
Speaker 2: So we have much more of an understanding of the
2:01:29
Speaker 2: real psychoactive effects and you can actually control it much more.
2:01:34
Speaker 1: Sure.
2:01:34
Speaker 2: We need that with everything.
2:01:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've read in some of these studies, the
2:01:39
Speaker 1: people who are newcomers to this, they actually have an
2:01:43
Speaker 1: individual who's experienced that sits with the individual and guides
2:01:47
Speaker 1: them on their journey.
2:01:48
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, they have services like that. California is much
2:01:52
Speaker 2: more advanced, and so is Colorado, and so is Washington State,
2:01:56
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of states. But here in Texas,
2:01:58
Speaker 2: it's still illegal, which is kind of fucking hilarious.
2:02:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see, my view is, So what do we
2:02:03
Speaker 1: do as physicists? We tell one particular story of the
2:02:06
Speaker 1: world at the level of particles and laws. The chemist
2:02:09
Speaker 1: comes along and takes our understanding and builds molecules and
2:02:12
Speaker 1: atoms from it. The biologist comes and takes those structures
2:02:16
Speaker 1: and builds cells and living systems and that kind of domain.
2:02:20
Speaker 1: And then ultimately you get up to the neuroscientist who
2:02:22
Speaker 1: studies the brain and the philosopher who's trying to see
2:02:25
Speaker 1: meaning that the brain is striving for and so forth.
2:02:28
Speaker 1: What it all amounts to is a variety of stories
2:02:31
Speaker 1: that discuss distinct qualities of the world. And the richest
2:02:36
Speaker 1: experience you get is from layering all those stories on
2:02:39
Speaker 1: top of one another so you can see the biggest
2:02:41
Speaker 1: possible narrative of all. Now, if these kind of psychoactive
2:02:45
Speaker 1: substances can give you new stories that you wouldn't have
2:02:49
Speaker 1: access to through the traditional means, the academic means of, say,
2:02:53
Speaker 1: of science, or through the philosophical means or artistic forays,
2:02:58
Speaker 1: if these psychoactive substances can bring in a new narrative,
2:03:02
Speaker 1: How wonderful could that be for all of us to
2:03:05
Speaker 1: be able to layer an additional story or multiple stories
2:03:09
Speaker 1: upon our understanding of the world?
2:03:11
Speaker 2: Well, you know who had that belief? Carl Sagan. Is
2:03:14
Speaker 2: that true? Carl Sagan was a giant fan of marijuana.
2:03:16
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen Carl Sagan's quotes? Well, I did
2:03:18
Speaker 1: know that, but I've never seen any quotes where he's
2:03:21
Speaker 1: actually speaking about the experience.
2:03:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, see if you can find Carl Sagan on marijuana, because...
2:03:28
Speaker 2: he had a direct quote that was very similar to
2:03:31
Speaker 2: what you were just saying, that he believes there's certain
2:03:33
Speaker 2: thoughts that you achieve and states that you achieve on
2:03:36
Speaker 2: marijuana that are impossible to get to without it.
2:03:39
Speaker 3: I see.
2:03:39
Speaker 2: Paraphrasing.
2:03:40
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean, that's a basic idea.
2:03:41
Speaker 2: He was a heavy-duty pothead. As you can imagine, someone
2:03:45
Speaker 2: who's fucking staring at space all the time, like, man,
2:03:47
Speaker 2: this is crazy.
2:03:49
Speaker 1: Well, not everybody does, but.
2:03:50
Speaker 2: He's in it from a different time, where, you know,
2:03:52
Speaker 2: I mean, he's traveling in all these circles with all these, like,
2:03:56
Speaker 2: musicians and You know, artists and all these different people.
2:03:59
Speaker 2: Because he was not just an astronomer. He was also
2:04:03
Speaker 2: like a Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yeah, statesman of science. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
2:04:08
Speaker 2: Someone who's promoting it in a way. And he did
2:04:11
Speaker 2: a brilliant job of doing that, obviously.
2:04:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I was inspired by him. I mean, Neil
2:04:15
Speaker 1: obviously was. I was inspired by him, too, as a kid.
2:04:18
Speaker 1: You know, this idea of... the wonder and the majesty
2:04:22
Speaker 1: of the cosmos as opposed to just sort of, you know,
2:04:24
Speaker 1: the test that you had to take in third grade on,
2:04:27
Speaker 1: you know, something that you're meant to memorize.
2:04:29
Speaker 2: Also his elegant use of the language to describe it
2:04:32
Speaker 2: in a way that was so inspiring and so, it
2:04:35
Speaker 2: was so moving the way he would describe the cosmos.
2:04:38
Speaker 2: Here it is. The cannabis experience has greatly improved my
2:04:40
Speaker 2: appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much
2:04:43
Speaker 2: appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist
2:04:46
Speaker 2: which I can achieve is when high, sometimes carries over
2:04:51
Speaker 2: to when I'm down. I guess that's what they would
2:04:53
Speaker 2: call back then, when I'm down. This is one of
2:04:55
Speaker 2: the many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse.
2:04:58
Speaker 2: A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has
2:05:01
Speaker 2: occurred with cannabis. For the first time, I've been able
2:05:04
Speaker 2: to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and
2:05:06
Speaker 2: the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that
2:05:10
Speaker 2: professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going
2:05:14
Speaker 2: simultaneously in their heads. but this was the first time
2:05:18
Speaker 2: for me. He also thought it dramatically helped improve his
2:05:21
Speaker 2: sex life, as he analytically explains here. Cannabis also enhances
2:05:26
Speaker 2: the enjoyment of sex. On the one hand, it gives
2:05:29
Speaker 2: an exquisite sensitivity. The actual duration of orgasm seems to
2:05:33
Speaker 2: lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of
2:05:38
Speaker 2: time expansion, which comes from cannabis smoking. And lastly, he
2:05:41
Speaker 2: argues for outright legalization in light of these benefits. The
2:05:45
Speaker 2: illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization
2:05:50
Speaker 2: of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight,
2:05:54
Speaker 2: sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad
2:05:59
Speaker 2: and dangerous world. This is only one of many quotes
2:06:02
Speaker 2: that he's had on cannabis because this is not... Scroll
2:06:04
Speaker 2: up to the top of that.
2:06:05
Speaker 3: He had a whole essay on it.
2:06:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:06:07
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of stuff.
2:06:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was... Oh, he had a book called
2:06:10
Speaker 2: Marijuana Reconsidered.
2:06:11
Speaker 1: He did?
2:06:12
Speaker 3: An essay.
2:06:13
Speaker 2: Oh, an essay in a book. Okay, so it was
2:06:16
Speaker 2: someone else's book. Hold on, scroll back up. He called
2:06:19
Speaker 2: himself Mr. X. Oh, he wrote under a pseudonym. Interesting. Huh. Huh.
2:06:25
Speaker 1: I mean, I agree with the conclusion about legalization. I'm
2:06:28
Speaker 1: not sure the argument there is the strongest one.
2:06:30
Speaker 2: What argument?
2:06:31
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if Carl Sagan's sex life and...
2:06:34
Speaker 1: his ability to hear art and music is the best
2:06:37
Speaker 1: argument for legalizing marijuana.
2:06:39
Speaker 2: No, it's not the best argument, but it is an
2:06:42
Speaker 2: argument for not just the use, but the enhancement of
2:06:48
Speaker 2: life through it.
