00:00:37.540It moved in ways it shouldn't have moved.
00:00:41.620And there is one guy who says, I think we need to really seriously consider that either our physics are wrong or this is signs of extraterrestrial life.
00:01:07.180He is the professor of science at Harvard University, received his Ph.D. in physics from Hebrew University at the age of 24.
00:01:15.560He led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative and subsequently a longtime member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
00:01:28.320He's written eight books, over 800 pages on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars and the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of the universe.
00:01:39.540He's been the longest serving chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Institute and director for the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
00:01:59.000He serves as the chair of the board on physics and astronomy for the National Academies and is the elected fellow for the American Academy of Arts and Science, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics.
00:02:19.200He is also a former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and this goes on.
00:02:27.460He's not a kook, even though you will see that this story of did we actually just find evidence of extraterrestrial life is more about what we're all going through right now.
00:02:47.120A lack of humility, an unwillingness to be wrong, and the lack of using all of the tools that science has always used.
00:03:07.480It's a fascinating interview with Abhi Loeb.
00:03:17.120Abhi, I can't tell you how excited I am to have you on the podcast.
00:03:30.980I have been waiting for your book to come out.
00:03:34.820I read it this week, and I think people will be surprised if they think they're going to get a book about little green men.
00:03:44.500It is really a very important book that is about the two things that I think we're missing right now, and that is the scientific theory and humility.
00:03:59.880And when you talk about Amuamua, Amuamua, Amuamua, Amuamua, when you're talking about that, I want to preface this with, it's my understanding that you are not saying this is definitely what this is.
00:04:18.960You're saying we have to have this discussion because either we're wrong about physics or we're wrong about this, you know, asteroid.
00:04:33.480Yeah, well, first of all, I wanted to thank you for having me.
00:04:38.600And indeed, you know, as an astronomer, the biggest lesson I've learned by studying the sky is a sense of modesty.
00:04:46.340You know, the story starts from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle that suggested that we are at the center of the universe and that there are spheres around us.
00:04:58.200And for a thousand years, people believed what he said.
00:05:02.180And, you know, it's flattering to our ego to think that we are central, you know, that we are unique and special at a privileged location.
00:05:10.440And that's why people tend to believe that notion.
00:05:14.540But then Copernicus and Galileo figured out that the Earth moves around the sun.
00:05:20.320And that was really a shock to many people.
00:05:24.040And in fact, at first, the philosophers didn't want to look through Galileo's telescope and they put him in a house arrest.
00:05:30.960But reality doesn't go away if you ignore it.
00:05:34.020And eventually we figured out that we are moving around the sun and the sun moves around the center of the Milky Way.
00:05:40.300A galaxy, which is one of a trillion galaxies in the observable volume of the universe.
00:05:44.620So we're clearly not at the center of the physical universe.
00:05:48.080And then, you know, many people still maintain the notion that we are special and unique and that there is no life out there except here on Earth.
00:05:58.460And I say to those that they should learn a lesson from my daughters.
00:06:03.020You know, when they were infant, they tended to think that they have qualities that nobody else shares.
00:06:09.080And they are special and unique and everything centers on them.
00:06:11.840But when they left to the kindergarten, they met other kids and realized, got a better perspective about reality.
00:06:19.060And for our civilization to mature, we have to find evidence for others.
00:07:25.720I think your book is so universal, even though the part of of what happened in 2017 is phenomenal.
00:07:38.300And we're going to get to that in a minute.
00:07:40.420But your message right now is so universal, because I think what you're experiencing in science is happening everywhere.
00:07:49.680I don't know if it says we're approaching the singularity or if there is something that is that happens periodically where everything changes.
00:08:01.200But we're on the verge of a great leap and everything seems to be decaying.
00:08:07.420And it it's it's I feel as though it is like those who have been the guardians at the gate are just not going to let anybody in.
00:08:17.500But they don't understand the castle walls are coming down.
00:08:22.720I completely agree with you right now.
00:08:25.940The way I see it is the mainstream community in astronomy in particular, but also in science is exactly the opposite side of where it's supposed to be.
