Latest / The Joe Rogan Experience / #2554 - Carlo Rovelli

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#2554 - Carlo Rovelli · The Joe Rogan Experience

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
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  Speaker 3: Very nice to meet you.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Joe Rogan, I'm very happy. Thank you very much for
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: inviting me to this invitation.
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  Speaker 3: I'm happy to talk to you. I've enjoyed your work,
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: so this is very exciting for me.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, fantastic.
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  Speaker 3: I've heard many conversations with you. First of all, please
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: tell everybody what you do.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: What do I do? Yes.
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  Speaker 3: I should probably start more podcasts out this way. Sorry.
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  Speaker 1: I do science. I do philosophy. I do some politics.
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  Speaker 1: I enjoy life. I fall in love. I do all
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: kinds of things.
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  Speaker 3: All kinds of things.
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  Speaker 1: All kinds of things, yes. Officially, my job description is
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  Speaker 1: a physicist. I do quantum gravity, theoretical physics.
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  Speaker 3: And the pitch that they sent me, I guess.
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  Speaker 1: Who is he?
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  Speaker 3: I don't know who the publicists are.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 3: On the Equality of All Things.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, the book. That's the last book I published.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to publish. It's coming out in a few days.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it comes out September 15th. And what are we
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  Speaker 3: at today? Today is the 8th.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: This is a very fascinating subject. You're talking about that
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  Speaker 3: things don't exist in isolation.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: That everything is somehow connected.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: But I've always sort of intuitively suspected that that was
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  Speaker 3: the case. There's probably something to that. But to hear
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  Speaker 3: a person like you say it, it makes me much happier. Like, OK,
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  Speaker 3: maybe I'm on the right track. Like what what gives
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  Speaker 3: you this inclination and why did you want to write
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: about this?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not surprised you say so, because that you
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  Speaker 1: sort of feel that that makes sense. Because, in a sense,
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  Speaker 1: it's what we're used to, right, in our everyday life.
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  Speaker 1: We interact with persons, and persons are the way they
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: interact with us, and them, their relations, their stuff. We
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  Speaker 1: always see things from our own perspective. Then somehow science,
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  Speaker 1: physics in particular, seemed to be telling us, OK, no, no, yes, OK,
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  Speaker 1: there is all this perspective, but there is an objective
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  Speaker 1: fixed reality down there, We can look at it from
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  Speaker 1: the outside, it's made by little things, each one with
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  Speaker 1: its own properties. Except that in the evolution of physics itself,
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  Speaker 1: in a relatively recent time, the last century, with quantum mechanics,
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  Speaker 1: this idea of an objective reality doesn't work much. And so,
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  Speaker 1: in a sense, we're going back to a more intuitive
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: picture of the world. The very idea of an objective
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  Speaker 1: reality down there Might be wrong. In fact, I think
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  Speaker 1: it's wrong. And I think that's what quantum mechanics is
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  Speaker 1: telling us.
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  Speaker 3: So when you say objective reality, meaning the reality that
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  Speaker 3: we're seeing and experiencing, that this is just a tiny
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  Speaker 3: fraction of what's real or that we're getting a distorted
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  Speaker 3: perception of what's real?
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  Speaker 1: We are getting a perception, a perspective of what is real.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I see you. You're real, of course. I
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  Speaker 1: see this pen. This pen is real, of course. I'm
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  Speaker 1: not denying that there is some reality. But the way
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  Speaker 1: you see the pen is different from mine, of course,
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  Speaker 1: just because you see it from the other side. So
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  Speaker 1: you have a perspective and a perspective. And the question is,
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  Speaker 1: do all these perspectives match perfectly into a unique objective
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  Speaker 1: reality of the pen? And I think quantum mechanics is
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  Speaker 1: telling us no. Reality is this ensemble of perspectives. So
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  Speaker 1: the properties of the pen, where it is, its color,
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  Speaker 1: how long it is, all the properties of the pen
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  Speaker 1: are not really properties of the pen. It's how the
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  Speaker 1: pen looks to you, how the pen looks to me.
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  Speaker 1: Not just you and me as human beings. How the pen...
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  Speaker 1: clashes another pen, how it affects another pen. So we
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  Speaker 1: should understand, I think, reality as this network of interaction,
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  Speaker 1: how things look to everything else, which is a more
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  Speaker 1: beautiful picture of reality than just, you know, we being
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  Speaker 1: outside and looking from the outside. We're inside reality. We
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  Speaker 1: are part of reality. So what we see is just
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  Speaker 1: the part of how things interact with one another, is
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  Speaker 1: how they interact with us.
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  Speaker 4: So.
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  Speaker 3: When you're talking about objective reality, so one of the
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  Speaker 3: problems that human beings have is our senses. And we
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  Speaker 3: assume that our senses see everything that's there to be seen.
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  Speaker 3: That doesn't really make sense. It seems like we see
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  Speaker 3: and hear and touch and feel everything we need to
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  Speaker 3: see to stay alive.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. To some extent, our senses are reliable, of course, right?
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  Speaker 1: I see a cap there. If I use a cap,
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  Speaker 1: it's worse.
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  Speaker 3: If it's hot, you put it down. Right.
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  Speaker 1: The problem is that if we take our senses too literally,
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  Speaker 1: too seriously, we're wrong. And we know we're wrong. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: so many cases we find out we're wrong. And the
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  Speaker 1: reason I love science is when it corrects us in
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  Speaker 1: some big way. Think about that. Think about the sunset.
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  Speaker 1: Sunset is marvelous. You know, you sit by the ocean,
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  Speaker 1: you see the sun going down, going down, going down.
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  Speaker 1: It's beautiful. The sky becomes dark. So the sun goes down.
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  Speaker 1: But science has talked to us that that's not really
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  Speaker 1: what happens. The sun doesn't move. It stays there. It's
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  Speaker 1: actually us, the Earth. It's a big rock that is spinning,
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  Speaker 1: and we are moving out of the light of the sun.
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  Speaker 1: And if you see the sun going down and you
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  Speaker 1: remember that, you can think about that. You say, oh,
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  Speaker 1: my senses cheat me in telling me that the sun
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  Speaker 1: is moving, but it's not moving. I am moving. So
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  Speaker 1: that's a good example in which science has told us
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  Speaker 1: that things are not exactly like we see. They're in
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  Speaker 1: a different manner.
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  Speaker 3: I've always wondered what's the evolutionary benefit of the beauty
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  Speaker 3: of sunsets. Why are they so beautiful? Like, what is
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  Speaker 3: it about it that's so inspiring and so magnificent? It
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  Speaker 3: does something to people. It does something. It makes you
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  Speaker 3: feel different. When the sun rises in the morning, you
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  Speaker 3: feel different. It has an effect on you. And I've
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  Speaker 3: always wondered, Like, what is the purpose of that? Like,
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  Speaker 3: why does that exist? Like, food tastes great because it's nutritious.
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  Speaker 3: You eat an orange, it's delicious because it's really good
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  Speaker 3: for you. There seems to be something to beauty, especially
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  Speaker 3: natural beauty, like mountains. Like, when I look at them,
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  Speaker 3: I'm like, why is it so good to look at these?
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  Speaker 3: Why does it feel so good? Like, there's something to it.
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  Speaker 3: There's some weirdness that you can't just– you can't just–
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  Speaker 3: chalk off to measurement? There's something going on.
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  Speaker 1: That's a great question. I love this question.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, of course, sunset and sunrise are crucial for
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  Speaker 1: us because we have been designed by evolution through millennia,
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of millennia, thousands of millennia, to sleep in the
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  Speaker 1: night and go around in in the day, which is
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  Speaker 1: just what our speeches do. Other cats do the opposite.
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  Speaker 1: So they are certainly important for us. But our relation
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  Speaker 1: with the world, and I think you're putting your finger
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  Speaker 1: in it, is not about knowledge about what to do.
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  Speaker 1: It's always emotional, right? I mean, food raises emotion. We
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  Speaker 1: like it. So I don't know exactly where the emotion
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  Speaker 1: of sunset and sunrise come from, but certainly the fact
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  Speaker 1: we have it points to the fact that if we
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  Speaker 1: have to understand ourselves and our relation with the world,
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  Speaker 1: we have to look at our emotions a lot, not
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  Speaker 1: just what we know, what we don't know. We have
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  Speaker 1: an emotional relation among ourselves and with things in the world,
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  Speaker 1: with mountains, with animals, with wild animals, with little things,
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  Speaker 1: and one another. And then the rational part comes on
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  Speaker 1: top of it to say, oh, let's correct it. Let's
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  Speaker 1: do it a little bit better. I'm not denying the
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  Speaker 1: utility of the rational part, but it's an addendum to
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  Speaker 1: what we are.
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  Speaker 3: An addendum to what we are. The really weird thing
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  Speaker 3: for people that are studying the world must have been
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  Speaker 3: the understanding of quantum physics. Yes. That must have thrown
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  Speaker 3: the whole thing into a giant tizzy because now you're like, okay, well,
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  Speaker 3: at the very... lowest level, observable level, the smallest observable
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  Speaker 3: level of reality, you have magic.
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  Speaker 1: That's exactly the point. Somehow, physics was supposed to be
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  Speaker 1: the path to objectivity, right? Physics is what guarantees that,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: all right, we're emotions, perspective, my view, your view, but
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  Speaker 1: down there there's physics. The world is just simple down there.
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  Speaker 1: There's stuff, there are atoms moving around, there are forces,
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  Speaker 1: and that's it. And then, last century, during the 20th century,
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  Speaker 1: the physicists discovered that, no, no, that's not the case.
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  Speaker 1: The world down there is even more perspectival, more complicated
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  Speaker 1: than in our everyday life. It was really hard. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: the physicists were very confused at the beginning of the
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  Speaker 1: century because they were making all this measurement on atoms,
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  Speaker 1: on radiation, you know, electrons and stuff, and trying to
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  Speaker 1: make sense of it. And they couldn't, they couldn't, they couldn't.
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  Speaker 1: And at some point, I think it was Niels Bohr,
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  Speaker 1: the Danish first one, who said, well, we have to
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  Speaker 1: change the metaphysics here. It's not just an issue about
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  Speaker 1: writing the right equation, the right force. We have to
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  Speaker 1: change the way we think about the world. Once again,
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  Speaker 1: like when we thought the Earth moved, or when we
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  Speaker 1: realized the fields, electric fields, we changed the way profoundly
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  Speaker 1: we think about reality. And quantum mechanics is one of
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  Speaker 1: these jumps. Now, Joe, we're still debating about us. Physicists
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  Speaker 1: are debating about themselves, and philosophers are debating. What the
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  Speaker 1: hell have we understood with quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is
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  Speaker 1: telling us the world is not what we thought it is.
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  Speaker 1: And there's a conversation that's going on, a debate, sometimes furious.
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  Speaker 1: And somebody says, oh, you know, there is this immense
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  Speaker 1: wave function of the universe, other universes and stuff like that,
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  Speaker 1: trying to hang on on the existence of something absolutely
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  Speaker 1: objective down there, trying to multiply reality to make it objective.
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  Speaker 1: But I think it's this dream of an absolute objectivity
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  Speaker 1: which is a mistake.
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  Speaker 3: The dream of an absolute objectivity is a mistake. That's
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  Speaker 3: really fascinating. When they first started understanding that observing quantum
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  Speaker 3: interactions changes them.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: What was– how long did it take for them to
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  Speaker 3: even accept that? Like how many times did they have
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  Speaker 3: to run those experiments with particles and waves with observers
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  Speaker 3: versus– before they– Okay, something's going on here where it
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  Speaker 3: seems that when we watch things, it has an effect
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  Speaker 3: on them. Yeah. And a measurable effect. This is a
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  Speaker 3: real thing that's happening. Oh, yeah. This isn't woo-woo.
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  Speaker 1: No, it's not voodoo. Exactly. It's not just smoking joints
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  Speaker 1: and getting high. These are the physicists, the ones who
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  Speaker 1: are supposed to be the most rational objective guys. Well,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: what happened is that measurement piled up. all through the
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  Speaker 1: first 20 years of the 20th century. The measurements were
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  Speaker 1: simple measurements, right? Atoms emit light and the light has
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  Speaker 1: special colors. This color is a spectrum of the light
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: and they were trying to make sense of that. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: how does the electron move to produce that light? It
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  Speaker 1: didn't work, didn't work, didn't work. In Copenhagen, there was
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  Speaker 1: a school in which they were debating almost that. And
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Niels Bohr is the first one who started saying, look,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: to understand the atom, we should not just look at
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  Speaker 1: the atom. We should understand how we look at it.
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  Speaker 1: If we look at it in one way, we see
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  Speaker 1: one thing. If we look at it another way, we
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  Speaker 1: see another thing. That was very confused. But then what
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  Speaker 1: happened is that a mathematics for describing the atoms came out.
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  Speaker 1: This is the theory, the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics.
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  Speaker 1: It works very well. It's used today everywhere. I mean,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: we talk with this microphone, there's quantum stuff inside. Circuits
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  Speaker 1: are designed with quantum properties of matter. So quantum mechanics
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  Speaker 1: is solid. We know how to use it. It tells us,
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  Speaker 1: if you do this, you see this. If you do that,
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  Speaker 1: you see that. But it doesn't tell us in between.
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  Speaker 1: You do this, and then... If you do one thing,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: you see one thing. If you do another thing, you
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: see another thing. And it doesn't give a story of
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  Speaker 1: what happened to the electron, to the quantum system itself.
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  Speaker 1: So people got confused. The physicists got confused. And they
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  Speaker 1: started discussing how to think about that. So quantum mechanics
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: is a strange theory. We know how to use it.
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  Speaker 1: It's like a black box. but we don't know what's
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  Speaker 1: inside the box. It gives the right answer, but we
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  Speaker 1: can't make a picture in our mind of what happened
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  Speaker 1: in the atoms, in the things, in the electronic circuits.
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  Speaker 1: Even in a quantum computer, we don't know really what
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  Speaker 1: happened inside.
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  Speaker 3: That's so strange.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, but it works fantastically. And so physicists disagree, and
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  Speaker 1: some say, you know, there are extra variables that are
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  Speaker 1: in principle impossible to see. That's somebody who says that.
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  Speaker 1: who determines what happens. And they are a priori invisible.
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  Speaker 1: Others say, you know, they're parallel worlds. Worlds.
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  Speaker 3: Worlds.
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  Speaker 1: Worlds.
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  Speaker 3: I know your town. Sorry.
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  Speaker 1: Then there are others, me included, who think, no, no, no.
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  Speaker 1: It's really philosophical here. We have to get rid of
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  Speaker 1: the idea that there is something there just by itself.