2:06:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the other argument is it's something that we
2:06:57
Speaker 1: can control as a society as opposed to eliminate. And
2:07:02
Speaker 1: if there is an option of that sort in general,
2:07:04
Speaker 1: that's the right.
2:07:05
Speaker 2: Way to go. Well, the war on drugs has been lost.
2:07:09
Speaker 1: Thankfully. Well, part of it, I should say.
2:07:11
Speaker 2: Part of it.
2:07:12
Speaker 1: Part of it was misguided. It was a misguided war.
2:07:16
Speaker 1: In fact, I think New York just legalized, if I'm
2:07:20
Speaker 1: not mistaken. And I don't, I was wondering, is that retroactive?
2:07:23
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody who.
2:07:24
Speaker 2: It should be.
2:07:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, but is it?
2:07:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's not. There's a lot of people that
2:07:28
Speaker 2: are in jail for the rest of their lives for
2:07:29
Speaker 2: trafficking marijuana, which is incredible.
2:07:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:07:32
Speaker 2: You know, and it should, look, it's just a plant, folks,
2:07:37
Speaker 2: and it's not toxic, and it doesn't kill anybody, and
2:07:39
Speaker 2: it's not even addictive. In very rare cases, there seems
2:07:43
Speaker 2: to be some people that purport some physical addiction to cannabis,
2:07:46
Speaker 2: but there's no real mechanism for it that's widely understood,
2:07:49
Speaker 2: like mechanism for benzodiazepines being addictive or alcohol whereas you
2:07:54
Speaker 2: get off of them there's actually a real possibility you
2:07:56
Speaker 2: could die from withdrawal there's nothing like that with marijuana
2:07:59
Speaker 2: the the seems to be mostly psychological, but again, the
2:08:04
Speaker 2: biological variability of people, like some people have weird reactions
2:08:08
Speaker 2: to stuff and some people may become actually physically addicted
2:08:11
Speaker 2: to marijuana, but it's super rare and way more rare
2:08:14
Speaker 2: than a lot of things that we can buy readily
2:08:16
Speaker 2: everywhere all the time, whether it's cigarettes or prescription drugs.
2:08:21
Speaker 1: I mean, cigarettes are a great example.
2:08:22
Speaker 5: Yeah.
2:08:22
Speaker 1: You know, it just doesn't make any sense. And I
2:08:24
Speaker 1: think now 12, 13 states, it's legal.
2:08:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I'm an enthusiast. I love the stuff.
2:08:30
Speaker 1: It's heading in the right direction.
2:08:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't. I don't.
2:08:34
Speaker 1: I mean, it happened so long.
2:08:35
Speaker 2: Well, maybe that's the problem, bro. Maybe we should just
2:08:37
Speaker 2: spark one up. We should go to New York now.
2:08:40
Speaker 1: We should have a trip.
2:08:40
Speaker 2: It's legal in New York now? It is. Yeah, but
2:08:42
Speaker 2: you gotta fucking have a vaccine passport to go anywhere now.
2:08:46
Speaker 2: They're doing weird shit in New York. That Mario Cuomo guy.
2:08:49
Speaker 2: Or Andrew Cuomo, his son, that guy, Jesus Christ. It's
2:08:55
Speaker 2: just these people, it's amazing how people are exposed in
2:08:59
Speaker 2: their ability to navigate or not navigate the pandemic and
2:09:02
Speaker 2: like what it's done in terms of like different cities
2:09:05
Speaker 2: and how different places in the country have embraced freedom
2:09:09
Speaker 2: or embraced regulation and what it's done in terms of
2:09:13
Speaker 2: like the impact that it's had on the businesses and
2:09:16
Speaker 2: That in turn the economy and in turn people's lives
2:09:18
Speaker 2: and drug addiction and suicides.
2:09:19
Speaker 1: But the thing to bear in mind too is everybody's
2:09:22
Speaker 1: situation is different that will impact their views. So for instance,
2:09:25
Speaker 1: if I told you what we did, you'd probably think
2:09:27
Speaker 1: I was an extremist. We left New York City. We
2:09:30
Speaker 1: went up to the mountains and the Catskill Mountains. We
2:09:33
Speaker 1: cut ourselves off. But as I mentioned, I was with
2:09:36
Speaker 1: my 92-year-old mother. And I was with my son who
2:09:39
Speaker 1: has an autoimmune issue.
2:09:41
Speaker 2: Well, that sounds like a great thing, though. Right.
2:09:44
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. So one has to always gauge
2:09:46
Speaker 1: responses based upon circumstance.
2:09:49
Speaker 2: That's not what my concern is. My concern is government overreach.
2:09:53
Speaker 2: My concern is not personal decisions. I think your personal
2:09:56
Speaker 2: decision was an excellent one. First of all, I think
2:09:58
Speaker 2: if you can go to the Catskills and live there,
2:10:00
Speaker 2: that's a good move, period. I mean, it's beautiful up there.
2:10:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, though my kids are hankering to come back to civilization.
2:10:07
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure. But Ultimately, I think
2:10:10
Speaker 2: when they look back on that experience, they're going to
2:10:12
Speaker 2: look back on it.
2:10:13
Speaker 1: I think so. I think so.
2:10:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:10:15
Speaker 1: You know, my son already realizes that. I mean, the
2:10:18
Speaker 1: fact that you have a year to spend in an
2:10:21
Speaker 1: unusual circumstance where you rely on each other in a
2:10:25
Speaker 1: different way. When do you ever have that possibility? For instance,
2:10:28
Speaker 1: we never would eat dinner as a family.
2:10:31
Speaker 2: Right.
2:10:31
Speaker 1: We'd always be this chaotic thing in Manhattan. Everybody would
2:10:34
Speaker 1: just eat at their own moment. We ate every meal together.
2:10:37
Speaker 1: And I cooked every meal for 350 some odd or
2:10:40
Speaker 1: 70 days or something.
2:10:42
Speaker 2: Wow.
2:10:43
Speaker 1: So it was different. It was definitely different.
2:10:45
Speaker 2: So you got to expand your culinary skills.
2:10:47
Speaker 1: I did. Absolutely.
2:10:48
Speaker 2: Is everybody vegan? The whole family vegan?
2:10:52
Speaker 1: They're not. But when I cook, I cook vegan. So
2:10:55
Speaker 1: they are eating vegan even though if they make their
2:10:59
Speaker 1: own meal. And we had things in the refrigerator that
2:11:01
Speaker 1: are not vegan. So it's up to them.
2:11:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, my family got together every night for movie night.
2:11:06
Speaker 2: We went through the entire Adam Sandler catalog in the
2:11:09
Speaker 2: first couple months.
2:11:10
Speaker 1: See, we said we were going to do that movie night.
2:11:12
Speaker 1: Somehow it never fully happened.
2:11:14
Speaker 2: It was great. And I got to introduce my kids
2:11:16
Speaker 2: to movies that I saw. You know, like Zohan, which
2:11:20
Speaker 2: is one of my favorite movies.
2:11:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that movie.
2:11:22
Speaker 2: Oh, my God. You've never seen that? No. Oh, my God.
2:11:24
Speaker 2: It's one of Adam Sandler's greatest movies. Don't mess with
2:11:27
Speaker 2: the Zohan. It's fucking amazing. It's hilarious.
2:11:29
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to have to watch this.
2:11:31
Speaker 2: I think it's his best movie. Really? Other than Uncut Gems,
2:11:34
Speaker 2: which I think is fantastic. fantastic but in a completely
2:11:37
Speaker 2: different way uncut gems is just this wild chaotic movie
2:11:41
Speaker 2: that gives you anxiety did you see uncut.