00:08:38.300It's not a small nuance that I'm talking about.
00:08:40.920It's the fact that in theoretical physics, for example, you find mainstream scientists, you know, hundreds of them or thousands working on concepts that have no test and no verification through experiments.
00:08:57.500These are extra dimensions, you know, the multiverse string theory, and they don't feel bad about it.
00:09:05.320In fact, there are philosophers supporting them and they are very happy to do that because they do intellectual gymnastics and they are never tested.
00:11:03.060But it didn't change anything other than that.
00:11:06.860The experience of Giordano Bruno was much worse.
00:11:10.000So, actually, there is a student at the Harvard English Department that was inspired by my book to write a Ph.D. thesis on the theme of my book.
00:11:20.720And she invited me a couple of months ago to her Ph.D. exam.
00:11:26.300And one of the examiners asked her, do you know why Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake?
00:11:32.980And she said, well, he was an obnoxious guy.
00:11:35.980He irritated a lot of people, which is, of course, true.
00:11:40.000But the professor corrected her and said, no, the main reason was that he argued that other stars are just like the sun and they might have a planet like the earth on which life may exist.
00:11:53.880And the church at the time found it offensive because it implies that if that life had sinned, you needed copies of Christ to visit those planets and save the life there.
00:13:01.580So, actually, as of a few months ago, there was a paper analyzing the latest data from the Kepler satellite that implies that a substantial fraction, about half of all the sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy, have a planet the size of the earth, roughly at the same separation.
00:13:21.920And what that says is that the conditions we find on earth could be replicated in all of these earth-sun systems.
00:13:30.800There are billions of them within the Milky Way galaxy alone.
00:13:35.060And if you repeat the same circumstances, you might get similar outcomes.
00:13:41.300And then there are a trillion galaxies like the Milky Way in the observable volume of the universe.
00:13:47.320So, altogether, the number of planets like the earth on which things like us may exist is more than the number of grains of sand on all beaches on earth.
00:14:00.340And if you think about all the kings and emperors that were extremely arrogant in conquering a piece of land on earth, that is equivalent to an ant that hugs a single grain of sand on the landscape of a huge beach.
00:14:20.000I mean, not only just in terms of the vast size of the universe and the number of planets like ours, but also in terms of the fact that we live for such a short time, you know.
00:14:29.800And, you know, we should just focus on the substance, right?
00:14:35.240Not pretend that we are powerful and so forth.
00:14:38.600And just try to figure out the world, you know.
00:14:43.480And something bad happens when these kids turn into adults.
00:14:47.640They start worrying about their ego, start promoting their image.
00:14:51.400When they get tenure in academia, they create those echo chambers of students and postdocs that make their voice louder so that they can get prizes and awards.
00:16:05.920No, I completely agree with this notion.
00:16:07.740You know, the Harvard Gazette, which is the Pravda of Harvard University, the official newspaper of Harvard University, they asked me for, they asked me, what is the one thing you would like to change about the world?
00:17:13.840Once we, you know, I wrote just recently that the only thing I'm certain of now in my life is that I'm not certain of anything.
00:17:22.600And the minute we become certain on things, we're in trouble.
00:17:28.640Let's go back to 2017 and describe what the observatory picked up in Hawaii and named it basically the English equivalent of, if I'm not mistaken, the visitor.
00:18:31.440Now, PANSTARS, the telescope on Maui, Mount Haleakala, which actually, as it turns out, I visited, you know, in July 2017, just a few months before Oumuamua was discovered.
00:18:47.300Back then, nobody knew about it, about Oumuamua.
00:18:50.200So, that telescope was constructed because Congress tasked NASA to find 90% of all the objects bigger than 140 meters that will come close to Earth.
00:19:05.320And the reason is, you know, we know that the dinosaurs were killed by a big rock roughly the length of Manhattan Island.
00:19:14.300And the dinosaurs just saw this rock coming towards them.
00:19:18.500It got bigger and bigger on the sky, and the fan stopped when it hit the ground.
00:20:05.140It's just that many people ignore them.