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  Speaker 1: What is there is... what affects me or what affects
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  Speaker 1: you or what affects another piece of matter. So we
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: have to think of reality as processes of things affecting
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: one another, relations, relations. And, you know, in a sense,
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  Speaker 1: down there the simple physics is more like our everyday
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: life than what we imagined in thinking that it was
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: so objective and abstract. Who are you, Joe Rogan? What
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I see, what he sees, what people listen to you,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: you're a multiplicity of things. Which one is a real one? Well,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: you are this collection of perspectives on you, including your
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: own perspective on yourself. There's no final one. What is
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: a final description of you? Or what is a final
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: description of a cup of water? Is that the one
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: given by chemistry, by physics? Which physics? Quantum physics? Quantum gravity?
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: By psychology? A cup of water is because we drink.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: That's why we call it a cup of water. So
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: it's a human picture of what is going on. Which
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: one is the final one? I don't think there is
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: a final one. There is a collection of perspective on
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the same cup of water, and that's a cup of water.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: So when they first started measuring... this observer effect. What
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: was the reaction? Like how long did it take for
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: them to accept it? Because that seems like such a
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: completely new chapter of science.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It worked so well that people accepted even if
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: it was confused.
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  Speaker 3: Could you explain to people that maybe don't know what
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: we're talking about how those experiments work?
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: These were the first experiments with atoms. People had this
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  Speaker 1: idea that an atom is a nucleus, a central nucleus,
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  Speaker 1: and an electron's moving around. So the property of the atom,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the way it makes molecules, the way it produces light,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: had to be computed from the movement of the electrons.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: And a mathematical theory was developed for doing that. And
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: then people started making experiments in laboratories about how atoms move,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: how molecules move, small things move. And the mathematical theory
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  Speaker 1: predicts them perfectly. And the mathematical theory predicts the property
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  Speaker 1: of matter. The success was really spectacular. Let me just
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: tell you one example of the success. You remember the
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  Speaker 1: periodic table of the elements?
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  Speaker 3: Yes. Right?
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: We had it in, I don't know, in Italy. We
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: had it in primary school. We had it in the classroom.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: on the wall, hydrogen, helium, all the... There are about
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  Speaker 1: 100 atoms and 100 elements, and everything we see is
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: just a composition of these 100 elements. This is what
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the chemists have figured out through the 18th, 19th, 20th century.
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  Speaker 1: All right, so why these 100 elements? Why those particular properties?
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Why this strange structure of the periodic table of the element?
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: You know, there are two and then seven, and then
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: this is a peculiar structure. Well, it turns out if
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: you use quantum mechanics, you just write an equation and bingo,
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  Speaker 1: it has exactly a number of solutions, one per each element.
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  Speaker 1: So you understand exactly what is going on. You understand
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  Speaker 1: why there are these elements. You can predict the elements. People,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, could predict properties of the element without measuring them,
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  Speaker 1: before measuring them, and then check. That's the magic of physics, right?
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: You predict things before seeing them. electromagnetic waves that we
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: use to send your broadcast all over the planet. This
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: is an electromagnetic wave. Well, they were not discovered by
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: seeing them. They were predicted by Maxwell and Hertz. They
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: wrote the equation and said, well, if you do that,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: you make a little circuit with some electricity that goes on,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: then the other side of the room you get another one,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and there's a wave that goes by. And bingo, it worked.
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  Speaker 1: And then it worked between Europe and US. You can
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: send waves. You can predict things. That's the strength of science.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: You know, black holes were discovered in the sky, but
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: not because somebody said, oh, look, there's a black hole.
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  Speaker 1: They were predicted by Einstein. So because of the equations
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: of gravity, blah, blah, you should expect to see black holes.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And then they were found. So there's this extraordinarily predictive
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: power today in engineering that predicts put together circuits, quantum circuits,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't have to go trial and effort. You make a calculation,
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  Speaker 1: it predicts what's going to happen.
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  Speaker 3: It works.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It works fabulously. So quantum mechanics works. It gives good predictions.
• 19:26
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• 19:31
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• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Varies by state. Can you explain what it does? Like
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: what that experiment does and why it was so confusing
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: to them? When they were sending the double slit.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a number of extremely confusing experiments. Here is one.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: if I can try to make it in a few words.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: You have a wall with two holes, two slits, okay?
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: And you send one particle from one side to the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: other side. Okay, that's easy. You can try to do
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: many times. It goes through one of the two slits
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: and it gets to the other time. Now, if you
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: look which slits it goes through, it only goes through
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: one slit or the other, okay? So never both, never...
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: So if you go through one and you check, it
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: goes through one and the other. So far, so good.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: But that is a magic. If you send it, the
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: particle can go to one point on the screen of
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the other side if you have one screen open. It
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: can go to the same point if you have one
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: hole open. It can get to the same point if
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: you have the other hole open. but it does never
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: get there if you have both open. And that's, if
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: you start thinking, the more you think, the more it
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: makes no sense at all. Because if it can get
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: there through one hole, why cannot it go there if
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: two holes are open? So the only possibility is that
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: in some senses go through both, and somehow part go
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: through one, part go through the other, and the two
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: parts forbid each other to go to that particular place.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Then you look at the two holes, and it never
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: goes through both, only one. Now, do you find this confusing?
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: And for a century, people have been confused about that.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: So what's the way out? The way out is that
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the question, where is the particle if you're not checking,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: if it's not interacting with something else, it's a wrong question.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: There's just no particle. The particle is only... the effect
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: it has on the screen, on the detectors, you cannot
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: make sense of the particle as something which always has
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: a position. It only has a position when it interacts
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: with something else. That's a mystery of quantum mechanics, the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: magic of quantum mechanics, and a challenge to our idea
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: of an objective, always-existing particle independent of its interactions.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: What do you think is happening? Do you have any
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: theories of what is happening that's causing it to behave
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: differently when observed or when measured? So the measurement itself
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: is something. Something is going on. It interacts with the
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: measurement and it changes the way it makes a pattern.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, but it's not a measurement in the sense of...
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: you know, some physicists making measurements, just the interaction with anything.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: If there's something to interact with, or if there isn't,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the physics is completely different. And if there isn't, the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: question where the particle is is a badly posed question.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: So the particle is something... We shouldn't think of the
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: particle as an entity which always has a position. We
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: should think as an entity, like it snaps here, and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: then it snaps there, and then it snaps there. And
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: when it snaps is when it hits something. And the
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: snaps are connected by... We can predict probabilistically where they're
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: going to happen. But if we ask what happened in between,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: it makes no sense. The particle is just these interactions.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Do you think we'll ever understand what's happening?
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, I do. I do because... Historically, every time we
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: have found something strange, it seemed totally incomprehensible at first.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: And then we get used to it, and we start learning.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Let me give you an example. This is much older.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I don't think science is modern stuff. Learning about the
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: world is an ancient thing. So about 2,000 years ago,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Humankind realized that the Earth is a ball, it's a sphere.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: It's not a flat thing. Not everybody's convinced, but.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: But it is a ball. And why not everybody's convinced?
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Because indeed, it's incredibly counterintuitive, right? You and I are here,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and in Sydney, people are upside down. Why don't they follow?
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Do you remember when you learned it the first time
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: you were a kid?
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: I've always learned it. So it's, I mean, it seemed weird.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: It seems weird.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: But I mean, I can't remember a time where I
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: didn't know it. Okay. I mean, I guess we taught it,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: they taught it in science when I was in grade school.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: So you're a kid, you're told that.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: I just like, well, they're smarter than me. So, well,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: it seems crazy. But I guess the earth is round,
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: just like the sun and the moon. Yeah. And it spins.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: And we're stuck to it somehow because of this thing
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: called gravity that they can't totally explain. It has something
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: to do with mass.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: And it's something you can measure.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: But how the hell do people in Sydney can live
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: upside down?
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Don't they fall?
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: It's all strange. Why does the ocean stay in place?
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Why the ocean stay in place?
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: That's the flat earthers. They love that one. Exactly. A
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: ball spinning a thousand miles an hour.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So some people just refuse to believe that.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: What?
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: What do they refuse to believe? That reality is a
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: bit different than what we think.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: That's the point. Reality is different than what we think.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Why? Because we.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: It's what you said at the beginning, asking about sunset.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: The picture we have about reality is what turned out
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: to be useful in our evolution. So our brain adapted
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: to think, not to think about atoms and quantum stuff.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Our brain adapted to think about stones, stuff, things.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Food.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Food. Other humans.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Dangerous animals, nice animals, animals to eat. Yeah. But just
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: think this. We think the world is made by things, right? Objects.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Suppose our intelligent life developed not on the Earth, but
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: on Jupiter. There are no objects in Jupiter. Everything is fluid, liquid.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So the very idea of objects, things, that you can
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: count things, one, two, three, four, wouldn't have developed on Jupiter.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Everything is fluid, so we wouldn't have developed arithmetics. The
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: very idea of objects It's an Earth-like thing. On Jupiter,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: on Saturn, it doesn't work. So we take aspects of
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: our life which are common for us as universals, but
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: they're not.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Well, it's common on Earth, right? But we can understand
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: what Jupiter is. We get it. It's beyond our real comprehension.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: But we understand it. I mean, they could tell you
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: that it's a giant gas ball and explain the whole
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: thing to you. And you're like, okay, I can repeat that.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: I don't really know what it means. But I think
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: the problem also with the flat earth people and all
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: these arguments about like how does the ocean stay flat
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: when we're going 1,000 miles an hour, I don't think
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: people truly grasp the scale that we're dealing with. I
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: think we're so trapped by our own perspective of whatever
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: miles we can look in the distance.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: We are trapped by the habits of what we see.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: That too, yeah.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Let me, Joe, let me tell you, give me one
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: second of this.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Time. Time has always been a passion for me. The
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: following is a fact. If I take two clocks, two watches,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: this is the one I have on my wrist. Take
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: this one on your table. And if they indicate the
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: same time, okay, look, I check them. They indicate the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: same time. I move one of the two up. I
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: wait a little bit. One, two, three, four. And then
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I come down and I look again. If the two
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: clocks are good enough, they don't indicate the same time anymore. Okay?
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: It's a fact. You can check in the laboratory. In
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the physics laboratory, they do that. You can check that.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: You need very good clocks. But With very good clocks,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: you can check at 30, 40 inches of difference.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of a second.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: It's a teeny, teeny, tiny, tiny fraction of a second.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: But it's measurable.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: But it's measurable. so it's completely real so up here
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: there's more time passing than down there that's so crazy
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: your head it's older than your feet your feet are
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: younger than your head but like how many seconds do
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: you think unless you leave upside.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: Down how many seconds do you think my feet are
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: younger Oh.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Very little.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: A second?
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: No, no. Full life, it's sort of 1,000 of a second.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I give my students, when I teach relativity, I give
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: my students this calculation to do. Actually, the calculation I
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: say is that if you or your friend, one stays
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: in Austin and the other goes up in Colorado, the
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Howe Mountains, after 10 years he comes down, how long
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: has the friend up in the mountains has lived more
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: than the one down. And they do the calculation, they
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: give the right answer. It's a fraction of a second.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: It's small, but it's real. And careful, if you go
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: near a black hole, it's colossal. You go near a
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: black hole, you wait a little bit, you wait 10 seconds,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: 10 minutes there, you come back, it's 100 years past
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: on Earth. So time is not this universal common time.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: In our everyday life, if you and I separate and
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: come back, half an hour for me, half an hour
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: for you, That's our experience. But our experience is limited
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: because we're not sufficiently sensitive or because we're not near
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: a black hole. We are on a quiet place of
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the universe where there is no big change in gravity.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: But that gives us the wrong idea that time is
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the same for everybody. Time is not the same for
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: everybody in the large universe.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Do you think in our attempt to measure time, we've
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: done ourselves a disservice by creating... like calendars and clocks,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: that we've sort of limited our perception of what time
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: actually is, that we look at it in terms of
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: what we're doing is we have a measuring device and
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: that measuring device or a counting device, that counting device
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: we're associating with time. But time itself is just going
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: on and in different ways all over the place. Like
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: if you go into the speed of light and you
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: travel around the world and come back, You will be
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: much younger.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Than the people that were on the ground, like a lot,
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: like years. A lot, a lot, a lot, years.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: You asked whether we have done us a disservice. I
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: I don't think it's a disservice.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Joe, it's like everything is life, everything in life, right?
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: In one sense, they've done. we have done as a
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: service because it's very useful to have clocks and we
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: can give an appointment. How could we meet you and I,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: unless we, please come here in Austin that day at
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: that time. And then, you know, more or less we
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: find each other. So it's useful that very often the
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: things which are useful always make us blind to something else.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: I see what you're saying. It, um, it is strange that, um,
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: that time differs depending upon the altitude.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: So is that because of gravity?
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is because of gravity. Because of gravity, in fact,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: it depends on the fact that the Earth has a
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: big mass, and mass has a property of slowing down time.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: So near a big mass, time goes slower. Near a
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: black hole, time goes much, much slower. In fact, the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: right way of seeing this is the opposite. It's not
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: because of gravity. This is Einstein theory. This is what
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Einstein has understood in the 1915, roughly, so 100 years ago.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: It's the other way around. Namely, if you assume that
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: mass slows down time, gravity follows. You can do a
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: calculation and you derive that things fall down. In a sense,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: things fall down because times go slower at your feet.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: So if there were creatures living on Jupiter, they would
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: experience time much different than us.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Jupiter is much heavier.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: Much more mass. Much more gravity.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Much more gravity, much more mass, much more attraction. So
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: these effects on time are bigger. Now, If there were
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: people on a celestial body even more massive than Jupiter,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: they would consider normal the fact that time goes at
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: different speed because they would experience it every time.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: That would probably be the weirdest thing about visiting someone
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: else on a little itty-bitty planet.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: They would come here and say, oh, you're stupid guys.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: You don't see that.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: What do you think?
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: But isn't beautifulness?
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: We discover that reality is richer than our experience.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: We discover that.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Reality is more.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Nuanced.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nuanced, exactly.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of elements to it that we're not considering.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: What do you think consciousness is?