2:11:42
Speaker 1: Gems no no my son saw it that's fairly recent
2:11:45
Speaker 1: isn't it.
2:11:45
Speaker 2: Yeah a couple years ago it gives you anxiety yeah
2:11:47
Speaker 2: you watch it going jesus it's about a guy who's
2:11:50
Speaker 2: a hardcore gambling addict okay who you know i don't
2:11:53
Speaker 2: want to spoil it but it's amazing it's a really
2:11:56
Speaker 2: good movie but it's so different than all of his
2:11:59
Speaker 2: other films which are these like light-hearted silly movies but
2:12:02
Speaker 2: Don't mess with the Zohan. It's fucking hilarious.
2:12:05
Speaker 4: All right.
2:12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really funny.
2:12:06
Speaker 1: Going to check that out.
2:12:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a giant Adam Sandler fan because his movies
2:12:10
Speaker 2: are just silly. They don't have some crazy message to them.
2:12:15
Speaker 2: There's no wokeness or no social responsibility. They're just madness.
2:12:19
Speaker 2: What about Jim Carrey? I love Jim Carrey. Yeah, me too. Yeah,
2:12:23
Speaker 2: I love especially some of the early stuff, you know?
2:12:26
Speaker 1: Dumb and Dumber?
2:12:27
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. It was great. Great. I heard the new
2:12:29
Speaker 2: one sucked, though. Did you see the new one?
2:12:30
Speaker 3: They got an Ace Ventura 3 in the works.
2:12:32
Speaker 4: No.
2:12:32
Speaker 2: Oh, really? Do they? Oh, wow. How was 2? Was
2:12:35
Speaker 2: 2 any good? Yeah.
2:12:36
Speaker 3: When is your close?
2:12:37
Speaker 2: I never saw 2. Yeah. Oh, that was recent. No, no, no.
2:12:41
Speaker 2: I mean, not recent. Next to the original one.
2:12:44
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, yeah. Close.
2:12:45
Speaker 3: Close to.
2:12:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:12:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
2:12:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I never saw that. Dumb and Dumber 2
2:12:49
Speaker 2: supposedly sucked, though, right?
2:12:50
Speaker 4: Correct.
2:12:50
Speaker 2: Correct.
2:12:51
Speaker 1: Well, the opening was a good scene.
2:12:52
Speaker 6: Yeah.
2:12:53
Speaker 2: Dumb and Dumber 2?
2:12:54
Speaker 1: The catheter scene, wasn't it? Is that Dumb and Dumber 2?
2:12:58
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm getting my film wrong.
2:12:59
Speaker 2: I don't know. But it was just interesting to expose
2:13:02
Speaker 2: my kids to different things.
2:13:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
2:13:04
Speaker 2: But limited. The 10-year-old's not into anything scary. I have
2:13:09
Speaker 2: to be careful.
2:13:10
Speaker 1: Right. So their experience of the pandemic was fairly ordinary
2:13:16
Speaker 1: because they were going to school and you were here?
2:13:18
Speaker 2: Well, in the beginning, they were not. Cause we were
2:13:20
Speaker 2: in California and they were going to zoom classes. And
2:13:22
Speaker 2: then once we moved to Texas this year has all
2:13:25
Speaker 2: been in school and they both got COVID eventually. Um,
2:13:29
Speaker 2: but mild, very mild. Yeah. Like, uh, one of them
2:13:32
Speaker 2: barely knew she had it. I was like, I want
2:13:33
Speaker 2: to get you checked. Cause like, you gotta like, she
2:13:36
Speaker 2: had a headache and I'm like, why, why do you
2:13:37
Speaker 2: have a head? Like what's going on? And so, uh,
2:13:40
Speaker 2: because I have access to testing, I have access, I
2:13:43
Speaker 2: have a machine at my home and, uh, and I
2:13:45
Speaker 2: have a machine here.
2:13:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:13:46
Speaker 2: Because when people come over the house to do work
2:13:48
Speaker 2: and stuff, I was like, let's just test everybody. Because,
2:13:50
Speaker 2: you know, if you have someone coming over the house
2:13:52
Speaker 2: or someone doing things, and this way also, I knew, like,
2:13:55
Speaker 2: if my parents were going to come over, I wanted
2:13:57
Speaker 2: to make sure that everybody's, my wife's parents, make sure that,
2:14:00
Speaker 2: you know, everybody's okay. So we tested her, and like, bingo,
2:14:06
Speaker 2: she had COVID. And then eventually my other daughter and
2:14:10
Speaker 2: my wife got it, but I never got it.
2:14:12
Speaker 1: And then, but did you quarantine them at all? Did
2:14:14
Speaker 1: you change anything when that happened?
2:14:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kept them. Yeah, we quarantined them and made
2:14:18
Speaker 2: sure that we tested them up until the point where
2:14:21
Speaker 2: they were negative. And then when they were negative, we
2:14:23
Speaker 2: gave them three days of testing in a row to
2:14:25
Speaker 2: make sure that they're, you know, you want to make sure.
2:14:27
Speaker 1: They're actually negative before you re-injure.
2:14:30
Speaker 2: But it was quick. I mean, my one daughter, the
2:14:32
Speaker 2: first daughter, she had a headache for a day and
2:14:35
Speaker 2: that was it.
2:14:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:14:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:14:36
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think I've had it, but the
2:14:38
Speaker 1: curious thing is I was in China in December. And
2:14:41
Speaker 1: then in January, I suddenly got 104 fever. And I
2:14:46
Speaker 1: went to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. And they asked me, where
2:14:52
Speaker 1: have you been? I said, China. They kind of freaked out.
2:14:54
Speaker 1: And they put me in an isolated room by myself.
2:14:58
Speaker 1: And this is when I had the backache. That was
2:15:00
Speaker 1: actually before our previous conversation.
2:15:03
Speaker 2: Did they even have COVID tests then?
2:15:05
Speaker 1: They may have had the possibility to send a sample
2:15:08
Speaker 1: someplace else, but they didn't.
2:15:09
Speaker 2: Did you ever get tested for the antibodies?
2:15:11
Speaker 1: No, I have not. My wife keeps telling me I
2:15:13
Speaker 1: should just out of curiosity. But that was like early January-ish.
2:15:17
Speaker 2: Shit, we could have tested you here. You got an
2:15:20
Speaker 2: antibody test? Yeah, we got an antibody test. Yeah. The
2:15:22
Speaker 2: nurse would have tested you for that as well.
2:15:24
Speaker 1: I mean, the nurse who did the navel swab?
2:15:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. Jamie still has antibodies.
2:15:27
Speaker 2: He got COVID in October. Look at him, strong. Right.
2:15:31
Speaker 2: Jamie's got strong antibodies. In October. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing.
2:15:34
Speaker 2: His antibodies are strong. Like, you look at it, it's
2:15:36
Speaker 2: a thick line. Because some of my friends who have
2:15:38
Speaker 2: had COVID, their antibody tests, we've done it with them,
2:15:41
Speaker 2: and their antibodies are pretty low. I see.
2:15:45
Speaker 1: And without the vaccine.
2:15:46
Speaker 2: No vaccine.
2:15:47
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:15:48
Speaker 2: No, Jamie's like fucking bulletproof with it. He's got a thick,
2:15:51
Speaker 2: fat line for the antibodies for whatever reason. And it
2:15:55
Speaker 2: varies so much, you know, depending upon the individual.
2:15:59
Speaker 1: How was your wife's case?