00:20:06.880They want to continue business as usual.
00:20:09.260I should tell you that I went to a seminar about Oumuamua at Harvard.
00:20:14.040And then when I left the room together with a colleague of mine who worked on rocks within the solar system, he said, this object is so weird, I wish it never existed.
00:20:24.380And, you know, I was appalled by that because as a scientist, you should accept whatever nature gives you.
00:20:31.720And in fact, if you see an anomaly, something that doesn't quite line up with what you expected, you should be happy because it's nature's way of telling you that your ideas have to be revised.
00:20:43.960So, that's the spirit of a learning experience.
00:20:47.000The future is not necessarily the same as the past because you are learning something new.
00:20:51.100So, anyway, what was new about Oumuamua that is different from comets or asteroids is the fact, in difference from comets, it didn't show any cometary tail.
00:21:03.640So, a comet is a rock covered with ice, and when it gets close to the sun, the ice evaporates and creates this tail of gas and dust behind it, which reflects light, and you can see it as a beautiful cometary tail.
00:21:18.300There was nothing like that in the case of Oumuamua.
00:21:36.480But the problem with that idea is that it exhibited an extra push away from the sun, which is usually attributed to the evaporation of gas because you get this rocket effect that gives the object an extra push.
00:22:00.880Another one is, as it was tumbling, spinning every eight hours, the amount of sunlight reflected from it changed by a factor of 10.
00:22:11.720And that means the area on the sky that it occupies changed by a factor of 10.
00:22:17.220And think about a piece of paper that is razor thin, tumbling in the wind.
00:22:23.060A change by a factor of 10 is a lot because it's unlikely to be exactly edge-on.
00:22:28.420And it means that projected on the sky, it is at least 10 times longer than it is wide.
00:22:34.300And the best fit to the variation in the light reflected from it was a flat object, pancake-like, not a cigar-shaped object the way it was depicted in a famous cartoon.
00:22:48.840And so, you have a pancake-shaped object that shows an excess acceleration.
00:22:54.600And the only way I could explain it is it's from reflected sunlight.
00:23:00.100And actually, the force declined with increasing distance, just like you expect from reflected sunlight, inversely with distance squared.
00:23:09.180And so, I suggest that maybe it's an artificial object because it needs to be very thin, like a sail, in order for it to be pushed by reflecting sunlight.
00:23:19.720And, you know, a sail on a boat is pushing the boat forward by reflecting air, wind.
00:24:56.740Of course, a photograph is worth a thousand words.
00:24:59.460If we had a photograph, everyone would agree whether it's a rock or artificial, right?
00:25:05.200The problem is that it was discovered on its way away from us.
00:25:09.140So, it's sort of like having a guest for dinner and realizing that this guest is interesting only when the guest leaves through the front door into the dark street.
00:25:18.760But the point is that in the future, you know, within a few years, we will be able to see many more of the same because there would be the Vera Rubin Observatory, much more sensitive than pan stars, that will survey the sky.
00:25:34.640And when we find one that approaches us, we could potentially send out a spacecraft that will take a close-up photo of it.
00:25:42.820So, when you said it was like a sail and it was catching solar light winds, is there anything naturally occurring that would do that, that we know of?
00:25:58.840If you imagine a thin object like a sail that is being pushed by a reflection of light, there is no natural process that would produce it.
00:26:08.480However, so, in the subsequent years, after my paper came out with my postdoc Shmuel Bialy, various people tried to explain the strange properties of Oumuamua from a natural origin.
00:26:23.860And they always discussed something that we have never seen before, like, for example, a hydrogen iceberg, a frozen hydrogen, a chunk size of a football field of frozen hydrogen.
00:26:37.080Then when the hydrogen evaporates, just like in the case of a comet, you don't see it because hydrogen is transparent.
00:26:43.880The problem with that idea is that a chunk of frozen hydrogen would evaporate very quickly along the journey.
00:26:51.300We showed that in a paper that followed up on this suggestion.
00:26:56.320So, it won't really survive in interstellar space because of the absorption of starlight.