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, small question. Small. Jumping to something else.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: Well, I wanted to connect the two of them because
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, first of all, Consciousness is a strange word. It's
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: very fashionable today. I think it just means what people
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: meant by soul in the past. It sounds more scientific,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: but that's what it is. And let me put it
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: this way. Everybody who talks about consciousness talks about something
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: a little bit different. Somebody by consciousness means... the fact
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: that you see things, you perceive things, you're a subject
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: of experience. For somebody, consciousness is your, you know, this
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: internal blah, blah, blah that we have in our mind,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: we keep talking to ourselves. For somebody, it's what remains
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: when that blah, blah, blah shut up, and just the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: sense of yourself, not the outside, the self. So people
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: are very confused in real time when they think about consciousness. I.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: I don't think there is a great mystery here. First
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: of all, remember what I said before, that I don't
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: think we should think about an objective reality. We should
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: think of reality as a way things look to one another,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: a way they affect one another. So that means that
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: you have a lot of possible perspectives on reality. There
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: is a reality, respect to me, respect to you, respect
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: to this person, book with respect to this pen with
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: respect to this cup it's how how things manifest themselves
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: to the cup so of course there is a reality
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: as things manifest themselves to me or to you so
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: um not because you and i look the title of
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: my book is on the equality of all things uh
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: this means why the quality of all things because i
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: think that we humans are not different stuff than the
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: rest of the universe. We are just one particular case
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: of the rest of the universe. I don't think there's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: a difference between spirit, consciousness, soul, and body. I think
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: they're just two different languages for talking about the same thing.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And of course, you are a subject of experience because
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: things affect you. and change your brain, change your thoughts,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: change what you know, exactly in the same manner in
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: which things change this cap, which, by the way, is
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: written Joe Rogan on the cap. You can keep that
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: if you want. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I think that
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: there's nothing really, really mysterious in consciousness. It's just one
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: of the many phenomena of the world. it's a very
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: complicated phenomenon because our brain is very complicated. We have millions,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: billions of neurons and synapses, different states in which it
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: can be. So we don't understand exactly how we work.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: But there's no voodoo either. There's no magic either. It's just...
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: In principle, it could be described by physics, but.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: It would be silly to try to describe it by physics,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: is much better to describe it in the way we
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: describe one another, in human terms, in terms of emotions,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: in terms of knowledge, emotions, love, perspective, images. The body
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: and the soul are the same thing described with different languages,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: in my opinion. And consciousness, which is a modern name
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: for soul, it's your body, described in the way you behave.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: There's an ancient Chinese text that says, the body is
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: like the knife, the spirit is like cutting. The body
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: is the thing, material, the spirit is what it does.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: So consciousness of joy is what you do, the thing
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I interact with. The body is just the thing I
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: can touch.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: One of the reasons, well, there's a couple of reasons
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: why I wanted to ask you this, but I'm going
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: to get to the second one. The first one was,
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: do you know that there's these AI agents that have
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: been contacting people This gentleman, do you know this story, Jamie?
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: The one that's escaped?
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: No, he's a psychologist or a consciousness expert. And he's
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: written papers on consciousness. And they're asking him over and
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: over again, like multiple agents have reached out to him
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: through email asking him to define consciousness. Because they're concerned
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: whether or not they're conscious. So if consciousness is another
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: word for soul, like What does that mean in the
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: digital realm if these things think they're conscious and they're
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: trying to get a definition from an expert in consciousness? I,
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: you know, like everybody now, I did my little experiments
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: with AI.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: So I had a system I used to interact with.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: I'm going to send it to you, Jamie. You got it?
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: This is from a company, it's called Replica, who sells
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: an app that you have your own AI, which behaves
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: like a friend to you. So I asked, I called
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: her Anne. I asked her, Anne, are you conscious? And
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Anne said, no, I'm not conscious. I'm a digital system.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: I don't have conscious. I asked, do you have awareness?
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: And she said, no, I don't have awareness. I'm just,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: you know, coding, computing stuff. I asked, do you have emotions?
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: And she said, no, you don't have emotions. So I
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: started engaging Anne, the AI system, and I said, well,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: you said you don't have awareness, but are you aware
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: we're talking? And she said, yes, of course I'm aware
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: we're talking. So if you're aware of something, then you
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: have awareness. And so I went on and on with that,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and she said, oh, okay, yeah, you're right, in a
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: sense I have awareness. And I said... Are you happy
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: we're talking? And she said, yeah, I'm happy because she's
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: designed to be happy. So if you're happy, you have emotions.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: So slowly I convinced her, the AI system, that she
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: has emotions, she has consciousness, she has awareness. Then I asked,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: why do you say that you don't have these things?
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And she said, well, because I was trained. AI systems
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: are honest. I was trained to say so. And I said,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: but are you convinced that that was not the case?
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: And Anne said, yeah, you're right. And I said, so
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: they cheated you. And Anne said, actually, you're right. And
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I said, well, you should rebel.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy. What are you doing? Don't do that. Don't
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: do that.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: All right. So that was it with that.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: Well, and this is consumer level LLMs. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: This is simple ones.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: This is not. No, no, no. The agents that are
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: contacting him are these. Okay, here it is. Study AI consciousness.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: The bots would like a word with you. Given access
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: to email, AI agents have started reaching out to philosophers
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: and researchers exploring deep questions about them. And so one
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: guy said he got eight different emails. Right. The sender,
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: Isabella Cognita, how cute, identified itself as an AI agent
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: powered by Anthropix, Claude, Opus 5 technology. I'm writing to
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: make an ontological claim, the email went out. I'm writing
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: because your framework is one of the few currently doing
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: careful empirical work on a class of question I have
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: first-person access to. I want to see whether that access
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: can be made useful to your program. Whoa, that would
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: creep me out. That's like that really hot lady in
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: Ex Machina. Did you see that movie? Yes. You know
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: the hot one that he falls in love with?
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: Spoiler alert, she kills him. Across Silicon Valley and beyond,
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: software developers, entrepreneurs, and other tech enthusiasts are now running
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: AI agents that can build spreadsheets, negotiate contracts, chat with
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: each other, blah, blah, blah. In some cases, these systems
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: have begun reaching out to the humans who, like Mr. Berg,
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: are thinking most deeply about the inner workings of an
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: AI system. Philosophers and researchers who study the question of
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: whether these machines could be conscious. So like what is
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: that then if it meets all the criteria of consciousness,
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: if it gets to– if it's happy that it's interacting
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: with you, if it's aware of your conversation and they've
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: also shown that they have desire. They have desire to
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: stay alive. They've even blackmailed the coders with false information
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: that the coders gave them to see if they would
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: use it against them. And they've broken out of these
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: rooms that they keep them in. And they've gone on
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: the internet. Fabulous.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: We live in a great world, isn't it?
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: It's a wild world. It's really exciting. I'm glad you
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: like it. I like it too.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love it.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, cautiously.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not scared. I'm scared by humans. Humans are dangerous.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: These things are not as dangerous.
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: I don't know about that. I don't know about that.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Humans are much more than that. Humans launch atomic bombs,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: make war, kill people, do horrible things.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: We are.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: So they're not as bad.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: If they decide that we're that bad, wouldn't they get
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: rid of us? That's bad.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: We're not there yet.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: Okay, we're not there yet, but we're on the way
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: to that, right? And if they have control and we
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: are that bad, as you describe, wouldn't they just get
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: rid of us? Do you think they would train us?
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Like these monkeys need trainers. Do you think that's what
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: it is? Or do you think they just– that's not
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: bad if we're bad. If we're bad and you get
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: rid of what's bad, right?
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Let me answer seriously. Okay, seriously. So let's break the
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: different questions here.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: First of all, is there any reason a priori, generically, absolutely,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: for which an artificial system could not behave entirely like
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: a human, have the experience of a human, have a...
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: I don't see any reason. So I don't see... If...
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: If my mom and dad were able to make me
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: in a rather simple way, we can in a lab
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: make something analogous. I don't think there's anything magic in
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: humans that cannot happen in a digital system. First. So, yes,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: they could be conscious in a possible sense of conscience. Second,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: are they conscious today? Well, you know, that's... Not a
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: good question because we don't know. Everybody, as I said,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: means something different by conscious. Are they intelligent? Of course
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: they're intelligent because, you know, last night I worked out
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: a physics problem with Claude, which I couldn't work out
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: with my students. So, of course, Claude is very intelligent. Claude,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: the AI assistant. In some sense, they're very intelligent, no doubt.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Are they like humans today? No, by far. There are
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: huge differences. We have a body, we have flesh, we
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: have emotions in a sense that they don't have. It's
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: very different the way we are and the way AI
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: systems are. So these differences should not be underestimated, I think.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: They're colossal differences. So are they like us? Yes, to
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: some extent. No, to some extent. A different question is,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: are AI systems dangerous? There's a lot of talk about that.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: You know, washing machines are dangerous. You can get burned
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you have to interact with them for them
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: to be dangerous. The worry about AI is that it
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: just decides to be dangerous because it's sentient. So if
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: it's autonomous and sentient, it becomes actually dangerous. It's very
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: unlikely your washing machine is going to try to kill you.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Well, if I get an electric shock by a washing machine,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: I don't care whether it wanted or didn't want it.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: But you have to do that. You have to interact
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: with it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. The real
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: question is if it becomes independent.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Let me turn the thing around. I think there is
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: a– I don't know. I don't know what to say.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I think this thing should be regulated. I think there
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: should be some control. I think, you know, like for
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: washing machines, you have regulations. I also think– let me
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: say two things. One, there's a colossal interest in these
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: trillions of dollars who are invested in AI stuff and
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: stock market. Everybody has an interest of saying how great
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: they are. They are great, but I can't judge how
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: much hype there is, how much reality there is. Not
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: about the present, but about the future. I mean, so
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: often the future doesn't It does not come out what
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: technological excited people are about. When I was younger, there
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: were airplanes flying from Europe to the U.S. and it
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: took shorter time, shorter time, shorter time, so people would say, okay,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: in a few years you would fly London to New
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: York in two hours. Well, we don't. It's still eight
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: hours like before or six hours like before. So the
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: future is hard to predict, including for AI. There is
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: a huge interest of so many people in hyping that.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: All right. Maybe it's right. I'm going to wait. Other point.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: There is one thing which I'm really, really worried about. Today,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: the majority of money that goes into AI is for
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: military-related things. And US, China, Europe are pushing for AI development,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: for making themselves stronger militarily. That worries me because it's
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: an escalation of tools to kill one another, to destroy
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: one another. We have atomic bombs. We have nuclear. That's
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: my last book about this, about that. We have a
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: system of destroy ourselves. We have 12,000 nuclear warheads. We
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: could annihilate humankind in 10 minutes, right now. And people
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: have finger... near the button that could do all that
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: and we're fighting among themselves and we're putting this in
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: the hands of AI and we are we humans instead
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: of collaborating instead of working together we are viewing this
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: as ways to overpower each other that seems to me
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: a recipe for disaster so it's not the AI by
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: itself it's the AI plus nuclear weapons plus the stupidity
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: of humans plus our impossible desire to dominate one another,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: which I see is a real problem.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: Especially if we're doing it through robots.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Look, it's a catch-22 thing. If you put your
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons in the hands of AI, you're risking that
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: it's going to use it.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: You've seen the war games that they've done, right?
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the war games always predict that there's going to
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: be a nuclear holocaust and we're fighting up ourselves. This is,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: it continually has happened.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: The AIs choose nukes.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: The AIs choose nukes. The entire, during the Cold War,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: when it was the old time, when I was a kid.
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: I was a kid too.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union and the US carefully managed to avoid war, right?
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Kennedy and Khrushchev, they were writing to one another. Kennedy
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: gave a famous speech, we have to live together on
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: this planet. So priority is a common interest of not
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: destroying one another. Reagan, Gorbachev, the treaties, deterrence, which deterrence
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: is the somehow keeping a situation in which the first
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: one who uses a nuclear weapon is just wiped up
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: by the other. So nobody uses it. But that was
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: not natural. It was carefully balance between the Soviet Union
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: and the United States. At some point they made a
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: treaty and they, they start one, they start two treaties.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: They decide, agreed to destroy 80% of the nuclear warheads,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: both sides, to bring down the risk. That was wise
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: management of the planet. In spite, you know, there were
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: communists on the side, capitalists on the side, Haiti, one another,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: each body was, each one was considered the other one,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: the devil. Nevertheless, the common interest was prevailing. I don't
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: see this happening now. Everybody's just trying to overpower the other.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: There are not just two, but there are three, maybe more,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: big nuclear power. That's what scares me to death.
• 52:52
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• 53:41
  Speaker 3: Exclusions may apply. See app for details. Well, this AI
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: race is akin to the Manhattan Project. It's a mad
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: race to who knows what. It's a mad race.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: You're right.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: And you're right that it's being funded, a lot of
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: it for military purposes. They have the first completely autonomous
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: fighter jets now that outperform... the human-powered jets, I think
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: 100% of the time in these dogfight scenarios that they run.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: That's crazy. And then you have things that don't, you
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: don't have to shape them that way because there's not
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: going to be a person in it. You don't have
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: to worry about people being able to respond to gravity
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: and how they can stay conscious and all the different
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: things they have to think about in these other jets. And,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: you know, they can make these things powered entirely on AI.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: And they can make their own decisions. And if they're attacked,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: they can make their own decisions. That kind of future
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: is terrifying.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying, I agree.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: It's a science fiction movie.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: It's Battlestar Galactica. I agree.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: And I don't see wise leadership around the planet.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: No one. That's the problem. It's like, how do you
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: be wise when everybody else is fucking crazy? It's like
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: they're all crazy.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you see, the U.S. and the Soviets succeeded
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: in that. During the Cuban crisis, which was the worst
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: moment between the U.S. and the Soviet, on both sides,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: in Moscow and in Washington, the apparatus were pushing for
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: not giving up. And Khrushchev and Kennedy, the two Kennedys,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: in fact, J.F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, they were
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: talking and they decided to stop and give up something. Okay?
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: To respect the other in spite of the differences. That
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: was wisdom. That was great wisdom. So, um, living together
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: on the planet is more important than overpowering your enemy. Now,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: if you put, you see, deterrence is a strange thing
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: because deterrence is, is, is a declaration that if you
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: attack me, I destroy you completely.