2:16:01
Speaker 2: Not bad. My wife has allergies and she gets these
2:16:04
Speaker 2: shots and that's what did her in. the shots always
2:16:08
Speaker 2: get her exhausted because she's allergic to fucking everything like
2:16:10
Speaker 2: grass and horses and all kinds of shit. So she
2:16:13
Speaker 2: gets these, she goes to an allergist to get shots
2:16:15
Speaker 2: and it's radically improved her ability. But every time she goes,
2:16:20
Speaker 2: that day she's wrecked. She's like, ugh, because your body's
2:16:23
Speaker 2: like overwhelmed. So your immune system is overwhelmed and that's
2:16:26
Speaker 2: what develops is the resistance to these allergies. But that night,
2:16:32
Speaker 2: she started feeling like shit. But before that, She worked
2:16:35
Speaker 2: out that day, felt great. And then we tested her
2:16:38
Speaker 2: the next day and she had it. Yeah. But it's obviously, it's,
2:16:41
Speaker 2: you know, it's dependent upon your health, depending upon how
2:16:45
Speaker 2: much you exercise, what you eat, how well you take
2:16:49
Speaker 2: care of yourself. And then also what, what preexisting conditions. Yeah.
2:16:53
Speaker 1: Now it's going to be which variant too.
2:16:55
Speaker 6: Right.
2:16:55
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, that's what's weird is that this variant
2:16:57
Speaker 2: coming out of Brazil, they're worried about.
2:16:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:16:59
Speaker 2: Apparently this variant coming out of Brazil is a virulent.
2:17:03
Speaker 5: Yeah.
2:17:05
Speaker 1: So some people say we should consider it sort of
2:17:07
Speaker 1: a separate disease.
2:17:09
Speaker 2: I think we're going to probably deal with this shit
2:17:11
Speaker 2: every year from now on now.
2:17:13
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:17:13
Speaker 1: But look, I mean, January of last year, they had
2:17:16
Speaker 1: the vaccine, right? I mean, isn't that an amazing thing?
2:17:18
Speaker 1: A few days after sequencing... the virus, they were able
2:17:22
Speaker 1: to develop a vaccine. So that, I mean, it wasn't available,
2:17:25
Speaker 1: but now we have that knowledge. Presumably next go around,
2:17:29
Speaker 1: the duration of time between identification and delivery will be
2:17:34
Speaker 1: much shorter.
2:17:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would like them to really concentrate on, I mean,
2:17:37
Speaker 2: it would be really nice. I know this is a
2:17:39
Speaker 2: time where no one wants to fat shame because everybody's
2:17:42
Speaker 2: worried about body positivity and letting people think they're okay
2:17:46
Speaker 2: no matter what you are, but you're not. Your body,
2:17:48
Speaker 2: when it's obese, is much, more likely to be susceptible
2:17:51
Speaker 2: to all sorts of ailments. And 78% of the people
2:17:54
Speaker 2: hospitalized for COVID were obese.
2:17:56
Speaker 1: I didn't know that number.
2:17:57
Speaker 2: It's a terrible number if you think about it that way. Presumably,
2:18:02
Speaker 2: you could have avoided 78% of the hospitalizations. I mean,
2:18:06
Speaker 2: because it is a thing that a person can avoid.
2:18:09
Speaker 2: It is physically possible that you could not be obese.
2:18:13
Speaker 2: It's not something like you're born blind or you're born
2:18:16
Speaker 2: with leukemia. This is something that you, by virtue of
2:18:20
Speaker 2: your actions or your diet or your genetics, you're more
2:18:24
Speaker 2: predisposed to being heavy. It's unfortunate there's no emphasis on that,
2:18:29
Speaker 2: that all the emphasis was about stay inside, wear three masks,
2:18:33
Speaker 2: keep away from each other. That's all well and good,
2:18:38
Speaker 2: but there should have been more emphasis on taking care
2:18:40
Speaker 2: of your body, taking care of your health, and it's
2:18:42
Speaker 2: just there was almost none. Almost none. The CDC didn't
2:18:46
Speaker 2: even have anything on their website about vitamin D until
2:18:48
Speaker 2: fairly recently.
2:18:49
Speaker 1: Is that true?
2:18:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:18:51
Speaker 1: Well, until recently, the CDC was neutered.
2:18:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that crazy?
2:18:55
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:18:56
Speaker 2: It's really crazy. The former CDC director coming out and
2:18:58
Speaker 2: saying that it's more likely than not that this was
2:19:01
Speaker 2: an accidental release of something that they were working on,
2:19:04
Speaker 2: the Wuhan lab. and this is because of Trump, because
2:19:08
Speaker 2: the guy's such a polarizing figure, that anything that he said,
2:19:12
Speaker 2: everybody was like, well, fuck whatever he said. If that
2:19:16
Speaker 2: wasn't the narrative, if he didn't have this constant desire
2:19:19
Speaker 2: to call it the China virus and the people didn't
2:19:21
Speaker 2: hate him so much, people would have probably looked into
2:19:25
Speaker 2: that much more readily. Because, I mean, you're talking about
2:19:29
Speaker 2: a level four lab that is in the same area
2:19:33
Speaker 2: where the breakout occurred. And in that level four lab,
2:19:36
Speaker 2: they work on, wait for it, coronaviruses, you know? And
2:19:40
Speaker 2: then Newsweek now entertaining the idea and the CDC director,
2:19:44
Speaker 2: former CDC director, he comes out and says it's much
2:19:46
Speaker 2: more likely than not. Yeah. It's interesting.
2:19:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know anything about it, but all I
2:19:51
Speaker 1: can say is that as a scientist, the move from
2:19:54
Speaker 1: an era when nobody paid attention to facts or denigrated
2:20:00
Speaker 1: facts or denigrated expertise, at least moving in a direction...
2:20:04
Speaker 1: where hopefully these facts and expertise actually matters, I think
2:20:08
Speaker 1: that's a vital move.
2:20:10
Speaker 2: It would be really nice if the facts only, and
2:20:13
Speaker 2: that's it, were what we discussed and expressed. Do you
2:20:19
Speaker 2: think that, is there enough funding for the type of
2:20:25
Speaker 2: research that you do, for the type of things that
2:20:27
Speaker 2: you're interested in? Would we be better off as a
2:20:30
Speaker 2: civilization if there was more money allocated to the study of... Yeah, absolutely.
2:20:37
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not as though the kind of science
2:20:39
Speaker 1: that we do is particularly expensive. I mean, those of
2:20:42
Speaker 1: us on the theoretical end of the universe don't need
2:20:46
Speaker 1: big equipment, but we do need students. We need the
2:20:49
Speaker 1: next generation. We need the postdocs and the graduate students.
2:20:53
Speaker 1: And now we find ourselves in like a zero-sum game
2:20:57
Speaker 1: where we're like, well, if we take that student, we
2:20:59
Speaker 1: can't take that one. Or if we take that student
2:21:02
Speaker 1: this year, then for the next two years, we can't
2:21:04
Speaker 1: take any other students. I mean, these are the kinds
2:21:06
Speaker 1: of calculations that literally are being done right now.
2:21:10
Speaker 2: Really? Yeah.
2:21:11
Speaker 1: And, you know, compared to the amount of funds that
2:21:15
Speaker 1: we spend, you know, I hate to frame it as
2:21:18
Speaker 1: a zero-sum game. but you divert some military funds to
2:21:24
Speaker 1: this kind of research, they would never know the difference,
2:21:27
Speaker 1: and it would make an enormous difference to the ability
2:21:30
Speaker 1: of our kind of science to train the next upcoming generation.