00:27:04.380Maybe it's a collection of dust particles, like a dust bunny, that is 100% less dense than air.
00:27:12.740So, you have this cloud of dust reflecting sunlight and getting pushed.
00:27:16.780Again, it's hard to imagine how something that is 100 times less dense than air would survive the journey.
00:27:24.200So, this example just illustrates to you that people that try to really explain the facts encountered difficulties and came up with scenarios that involve something that we have never seen before.
00:27:35.700And these scenarios appear to me less plausible than a light sail.
00:27:41.000And so, you know, I don't see why there should be an objection to putting that possibility on the table, an artificial origin.
00:27:48.520And unfortunately, many of my colleagues prefer not to discuss this possibility at all.
00:27:55.960So, there was another problem with it.
00:28:00.080Our infrared, as it was leaving, as it was leaving the area of the sun, it should have heated up, which would, you know, if you had hydrogen, you know, a hydrogen block.
00:28:14.420And as it got close to the sun, it would make that turn into gas, which would help it propel itself.
00:28:21.120But it would also be smaller on the other side of the sun because it would have expelled some of that stuff.
00:29:02.740So, the Spitzer Space Telescope did not detect any heat coming off it.
00:29:08.100And as a result, you can set an upper limit on its size.
00:29:11.260It has to be smaller than something so that we would not detect the heat.
00:29:15.700And that, on the other hand, implies that it must be relatively shiny because we see a certain amount of reflected sunlight.
00:29:23.920So, if the size is small and you see a certain amount of reflected sunlight, it means that it's more shiny than if it were bigger, you know.
00:29:33.040And it looks like this object was on the shiny end of all the comets or asteroids that we have seen.
00:29:44.600And, you know, there were other anomalies about Oumuamua.
00:29:50.180It came, for example, from a very special frame, which is called the local standard of rest, which is sort of like the galactic public parking lot.
00:30:01.680You know, that's the frame that you get to when you average over the motion of all the stars near the sun.
00:30:07.480So, there is a sort of a rest frame locally.
00:30:53.280Now, that begs the question of why it's in that special frame of reference.
00:30:57.880And, you know, one possibility is that there is a grid population of such objects that is used for navigation, like road posts sitting out there.
00:31:13.660Another possibility is that it's a relay station for communication so that you don't need to send a very powerful beam communicating across large distances.
00:31:26.040Or, you know, it could be just a junk, space junk, some surface layer of a spaceship that was torn apart and it's just floating out there.
00:31:38.260One thing is clear that we cannot associate this object with any particular star in our neighborhood because all these stars are moving around and this object is at rest.
00:31:48.920So, it's just like finding a car in a public parking lot.
00:31:52.440You cannot associate the car with a particular house from where it came because it's sitting at rest.
00:31:59.840But the closest star to us or the closest solar system to us is 25,000 light years away, right?
00:32:08.800No, the closest star to us is four and a quarter light years away.
00:32:31.860So, how old do you think, if this is space junk, how old would it have to be at the minimum?
00:32:41.660At the minimum, tens of thousands of years, if not millions of years, because to cross the solar system, you know, the Oort cloud, the periphery of the solar system, all the way to us, would take this object more than 10,000 years.
00:32:56.860And that means that it started its journey a long time ago.
00:33:02.740You know, we were not very interested in 10,000 years ago as a human species.
00:33:07.500So, I find it hard to believe that this object is spying on us.
00:33:12.640Most likely, it is just like, you know, going to the beach.
00:33:16.720Most of the time, you find seashells and rocks that are naturally produced.
00:33:21.300But every now and then, you find a plastic bottle.
00:33:24.960And that indicates that there is a civilization out there that produced it.
00:33:29.340So, I think of it more as a space junk or space trash.
00:33:34.360It could be equipment that is not functional anymore.
00:33:37.520Simply, you know, we launched Voyager 1, Voyager 2, New Horizons.
00:33:42.680Within thousands of years from now, that will not be functional.
00:34:29.760And to me, over the last four years, I know it's been crazy, but this is the biggest news story of all of mankind, if these things are true.