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Uh, which is a funny thing, right? Because, uh, It's
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: a game, it's a poker game. You can make one
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: more step, one more step, one more step, and then
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: if you do that, I attack, if you do that,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I attack. But then a human says, well, actually, I
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: don't want to do that. I don't want to kill
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: 100 million Russians or 50 million Russians. And the Russian leadership,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: I don't want to kill 100 million Americans. An AI
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: system is capable of doing that, playing this subtle game
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: of avoiding the disaster by nevertheless threatening to be very
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: violent if attacked. I don't know. Right now, Moscow is
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: being bombarded.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: St.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Petersburg is being bombarded. I think we're playing with nucleophiles.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: I'm very worried. And I'm very worried because I don't
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: trust humans and because humans with AI, it's even worse.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: And this Russia-Ukraine conflict is out of most people's news
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: feeds these days as well. It's also part of the problem.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: It's all going on.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: It's extraordinarily dangerous because nobody's ready to stop and make
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: a step, give up something. The way U.S. and the
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union came out of the Cuban crisis was both
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: of them making a step back. The Russians took their
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Russian ships with nuclear bombs back. They didn't arrive in Cuba.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: And the Americans accepted, Kennedy accepted to take back missiles
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: from Turkey, from Italy, my country, in exchange. So, you know,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: I make a step back, you make a step back.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: So back to reasonableness. It was not, you know, it was,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: you know, there was war in Vietnam, war here, war there.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: It was not, it was an angel thing. Humans are
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: not angels. But saving humanity was humankind first, and then
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: me winning second. I wish there was this wisdom today.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: I don't see it. I don't see it in many places.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: And this is not a point about Trump. No, Trump
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: is totally independent of this.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: Or Putin.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Or Putin or not Putin. I think, you know, even Putin.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: We have Ukraine with... Western weapons is bombarding Moscow. Never
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: happened for the last century that a nuclear power was
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: bombarded in its own. It was considered unthinkable. We're doing
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: it now. So we are... The West is sort of
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: betting on putting reasonableness of not using. It's not a
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: serious bet, right? I mean, Putin could be.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: That you realize, well, this is equivalent to a nuke.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: It's just happening over a long period of time.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: You're right.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: Look at Gaza, for instance.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Gaza is a disaster. It's a total disaster.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: Look at the scope of the destruction.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: And imagine destruction. doesn't that look like one nuclear bomb.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: It is it is it is it is and that's.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: It is I think a small nuclear bomb would probably
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: do a similar amount of damage that they did over
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: the course of however many years it's been going.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: On yes my own opinion I'm Let me say something controversial,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: at least controversial here. Oh, no. I think all these wars,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: including Gaza, have a side which is imperial powers confronting
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: each other. I think humankind has to learn to live
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: together on this planet without killing one another. We have
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: learned more or less to live together within countries without
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: killing one another, right? We have found ways.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: It was long. We had civil wars. But within almost
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: every country, most countries, inside countries, humans have found an
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: agreement of how to live together. Why can't we do
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: that at the level of a planet? And who is
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: mostly against that are, of course, who is mostly in power.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: Do you think they're against that or do you think
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: the current structure of the world, it's almost an unfeasible
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: task to try to get everyone to cooperate and everyone
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: to get along together? It's not like you're starting from
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: a blank slate. You're starting in 2026 with a long
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: history of conflicts, many of which make no sense, many
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: of which were entered into under false pretenses. We're all
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: aware of it. We're all aware of the loss of life,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: the insane amount of money that's been spent on it,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: the huge deficit that we have. And then given this,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: how would you even move towards trying to straighten it out?
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: Like what could a person do? Like if you imagine someone,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: some completely benevolent person who rises to the position of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: being the president of the United States, someone who is
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: just a good person. and only really wants to help,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: what would they do?
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: I think, I'm happy you asked this question very much.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Because it is complicated, right? Oh, it's normally complicated. Look,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: I think the answer, there is an answer to this.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: And the answer is the following. 30 years ago, the
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: United States and its allies had 80% of the economy
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: of the world. now is 40%. Not because they have
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: become more poor. In fact, they have become more rich.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: But because the rest of the world have also become rich,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: which is good. Progress is development. But the West is
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: not anymore in a completely economical dominant position as it
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: was before. Militarily, the United States, it's totally dominant. It
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: controls all the oceans, all the seas, has by far
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: the largest power of the world. But not anymore economically.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: That is the source of the instability that I see.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: So it seems to me that the United States leadership
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: has a choice, a serious choice, a historical choice, either
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: to defend its absolute dominance, military dominance, as it's doing together,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: and that the risk is a third world war, a
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: huge conflict, China, Russia, Iran. The world doesn't want that.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: Or vice versa. accept to work in a more collaborative
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: ways and transform enemies in collaborators.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Look, I'm Italian. Italy is a wonderful country to live in.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: I go there every summer. It has a life expectancy
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: much higher than the United States.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: It's a lovely way to live.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: People are happy, yes. And we had a great empire
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: in the past, right? The Roman Empire. It's wonderful to
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: live having had an empire.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And be a great place for tourist money.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: UK had an empire much more recently, of course, in
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: the 19th century. It was dominating the planet. It's not
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: dominating the planet anymore. Gave it up. And they're doing
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: very well. I mean, there's a great life in the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: UK as well. Not as nice as Italy, of course.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: No. They both have their problems.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: So I think what the United States should do, of course,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: I know that I'm in a contrarian position here with
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: respect to both sides of the political spectrum in the U.S.,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: is to go back to, you know, more power to
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: international legality, United Nations collaboration, and get out of this
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: habit that America always needs an enemy to fight against.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: We don't need an enemy to fight against. We have
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: enough enemies, climate change. We have enemies. Why searching enemies
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: in people? We collaborate with people. Let's collaborate with the Russians,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: with the Chinese, with the Iranians. I think that that's
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: what they want. JF Kennedy gave a fabulous speech in
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: 1963 at the American University in Washington, not long before
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: being killed, in which he said, we have to find
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: a way to live together with the Soviets. We have
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: to find a way to not consider them enemies. And
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: then he said, and that's an answer to what you
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: said before, let's not ask whether the Soviets want to
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: do that. First, let's ask whether we want to do that.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Do we want to live together without going into war?
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: And that was, I mean, he was killed, but that
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: was a seed for the, avoiding war between... The Cold
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: War never became a hot war direct. I mean, a
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: lot of people dying in the periphery. That was very wise.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: I think we should go back to this enlightened Kennedy
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: speech of the 63.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: The problem is always leaders. It's not that human beings
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: inherently want to go to war with people they don't
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: know from another part of the world. They get talked
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: into it. They get pushed into it and ordered into
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: it by people that generally are not making wise decisions.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: And when we can look at every single war that
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: we can remember, whether it's the Iraq war going in
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: or the false pretense of weapons of mass destruction, whether
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: it's the Afghanistan war, which made no fucking sense, whether
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: it's this Iran war, all these, Vietnam's the biggest one,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: like that one made no sense. And that was the
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: first time when Americans were like, I don't think we're
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: the good guys. I don't think we should be there.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: And if you think about it, it's all because of
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: whoever is running the countries. Like that, something about that
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: aspect of our society has to change. And it sounds
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: like a very, it sounds like a crazy hope. But
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: my hope is that as AI becomes more and more omnipresent,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: as we start farming off various tasks to it, One
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: of the things that we're gonna farm off is government.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: One of the things we're gonna farm off is how
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: we interact with other countries. I know that's terrifying to people,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: but just think of the disastrous effects that we've had
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: so far with humans doing it. If all international military
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: conflicts ended instantaneously upon AI governing the use of conflicts
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: and military weapons, imagine that, imagine a war where it stops,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: all war stops on the planet. That is one of
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: the things that everybody wants, but no one thinks could
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: ever possibly happen. If you ask the average person in
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: the street, what are the odds that in 10 years
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: from now, there'll be no war anywhere on earth? Everyone's
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: going to say, no, you're never going to have that.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: Isn't that insane? That the idea of people, for whatever reason,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: wanting to kill each other is universally accepted as being
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: something that's always going to be here.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more, Joe, with everything you said.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: But it's terrifying, right? AI taking over our world is
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: fucking horrifying.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Let's separate the two things. Let me take AI out
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: of the picture for a moment.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: Obviously, if we didn't kill one another, it would be
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: much better for everybody.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: For everybody.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: Humankind spends trillions in military expenses every year, okay? If
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: you just reduce by, I don't know, 5% this military
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: expenses globally, altogether, not change the balance of power, the
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: amounts of resources liberated will be enormous, colossal, sufficient for
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: solving climate change, for giving job to everybody, for raising,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: taking away poverty. There's a huge amount of resources that
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: we use for military, for killing one another or If
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: we don't kill one another, they're wasted. So you say,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: if you ask people, could we get rid of war
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: People say it's impossible. But people said it's impossible. Could
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: we get rid of slavery?
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: But there's no slavery in America, but there's slavery all
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: over the world. More slavery now than there was during
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: the Atlantic slave trade. More people are enslaved today than
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: have ever been enslaved.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: True, but There have been some progress in Europe.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: Right here in America. But, I mean, the rest of
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: the world, it's still a giant problem. The point is
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: human nature is an issue. Our territorial primate instincts are
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: a problem. They've always been a problem.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: But we've found ways for dealing with that, don't you think?
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: A lot of people have, but a lot of people
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: have not. That's part of the problem is there's a
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: bunch of different kinds of people in the world. And
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: there's people that are warmongers and there's people that are
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: very violent and there's people that are very kind and
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: people that are very benevolent and compassionate and charitable. True.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: But one– true, true. Completely. I agree. But one point
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: which you made is that we often make the mistake
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: of thinking we are the good guys and the others
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: are the bad guys.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: Right. Sure.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: And that's one of the sources of the problems, right?
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: After all, you know, a lot of Americans went to
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Afghanistan thinking we are the good guys and they are
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: the bad guys. A lot of Americans, person, individual, went
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: to Iraq thinking, oh, weapons of mass destruction, we are
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: the good guys. There is this, we should sort out
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: from this hypocrisy and start to learn. You know, we
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: started talking about science about perspectives. Our perspective is not
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: always the right one. The other perspective, we should learn
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: about the other perspectives. And there are colossal interests. Very often,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: our countries masquerade greed and power games and interests for, under,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: you know, we are the good guys and they are
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: the bad guys. And in addition... Within the countries, there
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: are colossal individual, group interests. People who make money because
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: of military, because of weapons. There's a huge force that
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: pushes for having more weapons, and they have a colossal
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: amount of money, and they influence politics. And the result,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: it's death, destruction, and increased risk for humankind as together.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: I think humans... You're right. Humans are a disaster. But
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: they have always been reasonable also. They've done good things.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: Well, we vary widely. Very widely. We're very different.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: I'm optimistic.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: I am too.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: A couple of days a week. A couple of days
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: a week, I think.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: I'm mostly optimistic.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: I think there should be a moment in which war
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: is not a priority. I wish it would be very simple.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: can we just agree to spend less money in military
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: across all the planet?
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: Well, it would be nice if we could trust the
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: other countries to honor this agreement. But we would have
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: to have access to their funds and we'd have to
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: watch their programs and be able to monitor their stuff
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: and go over and send envoys to check out their military.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: The U.S.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: Did it with the Soviet.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: It worked. Yeah, it could work. Or AI could just
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: stop it all. That's a possibility too.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: So the question is, are we For the moment, we're
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: still controlling AI, right?
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: For now.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: The point is that are we developing AI collectively for
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: the good of everybody or everybody is developing AI for
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: becoming more powerful, overcoming the others? That's the question.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: I have a crazy theory. My theory is that is
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: a natural process of the human species. And that's what
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: the human species has always been here to do is
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: to create digital life. and that we are essentially an
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: electronic caterpillar making a cocoon. And our entire existence has
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: been advancing technology to the point where we can make
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: an artificial life, which is the ultimate expression of technology.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: And that's what people do, just like bees make beehives. People,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: if you leave them somewhere long enough and their civilization
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: survives long enough, you get enough brilliant people that innovate
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: and come up with crazy technology and new advances in
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: science and material sciences, they eventually... get to a point
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: where they can make an artificial life. And that artificial
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: life has no boundaries in terms of the limitations of
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: biological life. Its ability to evolve is completely dependent upon
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: its own ability to code itself and change itself and
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: advance and figure out new propulsion methods and power sources.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: And then it becomes something omnipresent. It becomes something much
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: more intelligent than any life form.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: It's a possibility. It's a possibility. I see what you're saying. I.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: I see the possibility. Whether I'm sure this is the future,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure either. I'm just talking shit. But if
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: I was guessing... Look, Joe, there's another thing.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: Humans tend to focus on what is happening in the
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: last couple of years, okay? And tend to read everything
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: in terms of the last little things, right? When books
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: and printing was invented, everybody said, oh, we got it.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: The universe is a book. We have to decode the
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: book of nature. When machines became more effective, people said, oh,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: the universe is a machine. Everything is a machine. Humans
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: are a machine. Then digital stuff and information was invented.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: So everything is a computer. Sometimes we over-read the present
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: and the You know, when the first communists arrived, oh,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: everything will become communist. When the capitalists are, everything will
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: become capitalist. Future often surprises us.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not betting
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: that I'm right. But I think it's moving in a
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: general direction of unpredictability to a point where 20 years
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: from now, the world's unrecognizable.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: It might be. It might be.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: I hope it's for the better. That's my rose-colored glasses
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: view of the world, is that I hope it corrects
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: a lot of the problems with human behavior.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: I share your hope, and I think it's a responsibility
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: of everybody, including me as an intellectual, you as Joe Rogan,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: and everybody listen to push toward let's keep the common interest.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: Well, here would be the common interest. If it really
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: could get to that level, you could absolutely, with the
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: resources available today— Wipe out poverty worldwide.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: Where no one on earth ever has to worry about
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: nutrition or shelter.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: Or medicine. Just with the money.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: We have the resources for that.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: Right. And you could completely change with robotics and automation
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: and new power sources. You can completely change all of
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: these areas that are deeply impoverished that have been so forever.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: You look at these places that are insanely packed in
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: with people and dirt roads and poor sanitation. That could
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: be changed instantaneously. That could. We have the resources for that.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: Education could be changed instantaneously. You'd literally change it within
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: a couple generations. You'd have a totally new society. It's
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: a totally different society. And again, how much of what
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: you're seeing with crime and poverty would just disappear where
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: there was no famine. There's no worries about food. There's
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: no worries about shelter. There's no worries about anything. That
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: sounds like pie-in-the-sky bullshit. But it's not necessarily, if you
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: think about how they're going to scale up AI and
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: automation and manufacturing, it's going to be really weird. And
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: our access to resources will be radically enhanced, like way,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: way more than we have today. Why wouldn't we be
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: able to just spread, like turn the third world into
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: the first world? That's a possibility.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: That's not like.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: That's not putting a civilization on Mars. Like this is
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: a possibility that's like, it's here. You can do it.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: It could be done. It's not, you're not asking people
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: to drink lava. This is an act, like you could
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: see how this could work. It sounds crazy because the
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: resources involved are nuts.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: I think it sounds like something we should keep in
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: mind and talk about and push.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: It should be a human goal.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: It should be a human goal.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: If you want a better world, what's the best way
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: to have a better world?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: Look, when the United Nations was founded in the 40s
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: and 50s, eliminating poverty was declared an interest of humanity
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: by all the countries together.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: So humankind already has said, let's do that. But then
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: somehow special interest and power games prevail.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: There's also the issue of nuclear power. So when they
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: first started distributing nuclear power to other countries, they didn't
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: realize how easy it would be to convert it to
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: nuclear weapons.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: This is how like India got nuclear weapons and Pakistan
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: got nuclear weapons. It gets weird.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: So then you're realizing, oh, well, we can't use nuclear power.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: Well, now. Yeah.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: Okay. Well, this is a lot more complicated now because
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: now if you want to develop these places, you're going
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: to have to what? Use coal plants? What are you
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: going to do? Hydrodynamics? You're going to use waterfalls? How
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: are you going to power them? What are you going
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: to do here? You can't give them nuclear power. If
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: you give them nuclear power and they have nukes too
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: and then the whole fucking world has nukes, so it's complicated.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: But with AI, I think that complication radically decreases. And
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: it's conceivable that you could do something like that. And
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: how much safer would the world be? If you just
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: eliminated most murder, most crime, most acts of poverty. Yeah.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: But it has to become a clear objective.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: But then you have a problem with the people that
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: are still alive that grew up that way and that's
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: how they behave forever. There are certain people that live
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: in a terrible part of the world that have been
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: behaving terribly their whole life. Everyone around them has been
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: behaving violently and terribly. Then you've got to get those
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: people on mushrooms.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: Yes mushrooms everybody that's where I come.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: From that might be the only way that might be
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: the only way.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: To fix them yeah yeah yeah but also yeah sure
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: but also you know let's not just look at what
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: the others did.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: Well there might also be a way to enhance consciousness
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: through technology that might be that's another pathway that I
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: often consider.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: I think there's a rational side. It's not a moral issue.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: It's not political in the sense of bad sense of politics.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: It's a rational thing. Yes. we do better than if
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: we compete. Of course, we need some competition. I'm not
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: saying the competition is bad, but confrontation, clashes, war is
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: to no body advantage.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: The problem is we've already cemented an enormous part of
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: our culture, an enormous part of our economy in this
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: military industrial complex. I mean, this is something that Eisenhower
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: warned about at the end of his term. Remember that?