2:21:35
Speaker 1: So the answer is absolutely no, there's not enough funding,
2:21:39
Speaker 1: and it's a tragic situation because there are these brilliant
2:21:41
Speaker 1: young minds who want to pursue these kinds of ideas.
2:21:46
Speaker 1: And look, some will say, You know, some in government
2:21:48
Speaker 1: will say, well, look, that's all esoteric stuff, right? But
2:21:52
Speaker 1: those very same Congress people or senators, if they were
2:21:56
Speaker 1: in their position in the 1920s, I have little doubt
2:21:59
Speaker 1: they would have said the same thing about quantum physics.
2:22:02
Speaker 1: It's just esoteric. It's just these guys and women who
2:22:04
Speaker 1: want to understand strange things about particles. But then 80
2:22:08
Speaker 1: years later, quantum mechanics is driving a significant fraction of
2:22:12
Speaker 1: the economy. quantum mechanics, as we're talking about, integrated circuits,
2:22:16
Speaker 1: and all manner of electronic gadgetry. So it's incredibly short-sighted
2:22:21
Speaker 1: to not recognize that fundamental basic science is the engine
2:22:25
Speaker 1: of economic growth. That's not why I do it. I'm
2:22:28
Speaker 1: not that interested in economic growth. I'm interested in the
2:22:31
Speaker 1: ideas and the insight, but put that all to the side.
2:22:34
Speaker 1: From a pure dollar and cents standpoint, it's a cheap
2:22:37
Speaker 1: investment for an incredible potential payoff. And we're being short-sighted
2:22:43
Speaker 1: by not funding it at the level that it should
2:22:44
Speaker 1: be funded.
2:22:45
Speaker 2: What do you think could enhance the public's perception of
2:22:48
Speaker 2: these things other than what you're doing, which is a
2:22:51
Speaker 2: great thing, by these speeches and going on podcasts like
2:22:54
Speaker 2: this one or by writing your books? What can we
2:22:57
Speaker 2: do to sort of allow people to understand the significance
2:23:01
Speaker 2: of this work and how it's really impaired by these
2:23:04
Speaker 2: decisions that you have to make to choose one student
2:23:07
Speaker 2: over another student or to be limited in the amount
2:23:09
Speaker 2: of students you could accept.
2:23:10
Speaker 1: I mean, it's tough. I mean, certainly, as you're saying,
2:23:12
Speaker 1: books and lectures, television, documentaries, I mean, all these things
2:23:17
Speaker 1: are really good for getting these ideas out into the public,
2:23:21
Speaker 1: into the culture, into the zeitgeist. But ultimately, you've got
2:23:24
Speaker 1: to catch kids at an early age because it's the
2:23:27
Speaker 1: kids at an early age who are open to these
2:23:30
Speaker 1: ideas without having to be convinced that they might be
2:23:33
Speaker 1: of interest. And it's only when they get to 4th
2:23:35
Speaker 1: or 5th or 6th grade that their attention starts to
2:23:38
Speaker 1: turn away from science, which feels abstract and difficult, usually
2:23:43
Speaker 1: because of the way it's taught in the classroom. So
2:23:45
Speaker 1: one of the things that we do, you know, I
2:23:46
Speaker 1: have this nonprofit, World Science Festival. It's all about creating
2:23:49
Speaker 1: experiences for kids and adults that allow them to immerse
2:23:54
Speaker 1: themselves in all of these ideas, from quantum mechanics to
2:23:57
Speaker 1: cosmology to nanoscience to personalized medicine, the whole gambit, without
2:24:01
Speaker 1: it feeling like school.
2:24:03
Speaker 2: Right, make it exciting and fun.
2:24:04
Speaker 1: And without it feeling like it's all about assessment. So
2:24:08
Speaker 1: much of our educational system, I know this is an overgeneralization,
2:24:11
Speaker 1: and all you teachers out there who are doing a
2:24:13
Speaker 1: great job, you know, fantastic, but it's so much of
2:24:17
Speaker 1: our educational system is focused on assessment. I mean, my kids,
2:24:21
Speaker 1: so much of their learning of science and other subjects, too,
2:24:24
Speaker 1: it's all about get to the next quiz, get to
2:24:27
Speaker 1: the next exam, and once they're through it, the material
2:24:30
Speaker 1: is gone. It's not there for the joy it's not
2:24:33
Speaker 1: there for the wonder of it and so if we
2:24:35
Speaker 1: can create experiences for kids and adults so it's a
2:24:38
Speaker 1: full family experience where it's just so thrilling to learn
2:24:42
Speaker 1: about black holes and the big bang and quantum mechanics
2:24:45
Speaker 1: and entanglement and all the stuff that we were talking
2:24:47
Speaker 1: about then I think you've got a chance that the
2:24:50
Speaker 1: next generation looks at science in a different.
2:24:52
Speaker 2: Way yeah like what do you think could be done
2:24:56
Speaker 2: to make it more exciting for kids like a documentary
2:25:00
Speaker 2: for sure There's always a good one because a really
2:25:03
Speaker 2: good documentary excites people in an entertaining way. Yeah. And
2:25:07
Speaker 2: one that's structured well and it's got a good pacing
2:25:09
Speaker 2: to it that sort of stimulates people's fascination with the subject.
2:25:13
Speaker 2: What do you think about, I mean, I don't know
2:25:15
Speaker 2: if you've done any work with this stuff, but have
2:25:17
Speaker 2: you ever messed around with virtual reality?
2:25:20
Speaker 1: So I was about to answer virtual reality before you
2:25:23
Speaker 1: said it. So, yeah, so we have a nice partnership,
2:25:26
Speaker 1: it turns out, with Verizon. who's, you know, they have
2:25:29
Speaker 1: this new 5G network and they're trying to find ways
2:25:32
Speaker 1: to revolutionize things using that. And so we won a
2:25:37
Speaker 1: nationwide competition. We're one of a handful of groups to
2:25:40
Speaker 1: create a virtual reality experience for middle school kids using
2:25:43
Speaker 1: the 5G network. So it's fast. There isn't latency in
2:25:46
Speaker 1: the system. And we created a virtual reality experience of
2:25:49
Speaker 1: planet formation and star formation. So the kids, you know,
2:25:53
Speaker 1: they put on the headset and they go in there.
2:25:55
Speaker 1: And they have these controllers where they can cause little
2:25:58
Speaker 1: dust particles and rocks to coalesce into a planet. And
2:26:02
Speaker 1: then they can try to shoot the planet into orbit.
2:26:04
Speaker 1: You have to have the right angle and the right
2:26:05
Speaker 1: speed or else it goes crashing into the star. And
2:26:09
Speaker 1: then they can accelerate the life cycle of the star
2:26:12
Speaker 1: using their controller and cause it to go supernova or
2:26:15
Speaker 1: turn into a black hole. So kids who go through this,
2:26:19
Speaker 1: it's a full body experience of the cosmos, right? And
2:26:23
Speaker 1: so if you had a whole bunch of these experiences,
2:26:26
Speaker 1: this is just like a pilot experience. Imagine doing one
2:26:30
Speaker 1: of these for quantum mechanics.
2:26:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I wanted to get to.