00:34:56.360It will change our perspective about our place in the universe, our aspirations for space.
00:35:02.040It will have a huge impact on our culture and on our society.
00:35:06.640With respect to the Pentagon papers, and by the way, they are supposed to release everything they know about UFOs as part of the COVID bill in six months or so.
00:35:16.520So on that, we have to see exactly what these papers are.
00:35:23.460Right. And I'm not talking about Project Blue Book and all of that stuff.
00:35:26.380I'm talking about the new evidence that we have now that we can track.
00:35:32.560And we tracked objects that were seemingly tracking us for, I think, three weeks.
00:35:40.880And we had it on several different systems.
00:35:44.820You know, I think our technology has changed so we can we can spot these things.
00:35:52.040But it is it's no longer seemingly the story of, you know, I was out in the farm and I got an anal probe from this guy.
00:36:02.720Right. Well, you know, I think, first of all, it's of interest to the government because, you know, some of the reports could indicate technologies that other nations have that could be a threat to national security.
00:36:48.140So they don't think that it's coming from here.
00:36:51.680You know, I had a similar discussion with Joe Rogan in a podcast a week and a half ago.
00:36:57.440And my take on these reports is that with relatively modest funding, one can deploy scientific instruments at those sites and, you know, do a careful job at monitoring what is going on there.
00:37:18.320And rather than rely on eyewitness testimony or I mean, science is about reproducing results.
00:37:26.140OK, about arranging for better and better instruments to get more reliable evidence for us.
00:37:36.440There is no reason for it to be classified.
00:37:38.060And if there is a public funding source for doing such an experiment, putting those instruments out there.
00:37:44.460And after we discussed it, there was a grassroots initiative by some people to raise the funds to do such an experiment.
00:37:51.380You know, I am very much in favor of checking, you know, scientifically what is behind this.
00:37:58.760If we don't find anything, then we know that there is nothing to think about.
00:38:03.260But, you know, it reminds me of the biblical story in the Old Testament.
00:38:08.460There is this story about Abraham that heard the voice of God and that voice told him to sacrifice his only son, right, Isaac.
00:38:19.100And suppose Abraham had a voice memo up on his cell phone.
00:38:25.940He could have pressed the button and recorded the voice of God and nobody would doubt that he heard the voice of God.
00:38:33.740But he didn't have a cell phone back then.
00:38:36.320And so we have to decide if we believe the story or not.
00:38:39.780And scientifically speaking, we have no proof that this story is right.
00:38:44.300So my point is, if you have scientific instruments, you don't need to believe stories.
00:38:49.500You can just deploy them, record what is happening.
00:38:53.020And if you hear the voice of God, you can convince everyone that it really happened.
00:39:00.820I'm a big science geek, and I know just enough to have everything wrong.
00:39:09.700But I've been fascinated with the singularity.
00:39:14.900One of the I remember in my, what, 30s, I was fascinated by black holes and baby universes by Stephen Hawking.
00:39:23.840And his description of our universe as being just one soap bubble in a collection of soap bubbles.
00:39:35.040And you can't go between any of these universes, which makes you even feel smaller than you do if you understand the size of this universe.
00:39:44.340Yeah, I actually have a variant on this, which is, you know, we don't know what happened before the Big Bang.
00:39:51.300There is a point in time when everything that we see started.
00:39:56.580And, you know, by the way, it matches more or less the idea that is in the first chapter of the Bible, the Old Testament, that there was a beginning in time.
00:40:04.660But the question is, what was there before?
00:40:57.000And if that is the case, perhaps the umbilical cord of our universe was in the laboratory of another civilization that created our universe.
00:41:08.920And that's where the Big Bang came from.
00:41:11.000And then when we understand that, we will create another baby universe.
00:41:14.740So it's just like in family, human families, you have a baby that has a baby that has a baby.
00:41:20.560And that may explain how the universe came to exist.
00:41:24.520I actually agree with you, even for me, at least theologically.
00:41:48.280First of all, does quantum computing, the fact that it can exist, does that verify quantum mechanics and like a parallel universe at all?