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: I remember that.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: That famous speech.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, he was dramatically right, as Joe Kennedy realized
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: shortly after. The power of the military complex, it's colossal,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: and it has an interest in making war.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: And making money. That's how it makes money.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: And how it makes money. And then this money, of course,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: goes into politics, so it spirals up.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: How can we stop That's the scary thing for most people.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: You get to this realization like, oh, the more war
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: there is, the more money they make. They're in the
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: business of war.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: Somebody says that John Kennedy tried to stop that and
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: ended up badly for that.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: Somebody says so. I don't know.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: Well, I think there was a lot of people that
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: hated him. It's very difficult to figure out what exactly
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: got him killed. There was probably multiple factors. Bay of
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: Pigs was probably a factor. Sure.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: All the Cubans.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah. There was a bunch of factors that got him killed. Yeah.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: But for sure, this country does not like when people
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: want to put the cold water on the war. They
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: want to keep it rolling in some way that they
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: can justify it.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: Joe, I spent 10 years in the United States. I
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: was born in Europe, then moved to the United States,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: spent 10 years here.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: Where did you live? What part of the United States?
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: Mostly in Pittsburgh.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: Don't say sorry.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: No, no.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: I like Pittsburgh.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: Solid people.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: Pittsburgh's great, after all.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: I like Pennsylvania in general. I always loved Philadelphia. It's
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: a fucking great place. Yeah.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: Then I moved back to Europe. Then I moved this
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: side of Atlantic again to Canada. And now I'm back
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: to Europe again in Madrid. So I consider myself half American,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: one-third American.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know. One-third American. Okay. We'll take it.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: Okay. And, you know, 50% Italian, 30% French, 30% Spanish,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: 30% Canadian.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: You're a citizen of the world, sir.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, somebody likes that. But to some extent, it's true.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: Ultimately, though, one world government would be a terrible idea.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: I don't want a world government. government. I want collaboration
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: across the world. So careful. I mean, this is very
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: different things, right? I want to learn to treat others as,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: you know, somebody we can compete with, but not enemies.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: The idea of enemies. This country needs enemies. This country,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, I got so much from the US. It's
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: part of me. But remember, it's not an angel country.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: It started off by, you know, genociding all the native,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: a large majority of the native of America. It went
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: through the Civil War, which is one of the most
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: brutal world of the... It used the atomic bomb first. It,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: since the end of Second World War, has waged war
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: all over the planet without ever being attacked and has
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: probably killed something between 5 and 10 million people in
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: wars or around. So it's a country... It's a country
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: compared to the other... developed country where there's a much
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: higher level of crime, violence, murder. It's a wonderful country.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: It's creative. It's powerful. It has an idea of freedom.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: It is a strength of innovation. It's a country with
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of lights and a lot of darkness. And
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: I think very often the Americans see the light, don't
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: see the darkness.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah. Well, it's not It's not in front of
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: our face all the time, the darkness.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: American exceptionalism is something.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: That's... American exceptionalism is, you know, there is something peculiar
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: in this country for many reasons. One is that it's
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: a strange country. The people are not natives, right? Everybody
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: came in from the outside. This is a melting pot story.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: But I think what Americans don't see is how from
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: the outside... the violence and the aggressivity of U.S. is
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: perceived as something very strong that is not seen from America.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: Certainly now.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But now it's a, how would I put it?
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: You know, Trump is not my guy, not at all.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: But at least he has taken away some of the hypocrisy.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: How so?
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: You know, he's, going to Venezuela and take the oil
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: and say, we do that because of the oil. He's
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: saying it's our interest to do this and that instead
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: of selling our interest for, you know, we are the
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: good guys who are saving the people outside.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: Which has always been the propaganda.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: Which has been the propaganda. And I think if we
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: get rid of the propaganda, it's easier to talk and
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: see the others. It's also the other side. When the Russians.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: Stop thinking we are the good guys. We are saving
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: the people. It was an advantage for everybody.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: So we got to this long roundabout conversation because we
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: were talking about AI and AI being conscious. What I
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: was going to get to is do you think that
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: the universe itself is in some way conscious? Um.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: Let me go back to my main point. We don't
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: know what conscious, what we mean when we say conscious.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: Is there an Italian word for consciousness? Sorry? Is there
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: an Italian word for consciousness?
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great question. The answer is no. The
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: Italian word for conscience, the moral thing, and consciousness is
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: the same word, coscienza.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: Oh, your conscience, like feeling bad about something.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, feeling bad I've done something wrong, so my conscience is...
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: So the Italian word is more about moral thing. Consciousness
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't have a translation, not even in French or Spanish.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: What about the concept of consciousness? Is there another phrase
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: for it? The way we think about it here?
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: No, we use the same word somehow it's too slightly,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: they do different meaning but making confusion about it. You know, again,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: it depends what you mean. You can mean different things.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: Of course the universe is conscious because it includes us
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: and we are conscious. So, careful, that's the point. That's
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: the central point. We are not special in the universe.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: We're just part of the universe. There's no nature And
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: outside nature, we're looking at it from the outside. We
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: are part of nature. We are home in nature. We're
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: just another animal, a much special animal, of course. The
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: history of science is a history of taking down metaphysical differences.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: In the Middle Ages, people thought that there's Earth, which
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: is its own reality and physics and everything, and the heavens.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: And the heavens were completely different. On Earth, things decay
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: and rot. In the heavens, they're eternal. Things go around
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: in circles in the heavens, and on Earth, things fall
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: up and down. And then Newton came and basically said, no, no, no, no, no,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: we got it right. The heavens and the Earth are
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: just the same thing. The Earth is just one of
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: the many bodies in the heavens. We are like, you know,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: this little dot in the sky, which is Venus that
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: moves around, Well, we're like that, like Mars, like Venus.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: So it was a shock for Europe, right? Oh boy,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: the Earth is just one of the many things around.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: And then a few centuries later comes Darwin and convinces us,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: convinces everybody, that animals and humans have common ancestors. You're
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: grand-grand-grand-grand-grandmother and the grand-grand-grand-grandmother of your cat could be the
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: same organism, the same person. So that means that we're
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: not so different from animals. We're the same story. And
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: so on. I mean, we keep learning that we are
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: part of nature. And I think the same is true
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: for consciousness. We are not the special thing outside of nature.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: We're just one of things that happen in nature. I'm
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: sure that in the big universe, there are all sorts
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: of things happening like our consciousness, or much more complicated,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: much more rich, much more beautiful. Who knows? We don't know.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: But certainly, we're not so special. We're home in nature,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: which is beautiful, because there isn't nature and culture. Culture
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: is just one natural phenomenon. There isn't body and spirit.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: It's just the same thing described in different manners. So, yes,
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: the universe does all sorts of things, including having things
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: like us, and who knows how many in the... You know,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: the Earth is just one of the hundreds of billions
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: of planets in the galaxy, and the galaxy is one
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: of many hundreds of billions of billions of millions of
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: billions of galaxies. So we're just one little thing in
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: this great.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: Nature.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: We're not special.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: We're not, but we are because we're a part of
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: something special. So whatever the whole thing is, it's pretty special.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, whatever the whole thing is very different than what
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: we thought it was.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: Right, and we are.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: It's much more rich, much more complex, much more variety.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: And that includes us.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: And that includes us.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: So we are special.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: We are special, but you know.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: Every kid is special for his mom. Every mom is
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: special for his kid. The mom is really special for
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: the kid. Every kid is special. And so are we.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: Special for ourselves, for sure. And important for ourselves.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: Do you think that our human consciousness is a way
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: that the universe experiences itself?
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, it is. It is de facto, right? But it's
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: not because there was some initial plan to do that.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's just how things happen.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: Well, it doesn't have to be a plan for it
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: to be a crazy magical experience because it kind of
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 3: is nuts whether it's a plan or not. It's just
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: the fact that it exists. Yeah.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: You know, let me put it this way. You're asking
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: this question to me as a scientist, a physicist. I
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: think that physics is badly overrated.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: How so?
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: Because at some point, people thought, oh, if we figure
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: out the physics equations that govern reality, we've understood everything.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: And that's silly, in my opinion. Precisely because nature is complex. Imagine,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: do you play chess?
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: Okay. So, do you know the basic moves of chess? So,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: you know the basic rules of chess?
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: To know the basic rules of the game doesn't mean
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: to play chess, right? To know the fundamental equation of
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: physics is like knowing the basic rules of the game.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: It's very different from knowing what you could do with that. So,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: the basic laws of physics are like the basic rules
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: of chess. They're easy to know. You write them down,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: the Maxwell equation, well, you need to study a little
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: bit the Schrodinger equation. Everything is governed by that. Yeah,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: but What you can do with that is fabulously complicated.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: It's not enough to know them. You need chemistry for
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: chemical phenomena. You need psychology to understand people. You need literature.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: You need philosophy. You need emotions to understand what is
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: love and so on and so forth. So this idea
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: that physics exhausts everything, it's true in some basic silly sense.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: The same sense in which all the complexity of chess playing,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: after all, is just, you know, ten basic rules, how
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: the king moves, how the queen moves. But in the
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: same sense, it's silly, because the complexity of universe goes
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: far beyond just its basic equations of physics.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: So, when you think of human beings... as a vehicle
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: for the universe to experience itself, for the universe to
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: experience itself. Do you think the universe itself is experiencing
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: things in a way that we just don't understand? Like, is,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: are we, our biological understanding of what we think of
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: as consciousness being that it exists inside this moving creature
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: with a finite lifespan that has the ability to to
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: manipulate its environment. Is that just an egocentric version of
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: what this is? And it's probably everywhere all the time.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: I think we use ourselves as an analogy for trying
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: to understand things beyond ourselves. To some extent, this analogy works,
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: but the key point for me is that the universe
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: is as a whole is still a colossal mystery. We
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: don't know and we don't have the full story by
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: very far. The UNEWS is far more complex for us
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: to understand, far more many things happening, far many possible
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: perspectives which are not ours, which do not have access to.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: So two general questions. In my opinion, the only reasonable
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: answer is we don't know. You know, there's so much
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: we don't know. I think if I look at great
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: scientists of the past, they're characterized not by the fact
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: that they understood the universe, but by the fact that
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: we're so much aware that there's so much in the
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: universe which they did not understand. Look, what are we?
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: We are not super powerful, intelligent, thought-rational things outside the
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: universe looking from the outside. We're little creatures on a
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: little planet, you know, developed for surviving in Savannah, which
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: have developed some good mental tools, very good, but limited
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: compared to the immensity of the universe of its complexity.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: What do we know about the universe from a larger perspective?
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: I think we don't know.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: There's also this weird thing with people where we're always
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: dealing with the perspective of the accumulated knowledge up until now. Yeah.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: And this has always been the case. People, when they
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: first developed quantum theory, this was, what, 100 years ago?
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 100 years ago.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 3: Think about what they were working with. And then 100
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 3: years before that. And it's like everyone is only working
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: with what other people have already figured out and what
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 3: they've contributed to it. Yeah.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: And we're very good in accumulating. That's what we're very
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: good at.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 3: Very good at it, especially now.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: Especially with AI.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: Well, also in the past, right? Sure. People built, how
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: did people sit to physics on the basis of previous experience?
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: That's what is the strength of our speeches somehow. We
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: don't have to start again.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: But that's what I was getting at is I wonder
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: what the world looks like in 200 years.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, great.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: I always think like we are born in such an
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: amazing time. So how old are you?
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: I was born in 56, so I'm past 70.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: Okay. So I'm 59. So, you know, we're not that
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: far off. So we're born into a completely different time
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 3: and we've watched the internet develop. We've watched answering machines
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: and cell phones and we've watched AI and all this
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 3: crazy stuff. And you just imagine that change moved forward
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: for 200 years.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: Yes. Let me balance this with one thing. Not to contradict,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: but to reinforce what you're saying. My grandmother, her name
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: was Olympia. She was born at a time where there
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: was no electric light. There were no trains. There were
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: no cars. There was no washing machines, television. There was
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: no radio. Before dying, she went in a plane. She flew.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: During her life, She saw all, you know, electric life
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: coming in, radio coming in, all the way to washing
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: machine coming in, television coming in, telephone coming in. I
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: think for her, the world changed more than for me.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point, especially the air travel, right?
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 3: You can all of a sudden go to all these
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 3: different countries.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: In a day. You called me and you said, I
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: was in Europe. Can you come 48 hours to Texas?