2:26:32
Speaker 1: You know, where you can sort of see the quantum
2:26:34
Speaker 1: entanglement and feel the quantum entanglement. Or imagine doing one
2:26:37
Speaker 1: for relativity, where you can experience time slowing down at
2:26:41
Speaker 1: high speeds or time slowing down to the edge of
2:26:44
Speaker 1: a black hole. Then I think if that was an
2:26:47
Speaker 1: intrinsic part of the experience... science would be taken in
2:26:52
Speaker 1: in like a visceral way. And that's why we call
2:26:54
Speaker 1: this visceral science, for that reason, because it's a way
2:26:56
Speaker 1: in which science can kind of come into you, not
2:26:59
Speaker 1: just through like studying, but through experience.
2:27:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be an amazing thing. How would you
2:27:07
Speaker 2: represent entanglement? Like what visual representation of entanglement would you
2:27:14
Speaker 2: use and how would you make it accurate? Because you're
2:27:16
Speaker 2: talking about something that we don't really, air quotes, see.
2:27:20
Speaker 5: Yeah.
2:27:21
Speaker 2: You're just measuring it.
2:27:22
Speaker 1: Sure, totally. I wish I had an answer for you,
2:27:24
Speaker 1: and that would be part of the development process, to
2:27:27
Speaker 1: try to find a way. Because you can't literally represent
2:27:31
Speaker 1: it because, as you say, the quantum probability wave is
2:27:34
Speaker 1: not something that we literally see. But there might be
2:27:37
Speaker 1: a way of representing it visually... that would not be
2:27:40
Speaker 1: misleading and yet would give kids a sense of aha.
2:27:44
Speaker 1: So that thing that I used to consider to be
2:27:46
Speaker 1: a particle as a dot, it actually has a spread
2:27:49
Speaker 1: out character from this probability wave. Now, those words would
2:27:53
Speaker 1: be hard to take in. They're abstract. But if you
2:27:55
Speaker 1: just saw the wave and it was represented in a
2:27:59
Speaker 1: vibrant manner, a kid might be able to take in
2:28:03
Speaker 1: the gist of the idea, not be able to do
2:28:05
Speaker 1: like calculations, but to take in the gist of the idea.
2:28:08
Speaker 1: And moreover, imagine you have kids that go into this
2:28:13
Speaker 1: system and it's a real well-developed system 20 years from now, say,
2:28:17
Speaker 1: and they do it from a really young age. they
2:28:19
Speaker 1: might develop a quantum intuition that you and I don't have.
2:28:23
Speaker 1: Like you were earlier asking me, so what's the intuition?
2:28:26
Speaker 1: Like how does entanglement work, you know, in a way
2:28:29
Speaker 1: that allows me to wrap my brain around it? Maybe
2:28:32
Speaker 1: you can't do it because your brain is too old.
2:28:35
Speaker 1: But maybe if you catch a young brain and they
2:28:38
Speaker 1: experience these weird ideas from the get-go, it may become
2:28:42
Speaker 1: part of their way of thinking of the world. And
2:28:44
Speaker 1: it may be much easier for them to visualize and
2:28:47
Speaker 1: get these ideas out. Than without this kind of virtual
2:28:51
Speaker 1: reality experience. So I think there's a huge potential in there.
2:28:56
Speaker 2: Do you remember there was one of the things from
2:28:57
Speaker 2: What the Bleep that a lot of people took umbrage
2:29:00
Speaker 2: with was the Dr. Quantum cartoon?
2:29:03
Speaker 1: Actually, those were not bad.
2:29:05
Speaker 2: Not too bad, right? Yeah. They kind of got it
2:29:07
Speaker 2: right in a way.
2:29:07
Speaker 1: Kind of got it right, yeah.
2:29:08
Speaker 2: But something like that... Yeah. that shows... Oh, for sure.
2:29:12
Speaker 2: the weirdness of quantum reality or quantum physics.
2:29:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And the thing that I thought was good
2:29:19
Speaker 1: about those two is, especially for the younger kid, it
2:29:22
Speaker 1: put it in a bit more of a narrative. It
2:29:24
Speaker 1: wasn't just pedagogical. It was like this weird superhero character,
2:29:29
Speaker 1: I think is what it was.
2:29:30
Speaker 2: Dr. Quantum.
2:29:31
Speaker 3: Dr.
2:29:31
Speaker 1: Quantum or something. So I'm a great fan... of putting
2:29:35
Speaker 1: scientific ideas in a narrative form. You know, again, going
2:29:39
Speaker 1: back to evolutionary psychology, there are many reasons why we
2:29:42
Speaker 1: learn things better when they're framed in a story, because
2:29:46
Speaker 1: experience is story, and so we've gotten very good at
2:29:50
Speaker 1: extracting information from story-like experiences. So rather than abstractly teaching,
2:29:55
Speaker 1: you know, IH bar d psi dt equals minus d2
2:29:59
Speaker 1: over dx squared psi plus v of x psi of x,
2:30:01
Speaker 1: rather than writing out the Schrodinger equation, this abstract piece
2:30:04
Speaker 1: of language, mathematics, if you can frame it in a narrative,
2:30:08
Speaker 1: if you can frame it in terms of how it
2:30:11
Speaker 1: was discovered, you can frame it in terms of maybe
2:30:14
Speaker 1: you follow the life cycle of an electron governed by
2:30:18
Speaker 1: this equation, whatever, if you can put it into a
2:30:20
Speaker 1: story-like environment, kids and adults are going to get it
2:30:24
Speaker 1: more fully.
2:30:25
Speaker 2: What if you can take it and put it inside
2:30:29
Speaker 2: of a video game that's exciting to play? So the
2:30:32
Speaker 2: lessons of quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement and quantum physics
2:30:36
Speaker 2: inside some crazy video game where you kind of have
2:30:40
Speaker 2: to understand what's going on in order to advance.
2:30:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're speaking my language and you're taking away
2:30:47
Speaker 1: all my punchlines, which is really good. So right now
2:30:49
Speaker 1: we're working on a little video game where the player
2:30:53
Speaker 1: goes in and they manipulate the speed of light, and
2:30:58
Speaker 1: they manipulate it by performing certain tasks. And to carry
2:31:02
Speaker 1: out the tasks, you have to get an intuition for
2:31:05
Speaker 1: special relativity, how the world behaves at high speeds, or
2:31:08
Speaker 1: in our case, as the speed of light gets lower,
2:31:11
Speaker 1: the relativistic effects become more manifest in the everyday world.
2:31:14
Speaker 1: So a game-like setting where you have to gain an
2:31:17
Speaker 1: intuition for the weirdness of physics, I think is a
2:31:20
Speaker 1: powerful combination.
2:31:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be amazing if there was some sort
2:31:23
Speaker 2: of a way where you could kind of give them
2:31:28
Speaker 2: these little hurdles that they have to solve in order
2:31:31
Speaker 2: to advance. Exactly. But make it surmountable.
2:31:35
Speaker 1: Yes, make it surmountable so it's not frustrating.
2:31:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:31:37
Speaker 1: But make it challenging enough and interesting enough that you
2:31:40
Speaker 1: try to get to that point.
2:31:42
Speaker 2: In some sort of a visual and exciting way. Yeah.
2:31:46
Speaker 1: And for instance, when you go near the speed of light,
2:31:48
Speaker 1: the world around you looks very different. It curves in
2:31:51
Speaker 1: on you. Buildings in a cityscape become... compressed in one
2:31:55
Speaker 1: direction and angled in a different way. It's very weird.