00:41:59.440Does that verify any of these things and are we, will it be able to answer some of these questions that have, you know, been on man's mind forever?
00:42:12.440Well, so quantum computing is taking advantage of quantum mechanics.
00:42:16.740The fact that, you know, quantum mechanics is very weird.
00:42:20.120We are used to the fact that, you know, if you have a billiard ball, it sits at a given location and you can measure its position and its speed and you know what their values are if you have a good, a precise enough measurement.
00:42:35.580But in quantum mechanics, you can't really measure everything at the same time and everything is probabilistic.
00:42:42.120And, you know, it's only on, it's only on observation that you can, no, wait, you can measure it until you observe it.
00:43:25.600And quantum computing is taking advantage of that.
00:43:28.100The fact that, let's say you have multiple particles, you know, they can be in some system that is entangled, it's called, that if you were to measure the properties of one component of that system, it would affect what you can measure for the other.
00:43:46.860So quantum computing is taking advantage of that.
00:43:50.040And at the moment, I should say it's not yet at a practical level of being useful, but it's getting there.
00:43:58.100And, you know, within a few years, it's quite possible that it will get us to do some computations much faster than normal computers.
00:44:06.620But it doesn't shed any light on issues of parallel universe.
00:44:10.580I mean, have you seen have you seen what the Fermi labs just announced right before Christmas about they used string theory and quantum computing?
00:44:22.300And they they moved or they actually transported digital information from one place to another.
00:44:30.820And they said that that that is starting to take a take apart Einstein's theory of of speed of light and nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, et cetera.
00:44:43.820As I mentioned before, Einstein made three mistakes at the end of the last decade of his career, and one of them had to do with the spooky action at the distance in quantum mechanics.
00:44:54.380What what it means is if you have a system, let's say of two particles and you separate the particles by a large distance, if you if this system is, you know, the two particles know about each other because they were created together and then you separate them.
00:45:09.720Then then if you make a measurement of one particle very far away, it affects what you can measure right here immediately and it's faster than light.
00:45:20.200And so that's what Einstein dubbed this spooky action at the distance.
00:45:47.620I mean, clearly, this spooky action at the distance took Einstein out of his comfort zone and he was trying to resist it.
00:45:56.520And, you know, Einstein was the greatest scientist of the 20th century and he was wrong.
00:46:01.120Now, my point is, this is any anomaly you find through experiments is nature's way of telling you, be humble and be willing to revise your notions about reality.
00:46:15.460And so we should learn the lesson from those historical mistakes that others have made, including Einstein.
00:46:24.140And in principle, be willing to open our mind to what evidence tells us.
00:46:29.400But the problem is that some people do not want to even consider evidence and put skin in the game, make predictions that can be falsified, because that would mean that they were wrong.
00:46:40.260So if they want to maintain an image of not being wrong and being very smart, they will never put any skin into the game.
00:46:47.800And at the same time, when there is an anomaly like Oumuamua was, people would just shove it under the rug of conservatism and ignore it and do business as usual rather than discuss it.
00:47:01.160You know, the standard thing that people say is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
00:47:09.060Now, the word extraordinary is really in the eyes of the beholder.
00:47:13.640You know, some people regard, I don't know, a black hole as extraordinary.
00:47:17.300Others would say, no, it's just an object, a result of Einstein's theory of gravity.
00:47:21.180So the point is, in my mind, what matters is evidence, irrespective whether it's extraordinary or not.
00:47:28.280When you see something anomalous, you need to explain it.
00:47:31.800And if you put this bar of the evidence being extraordinary, then it gives you legitimacy at ignoring anomalies.
00:47:38.380You know, so that the philosophers back in the days of Galileo would say, oh, what Galileo says does not provide extraordinary evidence.
00:47:46.860Therefore, we can still think that the sun moves around the air, you know, and that is an excuse for being lazy, for ignoring anomalies when they appear.
00:47:56.860And my point is that we should be alert.
00:47:59.340We should be like kids, you know, that realize something unusual and are trying to figure it out.
00:48:05.140You know, who cares about our self-image?