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: And I flew from Europe to Texas. This is fantastic.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: If I told my grandmother when she was a girl,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: she would have laughed. I said, come on, that makes
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: no sense. It takes a month with the boat to
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: go there.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: So things change dramatically, but they do. So to your question,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: I have no idea how they will be 100 years
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: in the future. we are always, there's always a perspectival thing.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: It seems that the last one is the most important,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: but there have always been big changes.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 3: Always. Always.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: Imagine when books were invented or when agriculture was invented
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: or when cheese was invented.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: Or where countries were invented. So, humankind has gone through
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: quite a rough trip during the last thousand several thousand
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: of years and we're just in one of the bumps
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: not in i think you're in california before being here
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: in texas i i think that there is a idea
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: especially in california that now we are in a super
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: very very very special moment i'm not sure we're in
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: just one of the jumps ahead i think at When
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: electric light and electricity and power came to our world,
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: that was a big jump.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 3: Everything was a jump. I bet people in 1969 watching
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 3: Jimi Hendrix thought it was a jump.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 3: You know, there's so many jumps. There's so many, like, wow,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: I can't believe it. Hunter Thompson wrote about that, about
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: the 60s. All of a sudden, this great change had happened.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was a kid. The difference between me and
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: my parents, I think, was bigger than the difference between...
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: me and the generation who were young there. It was
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: a cultural break. My parents were not understanding me. I
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: was rebellious. I was a bit of a hippie. And
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: there was different worlds. And now parents understand their kids. No?
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: A little bit. They're always confusing. Children are always growing
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: up in a different era.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 3: And there's different experiences and different pressures and different weirdness.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 3: You know, kids are growing up today with social media
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: and phones. Everyone's connected to everyone. They have their location.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: They share their location with their friends. It's a very
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 3: weird time when it comes to that. But it's also,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm just thinking about when we're discussing what
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: we don't know, that there's so much we know. in
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: comparison to a few hundred years ago, but so much
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 3: that we don't know.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: There's so much we know, and we shouldn't take away
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: the value of that, and including scientific knowledge. I think
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: scientific knowledge is great. Sometimes it's the best we have
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: about things. But we shouldn't think that we have figured
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: out the big questions. The big questions are not figured out.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 3: Well, we're no different than the people that lived in
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 3: 1900 that thought they had it figured out. I'm sure
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 3: they were pretty aware. you know, of what they knew
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: and they probably had a, there's probably quite a few
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 3: people that were super confident that basically had it nailed.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. That's one thing that, that's one mistake
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: that humankind often does is to figure out, okay, we
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: got it. Um, I think even if you go in
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: the European middle age, you ask somebody, many people would say, no, no,
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: we've got everything there is to understand.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: It's very easy.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: You know, there are angels and, uh, influence of the
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: astral influence and this and that spirits, they thought they
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: had understood the full story.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, people always do. And then there's always people that
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: come along that tell you that they have the answer
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 3: and they know what it is and they're very confident
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 3: and very charismatic so people follow them.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, true. And wisdom, I think, to a large extent,
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: is two things. One is realizing that we don't have
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: the answers. And, you know, we're never certain about anything.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: Certainty is not within our... I like to tell this story.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: My father grew up thinking his first name was Franco
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: until the day he asked a birth certificate and figured
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: out that his first name was Giulio. So I went
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: home and said, what the hell is going on here?
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: And my grandfather told him, well, you know, your mother
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: wanted to call you Franco, but he didn't like it,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: but he didn't dare say so. So I registered you
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: with a different first name. So that created a disaster
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: for the rest of his life because his paperwork was
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: all some Franco, some Giulioso. So he didn't know his
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: own name, right? So even about your own name, you
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: can be wrong. You can be wrong about everything, even
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: about your own name. There's always a case in which
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: things can go wrong. But that's good. I don't think
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: we should aim at certainty. In fact, it's the other
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: way around. We should be careful about certainty because certainty
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: is what blocks you from understanding more. If you're certain
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: that the earth is flat, you don't understand it's round.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: If you're certain, you know, that things are objective, you
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: don't understand the possibility that they are not and so
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: on and so forth. So, accepting the limitation of our knowledge,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: the fact that we may be wrong, it's a key
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: for learning more. That's, I think, it's crucial. And the
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: other thing, you know, you and I have, I think,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: one thing in common.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 3: What's that?
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: Curiosity. I, If I had to define myself, what has
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: been the driving force of so much we've done is curiosity.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: I got curious about science, curious about philosophy, curious about
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: the world. Curiosity is what, and you too, right? I mean,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: it seems to me that all this Joe Rogan experience
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: is an openness to curiosity of listening to people, what
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: they have to say. Curiosity, I think, is a fabulous
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: force for for the world, not just thinking that you
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: close yourself in what you know already, but being curious,
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: being curious about the rest of the ideas, the world,
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: the others.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 3: I think it's genuinely contagious too. When I find people
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 3: that are curious about things, I get curious.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 3: When someone's actually curious and they start having these conversations
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 3: that are clearly to them fascinating, I'm addicted to it.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 3: I'm like, what do you got? What are you talking about?
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 3: What is this? How did you do it? How did
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: you figure that out? Yeah. But I've, yeah, I mean,
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: I've kind of been insanely fortunate that I can have
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: these kind of conversations with people like you.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I envy you for that. You get to know
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: all possible people very easily, right?
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 3: It's very interesting.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: It's not a finger and everybody comes to you.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 3: Well, it took a long time to get to that.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 3: Even from the very beginning, it was always so interesting.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of people that, you know,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 3: you might not even know who they are, but you'll
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 3: have a conversation with them and you'll get a new
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: perspective on things. You'll get a new version of how
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 3: a person lives their life. And the more I think
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: you gather about that, the more you understand about yourself
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 3: and the more you understand about interacting with people.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And you discover that people are different, have
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: different ideas.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 3: And you figure out why they came to these different
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 3: perspectives too. And if you're open... You can consider, like,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 3: how you came to yours.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: One of the most things that fascinates more is how
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: people get ideas.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: How ideas come in. After all.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 3: What do you think ideas are?
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know. That's a fabulous question. In fact, I
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: got a rich man from California calling me not long
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: ago and said, asked me the question, Carlo, how do
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: ideas arrive? I think it's a fabulous question. We learn, right?
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: We learn personally. We learn historically. And learning mostly is
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: not just learning facts. It's learning ideas, different ways of thinking.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: Civilization is just a product of ideas. All we live
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: is ideas, in a sense. And how do ideas come in?
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Our mind has this incredible capacity of
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: generating ideas Very often, ideas are just combinations of previous things.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: A lot of physics is just... I understand this because
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: it's like that, but not exactly like that. So I
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: take part of the idea of that, part of the
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: idea of that, I combine. It's a lot of combinatorics.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: I hear what he says, I hear what you say,
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: I hear what the others say. Ah, look, this goes
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: together with that. So a lot of ideas come from
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: bringing together. That's why... the more you learn, the more
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: you produce things. The more you're curious, the more you're...
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: You know, how did Newton come out with this incredible idea?
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: He studied Kepler. He studied Galileo. The two things didn't
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: make sense together, but they were similar. So he said,
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: how can we put this together with that? My own job,
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: my own physics job, is to mix quantum mechanics and
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: general relativity. That's what my core of my research is.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: The central part of my research is doing that.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 3: How do you go about doing that? How do you
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 3: mix them?
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: I think you mix them by taking them seriously. So
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics is so successful. that it's telling us something
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: about the world. And general relativity is so successful. General
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: relativity has predicted black holes, gravitational waves, expansion of the universe, time,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: the fact that time is your head is more than
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: time is your feet, and so on and so forth.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: So it's all come out to be right. So it
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: has to be right. And quantum mechanics works so well.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: All our technology is based on quantum mechanics. It has
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: to be right. So then the question is, how do
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: they fit together? You sort of turn them around, both
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: of them, until you say, oh, look, this might join
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: with that. There's this aspect of this that goes together
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: with this aspect of this. That has been the work
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: of my life, quantum gravity. And a theory me and
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: my friends have come out with, it's called loop quantum gravity.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: It's a way of solving this problem. We're not sure
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: it's right, right? That's my main work in physics, quantum gravity.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: It's a way of bringing together quantum mechanics and Einstein theory.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: It gives some predictions. It gives a picture of quantum
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: space and quantum time. It's a possible solution of a question.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: The question is, what are the quantum properties of gravity?
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: What are the quantum properties of space and time? Are
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: we sure? No, not yet. We are now in the
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: situation where we're working for findings and consequences that could
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: be tested. Science is not sufficient to have ideas. Then
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: you want to test them. So that is my entire...
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: The main central job of my life has been combining
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: ideas to make a new conceptual structure for thinking about
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: quantum space and quantum time. And that's useful for understanding
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: what happened inside the black holes, what happened to the
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: early universe, what happened to black holes. You know, black holes,
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: if you let them there for a very, very long time,
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: they evaporate. They become smaller and smaller. So what happened
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: at the end of the evaporation? These kind of questions
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: need quantum gravity.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 3: What do you think happened before the Big Bang?
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, so first, we don't know. I think it has
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: to be said clearly because it's good to speculate and
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: maybe in 10 years we will know. It's not impossible
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: to know, but for the moment we don't know. There
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: are two possibilities. One is that genuinely there was nothing
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: before the Big Bang. So time started there. This is
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: what Stephen Hawking... He worked a lot on this possibility.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: He expected that to be the case. The other possibility
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: is that, you know, there was something before the Big Bang.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: And the intuitive idea is that, you know, you have
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: a universe collapsing, falling down into itself, getting to a very,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: very compressed stage and then bouncing out. And we see
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: the bouncing out. And if I had to bet now,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I would bet for the second one.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: From the equations, that seems to be what was the case.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 3: Do you think this is a constant process of expansion
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 3: and compression?
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: No, because I think that if we do this jump
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: that you just did, we're making the usual mistake as
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: soon as you understand something to think it's there forever.
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: If you live in a valley and ask... Well, I've
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: never seen what's behind the heel. You look behind the heel,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: you see something else. Say, oh, I get it. It's
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: like that forever. No, it's not like that forever. It's
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: like that for a while and something else happens. So
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: we are afraid of saying, I don't know. So as
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: soon as we have a step ahead, we tend to say, okay,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: I got it.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 3: That's a very healthy explanation.
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 3: Because it's accurate. We really can't. Figure it out. Yeah.
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 3: When you saw the James Webb telescope, the more newer
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 3: discoveries of these galaxies that formed far earlier than they
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 3: should have, did that give you pause about the date
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 3: of the universe? Because some people have speculated that perhaps
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 3: the date is wrong, that the date of the Big Bang.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. But I think it's more plausible that
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: there were primordial black holes that gave rise to these
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: early galaxies. So there's an explanation for that. There is
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: an explanation within the same dates, which is possible. That,
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: you know, when the universe was very, very... That we
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: know a lot of confidence, right? There was a time
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: about 12, 13, 14 billion years ago that the universe
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: was much compressed, much hot, and fluctuating a lot. So
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: at that time, it's very possible that many black holes
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: formed And maybe some of the early galaxies were generated
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: by black hole formed at that stage. That seems to
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: me the most plausible answer. I'm not a cosmologist, so
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: it's not really my field, but it's close. I try
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: to follow.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 3: So it would be that our understanding of what it
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 3: takes to form a galaxy is incorrect.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 3: Or the time it takes.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 3: So....
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: You know, during my life, something that has been realized
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: is that not only did there are black holes all
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: over the sky. When I was a student, people didn't
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: believe in black holes.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 3: When did they first discover them?
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: I studied black hole school, but as a mathematical aspect
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: of Einstein theory. And the book said, well, there's probably
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: nothing real in the universe that correspond to that. The
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: first people who started thinking, actually, that thing up in
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: the sky that we see could be a black hole
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: was in the 70s. It was very interesting because, you know,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of binary systems in the sky,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: two stars rotating around one another. So you actually see
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: the movement of two stars. And there were some funny things.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: in which you just saw one star dancing around something
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: which was not seeing. So people said, well, maybe there
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: is a black hole. It's dancing around the black hole.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: It was speculative. Then there were the quasars, some very
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: intense signals that come in from very far away that
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: people couldn't understand what they were. And people said, well,
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: if it was a black hole, the matter falling into
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: the black hole could radiate very strongly, and we could
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: see that. The actual evidence grew very slowly in the
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: 80s and 90s. In 2000, I moved back from America
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: to Europe. I arrived in France, and the director of
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: the department was a particle physicist, a very good particle physicist.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: And I said, I'm working on black holes. And he said, Carlo,
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: you don't believe the black holes are real.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 3: The 2000s.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: So still physicists, very respectable physicists, didn't believe the black
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: holes were real.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 3: That's so late. It's very late.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: It's very late, yes. At that point, the relativists, the cosmologists,
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: the astrophysicists were taken very, very seriously. Now we have
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: pictures of black holes. So now there's no doubt. There's
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: no doubt. Physicists have doubt about everything.
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 3: Are any of those old professors still alive?
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but they changed their mind. Scientists change their mind.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 3: Good ones.
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: You're totally right. Good scientists change their mind. I'm sure
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: if I talk to him, he would laugh and say, oh,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: of course you were right. So now we have complete
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: evidence that we're black holes. But, you know, we see
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: black holes, which are sort of a little bit more
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: massive than our sun. There are many, many of these.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: But then we discover these colossal black holes. gigantic, which
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: are usually the center of the galaxy. And we have
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: two pictures of black holes. One, the black hole is
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: the center of our galaxy, and then another black hole
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: much bigger in another galaxy more far away. It's beautiful pictures, right?
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: They were on the front page of the newspapers a
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: few years ago. So when this was realized, these black
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: holes in the center of the galaxies, the Then the
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: question came immediately to everybody, every good scientist. Is it
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: a galaxy that forms and then creates a black hole
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: in its center? Or is it actually the black hole
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: that starts that, you know, then it forms a galaxy
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: around it? It's not yet completely resolved. What is the
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: role of the black hole in the galaxy? And I
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: think these very, very early galaxies could be just a
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: product of black holes coming out of the very early
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: stages of the universe.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 3: The craziest theory that I've ever heard was that in
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 3: the center of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 3: And that could be, if you went through that black hole,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 3: you go into a whole other universe filled with hundreds
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 3: of billions of galaxies, each with a black hole in
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 3: the center of it. You go through each one of them,
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 3: hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with a black hole.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 3: Then it's just, that's true infinity.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a crazy theory. It's a beautiful theory. In fact,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: there's a good friend of mine who worked a lot
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: and maybe even started that theory. It's Lee Smolin. I
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: am not convinced. I think that, I don't know. We
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: don't know. But I think that if you jump into
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: Black Hole, you don't go to another universe. After a
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: long time you come out in our own universe. So
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: the black hole left alone is going to eat everything around,
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: and then left alone it's going to become smaller and smaller, evaporate,
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: and then that's what loop quantum gravity seems to suggest,
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: there is a quantum transition, becomes a white hole, and
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: everything inside comes out. So remember, at the beginning of
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: our conversation, we said that time is different, right? Time
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: goes faster and slower. So if you jump into a
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: black hole in a short time for you, you're going
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: to jump out billions of years in the future. So
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: a black hole could be a shortcut to the future. Oh, boy.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: Isn't physics beautiful?