2:31:59
Speaker 1: But if you then have a challenge that requires you
2:32:02
Speaker 1: to have an intuition about that weirdness, like maybe firing
2:32:05
Speaker 1: a laser down a street, but the street is now
2:32:08
Speaker 1: angled and curved because of the high speed, you can
2:32:11
Speaker 1: imagine that you get a feel for it. You get
2:32:14
Speaker 1: an intuition for it. And so, again, with the World
2:32:19
Speaker 1: Science Fest on Verizon, we're in the midst of building
2:32:21
Speaker 1: an experience of that sort, and we'll see. how well
2:32:24
Speaker 1: it does at giving folks a sense of these ideas
2:32:27
Speaker 1: in a game-like setting.
2:32:28
Speaker 2: I would imagine putting something like that together would be
2:32:31
Speaker 2: incredibly involving. It is.
2:32:35
Speaker 1: Our journey is helped along by an earlier iteration of
2:32:40
Speaker 1: this idea that a group at MIT put together. I
2:32:43
Speaker 1: think it was called Slower Than the Speed of Light.
2:32:45
Speaker 1: It was a pretty rudimentary video game.
2:32:47
Speaker 2: How long ago was this?
2:32:48
Speaker 1: Maybe 10 years ago, I think. And so what we're
2:32:51
Speaker 1: doing is in a virtual reality environment, upping the experience.
2:32:56
Speaker 1: And in that way, I think that version, I mean,
2:32:59
Speaker 1: maybe the MIT folks, if they're listening, can chime in.
2:33:02
Speaker 1: I don't think it really caught on. But I think
2:33:04
Speaker 1: in a virtual reality setting where it's immersive, it can
2:33:08
Speaker 1: be really, really powerful.
2:33:10
Speaker 2: Those things must be incredibly difficult to code, right? Like
2:33:14
Speaker 2: a virtual reality thing, like What kind of a timeline
2:33:17
Speaker 2: are you on to do something like this?
2:33:18
Speaker 1: Well, we created the version of planet formation and stellar formation.
2:33:24
Speaker 1: That was about one year, I guess it took.
2:33:27
Speaker 2: And how long is the experience?
2:33:30
Speaker 1: You can be in there. It branches out, so there's
2:33:33
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that you can do. But a
2:33:34
Speaker 1: typical kid will be in there 20 minutes, 25 minutes.
2:33:38
Speaker 1: More than that, it becomes sickening. I don't know how
2:33:42
Speaker 1: much virtual reality. Yeah, I mean. I'm particularly sensitive to
2:33:46
Speaker 1: motion sickness. I get sick on like the Staten Island ferry.
2:33:50
Speaker 1: And most of these things I'm pretty okay with. But
2:33:53
Speaker 1: after a while, you just start to feel uncomfortable.
2:33:56
Speaker 2: Is this it?
2:33:57
Speaker 1: Hey, there it is.
2:33:58
Speaker 2: Verizon Demo Day.
2:34:00
Speaker 1: Well done. It's up there on the screen. Yeah, so.
2:34:02
Speaker 2: It's the best.
2:34:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is from the perspective of a player.
2:34:06
Speaker 3: Wow.
2:34:07
Speaker 1: And that player goes, and again, of course, this is
2:34:09
Speaker 1: on a flat screen. Imagine you're in this 3D environment,
2:34:12
Speaker 1: you know. And using these controllers, you can grab hold
2:34:14
Speaker 1: of those little dust particles and rocks. You can use
2:34:18
Speaker 1: it to create a planet, as is happening right here.
2:34:22
Speaker 1: And so a protoplanet is forming, and ultimately the user
2:34:25
Speaker 1: will have that planet, and they then try to send
2:34:28
Speaker 1: the planet into orbit. You know, there we go.
2:34:31
Speaker 2: This is wild.
2:34:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And as the planet goes into orbit,
2:34:36
Speaker 1: it then sweeps up more debris as it grows larger
2:34:40
Speaker 1: and larger, gravitationally pulling in the other rocks and dust
2:34:44
Speaker 1: in its environment. So this is really our phase one
2:34:50
Speaker 1: version of this project. We are refining the visuals on
2:34:53
Speaker 1: this right now. And the black hole has formed. Do
2:34:57
Speaker 1: you see a black hole?
2:34:58
Speaker 2: And those are the other players?
2:34:59
Speaker 1: They're avatars, the other players, yeah, exactly.
2:35:01
Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. This is cool. Yeah. That's the
2:35:05
Speaker 2: way to do it. Yeah. That's going to get people
2:35:07
Speaker 2: excited about it.
2:35:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we were supposed to roll this out in
2:35:10
Speaker 1: many schools, but then the virus hit. So it got
2:35:13
Speaker 1: put on hold. But at some point, this will be
2:35:16
Speaker 1: in a lot of middle schools. We rolled it out
2:35:17
Speaker 1: in Cleveland, a couple schools. The kids love it. So
2:35:21
Speaker 1: there's a real opportunity here to transform the way kids
2:35:25
Speaker 1: engage with these ideas.
2:35:27
Speaker 2: That's really badass. I love that you're doing that. I
2:35:29
Speaker 2: think that's such a great way to do it, to
2:35:31
Speaker 2: do it through virtual reality. Because virtual reality is so
2:35:33
Speaker 2: exciting as it is. you know, and to have it
2:35:36
Speaker 2: in some sort of a game form like that, you know,
2:35:40
Speaker 2: and that this being one of the first ones of those,
2:35:42
Speaker 2: it could probably expand. Like, if you can get it
2:35:44
Speaker 2: to the point where something like a Fortnite game involves,
2:35:47
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, something of that level of popularity.
2:35:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be amazing. That would be transformational.
2:35:54
Speaker 2: Yes. But it seems like it's not impossible. No, I agree.
2:35:58
Speaker 2: I agree.
2:35:59
Speaker 1: It is not impossible. One of the obstacles, of course,
2:36:02
Speaker 1: is that there's not a Huge uptake on virtual reality
2:36:06
Speaker 1: equipment yet. That's starting to change as the prices come down.
2:36:09
Speaker 1: The Quest, Quest 2, Oculus. This was all done on
2:36:13
Speaker 1: a machine that would require a couple thousand dollars for
2:36:16
Speaker 1: you to invest in a computer and a headset. But
2:36:18
Speaker 1: all that will change in the not too distant future.
2:36:21
Speaker 1: But the other hurdle is you really do have to
2:36:23
Speaker 1: make sure that kids don't get sick. Like my wife,
2:36:26
Speaker 1: she has epilepsy. She had a brain tumor and the
2:36:28
Speaker 1: end result was that she has epilepsy. And she went
2:36:31
Speaker 1: into one of, not this experience, but a different virtual
2:36:34
Speaker 1: reality experience. And about a minute or two in, she
2:36:37
Speaker 1: started to have a seizure.
2:36:38
Speaker 2: So from the strobing, was it strobing?
2:36:40
Speaker 1: Not even the strobing. It was somehow that there was
2:36:43
Speaker 1: a mismatch between your movements in the real world and
2:36:47
Speaker 1: your movements in the virtual world. Because there was all
2:36:49
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff flying at her. This was an experience
2:36:51
Speaker 1: around the rings of Saturn or something. And it was
2:36:55
Speaker 1: the disparity between... Her sense of movement in the real
2:36:58
Speaker 1: world and her sense of movement in the virtual world.
2:37:01
Speaker 1: And she had to immediately get out of the headset
2:37:03
Speaker 1: and go sit down and get out of it.
2:37:04
Speaker 2: That's crazy. Yeah.
2:37:06
Speaker 1: Now, I was uncomfortable, but I wasn't sick in that experience.