00:48:08.120And, you know, we are trying to figure out nature.
00:48:10.720And if we are not alone in the universe, that would be amazing.
00:48:13.500As you were pointing out, it will change everything for us.
00:48:16.860One of the guys who I read 20, 30 years ago that I just loved and and, you know, as it turns out, he's not accurate, but I just loved it because he thought so differently and everybody rejected him out of hand.
00:48:40.060And that's Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision.
00:48:43.520I loved the way he said, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:48:47.020Let's not dismiss this religious stuff as kooky.
00:48:51.680Let's see if it matches around the world.
00:48:54.680And then let's try to find a scientific evidence for it.
00:49:16.880Therefore, I don't really care how many likes I have on Twitter and I really think independently.
00:49:23.440But more importantly, you know, I don't think there is necessarily a conflict between science and religion because science is about understanding how things work.
00:49:33.380You know, it's just like looking at the watch and you want to figure out how the watch works.
00:49:38.240So, you open up the case and you start looking inside and you start to figure out the mechanics.
00:49:43.880And that's what science is about, figuring out how things work.
00:49:48.660Now, if you are religious, in fact, you would like science to succeed in this endeavor because it increases the all that you have about the watch.
00:50:00.020How delicate and how sophisticated it is.
00:50:03.480And science improves your appreciation of reality.
00:50:08.800For me, for example, the fact that the universe is controlled by a set of laws that we discovered here on Earth and they apply throughout the entire universe.
00:51:26.580So, the only reason there was a conflict was because some people that were theologians tried to also make suggestions for how the world works.
00:55:34.440If you look at social media, like over the past decade and a half, it clearly changed society.
00:55:40.220And whether you change it for the better or for the worse, it remains to be seen.
00:55:44.620And, you know, the advance in technology definitely changes our lifestyle.
00:55:51.140And I think we need to complement it with a proper sense of ethics and morals.
00:55:57.740You know, it's just like the atomic bomb.
00:56:00.520You know, when we had the Manhattan Project, we developed new means of destruction, right?
00:56:05.800So, there was a lot of concern back then that it may destroy humanity, right?
00:56:11.540And so, you have to supplement that with your set of values and not use nuclear weapons unnecessarily.
00:56:19.640And obviously, there is a similar risk with any technology that we develop that could have a big influence on us, such as genetic research.
00:56:27.820You know, the understanding of the human genome, you know, that opens up a Pandora box of possibilities of modifying people and, you know, designing people.
00:56:39.780And also, you know, the computer systems, artificial intelligence that enters any facet of our life, that could, for example, make decisions of life and death.
00:56:52.080About, you know, the medical state of patients, you know, an artificial intelligence system could decide whether a person will die or live, rather than a doctor, a human.
00:57:37.760I think they are essential because you really need to decide how to respond to these new technologies in a way that our civilization will maintain its longevity.
00:57:51.440And, you know, there are lots of ethical questions that come up now when we have new technologies.
00:58:32.640And I've told him this, you know, to his face.
00:58:38.600I find him the most fascinating, most inspiring, and the most terrifying man I've ever met.
00:58:46.920Um, his, his view of what can be and what might be is just off the charts exciting, but his arrogance of, well, we as humans won't make the mistakes to use this incorrectly.
00:59:05.220His, his cavalier, uh, idea of being eventually be one with the machine so you could download yourself and you'll live forever is terrifying because that's, as I said to him, that's not life, at least to me.
00:59:26.080Um, and it could mirror life, but it, it's not life.
00:59:31.500And the, the, again, I go back to what your book is really about.
00:59:35.960The arrogance and the hubris of, of science is, is back to the tower of Babel days.
01:00:18.040Um, a lot of the pursuits when coupled with arrogance are the same things that the early eugenicists here in America and elsewhere and Germany, um, it's the same pursuit of being able to make the Superman.
01:00:39.440Um, um, what's the difference besides technology that we, that we can now do these things?
01:01:01.460Uh, and, um, you know, if you have a good diet, um, intellectually, you get, um, a sense of modesty and, and then, um, you, your steps are more measured and are more balanced and you care about other people.