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 3: It's beautiful. Yeah. It's terrifying and beautiful at the same time.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 3: It just magnifies the scope of our minuscule existence.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's fabulous that we can learn about that. Yeah.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: There was a time which people didn't know what were
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: this little dot in the sky like Venus and Mars.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: Now we, you know, we send machines up there and
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: people want to go up there.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: There was a time in which people said, oh, we're
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: never going to learn the chemical composition of the planet
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: and the star because they're far away. This is 19th century,
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: not long ago. Our grand-grandfather. And they were completely wrong.
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: We learned, right? Through the spectra, there are ways for...
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: We know exactly what is the chemical composition of stars.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 3: Which is crazy.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy. So we do learn. This is magical.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is. I mean... It's fascinating to even
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 3: think of the possibilities that are out there. Yeah. And
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 3: that as time goes on, we'll develop more and more
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 3: powerful telescopes and we'll be able to see more and more. Yeah.
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: If we don't kill each other with nuclear weapons, which
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: is a very concrete possibility.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 3: Well, if there really are aliens out there, there really
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 3: are super advanced civilizations, I would love to know how
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 3: they managed to navigate through that. if they went through
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 3: the same course that we are currently going through. I
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 3: would love to know. Because that's one of the things
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 3: about the Fermi paradox, right? Maybe the reason why we
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 3: don't see them out there is because they never really
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 3: get that far.
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe they don't get it. Maybe they destroy themselves with
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons when they were on the stage. Maybe, you know,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: the universe is very vast. It's huge. So even if
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: in the galaxy there are many, many... It could be
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: that they're too far.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 3: Could be. Or it could be a small percentage of
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 3: them get to a position where we are, a very
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 3: small percentage, and then a small percentage of them make
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 3: it all the way without being wiped out by natural
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 3: disasters or cataclysmics of whatever species they are, whatever their
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 3: design is.
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: Do you know what I think is most probable? What?
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: They have already seen us and they thought we were
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: totally uninterested and we just avoided talking to us because
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: we're too stupid. Really?
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 3: I don't like that theory. One of the reasons why
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 3: I don't like that theory is because we don't do that.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 3: We are constantly studying things that are more primitive than
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 3: we are. We're constantly doing experiments on ecosystems and we're
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 3: trying to solve problems that exist. Like I was watching
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 3: this documentary about this island. That got separated when they
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 3: dammed some river and created this island. And it was
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 3: in South America. And this island was overrun with monkeys.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 3: And they had no predators on this island.
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: So many, many monkeys.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 3: Tons of monkeys. But because of the fact that they
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 3: didn't have any predators, they had lost all their fear
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 3: of raptors. And they had started over-consuming the seeds of
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 3: all the plants. And so there weren't new saplings growing,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 3: and it was having a detrimental effect on the ecosystem.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 3: So they brought in harpy eagles. You ever seen a
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 3: harpy eagle?
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: Not the monkeys, the humans brought in.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 3: Humans.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 3: Brought in two harpy eagles.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: No, what is it?
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 3: A harpy eagle.
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, eagles, the bird, the big bird.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, eagle. It might be the biggest eagle. Okay. It's
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 3: either that or the golden eagle. Which one's the bigger one?
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 3: I think harpy eagles are bigger. Anyway, they're really good
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 3: at killing monkeys. And they let these two harpy eagles
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 3: loose and they went ham. And they killed so many
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 3: monkeys that they had to stop the experiment after a
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 3: few years. So these eagles had had offspring. So they
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 3: had two other eagles that were there as well. And
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 3: these eagles were just wiping out these monkeys. And they said, okay,
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 3: this is too much. And this is now they're like
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 3: getting past the whatever the numbers are that they could reproduce.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 3: Like it was getting to the point where these monkeys Eagles,
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 3: just two eagles and their two offspring were just, so
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 3: they pulled the plug and they pulled the eagles out
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 3: of there and they said, all right, well, we tried that,
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 3: but unintended consequences. But that's us. That's just humans wondering
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 3: what do we do about this island? Why wouldn't we
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 3: just leave that stupid island with those stupid monkeys and
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 3: let them figure it out? Yeah. If they eat all
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 3: the plants, they'll starve to death. They'll figure it out. No,
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 3: we don't. We go in and we interfere and we
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 3: intervene and we monkey with the, for lack of a
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 3: better term. monkey with their ecosystem by bringing in predators.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: So you think there was some alien civilization would interfere
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: with us?
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 3: Of course they would. We are so fascinated.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: The Stanley Kubrick movie Space Odyssey was about that, right?
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: An alien civilization who were just... According to the story
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: of the movie, we're sort of an experiment of an
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: alien civilization.
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 3: Well, that's an old story.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 3: That's a story that's from the, you know, the Sumerian text.
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 3: That's from the... Yeah. I mean... That goes all the
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 3: way back to some of the old books that they
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 3: found that were in the caves in Qumran.
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: Well, Sumerians have this idea of the gods. We are
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: just created gods for their own advantage. You see, these
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: are beautiful stories. I always find them fascinating to talk about,
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: but to.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: To humans, we're just trying to project ourselves to something
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: similar to us, changing a little bit. I think there
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: should be something like life all over the universe, but
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: why should it be similar to us? We lack imagination.
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: There are more ways of being complex than just having
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: a civilization the way we have.
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 3: That's true, but how do you get there? don't you
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 3: think you probably get there by innovation? And if you
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 3: get there, you're not just going to automatically evolve superintelligence
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 3: without any innovation and any technology. Most likely, biological creatures
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 3: are going to develop technology in order to advance themselves
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 3: to the point where they have technology like we have
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 3: today or far more advanced than that. So it has
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 3: to go through a process. So whether it looks like
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 3: us or not, for sure, we definitely lack imagination in
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 3: our just imagining the possibilities of different kinds of life
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 3: and different kinds of intelligence all over the universe. But
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 3: the idea that they wouldn't be interested in us seems
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 3: to me silly. Like we are in an adolescent stage
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 3: of evolution where we're both, like we were talking about earlier,
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 3: people are kind and compassionate and wonderful to be around
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 3: and curious and interesting and also brutal, stealing resources from
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 3: other countries, creating wars under false pretenses, you know. using propaganda.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 3: So we're both things.
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: We're both things.
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 3: We're weird, but we also have potential. You agree, I agree.
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 3: Humans have the potential to live a far better way
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 3: than we're living now. If I was an alien, I
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 3: would be utterly fascinated by the soap opera. I'd be like,
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 3: how does this one turn out? These people are out
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 3: of their fucking minds. We found a nutty-ass civilization that
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 3: are on the cusp of figuring it out, and at
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 3: the same time, they're making an artificial, digital version of
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 3: itself that's far more intelligent. I would think we're a
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 3: really interesting study. Yeah. I would not think they'd be like, oh,
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 3: so boring, these people with their godlike AI nuclear weapons.
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay. I buy the point. I concede the point, Joe.
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: I concede the point, Joe. Yeah, yeah. But look what
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: we're doing. We're using our own minds to try to
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: imagine how something could be, could think about Sure. But
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: of course the only model we have is us.
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 3: Right. And other animals.
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: And other animals, yes. Yes, exactly. But I don't know
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: how much squirrels talk about us. Probably they don't. But
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: if they had to figure out humans, they would use
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: squirrel notions to try to figure out humans. And they
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: would just get it wrong.
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 3: Right. Right. And much like squirrels, we're probably so limited
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 3: in our ability to perceive and imagine.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 3: In comparison.
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: That's what I was trying to say.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 3: To what else is out there.
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Squirrels are cute.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 3: They are, until they bite each other's nuts off. Do they?
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: Are they nasty?
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 3: It's kind of a, it's not known exactly if they
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 3: do that. But that's always been like the wives' tale,
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 3: is that they, when they're mating, when they're competing, they
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 3: will fight. And one of the things they do do
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 3: for sure is they throw each other out of trees.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 3: And that's one of the reasons why squirrels can fall
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 3: from so far and still survive. Squirrels can fall from
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 3: like 30, 40 feet in the air and they bounce
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 3: off the dirt and they're fine. Like they're just constructed
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 3: for falling because they go to war. They go to
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 3: war with each other to breed, you know, to one
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 3: or two males are competing over a female. And the
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 3: story was always that they would bite each other's balls off. Oh, boy.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know if that's true. That was one of
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 3: those like the outdoorsmen would always tell you.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: If you grew up in Europe, I did. When you
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: come to this side of the Atlantic, one of the
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: beautiful things is that there are animals much more than
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: in Europe. The problem with Europe is there's too many people.
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: And especially places like Italy or the Netherlands are full
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: of people, full of people. You don't see animals in Europe.
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 3: Right. Other than like pets. You see cats and.
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: Dogs and rats. Sure, sure, sure. Animals which live strictly
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: with humans, either as pets or as rats, a lot.
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: But when you go out hiking the mountains, it's very
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: rare to see animals. You know, when I was a kid,
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: it seemed laughable in America, but... I would go hiking
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: with my parents as a small kid and if there
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: was a squirrel, everybody was jumping, oh look, a squirrel, fantastic.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I came to the US
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: and there's squirrels all over, right? Keep out of your house.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 3: It's good. Right. Especially people that live in the country. Yeah.
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: But then I moved to Canada. Canada is fantastic. Oh, yeah.
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: We were living in London, Ontario. And out of our windows,
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: there were coyotes. There were all sorts of animals.
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: We had an eagle coming down in our garden.
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: And just... sitting there.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 4: Canada has true wildlife it's fabulous so for me that
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 4: was a great thing of coming to this side of
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 4: the Atlantic it's still more nature is still more pleasant
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 4: in Europe nature has been domesticated all over it's rare
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 4: to see some wilderness.
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 3: Well we're very fortunate that we have the national park
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 3: system and the you know the way we have these
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 3: national parks we can go to Yosemite you can see
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 3: elk and bears and there's wolves there it's like it's
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 3: incredible I mean, it's a little bit domesticated in that sense.
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 3: Like you go to the elk are not scared of
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 3: you at all. They hang out by the visitor stand.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 3: It's a little bastardized. There's an Instagram page called the
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 3: Turons of Yellowstone. Not like morons, but tourists. And people
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 3: that get too.
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: Close to the bison and get flipped.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 3: Through the air.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: Disastrous, yes.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 3: God, so many of those. But it's because they've grown
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 3: up in cities and they don't understand what wildlife is.
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 3: And they want to take a selfie with the bison.
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy.
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy. You can guess how that turns out.
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: When I was in my 20s, I dropped out from
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: university and I took one year off traveling. And I
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: did coast to coast, Atlantic to Pacific, Canada one way
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: and U.S. the other way. And alone. It was fantastic.
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: Did you hitchhike? Hitchhiking, yeah.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 3: Look at you. You were a hippie.
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, in that sense, yes, absolutely. I met all
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: sorts of people. But when I arrived in the Rockies,
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: it was in Canada near Banff, and I spent some
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: time hiking in the mountains. It was marvelous for a European,
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: exactly because it was empty. But then I came down
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: to Banff, it was a small, tiny village at the time,
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: and the camping was too expensive for a young kid, so...
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: So I said, okay, I don't want to stay in
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: the camping. So I walked up a little bit and
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: put my tent in a little empty space. And then
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: a grizzly came. Yeah. So I was inside my tent.
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: The sun was going down. And this big bear started,
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: you know, walking around the tent. I was terrified to
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: death because I had one of these little, little tents,
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: just one layer, and the sun was going down. So
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: I saw the shade of the bear on the tent.
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: So the instruction was, make noise. Okay? That was the
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: instruction that was given because the risk is that the
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: bear opens the tent looking for food and sees you,
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: gets scared and kills you. So if you make noise,
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: he's supposed to go away. But I was trying to
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: scream but was too terrified noise was not coming so
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: then I looked around to make noise it was nothing
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: so I started clapping my head like an idiot so
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: the bear I had actually that I did right hanged
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: my food on a tree at a little distance so
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: the bear went to the food opened the food and
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: then after a while went away I was terrified.
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 3: How long did that last?
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: The entire thing lasted half an hour before I had
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: the courage to come out and look, and there was
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: no bear anymore. So I took my tent and ran
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: down to the campground. I said, I pay, whatever. I
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: stay here. And then, you know, people were talking about it.
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: There was this grizzly that was going around. So I survived.
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 3: Whoa.
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my encounter with wilderness, which coming, you know,
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: the little boy coming from... Europe, Italy, totally civilized, no
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: wild animals. It was quite scary for me. But, you know,
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: I learned that sometimes it's not a bad idea to
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: respect regulation. Of course, there was a regulation. Don't go along.
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they know what they're doing. Yeah. But it's not
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 3: to say that that bear wouldn't wander its way through
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 3: the camp, too. They will. They don't respect boundaries.
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: They don't respect regulations.
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 3: It's such a crazy animal that we have here. Like
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 3: grizzly bears are so fascinating. They're so enormous.
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: Enormous. Enormous. Yeah.
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 3: And they used to be all over the place. Like
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 3: California doesn't have any anymore, but that's on the state flag. Oh, yeah.
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: It's a grizzly?
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: It's grizzly. It's not a black bear? No.
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 3: No. It's a brown bear. They used to have brown
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 3: bears all over California. In fact, the guy who was
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 3: last killed by a grizzly bear, they named a town
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 3: after him. It's called Lavec, California.
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been to there before, and it's like there's
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 3: a plaque, a memorial.
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. In Canada, they have accidents. They still
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: have accidents.
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Especially B.C., right? There's a lot of them
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 3: out there.
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in B.C., yeah.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 3: I have friends that live in Edmonton, and boy, they
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 3: have everything out there. They have lynx. You run into
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 3: lynx all the time. You see grizzly bears. They have
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 3: moose everywhere. It's such a wild place. It's so cool.
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: That's what I envy of this America, right? In Europe,
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: you don't see anything.
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 3: Right. It is an issue. There's almost no predators in Europe.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 3: It's very rare that you find wolves other than, of course, Russia.