2:37:10
Speaker 2: I had a friend whose wife couldn't look at like
2:37:13
Speaker 2: a strobing image online. Yeah. Like if she saw something
2:37:17
Speaker 2: strobing online, all of a sudden her brain would short circuit.
2:37:20
Speaker 1: Well, my wife similarly will close her eyes if ever
2:37:23
Speaker 1: there is any strobing of that sort.
2:37:25
Speaker 2: That is so crazy.
2:37:25
Speaker 1: You know, it was a tumor that they took the
2:37:27
Speaker 1: tumor out when she was 29 years old. So it was,
2:37:29
Speaker 1: almost three decades ago. So she's fine, but there's this
2:37:34
Speaker 1: remnant effect. Or maybe she had this beforehand. No one
2:37:38
Speaker 1: knows cause and effect when it comes to this, but
2:37:40
Speaker 1: the bottom line is, yeah. So for kids, you just
2:37:44
Speaker 1: have to be careful that you're not creating something that...
2:37:48
Speaker 1: And that's the other thing that you have to be
2:37:50
Speaker 1: very mindful of.
2:37:51
Speaker 2: Maybe as virtual reality gets more and more involved or
2:37:55
Speaker 2: more and more accurate, it'll be less and less weird.
2:37:59
Speaker 2: Because there's that thing, that uncanny valley.
2:38:03
Speaker 1: Yes, of course. With visualizations and so on. But the
2:38:06
Speaker 1: difference here is if you're not actually moving in the
2:38:10
Speaker 1: real world, but you are experiencing motion in the virtual world,
2:38:15
Speaker 1: that disparity... For my wife, center into a seizure space,
2:38:19
Speaker 1: but for other people, it does make them feel sick.
2:38:22
Speaker 1: So the challenge is to find a way, because what
2:38:24
Speaker 1: you really want is you want to go into the
2:38:26
Speaker 1: virtual world and zip around. You know, you want to
2:38:28
Speaker 1: go near the speed of light. You don't want to
2:38:30
Speaker 1: go to a black hole. But most of these systems,
2:38:33
Speaker 1: they have to be constructed so that the environment appears
2:38:38
Speaker 1: around you as opposed to you zip into it and
2:38:41
Speaker 1: zip through it because of the feeling of nausea.
2:38:44
Speaker 2: What about some sort of a chair that appears to
2:38:46
Speaker 2: have the feedback where it makes it feel like you're
2:38:49
Speaker 2: actually going?
2:38:50
Speaker 1: There is a version of that one, and my wife
2:38:52
Speaker 1: did that one in a virtual reality setup that they
2:38:55
Speaker 1: had in California, and that worked okay for her. I
2:38:59
Speaker 1: didn't want to get on it because, again, if I
2:39:01
Speaker 1: get sick on Staten Island Ferry, if I get in
2:39:03
Speaker 1: a chair and I'm on like a roller coaster, forget
2:39:06
Speaker 1: about it.
2:39:06
Speaker 3: I'm dead.
2:39:08
Speaker 1: But yes, that may ultimately help, and And so, yeah,
2:39:12
Speaker 1: if you could somehow create a consonance between your sense
2:39:16
Speaker 1: of movement in both the real world and the virtual world,
2:39:19
Speaker 1: then yeah, I presume you'd be okay. But look, I mean,
2:39:23
Speaker 1: there's a museum in New Jersey, Liberty Science Center, and
2:39:27
Speaker 1: they have one of these devices, these spaceships that you
2:39:30
Speaker 1: go into, hydraulic motion and 3D visuals around you to
2:39:34
Speaker 1: give you a sense of, and as they're closing it up,
2:39:38
Speaker 1: they say, oh, by the way, if anyone feels sick
2:39:40
Speaker 1: or panicked, You know, there's the escape button at the top.
2:39:43
Speaker 1: And it was all kids. And I was just in
2:39:45
Speaker 1: there with my kids. It closed up. It started to go. Immediately,
2:39:48
Speaker 1: I had to hit the goddamn escape button, man, because
2:39:52
Speaker 1: I started to panic. I started to feel sick. And
2:39:54
Speaker 1: so I walk out of the thing, and there's a
2:39:56
Speaker 1: line of 100 kids waiting for the next ride. And
2:40:00
Speaker 1: I'm the sole person who walks out of the thing
2:40:02
Speaker 1: because I couldn't handle it. That's hilarious.
2:40:05
Speaker 2: There's a ride like that at Disneyland where it's a
2:40:07
Speaker 2: Star Wars ride.
2:40:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a similar thing.
2:40:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's really fun. There's actually a
2:40:13
Speaker 2: new one where you're in the Millennium Falcon ride.
2:40:15
Speaker 1: I think this was the Millennium Falcon, actually.
2:40:17
Speaker 2: That's the newer one. There's an older one called Star
2:40:20
Speaker 2: Tours that's been around for a few years. And then
2:40:23
Speaker 2: the new one is in, you know, they have a
2:40:24
Speaker 2: whole section of Disneyland that's all Star Wars experience that
2:40:29
Speaker 2: they spent. fucking billions of dollars on. It's really incredible.
2:40:32
Speaker 2: But the Millennium Falcon ride is incredible.
2:40:35
Speaker 1: And I used to be able to do it. I mean,
2:40:36
Speaker 1: 20 years ago, I went to Universal Studios. I don't
2:40:39
Speaker 1: know if they still have a theme park down there.
2:40:40
Speaker 1: It was near Disney. And I went on a Back
2:40:43
Speaker 1: to the Future ride.
2:40:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:40:45
Speaker 1: So that is a Millennium Falcon. Is that the same thing?
2:40:47
Speaker 2: No, the Back to the Future is different.
2:40:49
Speaker 1: Oh, that's Star Wars. I'm getting all mixed up. But anyway,
2:40:51
Speaker 1: so I went on that and I loved it. It
2:40:53
Speaker 1: was spectacular. But somehow I've changed.
2:40:56
Speaker 2: Oh, no.
2:40:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I freaked out. I totally freaked out. I mean,
2:41:01
Speaker 1: my heart started palpitating. And I was like, Brian, hang on.
2:41:05
Speaker 1: Like for the kids, just hang on. I was like,
2:41:07
Speaker 1: I can't do it.
2:41:07
Speaker 2: I can't do it.
2:41:08
Speaker 1: Boom, I hit the escape hatch.
2:41:10
Speaker 2: Wow, that sucks. That sucks. Well, listen, Brian, I really
2:41:14
Speaker 2: appreciate you coming in here. It's my pleasure. And I
2:41:16
Speaker 2: appreciate your work. And you're an amazing communicator of science.
2:41:19
Speaker 2: I really think it's awesome the way you describe things.
2:41:22
Speaker 2: You make it very accessible, and it's really fun.
2:41:25
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much. Enjoy the conversation.
2:41:26
Speaker 2: And your book is out right now, paperback. Tell everybody.
2:41:29
Speaker 1: Until the End of Time, Mind, Matter, and Our Search
2:41:32
Speaker 1: for Meaning in an Evolving Universe.
2:41:34
Speaker 2: Did you do the audiobook as well?
2:41:35
Speaker 1: I did the audiobook as well.
2:41:36
Speaker 2: Oh, that's so important. I hate when actors do other
2:41:39
Speaker 2: people's stuff. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate you, man.
2:41:41
Speaker 3: Thank you.
2:41:42
Speaker 2: Bye, everybody.
2:41:55
Speaker 1: Okay.