01:01:17.000Arrogance leads you in the direction of dismissing the values of, of other people.
01:01:22.060And, um, I, I, you know, I very much agree with you that, um, we, yeah, we should not surrender to this tendency.
01:01:30.180I mean, people like sweet things, right?
01:01:34.660We should just try to avoid it and it requires some effort.
01:01:39.280Um, and in the context of science, you know, the thing that bothers me is that, uh, it, it, it, it puts blinders, uh, on our eyes because arrogance says we, we already know the answer before we need to check it.
01:01:52.420And that's pretty bad, you know, because, uh, you, it's in many cases, it's just like saying, okay, I'm as wealthy as Elon Musk.
01:02:08.660And, but if you really want to cash your money, you think that you're more wealthy than Elon Musk, you go to the ATM machine and you find, you know, that you don't have that much money.
01:02:19.820And that is equivalent to testing, to putting some skin in the game, to testing your idea.
01:02:24.820And without going to the ATM machine, we may, we may never realize that we are bankrupt, you know, and so our ideas may be completely off.
01:02:33.780Now for people, you know, that sit in a comfortable position, they, they have income that they don't need to worry about.
01:02:40.620And they can believe in that our reality is a simulation and they can believe that we don't need any experimental feedback.
01:02:48.380We don't need to put any skin in the game.
01:03:10.100Where, where, where are you seeing, knowing what you know and seeing the state of the world and the state of arrogance in the world?
01:03:18.840I'm always optimistic in the sense that I never back down, you know, so even in the context of scientific disputes, you know, if the evidence shows me that I'm wrong, then I will correct myself.
01:03:33.660But if it's people that tell me on Twitter that I'm wrong without attending to the evidence, I don't care less.
01:03:40.860And in that sense, you know, it reminds, I used to be in the military at a young age because in Israel where I grew up, it's obligatory.
01:03:48.640And when I was in the paratroopers, there was a saying that the soldier sometimes needs to put his body on the barbed wire so that others can step forward.
01:04:00.080And that's the way I see the pain that I have right now in with all this pushback.
01:04:06.500I see it as a way of allowing the younger generation of tomorrow to be able to speak freely on this subject of search for other civilizations.
01:04:19.000You know, it's not about me personally.
01:04:20.820I see it as a service to those people so that they can overcome this taboo that exists right now.
01:04:26.920And also promoting the right ideas of modesty, of being open-minded, of allowing innovation in science.
01:04:34.920And at the same time saying that what most of the community is engaged with is self-indulgence, you know, trying to prove that people are smart,
01:04:44.020but not really dealing with reality by getting experimental data to test what these ideas are.
01:04:51.540And, you know, I don't mind that it's not popular.
01:04:54.260And obviously it will not be popular, but I just hold my – so I'm optimistic in the sense that I'm trying to promote a better future.
01:05:03.060If I was pessimistic, I would say, the hell with it.
01:05:14.520I find you a remarkable man and somebody that history should remember.
01:05:26.120We are entering such interesting times, to put it mildly.
01:05:31.500And those who may end up being wrong on things, but can passionately, scientifically, logically make a point and have a different point of view,
01:05:46.860those people are hard to find now because it's getting scary for people to stand up.
01:06:41.400And by the way, the Second World War is an excellent example where, you know, the Nazi regime was quite arrogant in saying that they are the superior race.
01:06:53.460And racism by itself makes very little sense because, you know, very often it's related to skin color or very superficial things.
01:07:02.400And humanity wasted so much money, energy, effort in fighting the Second World War.
01:07:18.660And Winston, I say that in my book, Winston Churchill in 1939 wrote an essay arguing that we should search for life beyond Earth.
01:07:29.520And just around the time when he was about to publish it, he was recruited to be the prime minister in England and didn't have a chance to publish it.
01:07:39.220And and then spent many years fighting the Nazi regime.
01:07:42.980And just imagine if instead of the Second World War, we would use all these resources to search for life elsewhere, the way Churchill advocated.