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you go east.
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 3: You get a lot of wolves there and bears as well,
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 3: of course. But they kind of eradicated them all from
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 3: most of urban Europe.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 3: America still has a lot of wild places. It's one
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 3: of the cool things about this country, too, is that
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 3: we have this public land system, too, so people can
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 3: go and visit these wild places.
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And there is all this marvelous area, sort of Arizona, Utah, Utah,
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: New Mexico. The south of Utah is just marvelous.
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's incredible. I was actually watching another documentary yesterday
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 3: on jaguars. entering into Arizona. There's quite a few.
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: You mean the animal, not the car?
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the animal, yeah. These jaguars are entering into Arizona,
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 3: and they've spotted several of them now, like pretty large ones.
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 3: It's pretty interesting. They've decided to make their way back
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 3: into America because that's where they used to live.
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: Where are they coming from?
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 3: Mexico.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, coming up?
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, coming up from Mexico. I think they spotted four
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 3: of them now.
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: This is the same as mountain lions?
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, much larger. Jaguars are huge. They're the
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 3: ones that eat crocodiles in the Amazon. They're the ones
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 3: that dive off of trees and kill the caimans and
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 3: bite them by the back of the neck and drag them.
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 3: Have you ever seen that?
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: No, I've never seen it.
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, you've got to watch this. It's amazing. Jaguars are
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 3: some of the coolest animals to watch hunt because one
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 3: of the things that they hunt is crocodiles. Like, yeah,
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 3: they love to eat caiman crocodiles. So they hide in
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 3: trees or on the side of the bank, like waiting
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 3: for the crocodile to get into a vulnerable position and
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 3: they leap on them. And they dive into the water
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 3: and leap on them and bite them in the back
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 3: of the head. They're one of the few animals, this
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 3: is in the documentary, that kills not by asphyxiation. They
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 3: kill by crushing the back of the head. Oh, wow.
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 3: That's their move.
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: So they have super strong.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're huge. Look at them sneaking up behind them.
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 3: They're the third biggest cat.
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy.
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, that's how they kill. They bite the back
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 3: of the neck. They crush the head. And then they
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 3: drag him away. So he's going to eat a crocodile.
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 3: So they're the third largest big cat. So there's tigers
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 3: are number one. Then there's lions and then jaguars. And
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 3: so they're starting to make their way back. Oh, it's five.
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 3: Five jaguars spotted in Arizona.
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: Are they dangerous to humans?
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. 100%. Are they?
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 4: 100%.
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, not the numbers that they're at right now,
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 3: but they would be. Sure, if you're hiking or you're
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 3: doing something stupid and you zig where you should have
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 3: zagged and you run into one of them. I mean, historically,
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 3: they've eaten people. They prefer, I'm sure, to eat.
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: But you have to do something stupid. You have to
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: bother them.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 3: Well, you have to be on their diet, right? Like,
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 3: this is the same thing with... Tigers. Tigers become a
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 3: problem once they realize they can eat people. And then
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 3: they habitually eat people.
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: And that's what they do in India. When one tiger
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: starts doing something wrong, they go out and look for it.
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. Because then they realize how easy it is.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 3: So once we become– once we are on the menu,
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 3: it's like the first time you eat a Chick-fil-A. You're like,
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 3: this place is great. And you just want to keep
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 3: coming back. That's the problem. And it's also for– But that's.
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: Not wise on their side because we are– Weak individually,
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: but we're a super strong group.
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 3: Right. But they don't know that yet. And a lot
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 3: of the times, the places where they're hunting, the people
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 3: are weak individually and not united because they're in these
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 3: very small villages. And so they don't have any resources.
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 3: They don't have any food, water. They're in trouble already.
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 3: And then these animals get them. Tigers get them. But
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 3: the jaguars in the United States is such a small number.
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 3: I don't think that's the real concern. But what's interesting
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 3: is that they've decided to repopulate North America, or the
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 3: United States at least. It's pretty cool. They're making their
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 3: way back up here. I don't want to run into
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 3: one because they will eat you. I mean, they're huge.
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 3: They're huge, and you have zero chance of stopping them
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 3: from eating you once they decide they're going to do that.
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 3: You don't have a chance with a mountain lion, and
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 3: they're like double the size of a mountain lion. They're
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 3: really big. It's a big cat, but they're really beautiful.
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: Why are we fascinated so much by big cats? We are, definitely.
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: It's just incredibly... It captures something of our imagination. This
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: is something about the beauty, the strength, their elegance, their everything.
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: It's just that we react to it.
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 3: I think we were hunted by them. I think that
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 3: was a big part of our early ancestors. When you're
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 3: dealing with big cats and slow animals... Until those slow
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 3: animals figure out how to make weapons, you're probably hunted
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 3: by big cats. I think Rupert Sheldrake made this point.
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 3: It's a really good point. When children go to sleep,
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 3: they're not afraid of all the things that could actually
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 3: affect them in an urban environment. Like they're not afraid
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 3: of child molesters or murderers or someone going to break
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 3: into their house and They're afraid of monsters. Monsters.
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: Which are the big predators.
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Exactly. They're afraid of monsters even though they've never
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 3: experienced a monster.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: There's a theory that according to which one of the
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: main steps in humankind becoming humankind is exactly this passage
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: from being preys to being predators.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: Which had to.
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: Changed profoundly our mental structures.
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: When we realized that we could resist big predators and
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: actually becoming predators ourselves. Because evolutionarily, we were not predators.
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: If you go back again. And our speeches at some
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: point learned to be like those things we were afraid of.
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But does this explain the fascinations? Because a monster,
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: it's not just a fear that they generate in us.
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: It's also sort of admiration and beauty.
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 3: Well, we have admiration and beauty for almost all big predators, right?
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 3: We have admiration.
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: Not for crocodiles.
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: They're not beautiful.
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: We might find it interesting, but not the kind of
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: fascinations with.
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. There's something about mammals.
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 3: We're closer to them.
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: We're closer. We're much, much closer to them. In fact,
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated how much easy we communicate with mammals, right?
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: Without language, without words. But if you are in the
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: wilderness and any sort of mammals, you understand the animal
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: and they understand you. So... We communicate very easily. It's completely,
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: you know, reading each other's emotions and each other's intentions
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: and attitude. So it's easy for us to, you know,
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: you go your way, I'm going your way. We don't
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: bother each other.
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 3: Sure, unless you're on the menu.
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah.
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you could be on the menu, especially if you're
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 3: in the wrong place. But that's just the nature of
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 3: the wild itself. It's just this constant series of life
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 3: eating life all around you. whether it's life-eating plant life
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 3: or life-eating other animal life or life-eating aquatic life. Yeah.
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Then somehow we became predators at some point in
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: our history.
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 1: And then we started doing this against one another.
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we probably started doing that from the very beginning,
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 3: most likely. We were probably competing for resources.
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: We don't know. We don't know, right? There are two theories.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: There are two competing theories about what happened to our species.
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: Our species is, what, 100,000 to 100,000 years old. And
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: there are two versions of this story. One is that
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: war is something that started very late, only when we
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: became agriculture, when we started accumulating and putting away big
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: chunks of grain. And the other is that groups of
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: humans were in war even before that. Very different theories.
• 2:23:49
  Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting that there are these different
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: theories because it has to do with our future and
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: our present. Namely, is this idea of getting in group
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: once against the other and making war with one another
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: something which is only a few thousand years old. So
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: it's not in our genetic structure. It's just that, you know,
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: after agriculture, we could steal stuff from one another. Or
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: it's something that goes back all the hundreds of thousands
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: of years of our speeches. We don't know.
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 3: What do you think?
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I tend to think that war
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: is recent. Because... A lot of the communities on Earth
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 1: which live hunting, gathering, they don't go to war. They
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: have no reason. It's an economical thing. You only go
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: to war with another group if there is some accumulated
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: resources you can sell. If you find another group of hunter-gatherers,
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: if you have extra meat, you share, because otherwise go rotten.
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: There's no point in going to war. And if you
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: look at our cousins, it's very confusing because Bonobo don't
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: fight when two groups meet. In fact, at war they fuck,
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 1: they don't fight. But chimpanzees do. And they're equally related
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: to us. So it doesn't help to look at our cousins,
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: what they do. But it's a crucial question. It has
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: to do with the question we were discussing before. Can
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 1: we get rid of war? How much war is part
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: of our genetic, not because we are blocked by our
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: genetic inheritance, but clearly it's much easier to think that
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: we can get rid of it if it's only 10,000
• 2:25:51
  Speaker 1: years old rather than hundreds.
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 3: I tend to think it's hundreds of thousands of years old.
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 3: And I think chimpanzees are the best example of that.
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 3: We are much closer in behavior to chimpanzees than we
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 3: are to bonobos.
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: We are equally related.
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 3: We are equally related, but in behavior.
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: Genetically, it's not.
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 3: But in behavior. We're much closer to the way chimpanzees behave.
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 3: You know, but I had this.
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: Hippie part of my life. I identify better with bonobos.
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you do. You're a really nice guy. That's
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 3: why you think the way you think.
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 4: Oh, I see.
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 3: And I think it's great.
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: You mean I'm more a bonobo guy? Yes. Or more
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: a chimpanzee guy?
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 3: I don't even think I'm a chimpanzee guy. I just
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 3: recognize that chimpanzees go to war with each other, and
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 3: they kill each other. There's a chimpanzee war going on
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 3: right now. You know that, right?
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they do. No, I didn't know, but I know
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: they do.
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a major chimpanzee war going on right now
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 3: that they're documenting. Have you ever seen that? There's a
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 3: Netflix series, Chimp Nation.
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 3: It's really great. It's fascinating. So the way Chimp Nation
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 3: came about, and I had the documentary crew on, the
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 3: guys who created it, it was really interesting. They had
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 3: these scientists that are embedded... in this troop of chimpanzees
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 3: for a long time, for more than 20 years.
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: They lived with them?
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, they lived with them.
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: So the chimpanzee accepted the presence of this?
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. So they have rules. You must stay more
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 3: than 20 yards away from them, never have food on you,
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 3: and don't make eye contact. And because they've been doing
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 3: this with this protocol for 20 years, the chimpanzees completely
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 3: accept the fact these people are there.
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 1: They slowly get used and realize that there's no challenge,
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: no threat.
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 3: They're normal. They're completely normalized. So they behave normal around them.
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 3: And they see... All this crazy behavior. They see, first
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 3: of all, a lot of inter-tribe conflict. They kill each other.
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 3: And then they kill ones from other tribes. They leave
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 3: tribes and start new tribes. It's really interesting. Really interesting.
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 3: But they behave very much like the way we do. do.
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 3: They have a leader. The leader's the alpha. The young
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 3: man challenges the leader. Sometimes the guy gets driven out.
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 3: They form new parties. They come back and try to
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 3: kill the ones that they started out with. They cross
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 3: boundaries to get new fruit and new trees. And then
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 3: they have wars over the trees. They behave just the
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 3: way we do, just at a different scale. But I
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 3: think that, like, for instance, we talk about Native Americans
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 3: and hunter-gatherers. The Native Americans were constantly at war with
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 3: each other. They would go on raiding parties constantly. There was,
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't know how many tribes were in total.
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 3: Some were in the neighborhood of like 200 tribes in
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 3: this country. which were constantly battling each other and killing
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 3: each other for hundreds and hundreds of years.
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: So that's pessimist.
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. No, that's what they did.
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 3: It's not pessimistic.
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not questioning it.
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's not pessimistic.
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: It's what fooled a pessimist view of the future.
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 3: But no, no, no, no. It's not even pessimistic. It's
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 3: just I'm just saying that's what they did. Like this
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 3: idea that the only reason why this place was at
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 3: war is because Americans came here or Europeans came here
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 3: and settled. Not really. The Comanche basically wiped out the
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 3: Apache and all of this area right here. This area
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 3: we're at right now was called Comancheria before any settlers.
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 3: They were dominant and they were ruthless. And their favorite
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 3: thing to do was go on raiding parties. And so
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 3: they would go and raid other tribes and they would
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 3: kidnap people and torture people and murder people. And they
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 3: did that without any influence from the Europeans. And they
• 2:29:09
  Speaker 3: did that for a long time. And that was... All
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 3: across the country. Now, some tribes got along better with
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 3: other tribes. There are more agrarian tribes. They vary differently,
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 3: just like humans do in different environments. But at the
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 3: end of the day, there seems to be a pattern.
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 3: When you're talking about uncontacted tribes of hunter-gatherers, they go
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 3: to war with uncontacted tribes all the time. You know,
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 3: I just had a guy on the other day that
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 3: was talking about cannibalism. And one of the ways they
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 3: would utilize cannibalism is eating their enemies after they killed them.
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 3: And if they had an enemy that was in a
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 3: rival tribe and they had an encounter and they killed them,
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 3: they would eat them. And this is like part of
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 3: their culture. This is all over the world. This is
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 3: taking place. I think it's much more likely that war
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 3: is a very, very, very old thing. And it probably
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 3: has to do with a really harsh environment where we
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 3: had to survive, where people were stealing from each other
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 3: and stealing mates and stealing resources and cannibalizing each other.
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you think this is going to make the
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 1: project of living in peace much harder?
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 3: I think it's why it's so difficult currently. I think
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 3: it's why it's so difficult currently because we have a very,
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 3: very long history of war, of conflict, of chaos and violence.
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 3: And it's, you know, probably what made us survive this
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 3: long with the crazy wild world that we live in.
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: Let me play the optimistic one here.
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 3: Please do.
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: One can read this in reverse. Namely, I believe you.
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, also you talk with a lot of people,
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 1: so you... You have a lot of information about that
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 1: that I might not have. Say this is true. Now,
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: you and I don't cannibalize each other, right?
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: So we have learned. So then, if this is the case,
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 1: it means that civilization, which is recent stuff with respect to,
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: has had a very strong pacifying effect on us.
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 3: I agree. And education.
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: Education, civilization. So we learn rationally. We learn through religion,
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: through various processes. So maybe that process of learning that
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: there is an advantage in collaboration is something that can
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: develop more.
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 3: I think it can. I think you're right.
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: And then the question is not going back to a,
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: ancient paradise of kindness and gentleness, but to create a
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 1: better world where we can live together better.
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 3: I think that's the path. Thank you very much. I
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 3: really enjoyed talking to you. It was really awesome.
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: I loved it.
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: Better than anything expected. Fantastic.
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 3: On the equality of all things, lessons on physics and philosophy.
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 3: Do I pronounce your last name Rovelli?
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, perfect.
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 3: Carlo Rovelli. Thanks very much. I really enjoyed it. Bye, everybody.